Issue 224 January 08, 2018 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory
This issue of the Newsletter comes straight from this year’s ASSA-conference, which took place in Philadelphia. As always, I had the opportunity to visit a series of excellent sessions on current research in heterodox economics (see, for instance, here, here, here, here or here). In visiting these sessions, I had the impression that there are a lot of interesting developments in our field, so I strongly recommend to check out the heterodox sessions and the corresponding papers and presentations, which can all be found on the ASSA webpage.
However, I also visited a series of sessions in mainstream economics and found, much to my surprise, that these sessions incorporated various novel perspectives and unconventional attitudes within the mainstream. There were sessions and papers on the culprits of financial deregulation and its contribution to the recent crisis, on the adverse effects of globalization, on the importance of increasing market concentration for explaining the fall of the wage share or on the possibility to use instruments from mechanism design to bring forth a socialist economy in the sense of Marx’s “free association of free individuals”.
The greatest surprise to me in these mainstream sessions was a talk on “Micro-Foundations of Aggregate Production Functions”. I basically visited this talk because I expected a rather dogmatic approach trying to relate aggregate production functions to individual optimization, which would represent the classic take on “micro-foundations” within the economic mainstream. However, it turned out to be quite different. In his introduction, the speaker, Emmanuel Farhi from Harvard University, revisited the Cambridge Controversies from the 1960s, where famous heterodox economists from Cambridge (UK), like Kaldor, Robinson or Sraffa, questioned the internal consistency of the aggregate production function as suggested by authors such as Solow or Samuelson from Cambridge (US). Farhi also emphasized, correctly, that the heterodox side won this debate, while Cambridge (US) admitted its theoretical defeat; this is highly remarkable since correct accounts on this debate are hardly found in the mainstream as these are typically swamped by the usual “whig history” prevailing in standard economics that presents currently dominating approaches (like the aggregate production function) as an outcome of a sensible historical learning process. Moreover, the proposed microfoundations were – again much to my surprise – not based on individual maximization, but, rather, built with reference to Input-Output tables, that is, to the interlinkages between different sectors of production. This emphasis on (sectoral) relations is actually not too far away from heterodox approaches to this question and partially takes up arguments that are typically associated with more unconventional economists such as Wassily Leontief or Piero Sraffa.
However, make no mistake: of course, the mainstream has not fully opened up and many important aspects still remain unnoticed. For instance, the criticism of financial deregulation is seen as a purely institutional phenomenon - quite unrelated to the general stability-properties of capitalism. On another front, the issue of increasing market concentration is primarily observed, but not rationalized as a typical outcome of market activities in the sense of endogenous concentration processes. And, similarly, the troubles with globalization are not understood in terms of path dependent processes (e.g. Kaldor, Myrdal) or power relations (e.g. Wallerstein), but are rationalized with very traditional means such as the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem or references to asymmetric information. In sum, what we observe is a conceptual broadening of mainstream economics, which can be understood as a reaction to current and more turbulent economic and political trends. Regrettably, some form of paradigmatic change or, at least, some major reforms of basic economic textbook-thinking does not seem to be on the agenda ;-)
On a personal note, I want to add one major reason why I really enjoyed this year’s ASSA-conference: I took part with a team of four researchers from the Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy located at Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria), which also serves as a base for the Heterodox Economics Newsletter. It was a real pleasure to take part in this event as a team and so my thanks go not only to all those people, who helped to organize the fantastic heterodox sessions taking place here, but also to Bernhard Schütz, Claudius Gräbner and Stephan Pühringer, who joined me in taking part in this highly interesting event.
I hope you could somehow enjoy my personal report from this year’s major economic conference and I will, finally, leave it at that!
All the best,
Jakob
© public domain
10-12 September, 2018 | City of Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
Convenors: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in collaboration with the Sociedad Mesoamericana y del Caribe de Economía Ecológica
Main theme: "Ecological Economics and Socio-ecological Movements: Science, policy and challenges to global processes in a troubled world"
For more than a quarter century since the ISEE was founded the international community has developed a substantial corpus of law and agreements that recognize our collective responsibility to attend to our serious global environmental problems while recognizing the extraordinary diversity of societies in our midst. Our colleagues are engaged in significant efforts to identify and understand the underlying obstacles to implementing effective policies that address the limitations of existing institutions while also searching for new approaches to overcome these problems.
In this vein, we have identified a number of important international issues that Ecological Economists are examining as part of our collective effort. Five problems of particular importance identified by our colleagues are:
While this list is not exhaustive, a considerable number of members of the ISEE are engaged in research on these matters. The lack of flexibility of existing institutions in most countries and the capture of many international organizations by entrenched interests (selling uncritical notions of ecological modernization, “sustainable development”, the “circular economy”) are generating complex obstacles for people searching for solutions to clearly identified problems; social and political conflict is intensifying around the world. At the same time, we are discovering that peoples around the world are adopting alternative ways to organize themselves, forging new models of “good living”, oftentimes choosing to live at the margins of their societies rather than open themselves to outside environmental and economic exploitation, and to internal and external colonialism. Ecological economists are discovering that these peoples have much to teach us about possible alternative paths to addressing the challenges. In the terminology of Karl Polanyi, they refuse to be incorporated into the “generalized market system”. Mexico is one of the countries of the world where such social experiments are influential and widespread.
The 2018 ISEE conference especially encourages colleagues examining the problems facing the international community to explore solutions with others engaged in strengthening socio-ecological grassroots organizations. By focusing on interactions among these different communities, we hope to contribute to advancing our understanding of today’s pressing problems, while exploring solutions offered by people outside the traditional circles of influence. In academic terms, we search at the same time for a cross fertilization between ecological economics and political ecology, political economy, ethnoecology, agroecology, climate sciences as well as material and energy systems.
Within this frame of reference, we invite participants to consider organizing their contributions to the discussion within the following general themes:
Please apply online: 15th-isee2018.uam.mx from January 15th until April 15th, 2018, by registering and submitting an abstract of no more than 250 words that includes: Full name(s), Co-author, paper title, general theme, objective(s), methods and results. Abstracts can be submitted in English or in Spanish (ver Convocatoria en Español para más detalles). You will receive a response no later than May 11, 2018.
A three-day Workshop from September 7th to 9th, will be organized prior to the International Conference as a separate activity to discuss basic principles in Ecological Economics and related disciplines. It will be held in a nearby rural community; this activity will include direct exchanges with peasant and indigenous communities involved in consolidating alternative social models.
Additionally, a number of optional one-day post congress tours will be offered to establish contact with peasant and indigenous communities that have reorganized to enrich and diversify their collective lives and protect their ecosystems; these activities will be hosted by the communities themselves with possibilities for translation in English. These reorganization processes become political, social, cultural and, of course, economic strategies; through them they rescue their historical memory, they discard, adopt, and reinvent the ways in which they see the world and assert their ability to govern themselves. They include various examples encompassing agroecology, forestry, small-scale industry, cultural heritage, and political mobilization in the face of domestic developmental policies that are promoting the expansion of transnational capital.
If there is interest and “demand”, there is the possibility of arranging longer visits that are further afield or offer the possibility of a deeper understanding of the process and/or a post-Congress vacation. These trips provide a window for introducing the participants to Peoples trying to improve their quality of life and defend their ecosystems. Although each of the options differ among themselves, they all are communitarian efforts to transform their societies while strengthening their cultures on the margins of the nation-state of which they are part.
For enquiries, please write us at: isee2018@correo.xoc.uam.mx
More details can be found at the conference website.
28-30 June, 2018 | Genova, Italy
The 15th Annual Italian Association for the History of Political Economy (STOREP) Conference will be held at the Università di Genova, Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche (Piazzale E. Brignole, 3a canc.), on June 28-30, 2018.
The title of the conference is “Whatever Has Happened to Political Economy?”.
There is considerable discussion on the current state of the economic discipline, on the relevance of its theories and models to the contemporary world, as well as on the appropriateness of economists’ toolkits. Held under scrutiny is the conception of economics as axiomatic science of rational choice, promoted by Lionel Robbins’ systematization in the early Thirties. According to its critics, the inadequacy of economics in the times of the global crisis may have to do exactly with the roads not taken after winning the competition with the alternative, and preceding approach of political economy.
What happened to political economy is therefore a nontrivial question, for today’s practitioners in economics. The 15th Annual STOREP Conference will bring together historians of economic thought, economists and other social scientists to explore the tensions between political economy and economics in historical perspective, with an eye to present times. The conference will address the main lines of evolution of political economy, from its advent in the 18th century to its consolidation as field of study devoted to the analysis of the relationships between individuals and society, markets and the state, to, finally, its surrender in the Thirties, with the separation between economics and moral considerations, and the progressive diffusion of the formalist approach in economics.
The historical perspective wherewith the Conference will look at such developments is necessary for two main reasons. First, the comparison between political economy and the approach of economics as we now understand it allows identifying the principal turning points in the evolution of the economic discipline and its mainstream (the advent of econometrics, the progress of economics imperialism, and others), but also in the plot of the evolving lively debate between various heterodox schools of thought. Second, this perspective helps appreciate the (changing) extent of variety intrinsic to both mainstream and heterodox economics in their developments until the last part of the 20th century.
By attempting to discover what has been lost in the passing from political economy to economics, the Conference aims at retracing the origins of the current “political economy” (presumably or so) approaches in economics – from “political economics” to “international political economy”. But it has also the ambition to provide insights on the current state of economics, on its more and more fragmented nature, as well as on the revival of various dimensions of (and issues broadly related to) the “political economy” perspective in a series of (mainstream) research programs at the frontier.
Possible topics for the conference sessions include, but are not limited to:
Besides plenary sessions, some parallel sessions will focus on the main topic of the conference; proposals of papers on all fields of the history of economic thought are also welcome.
STOREP welcomes special sessions jointly organized with other scientific associations, and invites these latter to submit proposals.
We are pleased to announce that distinguished colleague Professor Geoffrey Hodgson (University of Hertfordshire) will join the conference as keynote speaker.
Professor Harro Maas (University of Lausanne) will deliver the second “Raffaelli lecture”.
As in 2017, the 2018 STOREP conference will jointly organize initiatives and special sessions with the students and researchers of the international network “Rethinking Economics”.
Selected papers on the main topic of the conference will be published in a special issue of History of Economic Ideas.
Proposals submission
The deadline for abstract and session proposals is March 15, 2018. Notification of accepted and rejected abstracts and sessions will be sent by March 30, 2018.
Abstract proposals (with keywords, JEL codes, and affiliation) must not exceed 400 words. Session proposals (general description of not more than 600 words) should include the abstract of the three scheduled papers.
Proposals must be uploaded on the Submission website of the 15th Annual STOREP conference at: conference.storep.org (follow instructions by clicking on “INFORMATION. For authors” in the right column menu).
Registration
All participants, including young scholars who apply for the awards, must become STOREP members or renew their membership.
All relevant information concerning registration fees, accommodation and programme will soon be published on both the conference (conference.storep.org) and the Association (www.storep.org) websites.
Young Scholars STOREP Awards
1) Scholarshipsfor young scholars (under 40 years of age, non tenured). In order to be eligible, the applicant is required to submit a Curriculum Vitae and an extended abstract (2,000 words ca., both to be uploaded on the Submission website) on any topic relevant to the history of political economy, by March 15, 2018. The final version of the papers must be uploaded within May 15, 2018. Applicants will be informed about the result of the evaluation process no later than May 30, 2018. The authors of the papers selected will be awarded free STOREP Conference registration, including the social dinner and the association’s annual membership fee, as well as, if possible, a lump sum contribution to travel and staying expenses.
2) The STOREP Award (of 500.00 €) for the best article presented at the Annual Conference by young scholars under 40 years of age. All applications, with CV and the final version of the papers, should be sent to segretario@storep.org no later than September 15, 2018.
