From the Editor
A couple
of weeks ago I received an e-mail from a heterodox
colleague in the United Kingdom regarding the
forthcoming 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).
In preparation for the exercise, the colleague’s
department hired an external economist to advise it
on which publications should be submitted to the RAE
economics panel. It should come to no surprise that
our colleague’s publications were not rated as
acceptable for submission to the RAE. This will
probably mean that the department will not include
our colleague in its submission to the RAE economics
panel; but it also means that any future hiring will
be directed towards those individuals that have the
right kind of publications. What are the right kind
of publications you may ask; and the answer seems to
be that the publications expert was basing his/her
decision in large part on the Keele list—see
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ec/cer/resources_journals.htm.
You will notice that heterodox economics journals
are generally not rated very high on the list or
even not rated at all. Now if you think that
heterodox economics departments/economists could do
better by going into the Business/Management
panel—think again. The UK Association of Business
Schools has just launched an “Academic Journal
Quality Guide”:
http://www.the-abs.org.uk/?id=257. You
will also notice that heterodox economic journals do
not rate highly on this list as well.
The construction of these lists and others like them
are based on citation counts in one way or another.
Hence heterodox economic journals are not rated very
highly in part because heterodox economists do not
cite heterodox journals very much. In fact, in their
articles, heterodox economists generally cite
mainstream journals more than heterodox journals;
and in many cases their citation of heterodox
journals is minimal indeed as if the authors are
embarrassed to cite articles in heterodox journals.
By not citing more extensively articles in heterodox
journals, heterodox economists are both hurting
themselves as well as other heterodox economists.
This same argument is also appropriate for those
editors of heterodox journals that do not think it
is important for their authors to cite an array of
heterodox journals including their own. Heterodox
authors and journal editors may cry that they are
not responsible for the fate of our UK colleague. I
will leave it up to you as to whether that response
is acceptable and conducive to building a community
of heterodox economists.
Fred Lee
In
this issue:
-
Call
for Papers
-
Labor and Employment Relations Association
- History of Economic
Thought Conference
- Jobs & Justice:
Strategies and Solutions for Economics Security
- Forum for Social
Economics
- Conferences, Seminars
and Lectures
- Institutional Economics Workshop in Honor of Allan Schmid
- Hegemonic Transitions
and the State
- Winter & Spring 2007
Courses at The New SPACE, New York City
- Left Forum 2007
- London, UK- Rudolf
Steiner, Economist
- Heterodox
Conference Papers and Reports and Articles
-
Minimum Wage
-
Heterodox Journals and Newsletters
- Basic Income Studies
- Journal of Post
Keynesian Economics
- Australasian Journal of
Economics Education
- The International
Journal of Green Economics
- Heterodox Perspectives
in Economics Journals
-
Heterodox
Books, Book Series, and Book Reviews
- The Structure of Post-Keynesian Economics
- Germany's Economic
Performance
- Successes and Failures
of Economic Transition
- Strategic Arena
Switching in International Trade Negotiations
- Marxist Perspectives on
South Korea in the Global Economy
- Time and Space in
Economics
- The Myth of Japanese
Efficiency: The World Car Industry in a Globalizing Age
- Poverty & Policy in
Canada: Implications for Health and Quality of Life
- New EPI Catalog 2007
- A Handbook of
Alternative Monetary Economics
- Money and Markets
- Socialism after Hayek
by Theodore A. Burczak
-
Heterodox
Associations, Institutes, and Departments
- Green Economics Institute
-
For Your Information
- Econ-Atrocity
- Econ-Utopia: Greenbacks
for Green Energy
Call for Papers
Labor and Employment Relations
Association
Call for Papers—Special Sessions
LERA Annual Meeting
60th Anniversary
New Orleans, LA
January 3-6, 2008
Submission Deadline: April 1, 2007
New developments in employment relations, organizational behavior, and
social movements call for a closer look at emergent processes, outcomes,
and organizational forms. The motivation for this special call for
papers is to reflect the diversity of theoretical and methodological
approaches to researching emergent phenomena in the field. Examples
include, but are by no means restricted to, new forms of labor market
institutions; diversity in organizations; social movements; and
international/transnational actors and organizations. Selected papers
will be presented in several special sessions of the LERA annual meeting
program.
An academic advisory group of the LERA Program Committee will review the
papers in the spring. Selected papers will be grouped into themes with
authors asked to present Different from the LERA Refereed Papers
Competition, these submissions will go through a qualitative review
rather than a refereed process.
Submissions for this special call must be made via e-mail to LERA
office@uiuc.edu.
Only completed papers, not abstracts or letters of intent, may be
considered. All paper submissions must comply with the following
submission criteria:
• Papers must reflect original work or major developments on previously
reported work. Papers are not eligible if they have been presented or
published prior to the LERA or at other professional meetings.
• Papers (converted to a PDF file) are limited to 20 double-spaced pages
using a 12- point font, including endnotes, references, tables, and
bibliographies.
