childhood obesity and the income gradient evidence from australia this article examines the dynamic nature of human capital formation in the context of childhood obesity and the association of household income and childhood obesity in australia using the first five waves of the longitudinal study of australian children our results show a strong evidence of dynamic nature of child obesity the lag obesity is a significant and robust predictor of obesity in the current period we also found that the main channel for childhood obesity is inter generational trait the probability of obesity in children born to an obese mother or father is 15 higher than that of other children other important determinants are lifestyle factors including the consumption of drinks with a high sugar content and the amount of time watching tv income becomes an insignificant determinant of childhood obesity once we control for unobserved individual heterogeneity

power competition and the free trader vulgaris competition is taken for granted by neoclassical economics its cause is human nature and its functioning is the result of spontaneous interactions as such it is contrasted with power which is an unnatural restriction on human liberty by contrast marx discusses competition as a coercive mechanism historically competition develops with the development of market relations and what today appears as human nature is part of this process thus it is within competition and not outside of it that marx explains the coercive nature of capitalism his critique shows that competition and power appear to be antithetical because market relations are based on individual freedom however class relations are another essential aspect of capitalism by neglecting these relations neoclassical economists including those of a radical inspiration implicitly espouse the ruling class s viewpoint which they simply translate into rigorous mathematical terms in this sense they are the modern expression of what marx called the vulgar political economy

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

understanding corporate coherence theory and evidence abstract multiproduct firms are perceived to be coherent in their scope yet there is no strong theoretical foundations to explain coherence in modern industrial organization theory this paper shows that as u s manufacturing firms grow more diverse they maintain a constant level of coherence between neighboring activities this finding runs counter to the idea that firms with many activities are generally more incoherent a framework is then presented which appeals to the nature of enterprise learning path dependencies and the nature of the selection environment to explain the ubiquity of coherent diversifiers

advances in supervision technology and economic welfare a general equilibrium analysis abstract we analyze the impact of improvements in the technology by which employers monitor their workers it is unclear a priori whether workers should benefit or not from such advances on the one hand they decrease the total costs of hiring workers and stimulate labor demand on the other hand as supervision becomes less costly employers tend to substitute monitoring for wages as a means of motivating workers we show how the impact on firms and workers of such technological progress depends on the nature of the labor market equilibrium i e whether there is full employment or not and the cost technology of monitoring a distinct possibility is that unemployed workers welcome the changes in supervision because they promote employment while employed workers resist such changes and the more intensive supervision they encourage

the function of authority in transaction cost economics abstract this paper questions the transaction cost characterization of observed authority relations as efficient governance structures various inadequacies in the transaction cost account of work organization and the limits of firm size are traced to its neglect of the possibility that authority may be abused opportunistically this exemplifies a more general propensity in the transaction cost literature that of explaining economic organization in functionalist terms with little attention to the causal mechanisms through which efficient governance structures might actually arise three such mechanisms are considered but none is found to provide an adequate rationale for the imputation of efficiency to observed structures

smith and newton some methodological issues concerning general economic equilibrium theory there is general consensus that in economics adam smith is in the words of jevons the father of the science in this setting it has regularly been argued that neoclassical and modern mainstream economics carry through the methodological impetus brought into the discipline by smith moreover economists conventionally take it for granted that smith applied newton s method to political economy because newton s method is thought to be similar to that of modern mainstream economics the association of smith with newton is taken to further bolster the claim that modern mainstream economics continues the smithian tradition support for this commonly accepted view is gathered from smith s panegyric attitude to newton s conception of philosophy this shared conviction among economists underpins some interpretations of the invisible hand and of the intention behind the controversial chapter 7 of book i of the wn baptising smith as a forerunner if not the founder of theories of general economic equilibrium e g robbins 1962 1932 schumpeter 1994 1954 arrow hahn 1971 jaffe 1977 hollander 1973 1987 samuelson 1977 1992 as an offspring of the same tradition walras the architect of the equilibrium system has been set alongside newton the discoverer of the world system samuelson 1952 p 61

interlinked contracts and social power patronage and exploitation in india s waste recovery market abstract interlinked contracts have been examined almost exclusively in the context of the rural sphere this article describes the nature of exchange regimes between two sets of primary collectors of recyclable waste that is waste pickers and itinerant buyers and their dealers in the city of delhi far from the casualised labour transaction commonly described for the unorganised urban sector the findings portray a picture of personalised and surprisingly long term exchange between the parties while a new institutional economics approach might explain the underlying motivation and consequent general form of the implicit contracts it cannot explain the differential nature of each it is suggested that in order to do that a political economy approach must be taken this would understand interlinked transactions as being embedded within and consequently influenced by the particular social context in this case of an inequitable and impermeable caste hierarchy amongst those that engage in waste work