Organizing Committee
Scientific Committee
The Conference is sponsored by
The Call for Papers (PDF) downloaded here.
12-14 July, 2018 | Faculty of Economics University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
The International Association for the Economics of Participation (IAFEP) gathers scholars dedicated to exploring the economics of democratic and participatory organizations, such as labor-managed firms, cooperatives and firms with broad-based employee share-ownership, profit sharing and worker participation schemes, as well as democratic nonprofit, community and social enterprises. The IAFEP Conferences, which take place every two years, provide an international forum for presentations and discussions of current research on the economics of participation.
Submissions for the 2018 conference, taking place in Ljubljana (Slovenia), are invited from all relevant fields of study,including comparative economic systems, industrial and labor economics, organizational studies, management studies, institutional economics, evolutionary economics, development economics, sociology, psychology, political science, law, and philosophy. We also invite proposals for complete sessions.
Journal of Participation and Employee Ownership (JPEO), a new journal endorsed by the IAFEP, encourages authors to submit their papers to JPEO. At least one of the Editors (Richard Freeman and Takao Kato) will be at the Conference and available for informal discussions on possible paper submissions and special issue proposals.
Extended Abstracts (max. 1000 words) in English should be sent by e-mail to POLONA DOMADENIK (polona.domadenik@ef.uni-lj.si) by March 31, 2018. Abstracts should include full details of institutional affiliations and e-mail addresses. Proposals for complete sessions should include a brief description of the theme of the session and an abstract for each paper.
Authors will be notified by April 30, 2018 whether their papers are accepted for presentation. Complete drafts should reach us by June 25, 2018 in order to be handed out to Conference participants.
Key themes:
The incidence of the different types of broad-based financial participation (employee ownership, profit sharing, stock options, and other forms of equity and profit participation) and decision-making participation of the employees (autonomous work teams, flat organizations, non-executive employees on the boards of directors, and other employee involvement processes)
The effects of the various forms of workers’ financial and decision-making participation on firm performance (productivity, profitability, investment, and employment) and individual performance
The effects of the various forms of financial and decision-making participation on worker outcomes (such as pay, job security, training, turnover, stress, satisfaction, loyalty, relations with management)
The specific characteristics of the employees involved in the financial and decision-making participation; the motives and drivers of the different types of employee participation
The relation of financial and decision-making participation to corporate social responsibility practices, corporate governance, and sustainability of political democracy
Worker-management relations and human resource practices in firms with financial and/or decision- making participation
Challenges in expanding and transnational corporations using financial and/or decision-making participation
The social and economic history of financial and decision-making participation in different countries, industries, regions, and periods.
Sociological, psychological, political, legal, and philosophical issues relevant to financial and decision- making participation.
The role of institutional and cultural settings for the implementation and impact of workers’ participation
The creation, growth, survival, and stability of firms with financial and/or decision-making participation; the development and dynamics of financial and decision-making participation in firms with varying size, industry, knowledge intensity, employing specific social groups etc.
Evolution and implications of financial and decision-making participation in industrialized, post-industrial, transition, and developing economies
Analysis of past, present, and proposed public policies on financial and decision-making participation
A special session at the conference will be dedicated to one of the founding members of IAFEP, the late ProfessorJaroslav Vanek.
Conference Dates
The conference will consist of two full day sessions on July 12 and July 13, 2018. A session at the conference will host experts from the Slovenian business practice (managers, union representatives), who will discuss their experiences with employee ownership and board representation. On Saturday, July 14, 2018 we are planning some social events (more information will follow).
Registration and Accommodations
Detailed information on registration (including fees) and local accommodations will be available on the conference website in early April.
Participants from Developing and Transition Economies and Students.
A small amount of funding is available for participants from developing and transition economies and students. In order to be considered for the funding, researchers should clarify it in the abstract submission.
Horvat-Vanek Prize
The Horvat-Vanek prize is awarded every two years for a research paper of exceptional quality written by a young scholar in one of the areas of interest to IAFEP. The prize, of a value of US$ 1,000, will be awarded during the conference. In order to be considered for the prize, researchers and doctoral students aged 35 or under should submit one research paper in English (maximum length 10,000 words) by May 15, 2018 to Polona Domadenik (polona.domadenik@ef.uni-lj.si). Please, include your institutional affiliation and an abstract, and indicate clearly on the paper that you wish it to be considered for the Horvat-Vanek prize (the recipient will be requested to provide a passport or other official evidence of their date of birth in order to receive the prize).
Link to the conference website can be found here.
4-5 June, 2018 | ENS de Lyon, France
The scope of the conference is to bring together scientists interested in the use of complexity methods to improve our analysis of economic systems, especially their history, with a special focus on long economic and financial time series. We aim to combine usual approaches from social sciences (e.g. econometrics, cliometrics, finance, history…) with tools borrowed from physics, mathematics, econophysics, data and computational science. Several questions will be at the heart of the conference: the contribution of complex network analysis to economic history; non-linear dynamics in economic history; building empirical and theoretical economic history; econo-physics and cliometrics.
You are invited to submit a 1 page proposal, deadline of submission March 19, 2018.
Keynote speakers:
Note the important dates:
No registration fee.
For more details, see the call for abstracts at https://cac2018.sciencesconf.org
The Organizing Committee:
For CAC:
Antoine PARENT (Founding Director of CAC, Professor of Economics, Sciences Po Lyon, LAET CNRS); Catherine KYRTSOU (Deputy Director of CAC, Professor of Macro-Finance and Quantitative Methods, University of Macedonia); Fredj JAWADI (Deputy Director of CAC, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Evry).
For IXXI:
Pierre BORGNAT (Director of IXXI – Complex Systems Institute, ENS Lyon, Department of Physics, Research Professor CNRS – Physics); Pablo JENSEN (IXXI – Complex Systems Institute, ENS Lyon, Department of Physics, Research Professor CNRS – Physics);
Administrative coordination: IXXI – Complex Systems Institute, ENS Lyon
4-7 July, 2018 | Estonian Business School (EBS), Tallinn, Estonia
General theme: Surprise in and around Organizations: Journeys to the Unexpected
Sub-themes: Call for Short Papers
Please note:
Time period for submission of short papers:
For any questions re. the 34 EGOS Colloquium 2018 in Tallinn, please contact
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Sub-theme 44: Marxist Organization Studies
Convenors:
At EGOS 2018, we aim to build on the success of the seven previous EGOS Marxist studies sub-themes in bringing together people who share an interest in drawing on Marx's ideas to advance management and organization studies.
The organizers of the EGOS 2018 Colloquium have called for papers on the theme Surprise in and around Organizations -- on how surprise shapes the character and actions of organizations and the process of organizing. This sub-theme takes up this invitation by providing space for reflection on the contribution of Marxist-inspired organization studies to understanding why actors are surprised by rather predictable events, and why others are not surprised when circumstances warrant surprise. With its emphasis on human agency (“praxis”) and class struggle, the role of institutions and deep structures, and the context in which organizations and actors function, Marxist work is particularly well placed to contribute to the examination of these phenomena.
We particularly welcome papers that address the following questions:
We are not dogmatic in an attachment to any specific kind of Marxism. Indeed, all kinds are welcome and we also welcome non-Marxists those who wish to critique Marxist analysis. In previous years our sub-theme has enjoyed lively debate spanning a wide range of approaches. Some scholars have sought to integrate insights from organization studies into a Marxist framework, while others have examined how Marxist insights may fruitfully add analytical value to other research traditions.
We invite contributions that either (a) enrich our understanding of the empirical world of organizations based on Marxist theoretical foundations, or (b) enrich Marxist theory in a way that promises deeper understanding of that world.
Following EGOS guidelines, submissions for the Sub-theme take the form of “short papers” of up to 3,000 words, which, upon acceptance, are then developed into full papers in time for presentation at the Colloquium. The submissions website opens on Sunday, September 17, 2017, and submissions must be received by Monday, January 8, 2018, 23:59:59 CET.
15-18 August, 2018 | Helsinki, Finland
WORLD ECOLOGY 2018
Over the past two decades, large-scale resource extraction has returned to center stage in the political economy of capitalism – and in the resistance to it. Called “extractivism” by scholars and activists, resource extraction in the 21st century has assumed new prominence in an era of unusually high commodity prices and the widespread questioning of fossil fuel infrastructures. Far from limited to resource and energy question, recent extractivisms have linked up with manifold forms of land grabbing and cash-crop agriculture to create new agrarian questions of survival and justice in an era of runaway climate change. Crucially, many Indigenous Peoples, peasants, workers, and other groups have confronted the extractivist projects. Many of them have not only opposed place-specific projects but questioned the Nature/Society dualisms that have framed and legitimated the racialized, gendered, and colonial domination that has been fundamental to capitalism’s environmental histories. We are witnessing a new wave of challenges to capitalism as an ontological formation – a new ontological politics that confronts capitalism as a world-ecology of power, re/production, and nature.
Extractivisms, Social Movements and Ontological Formations is the fourth annual conference of the World-Ecology Research Network. We invite papers on the widest range of topics addressing the new extractivism, its political economy and political ecology, and movements against extractivist projects. We also welcome proposals for thematic sessions. Proposals from artists and activists are encouraged. Papers off-topic but relevant to the world-ecology conversation are also welcome.
Possible topics include:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Please use this link to submit an abstract for an oral presentation, a panel session, a workshop session or a poster presentation.
Important Dates:
More details can be found at the conference website.
6-9 June, 2018 | Groningen, Netherlands
Main theme: The Return of Politics to International Relations
The European International Studies Association (EISA) invites papers to be submitted to the workshops that comprise EWIS 2018, which will take place at University of Groningen in the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 06-09 June 2018. These workshops allow scholars to engage in sustained, in-depth discussion with a diverse range of their peers from various institutions, countries, disciplines and career stages. EWIS has quickly proven to be a popular and productive format, ideal for preparing special issues, edited volumes or exploring new ideas, themes and directions.
EWIS 2018 will be held at University of Groningen, an increasingly important centre for IR in Europe. The university is situated in the heart of the city, which allows easy access to Groningen’s rich history (including as a seat of the Hanseatic league) as well as its dynamic and diverse contemporary life. Easily reachable by direct train from Amsterdam Schiphol airport – and many other cities – Groningen combines the accessible charm of a small university town with the outlook and diversity of a big city.
The workshops that have been selected allow for exploration of the EWIS 2018 theme - ‘The Return of Politics to International Relations’ - and will zoom in on the manifold ways in which knowledge produced in the field of International Relations is increasingly politicized, considered as inherently political and confronted with ongoing efforts to reconceptualise politics and the political beyond the confines of IR.
List of Workshops for EWIS 2018 - General Call for Papers Now OPEN
You can now submit your abstracts for papers proposed for inclusion in the workshops at #EWIS2018. Please read - and follow – the guidelines below carefully. Paper proposals should be submitted to a particular workshop and only one proposal may be submitted.
Below you can find two Special Call for Sections.
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Section V: "The Political Economy of the Post-Soviet Space: Between Empires, Histories, and Uncertain Futures"
Convenors: Stuart Shields and Yuliya Yurchenko
The post-Soviet space is positioned on the crossings of the empire of capital with its internal competitions and shifting spatial and social boundaries. It is torn by inequalities, economic crises, various forms of conflict, and reinvigorated struggle for geopolitical presence between the Russian empire 2.0 and the new-old west. In IR/global political economy debates and scholarship the post-Soviet space tend to be discussed in an “adjacent” manner. That is to say that focused discussions are often left in the domain of area studies while the broader ones lose depth by fixating on the west-Russia ongoing rivalry. Such shortcomings leave contextualised analyses of individual states and societies sidelined in IR/GPE scholarship. The aim of this workshop is to address the complexity of the ongoing transformations in the post-Soviet space in a systematised interdisciplinary discussion thus contributing to a better understanding of the region, its internal dynamics, and significance of its foreign relations in IR/GPE.
