Party Politics and the Political Economy of Ghana’s Oil

Ghana’s status as a new oil producer raises questions about the developmental effects of resources, and the role of political institutions in these processes. The conundrum this paper addresses is the rather limited impact of oil exploitation in Ghana despite the country’s strong democratic record and internationally acclaimed oil governance legislation. The reasons for this lie in the nature of elite-based political coalitions and we root our analysis of Ghana’s hydrocarbons in the political settlements literature, which moves us beyond the ‘good governance’ approaches so often linked to ‘resource curse’ thinking. We also move beyond the instrumentalism of political settlements theory to examine the role political ideas play in shaping resource governance. We argue that inter-coalitional rivalry has generally undermined the benefits of Ghana’s oil but that a crude interests-based interpretation is insufficient to explain differences between these coalitions.     

Game over? Assessing the impact of the emergence of a profitable wagering strategy in major league baseball wagering markets

Testing the impact of profitable investment strategies is often hampered by the practical difficulties of determining who knew what, and when. This study examines the impact of the publication of a profitable wagering strategy on the Major League Baseball wagering market. While standard measures of market efficiency characterized the Major League Baseball win–loss moneyline market to be efficient, previous works shows that wagering on underdogs early in the season can generate persistent profits. Though the overall efficiency of the baseball wagering market remained after publication, these profitable opportunities dissipated. Bettor behaviour is found to play varying roles across different wagering strategies; up to half of the drop in returns can be attributed to wagering market participant behaviour.     

A quantitative turn in the historiography of economics?

ABSTRACT

Quantitative approaches are not yet common among historians and methodologists of economics, although they are in the study of science by librarians, information scientists, sociologists, historians, and even economists. The main purpose of this essay is to reflect methodologically on the historiography of economics: is it witnessing a quantitative turn? Is such a turn desirable? We answer the first question by pointing out a ‘methodological moment’, in general, and a noticeable rise of quantitative studies among historians of economics during the past few years. To the second question, all contributors to this special issue bring relatively optimistic answers by highlighting the benefits of using quantitative methodologies as complements to the more traditional meta-analyses of both historians and methodologists of economics.     

Sociology of economics or sociology of economy? theoretical-methodological arguments for sociological economics

This paper makes a proposal for reintroducing sociological or social economics into contemporary economic science. Such a reintroduction is proposed to be substantive, by analyzing the social structuring of the economy, and formal, by including sociological/social economics in the current (JEL) classification system of economic disciplines (code A.15). Both epistemological and ontological arguments can be presented to support the proposal. Epistemological arguments invoke the presence of essential components of sociological economics in the development of economic thought, and ontological arguments stress the role of social factors in economic life. In this paper I present primarily epistemological (theoretical-methodological) arguments for sociological economics, and secondarily ontological ones. I show that the present designation, sociology of economics, is something different from sociological or social economics in that the former refers to economic epistemology (knowledge) and the latter to economic ontology (reality). I conclude that, in addition to a sociology of economic science, we need a sociology of economic life. There is nothing surprising in the habit of economists to invade the sociological field. A major part of their work—practically the whole of what they have to say on institutions and on the…[social] forces which shape economic behavior—inevitably overlaps the sociologist’s preserves. In consequence, a no man’s land or everyman’s land has developed that might conveniently be called economic sociology … [or sociological economics] (Schumpeter 1956:134). The author is grateful to two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.     

Towards Post-neoliberal Resource Politics? The International Political Economy (IPE) of Oil and Copper in Brazil and Chile

The contemporary commodity boom is unprecedented in two ways. On the one hand, it takes place against the backdrop of the failure of neoliberal policies to achieve stable economic growth in Latin America. On the other hand, Left-of-centre governments, which have now been in power for over a decade, are designing new strategies to manage the increase in export earnings accrued from sustained international demand for commodities. In particular, Brazil and Chile have undergone significant market opening reforms in their resource sectors, yet persistent state ownership and the dominant role of state enterprises in key extractive industries continue to characterise their growth models. This article explains this puzzle through the application of Mahoney and Thelen's (2010) historical institutionalist framework on incremental change. In so doing, it offers a process-oriented approach in exploring how resource wealth under certain economic and political conditions provides leverage for states to promote economic development. In sum, the article hopes to contribute to the literature on neoliberal and post-neoliberal political economies in Latin America.     

Conquering or mapping? Textbooks and the dissemination of human capital theory in applied economics

Textbooks are an important subject for the study of science in general and economics in particular. In this paper, we analyse at the process of the acceptance of human capital theory through its inclusion in economics textbooks by looking at two specialized fields to which this theory became highly influential: labour economics and the economics of education. The analysis will compare the patterns of the dissemination of these new theoretical developments in a more consolidated field and in an emergent field of economics research with a particular focus in the early stages of that dissemination process.     

What's in a grade? Grading policies and practices in principles of economics

This study created an experimental design with which students can empirically assess their risk behavior with respect to exam grades within an expected utility framework. Specifically, the authors analyzed students’ risk preferences associated with taking exams and earning a “risky” unknown grade versus not taking exams and instead obtaining a “sure” grade. Students have grade-choice decisions in nonhypothetical situations that impact their actual exam grades. Estimates indicate that the more risk-averse a student is, the more willing he or she is to accept a lower certain grade and not take an exam than to run the risk of actually taking it. We believe that this experimental setup and its binding results make it an easy but effective way of teaching the obtuse concept of risk aversion.     

