Economics Commons^™

Universal Basic Income (Ubi): A Cure-All Or Band-Aid?, Madison Beckner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the triple crisis of capitalism looming and, in the U.S., a poorly performing welfare state, Universal Basic Income (UBI) has returned to popular attention. To assess whether this is warranted and, more importantly, to provide answer on the extent to which a UBI can or should be considered a cure-all, this work, first, examines the historical development of UBI proposals including those stemming from European Social Democrats and Libertarians. Next, pilot programs at the local, state, and national level are critically examined for their methodologies and empirical results. Turning, then, to theory on de-commodification, unpaid labor, and the equality-jobs …

Free Market: The History Of An Idea. By Jacob Soll. Basic Books, 2022. 326 Pp, Index. $32., James K. Galbraith

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Review of Free Market: The History of an Idea. Jacob Soll. New York, Basic Books, 2022. 326 pp.

Disembedded Liberalism: The Global Pressure On Democracy, Hallie Spear

CMC Senior Theses

The international political order is at a crossroads with divergent paths. Liberal democracy is once again threatened on the international stage. What's more troubling is that the most stable and influential democracies, the United States, those in Europe and India, seem to be vulnerable to the autocratic wave sweeping through the world. This thesis completes a critical analysis to understand the root causes of the recent disruption to democracy the world has observed. Focusing on three established, diverse, and populous democracies, this thesis investigates the economic conditions at play that made each nation vulnerable to populism. Neoliberal economic policies implemented …

Courting American Capital: Public Relations And The Business Of Selling Ivorian Capitalism In The U.S., 1960-1980, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

This chapter is an invitation to reimagine the roles assigned to players in the history of capitalism on the global stage. It challenges aspects of the historiography of capitalism in the twentieth century, which tend to center on historical actors and institutions of the Global North. Even when actors in the Global South are discussed, it is usually to portray them as passive victims of an intractable system. By focusing on the Ivory Coast and its economic diplomacy toward the United States, I seek to destabilize this general picture.

A Beer For The People: Black Capitalism And The Brewing Industry In Civil Rights Era Wisconsin, John L. Harry

Theses and Dissertations

The term “Black Capitalism” was coined by Richard Nixon during the 1968 presidentialcampaign as a means of both quelling the unrest of the previous decade regarding the more volatile factions within the larger civil rights movement as well as helping African Americans enter the economic mainstream. Once president, Nixon’s rhetoric became a policy through the creation of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise and loans through the Small Business Administration. In 1970, a group of Black businessmen in Milwaukee took advantage of these programs to become the first Black brewery owners in Wisconsin when they purchased Peoples Brewing Company in …

The Baran Ratio, Investment, And British Economic Growth And Development, Thomas E. Lambert

Faculty Scholarship

Investment in capital, new technology, and agricultural techniques has not been considered an endeavor worthwhile in a medieval economy because of a lack of strong property rights and no incentive on the part of lords and barons to lend money to or grant rights to peasant farmers. Therefore, the medieval economy and standards of living at that time often have been characterized as non-dynamic and static due to insufficient investment in innovative techniques and technology. Paul Baran’s concept of the economic surplus is applied to investment patterns during the late medieval, mercantile, and early capitalist stages of economic growth in …

الرساميل الأجنبية وتأثيرها على الاقتصاد المغربي, سهام علوي بلغيتي

Dirassat

Title : The impact of Foreign capital on the Moroccan economy

The Protection Treaty was a legal pretext for France to supervise Morocco. However, the reality of protection culminated in exclusive control and domination of the economic sector. Businessmen and settlers benefited largely from the wealth of the region without restrictions. Moroccans who were involved with the imperialist economic logic seized the opportunity regardless of the economic logic dictated by Islam. Thus, the socio-economic, political and cultural repercussions of French economic policy on the Moroccan economy were huge. The colonial order dismantled traditional economic patterns that existed long before, therefore, …

