The new post-industrial state

With the socioeconomic restructuring of the 1970s and 1980s, the idea of a smooth transition to a post-industrial service economy has required significant revision. We outline three such revisions: the ideas of informatization, informalization, and dualism. The first two are reworkings of post-industrial theory so as to emphasize one or other undervalued trend in industrial society, and are in principle quite compatible. The third emphasizes inequalities in power and resources that are plausibly associated with developments seen as benign by the others. Each has distinct implications for democratic development. However, we argue that while elements of all three models are present in current trends, so that the future might be best seen as a compromise between them, in fact all approaches fail to grasp the real significance of socioeconomic and technological restructuring. A more fruitful approach, with distinctive policy implications, is proposed.     

LONG‐RUN RISING SUPPLY PRICE AND THE NUMÉRAIRE

When a set of industries is kept in long‐run equilibrium, it is never possible to change just one price at a time. But when various (or all) prices are changing, the direction of change of any one price can depend on the numéraire adopted. What does it mean, then, to say that a long‐run supply curve is upward (or downward) sloping? Can this qualitative property be independent of the numéraire in terms of which the product price is being measured? In general, it cannot.     

Skills shortages are not always what they seem: migration and the Irish software industry

This paper argues that the skills shortage in the Irish software industry is socially produced by a range of domestic factors, especially the education and training system. It also contends that immigration reinforces rather than resolves skills shortages.     

Cheating in Contests

Much of the interest in the study of sports from the perspectiveof an economist lies in the empirical application of contestsas efficient mechanisms for eliciting effort. Contestants respondto contest incentives, and these incentives include the incentiveto cheat. This paper discusses different forms of cheating:sabotage, doping, and match fixing. The paper discusses howthese forms of cheating arise and how they can be treated. Inparticular, we look at specific forms of cheating in soccer,baseball, and cricket. In the appendix we develop a simple modelof match fixing.