Lengthier
versions are more suitable for subsequent publication than for the
presentation format at the LERA meetings.
• Papers must include a title, abstract (up to 200 words) and preferred
keywords.
Submitting authors will receive an e-mail acknowledgment of receipt.
Decisions will be
emailed to submitting authors in the summer of 2007.
For inquiries or more information on the 60th LERA Annual Meeting
program and other LERA paper and poster calls and competitions, visit
the LERA website at www.lera.uiuc.edu
or E-mail: LERAoffice@uiuc.edu
History of Economic Thought
Conference
Lanyon Building, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, 10-12
September 2007.
Papers are invited in all areas of economic thought for the annual
History of Economic Thought Conference to be held at Queen’s University,
Belfast, Northern Ireland, 10-12 September 2007. Prospective
contributors should submit a title and an abstract of no more than 300
words to the conference organiser by 16 March 2007. The conference
programme will be announced in early May. Final versions of papers will
be required by Friday 17 August.
The Web address for the conference is:
http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofManagementandEconomics/HistoryofEconomicThoughtAnnualConference2007/
Jobs & Justice: Strategies and
Solutions for Economics Security
March 29-31, 2007 (Vancouver, British Columbia)
Hosted by the Economic Security Project (a research alliance led by the
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Simon Fraser University)
Are you a community or labour activist, researcher, academic or student
concerned about labour issues such as precarious work, labour rights and
standards, living wage, temporary worker programs and contracting out?
Are you interested in innovative organizing strategies, successful
mobilizations and working towards policy solutions?
Conference on employment, work and economic security
The Economic Security Project will be holding a major conference, Jobs &
Justice: Strategies and Solutions for Economic Security, on March 29-31,
2007 in Vancouver, BC (Maritime Labour Centre). This conference will
look at the current state of employment and work in BC and Canada and
focus on solutions and public policies that would enhance justice,
economic security and meet the needs of diverse populations.
FEATURING:
Guy Standing, former Director of Socio-Economic Security with the
International Labour Organization, will open the conference with a free
public lecture on the evening of Thursday, March 29th, along with Jim
Sinclair, President of BC Federation of Labour.
The following two days will feature speakers, panel sessions, cultural
performances, a film showing as well as artwork and informational
displays. The conference plenary sessions will include:
SUCCESSFUL MOBILIZATIONS - Rodney Bickerstaffe (National Pensioners
Convention, UK) and Kent Wong (Center for Labor Research and Education,
University of California in Los Angeles)
LABOUR RIGHTS AND THE PUBLIC - Roy Adams (McMaster University), Jinny
Simms (BC Teachers' Federation) and Angus McAllister (McAllister Opinion
Research)
INNOVATIONS IN ORGANIZING - Carla Lipsig-Mumme (Monash University) and
Junaid S. Ahmad (National Interfaith Committee on Worker Justice)
CLOSING PLENARY - Elaine Bernard (Labor and Worklife, Harvard Law
School) and Marjorie Griffin Cohen (Simon Fraser University)
REGISTRATION
Cost to register: $175 plus GST ($35 plus GST for students and
low-income participants)
A very limited number of subsidies (to assist with travel,
accommodations and child care needs) may be available for low-income
community groups and students. Please contact Thi Vu (thi@policyalternatives.ca)
for details and application information.
For more a detailed conference program as well as registration
information, please visit the conference website at:
www.policyalternatives.ca/jobsconference
The Jobs & Justice: Strategies and Solutions for Economic Security
Conference is hosted by the Economic Security Project (www.sfu.ca/ecoomicsecurityproject),
a multi-year research initiative funded by the SSHRC
Community-University Research Alliance. The principle partners in this
alliance are the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - BC and Simon
Fraser University.
Forum for Social Economics
NOW PUBLISHED BY TRANSACTION PRESS
CALL FOR PAPERS
he newly appointed editor and editorial board of the Forum for Social
Economics invite papers. The Forum for Social Economics is an
international journal, along with the Review of Social Economy,
sponsored by the Association for Social Economics. For 35 years the
Forum has published high quality peer-reviewed papers. The primary focus
of the Forum is on applying social economic analysis to practical policy
issues and/or the implications of alternative policy perspectives
encompassing the social economy; it is differentiated in this respect
from the ASE’s other journal, the Review of Social Economy, which has a
general orientation. The Forum is a pluralistic journal publishing work
that addresses economic issues within wider ethical, cultural or natural
environmental contexts, and is sympathetic to papers that transcend
established disciplinary boundaries. Papers should make a contribution
to past or current socio-economic issues that have contemporary
relevance to economists, social scientists, policy makers and business.
he journal welcomes stimulating original articles that are clearly
written and draw upon contemporary policy-related research. Preference
is given to non-technical articles of topical and historical interest
that will appeal to a wide range of readers. The journal is also
interested in serving as an avenue for issues regarding teaching
economics, in particular teaching approaches to social and heterodox
economics.