The workshop is planned to cover three broad and overlapping areas.
Planned outputs include a special issue of select contributions and an edited volume (already solicited by the Palgrave IPE series).
More details and paper proposals can be submitted through the workshop website.
The deadline for proposals is January 10th.
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Section 18: "Global Epistemics: Structures, Practices, and Pathways of Knowledge Formation and Diffusion"
Section Chairs: Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (beb14@aber.ac.uk) & Inanna Hamati-Ataya (ih335@cam.ac.uk)
Knowledge is a condition of human life and development, and permeates all aspects of our societal evolution and transcultural exchanges. While times of social crisis bring forth the politics of knowledge as an intrinsic dimension of dynamics of power and authority, oppression and contestation, these are but partial manifestations of the deeper entanglement of our epistemic and socio-political histories, which predates the emergence of modern ‘knowledge societies’ and can be traced back to the earliest stages of human civilisation.
This section invites contributions to ‘Global Epistemics’ as a space of transdisciplinary inquiry into human knowledge across its material and discursive manifestations, past and present, and a reflection on its future condition and its role in mediating global political conflicts, problems, and solutions.
We welcome panels, roundtables, and papers anchored in micro-studies of contemporary structures and practices of knowledge formation and diffusion, as well as longue-durée analyses of macro patterns of socio-epistemic development within and across cultural and political regions, from Antiquity to the present. We are especially interested in cross-disciplinary perspectives on the politics of competing knowledges and epistemologies; the epistemic structures of international and global orders and hierarchies; transcultural pathways of traveling knowledges; imperial and counter-imperial epistemic systems and practices; agnotology and the diffusion of ignorance, doubt, and uncertainty; the securitisation of knowledge, science, and technology; the globalisation of scientific and technological revolutions; and the political economy of knowledge production and transmission.
This Section is sponsored by the Centre for the International Politics of Knowledge (KNOWLEDGE) and the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies (GloKnoS).
28-29 May, 2018 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Local Organizers: Manuel Aalbers (KU Leuven), David Bassens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Reijer Hendrikse (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Michiel van Meeteren (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Advisory Board: Sabine Dörry (LISER, Luxembourg), Gary Dymski (Leeds University), Karen Lai (National University Singapore), Martin Sokol (Trinity College Dublin), Dariusz Wójcik (Oxford University)
Sponsored by: EUFINGEO, the European Financial Geography Network (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, click here), The Financial Geography Research Network (Regional Studies Association, click here)
Overall organisational outline: The two-day Global Seminar is intended for a larger audience and is followed by the 1st FinGeo Spring School (30 May – 02 June 2018) for a selected audience of early career scholars.
Location: The Global Seminar takes place in Brussels: a city that harbours both the high promises and extreme disappointments of European integration, a financial centre in and of itself, and a place which remarkable urban fabric carries the signature of decades of commercial real estate and financial interests.
Background and ambition: For decades, Brussels has been the European hotbed fuelling financial integration, culminating in the inception of the Eurozone at turn of the century, and currently exemplified by a push for integrated capital markets. As unofficial capital of the EU, Brussels is a key regulatory node in shaping European and indeed global capitalism, having increasingly become a hotspot for corporate lobbying, housing a growing complex of private associations, consultancies, firms, roundtables and so forth, dedicated to influence the many diplomats and technocrats constituting the so-called ‘Brussels Bubble’.
Over time, this regime has produced radically uneven socio-spatial outcomes, particularly in the Eurozone ‘periphery’. Greece is the epitomic case of how the ongoing crisis of financialized capitalism, amplified through monetary union, can destabilize a country, effectively resulting in the handover of executive power and sovereignty to technocratic (creditor) bodies. Greece’s fate, however troubling, is but an extreme version of what is observable across the Eurozone and EU. Augmented since the crisis, it appears that limiting political manoeuvrability is a structural phenomenon, as member states are confronted with a structural loss of national executive authority, and judicial and parliamentary oversight. Instead, technocratic bodies like the Eurogroup and the European Central Bank (ECB) have increasingly filled the political vacuum. As a result of this increasingly ‘financialized’ regime, it appears that European banks and capital markets have recovered from the financial-cum-euro crisis, and are once again seeking ways to further enclose the EU/Eurozone in its value extraction schemes.
Last but not least, Brussels is also the fulcrum where much of the forthcoming wheeling and dealing around the latest financial sector challenges will play out: as Brexit is likely to have substantial consequences for the geographical organization of the European financial sector (and particularly UK banks), the Brussels’ business services complex will be working overtime. But also the inroads of financial technology (FinTech) into the field of ‘traditional’ finance poses key questions to Brussels-based politicians, regulators and technocrats, some of which have clear geopolitical dimensions to it.
Target Group and Application Procedure: Attendence of the seminar is open to all after registration, but there is a selection procedure for paper presenters. The registration fee is 100 euro for the full two days, including lunch & refreshments. Potential paper presenters should submit an title + abstract of max. 250w to david.bassens@vub.be and manuel.aalbers@kuleuven.beby 15 January 2018.
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Theme
The theme of the Global Seminar is ‘European Spaces of Financialization’. Organized on May 28 and May 29 in Brussels, the main intellectual drive for the seminar is to debate Europe’s multiscalar spaces of financialization, their production, workings, effects, and importantly, their alternatives. We want to understand the socio-spatial drivers of financialization that produce inequality, growing household indebtedness, and the privatization of public services and support structures in the face of austerity politics. Participants are invited to engage with the following financial geography themes: geographies of European integration, its offshore spaces and the wider state-finance nexus; the financialization of (non-) banking, finance and corporate enterprise; of boom-bust cycles; of politico-financial elites; of real estate, housing and households; geographies of sovereignty, austerity, resistance, debt, and so forth. Therefore we are both interested in the effects of financialization on states and markets as well as focusing on who and what drive further financialization of these spheres.
The program is structured around four dedicated keynote lectures of about 45 min + 15 min Q/A, each followed by a topical session with four papers. This allows us to accommodate up to sixteen presenting participants, although we want to encourage a larger community and the FINGEO spring school participants to be present. Moreover, the two keynotes from the First FINGEO dissertation prize will be accommodated on the Brussels seminar. The seminar will cover the following themes:
(i) The financialization of governments, the public sector and states
Keynote: Professor Bob Jessop, Lancaster University
In recent years a mounting body of work has emerged that empirically unpacks the financial entanglements and transformations of governments, state agencies, (quasi-) public institutions and their offshoots. Our first session builds on these contributions, in an understanding that states – through a multitude of functions – shape the very context upon which financial development unfolds. We are broadly interested in the latest empirical insights within this growing subfield of financialization studies, as well as emerging conceptual perspectives to make sense of the rise of finance in a growing set of public domains: how and why governments have been key accelerators of financialization; to what extent states have become financial subjects themselves, and how we should understand the ever-changing state-finance nexus in a financialized world.
About the keynote:
Bob Jessop is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, United Kingdom. Bob has written extensively on a wide range of interconnected topics, such as regulation, governance and neoliberalism. However, Bob is arguably best known for his vast work centered on the state, on state theory and state transformations, including his popular ‘strategic relational approach’ to study the nature of states.
(ii) Corporate financialization: banks, finance and corporations transformed
Keynote: Professor Julie Froud, The University of Manchester
Our second session focuses on the global political economy of corporations – a space we broadly refer to as corporate financialization. Amongst others, we zoom in on the changing nature of corporate financing and profitmaking: of banking, and wider financial intermediation, in which so-called ‘non-financial’ firms increasingly perform all kinds of financial activities. The growing influence of financial motives and practices over business, with the rise of governance models maximizing ‘shareholder value’ as prominent example, remains one of the key spaces shaping financialization research. Global corporations have since become progressively interwoven with shadow banking, tax evasion and other practices defining the financial offshore world, inviting scholars to rethink the ways in which corporate financialization shapes up. From a European perspective, financialized corporate governance practices have typically been seen as something that belongs to Anglo-American capitalism. Although such a position is difficult to maintain, it begs the question to what extent corporate financialization shapes Europe.
About the keynote:
Julie Froud is Professor of Financial Innovation at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Julie has written extensively on financialization and strategy at the level of the global corporation, amongst others focusing on the narratives, numbers and cult(ure) behind shareholder value orientation and the rise of capital markets.
(iii) The politics of financialization
Keynote: Professor Andreas Nölke, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
As a seminar organized in Brussels, it only seems logical that our third session zooms in the politics of financialization. Who are the actual (co-) producers of our financialized universe? Who benefits from more financialized markets and states, and who drive policy proposals and institutional change towards financialization, either on the EU level or within EU member states? Amongst others, this session will discuss geographies of lobbying, influence peddling, agenda setting, legislative processes and related political interests. The financial crisis and its (continuing) aftermath laid bare the excessive capture of politicians and regulators, with numerous political solutions or ‘fixes’ to solve the crisis, typically devised by private actors, merely replicating the very dynamics that caused it. Likewise, the ongoing push for integrated European capital markets will increase the likelihood of recurrent crises, rather than prevent it. Meanwhile, the ECB has steadily become Europe’s decisive political actor, increasingly assuming responsibilities of state actors.
About the keynote:
Andreas Nölke is Professor in Political Science at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. Andreas’ work centers on political economy, having written extensively on a variety of themes, such as corporate/transnational governance, international accounting standards, and varieties of capitalism. More recently, Andreas has engaged with the notion financialization, which he views ‘the core problem for a social Europe’.
(iv) The financialization of daily life
Keynote: Professor Kavita Datta, Queen Mary University of London
The final session broadly focuses on the spaces shaping the financialization of daily life, in which financial calculations and rationalities increasingly nudge and shape social exchange and reproduction, progressively transforming citizens – students, patients, pensioners, households, et cetera – into financial(ized) subjects. This particular area within the financialization literature and debate is mostly, but not exclusively, shaped by cultural approaches, applied at the local level or micro scale. How and why are decisions about where, when and how to live, shop, work or leisure influenced by financial considerations? Amongst others, this both encompasses empirical work on the financialization of home and the housing sector, but also conceptual work on debt and its mounting sway over social life.
About the keynote:
Kavita Datta is Professor of Development Geography at Queen Mary, Universtiy of London, United Kingdom. Kavita has written extensively on transnational migration from the global south to the north, and in particular to global cities like London. Amongst others, Kavita is studying how migrant communities subject to financial exclusion carve out alternative spaces of financial intermediation.
1-2 June, 2018 | University of Lisbon, Portugal
Theme: "Gender, Race, Class and Ecology in and through Critical Political Economy"
Capitalism cannot be explained by class alone. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, alongside the reinvigoration of far right groups, the global women’s strike in Spring, the vast number of public and political figures guilty of sexual harassment, and environmental disasters such as devastating wildfires, floods and hurricanes, we need a critical political economy that can take account of these interconnected problems and pressures. The upcoming CPERN midterm workshop seeks to reaffirm the importance of class in relation to gender, race, ecology and migration. We are interested in how gender, race, class and questions of ecology intersect, and resulting overlapping oppressions, material inequalities, power relations and social struggles. This includes postcolonial and Marxist feminist approaches to political economy and the personal and ‘embodied’ aspects of political processes. Overall, we welcome contributions on a range of topics that explicitly link gender, sex, race and/or class to key themes and pressing issues in political economy, including (but certainly not limited to) the following:
We are interested in all of the above and more, and wish for the workshop to cover a wide range of topics. We welcome scholars with an interest in critical political economy, from a variety of countries, social backgrounds, and disciplinary affiliations, regardless of whether they are in academia or not. We are particularly committed to promoting the participation of PhD students, early career scholars, and activists. Limited funds will be available for scholars and activists in precarious situations (who cannot get other sources of funding) to support travel and accommodation costs. Please inform us if you may require help with funding when you send us your abstract.
