New phase of development and knowledge capitalism: gramsci’s historical revenge?

Gramsci’s contribution to Marxism is based on the understanding of the historicity of capitalism, not only as a mode of production that prepares the historical-material conditions for scientific socialism (which is Marx's contribution), but as changing (historical) unities between economy, politics, ideology, and culture that represent historical phases of development within the mode of production. It is, in fact, this understanding that distinguishes Gramsci from the rest of the early Marxist theoreticians after Marx. In this sense, the problem that Gramsci poses in Prison Notebooks is how to explain, based on the Marxist theoretical framework, the emergence and decline of the historical phases of development of capitalism, without the (historical) crises that intervene in this transition resulting in a process of social revolution that leads to the scientific socialism foreseen by Marx. This unfolding of these developments was already evident at the time in which the Notebooks were written with the emergence of americanism and fascism. This article argues that the tremendous timeliness of Gramscian thought resides in the appreciation that, at the current time, just as in the 1930s, the transition to a new phase of the development of capitalism, for which the term knowledge capitalism is proposed, is verifiable, for which the technological-productive fundamentals have thus far been developed without its projection having yet taken place in the superstructure. From this flows a double historical revenge of Gramscian thought, since, on the one hand, it provides a valuable theoretical instrument for understanding and taking advantage of historical change, and, on the other, it offers major political strategic principles that at the current time, based on forms of production and autonomous social organization of the subaltern groups and classes within knowledge capitalism, have the historical-social space to contribute to the construction of an alternative hegemony characteristic of these classes and groups. To delve into this question, the article has been divided in three sections. The first section presents Gramscian theoretical tools for understanding historical change; the second synthetically explains the distinctive features of the new phase of development and characterizes the moment of its current unfolding in light of the previously mentioned theoretical instruments, and the third section discusses postcapitalist forms of production and social organization that could lead to the formation of alternative hegemonic social blocs in the framework of the emergence of the new phase of development that is becoming a historical epoch

Smooth transitions, asymmetric adjustment and unit roots

The aim of this paper is to develop a unit root test that takes into account two sources of nonlinearites in data, i.e. asymmetric speed of mean reversion and structural changes. The asymmetric speed of mean reversion is modeled by means of a exponential smooth transition autoregression (ESTAR) function for the autoregressive parameter, whereas structural changes are approximated by a smooth transition in the deterministic components. We find that the proposed test performs well in terms of size and power, in particular when the autoregressive parameter is close to one

The Balassa-Samuelson Effect and the Wage, Price and Unemployment Dynamics in Spain

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the wage, price and unemployment dynamics that have taken place in Spain during the last two decades. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the impact of the European economic integration process on Spanish labour market and the convergence to a European level of prosperity. We find some important lessons to be learnt from the Spanish experience that should be relevant for the new member states. First, high competitiveness in the tradable sector seems crucial for the real and nominal convergence to be successful, implying that the increase of wages in the tradable sector, and subsequently in the nontradable sector, should not be allowed to exceed the growth in productivity. Second, before fixing the real exchange rate it seems crucial that it is on its sustainable (competitive) purchasing power parity level. A real appreciation, as a result of high growth rates during the catching-up period, is likely to be harmful for real growth and employment.Balassa-Samuelson effect; nominal and real convergence; unemployment dynamics; purchasing power parity; cointegrated VAR

Nonlinear trend stationarity of real exchange rates: the case of the Mediterranean countries

The aim of this article is to provide additional evidence on the fulfilment of the Purchasing Power Parity hypothesis in the so-called Mediterranean countries. In order to test for the empirical validity of such hypothesis, we have applied two types of unit root tests. The first group is due to Bierens (1997) who generalizes the alternative hypothesis to nonlinear trend stationariry and, the second is the Leybourne, Newbold and Vougas (1998) approach that uses a nonlinear specification for the intercept and slope in order to detrend the series. The results suggest that the evidence in favour of the Purchasing Power Parity hypothesis increases when we allow for nonlinear alternatives

Voluntary Agreements and the Environmental Efficiency of Participating Farms

Voluntary environmental agreements have been popular with government agencies in several countries. However, many questions remain about their efficiency as a regulatory tool. Recent analyses suggest that they are more effective than classical regulatory or economic approaches when dealing with nonpoint pollution and when innovation processes at the source are necessary to define effective regulation. This paper applies an activitybased framework to assess the contribution of voluntary agreements to the environmental performance of farms participating voluntarily in a whole farm plan in the Southern part of Belgium. Using a cross-section of 52 farms, our results show that farms entering into environmental agreements are environmentally more efficient than non-participating farms when non-desirable outputs and the conservation of landscape features is accounted for in the analysis. --Agri-environmental indicators,Data envelopment analysis,Environmental efficiency,Voluntary agreements,Whole farm plan

Informal sector, productivity, and tax collection

The informal sector is a prominent characteristic of many developing countries. Most of the literature has focused on understanding the determinants of informality. The connection between the informal sector and economic development is, nonetheless, relatively less understood. One of the most important determinants of informality is the tax enforcement quality of a country which, some authors argue, additionally distorts firms' decisions and creates inefficiency. In this paper, I assess the quantitative importance of the effects of incomplete tax enforcement on aggregate output and productivity. I use a dynamic general equilibrium framework to study effects that have received little attention in the literature. I calibrate the model using data for Mexico, an economy where 31% of the employees work in informal establishments. I then investigate the effects of improving enforcement. My main finding is that under complete enforcement, Mexico's labor productivity and output would be 17% higher.Informal Sector, Productivity, tax enforcement, TFP, Heterogeneous plants

Knowledge management, innovation and big data: Implications for sustainability, policy making and competitiveness

This Special Issue of Sustainability devoted to the topic of “Knowledge Management, Innovation and Big Data: Implications for Sustainability, Policy Making and Competitiveness” attracted exponential attention of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers from all over the world. Locating themselves at the expanding cross-section of the uses of sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT) and insights from social science and engineering, all papers included in this Special Issue contribute to the opening of new avenues of research in the field of innovation, knowledge management, and big data. By triggering a lively debate on diverse challenges that companies are exposed to today, this Special Issue offers an in-depth, informative, well-structured, comparative insight into the most salient developments shaping the corresponding fields of research and policymaking

Two and Three Nucleon Forces

Chiral symmetry allows two and three nucleon forces to be treated in a single theoretical framework. We discuss two new features of this research programme at \cO(q^4) and the consistency of the overall chiral picture.Comment: Talk at the 18th International IUPAP Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Santos, Brazi