Is the economics of time and ignorance a “classic”?

A history of economic thought perspective on The Economics of Time and Ignorance reveals that the book rehabilitates some major themes in the Austrian tradition that were all but lost subsequent to the formalist revolution in economics that took place in the middle of the twentieth-century. The book also anticipates some important ideas that were extended and applied in Austrian economics after it was first published. Reviews have claimed that the book was a “classic” and also “original”. The book is too close in a temporal sense to judge whether or not future generations will canonize it as a “classic”. Using Stigler’s criteria as to what constitutes scientific “originality”, it is concluded that, taken as a whole, the book was not original. From the vantage point of the overall discipline of economics, it was a work advancing controversial ideas that would not easily change the beliefs, practices and interests of economists in general but it offered sound reasons for taking the Austrian thought-trajectory more seriously. It would be more fitting to view the authors as providers of many innovations contributing to the mature Austrian economics of the twenty-first century.     

The history of economics as economics?

Abstract

This paper critically evaluates the current decline of the relationship between economics and the history of economics, and proposes a framework called the panorama-cum-scenario model for the practice of the history of economics. Starting with the Hegelian thesis that the history of economics is economics itself, the paper argues that such a relationship is necessary but not sufficient because the history of economics is a metatheory addressed to economic theory. The history of economics needs a panoramic view of the subject and a scenario for the construction, interpretation, and evaluation of the system of economics. The panorama-cum-scenario model enables us to work on the history of economics not only by historical and rational reconstruction but also by global reconstruction. Nietzsche's anti-Hegelian viewpoint and Heidegger's hermeneutical standpoint are useful for identifying the role of historical research in developing economic knowledge based on the panorama-cum-scenario model. Several approaches to the history of economics are examined in light of the panorama-cum-scenario model. Schumpeter's history of economics is interpreted as an example of the panorama-cum-scenario model.     

Politics of scale and strategic selectivity in the liberalisation of public services – the role of trade in services

One of the most contentious issues of the neoliberal agenda has been the privatisation of public services. The WTO GATS negotiations over the liberalisation of trade in services, which commenced in the year 2000, led to a strongly contested debate over whether the international level would provide an additional channel for the privatisation of public services. In particular, the position of the European Union was criticised for promoting this agenda. More recently, this question has regained its significance with the start of negotiations for the Trade in Services Agreement and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Thus, this article seeks to analyse the politics of scale in the field of trade in services and its specific impact upon the liberalisation of public services. By applying a Neo-Poulantzian IPE approach, we propose a typology of (i) scalar forms in trade policy and (ii) of particular liberalisation strategies. Our results suggest that the multilateral level is but one element in a strategic politics of scale, with the former primarily fulfilling the role of locking-in liberalisation gains achieved at other levels, while other scalar forms, in particular bi- and plurilateralism, are primarily used to progressively advance the liberalisation agenda.     

Back to Buchanan? Explorations of welfare and subjectivism in behavioral economics

In light of behavioral findings regarding inconsistent individual decision-making, economists have begun to re-conceptualize the notion of welfare. One prominent account is the preference purification approach (PP), which attempts to reconstruct preferences from choice data based on a normative understanding of neoclassical rationality. Using Buchanan’s notion of creative choice, this paper criticizes PP’s epistemic, ontological, and psychological assumptions. It identifies PP as a static position that assumes the satisfaction of given ‘true preferences’ as the normative standard for welfare. However, following Buchanan, choice should be understood dynamically as a process whereby preferences constantly regenerate. Accordingly, the meaning of welfare emerges from an ongoing quest for individual self-constitution. If this holds true, then rationality axioms cannot serve as a priori normative standards. Instead, creative imagination and learning processes must remain central to any understanding of welfare in economics.     

How Do Business Interest Groups Respond to Political Challenges? A Study of the Politics of German Employers

Social scientists dealing with business and politics have tended to focus mostly on the power of business and less on the political challenges and constraints that business interest groups face. This paper analyses how business interest groups respond to political initiatives that challenge their interests, using four episodes of political conflict in Germany. The paper elaborates a model of response strategies and their likely impact on political outcomes. The model suggests that business interest groups can respond to political challenges in two ways: by seeking confrontation or by pursuing adaptation. The paper illustrates these two response strategies with four episodes of political conflict in the political-economic history of Germany: (i) the adoption of social insurance under Bismarck, (ii) the adoption of unemployment insurance in the 1920s, (iii) the adoption of board-level codetermination in the early 1950s, (iv) and the Agenda 2010 labour market reforms of the early 2000s. These four case studies show that adaptation facilitates social compromise, while confrontation results in a bifurcated outcome, producing either dominance or defeat of business interests, depending on what side government takes. Furthermore, the analysis finds that confrontation tends to be associated with a unity of interests within the business community, while adaptation tends to be associated with a fragmentation of interests. The discussion emphasises that the role of business in politics should not be seen solely in terms of business ‘influencing’ politics, but also as potentially adaptive.     

