post keynesianism meets feminist economics this article explores the relationships between post keynesian economics and feminist economics it distinguishes three key concepts in each tradition that recommend serious attention in the other tradition gender the household and unpaid work and caring as key concepts in feminist economics uncertainty market power and endogenous dynamics as core concepts in post keynesian economics this article will show with reference to the literature in which such cross fertilisation has been explored already how both traditions can be enriched from a stronger mutual engagement

is probability theory relevant for uncertainty a post keynesian perspective stable url http links jstor org sici sici 0895 3309 28199124 295 3a1 3c129 3aiptrfu 3e2 0 co 3b2 gthe journal of economic perspectives is currently published by american economic association your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of jstor s terms and conditions of use available athttp www jstor org about terms html jstor s terms and conditions of use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe jstor archive only for your personal non commercial use please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work publisher contact information may be obtained athttp www jstor org journals aea html each copy of any part of a jstor transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission the jstor archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world the archive is supported by libraries scholarly societies publishers and foundations it is an initiative of jstor a not for profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology for more information regarding jstor please contact support jstor org http www jstor orgsun feb 17 13 40 22 2008

new millennium economics how did it get this way and what way is it new millennium economics evolved out of neoclassical economics over the last 100 years the pace of change increased over time and in the first half of the 21st century the economics profession changed as much or more than it did in the last half of the 20th century the changes occurred both because of the internal tensions in the profession in the second part of the 20th century and because of technological changes that affected both the research methods of economics and the structure of higher education generally in this paper i consider that evolution i will organize my discussion in two sections the first focusing on changes in the structure of economic education the second focusing on changes in the content of what economists do from 2000 2050 changes in the structure of graduate economic education although the number of economics graduate students expanded substantially in the 1950s and 1960s the fundamental structure of graduate economic education did not change much at all in the second half of the 20th century however the structure of economic education has undergone profound changes in the 50 years since 2000

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

transmutability generalised darwinism and the limits to conceptual integration this article explores the limits to conceptual integration between evolutionary biology cognitive neuroscience and economics the new learning in the natural sciences supplies material to update and enrich the microfoundations of institutional economics specifically the instinct habit psychology the framing of social reality with evolutionary concepts is however misguided in important respects metaphorical modelling is the transfer of concepts developed for the understanding of one domain to another ontological distinct domain the argument is made that the generalisation of darwinian principles to the phenomena of institutional persistence and change is theorising by metaphor because there are crucial ontological differences separating the natural and social domains social reality has the property of transmutability meaning the social environment unlike the natural domain is changeable by human agency this article endeavours to explain how the generalisation of the natural selection principle evokes a fallacious conception of institutional reality the idea that fitness in the social economic sphere is a matter of purposive adaptation by agents to exogenous conditions is misleading because real success in business or politics is transformative and is achieved by catalysing and maintaining advantageous shifts of widely prevalent habits of thought and behaviour copyright oup

an empirical example of the condorcet paradox of voting in a large electorate social choice theory suggests that the occurrence of cyclical collective preferences should be a widespread phenomenon especially in large groups of decision makers however empirical research has so far failed to produce evidence of the existence of many real world examples of such and none in large electorates this paper demonstrates the existence of a real cyclical majority in a poll of danish voters preferred prime minister using pair wise comparisons this result is compared with those of a similar poll but by using different voting methods each resulting in different choices the example demonstrates the empirical reality of cyclical collective preferences and the importance of the choice of institutions

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

the intrinsic limits of modern economic theory the emperor has no clothes assumptions of the uniqueness and stability of general equilibrium in a walrasian framework have no theoretical justification this paper argues that the key reason for this is that the walrasian model treats people as acting independently of one another especially in their demand behavior this independence plays an essential role in constructing economies with arbitrary excess demand functions thus making individual behavior dependent or similar may open the way to obtaining meaningful restrictions on aggregate excess demand functions copyright 1989 by royal economic society

plurality and runoff systems and numbers of candidates although political scientists have in the last few decades learned much about the abstract properties of multicandidate electoral systems we have accumulated little theoretical knowledge on the ways in which strategic behavior of voters and candidates changes when we move from one voting system to another this essay has illustrated how the relative desirability of voting systems can change when the number of candidates usually considered fixed in such comparisons is taken as endogenous to the voting system in force at the time our main conclusion is therefore that the method of voting must be understood in relation to the total electoral system it is not enough to analyze properties of voting systems in the abstract but also in terms of the interactions that voting systems have with political groups and the constitutional setting

ontology and the study of social reality emergence organisation community power social relations corporations artefacts and money the conception of social reality i have previously defended and here extend positing features such as social relations positions and powers is thoroughly naturalistic and even consistent with modern interpretations of quantum field theory it also serves to ground a social science that can be scientific in the sense of natural science this is the thesis defended here central to the argument is an emphasis on a strong form of emergence and the category of organisation in process to bring out various salient features of the position defended i take the opportunity to compare aspects of it with relevant components of the contribution of john searle whose ontological conception appears at once to be both very similar yet also very different copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

