The democratic boundary problem raises the question of who has democratic participation rights in a given polity and why. One possible solution to this problem is the all-affected principle, according to which a polity ought to enfranchise all persons whose interests are affected by the polity’s decisions in a morally significant way. While AAP offers a plausible principle of democratic enfranchisement, its supporters have so far not paid sufficient attention to economic participation rights. I argue that if (...) one commits oneself to AAP, one must also commit oneself to the view that political participation rights are not necessarily the only, and not necessarily the best, way to protect morally weighty interests. I also argue that economic participation rights raise important worries about democratic accountability, which is why their exercise must be constrained by a number of moral duties. (shrink)

The ageing population has become one of the major issues, with manifold consequences upon the economic welfare and elderly living standards satisfaction. This paper grasps an in-depth assessment framework of the ageing phenomenon in connection with the labor market, with significant implications upon economic welfare, across the European Union. We configure our research on four distinctive groups of the EU–27 countries based on the Active Ageing Index mapping, during 1995–2018, by acknowledging the different intensities of ageing implications on (...) economic well-being from one group of countries to another. The methodological endeavor is based on Structural Equation Modelling. Empirical results highlight that the ageing dimensions and labor market productivity notably shape the socioeconomic development of EU countries, visibly distinguished across the four panels. The economic development induced remarkable positive spillover effects on the welfare of older people, under the influence of the ageing credentials and dynamic shaping factors. Our research advances the literature underpinnings on this multifaceted topic by investigation made on specific groups of the EU countries and distinctive strategies proposed for each group of countries, as effective results for improving the well-being of older people. Constant policy rethinking and adequate strategies should be a top priority for each specific group of EU countries, to further sustain the ageing phenomenon, with positive implications mostly on elderly welfare. (shrink)

The joint effort by the U.S. government and the political elite of Puerto Rico to industrialize the island created increased demand for female labor and a decline in the number of jobs traditionally held by men. The authors examine whether women's labor force participation in the formal sector responds to improving opportunities for women, declining opportunities for men, or the household's changing opportunity structures. Specifically, they examine a woman's return to work after the birth of her first child as (...) the initial point of conflict between productive and reproductive work. The data used in these analyses are from the 1982 Puerto Rican Fertility and Family Planning Assessment, an islandwide, representative sample of never-married and ever-married women between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine. The authors estimate a series of nested logistic regression models to evaluate the influence of occupational expansion or contraction on the timing of return to work after the first birth. Their findings offer selective support for the idea that women's lives are affected primarily by the occurrence of growing labor demand for women's labor. (shrink)

Theoretical and practical trends of corporate citizenship indicate a deepening partnership between business and community. Following these developments, the article develops a model for the participation of businesses in decision-making processes as part of policy making and social-economic planning in the community. The article focuses on three levels: It examines the benefits and risks of such participation; identifies the typical dimensions of the participation processes; and finally, provides guidelines on how to develop a participation strategy (...) based on the unique conditions of each business and community. (shrink)

An important part of what it means for agents to be situated in the everyday world of human affairs includes their engagement with economic practices. In this paper, we employ the concept of cognitive institutions in order to provide an enactive and interactive interpretation of market and economic reasoning. We challenge traditional views that understand markets in terms of market structures or as processors of distributed information. The alternative conception builds upon the notion of the market as a (...) “scaffolding institution.” Introducing the concept of market as a “socially extended” cognitive institution we go beyond the notion of scaffolding to provide an enactive view of economic reasoning that understands the market participant in terms of social interactive processes and relational autonomy. Markets are more than inert devices for information processing; they can be viewed as “highly scaffolded,” where strong constraints and incentives predictably direct agents’ behavior. Building on this idea we argue that markets emerge from (a) the economic interaction of both supply and demand sides, in continual and mutual interplay, and (b) more basic social interactions. Consumer behavior in the marketplace is complex, not only contributing to determine the market price, but also extending the consumer’s cognitive processes to reliably attain a correct evaluation of the good. Moreover, this economic reasoning is socially situated and not something done in isolation from other consumers. From a socially situated, interactive point of view buying or not buying a good is something that enacts the market. This shifts the status of markets from external institutions that merely causally affect participants’ cognitive processes to social institutions that constitutively extend these cognitive processes. On this view the constraints imposed by social interactions, as well as the possibilities enabled by such interactions, are such that economic reasoning is never just an individual process carried out by an autonomous individual, classically understood. In this regard, understanding the concept of relational autonomy allows us to see how economic reasoning is always embodied, embedded in, and scaffolded by intersubjective interactions, and how such interactions make the market what it is. (shrink)

This article explores how economic inequality in the United States has led to growing levels of poverty, food insecurity, and obesity for the bottom segments of the economy. It takes the position that access to nutritious food is a requirement for living and for participating fully in the workplace and society. Because of increasing economic inequality in the United States, growing segments of the U.S. economy have become more food insecure and obese, eating unhealthy food for survival and (...) suffering an erosion of “equality of capabilities” that undermines their ability to play a “full and active part in the functioning of community.” Unequal access to nutritious foods in the United States is attributable in part to an industrial food system that is designed to produce short-term profits for industrial food producers, processors, and distributors that extract surplus labor value through market concentration and opportunistic behavior at the expense of the long-term benefits for consumers, food workers, and ecosystems. Economic inequality, food insecurity, and the erosion of equality of capabilities in the United States have given rise to protest movements, social movements, social innovations, and some modest strengthening of regulations to make access to and consumption of healthy food a right for every person. Implications for business and society research are explored. (shrink)