Safekeeping: Slavery, Capitalism, And The Carceral State In Washington, D.C., 1830-1863, Brandon Wilson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By the 1830s, incarceration emerged as a two-pronged solution for racial control and economic expansion. Local and federal government built jails around the District of Columbia to detain "rowdy negro boys," men, and women, as a means to stymie their rapid movement and fuel a burgeoning domestic slave trade. People were jailed, fined, and often sold to the Deep South, providing a wellspring of capital for enslavers, justified through the lens of criminality. For the crime of petty theft, missing free papers, or in at least one case "using foul language," black people of the Washington region could find themselves …

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eric Hobsbawm, in his effort to explain the fundamental divide which produced the Second World War, convincingly argues that “the crucial lines in this civil war were not drawn between capitalism as such and communist social revolution, but between ideological families: on the one hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the great revolutions including, obviously the Russian revolution’, on the other hand, its opponents.” This thesis argues that the American Civil War was a “great revolution” that represented a crucial transformative point in the formation of these two waring factions. The struggle was especially influential on the theory …

Epochs Of Ecology: The Transition From Feudalism To Capitalism, Jacob Alexander Tucker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The transition from feudalism to capitalism has undoubtedly been one of the most fruitful and complicated debates amongst economic historians in the 20th and 21st centuries. With the advent of global ecological collapse, there is a necessity to examine and theorize the movement from feudalism to capitalism through the lens of ecology. While in mainstream economics the environment is either entirely dismissed or nature’s role in economics remains subsidiary to the human economy, in the field of Marxian economics, human’s interacting through nature is at the core of the entire theory. For that reason, this thesis takes earnestly Marx’s contributions …

Runaway: A History Of Postwar New York In Four Factories, Andy Battle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At midcentury, New York City was among the preeminent manufacturing centers in the United States. Within a generation, this manufacturing economy suffered an extraordinary collapse. Beginning in the 1950s, workers and their unions began to use the term “runaway” to describe factories that pulled up stakes in New York and set them back down in other climes. This dissertation explores the deindustrialization of New York City through case studies of “runaway” plants, or factories that left New York for the American South or abroad between the years 1945 and 1975.

In general, the manufacturers that remained in New York at …

The New American Slavery: Capitalism And The Ghettoization Of American Prisons As A Profitable Corporate Business, David A. Liburd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The labor of enslaved Africans and Black Americans played a large part in the history of colonial America, with the American plantation being the epicenter for all that was to be produced. While the two have never been completely tied together, capitalism and modern day slavery have been linked with one another. Some analysis sees slavery as a remote form of capitalism, a substitute, to an antiquated form of labor in the modern world.

Slave plantations adopted a new concentration in size and management, referred to by W.E. DuBois as a change "from a family institution to an industrial system."1 …

Fraud And Fantasy: Toward A New Research Agenda For Economic Sociology, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

From The Classical School To Today: The Evolution Of Stagnation Theories, Francis J. Lukacovic Ii

Applied Economics Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to study the theory of secular stagnation, which was made famous by the American Keynesian economist Alvin Hansen in his book Full Recovery or Stagnation. The theory of secular stagnation has reappeared in economic circles today due to recent economic conditions since the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The thesis will analyze the history of the stagnation theory dating back to Classical economists in the 19^th century. The concept of a stagnating economy has been talked about for centuries with many economists adding important thoughts. Furthermore, the thesis will address the current questions and …

Aggregate Demand And Defensive Spending In The United States From The Second World War To The End Of The Twentieth Century, Sam Martin

Student Writing

No abstract provided.

Critique And Transformation: On The Hypothetical Nature Of Ecosystem Service Value And Its Neo-Marxist, Liberal And Pragmatist Criticisms, Andony P. Melathopoulos, Alex Stoner

Journal Articles

Ecosystem service valuation (ESV) attempts to transform the opposition of human economic necessity and ecological conservation by valuing the latter in terms of the services rendered by the former. However, despite a number of ESV-inspired sustainability initiatives since the 1990s, global ecological degradation continues to accelerate. This suggests that ESV has fallen far short of its goals of sustainable social transformation—a failure which has generated considerable criticism. This paper reviews three prominent lines of ESV criticism: 1) the neo-Marxist criticism, which emphasizes the “fictitious” character of ecosystem commodities; 2) the liberal criticism through Friedrich Hayek's concept “scientistic objectivism”; and 3) …

