WIDER Advisory Group on International Economic Issues

(A research and training centre of the United Nations University

Drivers of Change or Cut-Throat Competitors? Challenging Cultures of Innovation of Chinese and Nigerian Migrant Entrepreneurs in West Africa

L'afflux remarquable des entrepreneurs migrants chinois dans différents pays d'Afrique occidentale au cours des dernières années a été heurtée à une résistance de plus en plus farouche par des entrepreneurs locaux établis. Que le premiers ont un avantage concurrentiel sur ce dernier en raison de traits socio-culturels distinctifs, ou si l'efficacité supposée chinoise est juste une caractéristique de toutes les diasporas mercantiles, est ouvert à la question. Cette étude exploratoire des migrants entrepreneuriales chinois et nigérians au Ghana et au Bénin tente de répondre à cette question. Apparemment, les forces culturels des agents du changement migrants ne sont pas limités à des systèmes de valeurs héritées ou religions, comme une éthique protestante ou le confucianisme, mais ils sont adaptés en permanence et ont inventé de nouveau par des réseaux transnationaux de la migration dans un monde globalisé. Il n'y a aucune preuve d'une prétendue supériorité de la culture d’innovation chinois par rapport aux cultures d’innovation africains des migrants entrepreneuriales. Plutôt, il existe une capacité accrue d'innovation d'une diaspora mercantile en général vis à vis des entrepreneurs locaux, indépendamment de l'origine de la culture nationale dans lequel il est intégré. En outre, la rivalité des entrepreneurs migrants chinois et nigérians dans les marchés africains ne conduit pas nécessairement à la concurrence coupe-gorge souvent suspectée sous l'impact de la mondialisation. Souvent, les deux groupes agissent plutôt complémentaires. Cela contribue, sous certaines conditions, même à la réduction de la pauvreté dans le pays d'accueil

Inconvenient glow: Cliometrics and the "golden age" of capitalism

This paper aims to criticize the recent cliometrics literature on the so-called "golden age" of capitalism. The works of Nicholas Crafts, Gianni Toniolo, and Barry Eichengreen are reconstructed in order to reveal the main characteristics of this research program. Its narrow quantitative focus, its reliance on theoretical propositions borrowed from neoclassical economics, and its auspicious interpretation of the postwar reconstruction are the main focus of the criticism presented. Finally, the cliometricians' attempt to historicize the "golden age" and de-historicize the following decades is related to the ideological understanding of the recent decades as a period of "great moderation."

Raising Keynes: A General Theory for the 21st century

Keynes’s General Theory argues there is no self-regulating mechanism that guarantees full employment. Keynes’s vision has been distorted by mainstream Keynesians to mean that it is the warts on the body of capitalism, not capitalism itself, that are the problem: frictions and imperfections and rigidities may interfere with the mechanism for self-regulation that inheres in the perfectly competitive model. This distortion has two supposed corollaries, first, that the more the economy resembles the textbook model of perfect competition, the less likely are lapses from full employment; second, that since imperfections are limited to the short run, so are lapses from full employment.Keynes was unable to convince the economics profession that the problem is capitalism; that the warts, real though they are, obscure a more fundamental problem. The reason is that Keynes lacked the mathematical tools to substantiate his vision. This paper deploys tools that were unavailable to Keynes, in order to lay the foundations of a Keynesian macroeconomics for the 21st century. Keywords: Keynes, Dynamic vs static models, Flexprice adjustment, Fixprice adjustment, JEL codes: B22, B41, E1

A Plea for Pluralism

Mainstream economics is one way of understanding how the economy works, but mainstream economists argue much more: that mainstream economics is the onlyway of understanding the economy. Mainstream economists should embrace pluralism for reasons suggested by John Stuart Mill: as a guard against the tyranny of the majority, a tyranny that fortifies itself against doubt not by reason but by power; even if the majority is right and the doubters wrong, engaging with doubt is a way to strengthen correct arguments; and, most likely, according to Mill, there is partial truth on the side of heterodoxy as well as on the orthodox side. The two elements of the power of mainstream economists are related: the police power over what is and what is not published in the major journals, and the role of publication in these journals in the tenure process. Pluralism is not an issue of concern to academics only. Economists of all stripes may try to construct the economy in the image of their theories, but for some time the mainstream has had the upper hand, just as it does in the academy. The push to deregulate the economy, which began in the United States during the Carter presidency, had its full flowering in the financial crisis of 2008.What will it take to allow heterodoxy into the academy? If history is any guide, innovations in economics take root when they are allied to successful political movements. One case in point is the symbiosis between Keynes’s General Theory and the New Deal and social democracy. Another is the resurgence of pre-Keynesian theory dressed up in the high-tech mathematics of New Classical theory and the coming to power of the apostles of neoliberalism in the 1980s. It’s a good bet that for a new economics to take hold in this century, it will do so in partnership, however tacit, with a new politics