Heterodox Economics Newsletter

Issue 183 July 20, 2015 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory

This issue of the Newsletter comes with a series of timely suggestion for your northern-hemisphere-summer-readings and, hence, includes a bunch of items related to recently published books and journal-issues. In case these readings seem too conventional for you and you are currently searching for something more thrilling I could offer you this piece. It implicitly explains how Europe's current perils are not so much the result of underlying economic problems, but rather the consequence of specific political decisions and strategies. The latter seem to cluster around the general idea that the threat of a sustained debt-bondage of whole countries might provide a suitable mean for enforcing the Eurozone's stability and growth pact. How lucky for Germany that this informal addition to the Eurozone's rules have not been fully implemented in the early 2000s when Germany regularly failed to keep its deficit and debt in line with Eurozone requirements.

In this context it is highly interesting to ask for the role of mainstream economics in all this. On a superficial level we observe economists' interventions in all possible variations on diverse media channels. From a more nuanced perspective we might also focus on the role of economic models created on mainstream economic foundation used by the European Commission to academically substantiate their economic policy decisions (click here for an overview). The two most important models are the output-gap model (which is used to calculate potential outputs and NAIRUs for all member states to account for cyclical variations in output) and the quest-model (a standard open economy DSGE-model). These models often produce rather curious results: According to the output-gap model the "natural" unemployment rate in Spain is higher than 20%. In terms of the typical interpretation of such models this result stems from a too high level of labor market protection and real wages. However, more probably the result is simply driven by the fact that the NAIRU in this model is effectively calculated as a trend on unemployment, which shows strong procyclical tendencies. A recent implementation of the quest-model on the other hand "showed" that the current-account surplus in Germany is mainly due to the farsightedness of the German population, which allegedly is very good in anticipating demographic change and, hence, increased private savings which reduced nation-wide imports (leading to a corresponding increase in net exports).

Given these theoretical underpinnings to guide policy the extreme stance often taken by the European Commission as well as the European Council becomes somewhat less surprising. In sum it seems that the conceptual groundwork delivered by standard economic thinking is much more at the heart of the current European dilemma as it might seem at first sight.

All the Best,

Jakob

© public domain

Table of contents

Call for Papers

19th FMM Conference on "The Spectre of Stagnation? Europe in the World Economy" (Berlin, 2015)

22-24 October, 2015 | Best Western Premier Hotel Steglitz International, Berlin

Deadline Extension: 31 July, 2015

Keynotes by Paul De Grauwe, Mariana Mazzucato, Barry Eichengreen, Rania Antonopoulos, Mark Blyth, Roger Backhouse, Eckhard Hein, Özlem Onaran and Jan Priewe.

The submission of papers in the following areas is encouraged:

All details, including submission procedure, are available at the FMM website.

3rd International Conference "Economic Philosophy" (Aix-en-Provence, 2016)

15-16 June, 2016 | Aix-en-Provence, France

It is organized by GREQAM, in collaboration with the Philosophy-Economics Network, French and international learned societies. The focus of this international conference is The economic agent and its representation(s). We support all contributors working on economic philosophy to submit papers relevant to the theme. Other contributions from economic philosophy are welcome.

The program will consist of both contributed papers and keynote lectures given by: Daniel Hausman, University of Wisconsin-Madison Cristina Bicchieri, University of Pennsylvania

All the information concerning the Conference and the submission process are available on: http://ecophilo.greqam.fr

Detailed CfP is available here (pdf).

The submission deadline is March 15, 2016.

We look forward to meeting you in Aix-en-Provence,

Jean-Sébastien Gharbi and Gilles Campagnolo for the Conference organizing and scientific committees

Association for Institutional Thought (AFIT) Conference on "Social Innovation & Social Impact" (Reno, 2016)

13-16 April, 2016 | Reno, Nevada

The 37th Annual Meeting of AFIT is scheduled to take place on April 13-16, 2016 in Reno, Nevada, at the Grand Sierra Resort in conjunction with the Western Social Science Association (WSSA) 58th Annual Conference.

Conference Theme: Social Innovation & Social Impact: From Institutional Theory to Policy and Practice

The 2016 AFIT conference invites you to submit papers and/or propose full sessions that address the application of institutionalist theory to policy and practice, with special emphasis on social innovation and social impact. Social, cultural, political, and economic institutions of all types shape economic behavior and outcomes. These institutions are not indigenous; exhibiting agency as actors, people create and re-create households, government bodies, non-governmental organizations, social enterprises, public-private partnerships, small businesses, corporations, non-profit organizations, schools, places of worship, cooperatives, novel forms of money, community-based organizations, laws, public-private partnerships, as well as numerous other institutions. People can therefore lead and further efforts toward progressive social change by reforming existing institutions or creating new ones to bolster desirable social impact. Our conference theme encourages work on social innovation: the development and implementation of new or improved solutions to a social problem which are more effectual, sustainable, and fair than the status quo.

Social innovation prioritizes benefits for the many rather than the few. Social innovation is driven by the interchange of ideas, sharing of values, and changes in roles and relationships.[1] The process of generating social impact is as important as the outcome itself. Considerations of community diversity—including gender, race, and ethnicity; class; health; generation or treatment of waste; depletion or preservation of natural resources; civic engagement; human rights; decent work; and learning opportunities—prove key.

The theme of Social Innovation & Social Impact: From Institutional Theory to Policy and Practice promotes the continuing development of institutional economics—theoretically, analytically, and empirically—while also creating synergies with related traditions. AFIT values pluralism in economic thought. Sessions are open to economists and non-economists, and papers linking institutionalism to other heterodox economic traditions are encouraged. For example, the organizer is interested in sessions linking feminist economics, social economics, and ecological economics to institutionalism.

Examples of possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

The conference is receptive to proposals for panels that review and discuss books recently published, especially by AFIT members. All proposals for papers and sessions reflecting the traditional and analytical perspectives represented by the Association for Institutional Thought will be given serious consideration. However, preference will be given to proposals that address the theme of “Social Innovation & Social Impact: From Institutional Theory to Policy and Practice.”

In addition, AFIT encourages proposals from graduate students, and AFIT sponsors prizes for outstanding student papers. Check our website for announcement of the student competition.

The format of the 2016 conference panels does not include discussants. However, if you organize a panel, and you find it necessary to have discussants, you are welcome to do so. Proposals for complete sessions are encouraged.

The specific formatting requirements for submissions to the conference will be sent out in September 2015, after the WSSA has completed revisions of the submission process on its end.Until then, if you have general queries, feel free to contact the conference organizer and Vice President of AFIT, Tonia Warnecke at twarnecke@rollins.edu.

For more information about AFIT, please visit our website at www.associationforinstitutionalthought.org

CCS – Conference on Complex Systems (Tempe, 2015)

28 September – 2 October, 2015 | Tempe, Arizona

The Conference on Complex Systems has an interdisciplinary focus, including perspectives of economics, various natural and social sciences as well as mathematics and computational sciences. The conference is complemented by a pre-conference for young scholars and by about 30 sattelite meetings to be held in the context of the CCS.

A number of satellite meetings are of particular interest from an economic and/or social simulation perspective and for which submission of contributions is still open, see the list below:

1. "Territorial Intelligence for Multilevel Equity and Sustainability ª - TIMES @ CCS2015

Procedure to submit:

  1. Send your proposal to us before 15th of July (PDF)
  2. We'll answer you ASAP when we'll receive your Email
  3. When your contribution is accepted, post your abstract in the EasyChair account for the CCS'15 conference
  4. Please make sure that:
    1. you insert the name of the satellite session in the first line of the abstract: Territorial Intelligence for Multilevel Equity and Sustainability
    2. you post your abstract by 15 August, 2015 for inclusion in the conference program
    3. when you submit you should check the box in 'Other Information and Upload' : 'The paper belongs to a Satellite Session – REQUIRED : Insert name of Satellite Session in the first line of your abstract'
  5. Then please kindly confirm your abstract submission forwarding to us the Email of confirmation indicating the number of your abstract.
  6. Register on the CCS'15 website to pay the fees (if you did not do it yet): http://www.ccs2015.org/registration/

The satellite meeting forms part of the "Complex Systems Digital Campus '15 - World e-Conference"

2. Netconomics @ CCS2015

3. Quantitative Methods for Predicting, Explaining and Describing Technological Change @ CCS2015

4. Concepts, Methods, and Measurements of Social Tipping Points @ CCS2015

5. The Cultural Evolution of Technology: Evidence, Hypothesis and Theory @ CCS2015

6. Green Growth - A Complexity Challenge @ CCS2015

7. PlatOpen Platform dependency for Open ABM complex model simulations @ CCS2015

8. Circular Economy as a Complex Adaptive System @ CCS2015

9. Computational Social Science: Social Contagion, Collective Behaviour, and Networks @ CCS2015

Call for Book Chapter Proposals: "Economic Imbalances and Institutional Changes to the Euro and the European Union"

Dear Colleagues,

I’d like to share with you the details about the call for papers for a new book "Economic Imbalances and Institutional Changes to the Euro and the European Union". I’ll be - together with a colleague of mine from the Slovak Republic - the editor.

