contingent democrats industrialists labor and democratization in late developing countries many classic works of political economy have identified capital and labor as the champions of democratization during the first wave of transition by contrast this article argues for the contingent nature of capital and labor s support for democracy especially in the context of late development the article offers a theory of democratic contingency proposing that a few variables namely state dependence aristocratic privilege and social fear account for much of the variation found in class support for democratization both across and within cases conditions associated with late development make capital and labor especially prone to diffidence about democratization but such diffidence is subject to change especially under the impact of international economic integration poverty reducing social welfare policies and economic growth that is widely shared case material from korea indonesia mexico zambia brazil tunisia and other countries is offered as evidence

institutions and progress an insistent theme in richard nelson s work is that of capitalism as an engine of progress in this paper i explore this idea through a sequence of his writing distinguishing progress as outcome from progress as instituted process this leads to a deeper issue within this nelsonian theme namely the incompatibility between progress and equilibrium i argue that evolving systems are ordered and coordinated but they are never in equilibrium capitalism is restless it always generates change from within and the proximate source of this progressive tendency is the uneven accumulation of knowledge capitalism is restless because knowledge is restless copyright 2001 by oxford university press

recognition applications in aged care work detailed arguments about the importance of recognition were present in adam smith s theory of moral sentiments but received little attention in classical and neoclassical economics however recognition is re emerging as an important concept in social and economic research in this study we consider the importance of recognition and misrecognition for a nuanced understanding of the motivation to undertake paid care work we use survey and interview data from a mixed methods study of the employment intentions of australian women working in aged care to investigate links between recognition wage rates and intentions to remain working in the sector our findings suggest that low wages convey misrecognition and that both wages and misrecognition have adverse implications for the future labour supply of aged care workers we conclude by considering particular challenges faced by the aged care sector and its workers in redressing low wage rates

historical reference hume and critical realism the purpose of this paper is to make the case for discussing developments in the history of thought as having the potential to inform modern discussion this is not to deny the importance of context or that new knowledge emerges over time which was not available to earlier thinkers but neither is taken as sufficient reason to deny any possibility of us learning from past thought the case is made by means of discussion of the particular relevance of david hume s thought for critical realism this is particularly controversial in that hume has been identified by critical realists as the inspiration for logical positivism from which critical realism dissents while critical realism is a body of thought of recent development it is argued here that hume has sufficient in common with critical realism to warrant considering the possibility that critical realists might learn from hume the notion that context is significant is used constructively by suggesting that important elements in common between the contexts of hume and of modern discussions reinforce the potential value of considering hume s ideas it is concluded that there is the potential for growth in knowledge from reference between the history of thought and modern discussions in economics and in particular between the nature and origins of hume s thought and the development of critical realism

distributional effects of a carbon tax on car fuels in france this paper analyses the distributional effects of alternative scenarios of carbon taxes on car fuels using disaggregated french panel data from 2003 to 2006 it incorporates household price responsiveness that differs across income groups into a consumer surplus measure of tax burden carbon taxation is regressive before revenue recycling however taking into account the benefits from congestion reduction induced by the tax mitigates regressivity we show also that recycling additional revenues from the carbon tax either in equal amounts to each household or according to household size makes poorest households better off

evolutionary theorizing in economics modern economic analysis oriented toward understanding the workings of economies that make extensive use of markets came into existence with three guiding questions all central in adam smith s 1776 1937 the wealth of nations one question concerned order without any central authority guiding and commanding action how is economic activity coordinated the second question was the challenge of explaining the prevailing constellation of prices inputs and outputs what explains the price of labor and the rent of land the third question addressed the processes of economic progress or development smith and other early economists clearly were impressed by the inventiveness the energy and the growing productivity generated by the evolving market economy how to understand its dynamics the first two questions have defined continuing central concerns of the discipline of economics since they first were posed over two centuries ago when not posed in the context of an economy that is understood as in the process of developing they seem to pull the focus of theorizing toward equilibrium conditions the third question concerned with the processes driving economic progress pulls the theorizing toward an evolutionary orientation the question of economic development has waxed and waned in centrality to the discipline as has the importance of evolutionary theorizing during the first several decades of the twentieth century evolutionary thinking and language was widespread in economics but as one contrasts the economic

the era of electoral authoritarianism in recent years scholarly attention has shifted from the study of democratization to the phenomenon of electoral authoritarianism in these regimes regular elections are held for national legislatures and chief executives yet they fail to live up to democratic standards of freedom and fairness a range of new research has investigated these regimes and especially the capacity of elections to either dislodge or reinvigorate authoritarian incumbents this article reviews some of the current work on electoral authoritarianism and attempts to find ways to achieve synthesis and better theoretical development it notes the need for greater conceptual consensus attention to context and better evaluation of what electoral competiveness means under authoritarian conditions it argues that the next stage for research should be smaller and contextual comparison that can allow for greater attention to concepts while allowing for strong midrange theory

history friendly models of industry evolution the computer industry the model presented in this paper is the first of a new generation of evolutionary economic models history friendly models history friendly models are formal models that aim to capture in stylized form qualitative and appreciative theories about the mechanisms and factors affecting industry evolution technological advance and institutional change put forth by empirical scholars of industrial economics technological change business organization and strategy and other social scientists in this paper we have analyzed the long term evolution of the computer industry in particular we have examined the emergence of a dominant firm in mainframes the introduction of a major innovation microprocessor the opening up of a new market segment personal computers ad the competition there between newcomers and diversified old established firms we have taken a body of verbal appreciative theorizing developed a formal representation of that theory and found that the formal version of that theory is consistent and capable of generating the stylized facts the appreciative theory purports to explain going through this analytic exercise has significantly sharpened our theoretical understanding of the key factors behind salient aspects of the evolution of the computer industry copyright 1999 by oxford university press

beyond the racial census the political salience of ethnolinguistic cleavages in south africa careful attention to social demographics can be valuable in understanding how patterns of interethnic competition vary between countries but social demographics can also vary across different levels of social aggregation within the same polity it may be improper to draw conclusions about the political importance of a particular cleavage based on data from only one level of social aggregation in south africa race is considered to be the primary cleavage around which political competition is organized intraracial ethnolinguistic cleavages are often dismissed as unimportant especially at the national level by focusing the analysis on the local level this article demonstrates that ethnolinguistic identities are in fact broadly salient in south africa these subracial identities appear to influence aggregate political outcomes and individual vote choices the article thereby offers substantive lessons for students of south african politics and methodological lessons for students of ethnic politics more