Papers will pass a double-blind referee process supervised and subject
to the final approval of the Editor.
The Forum invites graduate students to submit research papers. Proof of
graduate student status should be provided with the submission. While
the students’ papers will go through the regular review process and be
held to the same standards for acceptance as other submissions, the
panel of reviewers will serve a mentoring role to advise the student to
strengthen the paper.
Completed papers should be submitted as an email attachment to:
John Marangos, Editor
Forum for Social Economics
Department of Economics
Colorado State University
1771 Campus Delivery
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1771, USA
Tel: (970) 491-6657; Fax: (970) 491- 2925
e-mail:
John.Marangos@colostate.edu
AVAILABLE ONLINE AS OF VOLUME 36: Benefits of Online Availability
Include
- Full-text searching
- Multi-format delivery options: PDF or HTML
- Fast downloading, browsing and printing
- Document-to-document linking via references
- Table of Contents (TOC) alerting services
- Fully searchable across full text, abstracts, titles, TOC and figures
Top
Conferences, Seminars and
Lectures
Institutional Economics Workshop
in Honor of Allan Schmid
A workshop on Institutional Economics will be held at Michigan State
University next March. The web page for the workshop can be found at
http://www.msu.edu/user/mercuro/workshop/index.html
Institutional Economics web page--
http://www.msu.edu/user/schmid/instecon.htm
Hegemonic Transitions and the
State
23-24 February 2007
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
An International conference hosted by the Centre for Global Political
Economy and co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology, Department of Political Science, and the Institute for the
Humanities.
The conference, "Hegemonic Transitions and the State", aims to
contribute to our understanding of complex interconnections between
capitalist globalization and political authority. The conference
features sessions, papers, and plenaries dealing with such topics as:
states, sovereignty and crisis, the post Cold War re-shaping of global
power, cultural politics in Latin America, and the Middle East, the
development of a transnational capitalist class, indigenous peoples
movements in Latin America, global governance structures, neo-liberalism
in the Middle East and South East Asia, post Cold War eastern Europe,
global finance, state formation, social movements, and democratic
alternatives to neo-liberal globalization.
They keynote address will be delivered by Philip McMichael ( Cornell)
and Plenary speakers include Christopher Chase-Dunn (University of
California, Riverside), William Carroll (University of Victoria), Greg
Albo (York University), and Yildiz Atasoy, Stephen McBride and Gary
Teeple (Simon Fraser University)
Full details on the programme and on-line registration can be found at:
http://www.sfu.ca/cgpe/
Winter & Spring 2007 Courses at
The New SPACE, New York City
MARX'S CAPITAL, VOLUME I
Andrew Kliman
14 sessions: Thursdays, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Feb. 15 - May 24, 2007 (no class March 22)
DIALECTICS, THE ALGEBRA OF REVOLUTION:
AN EXAMINATION OF HEGEL'S LOGIC
Alex Steinberg
10 sessions: Tuesdays, 7:30 - 9:00 p.m.
Feb. 27 - May 8, 2007 (no class April 3)
FIGHTING SUPPRESSION OF DISSENT: ANOTHER LEFT IS POSSIBLE Andrea
Fishman, Joshua Howard, Anne Jaclard, Andrew Kliman and Seth G. Weiss
(The New SPACE Organizing Committee)
4 sessions: alternate Tuesdays, 6:00 - 7:30 p.m, March 13 - April 24,
2007
See attached for course descriptions.
Please see the New SPACE
website for additional information on courses and for pre-registration
requirements.
Left Forum 2007
Forging a Radical Political Future
March 9-11, Cooper Union NYC
www.leftforum.org
Left Forum 2007, FORGING A RADICAL POLITICAL FUTURE, is nearly one month
away! To save money and avoid long lines you can register early on our
website:
http://leftforum.org/leftforum2007/register.html. If you can
afford to add a
contribution, please do, as we have no institutional support and rely on
your help.
Our program-in-progress is posted on our website:
http://leftforum.org/leftforum2007/program.html. We are very
excited by it, and hope you will be as well. Please check back
frequently for updates.
Our confirmed speakers are from many distant places and a variety of
movements and tendencies on the Left. Among them are: Hilary Wainwright,
Cornel West, Michael Lowy, David Harvey, Stanley Aronowitz, Peter Gowan,
Manning Marable, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, David Graeber, Amiri
Baraka, Mahmood Mamdani, Dave Zirin, Bernadine Dohrn, Michael Albert,
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Walter Benn Michaels, Frances Fox Piven, Gilbert
Achcar, Marion Nestle, Harvey Cox, Mark Weisbrot, Doug Henwood, Hatem A.
Bazian, and many more.
