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Heterodox Economics Newsletter
Editor: Frederic S. Lee, University of Missouri-Kansas City, E-mail: [email protected] Book Review Editor: Fadhel Kaboub, Drew University, E-mail: [email protected] by Ergun Meric, University of Missouri-Kansas City
News letter 74
From the Editor
The Women of Color Resource Center, based in Oakland, is an advocacy and political education center, devoted to putting the issues of women of color at the center of the social justice agenda. The center was formed out of the Third World Women's Alliance, which sprung forth from the civil rights movement. The Center has a strong leftist political education history and works with its constituency-- activists, educators, grassroots folks, and low and no income women of color-- to provide timely, thought-provoking and inspiring educational and analysis sessions. We are looking for women of color speakers who are interested in speaking on topics of economic justice for women of color, the US financial crisis, and/or the housing crisis in our brown bag series during the time of the conference (Jan 3-5) or preferably, beyond, in to the week of the 5th. Speakers should be willing to make their findings and research accessible to a diverse audience and relevant to practical/applied work. Please contact Executive Director, Anisha Desai, at [email protected] if you are interested in working with us.
Dear ASSA Meeting Participant:
You are invited to the AFL-CIO Breakfast
Speaker: Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO
Topic: "Economic Renewal and the Employee Free Choice Act"
When: Sunday, January 4, 2009, 7:00 am until 8:00 am
Where: Colonial Ballroom, Westin St. Francis Hotel, 335 Powell Street, San Francisco, CA
Complimentary Continental Breakfast Will Be Served; No RSVP Required
Dear URPE members and friends,
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I think we left out from our current Newsletter the time and place of our URPE/RRPE reception at the ASSAs that we have every year.Knowing that we all are such a social bunch and will have full social calendars there, I will pass that on now, and remind you again right before the ASSAs.
The reception will beSaturday, January 3, 6 - 7:30, San Francisco Hilton, Sutter Room.
In solidarity, Al
The 2009 Annual Meeting for the Association for Social Economics will be held in conjunction with the ASSA meetings inSan Francisco, January 2-6. I hope you will be able to attend. Please remember the ASE Plenary Session, Friday, January 2, in the Hilton Imperial B. The session is scheduled for 6:30 – 9:00 p.m. The theme of the session is “Ethics and Capitalism” and the featured speaker is Deirdre McCloskey of the University of Illinois, Chicago. Discussants are Herbert Gintis and Nancy Folbre. A Reception, co-sponsored by ICAPE, will immediately follow. We hope to see you there!
PhD comichttp://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
Fred Lee
Call for Papers
Econ Journal Watch invites essay proposals on 'Notes from Underground' by economists and other social scientists. The goal is to get engaging essays on the inner life of the social scientist. Essays may be anonymous. The theme and invitation is described at:http://www.econjournalwatch.org/main/call_proposals.php
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Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies http://www.upd.edu.ph/~twsc/publications_kasarinlan.html
Call for Papers: Political economy of cross-border flows of goods, capital, labor and ideas.http://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/kasarinlan/announcement/view/12
Resource flows among economies have not only improved over the years but have also transformed in complexity and speed. Yet, for instance, financial flows continue to remain within the industrialized region; only a fraction of global finance goes to the developing regions.Still flows to the developing regions go mainly to high performing economies. And the composition of the flows is increasingly in liabilities and short-term in character. The prospect that finance takes root in the domestic economy and generates productive activities is thus low.
Similar pattern exists in goods flows. Trade is mainly within the industrialized region. The developing regions only get a small portion of trade, though high performing economies are able to participate more. The composition of developing regions trade is dominantly primary and/or low technology goods, which are easily absorbed by the industrialized region. The former cannot easily absorb the high value manufactures and high-technology goods from the industrialized region.Meanwhile, direct investments to the developing regions continue not to generate technology transfers or significant innovations.
Parallel to the capital and trade flows is the evolving labor flows.The standard view that labor is immobile is misplaced today. The view that trade and labor flows are substitutes is simplistic. The same applies for capital and labor flows. But because labor is not fully absorbed in the domestic economy, it moves out to other places for employment. In the end, labor from developing regions sustains productive activities in the industrialized region.
Ideas flows are far-reaching and penetrating as technology advances and goods, capital, and labor flows intensify. However, the reference point continues to be the industrialized region, thus developing regions are captured to assess their own progress according to the standards of the former. Industrialization, for example, is transformed into a form that fits with the industrialized region rather than to improve its nature to develop indigenous economic progress.
The issue welcomes papers that explore aspects or the totality of cross-border flows of goods, capital, labor, and ideas. Do resource flows affect economic performance and socio-political conditions of economies, and how? Do the circuits in which resources flow evolve independent of flows themselves? How does one make sense of the rapidity in and complexity of resources flows brought about by globalization with the fixity of resources despite globalization? Do China and India affect the nature of the circuits and resources flows?How would the present global financial and economic crisis change the circuits and flows? Are there viable alternative arrangements at this juncture?
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Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies invites theoretical and empirical papers that explore issues linked to the theme. Papers that use unorthodox perspectives or approaches, present solid analyses, and stimulate critical discourse are welcome.
For the submission guidelines, please see this link:http://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/kasarinlan/about/submissions#authorGuidelines
Due Date for Submission of Manuscript: June 30, 2009
All inquiries concerning the submission of articles should be addressed to:
The EditorKasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies Third World Studies Center Lower Ground Floor, Palma Hall College of Social Sciences and Philosophy University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City 1101 Philippines P.O. Box 210Telefax: +63 2 920 5428+63 2 981 8500 ext. 2488E-mail: [email protected]@gmail.com
The 2009 Left Forum (http://www.leftforum.org/) will take place April17-19 at Pace University, One Pace Plaza (across from City Hall), NYC. This year's conference theme will be "Turning Points."
The Left Forum is generally attended by a few thousand activists and academics, and there is always a strong interest in economic aspects of current issues. URPE people have a lot to contribute to the general Left discourse. We encourage all URPE members who are interested to think about participating in a panel!
The Left Forum would like to have panel submissions by January 15, 2009. They don't have to be totally complete, but the more complete the more likely a panel is to be accepted. You can also indicate to them that you are available as an individual to participate in a panel on a specified topic, and of course then you will get to present only if there is a panel on the topic that you select, and it is missing a speaker.
In earlier years URPE was allocated two panels for us to build. The method for allocating panels has now changed: organizations are no longer guaranteed any panels. Organizations and individuals can submit proposals to the Left Forum organizers, and they will choose which panels are accepted. This year again space is limited; there will be about 100 panels altogether.
Again, we encourage all URPE members who are interested to submit a panel or individual proposal directly to the Left Forum organizers. Read the guidelines below and then email your proposal to:
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[email protected]. Please cc to [email protected] so that we will know what panels URPE members are submitting. We can let you know about other URPE members who respond. This will also help us evaluate this year's organizing procedure.
CONFERENCE THEME: "Turning Points" -- What is to be done?
"Even before the financial meltdown and its spreading destruction to other sectors of the US economy and globally we have had a sense of a capitalism in deep trouble, unable not only to meet the needs of people (no new development) but unable to even reproduce its exploitative norms nor able to effectively force its once robust ideological hegemony on people. American capitalism has been deeply discredited in its failed wars, failed economy, and failure to meet the basic needs of people and the planet. The 2009 Left Forum poses the question, could we be at a historic juncture in the evolution of American power and politics?"
Read the rest of the description of the theme at:http://www.leftforum.org/?q=2009
PANEL REQUIREMENTS:
4 speakers maximum. You will need a chair -- one of the speakers or an additional person.
The panel fee has not yet been determined. Last year's panel fee was $120 for a total panel but that could change. The fee can be divided among panelists, and in the past has included admission for the whole weekend for all panelists. Stay tuned for more info on fees.
People who attend the LF are well-informed but most are not economists. Panels should be on topics of general interest, and accessible to non-economists. It is a good idea to work closely with the LF organizing committee, to prevent duplication with other panels.
URPE people looking for additional speakers can get ideas in the following ways:
1. Contact Economy Connection at [email protected] or 201-792-7459. We have a good speaker list and can provide suggestions that you can follow up.2. Send a post to the URPE Listserv to see if anyone else is doing similar work:[email protected]. Look on the URPE website (www.urpe.org). Under "Resources" the new Crisis page lists websites that include many articles URPE people have written recently.4. URPE now has a blog (http://urpe.wordpress.com) and a Facebook site (join Facebook and search for URPE).5. Ask the LF committee if they have extra speakers looking for a place on a panel.(The main organizer is Seth Adler, 212-817-2003, [email protected].)
PANEL ORGANIZING SUGGESTIONS FROM THE LEFT FORUM:
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"We ask that you consider age, gender, and racial balance to the extent you can and where there are differences on issues of controversy on the broad left that there be debate among your panelists. We hope many panels will critically engage the themes of the conference as they relate to our 2009 "Turning Points" Statement (see: www.leftforum.org)."
SUBMITTING A PANEL:
You will need:A titleNames of participants (including a chair) Their main affiliation (school, organization, etc.) A paragraph or so explaining what you intend to do
Submit your panel to the Left Forum at [email protected] and please cc to [email protected].