the dynamics of international differentiation a multi country evolutionary model the paper presents some admittedly preliminary results on evolutionary modeling of open economies interactions the dynamics is microfounded in a multiplicity of boundedly rational agents who imperfectly learn how to innovate in environments characterized by notionally unlimited opportunities micro discoveries is shown can generate persistent system level effects despite the absence in the model of any institutional specificity of individual countries processes of innovative exploration and imitation yield international divergence less often convergence catching up and falling bebind

feminist thought and economics or what do the visigoths know many economists have expressed concern that approaches borrowed from the humanities or from the softer social sciences will detract from the rigor and objectivity of economic science and give voice to those without proper training and in so doing reduce the discipline to a science no more defensible than alchemy since much feminist thought in economics draws heavily from intellectual traditions alien to mainstream economists e g critical interpretive theory cultural studies and feminist theory some economists may wonder what such modes of inquiry have to offer economics further they may ask are there no pitfalls in modes of inquiry not disciplined by accepted economic methodologies in short what do those visigoths know my purpose is to address issues in method and theory underlying recent feminist work in economics and to explain how economics may gain by opening its disciplinary gates from the perspective of traditional mainstream practice in economics two prominent issues emerge in considering modes of inquiry and theory drawn from other disciplines the first has to do with what counts as theory and the role of critique in theorizing the second has to do with the need to sort out better theories from worse and the perceived dangers of rampant relativism i will address these in turn

cognition market sentiment and financial instability the purpose of this paper is to explore the role for psychology within an open system structural theory of financial instability and to consider the implications for policy while behavioural finance has drawn on ideas from psychology in order to explain evidence of behaviour that deviates from the rationality axioms it is argued that the way in which psychology is framed by this approach is unduly limiting minsky s structural theory of financial instability with its keynesian and ultimately humean roots incorporates psychology into the theoretical foundations in particular cognition and sentiment are shown to be interconnected rather than separable it is concluded that the policy implications for addressing the current crisis while apparently similar between these different approaches are in fact very different the underlying theory involves different methodology and indeed different framing from behavioural finance the way in which the crisis is understood is therefore important for policy copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

the 6lucas critique a generalisation the extraordinarily influential lucas critique of various familiar econometric practices is generalized the intention though is not to argue against the possibility of economics as science but to hasten its widespread realization to this end it is argued that a quite significant change of direction in economic practice is warranted and an outline of a sustainable potentially fruitful alternative approach is indicated c 1995 academic press ltd copyright 1995 by oxford university press

confronting the science value split notes on feminist economics institutionalism pragmatism and process thought what changes must economics undergo if it is to become a more adequate discipline furthering of survival and flourishing this essay argues that a break must be made from contemporary mainstream economics at the level of ontology i e about the nature of reality drawing on neglected traditions of pragmatist philosophy and process metaphysics some elements of old institutionalist economics and late twentieth century natural science it demonstrates that ample argument exists for a view of the world as open evolving and permeated with value furthermore feminist scholarship offers an explanation for why such a worldview faces an uphill battle for acceptance copyright 2003 oxford university press

on some criticisms of critical realism in economics methodological comments on critical realism in economics have proliferated over the past decade typically focusing on tony lawson s economics and reality and reorienting economics which constitute the core of this project in the present paper we select a series of important mostly very recent arguments against critical realism in economics and assess their merits and demerits

realist philosophy of the social sciences and economics a critique this paper deals with critical realism as a contribution to the philosophy of the social sciences in the first section critical realism is introduced differences from other philosophies of sciences espicially positivism and falsificationism are discussed in the second section critical realism is criticised first for failing as a normative philosophy of science second for relying upon an impoverished notion of knowledge acquistion and finally for its unsuitablity as a contribution to social theory

state intervention for food price stabilisation in africa can it work abstract although its arguments may have more general applicability this paper discusses the desirability and options for the stabilisation of staple food prices principally in eastern and southern africa it addresses three broad questions i why is stabilisation of food grain prices desirable ii what is technically feasible and iii can the governance and trade issues thrown up by suggested mechanisms be solved it considers a number of options for price stabilisation assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each and suggesting situations in which each may be appropriate

the agenda for growth theory a different point of view it is argued here that the basic assumptions of neoclassical growth theory inherently limit the ability of models within that theory to cast light on economic growth as we have experienced it this holds for the new growth theory as well as the older growth theory of the 1950s and 190js it is proposed that to make real headway with understanding economic growth a growth theory needs the following elements 1 the ability to treat technological advance as an essentially disequilibrium process 2 to incorporate a theory of the firm in which firm capabilities and differences across firms are central elements and 3 to incorporate into the theory a richer body of institutions than currently are treated in standard growth theory including at the least universities copyright 1998 by oxford university press

energy efficiency of residential buildings in the european union an exploratory analysis of cross country consumption patterns abstract despite a common eu directive on energy efficiency in residential buildings levels of energy efficiency differ across european countries this article analyses these differences and investigates the effectiveness of different energy efficiency policies in place in those countries we firstly use panel data methods to explain average yearly energy consumption per dwelling and country by observable characteristics such as climatic conditions energy prices income and floor area we then use the unexplained variation by sorting between country differences as well as plotting within country changes over time to identify better performing countries these countries are analysed qualitatively in a second step we conduct expert interviews and examine the legal rules regarding building energy efficiency based on our exploratory analysis we draw a number of preliminary conclusions first we suggest that regulatory standards in conjunction with increased construction activity can be effective in the long run second the results suggest that carbon taxation represents an effective means for energy efficiency in this regard the scope of the carbon tax plays a crucial role we find evidence that a tax of 30 and a tax of 120 per ton of co2 cause markedly different reductions in energy consumption