After the global economic collapse triggered by the Great Recession, there has been an increased interest in the potential psychological implications of periods of economic decline. Recent evidence suggests that negative personal experiences linked to the economic crisis may lead to diminished generalized trust (i.e., the belief that most of the people of the society are honest and can be trusted). Adding to the growing literature on the psychological consequences of the economic crisis, we propose that (...) the perceived personal impact of the economic crisis not only would undermine generalized trust but also may lead to increased interpersonal trust (i.e., directed to specific and close people) and depersonalized in-group trust (i.e., directed to individuals who, while strangers, belong to the same group [e.g., social class]). Across three studies (N = 1379), we tested these central hypotheses and ascertained whether the perceived personal impact of the crisis would predict these types of trust (assessed using questionnaire and behavioral measures) independent of individuals’ socioeconomic status. Non-experimental data from Study 1 revealed that a higher perceived personal impact of the crisis is related to lower levels of generalized trust and higher levels of interpersonal trust. These effects were independent of participants’ socioeconomic status. Non-experimental data from Study 2 replicated the findings obtained in Study 1 and also showed a positive association between the perceived personal impact of the crisis and depersonalized in-group trust. This pattern of results emerged even after controlling for socioeconomic status, gender, age, political orientation, religiosity, and unemployment status. In Study 3, using an experimental design, we found that the salience of a possible economic downturn led to decreased generalized trust and increased interpersonal and depersonalized in-group trust—independently of socioeconomic status—compared with the control condition. These results challenge the conventional wisdom that economic crises invariably undermine trust in others. The implications of the present research as well as future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Widening participation — though it has only recently been labelled as such — has been a continuing concern for policy makers and higher education institutions in the United Kingdom since 1945 (and before). This article reviews the evidence for four key target groups — women, lower socio-economic groups, mature adults and ethnic minorities — to produce an overall assessment, a score card, of what has been achieved, and what remains to be done. It concludes that, while progress in (...) the recruitment of women, mature adults and ethnic minorities has been substantial — though with some qualifications — it has been much less so for lower socio-economic groups. (shrink)

In the US, research payments are technically taxable income. This article argues that tax liability is a form of possible economic and legal risk of paid research participation. Findings are presented from empirical research on Phase I healthy volunteer trials. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for the informed consent process, as well as for broader ethical issues in whether and how payments for research participation should be regulated.

The essay begins with an explanation of the underlying theological vision that supports Catholic social teaching's commitment to the centrality of the common good and the role of solidarity as both a virtue and a norm. The vision of humanity as one family and the church as a sacrament of unity is the foundation for a communitarian ethic that prizes inclusion, participation, and relative equality in the quest for a truly just society. An array of social science studies is (...) then employed to show that economic inequality “bleeds” into other realms of public life to undermine fundamental commitments of American society, namely, equal opportunity and political democracy. The essay concludes that an understanding of Catholic social teaching promotes a critical perspective that is deeply at odds with ongoing trends in the U.S. economy. (shrink)

The economic aspects of biobanking are intertwined with the social and scientific aspects. We describe two problems that structure the discussion about the economics of biobanking and which illustrate this intertwining. First, there is a ‘sustainability problem’ about how to maintain biobanks in the long term. Second, and representing a partial response to the first problem, there is a ‘commercialisation problem’ about how to deal with the voluntary altruistic relationship between participants and biobanks, and the potential commercial relationships that (...) a biobank may form. Social scientists have argued that the commercialisation problem is inadequate as a way to construct the multiple tensions that biobanks must negotiate. We agree that the commercialisation problem is an inadequate framework; turning to alternative accounts of bioeconomy, we suggest that contemporary consideration of the economics of biobanking primarily in terms of participants and their bodily tissue may reproduce the very commodification of science that these scholars critique. We suggest that an alternative conception of the economics of biobanking beyond the logics of commodification, which may thereby allow broader questions about the social and economic conditions and consequences of biobanks to be posed. (shrink)

Prior research has shown the relationship between objective economic inequality and searching for positional goods. It also investigated the relationship between social class and low income with conspicuous consumption. However, the causal relationship between economic inequality has been less explored. Furthermore, there are also few studies looking for the psychological mechanisms that underlie these effects. The current research’s main goal is to analyze the consequences of perceived economic inequality on conspicuous and status consumption and the possible psychological (...) mechanisms that could explain its effects. Furthermore, the current research aims to examine whether there is a causal relationship between PEI and materialism preferences and attitudes toward indebtedness. This work includes two preregister experimental studies. In the Study 1, we manipulated PEI and its legitimacy through a 2 × 2 between-participants experiment. Results showed a main effect of PEI on status consumption, status seeking, status anxiety, materialism, and attitude toward indebtedness. No interaction effect between legitimacy and inequality was found. In the Study 2, we manipulated the PEI through the Bimboola Paradigm. We replicated the effect of PEI on status consumption, status seeking, and materialism and found that status seeking mediated the relationship between PEI and status and conspicuous consumption. Economic inequality affects consumer behavior and favors consumption preferences for products that provide desirable symbolic values associated with status. These results could have important implications in the interpersonal and intergroup processes, including those related to consumption and purchase. (shrink)