The book will be published by Emerald Group Publishing in its International Finance Review book series.

If someone of you would like to participate, I invite to submit extended abstract (1 page) of the possible contribution with detailed information on the research idea, its correspondence to the key topics of the call, expected contribution according to the book ideas, methodology, expected outcomes .. in other words, brief summary of proposed chapter. Extended abstract will be the key for the initial suitability check of contributions.

There is no a particular deadline to submit extended abstract. However, sooner is better as we are limited on the total number of contributions that can be accepted.

International Finance Review is listed in Cabell's, EconLit, Scopus, Summon (ProQuest), and Thomson Reuters' Book Citation Index ensuring great visibility to authors.

Further details are available here.

Kind Regards,

Rosaria Rita Canale
Department of Business and Economic Studies
University of Naples “Parthenope”
https://uniparthenope.academia.edu/RosariaRitaCanale

ICDD Workshop on "Where have the classes gone?" (Kassel, 2015)

3-4 December, 2015 | University of Kassel, Germany

Where have all the classes gone? Collective action and social struggles in a global context

The so-called new social movements (NSM) have emerged in Western countries from the 1960s and 1970s. The apparent novelty of their struggles was the rupture with class politics and labor movement struggles. Since then, a vast majority of analyses and theoretical contributions have moved away from class struggle analysis and labor-capital antagonisms. In order to make sense of diverse and novel forms of resistance, social movements theories focused on particular aspects such as the institutionalization of political opportunities, the formation of identities or the ways of bringing the protests into public debate. Despite the strength of these approaches in understanding different elements of collective action, the question concerning the role of class politics and the political economy in collective action still remains. Collective forms of resistance continue to be diverse and stem from different contexts. Their demands range from the right to housing to calls against modern violence and slavery, gender equality or access to land and environmental protection. In an increasingly globalizing world, social movements and resistance are formed even in virtual campaigns against global trade agreements that benefit corporations, urban-rural movements against rising poverty, and localized political movements challenging neoliberal policies in their countries. What do all these struggles have in common? How does the global political economy affect them, even those which are apparently not connected to economic issues? Is class still a valid category for understanding resistance? These are some of the questions that the workshop intends to address. The space for exchanging insights is offered to academic contributions from different disciplines and activists. Hence, we especially encourage junior scientists and activists as well to submit their abstracts in this context.

Topics of interest can include, albeit by no means limited to, studies that focus on:

  1. Actors: Studies focusing on protests and social movements emerging and revolving around class and non-class identities such as migrants, peasants, women, LGBTIH, and youth.

  2. Context or process-tracing: Research tracing processes or focusing on historical conjunctures from which collective action and struggles surface, i.e., neoliberal expansion in the Global South.

  3. Aims and issue-based demands: Studies that examine political, economic or social issues and problems highlighting the demands from which the protests and discontent arises such as right to city spaces, housing, water struggles, free education, and health and rural movements arising against land-grabbing.

  4. Types of conflict: Studies could also explore the features and characters of conflicts whether long term, emerging or recent popular uprisings varying from Brazil, Hong Kong, China, Turkey or Ukraine.

Applications are to be sent to 2015workshop@icdd.uni-kassel.de with an abstract of not more than 300 words by August 30, 2015 at the latest.

The workshop, organized by the International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD), will take place at the University of Kassel, Germany.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Cenk Saracoglu (University of Ankara), Emma Dowling (Middlesex University)

Contact: 2015workshop@icdd.uni-kassel.de

Organizing Committee: Jorge Forero, Aishah Namukasa, Halyna Semenyshyn

Program Committee: Joaquin Bernaldez, Oksana Balashova, Alexander Gallas, Ismail Doga Karatepe, Verna Dinah Viajar

More information is available at the conference website. A pdf-version of this call is available here.

International Conference on "Contested Property Claims" (Aarhus, 2015)

10-11 December 2015 | Aarhus University, Denmark

In contemporary societies people generally acquire property within a property regime based on trade, contracts, inheritances, and welfare state redistributions. But these regimes do not always run smoothly. Behind them lie histories of appropriation and expropriation, and from within they are constantly challenged by those who point to the social injustices that they can produce. We call these attempts to interrupt the dominant system of contracts and exchanges ‘contested property claims’. They are points of friction where economic, political, and ethical issues around property are brought to light, and they illustrate how disagreements over property force social actors to reason about the institution of property as such.

To address these issues the research project Contested Property Claims – Moral Reasoning about Property and Justice in Practice, Debate, and Theory invites scholars from all fields to submit paper proposals on the ways property is performed and contested.

To propose a paper, please send an abstract of (max.) 300 words to contestedpropertyclaims@cas.au.dk.

Read more about the Contested Property Claims project here.

Please use this address for any inquiries about the conference. The closing date for receiving abstracts is 15 September 2015.

More information is available at the conference website. Further details about the streams is available here (pdf).

International Conference on "EU Trade Policy at the Crossroads" (Vienna, 2015)

4 – 6 February, 2016 | Vienna, Austria

EU Trade Policy at the Crossroads: between economic liberalism and democratic challenges

Organizers: ÖFSE – Austrian Foundation for Development Research, EAEPE – European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy, and EuroMemo Group, with financial support from Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Brussels, and Arbeiterkammer Wien.

International trade, and in particular TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Partnership agreement between the EU and the US, has recently become a hotly debated policy field in the EU, juxtaposing a coalition of EU institutions and the corporate sector against a large coalition of civil society organisations. TTIP stands out as the prime example of new generation free trade agreements aiming at deep economic integration. Besides tariff elimination, its primary aim is to focus on a very comprehensive set of regulatory issues and rules, with a view to dismantling and harmonizing these in areas such as agriculture, food safety, product and technical standards, sectoral regulations in services, the protection of intellectual property rights, and government procurement. In addition, investment liberalization and protection are central issues, with the proposed investor-to-state-dispute-settlement mechanism (ISDS) being particularly controversial.

The debate on TTIP has also triggered a renewed academic interest on trade issues. The academic discourse is characterized by a dual challenge: firstly, there exists a lack of knowledge about the likely impacts of the new trade agreements upon the well-being of EU societies. Many of the impacts of regulatory change on e.g. food safety, consumer protection, the natural environment or working conditions are not well- known. Secondly, there exists no alternative vision of what the role and contribution of international trade to social welfare in the current environment of multiple crises would possibly entail, and what kind of changes to the politics of EU trade would be needed.

Upon this basis, the conference wants to contribute to the trade policy debate by promoting (i) a trans- and interdisciplinary analysis of the current trade regime and policies in the EU and its likely economic, social and political impacts, and by facilitating (ii) a multi-stakeholder debate on alternative conceptualizations of trade and trade policy in the EU.

Thus, contributions from a variety of academic disciplines, such as e.g. economics, political science, law and sociology are encouraged. Similarly, the conference is open to a variety of theoretical and normative positions in the social sciences. In addition, the conference seeks to bring together researchers from academic as well as other research organizations with policy-makers and political activists from political organizations, NGOs and social movements.

The submission of papers in the following thematic areas is encouraged:

The deadline for submission of paper proposals is 30 September 2015. Please send an abstract (max. 500 words) to tradeconference2016@oefse.at. Decisions on accepted papers will be made in early October 2015. In case of acceptance, full papers are due by 31 December 2015, to be posted on the conference web page. The conference language is English.

Registration forms for the conference and information on the keynote lectures and plenaries will be made available online via the conference webpage.

Further enquiries may be directed to the conference organizers Werner Raza and Melanie Wolf at: tradeconference2016@oefse.at

Scientific committee of the conference: Marija Bartl (Univ. of Amsterdam), Ferdi de Ville (Univ. of Antwerp), Jean-Christoph Graz (Univ. Lausanne), Ronan O’Brien (EuroMemo Group), Werner Raza (ÖFSE), Christoph Scherrer (Univ. of Kassel), Gabriel Siles-Brügge (Univ. of Manchester), Sabine Stephan (IMK/Hans Böckler Foundation), Pasquale Tridico (Univ. Roma Tré), Rudi von Arnim (Univ. of Utah/US).

A pdf-version of this call is available here.

International Conference on Economic Theory and Policy (Tokyo, 2015)

22-24 September, 2015 | Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan

This conference is co-sponsored by the Review of Keynesian Economics (Edward Elgar). We will collect papers suitable for this journal.