trade liberalization corruption and software piracy as multinational firms explore new and promising national markets two of the most crucial elements in the strategic decision regarding market entry are the level of corruption and existing trade barriers one form of corruption that is crucially important to firms is the theft of intellectual property in particular software piracy has become a hotly debated topic due to the deep costs and vast levels of piracy around the world the purpose of this paper is to assess how laissez faire trade policies and corruption affect national software piracy rates using invisible hand theory as well as literature from the fields of international strategy and ethics formal research hypotheses are posited and tested results suggest that corruption mediates the relationship between economic freedom and software piracy implications for multinational managers and researchers are also addressed

maternal labour supply and childhood obesity in canada evidence from the nlscy this paper investigates the socioeconomic factors affecting childhood overweight and obesity in canada using data from the national longitudinal survey of children and youth in particular i attempt to address the issue of whether an increase in the mother s work intensity is associated with an increase in the risk of the child s becoming overweight or obese i also attempt to evaluate the causality of this relationship and the mechanisms that might facilitate this link the results suggest that an increase in the mother s work intensity when she first returned to work in the period after the child s birth and before the child started school is associated with an increase in the risk of the child s becoming overweight or obese later in childhood conditional on the mother returning to work in the period between the child s birth and the start of school for the child a 10 hour increase in the number of hours worked per week when the mother first returned to work is associated with an increase in the probability that the child later becomes overweight or obese that is in the range of 2 5 to 4 percentage points ce memoire analyse les facteurs socio economiques qui affectent l exces de poids et l obesite des enfants au canada a l aide des donnees de l elnej en particulier on se demande si un accroissement de l intensite de travail de la mere est associea l accroissement de poids et a l obesite de l enfant on etudie le lien de causalite et les mecanismes qui sous tendent ce lien les resultats montrent qu un accroissement de l intensite de travail de la mere quand elle retourne au travail dans la periode apres la naissance de l enfant et avant qu il ne commence ses classes est associea la probabilite d exces de poids et d obesite plus tard un accroissement de 10 heures dans le nombre d heures travaillees par semaine est associea une probabilite de 2 5 a 4 points de pourcentage que l enfant va avoir des problemes de poids ou d obesite

the architecture of economic systems hierarchies and polyarchies the authors present new ways of looking at economic organizations andsystems individuals judgments entail errors they sometimes reject good projects and accept bad projects the architecture of an economicsystem specifying how the decision making units are organized togetherwithin a system who gathers what information and who communicates what with whom affects its performance both because it influences thenature of errors that individuals make within the system and becauseit has a critical effect on the aggregation of individuals errors theperformance of two polar architectures decentralized polyarchical versus centralized hierarchical decision making authorities are analyzed and compared copyright 1986 by american economic association

post walrasian and post marxian economics it is widely believed that the failure of the socialist experiment should have had a devastating effect on radical economics yet radical economics is not only alive and well but flourishing years before the official demise of marxist socialism they had broadened their critique of standard economics well beyond the received marxist literature indeed their arguments offered striking parallels with the mainstream critiques of walrasian economics provided by the newly developing strand of thought i shall refer to as information economics in walrasian economics information is free moreover there are no costs associated either with making or enforcing contracts but with imperfect and costly information and incomplete risk markets the field of information economics has established that 1 in general markets are not constrained pareto efficient 2 markets may not clear 3 markets may not exist or when they exist may be thin 4 rents are pervasive and indeed reputation rents are necessary to ensure that high quality products get produced that workers do not shirk and so on 5 even when there are many participants in a market competition may be highly imperfect and 6 the distribution of income matters for economic efficiency

the impact of managerial networking intensity and market based strategies on firm growth during institutional upheaval a study of small and medium sized enterprises in a transition economy varying institutional environments provide the foundation for a great deal of international business research yet relatively little empirical work has examined the determinants of small and medium sized enterprise sme growth during institutional upheaval although the importance of sme development for economic transition and growth is widely acknowledged our paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining how the competitive strategies of smes evolve during institutional transitions and assessing the implications for firm growth using data collected from 135 smes in 1993 and 200 smes in 2001 we find that managerial networking intensity i e developing and maintaining relationships that may be used for business purposes declines markedly over time whereas the importance of market based strategies increases managerial networking intensity is strongly associated with firm growth early in the institutional transition process but not later market based strategies are not associated with firm growth in either time period drawing on convergent insights from multiple theoretical perspectives we argue that changes in strategy are concurrently driven by socially constructed norms that legitimize new ways of competing and delegitimize old ones and by knowledge acquisition and learning which provide managers with a more diverse set of tools with which to exercise their strategic choices