6TH EUROFRAME CONFERENCEON ECONOMIC POLICY ISSUES IN THE EUROPEAN UNIONCauses and consequences of the current financial crisis:what lessons for European Union countries?Friday, 12 June 2009, LondonCALL FOR PAPERSThe EUROFRAME group of research institutes (CASE, CPB, DIW, ESRI, ETLA, IfW, NIESR,OFCE, PROMETEIA, WIFO) will hold its sixth annual Conference on Economic Policy Issues in theEuropean Union in London on 12 June 2009. The aim of the conference is to provide an economicforum for debate on economic policy issues relevant in the European context.The Conference will focus on causes and consequences of the current financial crisis with aview to draw lessons for EU countries. Contributions should address issues related to: Causesof the current financial crisis (search for high profitability, growth based on indebtedness andcapital gains, functioning of global finance: banks’ behaviour, derivative products, financialbubbles, failure of financial mathematics; failures in the national and international regulatoryframeworks); Financial crises and the real economy, analysing consequences and solutions tothe problems they have caused (evidence for the links between financial crises and consumption
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behaviour; links between banks, equity markets and firms in financial crises; what can we learnfrom previous advanced economy financial crises); The development of the current crisis andpolicy answers (vicious circles in banking, financial and equity markets, failures and successes ofgovernment measures to restore the functioning of the financial and banking systems). Towards anew Financial System? (Less finance or finance without bubbles?, World growth withoutimbalances?, New banking and financial regulations?, A new European regulatory framework? Anew global financial architecture? A new functioning of financial markets?).Submission ProcedureAbstracts should be submitted by e-mail before 13 March to [email protected]. Abstracts (2 pages) should mention: title of communication, name(s) of the author(s),affiliation, corresponding author’s e-mail address, postal address, telephone number.Corresponding authors will be informed of the decision of the scientific committee by mid-April.Full papers should be received by e-mail by 25 May.Scientific CommitteeKarl Aiginger (WIFO), Ray Barrell (NIESR), Michiel Bijlsma (CPB), Marek Dabrowski (CASE),Christian Dreger (DIW), Klaus-Jürgen Gern (IfW), Markku Kotilainen (ETLA), Paolo Onofri(PROMETEIA), Iulia Siedschlag (ESRI), Henri Sterdyniak (OFCE), Catherine Mathieu (OFCE,Scientific Secretary)Local Organising Committee (NIESR, London)Ray Barrell, Dawn Holland, Simon Kirby; Phil Davis (NIESR and Brunel Univ)Contacts - Abstract and paper submissionsRay Barrell: [email protected] Mathieu: [email protected], tel.: +33 (0) 1 44 18 54 37
Call for Papers
Oeconomicus
An all-student interdisciplinary journal of economic issues Oeconomicus is an interdisciplinary journal of economic issues written, refereed, edited and published by current undergraduate, M.A., and Ph.D. students in the social sciences.
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The focus of the journal is on critical or heterodox approaches to issues of economic methodology and theory, history of economic thought, economic history, political economy, and economic policy. All heterodox traditions within the social sciences—including, but not limited to, Marxist, Institutionalist, Post Keynesian, Austrian, Feminist, and Poststructuralist/Postmodern—are welcome in the journal. Oeconomicus is sponsored by the Economics Club at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) and is published annually. We are currently accepting submissions for our 2008-2009 issue and welcome students at all levels to submit full-length articles, book reviews, interviews or comments. Submissions should be no more that 5000 words and in MS Word format. Submissions and enquiries should be sent to the editors at [email protected] , or [email protected]. The deadline for submissions is January 10th, 2009. For further information about detailed instructions for authors, the journal, the Economics Club and/or the UMKC Economic Department please visit our website http://cas.umkc.edu/econ/Oeconomicus/.
First Annual Social Science Consortium Award Competition The aim of the First Annual Social Science Consortium Award Competition is to encourage undergraduate and graduate students in Economics and Social Sciences to present their papers at UMKC and engage in academic discussions with other students and faculty. Up to three winning papers will be selected. Winners are expected to present their research at UMKC.Winners will each receive: $200 cash prize
Winning papers must be presented at a special seminar session at UMKC (to be announced at a later date) in order to collect the cash prize.Papers must have no more that 5000 words, including references and appendices. They should be submitted electronically (preferably in Word format) to the editors at [email protected] or [email protected] by January 10th, 2009: Sincerely, The Editors, Oeconomicus
The 2009 meetings of the History of Economics Society will held at the University of Colorado Denver over June 26-29. Those wishing to submit a
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paper or propose a session may do so at <http://www.hes-conference2009.com/>http://www.hes-conference2009.com/.
The conference will begin with an opening reception on Friday, June26 and will end mid-day on Monday, June 29. The meetings will be held at the University of Colorado Denver's Kenneth King Academic and Performing Arts Center on the University's Downtown Denver Campus. The campus's location in lower downtown Denver affords easy walking access to hundreds of restaurants and a variety of hotels in all price ranges. The campus's extremely limited dormitory facilities mean that there will likely not be a dorm housing option available. Conference rates will be arranged with several hotels within easy walking distance of the campus. Direct flights from London and Frankfurt make this a very accessible location for those traveling from Europe. Registration information will be posted in due course.
If you encounter any problems with paper/session submission or have any other questions about the conference, you can email me directly at <[email protected]>[email protected].
The 2nd International Conference of the Buddhist Economic Research Platform has been rescheduled for April 9-11, 2009. It will be held at Ubon Rajathanee University in Ubon Ratchathani Thailand.
None of the credit card transactions for the registration fees have been processed and all of those registrations will be destroyed. If you paid for your registration by cash transfer and will not be attending the newly scheduled conference, please notify me immediately and we will begin the process of refunding your money.
If you are planning on attending the conference, please register again. If you had registered for the original conference dates, please use the same registration fee you paid before.
When you register, please be sure to include the following information:
1. How you will be arriving in Ubon2. When you will be arriving in Ubon3. Where you would like to stay (University, Ratchathani Asoke Community or
Ubonburi Resort)4. When you will be leaving Ubon5. How you will be leaving Ubon6. Please be sure to include your email address
If you were scheduled to present a paper at the previously scheduled conference, please indicate if you would like to present the same paper or would like to update or submit a different paper. All new papers should be submitted NO LATER THAN February 15, 2009. If you submitted a paper and will not be able to attend on the new dates, please indicate
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if you would like your paper to be published in the electronic transactions and if you would like it to be considered for publication with selected papers.
The Progressive Economics forum will once again be hosting panels at the 2009 Canadian Economics Association meetings, to be held May 29-31 in Toronto.
Please come forward with any suggestions for panels that you would like to organize through the PEF. We will take all suggestions to the Steering Committee in early January to make a final submission. Please be as descriptive as possible - what topic, why, who will be on it.
Also if you have a paper you would like to present we can see if there is a panel that can fit it in. But you may want to submit through the regular CEA process for papers, just in case.
Nick Falvo will be coordinating the PEF's involvement with CEA this year. Thanks, Nick! Please email Nick ([email protected]) and copy myself ([email protected]) with any suggestions by Jan. 9, 2009. NOte: DO NOT reply to this message.
Best wishes,
Marc
Conferences, Seminars and Lectures
SEMINAIRE ARC 2ACCUMULATION, REGULATION, CROISSANCE
ET CRISECEPREMAP - GERME (Paris VII) - IRISES (Paris IX)
CEPN (PARIS XIII) - MATISSE (PARIS I)
Lundi 15 décembre (15h30-18h30)
Grande Salle, ENS - JourdanAccès : http://www.pse.ens.fr/pratique/index.html
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Crise financière :crise de régulation ou crise du capitalisme ?
Organisation : D. Gatti
Intervenants : R. Boyer, F. Lordon, A. Orlean, B. ThéretDiscutants : B. Coriat, A. Lipietz
Calendrier des prochaines séances :
9 / 2 / 2009Demi-journée autour de « La crise américaine et les plans de rescue »Organisation : P. Petit 6 / 4 / 2009Demi-journée autour de « Scénarios et politiques de sortie de crise »Organisation : B. Théret
The Political Significance of the Economic Crisis
A Lecture by Frank Furedi, professor of sociology, University of Kent at Canterbury; author, Invitation to Terror, Where have all the intellectuals gone?, The Politics of Fear
“The financial crisis and recession have taken the world by surprise. The uncertain and sometimes contradictory response of the political class has already worsened the character of the crisis, and a widespread unwillingness to face up to its seriousness makes it all the more difficult to resolve. How is the situation likely to develop in 2009, and how should we respond?”
Date: Tuesday 16 December Time: 7pm Cost: £10 / £7 IoI associates Tickets: http://www.instituteofideas.com/tickets/index.html or contact 020 7269 9220Venue: London School of Economics – New TheatreE171, East Building, LSE Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AEDetails: http://www.instituteofideas.com/events/xmaslecture2008.html
The Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University has scheduled the following workshops and other events for the Spring 2009
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semester. Workshops are held on Friday afternoons from 3:30 to 5 in the Social Science Building, Room 327.
Jan. 9 Joint Economic History/HOPE Workshop Mahmoud El-Gamal, Rice University “Islamic Financial Jurisprudence”
Jan. 16 HOPE Workshop Angus Burgin, Harvard University “The Colloque Lippmann and the Origins of Neoliberalism”
Jan. 20 HOPE Workshop Daniel Hammond, Wake Forest University “Strange Bedfellows: Msgr. John A. Ryan and the Minimum Wage Movement”
Feb. 13 HOPE Workshop Warren Young, Bar-Ilan University “The Minnesota Fed Archives Project and the Role of Drafts of Papers in the History of Economics”
Feb. 17 Panel discussion: “John Maynard Keynes of Bloomsbury.” Held at the Nasher Museum of Art as part of the “A Year of Bloomsbury” celebration at Duke University (http://news.duke.edu/2008/09/bloomsbury.html),this will be the “kick-off” event for the establishment of the Center. Craufurd Goodwin, Roy Weintraub, Kevin Hoover, and Bruce Caldwell will explore the place of Keynes within Bloomsbury and offer an assessment of his legacy.