As usual in our September conference, we will accept any papers on

Lectures

will partcipate in and give their lectures

Submission of Abstract:

For those who want to join and present a paper at our September conference, please send your abstract (between 200 words and 500 words) with your name, your affiliation, contact address to confyagi@meiji.ac.jp
Deadline: 31 July 2015

Notification of acceptance:

We will send you the notification of acceptance, basically within one week after your submission, in order that the participants can prepare for their travel to Japan.

VISA application:

For those who need documents for VISA application, could you please send your e.mail to: confyagi@meiji.ac.jp or to: yagi8@meiji.ac.jp as soon as possible

Seminar for Young Researchers and Ph.D students

Contact:

Co-organized by Department of Economics, School of Political Science and Economics, Meiji University

Supported by Headquaters of lntemational Collaboration, Meiji University

For more information please visit the conference website.

International Rosa Luxemburg Conference on "Socialism in Asia and Europe" (Seoul, 2015)

27-28 November, 2015 | Sungkonghoe University, Seoul, Korea

Keynote Speakers: to be determined

Organizing Committee:

Sponser: National Research Foundation of Korea

The Conference Theme: Socialism in Asia and Europe

International Rosa Luxemburg Conference 2015 will be held in Seoul, Korea from 27 to 28 November 2015. Succeeding the thought and practice of Rosa Lumxemburg, the conference is designed as a venue through which practical plans for alternative society in the 21st century will be discussed. We will engage ourselves in historically and geographically pluralistic conversations of socialism, which had had worldwide significance in the 20th century from the perspective of history, of thought, and of movement.

As the title ‘Socialism in Asia and Europe’ suggests, the conference, while framing itself to specific problematics, will reflect on socialism. Such a problematic base is that socialist practices actually had been forgotten or lost in the epistemological frame of the homogenized space and time; simultaneously, these practices had been employed as a subjective resistance to the globalization of capital. It is precisely from the context of this problematic base that the practice of those outstanding European socialist thinkers including Rosa Luxemburg were developed, in order to overcome the concrete and real contradiction encountered by European people (also the people of the world deducted from that afterward). Nevertheless, in the historical process of the 20th century, epistemologically, the practice of socialism in Europe had not had the other--the Third World--as its referent point. This absence of the other had therefore constituted the ways in which Europe could not understand the historical meanings of its own socialist practice. Therefore, without any mediation by taking the other as its point of reference, European practice of socialism had been universalized via self-abstraction in the world. Eventually, not only in Europe but also in the Third World, the knowledge and theory of socialism had failed to be succeeded as a knowledge/thought resource that establishes an organic relationship with the practice of socialism.

At the same time, socialist practice in Asia and the Third World had undergone the same fate. Standing against the capitalist globalization, socialism in Asia has drawn its own trajectory by striving to protect and improve people’s living conditions. It had its historical root and base, while undergoing many trials and errors. Nevertheless, the history of civil wars and the Cold War had resulted in historical rupture and regional splits, and hence the organic unity of socialist theory and practice had been endangered. Therefore, the formation of the subject for social transformation had been impeded as well. Inter-generation rupture in thought and movement, and regional-global division system formed via civil wars and the Cold War, are concretely expressive of the present crisis and impasse. Therefore, overcoming ruptured history and restoring regional internationalism can provide the possibility to break through the present crisis by dialectical interactions. In other words, each social community can recognize and problematize the site and the formation of historical rupture through regional internationalist interactions; at the same time, re-historicizing critical traditions of each community can give an impetus to regional internationalism. We expect that the model of reunification of theory and practice for the 21st century could be devised through the process of dialectics aforesaid. Ultimately, this is a kind of trial to reconsider the condition of the universality from below.

In this venue of conference discussion, ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ will be transformed and referred to as the field of interacting relationship. Especially, ‘Socialism’ existed not only as theory, but also as a concrete practice for realizing an alternative society in the 20th century. Therefore, estimating and evaluating them based on the concrete history of socialism could be the first step to overcome the present impasse at least in the intellectual domain.

In the coming conference, we will discuss and submit the prospect for an alternative society in the 21st century. ‘Runaway capitalism’ with the crisis of socialist movement unsolved has largely deepened the exploitation of the people of the world, while capitalism would eventually confront its internal crisis. At this time, necessity and request for constructing socialist alternative society are reviving, even if such a request has been regarded as old-fashioned. Under this situation, the conference intends to provide an opportunity to critically review ‘socialism’ in Asia and Europe from the perspective of regional internationalism. Additionally, the conference attempts to re-acknowledge the aftermath of generational rupture and regional splits; from the perspective of thought, movement, and historical structure, it endeavors to grope for the intellectual task of Socialism in Asia.

Broad Themes and Sessions Include:

  1. Appropriation of Rosa Luxemburg in Asia
  2. Contemporary meanings of Rosa Luxemburg in the neo-liberal era.
  3. Alternative society models and the 21st century socialism
  4. Thought and movement of socialism in Asia
  5. Historical structure of socialism in Asia: colonialism, civil war, Cold War and division system

Notes for participants

  1. The Conference will accept individual papers only.
    Deadline for submissions: August 15, 2015, only through e-mail to rosaseoul2015@gmail.com
    Result will be announced on Aug 31, 2015
  2. The organizing committees of the conference will review the proposals and select the best ones. Papers and sessions will be rearranged when necessary after submission of abstracts
  3. Language: The conference languages will be English and Korean with simultaneous translation
  4. As a general rule, conference participants will raise their own funding to join. We encourage all students and faculties to find their own travel fund where and if possible.
  5. Limited funding will be available to support partial travel/accommodation for selected proposals from developing countries. Applications for funding support must be submitted with the proposal. The application should include paper title, abstract, short autobiographical information and projected budgets in details (airfare and accommodation). Recommendation letters are welcome though not compulsory. The committee will NOT consider incomplete applications.

The organizing committee is pleased to announce the Call For Papers for International Rosa Luxemburg Conference 2015 in Seoul, Korea. The Conference will be held from 27 to 28 in November, 2015, at the Sungkonghoe University, Seoul, Korea.

Submissino Deadline: 15 August, 2015.

Further information at the conference website. All Inquiries to: rosaseoul2015@gmail.com

Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics: Special Issue on "Institutional Theories and Functional Differentiation"

The Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics plans to publish a Special Issue on Institutional Theories and Functional Differentiation in its forthcoming Volume 29, Issue 1, 2017.

The aim of this special issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics is to look at interactions of institutional theories and theories of social differentiation, with a particular focus being on theories of functional differentiation.

Deadlines

More information available here.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Economics and Society invites for contributions

We are inviting academic editorial contributors to The SAGE Encyclopedia of Economics and Society. This four-volume reference takes a fresh, contemporary look at economics through social science lenses covering categories such as Arts and Culture; Childhood and Economics; Education and Human Capital; Health and Health Care; Psychology, Attitudes, and Emotions; Religious Life, and more.

***A list of available articles, with target word counts, will follow soon. We are currently making assignments with a deadline of August 1, 2015.***

This comprehensive project will be published by SAGE Reference in 2015. The General Editor, who will be reviewing each submission to the project, is Dr. Frederick Wherry of Yale University.

SAGE Publications offers an honorarium for contributors ranging from SAGE book credits for smaller articles up to a free set of the printed product forcontributions totaling 10,000 words or more. Your name and affiliation will also appear in the byline of your entries in the final publication.

If you would like to contribute to the reference please send me your CV along with your selected topic(s) from the list below and I’ll confirm availability. If you are unable to participate, your recommendation of any colleagues who might be interested in the project would be greatly appreciated. Email: steinpub@gmail.com

Thank you for your consideration!

Joanne Steinberg, Managing Editor

Call for Participants

Capital as Power: Broadening the Vista (Ottawa, 2015)

1-3 October, 2015 | Carleton University, Ottawa, CA

The theory of capital as power (CasP) offers a radical alternative to mainstream and Marxist theories of capitalism. It argues that capital symbolizes and quantifies not utility or labour but organized power writ large, and that capitalism is best understood and challenged not as a mode of consumption and production, but as a mode of power. Over the past decade, the Forum on Capital as Power has organized many lectures, speaker series and conferences. Our most recent international gatherings include “Capitalizing Power: The Qualities and Quantities of Accumulation” (2012), “The Capitalist Mode of Power: Past, Present and Future” (2011), and “Crisis of Capital, Crisis of Theory” (2010).

The 2015 conference broadens the vista. With 30 papers on a wide range of topics, presenters extend and deepen CasP research, compare CasP with other approaches and critique CasP’s methods and findings.

The conference is open to everyone and is free to attend.