perfect competition and the creativity of the market from the perspective of the walrasian general equilibrium model entrepreneurial and opportunistic behavior seems foreign can the model be refashioned so that it can accommodate such behavior many would say no but we argue the contrary indeed we present a reformulation of the model that serves as a gateway to rather than a detour from such contemporary issues as innovation and incentives the trick is to reexamine what perfect competition means starting with an historical summary of general equilibrium we sketch an image of the perfect competitor as an active market opportunist seeking out profit potentials wherever he can

what did smith mean by the invisible hand the invisible hand is not a power that makes the good of one the good of all and it is not any of a number of other things it is said to be it is simply the inducement a merchant has to keep his capital at home thereby increasing the domestic capital stock and enhancing military power both of which are in the public interest and neither of which he intended smith s exposition discloses how his rhetorical sallies could disfigure his economics confuse his argument for free trade and make him play fast and loose with facts and the ideas of others

dollars and pounds the impact of family income on childhood weight this article examines the impact of family income on childhood weight status for children in the united states using matched mother child data from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy 79 instrumental variable iv models family fixed effects fe models and family fixed effects iv feiv models are estimated in order to control for causality the results suggest that although the prevalence of childhood obesity is higher in low income families in the sample family income might be acting primarily as a proxy for other unobserved characteristics that determine the child s weight status rather having a major direct causative role in determining the child s weight status

the complexity of exchange the computational complexity of two classes of market mechanisms is compared first the walrasian interpretation in which prices are centrally computed by an auctioneer recent results on the computational complexity are reviewed the non polynomial complexity of these algorithms makes walrasian general equilibrium an implausible conception second a decentralised picture of market processes is described involving concurrent exchange within transient coalitions of agents these processes feature price dispersion yield allocations that are not in the core modify the distribution of wealth are always stable but path dependent replacing the walrasian framing of markets requires substantial revision of conventional wisdom concerning markets

a resource based theory of the firm knowledge versus opportunism this paper develops a resource based knowledge based theory of the firm its thesis is that the organizational mode through which individuals cooperate affects the knowledge they apply to business activity we focus on the polar cases of organization within a firm as compared to market contracting there will be a difference in the knowledge that is brought to bear and hence in joint productivity under the two options thus as compared to opportunism based transaction cost theory we advance a separate yet complementary answer to the question why do firms exist our aim is to develop an empirically relevant and complementary theory of why firms are formed a theory based on irreducible knowledge differences between individuals rather than the threat of purposeful cheating or withholding of information we assume limited cognitive abilities on the part of individuals bounded rationality and assume that opportunistic behavior will not occur the latter allows us to determine whether resource based

externalities in economies with imperfect information and incomplete markets this paper presents a simple general framework for analyzing externalities in economies with incomplete markets and imperfect infonnation by identifying the pecuniary effects of these externalities that net out the paper simplifies the problem of determining when tax interventions are pareto improving the approach indicates that such tax interventions almost always exist and that equilibria in situations of imperfect information are rarely constrained pareto optima it can also lead to simple tests based on readily observable indicators of the efficacy of particular tax policies in situations involving adverse selection signaling moral hazard incomplete contingent claims markets and queue rationing equilibria traditional discussions of externalities have emphasized the distinction between technological externalities in which the action of one individual or firm directly affects the utility or profit ofanother and pecuniary externalities in which one individual s or firm s actions affect another only through effects on prices while the presence of technological externalities imply in general that a competitive equilibrium may not be pareto efficient pecuniary externalities hy themselves are not a source of inefficiency the fact that prices change has of course important consequences there are both distributional and allocational effects but the distribution effects net out gains for example hy firms whose prices increase are precisely offset by losses e g to individuals who must pay higher prices and there are no welfare losses from the allocation effects as long as the price changes involved are small if firms are maximizing profits and individuals are maximizing utility both facing prices that correctly refiect opportunity costs then standard envelope theorem arguments imply that changes in profits or utility induced by changes in allocations resulting from any small change in prices are negligible

the power of environmental indifference a critical discourse analysis of a collaboration of tourism firms international attempts have not succeeded in addressing climate change leaving an even heavier responsibility on countries firms and people as tourism is an expanding branch in the world economy it is crucial to focus on how climate change issues are addressed in this industry as well this paper analyses a group of tourism firms in norway that join together to promote growth and profitability in winter tourism the span in how these firms deal with environmental issues ranges from ecotourism till not addressing the subject at all although the majority of the firms have environmental issues on the agenda environmental issues are not included in the cooperation we use critical discourse theory to explore how this stance on environmental issues within a cooperation has come about and categorize the firms into three discourses neoclassical economics environmental economics and ecological economics our data indicate that the hegemonic power of neoclassical economics hampers an environmental focus in the network this power is exerted through the position of being environmentally indifferent the paper adds knowledge to economic discourses on firm level