carbon tax scenarios and their effects on the irish energy sector abstract in this paper we use annual time series data from 1960 to 2008 to estimate the long run price and income elasticities underlying energy demand in ireland the irish economy is divided into five sectors residential industrial commercial agricultural and transport and separate energy demand equations are estimated for all sectors energy demand is broken down by fuel type and price and income elasticities are estimated for the primary fuels in the irish fuel mix using the estimated price and income elasticities we forecast irish sectoral energy demand out to 2025 the share of electricity in the irish fuel mix is predicted to grow over time as the share of carbon intensive fuels such as coal oil and peat falls the share of electricity in total energy demand grows most in the industrial and commercial sectors while oil remains an important fuel in the residential and transport sectors having estimated the baseline forecasts two different carbon tax scenarios are imposed and the impact of these scenarios on energy demand carbon dioxide emissions and government revenue is assessed if it is assumed that the level of the carbon tax will track the futures price of carbon under the eu ets the carbon tax will rise from 21 50 per tonne co2 in 2012 the first year forecasted to 41 in 2025 results show that under this scenario total emissions would be reduced by approximately 861 000 tonnes of co2 in 2025 relative to a zero carbon tax scenario and that such a tax would generate 1 1 billion in revenue in the same year we also examine a high tax scenario under which emissions reductions and revenue generated will be greater finally in order to assess the macroeconomic effects of a carbon tax the carbon tax scenarios were run in hermes the esri s medium term macroeconomic model the results from hermes show that a carbon tax of 41 per tonne co2 would lead to a 0 21 contraction in gdp and a 0 08 reduction in employment a higher carbon tax would lead to greater contractions in output

defeating dictators electoral change and stability in competitive authoritarian regimes what explains electoral stability and change in competitive authoritarian regimes this article addresses the question by comparing eleven elections six of which led to continuity in authoritarian rule and five of which led to the victory of the opposition that took place between 1998 and 2008 in competitive authoritarian regimes countries located in the postcommunist region using interviews conducted with participants in all of these elections and other types of data and constructing a research design that allowed the authors to match these two sets of elections on a number of important dimensions they assess two groups of hypotheses those that highlight institutional structural and historical aspects of regime and opposition strength on the eve of these elections and others that highlight characteristics of the elections themselves the authors conclude that the key difference was whether the opposition adopted a tool kit of novel and sophisticated electoral strategies that made them more popular and effective challengers to the regime

theory creation and the methodological foundation of post keynesian economics for the last 15 years there have been extensive discussions about the foundations of post keynesian economics from these discussions post keynesians have reached the consensus that their economics is based on a philosophical foundation of realism and critical realism however the methodological foundation of post keynesian economics which refers to the methodological guidelines used for creating and developing theory has received relatively less discussion and development the aim of this paper is to stimulate discussion in this area by advocating that the method of grounded theory is consistent with critical realism and is a better and more developed set of guidelines for theory creation than the currently accepted alternatives copyright 2002 oxford university press

synthesizing the malthusian and senian approaches on scarcity a realist account food entitlement decline fed and food availability decline fad are two approaches to explaining famines that have different policy implications one focuses on the systemic level whereas the other is concerned with the individual level they therefore analyse relatively distinct causal mechanisms thus an important question is whether these approaches can be reconciled another related question is how fad and fed based explanations relate to classical malthusian views about rapid food requirement increase fri this paper analyses these questions and argues that these three approaches can indeed be reconciled within a single framework by outlining the causal sources of fad fed and fri this task requires among other things the separation of ontological categories and empirical measures as a consequence of this argument the paper suggests that there are only seven possible ontological combinations of how a famine situation can arise as a direct cause simultaneously it maintains that there are virtually an infinite number of ways in which these combinations may act as indirect causes rooted in economic political and social conditions the analysis is exemplified by the bengal famine of 1943 because that famine is a well known case the wider research and policy applicability of this general account are discussed but have yet to be tested in relation to other scarcity cases water land fish this synthesis is made possible by the incorporation of critical realist interventions into economic theory

poverty and distributional effects of a carbon tax in mexico abstract mexico recently declared ambitious goals in reducing domestic co2 emissions and introduced a carbon tax in 2014 although negative effects on household welfare and related poverty measures are widely discussed as possible consequences empirical evidence is missing we try to fill this gap by simulating an input output model coupled with household survey data to examine the welfare effects of different carbon tax rates over the income distribution the currently effective tax rate is small and has negligible effects on household welfare higher simulated tax rates maintaining the current tax base show a slight progressivity but welfare losses remain moderate welfare losses regressivity and poverty rise more with widening the tax base towards natural gas and the other greenhouse gases methane ch4 and nitrous oxide n2o mainly through food price increases for a complete analysis of the policy we simulate a redistribution of calculated tax revenues and find that the resulting effects become highly progressive also for high rates wider tax bases and even in the absence of perfect targeting of social welfare programs

post keynesian economics towards coherence this paper provides a comprehensive survey of post keynesian economics it argues that post keynesian economics has passed through the important initial stage of mounting a concerted critique of mainstream economics the focus however is on the stage reflected in current post keynesian research which the paper argues is concerned with elaborating a distinctive coherent approach that takes precedence over critique several traditions upon which post keynesian economics relies are identified institutionalism is proposed as an additional contributing tradition a novel aspect of the paper it is recognized however that more research is necessary to complete the post keynesian approach c 1996 academic press limited copyright 1996 by oxford university press

abstraction tendencies and stylised facts a realist approach to economic analysis in his numerous methodological asides and assertions that feature in his more empirically oriented postwar contributions nicholas kaldor makes frequent reference to notions of abstraction tendencies and stylized facts however the employment of such terms seems rarely to be explicitly questioned justified or explicated this paper argues that such notions can be readily explicated and their employment justified through adopting an explicitly realist approach to economic analysis it is also argued that realism represents a serious alternative to current orthodox approaches to economics without suffering from some of the latter s more obvious limitations copyright 1989 by oxford university press

the retirement consumption puzzle a marital bargaining approach abstract evidence from several countries reveals a substantial drop in household consumption around the age of retirement that is difficult to explain with life cycle models using food consumption data from more than 550 households from the panel study of income dynamics for the years 1979 1986 and 1989 1992 we find that married couple households decrease their expenditures on both food consumed at home and away from home by about 9 following the retirement of the male household head no significant decrease in consumption is found for single households either in a sample of males or a pooled sample of single males and females these results are consistent with a model of marital bargaining in which wives prefer to save more than their husbands do to support an expected longer retirement period and relative control over household decisions is affected by control over market income the pattern of the consumption decline which is increasing in the age gap between husband and wife lends further support to this interpretation

