Marx, Justice, and the Dialectic Method

An interesting controversy has recently been provoked by Allen Wood. He argues that capitalism, for Marx, cannot be faulted as far as justice is concerned. For Marx, the concept of justice belonging to any society is rooted in, grows out of, and expresses that particular society\u27s mode of production. Justice is not a standard by which human reason in the abstract measures actions or institutions--there is no eternal, unchanging norm of justice. Each social epoch gives rise to its own standard; each generally lives up to it; and each must be measured by this standard alone. Thus, in Wood\u27s view, capitalism is perfectly just for Marx.

The Ethical Dimension of Economic Choices

In general, capitalist countries display sustained growth, dynamism and innovation, and a high adaptability in response to external shocks. Yet in the last twenty years discontent over the notorious drawbacks of capitalism – corporate frauds, corruption, abuses of market power – has grown continually. In this paper, we argue that no remedy to these difficulties can be found if ethical dilemmas are not anticipated and addressed at the individual, firm and economy-wide level. While pro-ethical changes in business regulation would help, government action alone may not be effective enough. Given that the social sciences provide the general framework of reference for human action, better integration of the ethical dimension by these disciplines would bring about additional benefits. In particular, economic theory would gain from developing more in-depth reflection on human end-goals and values.Calculativeness; Capitalism; Corporate social responsibility; Economics; Virtue Ethics

Environmental Mechanism Designs in a New Order of Regulatory Capitalism

Complexity of environmental programs is most apparent with information asymmetries, making the design of efficient mechanisms particularly challenging. As developed theoretically in this paper, a new regulatory capitalism paradigm mating voluntary agreements with environmental education can produce outcomes at least as efficient as voluntary agreements alone. Such a design exploits a key difference between voluntary agreements versus educational programs in terms of their impact on agents' incentive compatibilities. Specifically, in a principal-agent model, voluntary agreements are associated with an incentive-compatibility constraint, whereas educational programs are not. The efficient bundle will likely consist of a set of education programs and voluntary agreements. With the new order of regulatory capitalism, it is time to concentrate on removing barriers yielding inefficient mono-mechanism design and start constructing multidimensional incentives to efficiently allocate effort toward environmental and economic goals.Command and control, environmental education, environmental policy, voluntary agreements, Environmental Economics and Policy,

"The Spirit of Capitalism and Asset Pricing: an Empirical Investigation"

We extend and test two models of aggregate asset pricing that feature status-seeking through accumulation of not only financial assets but also human capital. We use weak-identification robust tests to confront these models with U.S. data. Contrary to previous results, we find that the spirit of capitalism hypothesis, modeled as either direct preference for wealth or pursuit of relative wealth status, is rejected in the aggregate data. Therefore, adding status motive alone to an otherwise standard model may not be sufficient to resolve the equity premium puzzle.

The Spirit of Capitalism and Asset Pricing: an Empirical Investigation (Subsequently published in "The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics (Topics in Macroeconomics)", 2006, Vol. 6, Issue 3, Article 1, 1-23. )

We extend and test two models of aggregate asset pricing that feature status-seeking through accumulation of not only financial assets but also human capital. We use weak-identification robust tests to confront these models with U.S. data. Contrary to previous results, we find that the spirit of capitalism hypothesis, modeled as either direct preference for wealth or pursuit of relative wealth status, is rejected in the aggregate data. Therefore, adding status motive alone to an otherwise standard model may not be sufficient to resolve the equity premium puzzle.

The Capitalist Kitchen: Chemicals, Food Safety, and Public Awareness

Overview: Capitalism is a system based on individual rights with the principles of laissez-faire and the free market. In a capitalist economy, one has the individual right to succeed or fail. One is supposed to have the right to rise from poverty to riches, if they possess the skills and willpower to do so. While Ayn Rand’s notion of capitalism persuades one to believe it is a system of justice, corporate greed and political persuasion have taken a functional system and corrupted it. The system is rampant with insatiable hunger for more wealth, and the principles of capitalism allow for those with the most wealth to exponentially increase their wealth, even though it means taking from those who already have little or none to give. The system is not concerned with ethics or morality, rather how much profit they can make and how fast. Although this is a concern in all areas of the economy, this entirely and specifically applies to the agricultural industry. We cannot live without nutrition; we are all consumers and victims of agribusiness. The system has allowed for consumers to have their rights stripped and information withheld. Corporations and agribusiness take precedent over the basic rights of the human. Capitalism is no longer a system of justice and freedom, rather a system of exploitation and deception. This applies specifically in agribusiness by means of nutritional support of the poor, genetically modified crops and the labeling debate, industrial farming and the meat industry. By drawing on research in these areas, I will argue that capitalism and its policies have led America off the right path and down a track of corruption and immorality