Tentative Conference Programme is available here.

International Conference of Labour and Social History (Berlin, 2015)

17-19 September, 2015 | Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), Berlin, Germany

Preparatory Group

Andreas Eckert (re:work, Berlin), Josef Ehmer (University of Vienna), Nicole Mayer-Ahuja (Georg-August- Universität Göttingen), Lukas Neissl (ITH, Vienna), Brigitte Pellar (Vienna), Sigrid Wadauer (University of Vienna), Susan Zimmermann (ITH, Vienna)

Objectives

The critical reflection of the concept of work and the interrogation of its long-standing limitation to wage labour and gainful employment are among the central achievements of a global perspective on the history and the present of labour. Within this context the question arises regarding the permanently (re-)drawn and contested demarcations and “grey zones” between work and non-work, legitimate and unacknowledged, paid and unpaid work as part of the global development of the modern economy; this would include the migrant worker and the “vagabond”, the “housewife” and the cook, child labour, the video game at the workplace, the “petty criminal”, the unemployed unemployment activist etc. The differentiation between work and non-work, and the interrelation of the two spheres delimited from and merging into each other, have played an important role in economic development, the social valuation of different activities, and the life and the agency of non/working people themselves.

The 51st ITH Conference investigates the topic of “work and non-work” in an interdisciplinary perspective, in particular, from the point of view of the political construction of work and non-work. This approach is based on a broad notion of politics. The conference aims to con-tribute to denaturalising and re-politicising the concept and the practice of work and non-work and to highlight both work and non-work as a social relationship. The definition of certain activities as work or non-work and the relation between these poles have always been closely related to economic and socio-political policies, business strategies and social conflicts and struggles. Specifically, four (to some degree overlapping) focuses are central to the conference theme:

  1. Production of work and non-work: This theme explores how the – often ambiguous or even contradictory – boundaries between work and non-work have been invented, relocated, abolished and reconfigured and about how different actors, institutions and instruments have been involved in these processes.

  2. Everyday life between work and non-work: This is about investigating the agency of working people in concrete non/work situations (“self-will” [Eigensinn], slowdown of production, non-work at work and work in the free time etc.).

  3. Movements against (wage) labour: Hereunder, the refusal to work, struggles against work or specific forms of work, utopian anti-work concepts etc. could be subsumed.

  4. Politics of knowledge production: Contributions to this theme explore how different traditions – e.g. feminist or development research – have questioned prevailing definitions of work and non-work. How and why have such concepts influenced global labour history, what changes occur in the course of the transfer etc.?

A registration form can be accessed here.

The programme of the conference is available here.

Seminar on "How fossil fuel shapes the lives communities lead" (London, UK)

1 October, 2015 | University College London, UK

What are the underlying reasons for the high levels of fossil fuel consumption, which are the most significant cause of global warming? What say do communities have in how fossil fuels are consumed? And what part can they play in the transition away from fossil fuels?

The seminar aims to review the state of research on these issues – which are not new, but which are back at the centre of public concerns as the Paris climate summit approaches in December 2015.

In the rich world, energy is consumed by households (in cars, heating, electricity, embedded in products, and so on) – but the process by which fossil fuels are turned into that energy is controlled by big companies via big technological systems. How could communities play a bigger part in deciding how, and whether, this happens?

In developing countries, many communities have no access to basic energy resources (more than 1.3 billion people have no electricity, and more than twice that number have no clean cooking facilities). How can such communities get access to energy, at a time when fossil fuel consumption needs to fall, due to global warming? How can communities – as distinct from governments and companies – have a say in this?

In December 2013, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research took the initiative in initiating a dialogue between scientists, humanities researchers, non-governmental organisations, community activists and others about these issues, with the Radical Emissions Reduction conference in London. That was the start of a potentially fruitful conversation. Hopefully, this seminar will make a modest contribution to continuing it.

Preliminary agenda

Introduction, 4.0 pm

Session 1, 4.15 pm. How communities consume energy: the state of the research

■ William Lamb (Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester): “Human development and energy consumption in a climate-constrained world: what the past says about the future”

■ Simon Pirani (Canterbury Christ Church University/ Oxford Institute for Energy Studies): “The global drivers of fossil fuel consumption. Is the IPCC looking at them the right way?”

Session 2, 5.15 pm. Communities in the transition away from fossil fuels

■ Mika Minio-Paluello (Platform London): “Energy beyond neoliberalism”

■ Lucy Baker (SPRU/ University of Sussex): “Financing renewables in South Africa and the impact on community involvement”

Summary and forward-looking proposals, 6.30 pm.

Refreshments, 6.45 pm

Note: The seminar will be run in an inclusive, cooperative way, to ensure people become aware of each other’s research. The opening contributions will be brief, and there will be plenty of time for more discussion. Let us know if you would like e.g. to introduce your research during discussion.

The seminar is organised by the Energy and Governance research group at Canterbury Christ Church University, and Platform London. For more information contact simon.pirani@canterbury.ac.uk

Attendance is free. To register please email Shayne Halfpenny-Ray at s.halfpenny-ray759@canterbury.ac.uk

Job Postings

London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

Job Position: LSE Fellows in Economic History

These posts are fixed term from 1 September 2015 – 31 August 2016 and are part time with some flexibility in the number of hours to be worked.

The Economic History Department at LSE is home to the largest group of teachers and researchers in economic, business and social history in the UK. The department offers courses on subjects covering a wide range of places, time periods, and methodological approaches.

Applications are invited for two one-year LSE Fellowships in Economic History to commence on 1 September 2015. Both posts will be part-time.

One post will be responsible for the teaching of ‘Ec311: The History of Economic Thought’. The second post will contribute to teaching on masters level economic history courses.

Candidates for both posts will be expected to have a strong background in research and teaching in the field of economic history and excellent written and oral communication skills. You will also have successfully completed a PhD in economic history or a related discipline, or with thesis scheduled for submission by September 2015.

The other criteria that will be used when shortlisting for this post can be found on the person specification which is attached to this vacancy on the LSE’s online recruitment system

To apply for this post, please go to www.lse.ac.uk/JobsatLSE and select “Vacancies”. If you have any queries about applying on the online system, please e-mail: hr.jobs@lse.ac.uk quoting reference 1470178.

The closing date for receipt of applications is 20 July 2015, (11.59pm, UK time). Regrettably, we are unable to accept any late applications.

LSE values diversity and strives to promote equality at all levels, including its employees, students, customers and associates.

More information and online application form is available here.

University of Greenwich, UK

Job Position: Lecturer in Economics

Location: Greenwich
Salary: £31,342 to £36,309 plus £3,437 London weighting pro rata per annum
Contract Type: Permanent
Closing Date: Wednesday 29 July 2015
Interview Date: To be confirmed
Reference: 947

As part of our on-going development strategy, the Business School is seeking a Lecturer in Economics.You will be part of the Department of International Business and Economics, which provides a range of successful undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the fields of international business and economics.

The position offers opportunities for research and teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and enables an ambitious candidate to play an important role in the shaping of the future development of Economics at the University of Greenwich Business School. The School provides conditions conducive for active research.

We welcome applicants with research interests aligned with the existing specialisms of the Department and contributions towards plurality in theoretical and methodological approaches. The Department performed strongly in the latest Research Evaluation Framework review, with two-thirds of its research rated internationally significant or world-leading. The department hosts the following research groups: PSIRU which carries out critical empirical research on public services, the impact of privatisation and liberalisation, at global, European, and country levels, the Centre for Business Network Analysis and the Centre for Economic Performance, Governance and Regulation Research and works closely with the Work and Employment Research Unit hosted within the HR and Organsiational Behaviour Department.

The Department of International Business and Economics has a strong undergraduate offering in international business, economics and business law. It also runs successful postgraduate programmes in International Business and Business and Financial Economics both in London and with partners in East Africa, South East Asia and China.

Further information and online application form is available here.

University of the West of England, UK

Job Position: Professor in Economics (Applied Research)

A post has opened up at UWE, Bristol for an Economics Professorship. The successful person would most likely also be the Director of a new research centre.

The UWE Econ group is young and dynamic, genuinely pluralist and with particular strengths in labour, regions, migration, sustainability, and critical approaches to macro and finance. The group has a very good mix of applied economists and those with a critical perspective. Of the latter group, you may have come across the work of Daniela Gabor, Kobil Ruziev, Sebastian Berger, Yannis Dafermos, Susan Newman and Jo Michell. There is a collaborative ethos, led by Prof Don Webber, who is eager to work as widely as possible and encourage people to develop.

If you are an existing Prof, or an Associate Prof/Reader with upward trajectory I would strongly consider this post. It’s important for the group that the right kind of person – pluralist, open, collaborative – comes in.