Phase 1 healthy volunteer clinical trials—which financially compensate subjects in tests of drug toxicity levels and side effects—appear to place pressure on each joint of the moral framework justifying research. In this article, we review concerns about phase 1 trials as they have been framed in the bioethics literature, including undue inducement and coercion, unjust exploitation, and worries about compromised data validity. We then revisit these concerns in light of the lived experiences of serial participants who are income-dependent on phase (...) 1 trials. We show how participant experiences shift attention from discrete exchanges, behaviors, and events in the research enterprise to the ongoing and dynamic patterns of serial participation in which individual decision-making is embedded in collective social and economic conditions and shaped by institutional policies. We argue in particular for the ethical significance of structurally diminished voluntariness, routine powerlessness in setting the terms of exchange, and incentive structures that may promote pharmaceutical interests but encourage phase 1 healthy volunteers to skirt important rules. (shrink)

Real-world economies are open-ended dynamic systems consisting of heterogeneous interacting participants. Human participants are decision-makers who strategically take into account the past actions and potential future actions of other participants. All participants are forced to be locally constructive, meaning their actions at any given time must be based on their local states; and participant actions at any given time affect future local states. Taken together, these essential properties imply real-world economies are locally-constructive sequential games. This paper discusses a modeling approach, (...) Agent-based Computational Economics, that permits researchers to study economic systems from this point of view. ACE modeling principles and objectives are first concisely presented and explained. The remainder of the paper then highlights challenging issues and edgier explorations that ACE researchers are currently pursuing. (shrink)

The emergence of the “4th Industrial Revolution,” i.e. the convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, advanced materials, and bioengineering technologies, could accelerate socioeconomic insecurities and anxieties or provide beneficial alternatives to the status quo. In the post-Covid-19 era, the entities that are best positioned to capitalize on these innovations are large firms, which use digital platforms and big data to orchestrate vast ecosystems of users and extract market share across industry sectors. Nonetheless, these technologies also have the potential (...) to democratize ownership, broaden political-economic participation, and reduce environmental harms. We articulate the potential sociotechnical pathways in this high-stakes crossroads by analyzing cellular agriculture, an exemplary 4th Industrial Revolution technology that synergizes computer science, biopharma, tissue engineering, and food science to grow cultured meat, dairy, and egg products from cultured cells and/or genetically modified yeast. Our exploration of this space involved multi-sited ethnographic research in both the cellular agriculture community and alternative economic organizations devoted to open source licensing, member-owned cooperatives, social financing, and platform business models. Upon discussing how these latter approaches could potentially facilitate alternative sociotechnical pathways in cellular agriculture, we reflect upon the broader implications of this work with respect to the 4th Industrial Revolution and the enduring need for public policy reform. (shrink)

This paper addresses ways of arguing fors ome form of economic democracy from within a broadly Rawlsian framework. Firstly, one can argue that a right to participate in economic decision-making should be added to the Rawlsian list of basic liberties, protected by the first principle of justice. Secondly,I argue that a society which institutes forms of economic democracy will be more likely to preserve a stable and just basic structure over time, by virtue of the effects of (...) economic democratization on the development of an active, democratic character among citizens. Thirdly, I argue that a proper understanding of the demands of the difference principle shows that justice demands more than ex post redistribution, but also requires the ex ante redistribution of power and authority in economic life. This connects to Rawls’s discussion of the badness of inequality, and to his endorsement of a “property-owning democracy”. -/- My conclusion is that, even if we may doubt the success of this first Rawlsian argument,the second and third arguments are both successful, and together establish a strong Rawlsian case forseeing economic democratization as a requirement of justice. (shrink)

Climate change harmfully affects social and natural systems. These outcomes adversely affect the human and natural systems, resulting in adopting related-response measures whose implementation yields similar outcomes, especially when poorly designed. Climate-related projects, actions, and policies cause harmful environmental impacts, even though the United Nations Convention on Climate Change and its subsequent instruments urge parties, when dealing with climate change, to employ methods that preserve the quality of the environment. Few studies have established the effects of these environmentally, economically, culturally, (...) and socially unsound mechanisms on public participation, although research usually proves that ecological and environmental citizenship can enhance climate action. The study also highlights gaps in the common understanding of public participation in climate action. This reflection analyses the relationships between public participation and climate response measures and concludes that uncertainty related to response measures could affect the perception of climate action by the public. The reflection, therefore, shows that many international environmental law legal instruments, policies, and scholarships attempt to address the issue. (shrink)

Spheres of Global Justice analyzes six of the most important and controversial spheres of global justice, each concerning a specific global social good. These spheres are democratic participation, migrations, cultural minorities, economic justice, social justice, and intergenerational justice. Together they constitute two constellations dealt with, in this collection of essays by leading scholars, in two different volumes: Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy and Fair Distribution. These essays illustrate each of the spheres, delving into their differences, commonalities, collisions and (...) interconnections. Unlike many writings on global justice, Spheres of Global Justice does not content itself with describing the painful and advantageous effects of the globalization process as being inches per secondo facto a global injustice or a just global order. Rather, this multidisciplinary collection of essays, from a pluralist inspiration, combines empirical analysis with theoretical approaches and ethical principles, paying close attention to two aspects of the effects of the globalization process. These aspects are the causal relationships that lead to such effects and the kinds of obligations, or of normative relationships between global rights and correlative duties, that applies to each specific individual case. This volume illustrates how diverse global obligations are, and how they can be, grounded in diverse relationships (identity, ability to provide help, causal responsibility, past injustices, protection of agency and promotion of independence, et cetera). These essays also demonstrate that an ethical global approach has not only international or transnational, but also domestic, local and interpersonal dimensions. (shrink)

