Problem definition and re-evaluating a policy: the real successes of a regeneration scheme

This article seeks to problematize notions of objective policy evaluation using the techniques of interpretive policy analysis, and use the findings to develop a new evaluation and new proposals for policy improvement. It presents evidence from ethnographic fieldwork on the same set of urban regeneration (or renewal) policies in two Scottish neighborhoods between 1989 and 2009. The analysis showed that the policy was variously understood as a failure or a success in four different ways: as a failure within the rationality of official evaluation; as a failure because of the stigma in wider society against deprived neighborhoods; as a failure in some ways by local community activists describing their lived experience through local knowledge; and as a success through local knowledge of the improvements to the physical environment. It demonstrates how policy problem definition and evaluation are closely intertwined and therefore for a policy to be judged a success requires a nuanced understanding of policy problems within their wider social context

From area-based initiatives to strategic partnerships: have we lost the meaning of regeneration?

For forty years area-based initiatives (ABIs) were the primary tool used by UK governments to tackle problems of concentrated deprivation and dereliction. The last decade saw these initiatives end, replaced by new forms of city-wide or region-wide governance: Local Strategic Partnerships in England and Community Planning Partnerships in Scotland. It was argued in both policy documents and policy analysis that this change would deliver more effective regeneration for all communities. Challenging this narrative, I present this policy shift as a change in the meaning of regeneration policy using the methodology of interpretive policy analysis. The evidence from Scottish experience suggests that for a key policy actor-community activists in deprived neighbourhoods-the approach of ABIs had a great deal of meaning as regeneration. Furthermore, this meaning was still present a decade after an ABI had ended. Meanwhile, the newer strategic partnerships were delivering little meaningful change. This difference in meaning is used to reimagine strategic regeneration as a more positive process

The Dialectics of Differentiation: Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts and Their Relation to His Economics

The notion that Marx neither understood nor advocated the use of mathematics is a persistent one. His interest in both commercial and abstract mathematics spanned more than two decades however, and culminated in two "contributions" to the foundations of the calculus: "On the Concept of the Differential" (1881). A detailed examination of these and other technical notebooks suggests that Marx's economics both motivated and informed his studies in mathematics and that these, in turn, influenced his understanding of economic phenomena.

Technological Unemployment: A New View

This paper extends the now familiar Shapiro-Stiglitz (1984) model of labor market behavior to reconsider the controversial proposition that some forms of innovation have persistent displacement effects. In particular, it finds that when distinctions between random production failures and reduced effort level are difficult to draw, the adoption f new methods of production that compel more effort, break down more often and/or allow for closer supervision will sometimes induce technological joblessness. The possible magnitude of such dislocation, its welfare effects and the possibilities for invention are then discussed in detail.labor discipline, technological change, displacement

Paradise Lost and Found? The Econometric Contributions of Clive W.J. Granger and Robert F. Engle

This paper provides a non-technical and illustrated introduction to the econometric contributions of the 2003 Nobel Prize winners, Robert Engle and Clive Granger, with special emphasis on their implications for heterodox economists.ARCH, GARCH, cointegration, error correction model, general-to-speci...c

Labor Discipline, Reputation and Underemployment Traps

The introduction of "effort inducible" and non-effort" workers into an otherwise standard model of labor discipline produces a paradox of sorts: when firms cannot tell the difference, the predictable reductions in both output and real wages are sometimes accompanied by an increase in profits. The resolution of this paradox is found in the difference in expected productities of workers with and without jobs, the source of a reputation effect that alters the balance of labor market power. When, as a consequence of the acquisition and depreciation of productive skills, the relative proportions of such workers are then endogenized, the model exhibits multiple equilibria for plausible parameter values. One of these equilibria can be understood as a new sort of "underemployment trap" with an atrophied primary sector.labor discipline, reputation effect, positive feedback, underemployment trap