There is no fee for attending the workshop. The conference language will be English.
Abstracts of around 250 words should be submitted to cpern@criticalpoliticaleconomy.net by 1 February 2018.
More details can be found here.
22-23 December, 2018 | Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan
General theme: "Karl Marx: Alive or Dead in the 21st Century?"
The year of 2018 is the bicentenary anniversary of K. Marx's birth. This great thinker's name has been incorporated in the modern world history. Even today, we still suffer from antagonisms and critical tendencies that can be comparable to what K. Marx regarded as the results of capitalist economy. So, the name of this revolutionary intellectual giant in the 19th Century arouses uneasiness in every field of politics, economics, social thoughts, philosophy, as well as of social and political movements. Here arises one fundamental question: Have the Marx's ideas on the problems of modern economic system and society already been outmoded. Or is it possible to resurgent his theory and ideas on the grounds of accumulated knowledge and with advanced analytical tools? What is the message of this bearded man to the people who live over one century after his death?
However, K. Marx was not a prophet. He was a man who wished to ground his ideas in the materialistic view of history and declared his willingness to receive any scientific criticisms to his theory. In the occasion of the bicentenary of his birth, seven major academic societies engaging Marxian studies in Japan jointly organize a international symposium on "K. Marx in the 21st century" in Tokyo. We would bring K. Marx's theory and ideas on scientific discussions by major international researchers, both from the perspective of historical approaches as well as theoretical approaches. Historically, we could not skip the 19th Century in which his ideas were grown and the 20th Century in which his ideas influenced intellectuals and social movements under the name of “Marxism.” Theoretically, we should examine his ideas in the context of theoretical system he intended to establish on the one hand, and compare them with new ideas of the 21st century on the other hand. In 2017, we already held a preliminary symposium on the 150th anniversary of K. Marx's Capital in Tokyo―the proceedings will be published on our web pages soon. Making full use of the discussions in 2017, critical reviews and reappraisals of "K. Marx in the 21th Century" will be expected on more boarder basis in our 2018 international symposium.
We are looking forwards to active participation by leading Marxian researchers overseas as well as in Japan to address this major challenge at the symposium.
Chairman of the Executive Committee of K. Marx in the 21st Century Symposium: Dr. Tetsuji Kawamura (President of the JSPE, Japan)
Proposals and Paper Submission
The fields that we expect:
The general scheme of the symposium covers the following three major sub-categories:
The Executive Committee arranges a special plenary session in the field of (3) open to the interested public with simultaneous translation from English to Japanese. Other presentations are contained in the parallel sessions (in English or in Japanese possibly with simultaneous translation in English).
Proposals and Deadline:
Proposals of papers must be 400~1,000 words with the preferred consideration of genre (1) (2) (3) above. They are received from March 1 to March 31, 2018 by the following e- mail address: marxinthe21stcentury.jspe@gmail.com
The result is noticed to the applicants no later than May 31. Those adopted are obliged to send full papers to the above address till October 31 so that they are uploaded to the special website of the Symposium in due time. After the symposium they might be published in academic journals or books under the arrangement the organizing committee.
Registration & participation fee
Participation fee is US$100.00 (+ reception party fee: US$50.00). The deadline of the registration for participation on July 31, 2018. Procedures and paying methods will be announced on the webpage.
The Executive Committee: Why in Japan? Who are we?
In Japan, the theory and ideas of K. Marx, since their rather late arrival in the early 20th Century, have nourished generations of scholars as well as activists of social and political movements, even with a short interval under the repression by militarist government. In the long history of assimilation of K. Marx's theory and ideas in the process of struggling to tackle the Japanese modern capitalist economic system and society, Japan has accumulated unique achievements of Marxian studies. Even though the very broad spheres of their influences, no doubt political economy occupied its center as Marx himself attributed the investigation of political economy as the key to analyze the structure and movement of modern society.
Based on this long tradition of Marxian studies in Japan, the Executive Committee for the international symposium on K. Marx in the 21st Century is organized by the initiative of the Japan Society of Political Economy (JSPE) and Japanese Society for the History of Economic Thought (JSHET), which further included the related leading academic societies of Marxian studies in Japan: Institute for Fundamental Political Economy (IFPE), Japan Society for the Study of Materialism (JSSM), Japan Society for the Study of Credit Theory (JSSCT) and the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Marx-Engels-Forscher (AMEF). We are forming a scientific committee including leading overseas scholars that advice the Executive Committee in the selection of proposals and papers for the presentations as well as publications.
The Executive Committee of K. Marx in the 21st Century Symposium Chairman: Tetsuji Kawamura (President of JSPE: Hosei Univ.)
JSPE: Makoto Itoh, Hiroshi Ohnishi, Yasuo Gotoh, Kiichiro Yagi, JSHET: Koji Daikoku, Susumu Takenaga, IFPE: Nobuyo Gotoh, Takeo Nakatani, JSSM: Sadaharu Oya, Norimasa Watanabe, JSCCT: Yukihiko Maehata, Akira Matsumoto, AMEF: Izumi Omura, Akira Miyagawa
Administration Members
Secretary General: Prof. Atsushi Shimizu (Secretary General), Takeo Hidai, Kei Ehara, Yosuke Kobayashi, Tomoyuki Niida
Postal Address c/o Prof. Dr. Atsushi Shimizu’s Office, Department of Economics, Musashi Univ. 26-1, Toyotamakami 1- chome, Nerima-ku, Tokyo 176-8534 JAPAN
E-mail: marxinthe21stcentury.jspe@gmail.com
More details can be found at the conference website.
14-17 September, 2018 | Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
The twenty-first century will see major disruptions to the global balance of politico-economic power. China will soon become the world’s largest economy; India is another rising giant. These and other developments – including growing inequality in several major economies – contest the Western institutional model of economic development and mount new institutional challenges at the global level. There is a recognised need for new or enhanced international orders, to sustain peace and international trade, as well as to address the problem of climate change. Meanwhile, an extended period of global integration has fuelled local discontent and led to a rise of nationalism and separatism. The international challenges of the twenty-first century place institutional development and reform at the top of the agenda.
Organised in collaboration with the Faculty of Law of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the Fifth WINIR Conference will explore these institutional challenges. Contributions from any academic discipline or theoretical approach that address the challenges and dynamics of the economic, political, legal and social institutions of our time are welcome. Submissions on other aspects of institutional research are also welcome, with preference to those that relate to WINIR’s aims and research priorities.
The conference will open on the afternoon of Friday 14 September 2018 and end with a dinner on the evening of Sunday 16 September. Delegates will depart on Monday 17 September. The Friday sessions will be held on the CUHK's attractive campus in the New Territories district. On Saturday and Sunday the conference will be held in the heart of the Central district of Hong Kong.
Keynotes lectures will be given by:
All abstract submissions must be in English, but on this occasion presenters will be allowed to present their papers in English or Chinese. Chinese- and English-speaking streams will run in parallel in the breakout sessions. Authors wishing to present their paper in Chinese must indicate this during the online abstract submission process.
Submissions can be made here.
Submissions (300 words max.) will be evaluated be evaluated by the WINIR Scientific Quality Committee: Bas van Bavel (Utrecht University, history), Simon Deakin (University of Cambridge, law), Geoff Hodgson (University of Hertfordshire, economics), Uskali Mäki (University of Helsinki, philosophy), Katharina Pistor (Columbia Law School, law), Sven Steinmo (European Univeristy Institute, politics), Wolfgang Streeck (Max Planck Institute Cologne, sociology), Linda Weiss (University of Sydney, politics).
Please note the following important dates:
We look forward to receiving your submission.
Organising subcommittee: David Donald (dcdonald@cuhk.edu.hk), Francesca Gagliardi (f.gagliardi@herts.ac.uk), David Gindis (d.gindis@herts.ac.uk), Geoff Hodgson (g.m.hodgson@herts.ac.uk), Klaus Nielsen (k.nielsen@bbk.ac.uk),Katharina Pistor (kpisto@law.columbia.edu)
Event manager: Vinny Logan(vinny@vivarais.co.uk)
Link to the conference website can be found here.
12-13 April, 2018 | Oslo, Norway
Call for Papers: "Finance in the 21st Century"
The INET YSI Financial Stability working group (WG) is organising a workshop as part of the Rethinking Finance Conference in Oslo at the Norwegian Business School BI on April 14th, 2018.
The purpose of this workshop is to invite young scholars to present their work and discuss “Finance in the 21st Century” as well as related financial stability issues across the world.
Since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, economists have been animated to look beyond causes and explanations for the crash than those offered by standard textbook economics. How has thinking over the web of financial interrelations, institutions and activities, regulatory measures, market efficiency, global liquidity and the role of the state in finance developed? This conference offers a forum for alternatives to mainstream economic paradigms, discussion and an exchange of ideas on lessons learned from the crisis.
We welcome contributions by young researchers who wish to present their work in the working group. The contributions should be in the form a brief abstract (100-200 words) and be related to following fields (but not limited to):
Selected young scholars will be able to present their work to others members of our community. Limited travel support and accommodation will be offered. Please send your abstracts to: fs@youngscholarsinitiative.org
The deadline for submitting the abstracts and short statements is February 10th, 2018.
Successful candidates will be contacted by February 18th, 2018. We particularly encourage Norwegian young scholars to apply, but the workshop is open to candidates from any region.
Rethinking Finance Conference
The Rethinking Finance Conference is organized as a cooperation between Rethinking Economics Norway, The Center for Financial Regulation at the Norwegian Business School BI, the Finance Watch and the INET YSI Financial Stability WG. Our main confirmed speakers are Sheila Dow, Ann Pettifor, Daniela Gabor and Rohan Grey.
More information will be launched soon at the conference website.
11-13 June, 2018 | Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, US
Keynote Speakers:
Fort Collins is 60 miles from Denver & from Estes Park, the base of the Rocky Mountains
A Social Economics Summer School will be held right before the conference, on June 9-10.
Social economics studies the ethical and social causes, as well as the ethical and social consequences, of economic behavior, institutions, organizations, theory, and policy. The 16 World Congress in Social Economics will focus on how economics can be broadened by including ideas and analyses from social economics; however, all papers with a social or ethical theme are welcome.
Registration fees:
US$195 for the conference (includes coffee breaks and most meals)
US$35 for the conference dinner at The Mayor, which has an excellent selections of micro-brews in the area (the dinner fee does NOT include alcohol).
Travel:
Denver International Airport (DEN) is the best place to fly into. It is a hub for several airlines, and fares are typically reasonable. There is direct service into DEN from London, Paris and Amsterdam, as well as most large North American cities. From the airport, Greenride will bring you to the CSU campus in around an hour and a half. You can make reservations by calling (970) 226-5533 or visiting their website.
Accommodations:
Inexpensive dorm rooms have been reserved for conference attendees. The rooms are decent, relatively inexpensive, and are close to the dining facility and the building where the conference will take place. Rates run from around $40/night to $80/night, depending on what you want, and includes parking.
For those not wanting to stay in a dormitory, there are several hotels near campus. Three good places are Best Western, the Hilton and The Armstrong Hotel.
You can reserve a dorm room for yourself when registering. If you wish alternative accommodations, you will need to contact one of the hotels and book it yourself.
Tourism Link: www.visitftcollins.com.
If you have questions or want further information, please contact, Steven Pressman (pressman@monmouth.edu) and/or (pressman@colostate.edu).
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The Call for Papers of this conference can be found in our last issue. The CfP submission deadline is February 28, 2018.
5-6 May, 2018 | Peking University, China
The World Congress on Marxism is organized every three years by Peking University in China in collaboration with the school of Marxism in Peking. In 2015, more than 200 scholars from all over the world attended the First World Congress on Marxism and most of them construed it as an important event for Marxist studies and radical philosophy.
