Robots and us: towards an economics of the ‘Good Life’

(Expected) adverse effects of the ‘ICT Revolution’ on work and opportunities for individuals to use and develop their capacities give a new impetus to the debate on the societal implications of technology and raise questions regarding the ‘responsibility’ of research and innovation (RRI) and the possibility of achieving ‘inclusive and sustainable society’. However, missing in this debate is an examination of a possible conflict between the quest for ‘inclusive and sustainable society’ and conventional economic principles guiding capital allocation (including the funding of research and innovation). We propose that such conflict can be resolved by re-examining the nature and purpose of capital, and by recognising mainstream economics’ utilitarian foundations as an unduly restrictive subset of a wider Aristotelian understanding of choice

Theoretical Foundations of Social Innovation in Finance

Deliverable D5.2 of the E.U. FP-7 project CrESSI (613261

Report Contrasting CRESSI’s Approach of Social Innovation with that of Neoclassical Economics

Deliverable 1.

The state and class discipline: European labour market policy after the financial crisis

This paper looks at two related labour market policies that have persisted and even proliferated across Europe both before and after the financial crisis: wage restraint, and punitive workfare programmes. It asks why these policies, despite their weak empirical records, have been so durable. Moving beyond comparative-institutionalist explanations which emphasise institutional stickiness, it draws on Marxist and Kaleckian ideas around the concept of ‘class discipline’. It argues that under financialisation, the need for states to implement policies that discipline the working class is intensified, even if these policies do little to enable (and may even counteract) future stability. Wage restraint and punitive active labour market policies are two examples of such measures. Moreover, this disciplinary impetus has subverted and marginalised regulatory labour market institutions, rather than being embedded within them

OECD demand regimes (1960-2000)

Real wage growth restraint is generally regarded as a necessary condition for sustained gross domestic product growth and lower unemployment in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We use a general Keynesian growth model, allowing demand growth to be wage led or profit led, to argue that the case for real wage restraint is based on weak foundations. The model is applied to eight OECD countries (1960-2000). We find that (1) demand is wage led in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and (2) the decline in world trade growth is the dominant cause of sluggish growth in all economies, including profit-led Japan and the United States.demand-led growth, OECD unemployment, wage-led and profit-led demand regimes,

Technology, demand and distribution: a cumulative growth model with an application to the Dutch productivity growth slowdown

This paper argues that the case for real wage growth restraint, and the consequent restoration of profitability, which the mainstream consensus regards as a necessary condition for sustained output and productivity growth, is based on weak foundations, because it neglects the negative impact of wage moderation on productivity growth. Using a general Keynesian growth model, which integrates a (wage-led or profit-led) demand regime and a productivity regime (incorporating the productivity-growth enhancing effects of higher demand and higher real wages), the conditions are identified under which real wage restraint fails to raise output and productivity growth. The model is applied empirically to the Netherlands (1960--2000). Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

It is high time to ditch the NAIRU

According to the mainstream theory of equilibrium unemployment, persistent unemployment is caused (mainly) by "excessive" labor market regulation, whereas aggregate demand, capital accumulation, and technological progress have no lasting effect on unemployment. We argue that the mainstream nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) model is only a special case of a general model of equilibrium unemployment, in which aggregate demand, investment, and endogenous technological progress have long-term effects. It follows that the labor market policy prescriptions (i.e., to drastically deregulate), following from the standard NAIRU model, can by no means be generalized. Empirical support for the general model is provided by an econometric analysis for 20 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (1984-97): demand factors are the overriding determinants of structural unemployment in the OECD.demand-led growth, endogenous technological progress, equilibrium unemployment, Kaldor-Verdoorn relation, NAIRU,