Further details are available here.

Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Job Position: tenure-track post-doc „Dynamic Macroeconomics“

40 hours a week, fixed-term employment for the period of 6 years, with qualification agreement with a possibility for indefinite appointment.

There currently is an open tenure track position in „Dynamic Macroeconomics“ at the Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics (expected starting date: 1st of October, 2015).

Admission requirement: finished relevant doctoral studies

Additional knowledge: The applicant should be scientifically established in the field of dynamic models in mathematical economics through scientific publications, especially in dynamic macroeconomics and furthermore possess relevant work experience.

Salary scheme of the University Collective Agreement: B1
With qualification agreement (possibility for indefinite appointment): A2

Application Deadline: September 16th, 2015

Please submit your application documents within the stated deadline to:

The Vienna University of Technology strives to increase the proportion of women in particular in management and faculty positions and therefore encourages qualified women to apply. When equally qualified, female applicants will be given priority.

More information and online application form is available here.

Journals

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 44 (1)

Christopher P. Agoglia, Richard C. Hatfield, Tamara A. Lambert: Audit team time reporting: An agency theory perspective

Afshin Mehrpouya: Instituting a transnational accountability regime: The case of Sovereign Wealth Funds and “GAPP”

Margaret H. Christ, Adi Masli, Nathan Y. Sharp, David A. Wood: Rotational internal audit programs and financial reporting quality: Do compensating controls help?

Mahmoud Ezzamel, Jason Zezhong Xiao: The development of accounting regulations for foreign invested firms in China: The role of Chinese characteristics

Cambridge Journal of Economics 39 (4): Special Issue on "Contributions to the History of Ontological Thinking in Economics"

Richard Arena and Tony Lawson: Introduction

Tony Lawson: Process, order and stability in Veblen

Stephen Pratten: Dewey on habit, character, order and reform

Clive Lawson: Order and process in institutionalist thought: Commons and Ayres

Katia Caldari: Marshall and complexity: a necessary balance between process and order

Richard Arena: Order, process and morphology: Sraffa and Wittgenstein

Nuno Ornelas Martins: Interpreting the capitalist order before and after the marginalist revolution

Mário Graça Moura: Schumpeter’s conceptions of process and order

John Latsis: Shackle on time, uncertainty and process

Paul Lewis: Notions of order and process in Hayek: the significance of emergence

Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 8 (1)

Lars Lindblom: Equality of resources, risk, and the ideal market

Jack Anderson: Resolving the small improvement argument: a defense of the axiom of completeness

Scott Scheall: Lesser degrees of explanation: further implications of F. A. Hayek’s methodology of sciences of complex phenomena

D. Wade Hands: Orthodox and heterodox economics in recent economic methodology

Special contribution:Learning from the right neighbour: an interview with Jack Vromen

Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, 12 (1)

Kiichiro Yagi, Yuji Aruka & Takahiro Fujimoto: A new stage of the Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review

Yuji Aruka: The rise of pure economics under a new form of scholasticism in view of the present socio-economic system

Makoto Nishibe: Globalization: evolution of capitalist market economy through “Internalization of the Market”

Mitsuaki Murota & Jun-ichi Inoue: Large-scale empirical study on pairs trading for all possible pairs of stocks listed in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange

Benjamen F. Gussen: On the problem of scale: a general theory of morphogenesis and normative policy signals for economic evolution

Nikolaos Rodousakis: Goodwin’s growth cycle model with the Bhaduri–Marglin accumulation function: a note on the C.E.S. case

Alan Kirman: Preface for the special feature

Stefano Marmi: Preface for the special feature

Eva-Maria Feichtner & Simona Settepanella: Note for the special issue

Donald G. Saari: Social science puzzles: a systems analysis challenge

Gennaro Amendola, Luigi Marengo, Davide Pirino, Simona Settepanella & Akimichi Takemura: Decidability in complex social choices

Eva Maria Feichtner: An invitation to tropical geometry

Yoshinori Shiozawa: International trade theory and exotic algebras

Ngoc Mai Tran: The PerronRank family: a brief review

Simona Settepanella, Giovanni Dosi, Marco Grazzi, Luigi Marengo & Federico Ponchio: A discrete geometric approach to heterogeneity and production theory

Historical Materialism, 23 (2)

Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin: Marxist Theory and Strategy: Getting Somewhere Better

Razmig Keucheyan and Cédric Durand: Bureaucratic Caesarism

Claude Serfati: Imperialism in Context

Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton: The Role of Money in Plato’s Republic, Book i

Panagiotis Sotiris: ‘Struggle, Not Destiny’

Pierre Raymond: Althusser’s Materialism

Jeffery R. Webber: Dual Powers, Class Compositions, and the Venezuelan People

Andrew Feenberg: Fracchia and Burkett on Tailism and the Dialectic

Jason E. Smith: Are We Really in an Age of Riots?

Christopher Connery: Revolutionary China and Its Late-Capitalist Fate

Anne Freeland: Gramsci in the Era of Posthegemony?

Troy Vettese: HerrenvolkCapitalism

Industrial and Corporate Change, 24 (4): Special Issue on "Industry Evolution, Entrepreneurship, and Geography: Contributions in Honor of Steven Klepper"

Rajshree Agarwal, Guido Buenstorf, Wesley M. Cohen, and Franco Malerba: The legacy of Steven Klepper: Industry evolution, entrepreneurship, and geography

David C. Mowery: Steven Klepper and business history

Serguey Braguinsky: Knowledge diffusion and industry growth: the case of Japan’s early cotton spinning industry

Ashish Arora and Wesley M. Cohen: Public support for technical advance: the role of firm size

Constance E. Helfat: Vertical firm structure and industry evolution (Editor's Choice)

Michael S. Dahl and Steven Klepper: Whom do new firms hire?

Cristobal Cheyre, Jon Kowalski, and Francisco M Veloso: Spinoffs and the ascension of Silicon Valley (Editor's Choice)

Ron Boschma: Do spinoff dynamics or agglomeration externalities drive industry clustering? A reappraisal of Steven Klepper’s work

Journal of Australian Political Economy, 75 (1): Special Issue examining the contemporary state of heterodox economics

Frank Stilwell: Editorial

Tim Thornton: The Changing Face of Mainstream Economics

G.C. Harcourt and Peter Kriesler: Post-Keynesian Theory and Policy for Modern Capitalism

Takuya Sato: Marxist Economics: On Freeman's New Approach to Calculating the Rate of Profit

Geoff Dow: Marx, Keynes and Heterodoxy

Gavan Butler:Political Economy, Negotiations, Power and Employment

Therese Jefferson and Siobhan Austen: Understanding Links Between Gender and Pay: An Important Role for Heterodox Economics

Neil Perry and David Primrose: Heterodox Economics and the Biodiversity Crisis

Lynne Chester and Susan Schroeder: Conflation of IPE with Heterodox Economics? Intellectually Negligent and Damaging

Stuart Birks: Paradigms and Framing in Applied Economics: Methodological Issues

Edward Mariyani-Squire and Margaret Moussa: Fallibilism, Liberalism and Stilwell's Advocacy for Pluralism in Economics

Brendan Sheehan, John Embery and Jamie Morgan: Give Them Something to Think About, Don't Tell Them What to Think: A Constructive Heterodox Alternative to the Core Project

Jim Stanford: Towards an Activist Pedagogy in Heterodox Economics: The Case of Trade Union Economics Training

People wanting the hard copy version of the journal can obtain it from Frank Stilwell (frank.stilwell@sydney.edu.au) for $9.90 or take out a subscription for four issues of JAPE for $24. [There's been no price rise for nearly three decades: 'beat inflation, subscribe to JAPE!']

Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 25 (3)

Oded Stark, Marcin Jakubek & Martyna Kobus: Erratum to: A bitter choice turned sweet: How acknowledging individuals’ concern at having a low relative income serves to align utilitarianism and egalitarianism

Daniel G Arce, Douglas O. Cook & Robert L Kieschnick: On the evolution of corporate capital structures

Giulio Bottazzi, Davide Pirino & Federico Tamagni: Zipf law and the firm size distribution: a critical discussion of popular estimators

Michał Ramsza: Market choices driven by reference groups. An evolutionary approach

Esther Blanco & Javier Lozano: Ecolabels, uncertified abatement, and the sustainability of natural resources: an evolutionary approach

Dehai Liu, Hongyi Li, Weiguo Wang & Chuang Zhou: Scenario forecast model of long term trends in rural labor transfer based on evolutionary games

Giovanni Marin, Alberto Marzucchi & Roberto Zoboli: SMEs and barriers to Eco-innovation in the EU: exploring different firm profiles

Rethinking Marxism, 27 (3)

Editors' Introduction

Jodi Dean: The Party and Communist Solidarity

Stephen Healy: Communism as a Mode of Life

Anjan Chakrabarti, Anup Dhar: The Question Before the Communist Horizon

Yahya M. Madra, Ceren Özselçuk: The Party and Postcapitalist Politics: A Missed Encounter?