Time for behavioral political economy? An analysis of articles in behavioral economics

This study analyzes leading research in behavioral economics to see whether it contains advocacy of paternalism and whether it addresses the potential cognitive limitations and biases of the policymakers who are going to implement paternalist policies. The findings reveal that 20.7% of the studied articles in behavioral economics propose paternalist policy action and that 95.5% of these do not contain any analysis of the cognitive ability of policymakers. This suggests that behavioral political economy, in which the analytical tools of behavioral economics are applied to political decision-makers as well, would offer a useful extension of the research program. Such an extension could be related to the concept of robust political economy, according to which the case for paternalism should be subjected to ??worst-case?? assumptions, such as policymakers being less than fully rational.     

What drives the perception of health and safety risks in the workplace? Evidence from European labour markets

Worker perceptions of job-related health risk are a little-studied dimension of heterogeneity in the labour market. According to information from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), one out of three European workers considers that her health and safety is at risk because of work. Not surprisingly, risk perceptions are influenced by objective risk factors such as hazardous working conditions, onerous job characteristics and by the probability to be affected by occupational accidents and illnesses. This paper explores also the role played by personal characteristics and household structure for the explanation of risk perceptions. After controlling for job characteristics, workplace hazards, job satisfaction and health outcomes, I find that risk perceptions are strongly correlated with gender, age, and household structure. Lone parents as well as older and more experienced workers have a higher propensity than other categories to consider their health at risk because of work. The same seems to hold true for better educated workers, especially for those who have completed tertiary education. Further results suggest that the relationship between household structure and risk perception is stable across gender.     

Is an economics degree good preparation for the LSAT?

Those aspiring to law school must first complete the Law School Admissions Test, or LSAT. When ranking undergraduate majors by mean LSAT scores, economics has proven to be near the very top, if not the number-one major, over the last two decades. The goal of this analysis is the search for additional evidence that an economics degree is good preparation for the LSAT beyond mean score comparisons. After controlling for pre-college academic ability, collegiate academic ability, variables related to law school aspirations, institutional characteristics, several collegiate experiences, and demographics, the author finds that an economics degree has a positive and statistically significant association with higher LSAT performance.     

Why culture in economics?

This article responds to the points raised by Deirdre McCloskey, Emily Chamlee-Wright, Rob Garnett and Solomon Stein in the symposium on my book Understanding the Culture of Markets (Routledge 2013).     

Why garden for wildlife? Social and ecological drivers,motivations and barriers for biodiversity management in residential landscapes

Residential landscapes with private gardens are major land covers in cities and their sustainable management is paramount for achieving a resilient urban future. Here we focus on the value of residential ecosystems for biodiversity conservation and explore the social and ecological factors that influence wildlife-friendly garden management. Using a stratified sampling design across the UK city of Leeds, this interdisciplinary study develops and applies a mixed method approach, including questionnaires, interviews and ecological surveys across multiple spatial scales. We quantify wildlife-friendly gardening using two measures: (i) the number of wildlife-friendly features within gardens (the wildlife resources index, WRI); and (ii) the frequency of winter bird feeding. Wildlife-friendly gardening is influenced by a combination of garden characteristics and management intensity, householder demographics, wider environmental activity and landscape context. Residents reveal a range of motivations for wildlife-friendly gardening, notably personal well-being and a moral responsibility to nature. Respondents expressed a duty to maintain neighbourhood standards, revealing that social norms are a considerable barrier to uptake of wildlife-friendly activities, but also provide an opportunity where neighbour mimicry results in diffusion of wildlife-friendly practices. Community-driven initiatives that engage, educate and empower residents are better placed to encourage wildlife-friendly gardening than top-down financial incentives.     

Shackle,nihilism, and the subject of economics ∗

Shackle's economic theories have frequently been labelled ‘nihilistic’, and thus of dubious interest to economists. An examination of this charge reveals it to be meaningless. Through focusing on Nietzsche’s diagnosis of nihilism, it is ossible to conclude that mainstream economics, through appealing to models and concepts explicitly acknowledged to be fictitious, itself denies reality and life, and is thus nihilistic. However, desite suggestions, Shackle is ultimately unable to overcome the nihilistic tenencies of mainstream economic theories. Shackle identifies the individual subject as the source of knowledge, yet identifies the subject as analogous to an object, hence replicating the cause of nihilism.     

A national or local phenomenon? A comparison of the US and the Chinese housing markets

This article investigates the common movements of house prices across cities as well as the macroeconomic underpinnings of the comovements in the US and China. Our empirical results indicate more differences than similarities between the US and the Chinese housing markets. The results from a Bayesian dynamic latent factor model indicate that the fluctuations of house prices across cities in the US are more a national phenomenon, while the dynamics of house prices across cities in China are mainly driven by the city-specific component. We further use VAR models to compare the roles of the underlying determinants in these two housing markets. The results show that the roles of monetary policy shocks and aggregate fluctuations in driving the common movements of house prices across cities differ substantially between the US and China at both short and long horizons.