Feb. 20 HOPE Two-fer Workshop Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame, and Bruce Caldwell, Duke University “Neoliberalism, Chicago, and Hayek: Two Views”
March 20 HOPE Workshop Aiko Ikeo, Waseda University “Kaname Akamatsu (1896-1974) on Technology, Natural Resources, and the Flying-Geese Pattern Theory of Development” (Part of the Critical Biography Series Project organized by the Society for the History of Japanese Economic Thought)
March 27 HOPE Workshop Edward Nik-Khan, Roanoke University “George Stigler and the Chicago Business School”
April 17 HOPE Workshop Rob Leonard, Université du Québec à Montréal “Economics and Modernism, 1900-1950”
Examining the Practice of Ethical Economics
A Session Sponsored by the Association for Integrity and Responsible Leadership in Economics and Associated Professions (AIRLEAP®) (Free
and Open to Everyone -- Registration in the ASSA meetings is not required.)
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Sunday, January 4, 2009, 6:00-8:00 PM Palace Hotel, French Parlor Room, 2 New Montgomery St., San Francisco
Organizer and Chair: Professor Seth Giertz, University of Nebraska “‘I Do Solemnly Swear’: On the Need for and Content of Professional Economic
Ethics” Professor George DeMartino, University of Denver Discussed by Dr. Yvon Pho, Manager, BearingPoint, Inc.
“Honesty and Integrity in Economics” Professor Thomas Mayer, University of California, Davis
Discussed by Dr. Brian Sloboda, President of the Society of Government Economists “Rhetoric Matters: The Case for Standards of Ethical Conduct in Economics”
Professor Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago Discussed by Professor Gary Hoover, University of Alabama
George DeMartino Deirdre McCloskey
Thomas Mayer Seth Giertz
RESOWI - Centre F48010 Graz, Austria+43 316 380 3442
Call for Applications
Second Graz Schumpeter Summer School
Classical Economics After Sraffa:Problems and Perspectives
Graz, Austria, 13-18 July 2009 2010 sees the 50th anniversary of the publication of the book by Piero Sraffa, Production
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of Commodities by Means of Commodities (Cambridge University Press, 1960). This is a fitting occasion to discuss in depth with leading experts the development, current frontiers of research and open questions of the return to ‘the standpoint of the old classical economists from Adam Smith to Ricardo’ advocated by Sraffa. The Graz Schumpeter Centre (GSC) is pleased to announce its next Summer School that is devoted to this theme. The topics to be dealt with include: production and distribution; capital accumulation and economic growth; innovations and technical change; exhaustible resources and the environment; financial and economic crises; and issues in the history of economic thought. Senior Faculty include:
Professor Pierangelo Garegnani, University of Rome III, ItalyProfessor Harvey Gram, Queens College, New York, U.S.Professor Eiji Hosoda, Keio University, Tokyo, JapanProfessor Man-Seop Park, Korea University, Seoul, KoreaProfessor Sergio Parrinello, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Italy Professor Neri Salvadori, University of Pisa, ItalyProfessor Bertram Schefold, University of Frankfurt/M., GermanyProfessor Ian Steedman, Manchester Metropolitan University, U.K.
The Summer School will be held on the campus of Graz University, Graz, Austria. Admission is open to up to 30 Junior Fellows, that is, graduate students and recent Ph.D.’s. The schedule of the Summer School has between three and four lectures each day, given by members of the Senior Faculty. A further part of the time will be devoted to seminars in which Junior Fellows are given the opportunity to present their research and get feedbacks from peers. Successful participation in the Summer School will be certified. Application: Applications should include three copies of: a CV; a one-page statement of the student's motivation to participate in the Summer School, indicating also his or her familiarity with modern Classical economics; two letters of recommendation from university professors. The Application Form will be available on the homepage and should be completed and attached to any application. The material should be sent per mail to: Graz Schumpeter Centre, “Summer School 2009”, University of Graz, RESOWI-Centre FE, A–8010 Graz, Austria by the end of April. For questions about the application procedure and the Summer School in general, please contact us per E-mail: [email protected] Detailed information about tuition fee, accommodation and board will be given by the end of February. See the homepage of the Summer School at:www.uni-graz.at/schumpeter.centre
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Cooperation: The GSC cooperates with other European academic institutions to secure a diversified scientific board and a broad attendance. The partnership with other Academic Institutions creates a scientific network ensuring useful spillover effects. Scientific Committee: Christian Gehrke (Graz), Heinz D. Kurz (Graz), Sergio Parrinello (Rome), Ian Steedman (Manchester), Richard Sturn (Graz), Neri Salvadori (Pisa). Contact: For further information on application and funding please access the Summer School Website at www.uni-graz.at/schumpeter.centre or contact the Summer School Office.
Graz Schumpeter Centre
Summer School OfficeRESOWI - Centre FE
8010 Graz, Austria
TEL +43 (0)316 380 3595 FAX +43 (0)316 380 9523
MAIL [email protected]
WEB www.uni-graz.at/schumpeter.centre
World Peace Congress 2008/09, a multi-thematic conference focussed on grassroots programs devoted toward realizing a more peaceful and convivial future will be held in Bangalore, India from 27 Feb - 1 Mar 2009.More information is available at: www.worldpeacecongress2008.net <http://www.worldpeacecongress2008.net>Expressions of interest may be made to the organizers at: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics - News
Fred LeeExecutive Director
Job Postings for Heterodox Economists
ANNOUNCEMENT OF EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITYCity College of San Francisco
Position title: Economics and Statistics Instructor (Tenure-Track/Part-Time Pool)Posting number: 0080045 Filing deadline: 01-29-2009 (4:00 p.m.)Start date for Tenure-Track Position: Fall Semester 2009, beginning mid-August 2009.
Appointment types:A. CONTRACT: FIRST YEAR (PROBATIONARY), TENURE-TRACK (BASED ON AVAILABLITY OF FUNDS) EC §§87602-87615 as amended by SB2298 (1990)
B. TEMPORARY, PART-TIME (9 HOURS OR LESS PER WEEK) THIS WILL BE A PART-TIME HIRING POOL TO BE IN EFFECT FOR A ONE-YEAR PERIOD. EC §87482
Applying for tenure-track, part-time, or both positions does not affect how an application is reviewed.
Examples of Duties: 1. Teach Macro Economics classes. 2. Teach Micro Economics classes. 3. Teach Introductory Statistics classes. 4. Participate in curriculum development. 5. Participate in other faculty responsibilities and duties as appropriate, such as department and campus committee work as well as professional development activities. 6. Perform professional duties including, but not limited to, testing, grading, maintaining gradebook, maintaining student attendance records, etc. 7. Teach day, evening, and/or Saturday classes at any of the College's campuses as required. 8. Perform other related duties as assigned by the supervisor.
City College of San Francisco Minimum Requirements: 1. Demonstrated knowledge, skills, and abilities to work with community college students with diverse academic, socioeconomic, cultural, sexual orientations, disabilities, and ethnic backgrounds (Required). 2. Earned Master's Degree or higher in Economics from an accredited institution; OR THE EQUIVALENT. [If you would like to claim education equivalency for the formal educational requirement, the "Faculty Equivalency Application Form" is available on the left side margin. This form will be considered as part of the application materials and must be submitted on or before the filing deadline as indicated on this job posting.] 3. Satisfactory completion of a minimum of two courses in Statistics (at least one of which must be at the graduate level as part of the Economics major).
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Desirable Qualifications: 1. Previous teaching experience at the community college level (in Macro or Micro Economics or Introductory Statistics). 2. Previous teaching experience in college level Macro or Micro Economics or Introductory Statistics.
Application Procedure: To be considered a candidate for this posting, the following materials must be submitted. Substitution of required document(s) is not permitted. 1. A letter expressing interest in the position indicating specifically how the applicant fulfills both the minimum qualifications and as many as possible of the desirable qualifications. Minimum and desirable qualifications are listed in this posting. The letter should also address the applicant's background and skills in the areas stated in the Examples of Duties. 2. A current resume summarizing educational background, teaching experience, and related work experience. 3. A City College of San Francisco Faculty Position Application form completed in full and applied to this specific posting online. The statement "See Resume" is not acceptable. 4. Three (3) current letters of professional recommendation written within one year of the date of applicatrion (letters must be signed, dated, and on letterhead to be considered valid). 5. Copies of transcripts verifying the degrees, majors, and required coursework as listed on applicant's CCSF Application Form; official transcripts and actual verification of work experience will be required at a later date. [NOTE: Degrees and majors must be posted on transcripts to be considered in the application process. Foreign degree(s) must be evaluated before an application can be processed. Foreign Degree Evaluation sources information is located on the left side margin.] 6. Diversity Statement: Separate from your letter of interest, submit a concise response using only one page to discuss how your course content and teaching methods meet the needs of culturally and academically diverse learners. List classes or professional development activities you have participated in that directly relate to working with diverse student populations. Applicants bear the sole responsibility for ensuring that all application materials are complete when submitted and are received by 4:00 p.m. on the posting filing deadline. Postmarks will not be honored. Emails are not acceptable. Incomplete application packages will not be considered. All materials become the property of the City College of San Francisco, and will not be returned. Application files for this posting will not be considered for other postings.
