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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2012

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Opportunities As Chances: Maximising The Probability That Everybody Succeeds, Marco Mariotti, Roberto Veneziani Oct 2012

Opportunities As Chances: Maximising The Probability That Everybody Succeeds, Marco Mariotti, Roberto Veneziani

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Opportunities in society are commonly interpreted as ‘chances of success’. Within this interpretation, should opportunities be equalised? We show that a liberal principle of justice and a limited principle of social rationality imply that opportunity pro…les should be evaluated by means of a ‘Nash’criterion. The interpretation is new: the social objective should be to maximise the chance that everybody in society succeeds. In particular, the failure of even only one individual must be considered maximally detrimental. We also study a re…nement of this criterion and its extension to problems of intergenerational justice.

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The Calorie Consumption Puzzle In India: An Empirical Investigation, Deepanker Basu, Amit Basole Sep 2012

The Calorie Consumption Puzzle In India: An Empirical Investigation, Deepanker Basu, Amit Basole

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Over the past four decades, India has witnessed a paradoxical trend: average per capita calorie intake has declined even as real per capita monthly expenditure has increased over time. Since cross sectional evidence suggests a robust positive relationship between the two variables, the trend emerges as a major puzzle. The main explanations that have been offered in the literature to address the puzzle are: rural impoverishment, relative price changes, decline in calorie needs, diversification of diets, a squeeze on the food budget due to rising expenditures on nonfood essentials, and decline in subsistence consumption (due to commercialization). Using a panel …

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Erasing Class/ (Re)Creating Ethnicity: Jobs, Politics, Accumulation And Identity In Kenya, Mwangi Wa Githinji Sep 2012

Erasing Class/ (Re)Creating Ethnicity: Jobs, Politics, Accumulation And Identity In Kenya, Mwangi Wa Githinji

Economics Department Working Paper Series

A large literature on African economies argues that ethnicity plays a role in the politics and economics of African countries. Unfortunately, much of this literature is speculative or anecdotal because of the lack of data, with the exception of a few papers that examine ethnic networking as a business or employment strategy. In many ways Africa’s failure to develop is a failure of nationhood. Creating nation is handicapped by the use of ethnicity. In this paper, I empirically examine the relationship between employment, wages and ethnicity in Africa via a case study of Kenya. I challenge the pervasive view that …

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Real Exchange Rates And The Long-Run Effects Of Aggregate Demand In Economies With Underemployment, Peter Skott, Martin Rapetti, Arslan Razmi Apr 2012

Real Exchange Rates And The Long-Run Effects Of Aggregate Demand In Economies With Underemployment, Peter Skott, Martin Rapetti, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Successful economic development to a large extent derives from the mobilization of underemployed resources. Demand policy can play an important role. It is critical, however, to consider balance of payments constraints and to ensure an expansion of investment in the modern sector. A combination of investment promotion and exchange rate intervention may be required to achieve these goals.

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Assessing The Rise Of Organic Farming In The European Union: Environmental And Socio-Economic Consequences, Charalampos Konstantinidis Feb 2012

Assessing The Rise Of Organic Farming In The European Union: Environmental And Socio-Economic Consequences, Charalampos Konstantinidis

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Although organic farming is considered the poster child of rural development in Europe, there is little empirical evidence assessing its success in achieving the ambitious environmental and socio-economic objectives that it is purported to assist. This paper presents empirical evidence from the growth of organic farming in Europe over the past two decades that questions the highly optimistic claims of policy makers. Although policies in support of organic impact have had an overall positive environmental impact, their social impact is ambiguous, as organic farming appears to have grown more in areas with larger average farm sizes. Additionally, contrary to what …

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The Reserve Army Of Labour In The Postwar U.S. Economy: Some Stock And Flow Estimates, Deepankar Basu Feb 2012

The Reserve Army Of Labour In The Postwar U.S. Economy: Some Stock And Flow Estimates, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper presents some estimates of the stock of the reserve army of labour, and flows into and out of the reserve army of labour for the postwar U.S. economy. Estimates of stocks are presented for the period 1948–2011 at a monthly frequency; 6 month moving average estimates of flows into and out of the reserve army of labour are presented for the period 1990–2011. Some interesting patterns in the stock and flow data are pointed out, and it is suggested that this data base on the active and reserve army of labour can be used for empirical analysis of …

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Pluralism, The Lucas Critique, And The Integration Of Macro And Micro , Peter Skott Feb 2012

Pluralism, The Lucas Critique, And The Integration Of Macro And Micro , Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Mainstream macroeconomics has pursued .micro founded.models based on the explicit optimization by representative agents. The result has been a long and wasteful detour. But elements of the Lucas critique are relevant, also for heterodox economists. Challenging common heterodox views on microeconomics and formalization, this paper argues that (i) economic models should not be based purely on empirically observed regularities,(ii) heterodox economists must be able to tell an integrated story about goal-oriented micro behavior in a specific macro environment, and (iii)relatively simple analytical models have an essential role to play.

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Employment And Distribution Effects Of The Minimum Wage , Fabián Slonimczyk, Peter Skott Feb 2012

Employment And Distribution Effects Of The Minimum Wage , Fabián Slonimczyk, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper analyzes the effects of the minimum wage on wage inequality, relative employment and over-education. We show that over-education can be generated endogenously and that an increase in the minimum wage can raise both total and low-skill employment, and produce a fall in inequality. Evidence from the US suggests that these theoretical results are empirically relevant. The over-education rate has been increasing and our regression analysis suggests that the decrease in the minimum wage may have led to a deterioration of the employment and relative wage of low-skill workers.

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Class Struggle And Economic Flactuations: Var Analysis Of The Post-War U.S. Economy, Deepankar Basu, Ying Chen, Jong-Seok Oh Feb 2012

Class Struggle And Economic Flactuations: Var Analysis Of The Post-War U.S. Economy, Deepankar Basu, Ying Chen, Jong-Seok Oh

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Building on Marx’s insights in Chapter 25, Volume I of Capital, an augmented version of the cyclical profit squeeze (CPS) theory offers a plausible explanation of macroeconomic fluctuations under capitalism. The pattern of dynamic interactions that emerges from a 3-variable (profit share, unemployment rate and nonresidential fixed investment) vector autoregression estimated with quarterly data for the postwar U.S. economy is consistent with the CPS theory for the regulated (1949Q1–1975Q1) as well as for the neoliberal periods (starting in 1980 or in 1985). Hence, the CPS mechanism seems to be in operation even under neoliberalism.

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