Controversies still exists within the research fraternity on the form and level of incentives, compensation and reimbursement to study participants in resource-constrained settings. While most research activities contribute significantly to advancement of mankind, little has been considered in rewarding directly the research participants from resource-constrained areas. A study was conducted in Zimbabwe to investigate views and expectations of various stakeholders on study participation incentives, compensation and reimbursement issues. Data was collected using various methods including a survey of about 1,008 (...) parents/guardians of school children participating in various immunological cohort studies and parasitology surveys. Community advisory boards (CABs) at 9 of the sites were also consulted. Further, information was gathered during discussions held at a basic research ethics training workshop. The workshop had 45 participants that including 40 seasoned Zimbabwean researchers and 5 international research collaborators. About 90% (907) of the study participants and guardians expected compensation of reasonable value, in view of the researchers' value and comparison to other sites regardless of economic status of the community. During discussion with researchers at a basic ethics training workshop, about 80% (32) believed that decisions on level of compensation should be determined by the local research ethics committees. While, the few international research collaborators were of the opinion that compensation should be in accordance with local guidelines, and incentives should be in line with funding. Both the CAB members and study participants expressed that there should be a clear distinction between study incentive and compensation accorded to individual and community expectations on benefits from studies. However, CABs expressed that their suggestions on incentives and compensation are often moderated by the regulatory authorities who cite fear of unknown concerns. Overall, both personal and community benefits need to be considered colectively in future studies to be conducted in resource-constrained communities. There is projected fear that recruitment in future may be a challenge, now that almost every community, has somehow been reached and participated in some form of studies. A major concern on reimbursement, compensation or incentives should be internationally pegged regardless of different economic status of the individuals or communities where the study is to be conducted. (shrink)

Participation in further education is a central success factor for economic growth and societal as well as individual development. This is especially true today because in most industrialized countries, labor markets and work processes are changing rapidly. Data on further education, however, show that not everybody participates and that different social groups participate to different degrees. Activities in continuous vocational education and training are mainly differentiated as formal, non-formal and informal CVET, whereby further differences between offers of non-formal (...) and informal CVET are seldom elaborated. Furthermore, reasons for participation or non-participation are often neglected. In this study, we therefore analyze and compare predictors for participation in both forms of CVET, namely, non-formal and informal. To learn more about the reasons for participation, we focus on the individual perspective of employees and additionally integrate institutional characteristics. The results mainly show that non-formal CVET is still strongly influenced by institutional settings. In the case of informal CVET, on the other hand, the learning biography plays a central role. (shrink)

Italy is one of the European countries with the highest levels of gender inequalities (World Economic Forum 2011). The aims of this paper were to understand to what extent the well-documented gender gap in Italian adult society has an impact on both political and civic actions of younger generations, and whether the process of participation assumes specific features according to gender. 835 Italian participants (49.6% males; 50.4% female, aged from 16 to 26 years old; 20% under voting age) (...) completed a self-administered questionnaire. Analyses confirmed general trends (voting at elections is the most frequently performed political action among Italian youth) and showed the existence of a small gender gap (a major orientation of young women toward civic action, while young men are more engaged in manifest political participation). The results confirmed that family cultural capital and normative support are significant predictors of political participation, in particular for girls and young women. (shrink)

Alongside other types of mass atrocities, genocide has received extensive scholarly, policy, and practitioner attention. Missing, however, is the contribution of economists to better understand and prevent such crimes. This edited collection by 41 accomplished scholars examines economic aspects of genocides, other mass atrocities, and their prevention. Chapters include numerous case studies, probing literature reviews, and completely novel work based on extraordinary country-specific datasets. Also included are chapters on the demographic, gendered, and economic class nature of genocide. Replete (...) with research- and policy-relevant findings, new insights are derived from behavioral economics, law and economics, political economy, macroeconomic modeling, microeconomics, development economics, industrial organization, identity economics, and other fields. Analytical approaches include constrained optimization theory, game theory, and sophisticated statistical work in data-mining, econometrics, and forecasting.A foremost finding of the book concerns atrocity architects' purposeful, strategic use of violence, often manipulating nonrational proclivities among ordinary people to sway their participation in mass murder. Relatively understudied in the literature, the book also analyzes the options of victims before, during, and after mass violence. Further, the book shows how well-intended prevention efforts can backfire and increase violence, how wrong post-genocide design can entrench vested interests to reinforce exclusion of vulnerable peoples, and how businesses can become complicit in genocide. In addition to the necessity of healthy opportunities in employment, education, and key sectors in prevention work, the book shows why new genocide prevention laws and institutions must be based on reformulated incentives that consider insights from law and economics, behavioral economics, and collective action economics. (shrink)

Democracy is crucially about inclusion: a theory of democracy must account for who is to be included in the democratic process, how, and on what terms. Inclusion, if conceived democratically, is fraught with tensions. This article identifies three such tensions, arising respectively in: (i) the inauguration of the democratic public; (ii) enabling equal participation; and (iii) the relationship between instrumental and non-instrumental accounts of democracy’s value. In each case, I argue, rather than seeking somehow to dissolve or avoid such (...) tensions, theories of democracy should allow us to live with their implications reflexively: to work with them. Such tensions are counter-democratic to the extent that they derail what Nancy Fraser calls “participatory parity,” under which citizens count as “full partners in social interaction.” But the extent to which they do this is not itself dependent on points of paradox in the very idea of inclusion. Such parity relies on complex factors, social and economic, which democratic institutions and procedures will not by themselves address. To achieve full democratic inclusion we must already have addressed such factors; no account of democracy itself, however finely-tuned, will do this. (shrink)