Application materials and further information on department, salary, ADA accommodations, selection procedure, and conditions of employment are available at http://jobs.ccsf.edu .
If you have questions or need additional assistance, please call the Human Resources Department at (415) 241-2246.
Recruitment Message to Economists
The OECD seeks to recruit highly qualified women and men from its 30 member countries. As an OECD Economist you will be at the hub of global policy dialogue and
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will have the opportunity to interact with major actors who address economic, social and governance challenges. You will play a key role in providing rigorous intellectual input towards finding solutions for pressing policy issues.
Our success depends on the talented staff who bring a cross-section of qualifications and experience to the OECD. It is one of our top priorities to become a more diverse and inclusive organization.
Human Resource representatives, Makoto Miyasako and Niki Ruggeri, will be present at the OECD booth 402, AEA Annual meeting (January 3-5 2009, San Francisco) and look forward to discussing with you the potential opportunities. For more information on current job openings, we invite you to visit www.oecd.org/hrm/vacancies where you can also register to receive email alerts.
Post Doctoral Research Fellow: Innovation, Knowledge and Development - IKD
Economics Department, Faculty of Social Sciences Salary £24,152-£32,458 depending upon qualifications and experience, Ref: 5135 Based in Milton Keynes 12 month temporary contract start date as soon as possible
This is an exciting opportunity for a Research Assistant to assist the Director of IKD (Innovation, Knowledge and Development).
You will be focussed on the organisation and co-ordination of individual and group external grant bids, mainly in the finance and innovation area, within the Innovation, Knowledge and Development interdisciplinary research centre (IKD, www.open.ac.uk/ikd). You should have experience in writing grant proposals and conducting academic research. Part of your work will involve co-ordinating academics in different institutions (and countries) around grant projects, and so previous experience with co-ordinating researchers would be a benefit.
You will also be able to conduct your own research within one of IKD’s projects related to finance and/or innovation, and hence progress your career through publications. Knowledge and experience of UK and EU research funding bodies is important, and some experience with organising research events is desirable.
For detailed information and how to apply go to www.open.ac.uk/employment, call Carol Fuller on 01908 654483 or email [email protected] quoting the reference number. Closing date: 12 noon 2 January 2009.
Further particulars are available in large print, disk or audiotape (minicom 01908 654901).
We promote diversity in employment and welcome applications from all sections of the community.
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Heterodox Conference Papers and Reports and Articles
(1) Un texte d'Angel Asensio (ADEK) sur les "Conséquences économiques de la crise financière"(1bis) A text from Angel Asensio (ADEK) "Economic consequences of the financial crisis - A Keynesian point of view"
Banking regulatory reforms emerging, in piecemeal way by Andrew Cornford
BIS banking statistics amidst the financial turmoilby Andrew Cornford
"Gender Equality and the Current Global Economic Crisis"By Diane Elson
Hein, Eckhard / Lavoie, Marc / van Treeck, Till: Some instability puzzles in Kaleckian models of growth and distribution: A critical survey, IMK Working Paper, Nr. 19/2008. Düsseldorf 2008: http://www.boeckler.de/pdf/p_imk_wp_19_2008.pdf.
A GOODWINIAN MODEL WITH DIRECT AND ROUNDABOUT RETURNS TO SCALE (AN APPLICATION TO ITALY) by A. Ryzhenkov http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121556774/abstract
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Heterodox Journals and Newsletters
Review of Political Economy: Volume 21 Issue 1 (http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=issue&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email) is now available online at informaworld (http://www.informaworld.com).
This new issue contains the following articles:
Effective Demand and Short-term Adjustments in the General Theory, Pages 1 - 22Author: Olivier AllainDOI: 10.1080/09538250802516917Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&spage=1&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Capital Accumulation, Technical Progress and Labour Supply Growth: Keynes's Approach to Aggregate Supply and Demand Analysis Revisited, Pages 23 - 49Author: Alfonso Palacio-VeraDOI: 10.1080/09538250802516974Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&spage=23&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Marx and Schumpeter: A Comparison of their Theories of Development, Pages 51 - 83Author: Eric RahimDOI: 10.1080/09538250802516982Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&spage=51&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Sraffa's Interpretation of Marx's Treatment of Fixed Capital, Pages 85 - 100Author: Fred MoseleyDOI: 10.1080/09538250802517006Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&spage=85&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
The 2000–2001 Financial Crisis in Turkey: A Crisis for Whom?, Pages 101 - 122Authors: Mathieu Dufour; Özgür OrhangaziDOI: 10.1080/09538250802517014
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Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&spage=101&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Political Economy and Organizational Leadership: A Hope-based Theory, Pages 123 - 143Authors: Joe Wallis; Brian Dollery; Lin CraseDOI: 10.1080/09538250802517030Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&spage=123&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
A Conversation with Kurt Rothschild, Pages 145 - 155Authors: Kurt Rothschild; John KingDOI: 10.1080/09538250802517089Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&spage=145&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Enigma in the Origins of Paul Sweezy's Political Economy, Pages 157 - 161Author: Ben FineDOI: 10.1080/09538250802517113Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&spage=157&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Book Reviews, Pages 163 - 189Authors: Paul Lewis; Elisabeth Allgoewer; Paul Zarembka; Jurriaan Bendien; John Lodewijks; J. E. King; William K. Tabb; William K. Tabb; Tae-Hee Jo; Martin GregorDOI: 10.1080/09538250802517162Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-8259&volume=21&issue=1&spage=163&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Economic Systems Research: Volume 20 Issue 4 (http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=issue&issn=0953-5314&volume=20&issue=4&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email) is now available online at informaworld (http://www.informaworld.com).
This new issue contains the following articles:
Knowledge Flows, Patent Citations and the Impact of Science on Technology, Pages 339 - 366Authors: önder Nomaler; Bart VerspagenDOI: 10.1080/09535310802551315Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-5314&volume=20&issue=4&spage=339&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
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Using Additional Information in Structural Decomposition Analysis: The Path-based Approach, Pages 367 - 394Authors: Esteban Fernández-Vázquez; Bart Los; Carmen Ramos-CarvajalDOI: 10.1080/09535310802551356Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-5314&volume=20&issue=4&spage=367&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Estimating International Interindustry Linkages: Non-survey Simulations of the Asian-Pacific Economy, Pages 395 - 414Authors: Jan Oosterhaven; Dirk Stelder; Satoshi InomataDOI: 10.1080/09535310802551448Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-5314&volume=20&issue=4&spage=395&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Additivity of Deflated Input–Output Tables in National Accounts, Pages 415 - 428Author: Utz-Peter ReichDOI: 10.1080/09535310802551455Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-5314&volume=20&issue=4&spage=415&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
The First Two Eigenvalues of Large Random Matrices and Brody's Hypothesis on the Stability of Large Input–Output Systems, Pages 429 - 432Author: Guang-Zhen SunDOI: 10.1080/09535310802551471Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-5314&volume=20&issue=4&spage=429&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Trade Liberalization and India's Informal Economy, Pages 433 - 434Author: Arup MitraDOI: 10.1080/09535310802551505Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0953-5314&volume=20&issue=4&spage=433&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Journal of Economic Methodology: Volume 15 Issue 4 (http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=issue&issn=1350-178X&volume=15&issue=4&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email) is now available online at informaworld (http://www.informaworld.com).
