Keynes’s missing axioms

Between Keynes’s verbalized theory and its formal basis persists a lacuna. The conceptual groundwork is too small and not general. The quest for a comprehensive formal basis is guided by the question: what is the minimum set of foundational propositions for a consistent reconstruction of the money economy? We start with three structural axioms. The claim of generality entails that it should be possible to prove that Keynes’s formalism is a subset of the structural axiom set. The axioms are applied to a central part of the General Theory in order to achieve consistency and generality

The discourse of globalisation and the logic of no alternative : rendering the contingent necessary in the political economy of New Labour

Although convincingly discredited academically, a crude 'business school' globalisation thesis of a single world market, with its attendant political 'logic of no alternative', continues to dominate the discourse of globalisation adopted by the British Labour Party. Here, we identify three separate, albeit reinforcing, articulations of the policy 'necessities' associated with global economic change. Labour's leaders are shown to have utilised a flexible synthesis of potentially contradictory ideas in constructing their chosen discourse of globalisation to guide the conduct of British economic policy following the Party's election victory in 1997. We conclude that Labour appealed to the image of globalisation as a non-negotiable external economic constraint in order to render contingent policy choices 'necessary' in the interests of electoral rejuvenation

Assessing the Role of Foreign Direct Investment in China’s Economic Development: Macro Indicators and Insights from Sectoral-Regional Analyses

The objective of this paper is to assess the role of FDI in China’s economic development with reference to the broader literature on FDI and late development. Three main findings come out from the analyses in the paper. First, it is found that FDI tends to promote the improvement in allocative efficiency, while having a negative impact on productive efficiency. Second, insofar as FDI does promote overall productivity growth, this tends to be a matter of cumulative causation rather than one of single-direction causation. Third, in the context of a comparative analysis of two distinctive regional models, it is found that the economic impact of FDI tends to be more favourable in the inward-looking, capital-deepening pattern of development (the ‘Shanghai model’) than that in the export-oriented, labour-intensive pattern (the ‘Guangdong model’). Further analyses, however, suggest that the ‘Shanghai model’ has its intrinsic problems of sustainability. The scope for applying it to China as a whole is thus judged to be limited

Globalisation and Comparative Economics: Of Efficiency, Efficient Institutions, and Late Development

Does globalisation entail a demand for uniformity, or diversity, of the (political) economic institutions of nation-states? What is the theoretical underpinning of the demand? And what are the implications of the demand for economic development? The conventional literature known as comparative economic systems has been unable to answer these question, because there is an intrinsic tension between its methodology (the neoclassical framework of individualistic rational choices and their equilibrium) and the subject matter (the multiplicity of economic institutions and development experiences in the real world). The new comparative economics has consisted of a variety of attempts to cope with this tension: some aimed at preserving the neoclassical framework at a more fundamental level, while some others aimed at transcending the framework to arrive at a new theory of economic systems and development. This paper argues that attempts that adhere to the neoclassical tradition is likely to lead to dead ends, while attempts that encompass collective as well as individualistic rationality represent more promising directions. Fuller developments of the literature, however, require incorporating objectified institutions and paradigmised technology into its sphere of inquiry. It is submitted that there are important lessons to learn from classical political economy and their modern presentations, particularly Marxian theories of the social forces of production, in this regard

The Biopolitical Economy of Anti-Essentialism

If we are to understand the nature of the relationship between a culture and its economy it is necessary to trace out the logic that informs the apparently disparate currents that make up that culture and its economy. There are any number of loci by reference to which this relationship might be discerned, but none are so important or profound, or for that matter so telling, than our body. Following on from two previous articles this essay approaches the subject by way of Foucault’s understanding of the ‘biopolitical’.[1] Through the issues of sexuality and eugenics we see how the logic informing early modern liberal philosophy worked itself out, coming to its full realisation in what is today referred to as ‘anti-essentialism’. The rise of anti-essentialism is concomitant with, if not identical with, the rise of capitalism proper. Anti-essentialism, both as a cultural and economic phenomena, is necessary for the rise to global dominance of capitalism. Although anti-essentialism is often thought of in terms of postmodernism and performance theory something of its logic was understood in the early modern period. And it was so by way of opposition to the growing defence and acceptance of free-market economics, which acceptance went hand in glove with a free market in credit and debt, which is to say in the liberalisation of anti-usury laws

Il turista della società post-moderna: la cultura del new life tourism Spazio, luogo e non luogo Turismo, paesaggio, spazi pubblici e rigenerazione urbana Tematismi e tematizzazione. Itinerari culturali e strade turistiche per una ricomposizione spaziale.