Left Forum 2007 focuses on political organizing and social movement
formation as well as visions and strategies for the Left in this time of
opportunity. There will
be close to one hundred panels covering much of the world and its
current pressing questions, as well as serious theoretical issues
important to informing movements for social change. Panels will debate
the status of US hegemony, health care, Iraq and Iran, global political
power shifts, New Orleans reconstruction, new feminist politics,
ecology, labor movement strategy, contemporary anarchism, and many other
topics.
This year we are expanding our conference to offer three cultural
events: a Left Video
Festival at NYU during the afternoon of Friday, March 9th; a performance
of Voices From a Peoples History of the United States on Saturday night
in Cooper Union's Great Hall; and a very special event, also on Saturday
night, of Karen Finley performing her play George and Martha. Please
check our website for further information.
As we count down to the conference we urgently need volunteers. If you
would like to lend a hand, please get in touch by writing
jamie@leftforum.org.
In Solidarity,
LEFT FORUM BOARD OF DIRECTORS:
Stanley Aronowitz
Eric Canepa
Vivek Chibber
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Nancy Holmstrom
Mahmood Mamdani
Jamie McCallum
Frances Fox Piven
Julie Ruben
Michael Smith
Hopy Spalding
William Tabb
Rick Wolff
Julia Wrigley
Left Forum
Ph.D. Program in Sociology
CUNY Graduate Center
365 5th Ave
New York, NY 10016
www.leftforum.org
leftforum@leftforum.org
www.myspace.com/leftforum
212.817.2003
London, UK- Rudolf Steiner,
Economist
Monthly presentation-based conversations exploring Rudolf Steiner’s
contribution to economic issues:
Fridays:
9 February: Walter Johannes Stein, Economic Historian Extraordinary
WJ Stein was an author, educator and collaborator of both Rudolf Steiner
and Daniel Dunlop, with whom he worked in publishing The World Survey,
(A World Power Conference project to survey the earth's resources),
before going on to produce The Present Age which considered contemporary
questions from diverse perspectives. While it may be a long time since
(1922) Steiner spoke about his image of modern economic life as a global
affair, and much has happened since then that seems to contradict what
he described, today's circumstances are again close to those he was
witness to and his ideas have renewed relevance. They are especially
interesting when it comes to looking beyond the neo-liberal paradigm
that currently prevails to consider what might come next. This evening
will highlight Stein’s further development of Steiner's key insights.
Time: 7.15 - 9.00 pm
Cost: £5
Venue: Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Road NW1 6XT
Phone: 020 7723 4400
Tube: Baker Street Tube
2 March: The Economic Ideas of D. N. Dunlop
30 March: The 1930s. A Forgotten Moment in Economic History?
Contact Arthur Edwards (01452 810764) or Christopher Houghton Budd
(01227
738207) or email
economics@goetheanum.org. Time: 7.15 - 9.00 pm / Cost:
£5 / Venue: Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Road NW1 6XT 020 7723 4400 /
Baker Street Tube
Top
Heterodox Conference
Papers and Reports and Articles
Minimum Wage
Check out the article on the minimum wage--you will find some
interesting comments by economists you might know.
The new issue of Econ Journal Watch is online.
In the issue:
Why I Support the Minimum Wage: Using an open-ended, non-anonymous
questionnaire, Daniel Klein and Stewart Dompe asked 644 “raise the
minimum wage” signatories about the specific mechanisms at work,
possible downsides, and whether the minimum wage violates liberty.
Ninety-five participated, including Barbara Bergmann, Margaret Blair,
Alan Blinder, Barry Bosworth, Marianne Ferber, James K. Galbraith,
Richard J. Gilbert, Robert Haveman, Kevin Lang, Frank Levy, Catherine
Mann, Lawrence Mishel, James B. Rebitzer, Christopher Udry, Thomas
Weisskopf, and Edward Wolff. Also featured is correspondence from Henry
Aaron, Ronald Ehrenberg, and Robert Solow.
Information about Econ Journal Watch is available at
www.econjournalwatch.org.
We welcome inquiries and submissions, including from non-economists and
non-academics who would like to comment on articles in top economics
journals.
Daniel Klein
Editor, Econ Journal Watch
Top
Heterodox Journals and
Newsletters
Basic
Income Studies
My name is Xavier Fontcuberta and I’m writing you to see if your
organization could be interested in helping in the diffusion of a
new electronic scientific journal. The journal is named Basic Income
Studies, and is devoted to the study of all those reforms and
proposals that are known under the generic name of basic income
schemes. You can find it in www.bepress.com/bis, and there is free
access to articles after filling a short form.
It was launched by the Spanish Basic Income Network
(RRB) together with the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), and it is
currently published by the Berkeley Electronic Press (Bepress). As
its managing editor, I would like to ask you if you would be
interested in announcing in your website its existence and the
recent launching of the second issue (last December), or announcing
it through any other means you might suggest.
Thank you very much for your time and I’m waiting for your response.