This new issue contains the following articles:
Sraffa's mathematical economics: a constructive interpretation, Pages 325 - 342Author: K. Vela VelupillaiDOI: 10.1080/13501780802112858
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Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1350-178X&volume=15&issue=4&spage=325&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
The explanatory logic and ontological commitments of generalized Darwinism, Pages 343 - 363Author: J. W. StoelhorstDOI: 10.1080/13501780802506661Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1350-178X&volume=15&issue=4&spage=343&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Rationality, behavior, institutional, and economic change in Schumpeter, Pages 365 - 390Authors: Agnès Festré; Pierre GarrousteDOI: 10.1080/13501780802507222Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1350-178X&volume=15&issue=4&spage=365&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
On the autonomy of experiments in economics, Pages 391 - 407Author: Martin K. JonesDOI: 10.1080/13501780802507230Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1350-178X&volume=15&issue=4&spage=391&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Method and appraisal in economics, 1976–2006, Pages 409 - 423Author: Uskali MäkiDOI: 10.1080/13501780802507735Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1350-178X&volume=15&issue=4&spage=409&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Not all machines are alike – Harro Maas, Pages 425 - 429DOI: 10.1080/13501780802610711Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1350-178X&volume=15&issue=4&spage=425&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
A review of Donald MacKenzie, Pages 429 - 433DOI: 10.1080/13501780802610729Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1350-178X&volume=15&issue=4&spage=429&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
Expanding the domain of macroeconomic theory, Pages 433 - 436DOI: 10.1080/13501780802610737Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1350-178X&volume=15&issue=4&spage=433&uno_jumptype=alert&uno_alerttype=new_issue_alert,email
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INTERVENTION. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC POLICIES
Vol. 5 (2008), Number 2
Journal website: http://www.journal-intervention.org/seiten/englisch/current_issue.shtml
Publisher's website: http://www.metropolis-publisher.com/1/ausgaben/journal.do
Contents
Forum Interview with Jan Kregel
Special Forum on Economic Policy Studies Nigel F.B. Allington, John S.L. McCombie: Productivity Growth and Unemployment under Mrs. Thatcher Reconsidered Thomas Bernhardt: Dimensions of the Argentine Crisis 2001/02. A Critical Survey of Politico-economical Explanations Karin Fischer: Policy Reform and Income Distribution in Honduras
Special Forum on Recent Interpretations of Keynes and the General Theory
Victoria Chick: Contextualising Keynes’ Revolution. Review of Michael S. Lawlor’s ›The Economics of Keynes in Historical Context‹
Jan Toporowski: Keynes Betrayed? Review of Geoff Tily’s ›Keynes’ General Theory, the Rate of Interest, and Keynesian Economics: Keynes Betrayed‹
Paul Davidson: Understanding Keynes: A Response to Spahn’s Review of »John Maynard Keynes« Peter Spahn: Davidson on Keynes and Others - A Rejoinder
M.G. Hayes: The Post Keynesian Economics Study Group – After 20 Years
Articles Reiner Franke: A Microfounded Herding Model and its Estimation on German Survey Expectations
Special Issue on Financial Markets, Financialisation and the Macroeconomy Marc Lavoie: Financialisation Issues in a Post-Keynesian Stock-Flow Consistent Model Soon Ryoo, Peter Skott: Financialization in Kaleckian Economies with and without Labor Constraints Sebastian Dullien: Who is Afraid of Asian FX Interventions? Lessons for Europe from a Three-Asset-Portfolio Model
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Heterodox Books and Book Series
Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice, By Molly Scott Cato In
From Political Economy to EconomicsBy Dimitris Milonakis and Ben FineQuality-of-Living and Human Development as the Outcome from Economic Progress by Horace Carby-SamuelsISBN: 1897036353http://www.agorapublishing.com/Quality_of_Living.html
Capitalism is Not Democracyhttp://www.agorapublishing.com/featured-book.html
Networking FuturesThe Movements against Corporate GlobalizationJeffrey S. Juris, Arizona State University
Since the first worldwide protests inspired by Peoples’ Global Action (PGA)—including the mobilization against the November 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle—anti–corporate globalization activists have staged direct action protests against multilateral institutions in cities such as Prague, Barcelona, Genoa, and Cancun. Barcelona is a critical node, as Catalan activists have played key roles in the more radical PGA network and the broader World Social Forum process. In 2001 and 2002, the anthropologist Jeffrey S. Juris participated in the Barcelona-based Movement for Global Resistance, one of the most influential anti–corporate globalization networks in Europe. Combining ethnographic research and activist political engagement, Juris took part in hundreds of meetings, gatherings, protests,
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and online discussions. Those experiences form the basis of Networking Futures, an innovative ethnography of transnational activist networking within the movements against corporate globalization.
In an account full of activist voices and on-the-ground detail, Juris provides a history of anti–corporate globalization movements, an examination of their connections to local dynamics in Barcelona, and an analysis of movement-related politics, organizational forms, and decision-making. Depicting spectacular direct action protests in Barcelona and other cities, he describes how far-flung activist networks are embodied and how networking politics are performed. He further explores how activists have used e-mail lists, Web pages, and free software to organize actions, share information, coordinate at a distance, and stage “electronic civil disobedience.” Based on a powerful cultural logic, anti–corporate globalization networks have become models of and for emerging forms of radical, directly democratic politics. Activists are not only responding to growing poverty, inequality, and environmental devastation; they are also building social laboratories for the production of alternative values, discourses, and practices.http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=111411368540&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=14010
Capitalism and Christianity, American StyleWilliam E. Connolly, John Hopkin’s University
Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is William E. Connolly’s stirring call for the democratic left to counter the conservative stranglehold over American religious and economic culture in order to put egalitarianism and ecological integrity on the political agenda. An eminent political theorist known for his work on identity, secularism, and pluralism, Connolly charts the path of the “evangelical-capitalist resonance machine,” source of a bellicose ethos reverberating through contemporary institutional life. He argues that the vengeful vision of the Second Coming motivating a segment of the evangelical right resonates with the ethos of greed animating the cowboy sector of American capitalism. The resulting evangelical-capitalist ethos finds expression in church pulpits, Fox News reports, the best-selling Left Behind novels, consumption practices, investment priorities, and state policies. These practices resonate together to diminish diversity, forestall responsibility to future generations, ignore urban poverty, and support a system of extensive economic inequality.
Connolly describes how the evangelical-capitalist machine works, how its themes resound across class lines, and how it infiltrates numerous aspects of American life. Proposing changes in sensibility and strategy to challenge this machine, Connolly contends that the liberal distinction between secular public and religious private life must be reworked. Traditional notions of unity or solidarity must be translated into drives to forge provisional assemblages comprised of multiple constituencies and creeds. The left must also learn from the political right how power is infused into everyday institutions such as the media, schools, churches, consumption practices, corporations, and neighborhoods. Connolly explores the potential of a “tragic vision” to contest the current politics of existential resentment and political hubris, explores potential lines of connection between it and theistic faiths that break with the evangelical right, and charts the possibility of forging an “eco-egalitarian” economy. Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is William E. Connolly’s most urgent work to date.
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http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=111810224282&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=17506
Two BitsThe Cultural Significance of Free SoftwareChristopher M. Kelty, University of California
In Two Bits, Christopher M. Kelty investigates the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software but also music, film, science, and education. Free Software is a set of practices devoted to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made openly and freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. Kelty explains how these specific practices have reoriented the relations of power around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge. He also makes an important contribution to discussions of public spheres and social imaginaries by demonstrating how Free Software is a “recursive public”—a public organized around the ability to build, modify, and maintain the very infrastructure that gives it life in the first place.
Drawing on ethnographic research that took him from an Internet healthcare start-up company in Boston to media labs in Berlin to young entrepreneurs in Bangalore, Kelty describes the technologies and the moral vision that bind together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and other Free Software advocates. In each case, he shows how their practices and way of life include not only the sharing of software source code but also ways of conceptualizing openness, writing copyright licenses, coordinating collaboration, and proselytizing. By exploring in detail how these practices came together as the Free Software movement from the 1970s to the 1990s, Kelty also considers how it is possible to understand the new movements emerging from Free Software: projects such as Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that creates copyright licenses, and Connexions, a project to create an online scholarly textbook commons. http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=111411368540&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=14010
VARIETIES OF CAPITALISM AND NEW INSTITUTIONAL DEALS: Regulation, Welfare and the New Economy, Eds. W. Elsner, G. Hanappi
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Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA, USA: E. Elgar, 2008.
* ADVANCES IN EVOLUTIONARY INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS: Evolutionary Mechanisms, Non-Knowledge, and Strategy,Eds. G. Hanappi, W. Elsner,Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA, E. Elgar, 2008.
Violence Today: Actually existing barbarism Socialist Register 2009
The Republic of Hunger and other EssaysBy Utsa Patnaik
The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American HistoryEdited by Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day and Immanuel Ness
March 2009. 800 pp. Tables, Figures, Photos, Topic Finder, Timeline,List of Abbreviations, Bibliography, Name Index, General Subject Index.
Cloth 978-0-7656-1330-1 US$175.00 *Pre-Pub Price $155.00 until 3/31/09
Strikes have been part of American labor relations from colonial days to the present, reflecting the widespread class conflict that has run throughout the nation’s history. Against employers and their goons, against the police, the National Guard, local, state, and national officials, against racist vigilantes, against their union leaders, and against each
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other, American workers have walked off the job for higher wages, better benefits, bargaining rights, legislation, job control, and just plain dignity. At times, their actions have motivated groundbreaking legislation, defining new rights for all citizens; at other times they have led to loss of workers’ lives.
This comprehensive encyclopedia is the first detailed collection of historical research on strikes in America. To provide the analytical tools for understanding strikes, the volume includes two types of essays—those focused on an industry or economic sector, and those focused on a theme.