interlinkages between credit debt and the labour market evidence from turkey this article examines workers use of credit in the context of a developing country turkey based on empirical material collected through questionnaires and interviews with workers in the metal sector the results provide evidence of a link between workers debt and the type of wage employment in two ways first i demonstrate that insecurity of employment and income is important in determining the increased tendency to borrow and increasing the vulnerability of workers to debt service problems second i reveal that debt adds new dimensions to capital labour relations by functioning as a disciplining mechanism

opportunities incentives and the collective patterns of technological change in a few pages in the introductory article for this debate vernon ruttan succeeds in the unlikely task of flagging many issues at the core of the economic interpretation of technological change and by doing so he implicitly addresses also a few sensitive spots for the economic discipline at large here i will not attempt to provide any thorough view of what i consider the achievements and limitations of the current state of the art see however freeman i 994 for a critical survey which i largely share rather i shall put forward a series of remarks which hopefully could be seen as part of a much wider and still largely unexplored research programme as a premise just note that some form of attention to technology related phenomena has spread over the last 20 30 years from small enclaves of heterodox economists and economic historians to become an important concern even for quite mainstream theories of e g the firm industrial organisation macroeconomics trade growth etc from patent races all the way to new trade and new growth theories and even real business cycle macro models technical change has drawn a consideration which is less by default than it was say in robert solow s original growth models orjoe bain s barriers to entry views on industrial structures and in parallel empirical studies at the levels of specific technologies firms sectors and countries have boomed for overviews cf dosi i988 nelson i993 freeman i982 i 994 cohen i 995 and granstrand i 994 among others so at least in this sense those decreasing returns to the economics of technical change suggested by ruttan do not seem to have set in however ruttan s paper raises also substantive questions about the relative success of three interpretative perspectives which he calls induced evolutionary and path dependent in the following i shall argue that an evolutionary perspective broadly defined can easily accommodate both inducement effects and path dependent patterns of technical change let me start from what i consider the major building blocks of an

electoral institutions ethnopolitical cleavages and party systems in africa s emerging democracies do electoral institutions and ethnopolitical cleavages shape the structure the fragmentation or concentration of party systems separately or jointly if they shape the structure of party systems jointly how can this joint effect be theoretically specified and empirically tested if ethnopolitical groups and associated ethnopolitical cleavages are not primordially fixed but constructed in the course of social economic and political interactions as the accumulated findings of over three decades of comparative research on ethnopolitics attest how can constructed ethnopolitical groups be specified and associated eth

financialised internationalisation and structural hierarchies a mixed method study of exchange rate determination in emerging economies this paper conducts an extensive mixed method study of exchange rate determination in the brazilian foreign exchange market it combines semi structured interviews with foreign exchange market participants in brazil and london and advanced time series econometrics in line with post keynesian theory and critical realist ontology the interviews uncover the context specific expectations and underlying processes and structures that condition exchange rate dynamics in brazil and emerging economies more generally the results point to important structural changes in brazil s financial integration in the form of currency internationalisation and financialisation moreover they show that this internationalisation has been mediated through a structured and hierarchic international monetary system which fundamentally distinguishes exchange rate drivers in emerging economies from those in developed ones

authoritarian state building and the sources of regime competitiveness in the fourth wave the cases of belarus moldova russia and ukraine this article explores the sources of regime competitiveness in the post cold war era through a structured comparison of regime trajectories in belarus moldova russia and ukraine for the period 1992 2004 an examination of these cases suggests the need for a fundamental rethinking of the commonly held view of the transition process especially in countries that face relatively weak international democratizing pressures approaching these countries as unconsolidated autocracies rather than as simply emerging democracies draws attention to key sources of political competition that have largely been ignored in the literature on competitive regimes thus competitive politics in belarus moldova russia and ukraine were rooted less in robust civil societies strong democratic institutions or leadership than in the inability of incumbents to maintain power or concentrate political control by preserving elite unity controlling elections and or using force against opponents such pluralism by default has been the outgrowth of the strength of anti incumbent national identity and incumbent weakness as defined by a lack of know how ineffective incumbent organization and or the weakness of certain dimensions of state power

the effect of carbon tax on per capita co2 emissions new huadu business school 09zd050 national social science foundation of china 09zd050 08ajy022 research foundation of ministry of education of china 10jzd0018 fundamental research funds for the central universities 2010221051

do husbands and wives pool their resources evidence from the united kingdom child benefit common preference models of family behavior imply income pooling a restriction on family demand functions such that only the sum of husband s income and wife s income affects the allocation of goods and time testing the pooling hypothesis is difficult because most family income sources are not exogenous to the allocations being analyzed in this paper we present an alternative test based on a natural experiment a policy change in the united kingdom that transferred a substantial child allowance to wives in the late 1970s using family expenditure survey data we find strong evidence that a shift toward greater expenditures on women s clothing and children s clothing relative to men s clothing coincided with this income redistribution

a multivariate garch model of international transmissions of stock returns and volatility the case of the united states and canada this study examines the short run dynamics of returns and volatility for stocks traded on the new york and toronto stock exchanges the main finding is that inferences about the magnitude and persistence of return innovations that originate in either market and that transmit to the other market depend importantly on how the cross market dynamics in volatility are modeled moreover much weaker cross market dynamics in returns and volatility prevail during later subperiods and especially for canadian stocks with shares dually listed in new york implications for international asset pricing hedging strategies and regulatory policy are discussed

the application of development economics general principles and context specificity the purpose of this paper is to consider the application of development economics at the methodological level in particular given the shortcomings of both the modernist and postmodernist approaches to development policy we consider an alternative approach drawing on critical realism which combines the benefits of generality with the benefits of attention to specificity of context the approach is illustrated by showing how principles in development economics addressing issues of globalisation and peripherality can serve to illuminate some of the causal tendencies at work in a developed economy such as scotland copyright 2005 oxford university press

transforming economics into what heterodox economics and critical realism the volume under review consists of comments on critical realism by heterodox economists this paper addresses a number of themes from the book e g history and reflexivity sometimes expanding on the authors comments on critical realism other times responding to them on behalf of critical realists it considers the goals of critical realism and ask to what extent the book furthers them it concludes that the high level of abstraction at which critical realism operates encourages those commenting on it to do so at a similarly high level of abstraction as it stands critical realism and the contributions to the book are too divorced from the concerns of concrete economic theorising to be of great use to practising heterodox economists