Best regards,
Xavier
Journal of
Post Keynesian Economics
Volume 29 Number 2 / Winter 2006-7 of Journal of Post Keynesian
Economics is now available at
http://mesharpe.metapress.com.
This issue contains:
- The lasting economic contributions of John Kenneth Galbraith,
1908-2006
Stephen P. Dunn, Steven Pressman
- History versus equilibrium? on the possibility and realist basis of a
general critique of traditional equilibrium analysis
Dany Lang, Mark Setterfield
- OECD demand regimes (1960-2000)
C. W.M. Naastepad, Servaas Storm
- More on the monetary transmission mechanism: mortgage rates and the
federal funds rate
James E. Payne
- Exchange rates and prices: revisiting Granger causality tests
Jen-Chi Cheng, Larry W. Taylor, Wenlong Weng
- Irrational exuberance and stock market valuations: evidence from China
Feng Xiao
- A Post Keynesian approach to advertising and its relevance for the
transition economies
Marko Lah, Andrej SušJan, Branko Ilič
- "Expansionary fiscal contractions": a standard Keynesian explanation
Göran Hjelm
Australasian
Journal of Economics Education
Vol. 3. Numbers 1 & 2 2006
Contents
- The Ranking Game, Class and Scholarship in American mainstream
Economics
Frederic S. Lee
- Four Reasons for Pluralism in the Teaching of Economics
Frank Stillwell
- An Introduction to eRoadmapping: Providing Learning Paths for Students
and Empowering Teachers
Rodney Carr, Mary Graham, Phil Hellier and Helen Scarborough
- The Shrimp Game: Engaging Students in the Classroom
Margaret Giles and Jo Voola
- Is Economic Philosophy a Subject Worth Teaching?
L.A. Duhs
- Trends in Economics Degree Enrolments within Australia 1990-2004
Alex Millmow
- Teaching Economic Philosophy: Economics, Ethics and the Search for the
Right Maximand
L.A. Duhs
- Insecure Participation: Experiments in a One-day Introduction to
Economics
Christopher R. Geller
- Attendance and Assessment Performance in Economics Courses at the
University of Queensland’s Ipswich Campus
Averil Cook and James Laurenceson
The
International Journal of Green Economics
JGE, a peer-reviewed international journal, proposes and fosters
discussion on all aspects of Green Economics. It contributes to
international research and practice in Green Economics with the aim of
encouraging economic change and the positioning of Green Economics at
the centre of the Economics disciplines. Green Economic theories and
policies, tools, instruments and metrics are developed with the aim of
offering practical and theoretical solutions and proposals to facilitate
a change to the current economic models for the benefit of the widest
number of people and the planet as a whole.
www.inderscience.com/ijge
Heterodox
Perspectives in Economics Journals
Check out the 2007 Routledge Historical, Philosophical and Heterodox
Perspectives in Economics Journals brochure—see the
link
Top
Heterodox Books, Book Series, and Book Reviews
The
Structure of Post-Keynesian Economics
The Core Contributions of the Pioneers
G. C. Harcourt
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780511247613
Germany's Economic
Performance
From Unification to Euroization
Jens Hölscher
http://www.palgrave.com/products/Catalogue.aspx?is=1403999503
Successes and Failures
of Economic Transition
The European Experience
Hubert Gabrisch and Jens Hölscher
http://www.palgrave.com/products/Catalogue.aspx?is=1403934932
Strategic
Arena Switching in International Trade Negotiations
Wolfgang Blaas and Joachim Becker (eds.)
Ashgate 2007
Since the 1970s global rule-making with respect to international trade
has increased in importance. Political and academic attention has been
focused either on global institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the
WTO and UN organisations, or on regional blocs like the EU or NAFTA. As
negotiations take place in different international arenas, these arenas
themselves take on added strategic significance, with agendas pursued
and switched from one arena to another, should one route be blocked.
While dominant actors have sought to use arena switching to their
advantage, subordinate actors have begun to reactivate alternative
arenas of negotiation in order to pursue their different agendas.
This book employs a multi-level and multi-arena perspective in order to
analyse global rule-making in international trade. It seeks to explain
why actors - state actors and non-state actors - prefer particular
arenas. It deals with the question of which institutional designs serve
the aims of specific groups best and how the rules of the different
arenas are related (cont.)
Marxist
Perspectives on South Korea in the Global Economy
By: Martin Hart-Landsberg, Seongjin Jeong and Richard Westra
Series: Alternative Voices in Contemporary Economics
This volume brings together work by international scholars to provide a
unique analysis of the past, present and possible future trajectory of
Korea's political economy from a distinctly Marxist perspective.
The volume differentiates the Marxian approach to the political economy
of Korean development from the Keynesian, social democratic approach
that currently dominates the critical literature. In doing so the volume
provides a unique view of the development of the South Korean Economy.
