Marx's Legacy,Régulation Theory and Contemporary Capitalism

ABSTRACT

The 2008 financial crisis has challenged the merits of standard economic theories and sparked surprising references to Marxist analyses. A monetary economy is prone to crises, the interaction of competition with capital–labour relations launches relentless accumulation and over-accumulation crises exacerbate the built-in contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. Nevertheless, until now, these imbalances have not unfolded into its rapid and complete collapse. From the social and political struggles of labour and citizens, the 1929 crisis and finally the Second World War, new configurations emerge for the wage–labour nexus, the form of competition and the monetary and credit regime. These delineate an unprecedented accumulation regime, Fordism. In turn, Fordism enters a structural crisis and a dramatic change in institutionalized compromises favours a still different accumulation regime (finance-led) that evolved from one speculative boom to another till the 2008 American financial collapse. Thus the mobilization of Marx's foundational hypotheses by Régulation theory allows a better understanding than most alternative theories of major contemporary stylized facts: productivity slow-down and social polarization in mature economies, tensions between capitalism and democracy, new industrial capitalisms and limits to globalization.     

Shrinking Cities,Shrinking Households,or Both?

Household size decline accounts for a substantial portion of population loss in shrinking cities, yet little research has focused on it. Much of the literature presents a simple growth/decline binary that is largely determined via population figures. In this paper, we highlight the importance and assess the impact of household size changes on population decline, and determine what types of household size declines are more acute in shrinking cities than other locales. We find that elderly households and households with school-aged children are under-represented in shrinking cities, while households with pre-school-aged children are over-represented. More tellingly, we find the biggest source of household-related loss in shrinking cities to be the growth of single-person households now living in houses that were once home to entire families. These findings puncture the binary on which much of the shrinking cities discourse is based. The population dynamics of most cities are subtler than either practitioners or critical scholars assert. We argue that plans and development strategies for shrinking cities should reflect a range of demographic changes, including outmigration and internal household restructuring.     

文化产业竞争力研究的进展、问题与展望

20世纪80年代以后,随着国际竞争的加剧,产业竞争力成为国内外学者研究的重要课题。近年来,随着文化产业的兴起,文化产业竞争力的问题开始受到关注。目前,文化产业竞争力的研究还处于初始阶段,本文致力于在现有研究成果的基础上指出文化产业竞争力研究的不足,并提出今后的研究方向。     

论制度变迁的成本约束

制度变迁的关键是成本约束,这是制度本身产生的根本性要求。制度变迁是成本和收益相权衡和比较的产物,制度设计和安排必须充分考虑到制度变迁的成本和收益,减少制度变迁的阻力,提高制度运行的效率。