how much energy do building energy codes save evidence from california houses regulations governing the energy efficiency of new buildings have become a cornerstone of us environmental policy california enacted the first such codes in 1978 and has tightened them every few years since i evaluate the resulting energy savings three ways comparing energy used by houses constructed under different standards controlling for building and occupant characteristics examining how energy use varies with outdoor temperatures and comparing energy used by houses of different vintages in california to that same difference in other states all three approaches yield estimated energy savings significantly short of those projected when the regulations were enacted

exploring impact of carbon tax on china s co2 reductions and provincial disparities abstract with fast development it is not easy for china to achieve carbon reduction targets only by traditional command and control measures e g the measures for energy efficiency carbon tax is advocated as one effective complementary measure and has high possibility to be implemented for china s future low carbon development under such a circumstance this paper aims at forecasting the possible impact of carbon tax on both carbon reduction and economic loss of 30 chinese provinces a 30 chinese province cge computational general equilibrium model has been developed to conduct the provincial evaluation and seven scenarios including business as usual bau scenario and six carbon tax scenarios with carbon price from 20 usd ton to 120 usd ton up to 2030 are set the results show that china s industrial co2 will be reduced from 12 2 billion tons under bau scenario to 10 4 billion tons 9 3 billion tons 8 5 billion tons 7 9 billion tons 7 4 billion tons and 7 0 billion tons under scenarios of tax20 tax40 tax60 tax80 tax100 and tax120 in 2030 respectively electricity metal and chemicals sectors have high reduction potentials and are priority sectors for carbon tax policy provincial disparity analysis demonstrates that coal production consumption and total energy consumption are key factors to affect carbon tax effect on co2 reduction and inner mongolia shandong shanxi and hebei have the largest industrial co2 reduction potentials after levying carbon tax however the implementation of carbon tax will impede economic development for all provinces therefore the concept of carbon tax efficiency is further proposed in order to evaluate the effectiveness of carbon tax by considering both co2 reduction and gdp loss policy suggestions indicate that provinces of shanxi inner mongolia hebei and anhui should be set priority when implementing carbon tax policy in china and carbon price should be no more than 50 usd ton

the observer effect in international politics evidence from a natural experiment by pressuring governments to hold democratic elections and by becoming directly involved in the electoral process through technical assistance and funding or as election monitors international actors now play a visible role in domestic elections and other democratic processes throughout the developing world although scholars have documented several macrolevel relationships between international level variables and movement toward democracy there has been little attention paid to the microlevel effects of international involvement in the democratization process this article examines the effects of international election observation as a prominent form of international involvement in domestic elections and exploits a natural experiment in order to test whether international observers reduce election fraud using data from the 2003 presidential elections in armenia the article demonstrates that although observers may not eliminate election fraud they can reduce election day fraud at the polling stations they visit the unusual advantage of experiment like conditions for this study offers unique causal evidence that international actors can have direct measurable effects on the level of election day fraud and by extension on the democratization process

feminist and post keynesian economics challenges and opportunities there are significant areas of difference between feminist and post keynesian economics some feminist contributions to discussions about ontology and critical realism suggest strong reluctance to adopt realist philosophies and these provide a marked contrast with post keynesians frequent appeals for economics to reflect reality at the same time however some post keynesians are calling for a more inclusive pluralist approach to economic research a discussion that has areas of commonality with various feminist discussions of epistemology continued productive dialogue between the two traditions may be facilitated through an understanding of their contrasting ontological and epistemological debates it may be further accommodated by growing recognition of the potential advantages of utilising plural methods to address specific research questions copyright the author 2007 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

economics as progress the lse approach to econometric modelling and critical realism as programmes for research in the face of claims that economics is increasingly driven merely by fashion this paper draws out certain similarities and differences between two self consciously progressive and developmental research programmes namely the lse approach to econometric modelling and critical realism in economics the argument is that while these two programmes of research share a common point of departure and possess many common elements what at root distinguishes them is their adoption of opposing philosophical orientations the comparison enables both the nature of each programme and the relevance of their common concerns to be more easily appreciated and helps clarify the sort of evidence that would provide a basis for selecting one project over the other copyright 2005 oxford university press

a realist appraisal of post keynesian pricing theory this paper argues that based on the ontological insights of critical realism epistemological guidelines can be established to review post keynesian pricing theories critically consequently the paper suggests a basis on which the coherence of post keynesian pricing theory can be established crucially some often cited contrib u t i o n s are inconsistent with such a realist define d post keynesian economics the role of empirical work in critical realism is discussed

a critical realist interpretation of evolutionary growth theorising the article discusses a critical realist interpretation of evolutionary growth theorising by focusing on some of its basic characteristics the evolutionary ontology is complex differentiated structured systemic open ever changing and radically uncertain its methodology tends to be increasingly based on appreciative theorising retroductive explanations and interdisciplinary analysis after discussing these features the article suggests that critical realism may indeed constitute an important philosophical and methodological foundation for the future development of evolutionary theories of economic growth

inside the black box technology and economics economists have long treated technological phenomena as events transpiring inside a black box and on the whole have adhered rather strictly to a self imposed ordinance not to inquire too seriously into what transpires inside that box the purpose of professor rosenberg s work is to break open and examine the contents of the black box in so doing a number of important economic problems be powerfully illuminated the author clearly shows how specific features of individual technologies have shaped a number of variables of great concern to economists the rate of productivity improvement the nature of learning processes underlying technological change itself the speed of technology transfer and the effectiveness of government policies that are intended to influence technologies in particular ways the separate chapters of this book reflect a primary concern with some of the distinctive aspects of industrial technologies in the twentieth century such as the increasing reliance upon science but also the considerable subtlety and complexity of the dialectic between science and technology other concerns include the rapid growth in the development of costs associated with new technologies as well as the difficulty of predicting the eventual performance characteristics of newly emerging technologies