The 2018 Congress is held on the bicentenary of the birth of Karl Marx and the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up, and it invites discussions on the nature, roles, and responsibilities of Marxist philosophy, socialist studies in the 21st Century, Chinese experience and path and Chinese Marxism. This World Congress on Marxism represents a real step forward in international understanding in the circle of Marxist and radical philosophy.. It is a chance for philosophers from all over the world simply to talk and listen to one another. We invite you to walk around the most beautiful campus of China, listen to the lectures, participate in the debates, enjoy the cultural activities, and share your experiences with others.
The theme of the 2nd World Congress on Marxism is "Marxism and the current world and China". The conference will focus on exhibiting the path of China’s development, Chinese theory, system, and culture, face the international common issues, gather the world Marxism researchers, and explore Marxism to lead the development of world civilization.
There will be no registration fee for the congress.
We will provide free accommodation for all foreign scholars and free flights for world-renowned scholars. If you are interested, you can contact us at: shimadahui@163.com
More details can be found at the conference website.
24 January, 2018 | University of Greenwich, London, UK
Research seminar by Professor Herakles Polemarchakis (University of Warwick) on "Credit Failures", on the 24th of January, at 16:00-18:00 at the University of Greenwich, Queen Anne Court, room QA280. The seminar is co-organised by FEPS, the Department of International Business & Economics (IBE) and GPERC.
The chair and discussant will be Professor Ozlem Onaran (FEPS Scientific Council member and Director of GPERC).
No registration is required, seats are allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis.
To find out more about our events, please visit our events page and to read our recent working papers and policy briefs, visit our publications page. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook to find out about our latest research.
16 February, 2018 | Leicester University School of Business, UK
Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy (CPPE), Leicester University School of Business & Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) South Group
How are machines being used in contemporary capitalism to perpetuate control and to intensify power relations at work? Theorizing how this occurs through discussions about the physical machine, the calculation machine and the social machine, this workshop re-visits questions of the incorporation and absorption of workers as appendages within the machine as Marx identified as well as new methods to numerate without, necessarily, remuneration. Speakers ask to what extent control is underway via intensified methods to capture labour power, including affective and emotional labour; and will identify how calculation and numeration serve to abstract labour through prediction, prescription, monitoring and tracking; on the streets, in homes, offices and factories. The ‘black box’ argument currently fashionable in debates, where digitalized management methods are a(e)ffectively obscured, is challenged, by identifying precisely how algorithmic decisionmaking, automation and machine learning processes operate to control workers and by theorizing the implications of measure inside human/machine experiences of relations of production.
More details can be found here.
Please email me for any other information at pvm.doc@gmail.com or pm358@le.ac.uk
2-4 March, 2018 | Vienna, Austria
Theme: Ecological Economics, focus on resources and sinks, (care) work, society, and technology
Exploring Economics and the Society for Pluralism in Economics Vienna (Gesellschaft für Plurale Ökonomik Wien) invite you to the writing workshop 'Socio-Ecological Economics' which is going to take place from 2nd to 4th of March 2018 in Vienna. The writing workshop will be held in English and aims at conveying a deeper understanding for socio-ecological economics while accompanying participants in writing an essay that eventually will be published on the homepage 'Exploring Economics'. Please see former examples.
About the writing workshop
Application process
The writing workshop addresses students who are currently enrolled in Bachelor or Master programmes with an interest in Ecological Economics. Prior knowledge is not required but helps in the application process. For application, please submit a CV and a short motivation letter (max. 600 words). The writing workshop is designed for 15-20 participants. Aside from a high motivation, the selection is based on gender parity, with a preference for students from Southern/Eastern Europe as well as non-European countries. Applicants should indicate two preferences for their focus topic and justify the motivation of their choice. The assignment to a certain topic will take place before the writing workshop. In case you have prior knowledge on literature for the respective topic, please let us know (see application form) so that we can take it into consideration for the further planning of the writing workshop.
List of requirements
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us: writing-workshop@plurale-oekonomik.at. All applicants will be informed by 1st of February about admission.
The application is open until 20th of January 2018.
For more details (registration, program etc.) see here.
7–15 August, 2018 | Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
Free Tuition & Excursion
Keio University is a center of Japanese Marxian economics and has produced many famous theorists and activists from the pre-war period. Based on this tradition, Keio University set up a summer school on Marxian economics for young graduate and under-graduate students from all over the world in 2016. In 2018, we also provide this intensive series of lectures not only on the Japanese new Marxian tradition, but also on Chinese and Korean Marxian economics. This program is supported by School of Economics, Xiamen University, China.
Applicants must contact the coordinator, Prof. Hiroshi Onishi, for eligibility requirements at onishi@z3.keio.jp.
Application deadlines
Program
Further Details
The costs for tuition and one-day Tokyo excursion for this program will be covered by Keio University. However, students are responsible for arranging and paying for the accommodation and transportation costs to Keio University. If applicants need help to book hotels, we can support.
Participants will be regarded as international students of Keio University, and issued certificates of completion of this summer school.
Contact: Prof. Hiroshi Onishi at onishi@z3.keio.jp
Job Title: Lecturer in Economics (Two Posts)
The Institute of Management Studies (IMS) combines innovative and world-renowned 4* research in one of the most creative universities in the UK with the expertise of leading academics in the fields of economics, entrepreneurship, strategy, business psychology, innovation, leadership development, and marketing. We are now seeking two full-time Lecturers in Economics to join our expanding group in this area; they will contribute to the development, teaching, and high-impact research output of economics in the IMS.
You will have a good first degree and Ph.D (or equivalent), or be near Ph.D. completion, in an area related to economics and an internationally recognised portfolio of interdisciplinary research (or the clear potential to develop one) in relation to economic theory and/or applied economics.
Applications are encouraged from academics who can teach economic theory and application (both qualitative and quantitative approaches), and have knowledge of the context and methodology of applied techniques. An ability to combine mainstream and heterodox approaches in their teaching and research is essential.
Salary will be on Lecturer A salary range £37,393.78 - £41,705.50 (Grade 7) or Lecturer B salary range £44,084.64 - £50,594.80 (Grade 8), all inclusive London Weighting
Link to the job advert can be found here.
Job Title: Policy adviser ECON committee
Vacancy Notice: Contractual agent, FG III
This is to inform you that the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament is looking for a full-time replacement for the position of ECON adviser (fixed-term contractual agent contract, function group III – Contract until 31/12/2019).
Indicative starting date: 1st of February 2018
Tasks to be performed:
Qualification and experience required
In case of equal appreciation on competence and suitability for the position, preference will be given to female applicants.
In case of interest in this position, send a motivation letter with your CV and supporting documents by e-mail only to the Deputy Secretary General of the Group (Jan-Paul.Brouwer@ep.europa.eu) with copy to Greens/EFA HR department (Greens.HR@ep.europa.eu) before 08/01/2018 end of business (7PM GMT+1).
Job Title: Economist, Labour Market Specialist
Economist, Labour Market Specialist at International Labour Office, Geneva Switzerland The ILO is recruiting a full-time economist to work in its INWORK (Inclusive labour markets, labour relations and working conditions) Brach contributing to the team's work on non-standard employment. We are looking for an economist with a solid and proven understanding of labour market issues and their link with economic development and inequality. The person should be comfortable working with micro-data sets and must be able to write effectively for a policy environment.
INTRODUCTION
The position is located in the Inclusive Labour Markets, Labour Relations and Working Conditions Branch (INWORK) of the Conditions of Work and Equality Department (WORKQUALITY). INWORK aims to improve the working conditions and protection of workers through effective policies while contributing to achieving an inclusive labour market which provides access to quality employment for all. Supporting the development of sound labour relations is the cornerstone of the strategy to realize such outcomes and to ensure a just share of the fruits of economic and social progress for all. The Branch undertakes multi-dimensional analysis of workers’ protection, vulnerability at work and labour market institutions, including the impacts of the latter on labour markets and economic performance and on equality. In doing so, it develops and, upon request, offers integrated policy advice which is responsive to national needs, priorities and resources.
The incumbent will contribute to the Branch’s research, analytical and policy work concerning the design of sound and inclusive labour market institutions. He/she will develop a better understanding of the interplay between institutions, especially those governing work contracts and labour market security, which have a bearing on workers’ labour supply, working conditions, labour market performance, development of non-standard forms of employment and job quality. He/she will provide policy advice to ILO constituents using evidence-based analytical work on how to ensure that regulations and institutions contribute to more equitable outcomes in the labour markets and provide protection against vulnerability, and what specific policy tools can be developed to monitor and to improve the functioning of institutions.
The position will report to the Chief of INWORK.
Description of Duties
Specific duties
These specific duties are aligned with the relevant ILO generic job description, which includes the following generic duties:
Competencies
In addition to the ILO core competencies, this position requires:
Very good knowledge of labour market institutions, including in developing countries; proven ability to utilise statistical methods including analysing large data sets (e.g., STATA); confirmed experience in applying multidisciplinary approaches (e.g., economics, sociology, political science, legal studies) notably to labour market institutions; good knowledge of international labour standards. Ability to synthesize research and reach empirically based conclusions on related subjects; provide seasoned advice on best practices, demonstrated ability to formulate new concepts and methodologies, especially in the field of labour market institutions, alternative courses of action, training materials, project proposals, procedural matters and present them at high-level meetings; design and synthesize strategies for programme development in member States; produce reports (e.g. reports for regional conferences and the International Labour Conference, technical publications, training manuals and draft resolutions) and evaluate and monitor development cooperation activities and projects. Strong analytical skills; ability to address and communicate with a variety of audiences (both specialized and non-specialized). The ability to work in a multicultural environment and to demonstrate gender-sensitive and non-discriminatory behaviour and attitudes.
Education
Advanced university degree in Economics.
Experience
Eight years’ experience at the national level or five years at the international level related to labour market institutions.
Languages
Excellent command of one working language (English, French, Spanish) of the Organization. Working knowledge of another working language would be an advantage.
Additional Information:
Evaluation (which may include one or several written tests and a pre-interview competency-based assessment centre) and the interviews will tentatively take place between February and May 2018. Candidates are requested to ensure their availability should they be short listed for further consideration.
Link to the job advert can be found here.
The Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State College has two positions available.
#1 Associate Dean for Labor Studies, whowill lead the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies in NYC. This academic leader will be responsible for the current Van Arsdale labor studies program in Manhattan, while continuing to develop high quality labor studies programs throughout SUNY Empire State College.
#2 Program Director, who will assist the Associate Dean and requires familiarity with unions in NYC as well as New York State. Both positions require a background in labor studies and a commitment to the labor movement.
The Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies is one of the founding programs of Empire State College and serves approximately 1,900 students through partnerships with several trade unions in New York City. SUNY Empire State College is committed to continuously growing and improving the Van Arsdale Center by expanding labor-centered programming through new curriculum and program development and by pursuing partnership opportunities with unions throughout New York State. Please refer to the links below.
More details on the Associate Dean position can be found here.
More details on the Program Director position can be found here.
The European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) invites you to submit a recently published article for the annual EAEPE-Kapp Prize competition.
The closing date for the 2018 EAEPE-Kapp Prize competition is 31 January 2018.
Submissions should be papers published in a scholarly journal on a theme broadly in accord with EAEPE's Theoretical Perspectives, consisting of a minimum of 5000 words and normally not exceeding 12000 words, published online or in print in 2017 (e.g. no forthcoming or in press articles are accepted).
Only one entry per author will be considered. At least one of the co-authors must be a paid-up EAEPE member in the year of the competition, and at least one co-author of each submission must commit to attend EAEPE's 2018 annual conference.
Any member of the EAEPE Council, or Trustee of the Foundation for European Economic Development (FEED) serving at any time from 1 January of the year before the year of competition to 1 July of the year of the competition inclusive, shall be ineligible to participate, including as a coauthor.