I materiali sono composti dalle prime tre presentazioni, i contributi dedicati al tema dell'autenticità, della diversa interpretazione di spazio, luogo e non luogo e degli itinerari culturali. Completano questo primo deposito di materiale didattico due approfondimenti sulla Consumer Culture Theory e Service Dominat Logic

Neoliberalism and the Crisis of Legal Theory

INTRODUCTION: Patients have the right to influence the care they receive, but their wish to participate in care decision-making is unclear. AIM: This study investigates whether participation in nursing documentation influences patient participation in care decision-making, mastery, self-esteem, empowerment and depressive feelings among adult in-patients with chronic disease. MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY: Adult patients (n=39) with chronic diseases were randomized. The intervention group participated in nursing documentation. Upon departure, patients filled in questionnaires about participation in care decision-making, mastery, self-esteem, empowerment and depressive feelings. RESULTS: The majority of the patients preferred a collaborative or passive role regarding care decision-making. Lack of knowledge was one reason for non-participation. Having been diagnosed more than five years previously meant stronger empowerment. CONCLUSION: It is a challenge for nurses to find strategies to assess patients' wishes regarding participation in care decision-making. Nurses must support patients' knowledge of their disease and empowerment

Ecological Economics and Human Ecology

While economic theory has been enormously influential since the eighteenth century, the level of dominance of culture, politics and ethics gained by it in the last few decades is unprecedented. Not only has economic theory taken the place of political philosophy and ethical discourse and imposed its own concepts and image of society on other social sciences, it has redefined the natural sciences through its own categories as nothing but instruments of production, investment in which is to be judged in terms of its profitability. In this chapter I challenge all this, arguing for the primacy of political philosophy inspired by T.H. Green, showing how A.N. Whitehead provided the natural philosophy to defend Green's social liberalism. I then defend ecological economics and human ecology based on assumptions deriving from Whitehead to replace current economic and political doctrines as the basis for formulating public policy

Making financial history: The crisis of 2008 and the return of the past

The past does not simply provide conditions of possibility for capitalist finance; it also serves as a vital resource for those who might seek to understand or negotiate it in a particular present. However, scholars of finance and crisis have overlooked this point at precisely the same time that they themselves have sought to find clues or lessons in financial history. This article provides a reading of how and why the past has come to acquire such a strange presence within contemporary capitalism. Following Michel de Certeau, it approaches historiography as an operation, focusing on how the past has figured within three distinct but related fields of social science – namely, financial economics, economic history, and constructivist political economy. It demonstrates how each of these fields has been structured around an exclusion of the recollected past as an input into historical process, and argues that this has been revealed by the discursive response to the crisis of 2008, which in turn should be understood as a breakdown in the machinery of capitalist historiography. It concludes by suggesting that in order to grasp the potential productivity of such a breakdown, scholars of the global economy should begin to make a place for ‘the practical past’ within both their visions of history and methods of historical research

Language and argumentation in the controversy economic

This article offers an approach to the general structure of the controversy in economy. In our case we adopted a perspective to study a particular aspect of the rhetoric that comes from the context of a particular controversy: the controversy on the advantages of the free commerce between Daly and Bhagwati. It is sustained that the positions in economy present with relative frequency interest conflicts that are revealed in the dialectic one of the arguments. A proponent in open defense of the free commerce is not released of presumptions reflected in the field of the rhetoric. Reason why to include the language dimensions of the argumentation in economy has advantages for the field of the explanation and the epistemology in the social sciences.