Ethan Miller: Anticapitalism or Postcapitalism? Both!

Justin Helepololei: A Plurality of Communisms

Oona Morrow, Claire Brault: More-than-Capitalist Landscapes of Communist Becoming

Jim Igoe: Communism “without Guarantees”

Pem Davidson Buck: Whiteness, Communism, and Possibility

Joseph G. Ramsey: How Do Communists Party?

Stephen Healy: Parody, the Party, Politics, and Postcapitalism: Some Thoughts on a Shared Future

Jodi Dean: Red, Black, and Green

Thomas Hirschhorn: Flamme éternelle

Drucilla K. Barker: Unstable Feminisms: A New Marxian Class Analysis of Domestic Labor

Cecilia Rio: The Magic of the Ouroboros: Reflections on Class Struggle on the Home Front

Harriet Fraad: The Happy Marriage of Antiessentialist Class Analysis and Feminist Exploration of the Household

Graham Cassano: “Not a Thing to Prophesy and Plead For”: From Determinism to Overdetermination in Marxism and Feminism

Brian C. Lovato: New Forces of Resistance: Antiessentialist Revolutionary Subjectivity in Marxist Theory

Review of Keynesian Economics, 3 (3)

Symposium – The Economics of Deflation

Lino Sau: Debt deflation worries: a restatement

Marica Frangakis: Public debt crisis, austerity and deflation: the case of Greece

J.W. Mason and Arjun Jayadev: The post-1980 debt disinflation: an exercise in historical accounting

Giuseppe Mastromatteo and Sergio Rossi: The economics of deflation in the euro area: a critique of fiscal austerity

Debates

Rudiger von Arnim and Jose Barrales: Demand-driven Goodwin cycles with Kaldorian and Kaleckian features

Peter Skott: Growth cycles with or without price flexibility

Rudiger von Arnim and Jose Barrales: Growth cycles: a response to Peter Skott

Articles

John W. Keating and Isaac K. Kanyama: Is sticky price adjustment important for output fluctuations?

Norman Sedgley III, Charles Scott and Fred Derrick: The fiscal multiplier with heterogeneous agents: the role of wealth, wealth distribution, and interest rates under Ricardian equivalence

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 22 (4)

Mark Donoghue: The scope and significance of William Thomas Thornton's literary works

Sylvie Rivot: Rule-based frameworks in historical perspective: Keynes’ and Friedman's monetary policies versus contemporary policy-rules

Germán D. Feldman: A Sraffian interpretation of classical monetary controversies

Rudi Verburg: Bernard Mandeville's vision of the social utility of pride and greed

Jean Dellemotte & Benoît Walraevens: Adam Smith on the subordination of wage-earners in the commercial society

Work, Employment and Society, 29 (4)

Stefanie König and Beate Cesinger: Gendered work–family conflict in Germany: do self-employment and flexibility matter?

Liana Christin Landivar: The gender gap in employment hours: do work-hour regulations matter?

Abigail Powell and Lyn Craig: Gender differences in working at home and time use patterns: evidence from Australia

Keith Randle, Cynthia Forson, and Moira Calveley: Towards a Bourdieusian analysis of the social composition of the UK film and television workforce

Wolfgang Lehmann and Alison Taylor: On the role of habitus and field in apprenticeships

Clare Butler, Anne Marie Doherty, Jocelyn Finniear, and Stephen Hill: Alone in the back office: the isolation of those who care to support public services

Alex Lehr, Agnes Akkerman, and René Torenvlied: Spillover and conflict in collective bargaining: evidence from a survey of Dutch union and firm negotiators

Namrata Gupta: Rethinking the relationship between gender and technology: a study of the Indian example

Robin Burrow, Chef John Smith, and Christalla Yakinthou: ‘Yes Chef’: life at the vanguard of culinary excellence

Books and Book Series

Time, Capitalism and Alienation: A Socio-Historical Inquiry into the Making of Modern Time

By Jonathan Martineau | 2015, Brill

In Time, Capitalism and Alienation. A Socio-Historical Inquiry into the Making of Modern Time, Jonathan Martineau offers an account of the histories of social time in Europe, from the innovation of the clock around 1300 to the making of World Standard Time around the turn of the twentieth century. Approaching 'time' as a social phenomenon traversed by various power and property relations, this work provides a socio-theoretical and historical analysis of the relationship between clock-time and capitalist social relations, problematizing the rise to hegemony of a clock-time regime harnessing various social temporalities to the purpose of capitalist development. This book sheds light on the alienating tendencies of the modern temporal regime and the relationship between time and modern economic development.

Link to the book is available here.

Appreciating Mental Capital: What and Who Economists Should Also Study

By Robert Locke | 2015, WEA Books

In Appreciating Mental Capital: What and Who Economists Should Also Study, Robert Locke sets straight the most famous case of historical falsification in economics – The neoclassical economists removal of the subject of mental capital from the lexicon of economic studies over which they had gained control by mid-20th century. He accomplishes this feat by returning to the origins of economic thought in the age of classical economics to rediscover, by broadening the analysis historically and geographically, especially to German economists, a thriving school of mental capital advocates persistently challenging the classical/neoclassical view of physical capital as the chief driver of technological expansion.

The neoclassical school’s takeover of economics, Locke asserts in Chapter I, has led to an incomplete and distorted discussion within economics of the subject. Students of economics, therefore, cannot rely on economists to examine the subject of mental capital, but need to study the actual formation of mental capital in our times.

This is the meaning of the “Who” economists should study in the book’s subtitle.

In Chapter II he describes how the networks of mental capital changed between the first and second industrial revolutions to bring science and science-based technology into the Know-Who loops that permitted German mental capital to outstrip British and French in technological prowess in the period up to 1940.

In Chapter III, Locke shifts the emphasis on mental capital formation to its negative effects, especially in wealth distribution, after neoclassical economics and econometrics came to dominate the discipline in departments of economics and business schools in the 1960s. In this analysis he compares how the mental capital establishments in Germany and the US coped with two major economic events in the late 20th century globalizing economy: The Japanese challenge in manufacturing and the social-economic crisis invoked by the process of financialization.

In the first matter, he describes how the mental capital Germany inherited from the past dealt much better than the mental capital that reformed US business schools imbibed in the 1960s from neoclassical economics and econometrics, when confronting the Japanese manufacturing challenge. In the second he explains how US economists and their educational institutions, in theory, practice, and ideology provoked the financial crisis; by contrast, the communitarians values to which German mental capital subscribed, shielded the country from the worse effects of the mal-distribution crisis. No economist, Locke claims, can master his discipline, unless he/she understands the role the discipline plays in the sociology of the institutionalization of mental capital in the economy. They cannot learn that from economists, so they need to turn historian and study themselves.

Link to the book is available here.

Developing an economics for the post-crisis world

By Steve Keen | 2015, WEA Books

The veracity of mainstream economics has been called into question in the years since the economic crisis began. But the questioning of economics precedes the crisis, and not by merely years but arguably ever since 1898, when Thorstein Veblen published his brilliant paper “Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?” But Veblen’s critique fell on the deaf ears of the mainstream, and was unknown to the public. Only in the fringes of academic economists did Veblen’s words, and the spirit of rebellion he encouraged, live on.

Economics came under challenge again in the 1930s, and this time Keynes led the charge against an orthodoxy that, six years after the Great Depression began, had no idea what caused it, or how to overcome it. But Keynes’s challenge was largely deflected by Hicks’s reinterpretation of Keynes, and the taxonomic economics that Veblen hoped to defeat was rebuilt after the challenge of the Great Depression and the World War had ended.

In 2007, the global economy experienced its greatest crisis since the Great Depression, and once again, mainstream economics failed to anticipate the crisis, and even after it has apparently passed – in the Anglo-Saxon world at least – once again, can provide no explanation of why it happened in the first place.
What is different this time around is that there is a publicly accessible outlet for critical voices, and it has been around – in various guises – for 15 years. What was first known as PAECON (the Protest against Autistic ECONomics) and is now known as the Real World Economics Review was established by Edward Fullbrook in 2000 in response to protests by French students against the unworldly theorems they were forced to learn in the French economics curriculum. When the financial crisis hit in late 2007, the Real World Economics Review was already there, ready to provide an outlet for critical economists, and intent on getting their views to the public.

This short book provides the articles that I have published in RWER over the last fifteen years – starting with the first in July 2001. The topics covered include methodology, microeconomics, and the monetary approach to macroeconomics that I have been developing – along with many other non-mainstream economists – over the last 20 years.