Asingle PDF file should be sent to info@eaepe.org
Sending your entry to the wrong address will result in a delay that may make you miss the deadline. EAEPE will not be held responsible for submissions that are dispatched to the wrong address. The EAEPE Council will judge submissions by the end of May at the latest. The Council reserves the right not to award a prize if the entries are below the required quality.
The EAEPE-Kapp Prize winner will be announced at our 30th Annual Conference at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis on 6-8 September 2018.
For more information please write to Carlo D'Ippoliti, Prize officer within the EAEPE Council, at carlo.dippoliti@uniroma1.it
More details are available here.
Call for Applications
Sponsored by Routledge/Taylor and Francis, publisher of Feminist Economics
In memory of Rhonda Williams, associate editor of Feminist Economics from 1994 to 1998, the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) has established a prize to help scholars from underrepresented groups in IAFFE, whose work reflects Rhonda Williams's legacy of scholarship and activism, attend the annual IAFFE conference and present a paper.
Amount: $1,000 to be awarded at the 27 IAFFE Annual Conference in New Paltz, New York, June 19-21, 2018. Conference information can be found here. The funds are intended topartially defray travel costs to attend the annual conference. (For scholars traveling from a long distance, additional funds may be available to assist with travel and conference expenses.) The award winner will also receive a registration fee waiver for the 27IAFFE Annual Conference.
Application Deadline: March 15, 2018.
Criteria: The recipient's work in activism, advocacy, or scholarship should demonstrate a commitment to one or more of the following issues:
Special consideration will be given to applicants from groups not well represented in IAFFE and those with limited access to travel funds from their home institutions or international funders. This prize is targeted to junior scholars and activists.
The recipient of the prize must present a paper at the IAFFE conference (you must separately submit to present the paper for inclusion in the Conference program at the conference website and submit the manuscript to Feminist Economics within a reasonable period after the conference. The paper will undergo an expedited review process, but publication is not guaranteed.
In cases where some but not all the criteria for the prize have been met, a travel grant may be awarded instead of the Rhonda Williams Prize.
Application Process:
Applications should be sent to Marlene Kim, Chair, Rhonda Williams Prize Committee, at Marlene.Kim@umb.edu and should include:
Please send all files in Microsoft Word or in PDF Acrobat format. Please be sure that all materials are sent. Applicants who omit any of the three items listed above may not be considered for the prize.
Applicants who have not yet registered for the annual conference because of funding needs, must still submit their papers via the conference website to be considered for the prize. The prize winner will be allowed to register for the annual conference and will be included in the conference program after being notified of the prize.
If you are not an IAFFE member for 2018, please send in your membership application prior to submission of your prize application. Click here to join or renew.
Please direct any questions to Marlene Kim, Chair, Rhonda William Prize Committee, Marlene.Kim@umb.edu, or (617) 287-6954.
PART I: A SYMPOSIUM ON NEW DIRECTIONS IN SRAFFA SCHOLARSHIP
Riccardo Bellofiore and Scott Carter: Symposium: New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship
Eleonora Lattanzi and Nerio Naldi: Documents on Piero Sraffa at the Archivio Centrale Dello Stato and at the Archivio Storico Diplomatico
Lucia Morra: Friendship and Intellectual Intercourse Between Sraffa and Wittgenstein: A Timeline
Gabriel Brondino and Andrés Lazzarini: Sraffa’s 1920s Critique and its Relevance for the Assessment of Mainstream Microeconomics
John B. Davis: Sraffa on the Open Versus “Closed Systems” Distinction and Causality
Bertram Schefold: The Improbability of Reswitching, the Certainty of Wicksell-Effects and the Poverty of Production Functions: The Cambridge Critique of Capital Transformed
Scott Carter: Sraffa, the Configuration of Exchange, and Value/Price Expressions of Labour Time in Surplus-Producing Triangular Trade
PART II: ESSAYS
Masazumi Wakatabe: The Great Depression and Macroeconomics Reconsidered: The Impact of Policy and Real-World Events on Economic Doctrines
Gene Callahan and Andreas Hoffman: Two-Population Social Cycle Theories
PART III: REVIEWS: A COLLECTION OF BOOK REVIEWS OF THOMAS C. LEONARD'S ILLIBERAL REFORMERS, INCLUDING A RESPONSE FROM THE AUTHOR
Mary O. Furner: Not All Il-Liberal: Academic Reform Thought in the Long Progressive Era
Matthew Frye Jacobson: Illiberal America: Rethinking the Progressive Era in the Age of Obama and Trump
Charles R. McCann, Jr.: Reflections on Thomas C. Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers
Scott Scheall: Faith as Political Epistemology: A Review of Thomas C. Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers
Thomas C. Leonard: A Response to My Friendly Critics
Remembering the Founder of Capitalism Nature Socialism
Barbara Laurence & saed: James Richard O’Connor (20 April 1930 – 12 November 2017)
House Organ
saed: From the October Revolution to Revolutionary Rojava: An Ecosocialist Reading
In Memoriam
Giovanna Ricoveri: Valentino Parlato and the Question of the Environment
Alternative Frameworks
Rhydian Fôn James & Molly Scott Cato: A Green Post-capitalist Alternative to a System of Accumulation: A Bioregional Economy
Critical Interventions
S Faizi: U.S. Intransigence and the Climate Change Reality
Contradictions and Struggles
Charalampos Konstantinidis & Andriana Vlachou: Appropriating Nature in Crisis-ridden Greece: The Rationale of Capitalist Restructuring, Part 1
Peter C. Little: On the Micropolitics and Edges of Survival in a Technocapital Sacrifice Zone
Ideology and Politics
Matthew J. Irwin: “Your Wilderness:” The White Possession of Detroit in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive
Poetry
Ryan Fitzpatrick: And Tomorrow, I’m Someone Else; Does Your Hometown Care?
SPECIAL CONTRIBUTION
TILL GRÜNE-YANOFF: Reflections on the 2017 Nobel Memorial Prize Awarded to Richard Thaler
ARTICLES
ÅSBJØRN MELKEVIK: The Fictitious Liberal Divide: Economic Rights Are Not Basic
NOBUHIKO NAKAZAWA: What Attracted Keynes to Malthus’s High Price of Provisions?
MATS EKMAN: A Coasian Solution to Problems of Initial Acquisitions
Marc Lavoie and Achim Truger: Interview with Henri Sterdyniak: ‘I see myself as an empirical Keynesian’
Special Issue: The Political Economy of the New Fiscalism
Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia: Editorial to the special issue
Brett Fiebiger: The New Austrian School challenge to Keynesian demand management
Brett Fiebiger and Marc Lavoie: The IMF and the New Fiscalism: was there a U-turn?
Orsola Costantini: Political Economy of the Stability and Growth Pact
Mario Seccareccia: Is high employment in the Eurozone possible? Some reflections on the institutional structure of the Eurozone and its crisis
Verónica Amarante & Cecilia Rossel: Unfolding Patterns of Unpaid Household Work in Latin America
Juan Carlos Campaña, Jose Ignacio Giménez-Nadal & José Alberto Molina: Gender Norms and the Gendered Distribution of Total Work in Latin American Households
Katie R. Genadek: Unilateral Divorce and Time Allocation in the United States
Christina Curley: Sexual Orientation, Sexual History, and Inequality in the United States
Tobias Karlsson & Maria Stanfors: Risk Preferences and Gender Differences in Union Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing
Anu Rammohan & Patrick Vu: Gender Inequality in Education and Kinship Norms in India
Carmen María Hernández-Nicolás, Juan Francisco Martín-Ugedo & Antonio Mínguez-Vera: Women Mayors and Management of Spanish Councils: An Empirical Analysis
Tara Natarajan: Formal Methods for Integrated Socioeconomic Analysis: An Introduction to the Special Issue
Hendrik Van den Berg: Mainstream Economics' Flight from Complexity
Claudius Gräbner: Formal Approaches to Socio-economic Analysis—Past and Perspectives
F. Gregory Hayden: Using the Social Fabric Matrix to Establish Corporate Accounting Consistent with Normative Criteria Regarding Climate Change
Panayotis Giannakouros & Lihua Chen: A problem-solving approach to data analysis for economics
Saeed P. Langarudi & Michael J. Radzicki: A Simulation Model of Katouzian's Theory of Arbitrary State and Society
Articles
John Bellamy Foster: The Earth-System Crisis and Ecological Civilization: A Marxian View
Jules Townshend: Living with the Fragments: Further Thoughts on Norman Geras’s Critique of Post-Marxism
Jerry Harris, Carl Davidson, Bill Fletcher & Paul Harris: Trump and American Fascism
Yuan Zhixiu & Zhang Zhidan: An Ideological Critique of Neo-liberalism: A Case Study of Hayek
John Maerhofer: Can Starving People Go on a Hunger Strike? The Maoist Movement in India and the Global Revolution
Donatella Alessandrini & Suhraiya Jivraj: Conceptualising the Economy-Society Nexus in Well-Being and Happiness Initiatives: Gross National Happiness in Business in Bhutan and Social Impact Bonds in the United Kingdom
Shih-Yu Chou: The Politics of National Interests and the English Language: Deconstructing the Falklands War
Marek Hrubec: Future Legacy of the Russian Revolution: Participatory Political Economies
Yu Bin & Guo Zhiwei: Why Lenin Chose the October Revolution But Not the July Revolution?
