Issue 39: February 16, 2007

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 Hence heterodox economic journals are not rated very highly in part because heterodox economists do not cite heterodox journals very much.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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 www.populareconomics.org
 

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