elephant poaching ivory trafficking problems in sub saharan africa an application of o hara s principles of political economy this paper examines the complex social problem of african elephant decimation using a political economy approach this paper applies five principles of o hara s political economy pope historical specificity circular and cumulative causation uneven development heterogeneous agents and contradiction pope provides a practical tool for scrutinising the interdependent aspects of a problem the culture of conspicuous consumption for ivory is a key historical driver of demand yet a core integrated factor that helps explain the current crisis relates to the principle of uneven development the role of uneven development can be indirect through lack of human development causing high crime and corruption rates weak policy frameworks and conflicts in land ownership further heterogeneity of agents adds to the complexity of the networks engaged in the decimation of elephants linked to the poaching trafficking circuit of heterogeneous agents this paper identifies two specific elephant contradictions between the market forces of durable fixed capital and environment elephant capital this study contributes to the literature by analysing the interlinking cumulative processes of elephant poaching and ivory trafficking networks which previous studies in the economics literature tend to ignore

what s in a name tony lawson on neoclassical economics and heterodox economics in this article i respond to tony lawson s what is this school called neoclassical economics lawson s paper is provocative because it reformulates neoclassical economics based on veblen s original intent as a mismatch created by recognising the value of an evolutionary approach to the economy whilst remaining over reliant on elements of a taxonomic approach for lawson many heterodox economists may be neoclassical under this description i argue that there is clearly a case to be heard but that the reformulation of the neoclassical raises a number of issues there are issues concerning the specific critique of the current usage of the term neoclassical regarding genealogy and meaning there are specific issues regarding the further development of the new old veblen definition of the neoclassical how clear is the definition in a practical context as a way to identify a neoclassical group based on the commitments of the critique and the definition what does it mean to be more realistic and what is the strategic value of such a provocation for heterodoxy i argue that the combination of these are reasons for more consideration of issues of social ontology not less insofar as the terms of the argument are incomplete and this invites both lawson and those he is criticising to progress the argument particularly on method

bank earning asset behavior and causality between reserves and money lagged versus contemporaneous reserve accounting abstract this paper empirically examines the impact of lagged reserve accounting on large individual bank behavior its specific objective is to assess the claim that the institution of lra has led to a decoupling of the earning asset and reserve adjustment decisions of banks to accomplish this objective a system of equations which jointly describe the reserve adjustment and earning asset decisions of banks is estimated and tested for differences in the model between the periods before and after 1968 it is found that bank behavior does not differ fundamentally under lra evidence that banks make their earning asset adjustments promptly and that expected future interest rates are important in their decisions is also presented

the current economic crisis its nature and the course of academic economics the current crisis has triggered significant debate concerning economic theory and policy largely absent from this debate is an informed discussion of the methods used by economists in analysing the economy and formulating their proposals but method matters here i argue that current academic research practices need to be transformed before real insight can be achieved specifically i indicate why and how a more grounded framework than that presupposed by current research practices facilitates a potentially more fruitful approach to understanding the crisis

bank reserve adjustment process and the use of reserve carryover as a reserve management tool a microeconometric approach this papers examines the impact of bank use of the reserve carryover provision on the reserveadjustment process and federal funds rate volatility a discussion of the newly proposed change to contemporaneous reserve accounting is also given the empirical purposes of this paper are accomplished by specifying and estimating a model of bank reserve adjustment behavior in which the interrelatedness of reserve adjustment instruments is explicitly taken into account we conclude that to the extent banks use carryover to express their funds rate forecasts in the market and the federal reserve clearly signals its intended open market course variability in the funds rate and the monetary aggregates is reduced by the carryover provision

shackle on time uncertainty and process this paper is intended both as a contribution to the conceptual work on process in economic thought and as an attempt to connect a non institutionalist non evolutionary thinker to it the paper has two principal objectives i to delineate a broad philosophically grounded conception of what an economic process theory ept is and ii to locate the contributions of george shackle within this broad conception of ept in pursuing these two objectives i hope to draw out the originality and significance of shackle s economics with a particular emphasis on what he adds to process conceptions developed within other heterodox traditions such as institutional and evolutionary economics i will also highlight some of the perceived limitations of shackle s approach and link them to the limitations of process philosophy

the effects of shifts in monetary policy and reserve accounting regimes on bank reserve management behavior in the federal funds market abstract this paper looks at the effects on fed fund rates and fed fund purchasing behavior of large banks resulting from i the 1982 regime switch from non borrowed to borrowed reserve targeting by the fed and ii the 1984 switch from lagged to almost contemporaneous reserve accounting cra whether we analyse changes in the interest rate or quantity dimensions the shift in monetary policy targets appeared to have had a more profound effect on the market for bank reserves than the shift in reserve accounting regime these results therefore tend to support the contention that a shift to cra by itself will have little effect on bank reserve management behavior unless combined with its logical counterpart a total reserves target

