Insatiability and Crisis: Using Interdisciplinarity to Understand (and Denaturalize) Contemporary Humans

This chapter illustrates how collaboration between different social sciences can encourage students to think critically about prevailing assumptions regarding human nature. Both the chapter and the pedagogical experience on which it is based investigate the distinctive type of human created by capitalist society. In so doing, it takes a heterodox approach to analyzing the concept of an insatiable human nature through a case study that invites students to critically assess this perspective. This discussion then leads to an investigation and critique of traditional neoclassical Economic assumptions about human behavior, which forms the basis for a case study on the causes of the global economic and financial crisis of 2008. The goal is to facilitate students’ development of a more grounded perspective on real world events

Come back Marshall, all is forgiven? : Complexity, evolution, mathematics and Marshallian exceptionalism

Marshall was the great synthesiser of neoclassical economics. Yet with his qualified assumption of self-interest, his emphasis on variation in economic evolution and his cautious attitude to the use of mathematics, Marshall differs fundamentally from other leading neoclassical contemporaries. Metaphors inspire more specific analogies and ontological assumptions, and Marshall used the guiding metaphor of Spencerian evolution. But unfortunately, the further development of a Marshallian evolutionary approach was undermined in part by theoretical problems within Spencer's theory. Yet some things can be salvaged from the Marshallian evolutionary vision. They may even be placed in a more viable Darwinian framework.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Cross-border electronic commerce: distance effects and express delivery in European Union markets

This empirical study examines distance effects on cross-border electronic commerce and in particular the importance of express delivery in reducing the time dimension of distance. E-commerce provides suppliers with a range of opportunities to reduce distance as perceived by online buyers. They can reduce psychological barriers to cross-border demand by designing websites that simplify the search for and comparison of products and suppliers across countries. They can reduce cost barriers by applying pricing strategies that redistribute transportation costs, and they can overcome time barriers offering express delivery services. This study of 721 regions in five countries of the European Union shows that distance is not “dead” in e-commerce, that express delivery reduces distance for cross-border demand, and that e-demand delivered by express services is more time sensitive and less price sensitive than e-demand satisfied by standard delivery. The willingness of e-customers to pay for express services is shown to be affected by income and by the relative lead-time benefits and express charges. Furthermore, the adoption of express delivery is positively associated with e-loyalty in terms of repurchase rates. The results confirm the importance for e-suppliers of cleverly designed delivery services to reduce distance in order to attract online customers across borders

The Return of Character: Parallels Between Late-Victorian and Twenty-First Century Discourses

There has been an increasingly common trend in the UK to identify character skills and traits as the basis for various individual successes and achievements. In education policy and employment services, character has been linked to the making of successful, morally aware, employable and socially mobile citizens. This article explores the late-nineteenth century use of character discourses, focusing on the economist Alfred Marshall. During this period character was associated with future-oriented subjects – those displaying provident and thrifty habits and dispositions – and held particular class, race and gender prejudices. The article draws parallels between this late-Victorian approach to character and the ‘return’ of character in twenty-first century education and welfare-to-work policy, in particular where cultivating character is linked to improving employability and social mobility. We can make productive comparisons between character’s Victorian legacy and its reemergence more recently amid increasingly moralized discourses around poverty, inequality and unemployment. In doing so, we might better understand the historical antecedents to stigmatizing character discourses today, insofar as they leave the burden of responsibility for particular social outcomes in life and the labour market with individuals and their ability to cultivate their own human capital