developing countries changing nature of financial integration and new forms of external vulnerability the brazilian experience this article argues using the example of brazil that the changing nature of developing and emerging countries decs financial integration has created new forms of external vulnerability causing large and volatile capital and exchange rate movements despite sound fundamentals and a substantial reduction in its traditional external vulnerabilities the brazilian real has been one of the most volatile currencies over recent years the article argues that this has been the result of the surging exposure of foreign investors in an increasingly complex set of very short term domestic currency assets following a minskyan analysis we demonstrate that the changing nature of brazil s external vulnerability confirms both the inherent and endogenous instability of international capital flows and decs subordinate role in the international financial system we conclude with policy recommendations to reduce decs external vulnerability sustainably

formalism logic and reality a keynesian analysis in the view of many perhaps most economists to state a theory in terms of a formal model is an unambiguous improvement rather than as we see it a matter of costs and benefits the benefits greater rigour more precision demonstrable results are widely understood while the costs are underexplored the costs are associated with the way in which formalising an argument can change its meaning i e with its non neutrality this paper will focus on the particular costs of formalism associated with the obstacles formal ism poses for translating from formalist theory to practical application

a technology gap approach to why growth rates differ abstract this paper contains a discussion and test of the technology gap approach to development and growth the basic hypotheses of the theory are tested on pooled cross sectional and time series data for 25 industrial countries for the period 1960 1983 the sample includes in addition to 19 oecd countries 6 of the most important industrial economies from the non oecd area the findings of the paper confirm that there exists a close correlation between the level of economic development measured as gdp per capita and the level of technological development measured through r d or patent statistics furthermore for the group of 25 countries as a whole technology gap models of economic growth are found to explain a large part of the actual differences in growth rates both between countries and periods as expected both the scope for imitation growth in innovative activity and efforts to narrow the gap investment appear as powerful explanatory factors of economic growth however when the non oecd countries and later usa and japan are removed from the sample the explanatory power of the technology variables especially growth in innovative activity diminishes

distributional effects of carbon taxes the case of mexico abstract in this study i develop an analytical general equilibrium model to assess the distributional effects across income groups of a carbon tax assuming that the revenue from the carbon tax is recycled in two different ways as a manufacturing tax cut and a food subsidy i use this analytical model to provide intuition about the main distributional components the model is calibrated with data from mexico to obtain unambiguous price and quantity changes i find that the distribution of the costs is driven by the way the revenue is recycled in particular the costs are distributed regressively when the revenue is recycled as a manufacturing tax cut and progressively when it is recycled as a food subsidy providing a food subsidy also generates higher welfare and lower carbon emissions than the manufacturing tax cut to compare and test the robustness of the numerical findings for mexico i calibrate the model with data for a developed country specifically the u s a despite differences in the magnitude of the changes in some variables the general findings mentioned above also hold for u s a data these results suggest that as found for the u s a in recent studies carbon taxes are not necessarily regressive rather the way revenue is recycled is a major determinant of how the carbon tax costs are distributed

the 1947 soviet famine and the entitlement approach to famines this paper presents an analysis of the economics of the 1947 soviet famine using data from recently declassified archives it is argued that the best estimate that can currently be given of the number of excess deaths in the range 1 0 1 5 million the demographic loss was greater during the famine surplus stocks in the hands of the state seem to have been sufficient to have fed all those who died of starvation the famine was a fad2 preventable food availability decline famine which occurred because a drought caused a bad harvest and hence reduced food availability but had the priorities of the government been different there might have been no famine or a much smaller one despite the drought the selection of victims can be understood in terms of the entitlement approach

social cleavages and the number of parties how the measures you choose affect the answers you get this article explores the issues surrounding the operationalization and measurement of social cleavages in a large n context from the perspective of the party systems literature it first highlights the difficulty of measuring the concept which it argues has impeded hypothesis testing and suggests strategies for improving upon existing measures it then demonstrates that the conclusions we draw about well known hypotheses linking social cleavages to the number of electoral parties in legislative elections depend upon the measure we employ hence the article makes the case that how we measure social cleavages matters

life of the party the origins of regime breakdown and persistence under single party rule this article develops a theory of single party regime consolidation to explain the dramatic variation in longevity among these regimes the strength of the opposition and rent scarcity during party consolidation it argues structure the choices available to elites as they decide how to build a support base a weak opposition and ready access to rents makes a low cost consolidation possible but these conditions provide little incentive to build a robust coalition or strong party organization this trajectory generates weak single party rule that is likely to collapse in a crisis conversely elites who face a powerful opposition and scarce rents have no choice but to offer potential allies access to policy making and have powerful incentives to build a strong and broad based party organization ruling parties that emerge from initial conditions like these prove more resilient during later crises the author conducts an initial test of the argument against paired comparisons of guinea bissau and tanzania and of indonesia and the philippines

social divisions and institutions assessing institutional parameter variation this paper investigates the hypothesis that the association between property rights institutions and income is weaker in countries with high social divisions it argues that social divisions should have a negative effect on perceived institutional inclusiveness which in turn should depress institutional payoffs absent a property rights indicator that captures the perceived inclusiveness of institutions social divisions should then weaken the observed association between property rights institutions and income the empirical results support this hypothesis and highlight the importance of evaluating whether the institutions measure used captures the institutional framework applying to the population at large

the causes of famine abstract this article argues that sen s theory of famine will lead to the wrong diagnosis and the wrong remedies for famine and will therefore worsen the situation his analysis of the bengal famine is a case in point it is based on unreliable and inaccurate statistics even the statistics he does use contradict his thesis his explanatory hypotheses are shown to be theoretically and factually wrong the actions of the bengal government of 1943 are looked at in the light of sen s recommendations

when do votes count regime type electoral conduct and political competition in africa the effects of electoral systems have been tested recently in africa raising several questions are the systematic effects of electoral rules the same across regime types does the conduct of elec

impact of energy policy instruments on the estimated level of underlying energy efficiency in the eu residential sector the promotion of energy efficiency is seen as one of the top priorities of eu energy policy ec 2010 in order to design and implement effective energy policy instruments it is necessary to have information on energy demand price and income elasticities in addition to sound indicators of energy efficiency this research combines the approaches taken in energy demand modelling and frontier analysis in order to econometrically estimate the level of energy efficiency for the residential sector in the eu 27 member states for the period 1996 to 2009 the estimates for the energy efficiency confirm that the eu residential sector indeed holds a relatively high potential for energy savings from reduced inefficiency therefore despite the common objective to decrease wasteful energy consumption considerable variation in energy efficiency between the eu member states is established furthermore an attempt is made to evaluate the impact of energy efficiency measures undertaken in the eu residential sector by introducing an additional set of variables into the model and the results suggest that financial incentives and energy performance standards play an important role in promoting energy efficiency improvements whereas informative measures do not have a significant impact

