The Future Be Damned: Economists’ Optimism and Nuclear Proliferation

Lower income households make much heavier use of costly financial services, such as payday loans, check cashing services, auto title loans, and many more. These services are crafted for, targeted to, and distributed through outlets in lower income neighborhoods. In other words, there are extensive provisioning systems designed specifically to deliver such products and services to these households. Such marketing aimed at lower income groups reduces both their wealth and welfare relative to upper and upper middle groups.     

Institutionalism and the New Classical Economics

Neoliberalism has transformed markets supplying public goods. Analysis of five real-world Australian markets reveals the eligibility rules for access and ongoing participation, interaction of participants, the role of intermediaries and government, the extent of competition, complex regulatory regimes shaping and controlling these markets, and key market outcomes. Contrary to neoliberalism's free market rhetoric and the view promulgated by mainstream economics, a spectrum of market configurations and governance regimes were found along with participation being highly dependent on technology access and skills, market outcomes inconsistent with policy rhetoric, market interrelationships posing adverse cumulative impacts, and government is strongly interventionist through multiple roles.     

Changing Perspectives on the Factors of Production

Envy is a complex emotion that influences the behavior of envious and envied individuals. Because envy can imply ill will, discontent or dislike of the envied individual who possesses something that the envious individual desires, or aspiration to emulate the envied position, it can lead the envious individual to undertake costly efforts to reduce the gap between the envied situation and his own situation. The envious individual can seek either to damage or match the situation enjoyed by the envied individual. In return, the envied individual can adopt either envy-appeasing strategies or envy-arousing strategies. We argue that these costly envy-related behaviors impede or stimulate economic development.     

Men of Steel Meet the Market: Interpreting Firm Behavior in Russia’s Metallurgy Industry

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty (2014) explains growing income inequality via the difference between the rate of return on capital and the growth rate of the economy: the “r > g” inequality. Even if it is true that r > g leads to increasing inequality, nearly every school of economic thought predicts that r will fall as the economy grows. Thus, for Capital (2014) to be a comprehensive theory of inequality, a more adequate theory of r is required. I term this the “Piketty Problem.” I offer a solution to this problem from an institutionalist perspective.     

Social Structure in Economic Theory

This paper investigates the factors that drive ruler decision making under democracy. By dividing politicians’ actions into two distinct domains and exploring their compositions, we construct a fuller and more realistic picture of politician decision making. In the non-discretionary domain, the politician’s actions are clearly limited by voter desires; in the discretionary domain the politician is free to make choices as he chooses without voter repercussions. Standard neoclassical models of political behavior suggest that when votes don’t matter, monetary income drives ruler behavior. While monetary pursuit may explain some ruler decisions, it leaves many other observed choices unexplained. Our non-discretionary/discretionary dichotomy highlights the up-to-now neglected role that psychic income plays in explaining otherwise unexplained ruler decisions. The case studies considered support this view.     

The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics

L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has become popular as a teaching tool in economics. It has been argued that it was written as an allegory of Populist demands for a bimetallic monetary system in the late 19th century. The author argues that Baum was not sympathetic to Populist views and did not write the story as a monetary allegory.     

On the Endogeneity of the Mean-Variance Efficient Frontier

The endogeneity of the efficient frontier in the mean-variance model of portfolio selection is commonly obscured in the portfolio selection literature and in widely used textbooks. The authors demonstrate this endogeneity and discuss the impact of parameter changes on the mean-variance efficient frontier and on the beta coefficients of individual assets.