Contents:Editors and ContributorsTopic FinderIntroduction to The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, Aaron Brenner Types of Strikes, Aaron Brenner List of AbbreviationsPart I. Strikes: Theory and Practice Introduction, Aaron Brenner Strikes in American History, Aaron Brenner Theories of Strikes, Gerald Friedman Socialist Theories of the Strike, Christopher Phelps The News Media and Strikes, Christopher R. Martin The Business Community's Mercenaries: Strikebreakers and Union Busters, Robert Smith Corporate Strike Strategy, Kim Phillips-Fein The Decline of Strikes, Jeremy Brecher Strike Lessons from the Last Twenty-Five Years: What It Takes to Walk Out and Win, Steve Early
Part II. Strikes and Working Class Culture Introduction, Benjamin Day Dressed for Defiance: The Clothing of Female Strikers, 1910-1935, Deirdre Clemente Better Than a Hundred Speeches: The Strike Song, Tim Lynch Civil Rights Strikes, Todd Michney World War II Hate Strikes, James Wolfinger Polish Workers and Strikes, 1900-1937, Jim Pula North Carolina Women on Strike, Roxanne Newton The Catholic Church and Strikes, Dan LaBotz Strikes Led by the Trade Union Unity League, 1929-1934, Victor G. Devinatz Part III. Strike Waves Introduction, Aaron Brenner The Strike Wave of 1877, John P. Lloyd World War I Era Strikes, Cecelia Bucki The Rise and Fall of the Sit-Down Strike, Rachel Meyer The 1945-46 Strike Wave, Jack Metzgar Strikes in the U.S. Since World War II, Nicola Pizzolato Part IV. Strikes in the Public Sector Introduction, Immanuel Ness Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919, Joseph Slater Teachers' Strikes, John Lloyd Postal Workers' Strikes, Aaron Brenner Strikes in the New York City Transit System, Michael Hirsch
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Social Workers and Strikes, Howard Karger Part V. Strikes in the Private Sector Introduction, Immanuel Ness Section 1. Manufacturing, Mining, and Agricultural Strikes Introduction, Immanuel Ness Strikes and Apprenticeship, Daniel Jacoby Strikes in the 19th-Century Cotton Textile Industry in the Northeast United States, Mary Blewett Twentieth Century Textile Strikes, David Goldberg Garment Worker Strikes, Paul LeBlanc Steel Strikes Before 1935, John Hinshaw Steel on Strike: From 1936 to the Present, Robert Bruno Unionizing the Jungle: A Century of Meatpacking Strikes, Jackie Gabriel Automobile Workers' Strikes, Ian Greer Rubber Workers' Strikes, John Woods Plumbing Strikes, Kim Phillips-Fein Agricultural Strikes, Dan La Botz Labor and the Transformation of the Hawaiian Sugar Industry, Edward D. Beechert The Redwoods Lumber and Sawmill Workers' Strike, Cal Winslow The Watsonville Cannery Strike, 1985-1987, Myrna Cherkoss Donahoe Coal Miners On Strike and the Formation of a National Union, Jon Amsden and Stephen Brier Mesabi Iron Miners' Strikes, Gerald Ronning The Rise and Fall of Rank-and-File Miner Militancy, 1964-2007, Paul Nyden Section 2. Infrastructure Industry Strikes Introduction, Benjamin Day Labor Upheaval on the Nation's Railroads, 1877-1922, Theresa Case Strikes by Telegraph Workers, Anthony J. Silva Telegraph Messenger Strikes and Their Impact on Telegraph Unionization, Greg Downey Trolley Wars, Scott Molloy Seafarers' Strikes in American History, Nathan Lillie Longshoremen's Strikes, 1900-1920, Cal Winslow Strikes on the Port of New York 1945-1960, William Mello Strikes in the U.S. Airline Industry, 1919-2004, David J. Walsh Aerospace Engineer Strikes, Stan Sorscher Section 3. Service Industry Strikes Introduction, Benjamin Day Newsboy Strikes, Jon Bekken Retail Workers' Strikes, Daniel Opler Waitress Strikes, Dorothy Sue Cobble Office Workers' Strikes, Vernon Mogenson Strikes in the Motion Picture Industry, Andrew Dawson Attorney Strikes at The Legal Aid Society of New York City, Michael Letwin Musician Strikes, Damone Richardson Striking the Ivory Tower: Student Employee Strikes at Private Universities, Mandi Isaacs Jackson The Boston University Strike of 1979, Gary Zabel Strikes by Professional Athletes, Michael Schiavone Nurses on Strike, Lisa Hayes Organizing Home Health Care Workers in New York City, Immanuel Ness BibliographyName IndexGeneral Subject Index Order online at www.mesharpe.com, tel: 800-541-6563 or 914-273-1800, fax: 914-273-2106
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M.E. Sharpe, Inc.80 Business Park DriveArmonk, NY 10504
Central Banking, Asset Prices and Financial FragilityBy Éric TymoigneSeries: Routledge International Studies in Money and Banking
http://www.routledge.com/9780415773997
The current literature on central banking contains two distinct branches. On the one side, research focuses on the impact of monetary policy on economic growth, unemployment, and output-price inflation, while ignoring financial aspects. On the other side, some scholars leave aside macroeconomics in order to study the narrow, but crucial, subjects of financial behaviours, and financial supervision and regulation. This book aims at merging both approaches by using macroeconomic analysis to show that financial considerations should be the main preoccupation of central banks. Eric Tymoigne shows how different views regarding the conception of asset pricing lead to different positions regarding the appropriate role of a central bank in the economy. In addition, Hyman P. Minsky’s framework of analysis is used extensively and is combined with other elements of the Post Keynesian framework to study the role of a central bank.
Tymoigne argues that central banks should be included in a broad policy strategy that aims at achieving stable full employment. Their sole goal should be to promote financial stability, which is the best way they can contribute to price stability and full employment. Central banks should stop moving their policy rate frequently and widely because that creates inflation, speculation, and economic instability. Instead, Tymoigne considers a pro-active financial policy that does not allow financial innovations to enter the economy until they are certified to be safe and that focuses on analyzing systemic risk. He argues that central banks should be a guide and a reformer that allow a smooth financing and funding of asset positions, while making sure that financial fragility does not increase drastically over a period of expansion.
This book will be of interest to students and researchers engaged with central banking, macroeconomics, asset pricing and monetary economics.
Eckhard Hein, Torsten Niechoj, Peter Spahn and Achim Truger (eds.): Finance-led Capitalism? Macroeconomic Effects of Changes in the Financial Sector
http://www.metropolis-publisher.com/Finance-led-Capitalism%3F/705/book.do
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Contents The Research Network Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policies Introduction, Eckhard Hein, Torsten Niechoj, Peter Spahn and Achim Truger I. Financialisation – trends and implications Financialisation: What it is and why it matters, Thomas I. Palley
Private equity: financial engineering or solution to market failure?, Sigurt Vitols Rising shareholder power – effects on distribution, capacity utilisation and capital accumulation in Kaleckian/Post-Kaleckian models, Eckhard Hein
II. Financial systems and economic development Financial systems in developing countries and economic development, Hansjörg Herr Financial flows and international imbalances – the role of catching-up by late industrializing developing countries, Jan Kregel
Crisis prevention and capital controls in India: Perspectives of capital account liberalisation in the current scenario, Nishtha Khurana
III. International monetary order and imbalances The international monetary (non-) order and the ‘global capital flows paradox’, Jörg Bibow Trends that can’t go on forever, won’t: Financial bubbles, trade and exchange rates, Michael Hudson Macroeconomic policy with open capital accounts, Fernando J. Cardim de Carvalho IV. Financial (in)stability and financial crises Inefficient markets: Causes and consequences, Wolfgang Filc On the manic-depressive fluctuations of speculative prices, Stephan Schulmeister V. Financial market crisis in the USA The rise and fall of the U.S. subprime mortgage market, David F. Milleker On shaky ground: The U.S. mortgage boom and its economic consequences, Christian E. Weller and Kate Sabatini Global imbalances: The U.S. and the rest of the world, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou
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Book Reviews
The HEN-IRE-FPH Project for Developing Heterodox Economics and Rethinking the Economy Through Debate and Dialogue
The Heterodox Economics Newsletter, The International Initiative for Rethinking the Economy (IRE), and the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation for the Progress of Humankind (FPH) (www.fph.ch) have undertaken a joint project to promote the development of heterodox economics. It involves publishing in the Newsletter reviews, analytical summaries, or commentary of articles, books, book chapters, theses, dissertations, government reports, etc. that relate to the following themes: diversity of economic approaches, regulation of goods and services, currency and finance, and trade regimes. These themes relate to heterodox economics and to the open and pluralistic intellectual debates in economics. For further information about the project and queries about reviewing, contact Fred Lee ([email protected]).
Prayukvong, W. (2005) "A Buddhist Economic Approach to the Development of Community Enterprises: a case study from southern Thailand," Cambridge Journal of Economics, 29(6): 1171-1185. Reviewed by Ulas Basar Gezgin, PhD, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Chang, Ha-Joon (2002), ‘Breaking the Mould: an Institutionalist political economy alternative to the neoliberal theory of the market and the state’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 26(5): 539-60.Reviewed by Lynne Chester, Curtin University, Australia
O’Hara, Phillip Anthony (2007), ‘Principles of Institutional-Evolutionary Political Economy – converging themes from the school of heterodoxy,’ Journal of Economic Issues, March 2007, 41(1): 1-42Reviewed by Lynne Chester, Curtin University, Australia
Hanusch, Horst and Pyka, Andreas (2007), "Principles of Neo-Schumpeterian Economics", Cambridge Journal of Economics, 31(2): 275-90.Reviewed by Hans H. Bass, Bremen University of Applied Sciences
Heterodox Graduate Program and PhD Scholarships
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Heterodox Web Sites
The Website for the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University is now up and running. You may visit it athttp://www.econ.duke.edu/CHOPEPlease note that this address is case sensitive.
ClimateChangeEconomics.net, A comprehensive website of resources and tools dedicated to addressing the carbon intensity of our economy and related climate change policy in the 50 states and territories. Our aim is to make ClimateChangeEconomics.net the premier objective research tool for state and federal legislators, as well as regulators and policy analysts, on the economic opportunities presented by the fight against climate change.Roles for heterodox economists: 1. Site members can post links to documents, to web sites and comment on the listings to influence other readers. (Postings rate readability, political bias, geographic focus, web accessibility and offer a description; members can add comments on the posted materials and the documents/web sites.)2. We also solicit short pieces from site members for our sections on: "Basic Economics Guidance" to educate about (neoclassical) economic analysis (and its weaknesses) and to offer other modes of analysis, and "Legislators' Tools" to help them to dissect the analyses and testimony provided to them by asking better questions and understanding the assumptions and analytical logics that lead to particular empirical findings. Dr. Peter B. MeyerPresident and Chief Economist, The E. P. Systems GroupPhone: (502) 435-3240Fax: (859) 491-9252Email: [email protected]
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Dear all
I have successfully established (with the administrator's approval) a new organisation called the 'Association for Heterodox Economics' on 'Academia Tree' - the 'facebook for academics' (www.academia.edu).
If heterodox economists add themselves to one or more of our present three 'Departments' (Committee, Conference Committee, and Members) they will be able to identify their research interests (and add new research interests), upload papers, and will be reached by searches by other academics and from 'outside' (eg Google).