This paper examines why fundamental freedoms are so unevenly distributed across the earth. Climato-economic theorizing proposes that humans adapt needs, stresses, and choices of goals, means, and outcomes to the livability of their habitat. The evolutionary process at work is one of collectively meeting climatic demands of cold winters or hot summers by using monetary resources. Freedom is expected to be lowest in poor populations threatened by demanding thermal climates, intermediate in populations comforted by undemanding temperate climates irrespective of (...) income per head, and highest in rich populations challenged by demanding thermal climates. This core hypothesis is supported with new survey data across 85 countries and 15 Chinese provinces and with a reinterpretative review of results of prior studies comprising 174 countries and the 50 states in the United States. Empirical support covers freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of expression and participation, freedom from discrimination, and freedom to develop and realize one's human potential. Applying the theory to projections of temperature and income for 104 countries by 2112 forecasts that (a) poor populations in Asia, perhaps except Afghans and Pakistanis, will move up the international ladder of freedom, (b) poor populations in Africa will lose, rather than gain, relative levels of freedom unless climate protection and poverty reduction prevent this from happening, and (c) several rich populations will be challenged to defend current levels of freedom against worsening climato-economic livability. (shrink)

The conducive economy challenges both the conceptual foundations and the practices of present-day economies. In the Netherlands, a few initiatives during the 1980s and early 1990s looked promising, in particular, as these initiatives focused on work quality as one major precondition for reducing disability and enhancing labor participation. Prospects are less bright today. Ever larger slices of governmental monetary, financial, economic, and social policies become market oriented, as distinct from conducivity oriented. The instrument of the covenant, nonetheless, may (...) prove worthwhile in further promoting the banner of work quality. (shrink)

The economic calculation of a central planner has traditionally been argued to result in irrational and inefficient allocation of resources, but this can be reasonably questioned given advances in computing technology, especially artificial intelligence. We conclude that central planning coupled with AI is still unable to allocate resources with the same efficiency as price signals and market forces through examinations of the technical structure of current AI approaches. AI-driven central planning is not viable in part due to incentives, computing (...) power, knowledge/data acquisition, and speed of collection. There are deep incentive problems for planners, programmers, and ordinary participants to complicate efforts at planning and bias data. Most importantly, AI cannot easily or quickly duplicate the signals of relative scarcity that are generated in markets. Some challenges we highlight are pertinent to planning generally, but many others arise from the introduction of an AI-planner. (shrink)

Many participants in the debate over the current state and recent developments of economics make claims that are unrefined, simplistic, often exaggerated. This is understandable: the stakes are high, the issues trigger emotional responses, and few participants are motivated or equipped to seek more nuanced analyses. To assert, or to deny, that economics as a scientific discipline or a particular part of it (such as a model) is about reality – or refers to reality, represents it, is true about it, (...) or is truthlike about it – is to make a very complex and highly ambiguous claim. 1 The disputants often make claims that have parallels in the philosophical controversy between scientific realists and their opponents, or at any rate those claims can be partly analyzed in terms of some of the arguments presented in this philosophical controversy. The question addressed here is whether realism about economics is a viable position. The argument proceeds by way of refuting a number of arguments against realism about economics. I suggest a genuine controversy over the factuality of any particular strand or piece of economics requires realism as a general interpretation of economics – or at any rate requires debunking the anti-realist arguments discussed below. “The issue of realism” as most economists would recognize it, is not exactly the issue of realism as philosophers recognize it. “The issue of realism” in economics is about realisticness as a property of theories , while (part of) the issue of realism in philosophy is about realism as a theory of theories . But some parts of the issue of realisticness (such as those related to reference and truth) in economics can be translated into aspects of the issue of realism as a theory of theories. Thus there is also an issue of realism (with no quotation marks) in economics. It is this issue of realism that has to be settled as a prerequisite for critical assessments of important forms of realisticness of economic theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate RaworthYoko NagaseKate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. London: Random House Business Books, 2017. 372 pp. £20. ISBN 9781847941374.Question: Is this a book about utopia? Answer: Yes, indeed; it is a book about a twenty-first-century utopia represented by the Doughnut.The author presents a vision of a pragmatic utopia, represented by the (...) inside of her Doughnut that is both distributive and regenerative. According to the author, a distributive economy is "one whose dynamics tend to disperse and circulate value as it is created, rather than concentrating it in ever-fewer hands." A regenerative economy is "one in which people become full participants in regenerating Earth's life-giving cycles so that we thrive within planetary boundaries" (156).The emphasis on the fair distribution of income, wealth, and means of production is an ideal pursued by famous utopians, from perfectly equal distribution of everything in Thomas More's Utopia to very libertarian position of "whatever he has justly made he has a right to keep" by H. G. Wells.1 The distributive Doughnut community aims to enable individuals to be, in Amartya Sen's words, "healthy, empowered and creative—so that they can choose to be and do things in life that they value" (43). This ideal of individuals' rights to choose their life and to realise their ends is the centerpiece of libertarians' ideal society.2 The Doughnut, however, leans heavily toward democratic socialism. Arguments for redistributive measures such as a universal basic income and taxes on land and wealth put forward by the author go beyond promoting equal opportunity and emphasize the necessity of economic means to make the best out of the opportunities (164, 180, 200). [End Page 528]The issue of sustainability at the global level is a concept that does not appear in the classical utopian literature, even though the idea of living happily in perpetuity is very much the tenet of many classical utopian societies. Given the extent of the geographical knowledge that existed by the time Wells explored his idea of a utopia, he was no longer able to set it in some not-yetdiscovered place on Earth like his predecessors did—hence the adaptation of "another planet."3 But this setup had nothing to do with the concept of the ecological limit of Earth. Pre-nineteenth-century utopians would be familiar with the contents of the Doughnut's foundation, the inner shell that consists of the social and economic factors such as food, health, education, and housing. However, the outer shell of the Doughnut is very twenty-first century, enclosing the nine planetary boundaries of the Doughnut as a life-support system, such as ozone layer depletion, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, and climate change (44–48).The author points out that we need to get a grip on understanding how we belong in the world. Instead of relying on the power of words as George Orwell's Thought Police, the author takes full advantage of the power of the visual, by drawing the Doughnut as a map for a new economy and society.4 If studying economics is tantamount to "mastering the mother tongue of public policy" (287), Doughnut Economics is a critical introduction to and the foundation of economic, environmental, and social policymaking.Rather than utopias as purely thought exercise by Plato or More, Raworth, like David Hume, presents a model of a utopia that is meant to be achievable.5 The economics of the Doughnut does not depend on any unrealistic assumptions of human nature. The author proposes means to reaching inside the Doughnut without abolishing the market system or private property rights. But a strong emphasis is placed on additional redistributive policies and regulations that are deemed critical toward sustainability. This position is consistent with that of the former chancellor of Germany who reportedly said that she "wanted as much market economics as possible, but as much state intervention as necessary."6 In promoting the open-source circular economy movement, the author wonders if it may seem "unfeasibly utopian" (231). Yet given the pace... (shrink)

