Identities, Education and Reentry: Performative Spaces and Enclosures

This is part one of a two-part interdisciplinary paper that examines the various forces (discourses and institutional processes) that shape prisoner-student identities. Discourses of officers from a correctional website serve as a limited, single case study of discourses that ascribe dehumanized, stigmatized identities to the prisoner. Two critical concepts, performative spaces and identity enclosures, are purposed as potential critical, emancipatory terms to explore the prisoner-student identity work that occurs in schools and elsewhere in prison. This paper is guided by the effort to assist teachers to act as transformative intellectuals in prisons and closed-custody settings by becoming more aware of the multilayered contexts--the politics of location--that undergird their work. Seeing the bigger picture has implications for how and what educators teach in prison settings and, perhaps, why education works to facilitate reentry. This paper is grounded in normalization theory. Normalization theorists believe prisons can facilitate reentry when they mirror important dimensions of outside life. The performance of multiple, contextualized identities, considered here and examined in more detail in a forthcoming article, serves as an example of how educators mirror normal life by facilitating the performance of different roles for prisoners on the inside

Information, sticky prices and macroeconomic foundations : commentary

Macroeconomics

A note on purifying mixed strategy equilibria in the search model of money

A construction of a nonsymmetric, pure-strategy equilibrium payoff-equivalent to the symmetric, mixed-strategy equilibrium.Monetary theory

The labor market implications of unemployment insurance and short-term compensation

Two types of unemployment insurance systems are studied. In one, unemployed workers receive benefits while those on reduced hours do not, as in North America (at least until recently). In the other, short-time compensation is paid to workers on reduced hours, as in Europe. With incomplete experience-rating of unemployment insurance taxes, the first system leads to inefficient temporary layoffs. The latter system does not lead to layoffs but does lead to inefficient hours per worker. Some cross-country evidence is presented regarding these effects. The implication of the analysis is that policy reform on the tax, not the benefit, side of the system is the best way to reduce the inefficiencies implied by both types of unemployment insurance.Unemployment insurance ; Labor market

Money in search equilibrium, in competitive equilibrium, and in competitive search equilibrium

We compare three market structures for monetary economies: bargaining (search equilibrium); price taking (competitive equilibrium); and price posting (competitive search equilibrium). We also extend work on the microfoundations of money by allowing a general matching technology and entry. We study how equilibrium and the effects of policy depend on market structure.Money ; Equilibrium (Economics)

New monetarist economics: methods

This essay articulates the principles and practices of New Monetarism, the authors' label for a recent body of work on money, banking, payments, and asset markets. They first discuss methodological issues distinguishing their approach from others: New Monetarism has something in common with Old Monetarism, but there are also important differences; it has little in common with Keynesianism. They describe the principles of these schools and contrast them with their approach. To show how it works in practice, they build a benchmark New Monetarist model and use it to study several issues, including the cost of inflation, liquidity, and asset trading. They also develop a new model of banking.Monetary policy

Price setting, price dispersion, and the value of money - or - The law of two prices

We study models that combine search, monetary exchange, price posting by sellers, and buyers with preferences that differ across random meetings - say, because sellers in different meetings produce different varieties of the same good. We show how these features interact to influence the price level (i.e., the value of money) and price dispersion. First, price-posting equilibria exist with valued fiat currency, which is not true in the standard model. Second, although both are possible, price dispersion is more common than a single price. Third, perhaps surprisingly, we prove generically there cannot be more than two prices in equilibrium.Money ; Price levels

A simple search model of money with heterogeneous agents and partial acceptability

Simple search models have equilibria where some agents accept money and others do not. We argue such equilibria should not be taken seriously - which is unfortunate if one wants a model with partial acceptability. We introduce heterogeneous agents and show partial acceptability arises naturally. There can be multiple equilibria with different degrees of acceptability. Given the type of heterogeneity we allow, the model is still simple: equilibria reduce to fixed points in [0,1]. We show that with other forms of heterogeneity, equilibria are generally fixed points in set space, and there exists no method to reduce this to a problem in R1.Money theory

Acceptability, means of payment, and media of exchange

This essay explains the use of fiat money, or why intrinsically useless objects are accepted as payment in transactions. People accept a particular object as a means of payment because others do: social conventions matter more than the intrinsic characteristics of the object itself. Not everything can become a fiat money, though. If an object is especially costly to hold, for example, it will not be accepted as a means of payment. This explanation of fiat money is illustrated in a simple theoretical economic model. ; This essay was originally published in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. It is reprinted in this journal with the permission of Macmillan Press and Stockton Press.Money theory