technology and oliver williamson s transaction cost economics abstract oliver williamson has greatly contributed to refining neoclassical economics by incorporating transaction costs and internal organization yet his new institutional economics too easily dismisses the role of technology in doing so he has replaced the determinism of technological production efficiencies with the determinism of transaction cost efficiencies a review shows that williamson s new institutionalism has evolved through three stages in terms of the focus of his analysis and his views of transactions throughout this evolution however his proposed solutions to organizational failures have actually continued to rely heavily upon technology

stagnant productivity and low unemployment stuck in a keynesian equilibrium a major challenge is to build simple intuitive macroeconomic models for policy makers and professional economists as well as students a specific contemporary challenge is to account for the prolonged slow growth and stagnant productivity that has followed the post financial crisis recession along with low inflation despite low unemployment notably in the uk we set out a simple three equation model which extends the core model in our two recent books carlin and soskice 2006 2015 to one with two equilibria and two associated macroeconomic policy regimes one is the standard inflation targeting policy regime with equilibrium associated with central bank inflation targeting through monetary policy it is joined by a second keynesian policy regime and equilibrium with a zero lower bound zlb in the nominal interest rate and a zlb in inflation in which only fiscal policy is effective ragot 2015 our approach is related to the benigno and fornaro 2016 keynesian wicksellian model of growth with business cycles it diverges from new keynesian models because although we attribute model consistent expectations to the policy maker we do not assume that these are the basis for inflation and growth expectations of workers and firms we compare our approach to ravn and sterk s related multiple equilibrium new keynesian model ravn and sterk 2016

the rise and decline of economic policy as an autonomous discipline a critical survey after smith s statement of the market virtues the process of gestation of economic policy as a consistent set of rules for public agenda has been rather slow until not so long ago economic policy as a discipline was confined to prescribing practical rules intended to explain technical procedures of government intervention economic policy as a coherent and to some extent autonomous discipline emerged in the late 1950s in scandinavian countries the netherlands and italy when solid foundations indicating market failures and a theory about conditions for policy effectiveness and design had been developed this paper intends to explain the reasons for its emergence the circumstances which helped it to be taught in many scandinavian dutch and italian universities and a few other european ones the reasons for its apparent setback and some factors that could facilitate its diffusion in the next years

the contractual nature of the firm for their helpful comments i am grateful to armen a alchian yoram barzel keith leffler john s mcgee and dean worcester 1 ronald h coase the nature of the firm 4 economica 386 1937 the paper however was written several years earlier see note 3 infra 2 the social sciences citation index provides the following information breaking down the period of 1966 80 into three five year periods the total citations of coase s firm paper for each subperiod are 1966 70 17 citations 1971 75 47 citations and 1976 80 105 citations

sector specific minimum wages economic growth and some policy implications abstract economic growth is introduced in the urban unemployment model of harris and todaro it is shown that in the steady state the optimal savings ratio is greater than the golden rule savings ratio under full employment also the optimal proportion of total investment allocated to the urban sector is not necessarily higher than the optimal proportion under full employment

money in development a monetary growth model a la mckinnon since professor tobin s seminal 1965 contribution money and economic growth a vast body of literature has developed on exploring the nature of macro economic interactions between monetary and real phenomenon the literature generally referred to as monetary growth models is primarily aimed at extending and or testing the robustness of professor tobin s results under a variety of different specifications of both the economic system and how money enters the system a medium of exchange a consumer good a producer good or a store of value the main results of tobin s analysis are i the steady state capital labor ratio in a monetary economy is lower than that in a non monetary economy and that ii the monetary authority can by increasing the rate of growth of money supply raise the steady state capital labor ratio the literature refers to these results as the non neutrality of money of the first and second kind respectively 8 457 58 although tobin himself makes no such reference his second result has been deployed in the development literature as a policy prescription for inducing through an expansionary monetary policy a higher rate of capital accumulation in the less developed economies 8 458 5 14 10 notwithstanding the problems encountered in treating capital accumulation as the sine qua non of economic development the analytics and resultant propositions of monetary growth models may not be extended in a straightforward manner to apply to the developing economies for the validity of the relevant propositions rests on a number of assumptions that are unlikely to be satisfied namely the full employment of labor perfect factor markets implying in particular the existence of organized markets for primary securities etc while a number of other contributors have touched on the subject mckinnon 13 14 and kapur 10 seem to be the only ones that have genuinely attempted to extend the analysis to the context of underdevelopment 17 15 5 although kapur does make a fuller use of the usual analytics of the monetary