The goal of this study was to determine if the level of preservice teachers’ economic literacy might serve as a gatekeeper to teaching economics competencies. The participants ( n=84) were teacher candidates in an elementary education program in their final methods courses prior to their teacher internship. The findings supported the intuitive belief that elementary teachers lack the economic literacy and confidence needed to teach economics concepts in the elementary curriculum. This deficit can serve as a gatekeeper to (...) teaching economics competencies leading to curricular disjuncture between the established curriculum and actual practice in the classroom. (shrink)

This target article is concerned with the implications of the surprisingly different experimental practices in economics and in areas of psychology relevant to both economists and psychologists, such as behavioral decision making. We consider four features of experimentation in economics, namely, script enactment, repeated trials, performance-based monetary payments, and the proscription against deception, and compare them to experimental practices in psychology, primarily in the area of behavioral decision making. Whereas economists bring a precisely defined “script” to experiments for participants to (...) enact, psychologists often do not provide such a script, leaving participants to infer what choices the situation affords. By often using repeated experimental trials, economists allow participants to learn about the task and the environment; psychologists typically do not. Economists generally pay participants on the basis of clearly defined performance criteria; psychologists usually pay a flat fee or grant a fixed amount of course credit. Economists virtually never deceive participants; psychologists, especially in some areas of inquiry, often do. We argue that experimental standards in economics are regulatory in that they allow for little variation between the experimental practices of individual researchers. The experimental standards in psychology, by contrast, are comparatively laissez-faire. We believe that the wider range of experimental practices in psychology reflects a lack of procedural regularity that may contribute to the variability of empirical findings in the research fields under consideration. We conclude with a call for more research on the consequences of methodological preferences, such as the use on monetary payments, and propose a “do-it-both-ways” rule regarding the enactment of scripts, repetition of trials, and performance-based monetary payments. We also argue, on pragmatic grounds, that the default practice should be not to deceive participants. Key Words: behavioral decision making; cognitive illusions; deception; experimental design; experimental economics; experimental practices; financial incentives; learning; role playing. (shrink)

By a "developed" economy, people roughly mean ones with a high, persistently-growing per-captia income which is not simply based on resource extraction (i.e., oil) or remittances or rentierism — an industrial (or, if there is such a thing, post-industrial) economy which makes most of its participants reasonably and increasingly prosperous. While there are of course differences among them --- the United States is not New Zealand, which is not Belgium, which is not Finland, which is not Japan --- they are (...) all more similar to each other than they are to the vast variety of "undeveloped", "under-developed", or (most optimistically) "developing" economies across the world. (Some people refer to the developed countries as "the North" and the others as "the South"; this drives me up the wall, if only from looking at where China and Australia are on the map.) Economies in the first category tend to stay there; so, sadly, do countries in the second. Development economics is the sub-discipline of economics which attempts to study how economies which have not attained this happy condition can be made to do so, and the factors which hold others back. (shrink)

Ever since the first elite business schools were founded in Europe and the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s, they have enjoyed an intimate relationship with economics. Despite some notable analyses of economics’ importance for the successful institutionalization of business schools, an understanding of the relation between economics and elite business schools requires further development. As such, this paper focuses on ‘economics as symbolic capital’ for the consecration of business schools as elite settings, with particular emphasis on (...) the symbolic aspects of economics’ cultural and social capital. Consecration can be seen as critical to the institutionalization of elite business schools; in contrast to the primary focus of previous studies on the material significance of economics in business schools, my chief concern is the discipline’s symbolic power and importance for business schools’ status as elite institutions in many countries today. Data from a study on Sweden’s elite business school, The Stockholm School of Economics, were based on both historical and contemporary sources, including archival material, biographies, statistics, participant observations, and interviews with faculty and students. The SSE is one of the world’s oldest elite business schools where economics has played a critical role ever since its establishment; the SSE’s economics faculty has a unique relation to the ultimate source of capital for contemporary global economics, namely, The Nobel Prize in Economics, which exerts a significant influence on the discipline’s general standing and status today. (shrink)

This paper relates the origin, the principles and the evolution of the financial participation in HBK-Spaarbank. This participation in the capital is concretized by the cooperative company Personnel Cooperative HBK. Founded in 1979, this cooperative company which represents all workers of HBK-Spaarbank has now become a very significant shareholder. At present it owns 22.50% of the capital of the savings bank.