Link to the book is available here.

Economics After Capitalism: A Guide to the Ruins and a Road to the Future

By Derek Wall | 2015, Pluto Press

‘There is no alternative’ has been the unofficial mantra of the neoliberal order since its utterance by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. As Derek Wall argues in Economics After Capitalism, there is in fact an alternative to our crisis-ridden, austerity-inflicted world - and not just one alternative, but many.

Challenging the arguments for markets, mainstream economics and capitalism from Adam Smith onwards, Economics After Capitalism provides a step-by-step guide to various writers, movements and schools of thought, critical of neoliberal globalisation. These range from Keynesian-inspired reformists such as Geroge Soros and Joseph Stiglitz, critics of inequality like Thomas Piketty and Amaitya Sen, to more radical voices including Naomi Klein, Marxists such as David Harvey, anarchists, and autonomists including Toni Negri and Michael Hardt.

By providing a clear and accessible guide to the economics of anti-capitalism, Derek Wall successfully demonstrates that an open source eco-socialist alternative to rampant climate change, elite rule and financial chaos is not just necessary, but possible.

Link to the book is available here.

Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism

By Jim Stanford | 2015, Pluto Press

Economics is too important to be left to the economists. This concise and readable book provides non-specialist readers with all the information they need to understand how capitalism works (and how it doesn't).

Economics for Everyone, now published in second edition, is an antidote to the abstract and ideological way that economics is normally taught and reported. Key concepts such as finance, competition and wages are explored, and their importance to everyday life is revealed. Stanford answers questions such as "Do workers need capitalists?", "Why does capitalism harm the environment?", and "What really happens on the stock market?"

The book will appeal to those working for a fairer world, and students of social sciences who need to engage with economics. It is illustrated with humorous and educational cartoons by Tony Biddle, and is supported with a comprehensive set of web-based course materials for popular economics courses.

Link to the book is available here.

How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism

By Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nişancıoğlu | 2015, Pluto Press

Mainstream historical accounts of the development of capitalism describe a process which is fundamentally European - a system that was born in the mills and factories of England or under the guillotines of the French Revolution. In this groundbreaking book, a very different story is told.

How the West Came to Rule offers a unique interdisciplinary and international historical account of the origins of capitalism. It argues that contrary to the dominant wisdom, capitalism’s origins should not be understood as a development confined to the geographically and culturally sealed borders of Europe, but the outcome of a wider array of global processes in which non-European societies played a decisive role. Through an outline of the uneven histories of Mongolian expansion, New World discoveries, Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry, the development of the Asian colonies and bourgeois revolutions, Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu provide an account of how these diverse events and processes came together to produce capitalism.

Link to the book is available here.

Institutions and Small Settler Economies: A Comparative Study of New Zealand and Uruguay, 1870 – 2008

By Andre Schlueter | 2014, Palgrave Macmillan

Are institutions the main cause of sustained economic growth? Institutions and Small Settler Economies provides a comprehensive improvement in our understanding of institutional contributions to economic growth based on North, Wallis and Weingast's (NWW) institutional theory.

In this exciting new volume, Schlueter offers a substantial range of novel insights into the socio-economic development trajectories of two deliberately selected New World economies: New Zealand and Uruguay. This study sets itself apart from other publications through its impartial analysis of the strengths and limitations of leading institutional scholarship, as well as its rigorous comparative methodology involving a substantial set of quantitative and qualitative data.

Link to the book is available here.

Limits to Culture: Urban Regeneration vs. Dissident Art

By Malcolm Miles | 2015, Pluto Press

How can we unmask the vested interests behind capital’s ‘cultural’ urban agenda? Limits to Culture pits grass-roots cultural dissent against capital's continuing project of control via urban planning.

Limits to Culture starts by outlining the cultural turn in urban policy which happened between the 1980s and the 2000s, in which new art museums and cultural or heritage quarters lent a creative mask to urban redevelopment. Malcolm Miles challenges the notions of the ‘creative class’ and ‘creative city’, and aligns them to gentrification and the elimination of diversity and urban dynamism. He explores the history of cultural urban policy and its antagonistic relationship to community and political art internationally – across the UK, Europe and the US. In the 1960s creativity was identified with revolt, yet from the 1980s onwards it was subsumed in consumerism, which continued in the 1990s through cool Britannia culture and its international reflections. After the crash of 2008 money became scarcer, meaning that the illusory creative city gave way to reveal its hollow interior, through urban clearances and underdevelopment.

Limits to Culture straddles the fields of cultural studies and urban geography and aims to shine a new light into some of the darker corners of the political history of both.

Link to the book is available here.

Heterodox Graduate Programs, Scholarships and Grants

European Ph.D. in Socio-Economic and Statistical Studies (Rome, 2015)

European Ph.D. in Socio-Economic and Statistical Studies (SESS.EuroPhD) at Sapienza University of Rome

Sapienza University of Rome is pleased to announce that it will be offering a 3-year full-time Ph.D. scholarship for attaining the degree of Doctor Europaeus (PhD) within the European Ph.D. in Socio-Economic and Statistical Studies (SESS.EuroPhD), starting in October 2015 (31st cycle).

Sess.EuroPhD is an international, interdisciplinary graduate programme in which a consortium of eight partner universities cooperate to provide graduate students from all over the world with the possibility for training and doing high-level research in the fields of sociology, economics and statistics.

The fellowship amounts to € 19.800,00 per year, with a possible 50% increase for research stays abroad, plus additional funding to attend conferences and summer schools. Further, non- funded Ph.D. candidates might be admitted to the program, and all PhD students are expected to spend at least a semester in one of the partner universities within the network.

Qualified graduates holding an MA degree in economics, sociology, statistics or related fields obtained by July 2015 are invited to apply.

The call for applications (in Italian) is advertised on Sapienza’s PhD programs website

Candidates interested in applying are welcome to enquire for more details by writing at sess@uniroma1.it. Please note that the research project and the application must be in English.

More details on SESS.EuroPhD at Sapienza can be found here and at the website of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (coordinator of the SESS.EuroPhD).

A pdf-version of this call is available here.

Master program in the History of Economic Thought (Lyon, 2015)

M2: HISTOIRE DES THÉORIES ÉCONOMIQUES ET SOCIALES (HTES)

Dear colleagues and friends,

The online registration for our master in the History of Economic Thought at the University of Lyon 2 (France) will be open July 15 and until August 31, to start the courses September 21.

Applicants should apply online and will be asked to submit a letter of application (in French), curriculum vitae, and some others documents.

For questions contact me at Rebeca.gomezbetancourt@univ-lyon2.fr.

Final results will be published September 4.

More information is available here (french).

Additional information about the Master in HET can be found here (french).

Kind regards,

Rebeca Gomez Betancourt

Rural Poverty, Rural-Urban Migration and Rural Development in the ERF Region

ERF is pleased to announce a call for proposals on rural poverty, rural-urban migration and rural development in the ERF region (Arab countries, Iran and Turkey). This call falls under the theme of Inequality, which is part of the Arab Spring Development Initiative (ASDI). ERF and non-ERF affiliates are invited to submit their proposals per the terms outlined below. This call for proposals is motivated by the greater concentration of poverty in rural areas, the inducement of rural-urban migration by income and non-income disparities between rural and urban areas, and by the need to guide policy makers on appropriate rural development policies for equitable growth. These considerations are further heightened by technical advances in agriculture, referred to as “Green Revolution 2.0,” and the need for balanced policy to make the most out of these advances for addressing inequality and poverty.The call is intended to generate fresh knowledge on different dimensions of the rural economy, covering agriculture, off-farm activities, the determinants and patterns of migration, and the impact of a range of policies towards infrastructure and human development in rural areas, including in small towns well-linked to a rural hinterland. The proposals may address any of the following sub-themes or relationships, focusing on a specific country or a group of countries in the region:

  1. The characteristics and determinants of rural poverty, with a focus on links to incomes from farm and non-farm activity.
  2. The magnitudes, trends and determinants of rural to urban migration, including to small towns versus large cities.
  3. The implications of new agricultural technology for rural inequality and for rural to urban migration.
  4. Appropriate agricultural infrastructure and human development public policy interventions in rural areas and in small towns in rural areas to address rural poverty and rural to urban migration.

Other sub-themes related to the topic of this call will also be considered. Researchers are encouraged to use different microeconomic datasets that are publicly available on the ERF data portal.