Information and Trends
Pei Shaohua: White Supremacism and Racial Conflict in the Trump Era
Lisa Saunders: Rational choice, independent utility and the inclusive classroom
Duncan Watson; Louise Parker; Steve Cook: Real world economics: the peculiar case of applied economics provision in England and Wales
Kevin W. Capehart: A nutty model for teaching macroeconomic models
I. David Wheat: Teaching endogenous money with systems thinking and simulation tools
Pat Cantrell; David Mitchell: Enhancing pluralism in the undergraduate economics curriculum by incorporating a political economy approach
Finn Olesen; Mogens Ove Madsen: Problem-based learning: a non-mainstream way to teach economics
Mario Seccareccia: Editor’s Note
Minisymposium on the New Normal and Secular Stagnation
Servaas Storm: The New Normal: Demand, Secular Stagnation, and the Vanishing Middle Class
James K. Galbraith: A Comment on Servaas Storm’s “The New Normal”
William Lazonick: The New Normal is “Maximizing Shareholder Value”: Predatory Value Extraction, Slowing Productivity, and the Vanishing American Middle Class
Servaas Storm: The New Normal: Demand, Secular Stagnation, and the Vanishing Middle Class: A Reply to James K. Galbraith and William Lazonick
Articles
Eckhard Hein, Petra Dünhaupt, Marta Kulesza & Ayoze Alfageme: Financialization and Distribution from a Kaleckian Perspective: The United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden Compared—Before and after the Crisis
Leonardo Pataccini: From “Communautaire Spirit” to the “Ghosts of Maastricht”: European Integration and the Rise of Financialization
Thomas Paul Henderson: The Class Dynamics of Food Sovereignty in Mexico and Ecuador
Ian Scoones, Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba and Chrispen Sukume: Tobacco, contract farming, and agrarian change in Zimbabwe
Garrett Graddy-Lovelace: United States–Cuba Agricultural Relations and Agrarian Questions
Huaiyin Li: Institutions and Work Incentives in Collective Farming in Maoist China
Ángel Luis González-Esteban: Patterns of world wheat trade, 1945–2010: The long hangover from the second food regime
Andrea Collins and Matthew I. Mitchell: Revisiting the World Bank's land law reform agenda in Africa: The promise and perils of customary practices
Antonio Castellanos-Navarrete and Kees Jansen: Is Oil Palm Expansion a Challenge to Agroecology? Smallholders Practising Industrial Farming in Mexico
Jean-Christophe Diepart and Thol Sem: Fragmented Territories: Incomplete Enclosures and Agrarian Change on the Agricultural Frontier of Samlaut District, North-West Cambodia
Lotte Isager, Niels Fold and Thobias Nsindagi: The Post-Privatization Role of Out-growers' Associations in Rural Capital Accumulation: Contract Farming of Sugar Cane in Kilombero, Tanzania
David Picherit: Rural Youth and Circulating Labour in South India: The Tortuous Paths Towards Respect for Madigas
Mark Setterfield: Can monetary policy survive policy model mis-specification? Model uncertainty and the perils of “policy model complacency”
Sung-Ha Hwang: Class alliances and conflict: An explanation of political transitions in 19th-century Europe
Carlo Panico and Antonio Pinto: Income Inequality and the Financial Industry
Simon Vicary: Is three a crowd? Small group provision of a public good
Nicola Meccheri and Luciano Fanti: A note on endogenous competition mode with managerial-unionized firms
Sarah Lynne Salvador Daway: On Decreasing Marginal Impatience, Stability and Monetary Policy in a Sidrauskian Economy
Biao Huang: A simple generalization of the singular rent model
Giuseppe Freni: Back to the sixties: A note on multi-primary-factor linear models with homogeneous capital
Takao Fujimoto, B. B. Upeksha P. Perera and Giorgio Giorgi: A proof of the Farkas–Minkowski theorem by a tandem method
Ahmad K. Naimzada and Serena Sordi: On controlling chaos in a discrete-time Walrasian tâtonnement process
Stefanos Ioannou: Sovereign ratings, macroeconomic dynamics, and fiscal policy. Interactions within a stock flow consistent framework
Óscar Afonso, Pedro Cunha Neves and Maria Thompson: Costly investment and complementarities in an international trade model with directed technological change
Fidel Aroche Reyes and Ana Salomé García Muñiz: Modelling economic structures from a qualitative input–output perspective: Greece in 2005 and 2010
Luca Colombo and Gerd Weinrich: Expectations and policies in deflationary recessions
Leila E. Davis: Financialization and the non-financial corporation: An investigation of firm-level investment behavior in the United States
Susumu Cato: Decisive coalitions and positive responsiveness
Carlo D'Ippoliti: Editoriale. I problemi delle banche vanno molto oltre le mele marce (Editorial. Italy’s banks problems run deeper than NPLs)
Elisabetta Montanaro, Mario Tonveronachi: Vulnerabilità del sistema bancario italiano. Diagnosi e rimedi (Dealing with the vulnerability of the Italian banking system)
Marco Dardi: Giacomo Becattini, 1927-2017
URPE at the ASSAs and EEAs: Proceedings Isue
David Gordon Memorial Lecture
Eileen Appelbaum: Domestic Outsourcing, Rent Seeking, and Increasing Inequality
John Schmitt: Comments on “Domestic Outsourcing, Rent Seeking, and Increasing Inequality” by Eileen Appelbaum
URPE at the ASSAs
David M. Kotz: Social Structure of Accumulation Theory, Marxist Theory, and System Transformation
Devin Thomas Rafferty: “In Case of Emergency, Break-Open Glass”: The IMF’s “New” Institutional View, Financial Instability, and Financing Development Processes
Ann E. Davis: Fetishism and Financialization
William McColloch: Profit-Led Growth, Social Democracy, and the Left: An Accumulation of Discontent
Brenda Spotton Visano: Gendering Post-Keynesian Monetary Macroeconomics With Situated Knowledge
URPE at the EEAs
Laurence Alan Krause: Marx on the Mid-nineteenth-Century Gold Standard
Zhun Xu: The Development of Capitalist Agriculture in China
Kirstin Munro and Chris O’Kane: Autonomy and Creativity in the Artisan Economy and the New Spirit of Capitalism
Kurt von Seekamm, Jr.: A Note on the Modeling of Rent Seeking
Lopamudra Banerjee: Social Class and Disaster Exposure
Articles
Anirban Karak: Accumulation by Dispossession: A Marxist History of the Formation of the English Premier League
Mario A. Cedrini and Roberto Marchionatti: On the Theoretical and Practical Relevance of the Concept of Gift to the Development of a Non-imperialist Economics
Debating Economics
Fred Moseley: Introduction
Gerald Friedman: A Future for Growth?
J. Bradford DeLong: Notes on Gerald Friedman
Editorial Perspectives
The New Red-Baiting: And They Even Come After Our Kids
Articles
Andy Blunden: Goethe, Hegel and Marx
Christopher Araujo: On the Misappropriation of Marx's Late Writings on Russia: A Critique of Marx at the Margins
Giorgos Meramveliotakis and Dimitris Milonakis: Coasean Theory of Property Rights and Law Revisited: A Critical Inquiry
Panagiotis Sotiris: Gramsci and the Challenges for the Left: The Historical Bloc as a Strategic Concept
Communications
Marcel van der Linden and Karl Heinz Roth: “Marxism” or Marx's Method? A Brief Response to Tom Brass
David Laibman: A Note on the Complex and Contradictory Effects of Rising Productivity in Modern Economies
Tom Brass: Marxism, “Marxism,” or Populism? A Reply to van der Linden and Rot
Review Article
Alex Callinicos: Marx's Unfinished but Magnificent Critique of Political Economy
Agnes Callard: LIBERAL EDUCATION AND THE POSSIBILITY OF VALUATIONAL PROGRESS
Elizabeth Brake: MAKING PHILOSOPHICAL PROGRESS: THE BIG QUESTIONS, APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, AND THE PROFESSION
Philip Kitcher: SOCIAL PROGRESS
Darrel Moellendorf: PROGRESS, DESTRUCTION, AND THE ANTHROPOCENE
Jonathan Anomaly: TRUST, TRADE, AND MORAL PROGRESS: HOW MARKET EXCHANGE PROMOTES TRUSTWORTHINESS
Allen Buchanan, Russell Powell: DE-MORALIZATION AS EMANCIPATION: LIBERTY, PROGRESS, AND THE EVOLUTION OF INVALID MORAL NORMS
Peter J. Boettke, Rosolino A. Candela: THE LIBERTY OF PROGRESS: INCREASING RETURNS, INSTITUTIONS, AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Daniel Austin Green, Roberta Q. Herzberg: PROGRESS AND REGRESS: UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX SOCIAL MEASURES AND THEIR TRADE-OFFS
Tyler Cowen: WHY HASN’T ECONOMIC PROGRESS LOWERED WORK HOURS MORE?
Orlando Samões: PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY IN ADAM SMITH’S NATURAL LIBERTY: FANCIES OF MANKIND
Shelley Burtt: DISABILITY POLICY: ARE WE MAKING PROGRESS?
Adam James Tebble: LIBERTY AGAINST PROGRESS
José Luís Cardoso, Nathalie Sigot & Muriel Dal Pont Legrand: Introduction
Hans-Michael Trautwein: The last generalists
Richard van den Berg: ‘A judicious and industrious compiler’: Mapping Postlethwayt's Dictionary of Commerce
Claire Pignol & Benoît Walraevens: Smith and Rousseau on envy in commercial societies
Ecem Okan: How did it all begin? Adam Smith on the early and rude state of society and the age of hunters
Catherine Herfeld: Between mathematical formalism, normative choice rules, and the behavioural sciences: The emergence of rational choice theories in the late 1940s and early 1950s
Ivan Moscati: Expected utility theory and experimental utility measurement, 1950–1985. From confidence to scepticism
Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche & Lauren Larrouy: “From warfare to welfare”: Contextualising Arrow and Schelling's models of racial inequalities (1968–1972)
Romain Plassard: Disequilibrium as the origin, originality, and challenges of Clower's microfoundations of monetary theory
Lilia Costabile & Gerald Epstein: An activist revival in central banking? Lessons from the history of economic thought and central bank practice
J. Barkley Rosser Jr.: Introduction to Special Issue of Review of Behavioral Economics Honoring Richard A. Easterlin
Eugene Smolensky: In the Beginning This Was Richard A. Easterlin
Stanley Engerman: Richard A. Easterlin, Economic Historian and Demographer
Richard A. Easterlin: Paradox Lost?
Carol Graham: A Tribute to Richard Easterlin: Economist, Demographer, and Gentleman
Claudia Senik: Gender Gaps in Subjective Wellbeing: A New Paradox to Explore
Robson Morgan and Kelsey J. O'Connor: Experienced Life Cycle Satisfaction in Europe
Kelsey J. O’Connor: Happiness and Welfare State Policy Around the World
By Mark E. Blum and William Smaldone | 2017, Brill
During the first half of the twentieth century, Austrian socialist thinkers such as Otto Bauer, Rudolf Hilferding, Karl Renner, and Max Adler emerged from and helped transform Austrian Social Democracy into one of Europe's best organized and most effective political and social movements. Equipped with extensive introductions that outline the intellectual and political background within which the Austro Marxists worked, these volumes represent the most thorough effort to date to provide a representative sampling in English of the Austro-Marxists' key theoretical ideas and their approaches to politic action. Drawing on their writings from the early twentieth century until the collapse of Austrian Socialism in the 1930s, these volumes illustrate the conceptual richness of Austro-Marxist thought and the enduring challenge that socialists faced then and now in the realization of their hopes.
Link to the book can be found here.
By François Chesnais | 2018, Haymarket Books
Across the world, economic recovery, growth and investment are – at best – slow. At the same time, shares, derivatives and other financial instruments are traded in vast quantities with unprecedented rapidity. In accounting for this divergence between the apparent fortunes of the underlying ‘real’ economy and the world of finance, both mainstream and Marxist economists have offered varying answers.
Finance Capital Today enters this debate, providing a rich new analysis of the specific features of contemporary capitalism. Utilising Marx’s theory of interest-bearing and fictitious capital and highlighting the increasing concentration and centralisation of capital within a truly global system, Chesnais argues against those who attribute the current sluggish state of the world economy exclusively to a ‘crisis of financialisation’ or ‘financialised capitalism’. Instead, we are faced with a crisis of capitalism tout court, in which large amounts of capital are looking for profitable investment in a setting of underlying overproduction and low profits. The outcome will be low global growth, repeated financial shocks and the growing interconnection between the environmental and economic crises.
Link to the book can be found here.
Edited by Eckhard Hein, Daniel Detzer and Nina Dodig | 2016, Edward Elgar
The contributions to this book provide detailed accounts of the long-term effects of financialisation and cover the main developments leading up to and during the crisis in 11 selected countries: the US, the UK, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, Italy, France, Estonia, and Turkey. The introductory chapter presents the theoretical framework and synthesizes the main findings of the country studies. Furthermore, the macroeconomic effects of financialisation on the EU as a whole are analysed in the final chapter.
Link to the book can be found here.
Edited by Michael J. Murray & Mathew Forstater | 2018, Palgrave
This edited collection investigates how full employment programs can sustain the economy and the environment, promote social justice, and reinvigorate local communities. The contributing authors focus on the formation of institutions to eliminate the opportunity gap for marginalized populations, enact environmentally sustainable methods of production and consumption, and rebuild local economies through education, training, and community redevelopment programs. They argue that the formation and implementation of a federally funded, locally operated Job Guarantee program is a vital component to address a variety of complex and interweaving concerns. Through the formation of alternative institutions and encouraging local economies, the Job Guarantee approach has the potential to alter economic, social, and political structures away from an exploitative market-oriented structure toward one that is refocused on humanity and the sustainability of the earth and its peoples, cultures, and communities.
Link to the book can be found here.
By Patrick Murray | 2018, Haymarket Books
A wide-ranging collection of essays dealing with Marx’s key insights in political economy and the historical materialist method Murray’s essays concentrate on Marx the historical materialist, the investigator of historically specific social forms of wealth and labour. In probing Marx’s dialectical accounts of the commodity, value, money, surplus value, wage labour and capital, The Mismeasure of Wealth establishes Marx’s singular relevance for critical social theory today.
Link to the book can be found here.