Synthesizing The Vertical And The Horizontal: A World-Ecological Analysis Of 'The Industrial Revolution', Part I, Christopher R. Cox

Dissertations and Theses

'The Industrial Revolution' is simultaneously one of the most under-examined and overly-simplified concepts in all of social science. One of the ways it is highly under-examined is in the arena of the ecological, particularly through the lens of critical world-history. This paper attempts to analyze the phenomenon through the lens of the world-ecology synthesis, in three distinct phases: First, the history of the conceptualization of the Industrial Revolution is examined at length, paying special attention to the knowledge foundations that determine these conceptualizations. Secondly, I sift out what I believe is the dominant model throughout most of modern …

Alienation In Capitalism: Rediscovering Fulfillment, Gregory Lee Carter

Honors Theses and Capstones

Many Americans are pessimistic about their country's medium or long-term economic outlook. A century ago, Big Business was born as an economic force, but it has powerfully infiltrated the realm of politics now. The corporate scramble for natural resources has caused global disharmony and domestic economic conflict in the U.S. The capitalist system, which many have come to realize is unsustainable and oppressive, has thus come to fulfill some of the predictions made by earlier critics from Kierkegaard, Rousseau, to Marx. Each believed that a society which is forced to accommodate an oppressive system will inherently display alienation. That …

A Theory Without A Movement, A Hope Without A Name: The Future Of Marxism In A Post-Marxist World, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Just as Marx's insights into capitalism have been most strikingly vindicated by the rise of neoliberalism and the near-collapse of the world economy, Marxism as social movement has become bereft of support. Is there any point in people who find Marx's analysis useful in clinging to the term "Marxism" - which Marx himself rejected -- at time when self-identified Marxist organizations and societies have collapsed or renounced the identification, and Marxism own working class constituency rejects the term? I set aside bad reasons to give on "Marxism," such as that the theory is purportedly refuted, that its adoption leads necessarily …

Radical Student Activism In The 1930s And Its Comparison To Student Activism During Occupy Wall Street, Andrew J. Pierce

Senior Honors Projects

In order to understand the present we must first understand the past. The United States may be a country founded on principles of democracy and republicanism, but students in universities across the nation have aligned themselves, historically, with some heterodox philosophies over the years. Whether it was Communism or Socialism in the 1930’s, or left libertarianism and direct democracy during the recent Occupy protests, students have long considered whether the policies of the United States government were really working in their best interests.

On campus in Depression-era America, Leftist student groups began to rise up and attempted to change the …

Capitalism And The Science Of History: Appleby, Marx, And Postmodernism, Patrick D. Anderson

Grand Valley Journal of History

Joyce Appleby has written an extensive amount on the origins and development of capitalism, but her work is influenced by her belief that history is a science with at least some objectivity. She rejects Marxism as a relic of past historians with naïve beliefs about finding the laws of nature, but she also rejects postmodern criticisms of history because they undermine any chance for objectivity. Appleby believes the historian can be objective even if politics necessarily colors his or her work. For Appleby, her support of capitalism leads her to make policy recommendations with her historiography, recommendations that change with …

An Attempt To Reshape Capitalism’S Image, Ross A. Nichols

Gettysburg Economic Review

John Stuart Mill claimed to be a disciple of both Jeremy Bentham and David Ricardo. This was a strange proclamation because each man advocated a competing theory of value; Bentham’s utilitarianism laid the foundation for the utility theory of value and Ricardo developed the labor theory of value. Mill’s goal in attempting to unify these theories of value was to provide a solution for the growing class conflict that plagued capitalism. Class conflict arose as feudalism was phased out and industrial capitalism replaced merchant capitalism as the dominant economic system. The Corn Laws symbolized this competition between classes. Capitalists were …