ELIGIBILITY

The following eligibility criteria will be applied:

SELECTION CRITERIA

All proposals will be evaluated by a refereeing committee on the basis of the following criteria:

IMPORTANT DATES

GUIDELINES FOR PROPOSALS

Authors should submit a proposal of a maximum length of twenty pages. ERF reserves the right to exclude proposals that are not consistent with these guidelines. The proposal should be structured to contain seven sections in the following format:

  1. Statement of the research problem: A clear and concise description of the nature and importance of the proposed research, its scope and boundaries, its general context, and its objectives, with explicit reference to feasibility and policy relevance.
  2. Value Added: A selective and analytical review of the relevant literature, with a view to both demonstrating knowledge of past theoretical and empirical work, as well as identifying the knowledge gap that the proposed research is intended to address.
  3. Conceptual Framework and Research Methodology: A clear statement of the conceptual framework should be provided, elaborating on the set of specific, identifiable and concrete questions for which the proposed research intends to answer. This is to be followed by an elaboration of the research methods to be employed and why they are best suited to answer the research questions. This section should also indicate the nature of the information required and the data collection techniques, whether primary or secondary or a combination of the two. Finally, it should explain how the information will be analyzed and interpreted using quantitative and/or qualitative methods.
  4. Publications and Dissemination Strategy: This section should describe the research products that will be delivered at various stages of the research process. It should also outline a strategy on how these products will be disseminated to different stakeholders (working papers, edited volumes, workshops, etc.).
  5. Time Frame: A clear plan of the timing of all stages of the research project as well as any dissemination activities (including workshops), taking into account that all projects have to be completed before July 15, 2016. The timetable must specify due dates of draft and final papers as well as any planned events. The proposed events should have a description of the purpose, size and approximate dates.
  6. Budget: The budget should be submitted in US dollars, itemized and inclusive of all research and dissemination expenses. Research costs should be by deliverables. Other budget items may include travel, if necessary, research assistance, data collection, office supplies and photocopying. The purchase of equipment is not allowed under ERF grant rules. If events are planned, separate costing is required.
  7. References: A list should be attached to the proposal specifying the suggested references to be used in writing the proposed paper(s).

PLEASE FORWARD YOUR SUBMISSION, TOGETHER WITH:

TO: iroman@erf.org.eg

For further inquiries, please contact Ms. Ingy Hab-El-RomanProgram Officer: iroman@erf.org.eg

More information is available at the ERF website.

The Center for Development and Regional Planning offers PhD program in economics (Belo Horizonte, 2015)

The Center for Development and Regional Planning (Cedeplar) at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) invites applications for its four-year PhD program in economics, with a track in the history of economic thought. PhD candidates are required to complete a common core of courses on microeconomic theory, macroeconomic theory, and economic methodology, plus a number of field electives on the history of economic thought, economic history, political economy, and related areas. The working languages are Portuguese (predominantly) and English. Spanish-speaking candidates are especially welcome to apply.

The deadline for applications is October 5, 2015, and the selected candidates are expected to begin their activities in February 2016. A sizeable number of scholarships are available from Brazilian funding agencies. The selection process consists in the evaluation of a research proposal, an interview, and curriculum analysis. Candidates should have a Bachelor's degree in economics or related areas. A Master's degree is desirable, but not mandatory.

For more information, please visit this link (in Portuguese), or contact suprinyak@cedeplar.ufmg.br.

Newsletters

World Economics Association, 5 (3)

Yannis Dafermos, Marika Frangakis and Christos Tsironis: Greece and austerity policies: Where next for its economy and society?

David A. Westbrook: Who are our allies? Who are our customers?

Merijn Knibbe: A critique of Nominal and Real macro Unit Labour Costs as an indicator of competitiveness

Graham Gudgin and Ken Coutts: Macroeconomic impact of UK liberal economic policies


Calls for Support

Petition in support of a 15$ Minimum Wage as of 2020

I hope you will consider endorsing the petition I have written with Jeannette Wicks-Lim, supporting the idea of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour as of 2020 (link to petition below). Everything in the petition should be self-explanatory. As noted in the petition itself, Jeannette Wicks-Lim and I have also prepared a technical appendix and set of references covering all the points raised in the petition (the petition itself includes the link to the technical appendix and references; that link is also below). Still, please feel free to be in touch with me if you have any questions about the substance of the proposal.

If you are willing to sign the petition, please send your endorsement and institutional affiliation to the PERI Communications Director Emily Bloch at ebloch@peri.umass.edu.

The final publicly-available petition will state clearly that institutional affiliations are for identification purposes only.

Thank you for your willingness to consider this,

Bob Pollin

Link to the petition

Link to the technical appendix and references

Soliciting proposals for a viable way forward for Greece

Dear All,

After sitting in on scores of unrewarding discussions about the situation of Greece (and other nations in a related position), I am soliciting proposals for a viable way forward for Greece and its supporters. This is an experiment in crowd-sourcing.

These proposals can include anything relevant, from meaningful reforms within the EU or IMF, through unilateral steps that Greece can take, to worldwide revolution. They can be partial or complete solutions. Please contribute serious proposals only, refraining from wildly speculative or patently unrealistic proposals.

You first need to post your full proposal on your own website or googledoc.

Then post a short summary of your proposal here, as follows:

A summary is required. If there is no summary, I will delete the row. If your summary is longer than 200 words, I will truncate it at 200 words without regard for an elegant ending. I may also attempt to categorize the proposals, once I see what comes in.

If you would like to respond to a particular proposal, please do so in 200 words or less. You are required to add your name. This is a very serious discussion, and we cannot afford to allow trolls ruin it. I retain administrator privileges. If you prefer a different approach, please start a separate discussion elsewhere.

Thanks much! Let’s see if we get anything interesting or useful. I will circulate the link again in one month, although you are free to check out the posts whenever you like.

In solidarity,

Deborah S. Rogers, PhD
President, IfE (Initiative for Equality)

Affiliated Researcher, IRiSS (Stanford University, Institute for Research in the Social Sciences)
Email: deborah.rogers@initiativeforequality.org
Website: www.initiativeforequality.org

For Your Information

New Public Policy Think-Tank: The Binzagr Institute

The Binzagr Institute is an independent public policy think tank dedicated to the promotion of interdisciplinary research in the service of an improved quality of life for all members of society. We believe that providing decent employment opportunities for everyone ready, willing and able to work at a socially established living wage is an institutional prerequisite for social justice and sustainable prosperity.

I would like to invite you to read more about the Institute's vision and to engage with the Institute's publications via our social media presence. Our goal is to engage both the academic and non-academic communities in meaningful conversations about alternative policy solutions to the major challenges facing society today. We believe that the path to sustainable prosperity is not only achievable and affordable, but also unavoidable. Our common destiny as a global community simply means that every decision we make as individuals, organizations, or governments must carefully consider not just its financial sustainability, but more importantly its impact on people and the environment; hence our slogan: People. Planet. Prosperity.

I am indebted to my teacher, mentor, and dear friend, Dr. Mathew Forstater, for serving as the Research Director of the Institute. His expertise and leadership are tremendous assets for our mission. We are both very grateful to Mr. Saeid Binzagr and the Binzagr family for embracing our vision for the Institute and for their generous financial support. We are also excited to welcome a group of distinguished scholars and public policy experts who have kindly agreed to serve on the Institute's Advisory Board, namely Bradley W. Bateman (President, Randolph College), Charles Goodhart (Professor, London School of Economics), Rebeca Grynspan (Secretary General of SEGIB), Jan Kregel (Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute), Julianne Malveaux (President Emertia, Bennett College for Women), and john a. powell (Director, Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society).

The Binzagr Institute is also proud to partner with Denison University and the economics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). Both universities have offered us a fantastic group of Research Assistants and Research Fellows. We are excited about the opportunity to engage our team of Research Scholars through our annual conference, workshops, seminars, and other activities at Denison and UMKC.

Finally, I'd like to invite you all to forward this newsletter to your colleagues and friends and, in turn, to invite them to subscribe and to follow us on social media. I am very excited about the Institute's agenda and I look forward to engaging with you in this important work.

Best wishes,

Fadhel Kaboub
President, Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity
Associate Professor, Denison University

The Economic Sociology and Political Economy global academic community

You are welcome to join the Economic Sociology and Political Economy global academic community which brings together 32,000 members from about 110 countries.

Enlightening books and articles, interesting posts from the leading blogs, important calls for papers, fellowships, job opportunities, sharp quotes, instructive videos, and more – are being brought regularly to the attention of our followers; and all these related to topics in Economic Sociology, Political Economy, Capitalism, Social Study of Markets and Finance, Labor and Welfare research, and Sociology of Economics.

To reach large and diverse audiences, the ES/PE community based on the main social media networks. Please visit us, join and spread the word to your colleagues, students and friends.Thanks!

www.facebook.com/EconSociology
https://twitter.com/EconSociology

www.reddit.com/r/EconSociology
http://EconSociology.tumblr.com