A good way, I think, to demonstrate the research-active and productive nature of heterodox economics and its relevance to the present economic situation.
RegardsAlan Freeman
Announcing CRITICAL MASS, an open discussion forum on political economy and power.
*************************************
Dear All,
The Critical Mass Forum on Political Economy and Power brings together researchers interested in exploring the possibilities and limitations of the concept of power as an alternative basis for re-thinking the tradition of political economy and its foundational categories of value, capital and accumulation. Created and maintained voluntarily by graduate students of political economy at York University in Toronto, Critical Mass aims to extend beyond York to foster online discussion and debate between the global community of researchers working in these areas.
In addition to facilitating a general discussion on political economy and power, the forum also gives participants an opportunity to discuss issues related to statistical data, to post and discuss upcoming political economy events and to receive feedback on their own research.
If you are interested in participating, please visit the forum website: http://www.yorku.ca/cmass/forum/
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Queries from Heterodox Economists
Heterodox Economics Archive Material
DOCUMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX ECONOMICS
For Your Information
A short talk on Australian ABC radio entitled "Should the financial crisis prompt another look at social ownership?" Here is the podcast and transcript.http://www.abc.net.au/rn/perspective/stories/2008/2426170.htm by David McMullen http://economsoc.wordpress.com/A discussion of the talk can be found at Strange Times.http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/?p=155
U. S. Census Bureau Announces a New Product
for Tracking Business Activity
The U.S. Census Bureau announces the release of the Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS), a data series that allows users to track annual changes in employment for growing and shrinking businesses at the establishment level.
There are more than 6 million establishments with paid employees in the United States. These businesses are dynamic: opening and closing, adding and losing employees.
The BDS monitors this activity, tracking annual job creation and destruction at the establishment level using elements not found in similar databases, such as firm age and
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size. Tracking by firm age, for example, allows users to distinguish between new establishments of new firms and new establishments of mature firms. These statistics are crucial to understanding current and historical entrepreneurial activity in the U.S.
“The Business Dynamics Statistics provide data users unprecedented information on the life cycle of U.S. businesses,” said Ron Jarmin, chief economist at the U.S. Census Bureau. “These rich new data will fundamentally change the way people think about job creation and economic growth.”
A number of key economic data items are tabulated by the Business Dynamics Statistics, including number of establishments, establishment openings and closings, employment, job creation and destruction, and job expansions and contractions.
_____________________________________________________________________________________Editor’s note: The information can be accessed at <http://www.ces.census.gov/index.php/bds>.
Analysts and policymakers need to understand business activity and the process of job creation to enable informed decision making. One novel feature of the BDS is that the activity of young entrepreneurial businesses can be comprehensively tracked by industry, state and over time. “The dynamics of businesses in our economy are so important to our economic growth, yet this is an area we are just beginning to understand. These data give the public, policy makers and researchers access to business dynamics information in a level of detail we have never had before,” said Robert Litan, vice president of research and policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
The Business Dynamics Statistics results from a collaboration between the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The information is compiled from a database of establishments and firms tracked over time known as the Longitudinal Business Database.
The Business Dynamics Statistics provide annual statistics from 1976 to 2005 by firm age and size. Annual files are also provided at the state level for Standard Industrial Classification sectors and for the economy as a whole.
Findings from the Business Dynamics Statistics include:
States differ substantially in the creation and establishment of new businesses. States with higher entrepreneurial activity are in the West and Southwest, with as much as 12 percent of employment accounted for by young firms (less than 3 years old). In contrast, states with low entrepreneurial activity are in the East and Midwest, and have about 6 percent of employment accounted for by young firms.
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Establishments owned by younger firms grow faster, on average, than those owned by older firms. However, many young firms close shortly after they open, so the job destruction rate is also higher for establishments owned by younger firms. Hence, BDS shows the pattern for young businesses is one of “up or out,” with rapid net growth for survivors balanced by a high exit rate.
The BDS shows that the fraction of employment accounted for by business startups in the U.S. private sector over the 1980-2005 period is about 3 percent per year. This exceeds the 1.8 percent average annual net employment growth. This pattern implies that job destruction exceeds job creation at existing businesses and highlights the importance of business startups for job creation in the U.S. economy.
Letter Concerning the Swedish Prize in Economics
November 20, 2008
Dear Prof. Sundqvist:
I am sure you have received notes like this before from several others, so you will, possibly, find it not too difficult to pardon me. I write this with the greatest respect for your Academy and its work(s), not least in the area of encouragement of the Arts & Sciences, globally. However, the Award of a Nobel [Memorial] Prize in Economics , all alone in the social sciences, is a matter that I , like many others, find quite anomalous [without disparagement of the individual Prize recipients] Economics, without delving any deeper (as I could, in spades), is a 'Policy Science': so , whether that designation is oxymoronic or not, your Award basically indicates more the Policy Tilt of the Academy , at a particular time [hence devaluing somewhat, en passant, the objectivity of the Award process], than the merits of the scholar being honored.
It were fitting, I think, if such an Award were to be continued, that you chose also to elevate, in fairness, a subject like Linguistics which , au contraire, is a science: and , additionally, perhaps, let Noam Chomsky be its First Recipient.
I can also think of Anthropology, the Mother of all Human/Social Sciences, as another discipline that is, unmistakably, a genuine science, wherein real insights into the human condition are , or maybe can be, both sought, and found.
I am , myself, leastways formally speaking, an 'economist' : so I say this, firstly, from some 'inside' knowledge , not ignorance - and, secondly, I say it out of purely disinterested motivations.Now , chances are that you will shrug this one off, and you are certainlyentitled: but I am being quite serious.
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Of course , I am not necessarily arguing the notion that every science must have a Nobel Prize, though that may not be a bad idea: but that if Economics is to be so graced , why not some other disciplines, also, as noted above, that are at least as deserving, if not more?
It may really be worth considering: for I do believe that ,eventually, what I am proposing now will come about in the fullness of time - so this is only a species of an advance 'clarion call'.
With very best wishes,
Respectfully,
Rajani Kannepalli Kanth
ps I am , to be sure, expressing my personal sentiments only, independent of my present affiliation.
Hampshire College Students Learn What Money Can't BuyBy PETER SCHMIDT
Worried about a tanking stock market? Declining home values? Deflation? Inflation? Your job?
In the face of tough economic times, a new course at Hampshire College this fall offers a consoling thought: Material possessions might not be making you happy anyway — at least not as happy you think.
Taught by Melissa M. Burch, an assistant professor of cognitive development, and Omar S. Dahi, an assistant professor of economics, the introductory-level course, "Consumption and Happiness," explores the relationship between wealth and well-being.
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In keeping with Hampshire College's emphasis on interdisciplinary education — especially in the freshman year — it draws heavily from both psychology and economics while also tapping into such fields as environmental science, philosophy, and religion.
The course is designed to show students that the field of economics has traditionally assumed that wealth and well-being go hand in hand, but the view has been challenged in recent decades by a school of thought known as "happiness economics." That school invokes psychology and other disciplines in arguing that economic success should not be measured in purely monetary terms.
"It is not just soul-searching, but that is a big part of it," Mr. Dahi says. The students in the class "think about their own consumption habits, those of their peers, their future plans, their career choices."
Mr. Dahi credits the idea for the course to Amitava Krishna Dutt, a professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame who has taught undergraduates an intermediate-level course with the same name since 2004. Mr. Dahi helped Mr. Dutt, his dissertation adviser, teach the class, and he resolved to offer a similar course after seeing how engaged the students were.
Mr. Dutt says his course resonates because "we are all consumers, and we all want to be happy in one way or another."
Both this fall's Hampshire course and the Notre Dame course, typically offered in the spring, begin their examination of how consumption relates to happiness by steeping students in a long-running philosophical debate over the matter. Students read how Aristippus, the fourth-century-BC Greek philosopher, held that the goal of life was the pursuit of pleasure, thus giving rise to the tradition of defining happiness in hedonistic terms. Aristotle, coming on Aristippus's heels, dismissed his definition of happiness as vulgar and limiting, and posited that true well-being comes from eudaimonia, the state achieved from living virtuously and in accordance with one's ideals. For the most part, philosophers and religious leaders have been aligning themselves with one or the other ever since.
"Happiness economics" arose mainly from two developments in the 1970s. In 1972, Bhutan's leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, looked at the problems afflicting other developing countries and decided it was folly to treat gross domestic product, or GDP, as the sole measure of the success of his nation's economic policies. He fashioned an alternative, the "gross national happiness" index, or GNH, which took into account goals like protecting the environment and preserving his nation's cultural traditions. His decision would inspire other nations to try to come up with measures of their well-being that considered factors like free time and access to health care.
Then, in 1974, Richard A. Easterlin, then a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, published a paper examining the self-reported happiness levels of people around the world in the context of economic conditions. His groundbreaking
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conclusion — to become known as "the Easterlin paradox" — was that, at least among nations where basic needs are being met, increases in wealth do not bring corresponding increases in happiness. In the United States, for example, he found no evidence that people became happier during the period from 1946 until 1970, a time of rising incomes.
Although other economists have challenged Mr. Easterlin's conclusions, and "happiness indexes" like Bhutan's have been criticized as more geared toward political goals than practical ones, "happiness economics" continues to generate interest. Among the innovations it has spawned is the Happy Planet Index, developed by the New Economics Foundation, which takes the life expectancy, life satisfaction, and environmental footprint of a nation's citizens into account. (The United States ranked 150th out of 178 nations in the first round of rankings, conducted in 2006; Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific, topped the list.)