An Attempt To Reshape Capitalism’S Image, Ross A. Nichols

Student Publications

John Stuart Mill is an extremely interesting figure in the history of economics. He was known for his eclecticism and his views on economic theory can best be described as self-contradictory. In this vein was his attempt to formulate a theory of value. Claiming to be a disciple of both Bentham (utility theory of value) and Ricardo (labor theory of value), he sought to combine two rivalry theories of value. While Mill’s attempt ultimately proved futile, it was not because he could not make up his mind. Mill wanted to reshape capitalism’s image. He wanted to reform capitalism, to show …

The Historical Background Of The Communist Manifesto, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published 150 years ago in London in February 1848, is one of the most influential and widely-read documents of the past two centuries. The historian A. J. P. Taylor (1967, p. 7) has called it a "holy book," and contends that because of it, "everyone thinks differently about politics and society." And yet, despite its enormous influence in the 20th century, the Manifesto is very much a period piece, a document of what was called the "hungry" 1840s. It is hard to imagine it being written in any other decade of the 19th …

The Myth Of Endless Accumulation: A Feminist Inquiry Into Globalization, Growth, And Social Change, Martha Freymann Miser

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This theoretical dissertation examines the concept of growth and its core assumption—that the continual accumulation of wealth is both socially wise and ecologically sustainable. The study challenges and offers alternatives to the myth of endless accumulation, suggesting new directions for leadership and social change. The central question posed in this inquiry: Can we craft a more ethical form of capitalism? To answer this question, the study examines conventional and critical globalization studies; feminist scholarship on standpoint, political economy, and power; and the Enlightenment notions of progress and modernism, drawing on a number of works, including Aristotle on the three intelligences, …

"Introduction" To "Symposium: The Fate Of Anglo-American Capitalism", Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The call for papers in this special issue asked whether there is a future for the robust sort of capitalism favoured by Adam Smith or whether we have reached a limit to Anglo-American capitalism as the engine of human betterment. Contemporary events loomed large late in 2008 and it seemed appropriate to consider whether Anglo-American capitalism was passing away. We were particularly interested in contributions that viewed current economic events through a lens informed by Smith's teaching on institutions, money and economic growth.

Black Tuesday And Graying The Legitimacy Line For Governmental Intervention: When Tomorrow Is Just A Future Yesterday, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Black Tuesday in October 1929 marked a major crisis in American history. As we face current economic woes, it is appropriate to recall not only the event but also reflect on how it altered the legal landscape and the change it precipitated in the acceptance of governmental intervention into the marketplace. Perceived or real crises can cause us to dance between free markets and regulatory power. Much like the events of 1929, current financial concerns have led to new, unprecedented governmental intervention into the private sector. This Article seeks caution, on the basis of history, arguing that fear and crisis …

The State‐Led Transition To Liberal Capitalism: Neoliberal, Organizational, World‐Systems, And Social Structural Explanations Of Poland’S Economic Success, Lawrence P. King, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee

Political Science Faculty Publications

Neoliberals argue that rapid liberalization and privatization can transform postcommunist economies into Western-style capitalist systems. Organizational sociologists argue that these policies produce a unique variety of capitalism, while world-systems theorists argue that they lead to underdevelopment. This article advances a social structural alternative in a crucial case. Poland’s relative economic success resulted from prolonged state ownership and an interventionist state employing various industrial policy tools that facilitated efficiency-enhancing market-oriented restructuring before ushering in beneficial foreign direct investment. The resulting capitalist system closely resembles the typical pattern found in most late industrializers.

Book Review: When Corporations Rule The World (Second Edition), The Post Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, Glen Kuecker

History Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

The Great Transition: The Dynamics Of Market Transitions And The Case Of Russia, 1991-1995, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The market transition in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union brings us back to essential issues that Marx and Weber addressed: the genesis of capitalism and the process of economic change. What is the transition and what does it involve - restructuring incentives, creating new laws, learning new culture, or creating new power structures? The answer partially depends on the particular transition (initial conditions, targets, actors' perceptions); but necessary general frameworks remain elusive, and current economic policies and analyses reveal that we understand little more about economic change than a century ago. Recent works on market transitions have furthered …