Reviews:
‘The state centered approach to East Asian development made possible a
decisive advance over neoclassical dogma in interpreting Korea’s
high-speed growth, but could not itself cope with Korea’s great crisis
and the enormous changes it detonated. This volume shows how Marxist
theoretical perspectives on profitability, capital accumulation, and
class struggle can enable a more all-encompassing historical account of
Korea’s transformations, especially by analyzing government policy and
economic institutions in terms of political conflict, the nature of
workers’ resistance, and Korea’s changing place in the global economy.’
Robert Brenner, Professor of History and Director of the Center for
Social Theory and Comparative History, UCLA, USA
https://www.ashgate.com/shopping/title.asp?key1=&key2=&orig=results&isbn=0%207546%204816%208
Time and Space
in Economics
*Asada*, Toichiro, *Ishikawa*, Toshiharu Springer Verlag (Tokyo) 2007
About this book
In August 2005, a small but important conference took place at Chuo
University in Tokyo, Japan. This international conference, the Chuo
Meeting on Economics of Time and Space 2005 (Chuo METS 05), aimed to
enrich the respective disciplines of the economics of time (dynamic
economics) and the economics of space (spatial economics) and to expand
their applicability in the real world. The chapters contained herein are
based on the papers presented at that conference. Part I of the book
deals with Keynesian macrodynamics, which allows for the existence of
involuntary unemployment; Part II focuses on nonlinear dynamics, with an
emphasis on the complexity that is generated as a result of the
nonlinearity of the system; Part III consists of an empirical analysis
of spatial economics through geographical relationships with economic
activity; and Part IV analyzes the effects of spatial competition
between economic organizations or agents on economic performance in a
region.
The Myth of
Japanese Efficiency: The World Car Industry in a Globalizing Age
Cheltenham and New York: Edward Elgar, 2006
by Dan Coffey, University of Leeds Business School (Econ):
djc@lubs.leeds.ac.uk
Endorsements
Coffey's insightful book promises to make a critical contribution
…lucidly brings together original research, literatures in the economics
and sociology of production, and innovative analysis. Coffey has written
a book of exceedingly high calibre.
Professor Sarah S. Lochlann Jain, Dept of Anthropology, Stanford
University
This is an important book about a big subject: Dan Coffey makes the case
for this development of a “production fantasy” around the Japan car
industry …takes production seriously, actually seeks to observe what
goes on, and understand it. He is ingenious and his empirical work is
first rate. An original contribution of great significance.
Emeritus Professor Keith Cowling, Dept of Economics, Warwick University
This fine book … confirms the view of some that the Japanese vehicle
firms were not as special as they were made out to be. For those wishing
to separate the myth and reality of the Japanese car and truck industry
this book is a “must read”. There is no longer a "Japanese" threat, but
there may be a Toyota one. Read this book and see why.
Emeritus Professor Garel Rhys OBE,
Centre for Automotive Industry Research, Cardiff University
An original and provocative thesis which casts the “lean” and “flexible”
in an entirely new light – a challenging study of myth making in a
globalizing world.
Professor Ulrich Juergens, Social Science Research Centre Berlin
Description
The Myth of Japanese Efficiency is a provocative book which challenges
accepted views on Japanese production methods in the world car industry,
as a first step in the identification and analysis of a ‘production
fantasy’.
The book argues that the ‘lean and flexible’ production model popularly
associated with the Japanese giant Toyota is a myth, but one which sheds
light on cultural responses to the attendant stresses of globalization.
The book commences with a set of original and individual studies of
process flexibility, labour productivity and re-organization of work in
the world car industry. Wider evaluations of Japanese impacts on the
global economy and of a resurgent Western capitalism are then made,
progressing the case for a fundamental re-assessment of the narratives
informing popular accounts of Japan’s manufacturing success. The study
commences with the fictionalization of history and propagation of
empirical counterfactuals and finishes with observations on the wider
impact and meaning of myths about production.
Of interest to: political economists, industrial sociologists and other
researchers interested in contemporary debates around ‘post-Fordism’ and
‘lean and flexible’ production, as well as academics concerned with the
basis of Japanese post-war success in the world market for manufactured
goods, and Western responses.
While written for an academic audience, the material is pitched so as to
be accessible to motivated students taking courses on these or related
issues.
Poverty &
Policy in Canada: Implications for Health and Quality of Life
Dennis Raphael, Canadian Scholars' Press,
http://www.cspi.org, coming March 2007
"This volume explores social and political forces that conspire to allow
poverty to continue unabated. At the simplest level, poverty's sheer
invisibility keeps it off the national radar. That's why Professor
Raphael's work is so necessary. Poverty and Policy in Canada will
strengthen our struggle to make poverty visible, to thereby make it
politically real, and ultimately to make poverty history."
- Jack Layton, Leader, New Democratic Party of Canada
This book is unlike any other. Poverty and Policy in Canada provides a
unique, interdisciplinary perspective on poverty and its importance to
the health and quality of life of Canadians. This original volume
considers a range of issues that will be of great interest to a variety
of audiences - Social Work, Health Sciences, Sociology, Political
Science, Policy Studies, Nursing, Education, Psychology, and the general
public.