In this Article, Professor Suk defends the moral legitimacy of liberal states’ legal protection of minority languages. Many opponents of minority language protection have argued or assumed that legal intervention denies individuals the right to choose the majority language and the economic opportunities often attached to the dominant language. This Article argues that such arguments overlook another category of goods that are necessary to individual autonomy: relational resources. Individuals have an interest in maintaining their ancestral languages because doing so (...) is essential to maintaining one’s relationship to one’s family and community. The relational interest cannot easily be compared with economic opportunities, because these two dimensions of autonomy are incommensurable. As a result, a liberal state should avoid forcing its citizens to choose between these incommensurable goods. By adopting policies that protect minority languages, while also ensuring individuals’ access to economic and political participation in the majority language, a liberal state can manage and balance the conflict between these important competing aspects of autonomy. (shrink)

This article examines the development of and contestation over the standards for certified fair trade, with particular attention to the U.S. context. It charts fair trade's rapid growth in the United States since the 1999 advent of formal certification, explores the controversies generated by the strategy of market mainstreaming in the sector, and focuses on five key issues that have generated particularly heated contention within the U.S. fair trade movement. It offers a theoretical framework based in the literatures on agrifood (...) systems, social movements, and public-choice economics, for understanding the corporate response to alternative markets such as fair trade. The article suggests a typology of responses by social movement actors to this increased corporate participation, and assesses the relevance of the U.S. case for the future prospects of fair trade, both in other national contexts and as an international movement. (shrink)

The Transatlantic slave trade radically impaired Africa's potential to develop economically and maintain its social and political stability. The arrival of Europeans on the West African Coast and their establishment of slave ports in various parts of the continent triggered a continuous process of exploitation of Africa's human resources, labor, and commodities. This exploitative commerce influenced the African political and religious aristocracies, the warrior classes and the biracial elite, who made small gains from the slave trade, to participate in the (...) oppression of their own people. The Europeans, on the other hand, greatly benefited from the Atlantic trade, since it allowed them to amass the raw materials that fed the Industrial Revolution to the detriment of African societies whose capacity to transform their modes of production into a viable entrepreneurial economy was severely halted. (shrink)

This was the first cross-over book into the history of science written by an historian of economics. It shows how 'history of technology' can be integrated with the history of economic ideas. The analysis combines Cold War history with the history of postwar economics in America and later elsewhere, revealing that the Pax Americana had much to do with abstruse and formal doctrines such as linear programming and game theory. It links the literature on 'cyborg' to economics, an element (...) missing in literature to date. The treatment further calls into question the idea that economics has been immune to postmodern currents, arguing that neoclassical economics has participated in the deconstruction of the integral 'self'. Finally, it argues for an alliance of computational and institutional themes, and challenges the widespread impression that there is nothing else besides American neoclassical economic theory left standing after the demise of Marxism. (shrink)

As behavioural economics reveals, human decision-making deviates from neoclassical assumptions about human behaviour and people (often) fail to make the ‘right’ welfare-enhancing choice. The purpose of Sunstein and Thaler’s concept of ‘nudge’ is to improve individual welfare. To provide normative justification, they argue that the only relevant normative criterion is whether the individual is ‘better off as judged by themselves’, so that the direction in which people are to be nudged is defined by their own preferences. In light of behavioural (...) findings, however, people’s choices do not provide a sound basis for eliciting preferences and thus for assessing welfare. In this paper, I aim to challenge Sunstein and Thaler’s normative view, arguing that it is unreasonable to rely on conventional welfare economics, particularly considering the given context. Sunstein and Thaler depend on an approach of ‘preference purification’ which assumes informed, latent, and true preferences: As a result they face crucial methodological, epistemological, and practical objections, and cannot show how their approach enhances individual welfare. By building on the concepts of R. Sugden and C. Schubert, I develop an alternative normative framework for behavioural public policy, based on a contractualist perspective in which people may consent to collective choice rules in order to align future behaviour with values, to achieve particular goals or to preserve personal integrity. Individual consent and citizens’ participation and deliberation are crucial to this approach. This contractualist approach may provide a normative justification for behavioural public policy, and help to reconcile behavioural and normative economics. (shrink)

Stakeholder theorists distinguish between normative stakeholders, those who gain moral standing by making contributions to the firm, and derivative stakeholders, those who can constrain the corporate association even though they make no contribution. The board of directors has the legal authority to distinguish among these stakeholder groups and to distribute rights and obligations among these stakeholder groups. To be sure, this stakeholder formulation appropriately seizes on the firm’s voluntary, associative character. Yet, the firm’s constituents contribute assets and incur risks to (...) participate in market, economic activities. And, as such, the firm’s “stakeholders” must share an imperfect language to assist in making two key economic decisions: (1) who are the legitimate and who are the derivative stakeholders; and (2) who should sit on the board? Still, stakeholder theorists have good reason to be skeptical of neoclassical economics. Its assumptions that all act opportunistically and that all can calculate rationally and fully hardly correspond to studies on the managerial experience of corporate coordination. However, advances in behavioral law and economics now provide a cogent economic logic that readily fits into a stakeholder mode. In brief, we argue that (1) the firm’s economic purpose designates legitimacy to core stakeholders, to those who add value, assume unique risk, and can incur harm; (2) the board serves as the principal who coordinates these core stakeholders to sustain competitive advantage and new wealth creation; and (3) state incorporation law, Delaware in particular, reinforces the board’s function. These, in turn, supply selection criteria for board membership. We aim to synchronize concepts from behavioral law and economics with stakeholder theory. (shrink)