By Stephen Armstrong | 2017, VersoBooks
We are living in an age with unprecedented levels of poverty. Who are the new poor? And what can we do about it
Today 13 million people are living in poverty in the UK. According to a 2017 report, 1 in 5 children live below the poverty line. The new poor, however, are an even larger group than these official figures suggest. They are more often than not in work, living precariously and betrayed by austerity policies that make affordable good quality housing, good health and secure employment increasingly unimaginable.
In The New Poverty investigative journalist Stephen Armstrong travels across Britain to tell the stories of those who are most vulnerable. It is the story of an unreported Britain, abandoned by politicians and betrayed by the retreat of the welfare state. As benefit cuts continue and in-work poverty soars, he asks what long-term impact this will have on post-Brexit Britain and—on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the 1942 Beveridge report—what we can do to stop the destruction of our welfare state.
Link to the book can be found here.
The Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at The New School for Social Research invites applications for the Heilbroner Fellowship in Capitalism Studies, to be held for one or both semesters of the 2018-2019 academic year. Rank is open, but we seek a scholar who will contribute significantly to the flourishing activities of the Center. The responsibilities of the position include residence, teaching one graduate level course, organizing the work-in-progress series and annual symposium for graduate student fellows, participating in the faculty fellows’ work-in-progress group, and, in general, contributing to the life of the Center. Title, salary, and benefits will be commensurate with rank and experience. Capitalism Studies is an emerging area of interdisciplinary teaching and research that engages critically with contemporary economic arrangements through diverse inquiries into the many forms of capitalism. We encourage applications from scholars working on the following themes: financialization, work and social reproduction, post-capitalism, sustainability, racial capitalism, emergent infrastructures of capitalism, precarity and informality, ecology and political economy, global perspectives on inequality, and contemporary or historical perspectives on global reconfigurations of labor, trade, and finance.
More information about The New School for Social Research can be found here.
Information about the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies can be found here.
Application
Applicants apply on-line using the faculty application on The New School human resources website. Using our online application system, applicants must submit the following by February 15, 2018:
Applicants may be contacted at the discretion of the search committee for additional materials.
The New School is committed to actively recruiting from a diverse pool of applicants. We encourage candidates from groups underrepresented in US higher education to apply. The New School does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, creed, sex or gender (including gender identity and expression), pregnancy, sexual orientation, religion, religious practices, mental or physical disability, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, veteran status, marital or partnership status, or any other legally protected status.
More details and application form can be found here.
In September, we are launching a new Master (full-time and part-time) in International Development with Economics. Now, one of the novelties is that “heterodox economics” is explicit in the blurb for the programme and of course in the programme itself.
About the course
This course addresses the contemporary challenges of global development, utilising core economic concepts, theories and methods. Rooted in real-world practical and policy challenges, the course is founded on Bath’s longstanding engagement in international development and applied economic analysis. It uses innovative learning approaches to promote in-depth investigation of cases and issues, drawing links across global, regional, national and local scales. We offer you the opportunity of a placement-based research project, providing hands-on experience to complement campus-based learning.
The course is ideal if you’re a recent graduate who wants to pursue a career in international development as an economic analyst. It is also suitable if you’re an established professional wishing to deepen your knowledge and critical understanding of international development from an economics and broader social science perspective.
You will leave the course with:
LEARNING AND TEACHING
You will join the Department of Social & Policy Studies here at Bath. We are ranked in the top 50 for Development Studies in the QS World University Rankings 2017.
Our staff are all active in this field, research-led, and united in their commitment to finding better solutions to the world’s development problems.
We encourage diversity of intake, in experience, qualifications and interests, to stimulate the richness of experience and learning.
JOIN OUR WEBINAR
Join our webinar on Wednesday 31 January 2018 at 12:00-13.00 GMT.
During the webinar you will be able to find about:
There will also be an opportunity to put your questions to our staff. Register for the webinar.
More details about application, course structure, prospects and more can be found at the university website.
Funding: LISS-DTP ESRC Collaborative Studentship, +3 (PhD) or 1+3 (MRes, followed by PhD)
Application deadline: 23 February 2018
Project description:
The globalisation of supply chains has created a governance deficit concerning working conditions in the world economy. Private-sector initiatives (corporate social responsibility and codes of conduct) face limits to improving labour standards. Yet, little attention has been paid to public sector attempts to regulate working conditions in global supply chains. An EU Directive on Public Procurement, however, allows state organisations to include clauses on labour standards in procurement contracts. In this context, this project will examine socially responsible public procurement of electronics hardware - an industry mired by serious labour violations – and focuses on the state as a regulator and buyer. The research will be carried out with Electronics Watch, a non-profit, non-governmental initiative which organises public sector buyers, provides tools to create effective market demand for decent working conditions (e.g. contract clauses), and monitors working conditions to ensure compliance in factories. The project will examine: how the EU Directive is being implemented by public-sector buyers in the United Kingdom; how the governance framework impacts lead firm and supplier relationships in the sector; and the experience of public procurement regulation as an emergent new relationship between the state, public sector governance and labour conditions in globalised production networks.
In terms of research methods, the project will involve key informant interviews with one or more public procurement agencies in the United Kingdom; a mapping of the legal framework for labour standards in public procurement, and its implementation in the contracts will be conducted; key informant interviews with one of the top three electronic brand firms at its headquarter location and with the brand firm’s major suppliers in Malaysia; interviews will also be conducted with local monitoring organisations, trade unions, and workers in Malaysia; secondary data from audit and monitoring reports will be analysed to provide contextual data.
Applications must be made through the LISS DTP website. Please do not hesitate to contact the academic leads Professor Adrian Smith [a.m.smith@qmul.ac.uk] and Dr Gale Raj-Reichert [g.raj-reichert@qmul.ac.uk] to discuss the details of the proposed project.
Link to the current issue of the Newsletter can be found here.
At the 2017 meetings in Toronto, the History of Economics Society New Initiatives Fund committee approved support for a podcast series dedicated to exploring topics and themes in the history of economics. The first episode of the series has been published and should be available on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, etc. in the next few days.
Smith and Marx Walk into a Bar: A History of Economics Podcast is co-hosted by Scott Scheall, Gerardo Serra, and Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak. New episodes will be posted monthly.
Enjoy the first episode!
Dear friends,
Founded in 1968, the Union for Radical Political Economics will be celebrating our 50 anniversary in 2018. This is an important moment for us to both reflect on the successes of the past and look forward to the challenges of the next half-century. We enter our sixth decade of agitation and education well positioned to take on the pressing challenges of this political moment: our membership is strong, our journal the Review of Radical Political Economics (RRPE) is widely read, and we are an essential radical voice at conferences and events across the country.
While many URPE members hold teaching positions in universities, fewer graduate programs today than in the past offer radical political economics as a central component of their curricula. Radical students typically do not have access to the financial and institutional support available to students pursuing mainstream research agendas, often requiring them to either write their dissertations with little or no direct financial support or choose a “less controversial” research topic. This lack of institutional support and engagement directly inhibits the development of radical political economics as a whole.
URPE is addressing this challenge head-on in three specific ways:
The publication of our journal the Review of Radical Political Economics, which provides the opportunity for the publication, in a refereed journal, of substantive articles in the area of radical political economics.
Increased participation of URPE as a sponsor of panels at academic conferences In 2018, URPE will be sponsoring a number of panels at the meetings of the ASSA (Allied Social Science Association), the EEA (Eastern Economic Association), and ICAPE (The International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics). For the third year, we will have panels at the Southern Economic Association (SEA) and for the first time, at the WSSA (Western Social Science Association). These conferences provide radical political economists -graduate students in particular - with the opportunity to share their research widely and increase their employability.
Launched in 2016, our Graduate Dissertation Fellowship is awarded to graduate students writing doctoral dissertations in radical political economy. Fellows share their subsequent work with URPE through one of our outlets, including the RRPE, the URPE Newsletter, the URPE blog and other public forums.
Of course, we can’t do this work without you. Financial support from members and supporters is essential to the success of our work - please consider donating today.
Your donation to the general operating budget will go directly to our outreach and education efforts in 2018, including our panels at conferences nationwide, the development of a new and comprehensive website, and our Teaching Materials and Workshops Initiative, which assists graduate students and others with teaching and the job search process. For more information about our work, please take a look the URPE Annual Report, available on our website.
We also welcome your donations to the URPE Graduate Student Fellowship. Our goal is to raise enough money to make this fund a self-sustaining resource that will support innovative research for years to come. We hope to expand the fellowship to fund multiple fellowships each year.
Your tax-deductible donation can be made directly on our website or you can mail it to the address below.
Thank you for your ongoing support!
Please consider te opportunity to sign the following "Appeal: Overcoming the fiscal compact".
A deadline is imminent, to which the press and politicians have paid very little attention, but which, in fact, has huge economic and social importance. Article 16 of the Fiscal Compact (or Intergovernmental European Budget Pact) declares that, within five years of its entry into force (i.e. by 1st January 2018), based on an evaluation of its implementation, the 25 signing European countries are required to take the necessary steps to incorporate the rules into the legal framework of the European Treaties.
On several occasions politicians from various backgrounds have expressed their impatience with thePact; and legal experts attentive to community legislation have denounced the Pact as contrary to the principles enshrined in the European Treaties, and should therefore, in no way be incorporated into them or into European law.
[...] The double dip that has swept through the European economy in the last decade has shown – beyond any reasonable doubt – that it is precisely the whole European machine that needs deep structural reforms. As shown by recent studies carried out in the context of the International Labor Organization, these reforms must aim at a clear orientation of European and national economic policies towards a development model led by wages, domestic consumption and new investments, rather than insisting on a mercantilist model, problematic in terms of global equilibrium as well as incapable of ensuring progress, convergence and economic and social cohesion within the Union.
First signers are Philip Arestis (University of Cambridge), Jean-Paul Fitoussi (Sciences Po Paris), Mauro Gallegati (Università Politecnica delle Marche), Alan Kirman (EHESS Paris), Heinz D. Kurz (University of Graz), Marc Lavoie (Université Paris 13, Université d’Ottawa), Riccardo Realfonzo (Università del Sannio), Louis-Philippe Rochon (Laurentian University Canada), Roberto Romano (CGIL Lombardia, Està), Mario Seccareccia (Université d’Ottawa), Willi Semmler (New School, New York), Leonello Tronti (Università di Roma Tre)
To join the appeal please send an email to redazione@economiaepolitica.it
The full text and the full list of signers can be found here.
We are very pleased to announce the official release of the RICardo dataset on the occasion of the bicentenary of David Ricardo’s Principles. The RICardo database is now freely available under the Open Database License described under the Data Package format. Our data (and transformation scripts) are now opened to anyone to fuel research, to check our work or to get inspired for similar projects in Digital Humanities.
Compared with the preliminary version opened to the public in July 2016, this updated version provides an extended trade database with new sources and new data. We were able to include many new primary sources thanks to the exploitation of a rich collection of trade statistics archived by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (Insee). The process of adding and filtering data allowed us to correct some errors and anomalies remaining in the preceding version.
We also reworked our exploration tool, the RICardo website, which has been improved in multiple ways (thanks to the help of grants accorded by Sciences Po). A new graphical identity and better documentations including, besides the trade database, an exchange rate database, a directory of all the entities listed in the trade database, and a directory of data sources (see the corpus webpage).
Hopefully, this will not be the last version. The trade database still needs to be completed, especially for the period 1914-1923, and with new primary sources overall. We are also thinking of new features to better exploit the data, such as a political codification of entities over time. Moreover, anomalies can still remain yet to be corrected. We are very grateful for remarks and comments that would help us in improving this work. They can be posted on our Hypotheses blog.
We will also use this blog to discuss the choices we made and document the issues we tackled in a series of blog posts to come.
With our best wishes,
Béatrice Dedinger and Paul Girard