Central issues include the definitions of poverty and means of measuring
it in wealthy, industrialized nations such as Canada; the causes of
poverty - both situational and societal; the health and social
implications of poverty for individuals, communities, and society as a
whole; and means of addressing its incidence and improving its effects.
Particular emphasis has been placed on the lived experiences of poverty
throughout the book.
This new book has three, straight-forward goals:
- To provide a range of approaches for understanding poverty and its
effects;
- To help readers understand the structural antecedents of poverty -
that is, how society and its distribution of resources are the primary
determinants of poverty;
- To provide realistic solutions to poverty.
"I highly, highly recommend this book. It should be mandatory reading
for all people who are concerned about issues of poverty and their
violation of the principles of social justice. This book, I believe,
will become a major text book on the subject of poverty. Its strength is
the comprehensive treatment of the subject. Another strength is the
section on 'the experience of poverty.' A third strength is the book's
political economy perspective that explains poverty as a political
failing rather than as a personal failing. This book will help to debunk
many myths and stereotypes associated with poverty."
- Bob Mullaly, Dean, Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba
"I recommend [this book]. It provides a very engaging examination of the
intersection of policy, poverty and health in Canada. It offers both a
quantitative and qualitative account of how poverty is a major predictor
of the health of Canadians. This book provides an excellent overview of
the current literature in this field along with the voices of people
living in poverty."
- Peter Dunn, Wilfrid Laurier University
"There is a need that this book fills. It pulls together a lot of
information that has much value for teaching purposes. The author does
not 'dumb down' the material. The arguments are coherent and the quality
of ideas is high."
- Ernie Lightman, University of Toronto
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dennis Raphael is Professor and Undergraduate Program Director at the
School of Health Policy and Management at York University.
New EPI Catalog 2007
Want an idea of the breadth of subjects the Institute covers? It’s easy
with the new
EPI
2007 publications catalog, available online as an easy PDF download.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is an independent, nonprofit,
nonpartisan research institute that researches the impact of economic
trends and policies on working people in the United States and around
the world.
A Handbook of
Alternative Monetary Economics
P. Arestis & M. Sawyer (eds),
Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, January 2007
This major new Handbook consists of over 30 contributions that explore
the full range of exciting and
interesting work on money and finance, currently taking place within
heterodox economics.
See the Content and
flyer
Money and
Markets
Giacomin & M.C. Marcuzzo (eds), London: Routledge,
forthcoming (Spring 2007)
This book brings together 14 essays by leading authors in the field of
economics to look at the relationship between money and markets
thoughout economic theory and history, thus providing a key to
understanding important issues in monetary theory and other important
debates in contemporary economics.
For detailed information:
00_Money and
Markets778_pre-2.pdf
Socialism
after Hayek by Theodore A. Burczak
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=93585
The University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Advances in
Heterodox Economics.
Reviewed by M.J. Murray, University of Missouri- Kansas City
The opening chapter of the book outlines Hayek’s economic and social
theory in what Burczak defines as an “applied epistemological
postmodernism (p. 1).” Central to Hayek’s postmodern economics is the
human/economic problem or what is later defined, and used throughout the
book as the knowledge problem (cont.)
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Heterodox
Associations, Institutes, and Departments
Green
Economics Institute
With an ever increasing gap between rich and poor, and the increasing
number of people living below a minimum standard of living, there is a
need for new solutions and a complete reassessment of the problems and
what really counts.
The Green Economics Institute has therefore been formed to bring
together thinkers, activists, practioners, academics and policy makers,
people in business wanting to work for a real change in outcomes,
economists and campaigners, writers and opinion formers in order to
educate and exchange information and ideas and to provide the tools for
beneficial change to occur.
The Green Economics Institute undertakes,encourages and supports
research into Green Economics issues, perspectives, methods, tools and
instruments, economic theoretical discourses and disciplines in order to
facilitate change in the way people are affected by the economy and
their relationship to it. It will seek out and encourage best practise
and innovation in Fair Trade and sustainability and exchange ideas and
examples and cases.
www.greeneconomics.org.uk
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For Your Information
Econ-Atrocity
An Econ-Atrocity, brought to you by the Center for Popular Economics. If
you would like to automatically receive CPE’s Econ-Atrocities and
Econ-Utopias by email, subscribe (or unsubscribe) by going to the
following link:
http://www.populareconomics.org/site_files/subscribe.html To
see our archive of Econ-Atrocities please visit
www.fguide.org.
Econ-Utopia: Greenbacks for
Green Energy
By Jonathan Teller-Elsberg, CPE Staff Economist
With Al Gore on Oprah giving his “inconvenient” PowerPoint presentation,
new reports of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels, and the release
of the British government’s Stern Review, which is the latest major
estimate of the economic costs of climate change, the issue of global
warming is becoming a part of mainstream politics and kitchen-table
conversations. Since the burning of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and
coal) is the main source of human-caused warming, the need for
alternative forms of energy is clear.