The economic aspects of biobanking are intertwined with the social and scientific aspects. We describe two problems that structure the discussion about the economics of biobanking and which illustrate this intertwining. First, there is a ‘sustainability problem’ about how to maintain biobanks in the long term. Second, and representing a partial response to the first problem, there is a ‘commercialisation problem’ about how to deal with the voluntary altruistic relationship between participants and biobanks, and the potential commercial relationships that (...) a biobank may form. Social scientists have argued that the commercialisation problem is inadequate as a way to construct the multiple tensions that biobanks must negotiate. We agree that the commercialisation problem is an inadequate framework; turning to alternative accounts of bioeconomy, we suggest that contemporary consideration of the economics of biobanking primarily in terms of participants and their bodily tissue may reproduce the very commodification of science that these scholars critique. We suggest that an alternative conception of the economics of biobanking beyond the logics of commodification, which may thereby allow broader questions about the social and economic conditions and consequences of biobanks to be posed. (shrink)

We have long been accustomed to thinking of democracy as a major selling point of Western institutions. That a set of political institutions should be democratic is widely regarded as the sine qua non of their legitimacy. So widespread is this belief that even those whose institutions do not look very democratic to us nevertheless insist on proclaiming them to be such. Meanwhile, an adulatory attitude toward democracy has arisen in many quarters, and many theorists have taken up anew the (...) idea that if democracy is the way to go in political institutions, then it must also be the way to go in “other” areas, notably in economic and social institutions. So there has arisen a call for “economic democracy” — which is taken to mean, especially, that the “means of production” should be managed by their constituent workers in concert rather than by some few who own, or act for the owners of, those enterprises. Robert Dahl, in his influential Preface to Economic Democracy, sums it up nicely when he proclaims a “stronger justification” for worker participation: “ If democracy is justified in governing the state, then it must also be justified in governing economic enterprises; and to say that it is not justified in governing economic enterprises is to imply that it is not justified in governing the state.”. (shrink)

This article is a response to a call for a study of international criminal law as an economic phenomenon, going beyond addressing administrability, commensurability, and interpersonal comparison of utility, band instead focusing on problems of institutional choice. This approach differs from the typical methods of normative and descriptive scholarship of international criminal law. An institution like the International Criminal Court can be usefully examined as an international public good, and as such offering little incentives for states such as the (...) United States of America to join as they can enjoy benefits without costs. This article examines the economic basis for the US non-participation in the ICC and grapples with future prospectives. (shrink)

The essay proceeds from the assumptions that for a economic/political integration group to succeed, first, its participants’ motives should ideally be as alike as possible and not oppose one another and, second, their expectations from integration should correspond to the organisation’s capabilities. In light of these assumptions, the study endeavours to assess the Eurasian Economic Union’s (EAEU) potential for stability and development. First, the author analyses the key motives that were driving its member states’ decisions to enter the (...) organisation, compares them with one another and discusses how the countries’ motives influence their conduct in the union. Second, the author confronts those motives against the EAEU’s activities and the general logic of interstate politics on the post-Soviet space to reckon up whether the bloc’s capabilities fit with the expectations of its member countries. Finally, based on that discussion, the author speculates on how the divergence/convergence of EAEU member states’ goals, as well as the (in-)feasibility of their expectations, affect the organisation’s development. (shrink)

This paper puts forward an argument for stakeholder rights. It begins by exploring two major answers to the question, 'in whose interests should the commercial company function?'. One claims parity for other stakeholders alongside the shareholder on the basis of a theory of property rights, and another on a theory of citizenship. Each of these answers, it is argued, fail to convince. The way forward is to recast the initial question, not asking in whose interest the company should function, but (...) which type of interest, potentially located in any sort of person, might the company serve. That interest is identified and distinguished from others that people affected by corporations might have. These distinctions then provide the basis for an argument in favour of enfranchising two sorts of individual: sovereign stakeholders, in charge of monitoring the formulation and revision of company objectives; and secondary stakeholders, who along with those in the first category monitor the means used to achieve those objectives.The paper concludes that these distinctions should lead us to reconsider other elements in the corporate governance debate, such as the nature of a director's fiduciary duty; and the difference between democracy in corporations and democracy in the wider society. (shrink)

Changing patterns of political participation observed by political scientists over the past half-century undermine traditional democratic theory and practice. The vast majority of democratic theory, and deliberative democratic theory in particular, either implicitly or explicitly assumes the need for widespread citizen participation. It requires that all citizens possess the opportunity to participate and also that they take up this opportunity. But empirical evidence gathered over the past half-century strongly suggests that many citizens do not have a meaningful opportunity (...) to participate in the ways that many democratic theorists require, and do not participate in anything like the numbers that they believe is necessary. This paper outlines some of the profound changes that have been experienced by liberal democratic states in the 20th and early 21st Centuries, changes which are still ongoing, and which have resulted in declines in citizens participation and trust, the marginalisation of citizens from democratic life, and the entrenchment of social and economic inequalities which have damaged democracy. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom in rejecting the idea that the future of democracy lies in encouraging more widespread participation. The paper takes seriously the failure of the strategies adopted by many states to increase participation, especially among the poor, and suggests that instead of requiring more of citizens, we should in fact be requiring less of them. Instead of seeking to encourage more citizen participation, we should acknowledge that citizens will probably not participate in the volume, or in the ways, many democratic theorists would like, and that therefore we need an alternative approach: a regime which can continue to produce democratic outcomes, and which satisfies the requirements of political equality, in the absence of widespread participation by citizens. (shrink)