deficient foresight a troublesome theme in keynesian economics the fact that john maynard keynes had made a distinguished contribution to the theory of probability 1921 no doubt predisposed many of his readers to imbue with great significance his subsequent remarks on the related topic of uncertainty in economic decision making among those who have provided commentaries on his work there are those who have singled out this uncertainty theme not only for its special importance but also for its potential for analytical subversion the purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the ideas involved in this particular aspect of keynes work together with the lines of argument that have emerged from those commentators who have pursued it the result of this scrutiny will be to call into question the idea that there is anything peculiarly subversive in the analytical consequences of broaching problems of uncertainty in economic decision making i shall argue rather that as an analytical issue it is depending on how it is handled either innocuous or else quite indiscriminately destructive

correlated arch corrarch modelling the time varying conditional correlation between financial asset returns abstract although the time variation of the conditional correlations of asset returns is a well established stylized fact and of crucial importance for efficient financial decisions there is no explicit general model available for its estimation and forecasting in this paper we propose a bivariate garch covariance structure in which conditional variances can follow any garch type process while conditional correlation is generated by an explicit discrete time stochastic process the corrarch process a high order corrarch can parsimoniously be represented by a corgarch process the model successfully generates the reported stylized facts establishes an autocorrelation structure for correlations and thus provides an explicit framework for out of sample forecasting we provide empirical evidence from the g7 stock market indexes

green fiscal reform in sweden econometric assessment of the carbon and energy taxation scheme abstract empirical econometric assessment of environmental policy effectiveness is capable of demonstrating which tools have been helping to achieve the desired effect of reducing harmful emissions or stimulating technological change this paper employs an econometric approach to analyse the effectiveness of energy and carbon taxes in sweden the country which was one of the first to introduce a co2 tax as well as an extensive environmental tax reform the results showed that taken in isolation a co2 tax was not sufficient to result in a significant change in co2 emissions in sweden except in the case of petrol on the other hand energy taxes for coal and lpg have been statistically significantly effective it was also clear that a technological innovation in the form of development of nuclear and hydro energy played a significant role in reducing co2 emissions and higher oil price was also important in reducing national co2 emissions in sweden at the same time renewable energy excluding hydro a more recent innovation has not been a statistically significant driver of co2 emissions reduction perhaps due to the fact that wind and solar play a much lesser role in sweden at the moment the net electricity imports from other countries have contributed positively towards reducing co2 emissions in sweden while the use of coal and biomass tended to increase co2 emissions compared to the ex ante modelling results from the literature review the findings confirm the role of environmental taxation as a viable policy instrument effective in reducing co2 emissions in sweden although point towards a more nuanced picture the paper raises important policy questions focused on the effectiveness of environmental policy tools

the fourth wave of democracy and dictatorship noncooperative transitions in the postcommunist world the transition from communism in europe and the former soviet union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy since the crumbling of the berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the soviet union in 1991 most of the twenty eight new states have abandoned communism but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies the remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidated transitional regimes this article seeks to explain why some states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rule in endorsing actorcentric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancien regime to new regime that can account for both democracy and dictatorship as outcomes situations of unequal distributions of power produced the quickest and most stable transitions from communist rule in countries with asymmetrical balances of power the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful in countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage democracy emerged conversely in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage dictatorship emerged in between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime and its challengers was relatively equal rather than producing stalemate compromise and parted transitions to democracy however such situations in the postcommunist world resulted in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers the regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated unstable partial democracies

recent evolutionary theorizing about economic change this famous passage from marshall s principles of economics it first appeared in the fifth edition which came out in 1907 nicely brings out two issues which are as germane to economics today as they were when marshall wrote the first is the heavy reliance by economists in their formal theorizing on the notion of equilibrium the other is the appeal that biological conceptions3x201d have for many economists particularly when their focus is on economic change

the ubiquity of habits and rules under what circumstances is it necessary or convenient for an agent to rely on habits or rules this paper focuses on the types of decision situations giving rise to their use even optimization requires the deployment of rules and for this reason mainstream economics cannot legitimately ignore these questions the argument is that habits and rules are ubiquitous in human activity in a new taxonomy seven types of decision situations are considered classified according to the type of information problem involved neither neoclassical nor behavioral economics can provide a complete account of the bases of habits or rules in these cases copyright 1997 by oxford university press

sectoral systems of innovation and production the concept sectoral system of innovation and production provides a multidimensional integrated and dynamic view of sectors it is proposed that a sectoral system is a set of products and the set of agents carrying out market and non market interactions for the creation production and sale of those products a sectoral systems has a specific knowledge base technologies inputs and demand agents are individuals and organizations at various levels of aggregation they interact through processes of communication exchange co operation competition and command and these interactions are shaped by institutions a sectoral system undergoes change and transformation through the co evolution of its various elements 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

two studies of women s retirement incomes in australia assessing some outcomes of pluralism in economic research to illustrate the potential use of plural research methods two studies of australian women s retirement incomes are examined the first study employed quantitative microsimulation techniques its outcomes emphasised low lifetime earnings as a cause of women s lower retirement incomes the second study used an inductive approach known as grounded theory and its conclusions emphasised household decision making processes as a cause of both women s low lifetime earnings and lower retirement incomes using runde s criteria for assessing causal explanations a comparison is made of the outcomes of the two studies the conclusion is that rather than being seen as competing accounts the outcomes of the two varying research methods can be viewed as complementary by demonstrating the different insights afforded by contrasting research methods this paper provides some support for pluralism of research methods within the discipline of economics

politics economics agriculture and famines the chinese case abstract this paper is a study of the littleknown chinese famine of 1959 1961 which took place during the great leap forward this famine was caused by the revolutionary politics of the time which failed agriculture and killed at least 25 million people the crucial point is that the famine was most cruel in the cities where workers incomes were much higher than those of their counterparts in the countryside