Historically, low prices for fossil fuels have meant that renewable
energy systems were rarely economically viable. With improvements in
technology and production methods, renewable energy has been closing the
gap over time. But one thing has almost always been left out of the
equation: the long term, hidden costs of global warming from fossil fuel
use. These costs might be financial (the cost of building new homes for
people displaced by rising oceans), human (the trauma people experience
when their way of life is ruined), or something else (the loss of
millions of species of life than cannot survive a hotter planet).
In the language of economics, this is an example of a “negative
externality,” a cost that is not included in the market price. As a
result, the monetary price is “wrong”—in this case, the monetary price
of fossil fuels is too low, and so people use more fossil fuel than they
would if they knew the “true cost.”
Lately, some governments have taken the question of energy’s true cost
to heart, and created incentive plans called “feed-in tariffs” to
promote renewable energy. Germany has been at the forefront with its
2004 law, the “Renewable Energy Sources Act.” The law mandates that
electric utilities must pay a guaranteed price to anyone who installs a
renewable energy system, and that price is guaranteed for 20 years. The
price the utility pays is much higher than the price the utility charges
for fossil-fuel derived energy that it supplies.
For example, if you put a small photovoltaic (solar electricity) system
on the roof of your home and connected it to the electric grid, the
German utility must pay you just over 68 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
(calculated at the exchange rate on 12/14/2006). Meanwhile, the price
you would pay for electricity you get from the utility would be around
20 cents/kWh.
The German government’s logic is that each bit of electricity that comes
from a renewable source instead of a fossil fuel has long-term savings
built in, because the renewable energy isn’t contributing to global
warming. The law turns those long-term savings into cash up front that
citizens can use for investing in green power.
As a result, there has been an explosion of interest in alternative
energy in Germany. In 2005, some 635 megawatts (1 megawatt = 1,000
kilowatts) of new solar electric systems were installed—enough power to
supply the needs of nearly 60,000 average American homes (and the
average German home is almost surely more efficient). Spain, Italy,
Greece, South Korea and France have all followed Germany’s lead and
established their own feed-in tariff systems.
Starting in 2007, residents of California will enjoy a similar incentive
to go green; the state’s feed-in tariff guarantees a five year contract
paying 38 cents/kWh for newly installed photovoltaic systems. With all
that valuable beachfront property to worry about, it’s no wonder that
California is leading the way in the U.S. to avoid catastrophic global
warming. But the only hope for sufficiently reducing greenhouse gas
emissions to save Malibu is that the rest of the country (and world)
follow a similar path to make fossil fuels the economic losers that they
ought to be.
Sources:
For a taste of the bad news on global warming, see
- BBC News, “Gravity satellites see ice loss,” 10/20/2006,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6069506.stm.;
“Climate change fight ‘can’t wait’,” 10/31/2006,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6096084.stm; “Sea-level
rise ‘under-estimated’,” 12/14/2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6179409.stm
- Gerald Wynn, “Carbon Emissions up One-Quarter Since 1990” 12/8/2006,
www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1208-10.htm
- Jeremy Lovell, “2006 Set to be 6th Warmest Worldwide: UK Report,”
Reuters (via Commondreams.org), 12/14/2006,
www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1214-02.htm
For Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth
- An Inconvenient Truth,
http://www.climatecrisis.net/ .
- Oprah, “Global Warming 101 with Al Gore,” 12/5/2006,
www2.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/200612/tows_past_20061205.jhtml
- Pew Research Center for People and the Press, “Little Consensus on
Global Warming,” 7/12/2006,
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=280 .
For information on photovoltaics, feed in tariffs, and electricity
usage, see
- Wikipedia, “Photovoltaics,” accessed 12/14/2006,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics .
- Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, “U.S.
Household Electricity Report,” Table US-1, “Electricity Consumption by
End Use in U.S. Households, 2001,” 7/14/2005 (accessed 12/14/2006),
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us.html .
- Craig D. Rose, “Solar energy’s day is dawning: State to embark on its
biggest-ever photovoltaic project,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 12/10/2006,
www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061210/news_1n10solarone.html .
For an overview of renewable energy options for homeowners, small
businesses, and communities, The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook, Greg
Pahl
www.chelseagreen.com/2007/items/citizenpowered
© 2007 Center for Popular Economics
Econ-Atrocities are the work of their authors and reflect their author's
opinions and analyses. CPE does not necessarily endorse any particular
idea expressed in these articles.
The Center for Popular Economics is a collective of political economists
based in Amherst, Massachusetts. CPE works to demystify economics by
providing workshops and educational materials to activists throughout
the United States and around the world. If you would like more
information about CPE please visit our website at
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