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

the limits of ontological critique from judgmental rationality to justification the cambridge social ontology cso programme s inability to generate a meaningful dialogue with mainstream economics is difficult to understand by mere reference to judgmental rationality and without reference to cso s ideological configuration our paper uses an economie des conventions framework to draw systematic comparisons between cso s ideological configuration and the ideological configurations of mainstream economic theories and practice the resulting analysis helps us to understand not only why cso generated little response from the mainstream but also how cso might renew its critique in ways that might be more likely to produce a response

john nash the master of economic modeling during the past two decades non cooperative game theory has become a central topic in economic theory many scholars have contributed to this revolution none more than john nash following the publication of von neumann and morgenstern s book it was nash s papers in the early fifties which pointed the way for future research in game theory the notion of nash equilibrium is indispensable nash s formulation of the bargaining problem and the nash bargaining solution constitute the cornerstone of modern bargaining theory his insights into the non cooperative foundations of cooperative game theory initiated an area of research known as the nash program nash s analysis of the demand game in which he uses a perturbation of a game to select an equilibrium inspired the construction of several refinements of the notion of nash equilibrium a scholar s influence does not necessarily qualify him for a nobel prize one may argue that such awards are a social institution established to serve social goals it is legitimate to ask what message the swedish academy sends to the scientific community and the rest of the world in some cases prizes are designed to encourage individuals to invest their resources in endeavors that are important to society nash s achievements depend more on his genius than on characteristics which can be encouraged by utilitarian incentives sometimes prizes are expressions of social indebtedness towards members of society who have devoted their life towards advancing a social goal nash s active career was intensive but very short and i have not heard that he deliberately sacrificed attractive alternatives in favor of advancing economic knowledge prizes are also intended to promote the recipient s field of research by now game theory is well recognized any graduate student in economics is familiar with the foundations of non cooperative game theory and i doubt that there is any further need to expand the influence of game theory

bank reserve adjustment process and the use of reserve carryover as a reserve management tool abstract in light of vogt s 1989 comment on our original paper we reexamine the empirical evidence on how banks use reserve carryover we dispute vogt s characterization of the evidence as contradictory and find nothing in the results to undermine our original conclusion that banks use the reserve carryover provision primarily to hedge reserves costs over time we also correct a computational error that appeared in the original paper

picking a loser a social choice perspective on the danish government formation of 1975 all democratic systems are theoretically open to so called election inversions i e instances wherein a majority of the decision makers prefer one alternative but where the actual outcome is another the paper examines the complex 1975 danish government formation process which involved five rounds of negotiations and at least five competing alternatives we demonstrate that in terms of party preferences the final outcome was not the condorcet winner but rather one that could have been beaten by at least three other government alternatives in head to head comparisons the danish procedural system of negative parliamentarism combined with simple plurality rule to produce the electoral inversion

order and process in institutionalist thought commons and ayres process is a central category in institutionalist economics conceptions of process often bound up with ideas of historical time and circular or cumulative causation are regularly used to distinguish institutionalism from mainstream theorising and to highlight similarities or complementarities with other heterodox positions discussions of institutionalist ideas of process however have tended to concentrate on the contributions of thorstein veblen to the exclusion of those of other major institutionalists in contrast this article considers two other important contributors to institutionalist thought john commons and clarence ayres the differences between these authors works are often thought to articulate some kind of a fault line in institutionalist thought highlighting very different and indeed incompatible positions i argue that although their overall projects are clearly very different if attention is focussed on the general ontological presuppositions of each author there exists a good measure of common ground between them this is especially the case if comparisons are made in line with the focus of this special issue between their conceptions of process and order from an ontological perspective moreover those aspects of their accounts that at first appear at odds are rather shown to be quite compatible and even usefully complementary

the economics of identity and the identity of economics drawing upon individual and social choice theory the economic approach to identity associated with akerlof and kranton is critically assessed in terms of its own definitional and technical conundrums this leads on to an external critique in terms of the limited extent to which identity can be addressed by mainstream economic methods indeed the latter essentially sets aside the insights into the nature of identity that emerged with modernism let alone postmodernism as a result the enterprise of constructing an economics of identity is set in the context of recent changes in and disagreement over interpretation of the identity of contemporary economics

heterodox economics history and prospects frederic s lee s collection of essays makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the history of heterodox economics and to our sense of heterodox economics as a community this paper explores issues arising from the collection in relation to the characterisation of this history the understanding of heterodox economics itself and the nature and role of such a history from a historiographical perspective the paper concludes with a discussion of the future of heterodox economics and an argument for a pluralist strategy for its promotion copyright the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

the nature of heterodox economics heterodoxy serves as an umbrella term to cover the coming together of separate projects or traditions in answering the question what distinguishes heterodoxy from the orthodoxy the author argues that matters of ontology are central in answering the question how are the various traditions that make up the modern heterodoxy to be distinguished from each other the author defends criteria other than varying commitments to specific substantive theories policy measures or techniques or basic units of analysis