from formlessness to structure the institutionalization of competitive party systems in africa giovanni sartori once described african party systems as formless our contribution challenges this view in an era of resurgent multipartism that swept through the subcontinent in the early 1990s and continues until today the article brings together contemporary research on african party systems with the wider disciplinary literature on party system institutionalization using a data set including all continuous election sequences in africa from 1950 to 2008 we find that africa has some of the most volatile party systems ever recorded and yet tremendous diversity across regimes we test the relative impact of political institutions economic performance the history of party system development and social cleavage structure on party system institutionalization in africa we find that its party systems have been shaped by a set of factors unique to the subcontinent but some of the general global patterns of party system development hold true in africa as well

the approach of institutional economics this paper assesses the old institutional economics it emphasizes the importance of key old institutionalist themes concerning the necessity of habits and rules and the role of institutions a problem in the alternative theoretical program of the new institutionalism is the untenability of its assumption of an original institution free market or state of nature even optimizing behavior requires the prior existence of habits and rules although it still lacks a complete and systematic theory the evolutionary approach of the old institutionalists tackles the problem of the interactive relationship of actor to structure without analytical reduction to one or the other

distributional effects of a carbon tax on chinese households a case of shanghai abstract as an effective policy instrument to reduce co 2 emissions the effects of a carbon tax on distribution have been the critical factor in determining whether a carbon tax will be acceptable in china taking shanghai as an example which is the economic center and front runner of china this paper estimates the distributional effect of a carbon tax on households in various income groups by using the input output model and the suits index the results indicate that the comprehensive distributional effect of the carbon tax is regressive the expenditure of the low income group caused by the carbon tax accounts for 0 853 of the total expenditure while that of the high income group 0 712 the direct distributional effect presents a weak progressivity while the indirect one is significantly regressive and the latter is much larger than the former moreover the suits index of the carbon tax is 0 078 implying that the carbon tax burden on the low income group is the highest and thus that a carbon tax can intensify income inequality therefore when introducing a carbon tax some rational associated redistribution or compensation measures such as purposive transfer payments should be implemented to restrict or even eliminate the regressivity of the carbon tax

political parties and uncertainty in developing democracies this article lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the effects of political uncertainty on party development and strategies of mobilization and competition defining uncertainty as the imprecision with which political actors are able to predict future interactions the authors identify three types of political uncertainty regime uncertainty economic uncertainty and institutional uncertainty they argue that political uncertainty is particularly high among developing democracies contributing to puzzling empirical patterns of party development and competition in these contexts taking into account the role of uncertainty in the strategic decision making of party elites will help scholars better understand the differences between parties in advanced and developing democracies but it can also help scholars understand the less dramatic differences between parties even within advanced democracies the authors theoretical framework can be applied broadly since uncertainty informs the strategic

equilibrium institutions the federal proportional trade off durable democracies display a huge variety of combinations of basic institutional formulas a quantitative logical model shows that while there are multiple equilibrium sets of institutions each involves some trade off between the size of the country the territorial structure of government and the electoral system specifically the larger the country the more important is federalism in comparison to proportional representation electoral rules for the durability of democratic institutions the explanatory power of the model is positively tested on all current durable democratic countries it is also illustrated with a few both fitting and deviant cases a relevant implication is that the room for manipulation of the choice of institutions is large but not unlimited as the choices for a durable democracy are constrained by bounded trade offs between the values of major institutional variables

reflections on critical realism in political economy this paper studies critical realism in political economy the focal points are two important tensions in critical realism the first tension relates generally to the status and importance of philosophy and the scope of critical realism the second tension relates specifically to critical realism in political economy firstly two perspectives within critical realism in political economy are separated a marxist current and a broad heterodox current secondly these two perspectives within critical realism are contrasted and discussed on the basis of a critical stance towards philosophical reductionism thirdly it is argued that reconciliation between central aspects of the two perspectives is both feasible and desirable and finally neo marxist political economy is pinpointed as a critical constructive and developmental mediation for critical realism in political economy copyright 2002 oxford university press

modeling the impact of a carbon tax a trial analysis for washington state abstract in recent years energy policy makers have proposed a carbon tax as an economy wide policy tool to curb greenhouse gas ghg emissions the quantification of its impact on ghg emissions has relied on an energy economy model whose complexity often makes it difficult to comprehend how it simulates the interaction of a carbon tax and energy demand this study therefore aims at developing an alternative model called the carbon tax analysis model c tam the elasticity based approach used in c tam is less sophisticated than an equilibrium based approach used in an energy economy model but c tam is designed to maximize its predictive capabilities by using a wide range of elasticities for each sector and fuel use accounting for likely changes in fuel mix for electricity generation and addressing the model s sensitivity to elasticity estimates with monte carlo simulation the trial analysis in this study evaluates a potential carbon tax in washington state suggesting a carbon tax at us 30 per metric ton of co 2 tco 2 lowers ghg emissions by 8 4 from the business as usual bau scenario in 2035 the study concludes that c tam can provide meaningful policy implications by forecasting detailed impact on revenues and energy demand for each sector and fuel use

dosis facit effectum why the size of the carbon tax matters evidence from the swedish residential sector abstract after 25 years of gradually increasing its carbon tax sweden now imposes the world s highest tax on carbon dioxide emissions this paper examines the effect of the swedish carbon tax on residential carbon emissions by using european panel data we employ synthetic control methods scms and perform difference in difference did regressions to evaluate the causal impact of carbon taxation on carbon emissions in the residential sector we provide evidence that early 2000s carbon tax augmentation had a causal effect on residential carbon emissions we find that the reduction of residential carbon emissions stemming from the carbon tax augmentation ranges from 200 kg when compared with other countries with a carbon tax of more than 20 euro to 800 kg when compared with countries without a carbon tax of co2 per capita per year hence the evidence suggests that carbon taxation is an effective tool for reducing residential co2 emissions and in turn mitigating climate change

boylan and o gorman s causal holism a critical realist evaluation boylan and o gorman have recently elaborated an interesting new perspective called causal holism which attempts to go beyond developments in rhetoric and realism the aim of this paper is to evaluate causal holism from the perspective of critical realism emphasis is placed primarily on three areas of disagreement differential approaches to unobservable entities description and explanation although areas of agreement are also considered the conclusion gives a sketch of what a critical realist causal holist view of economics might look like