In co-teaching the Hampshire College class, Ms. Burch walks students through various psychological studies of the relationship between happiness and wealth. The class looks at the sad fates of many lottery winners, examines how self-perceptions and moods are affected by product advertising, and learns the "hedonic treadmill" theory, which holds that people who get what they want end up growing accustomed to it and wanting more.
Students in the Hampshire College class have split into groups of four to undertake research projects based on what they have learned.
Courtney G. Dozetos, a 19-year-old sophomore, says her group is examining contrasts between how Eastern and Western cultures define happiness. "I am not a numbers person," she says, "but it is really fascinating to look at what drives our economy and how our economy sort of drives us."
Other research teams are looking at consumer behavior in response to beauty-product ads or surveying fellow students on the pleasure they derive from shopping.
For her part, Ms. Burch says teaching the cross-disciplinary class — and thinking about the effects of her own ecological footprint — has caused her to abandon plans to replace her 1997 Honda Civic. "I've decided," she says, "to hold onto it until it dies."
http://chronicle.comSection: The FacultyVolume 55, Issue 16, Page A6
Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Chicago Political Economy Group (CPEG): Jobs Program Proposal Here is a link to a jobs program proposal aimed at the kind of fundamental restructuring of the US economy that we believe is necessary to right the U.S. economy over the long term: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dhgjvbdv_531ftpbfsdw. We invite your comments.
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Dora C (Camy) Saavedra
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Where Are the New Jobs for Women? By LINDA HIRSHMANPublished: December 9, 2008
Washington
Hadley Hooper
BARACK OBAMA has announced a plan to stimulate the economy by creating 2.5 million jobs over the next two years. He intends to use the opportunity to make good on two campaign promises — to invest in road and bridge maintenance and school repair and to create jobs that reduce energy use and emissions that lead to global warming.
Mr. Obama compared his infrastructure plan to the Eisenhower-era construction of the Interstate System of highways. It brings back the Eisenhower era in a less appealing way as well: there are almost no women on this road to recovery.
Back before the feminist revolution brought women into the workplace in unprecedented numbers, this would have been more understandable. But today, women constitute about
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46 percent of the labor force. And as the current downturn has worsened, their traditionally lower unemployment rate has actually risen just as fast as men’s. A just economic stimulus plan must include jobs in fields like social work and teaching, where large numbers of women work.
The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force.
It turns out that green jobs are almost entirely male as well, especially in the alternative energy area. A broad study by the United States Conference of Mayors found that half the projected new jobs in any green area are in engineering, a field that is only 12 percent female, or in the heavily male professions of law and consulting; the rest are in such traditional male areas as manufacturing, agriculture and forestry. And like companies that build roads, alternative energy firms also employ construction workers and engineers.
Fortunately, jobs for women can be created by concentrating on professions that build the most important infrastructure — human capital. In 2007, women were 83 percent of social workers, 94 percent of child care workers, 74 percent of education, training and library workers (including 98 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers and 92 percent of teachers’ assistants).
Libraries are closing or cutting back everywhere, while demand for their services, including their Internet connections, has risen. Philadelphia’s proposal last month to close 11 branches brought people into the street to protest.
Many of the jobs women do are already included in Mr. Obama’s campaign promises. Women are teachers, and the campaign promised to provide support for families with children up to the age of 5, increase Head Start financing and quadruple the money spent on Early Head Start to include a quarter-million infants and toddlers. Special education, including arts education, is heavily female as well. Mr. Obama promised to increase financing for arts education and for the National Endowment for the Arts, which supports many school programs.
During the campaign, Mr. Obama also promised that the first part of his plan to combat urban poverty would be to replicate a nonprofit organization in New York called the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 cities across the country. The group, which works to improve the quality of life for children and families in the Harlem neighborhood, employs several hundred people in full- and part-time jobs. By making good on this promise, Mr. Obama could create thousands of jobs for women in social work, teaching and child care.
Unlike the proposal to rebuild roads and bridges, the Harlem Children’s Zone program is urban, and thus really green. If cities become more inviting, more people will live in them — and that means they will drive less, using less fuel. The average New Yorker’s greenhouse gas footprint is only about 29 percent as large as that of the average American; the city is one of the greenest places in America.
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Maybe it would be a better world if more women became engineers and construction workers, but programs encouraging women to pursue engineering have existed for decades without having much success. At the moment, teachers and child care workers still need to support themselves. Many are their families’ sole support.
A public works program can provide needed economic stimulus and revive America’s concern for public property. The current proposal is simply too narrow. Women represent almost half the work force — not exactly a marginal special interest group. By adding a program for jobs in libraries, schools and children’s programs, the new administration can create jobs for them, too.
Linda R. Hirshman is the author of “Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.”
Whose Interests Will Shape Barack Obama’s “Change”?
------------------------- Radical Change Needs Pressure from Below
------------------------- By Ismael Hossein-zadeh
The RemedistBy ROBERT SKIDELSKYDecember 14, 2008; The Way We Live Now; New York Times
Among the most astonishing statements to be made by any policymaker in recent years was Alan Greenspan’s admission this autumn that the regime of deregulation he oversaw as chairman of the Federal Reserve was based on a “flaw”: he had overestimated the ability of a free market to self-correct and had missed the self-destructive power of deregulated mortgage lending. The “whole intellectual edifice,” he said, “collapsed in the summer of last year.”
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What was this “intellectual edifice”? As so often with policymakers, you need to tease out their beliefs from their policies. Greenspan must have believed something like the “efficient-market hypothesis,” which holds that financial markets always price assets correctly. Given that markets are efficient, they would need only the lightest regulation. Government officials who control the money supply have only one task — to keep prices roughly stable.
I don’t suppose that Greenspan actually bought this story literally, since experience of repeated financial crises too obviously contradicted it. It was, after all, only a model. But he must have believed something sufficiently like it to have supported extensive financial deregulation and to have kept interest rates low in the period when the housing bubble was growing. This was the intellectual edifice, of both theory and policy, which has just been blown sky high. As George Soros rightly pointed out, “The salient feature of the current financial crisis is that it was not caused by some external shock like OPEC raising the price of oil. . . . The crisis was generated by the financial system itself.”
This is where the great economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) comes in. Today, Keynes is justly enjoying a comeback. For the same “intellectual edifice” that Greenspan said has now collapsed was what supported the laissez-faire policies Keynes quarreled with in his times. Then, as now, economists believed that all uncertainty could be reduced to measurable risk. So asset prices always reflected fundamentals, and unregulated markets would in general be very stable.
By contrast, Keynes created an economics whose starting point was that not all future events could be reduced to measurable risk. There was a residue of genuine uncertainty, and this made disaster an ever-present possibility, not a once-in-a-lifetime “shock.” Investment was more an act of faith than a scientific calculation of probabilities. And in this fact lay the possibility of huge systemic mistakes.
The basic question Keynes asked was: How do rational people behave under conditions of uncertainty? The answer he gave was profound and extends far beyond economics. People fall back on “conventions,” which give them the assurance that they are doing the right thing. The chief of these are the assumptions that the future will be like the past (witness all the financial models that assumed housing prices wouldn’t fall) and that current prices correctly sum up “future prospects.” Above all, we run with the crowd. A master of aphorism, Keynes wrote that a “sound banker” is one who, “when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way.” (Today, you might add a further convention — the belief that mathematics can conjure certainty out of uncertainty.)
But any view of the future based on what Keynes called “so flimsy a foundation” is liable to “sudden and violent changes” when the news changes. Investors do not process new information efficiently because they don’t know which
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information is relevant. Conventional behavior easily turns into herd behavior. Financial markets are punctuated by alternating currents of euphoria and panic.
Keynes’s prescriptions were guided by his conception of money, which plays a disturbing role in his economics. Most economists have seen money simply as a means of payment, an improvement on barter. Keynes emphasized its role as a “store of value.” Why, he asked, should anyone outside a lunatic asylum wish to “hold” money? The answer he gave was that “holding” money was a way of postponing transactions. The “desire to hold money as a store of wealth is a barometer of the degree of our distrust of our own calculations and conventions concerning the future. . . . The possession of actual money lulls our disquietude; and the premium we require to make us part with money is a measure of the degree of our disquietude.” The same reliance on “conventional” thinking that leads investors to spend profligately at certain times leads them to be highly cautious at others. Even a relatively weak dollar may, at moments of high uncertainty, seem more “secure” than any other asset, as we are currently seeing.
It is this flight into cash that makes interest-rate policy such an uncertain agent of recovery. If the managers of banks and companies hold pessimistic views about the future, they will raise the price they charge for “giving up liquidity,” even though the central bank might be flooding the economy with cash. That is why Keynes did not think that cutting the central bank’s interest rate would necessarily — and certainly not quickly — lower the interest rates charged on different types of loans. This was his main argument for the use of government stimulus to fight a depression. There was only one sure way to get an increase in spending in the face of an extreme private-sector reluctance to spend, and that was for the government to spend the money itself. Spend on pyramids, spend on hospitals, but spend it must.
This, in a nutshell, was Keynes’s economics. His purpose, as he saw it, was not to destroy capitalism but to save it from itself. He thought that the work of rescue had to start with economic theory itself. Now that Greenspan’s intellectual edifice has collapsed, the moment has come to build a new structure on the foundations that Keynes laid.
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Robert Skidelsky is the author most recently of “John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman.”
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