The system we call participatory planning bears no resemblance to one
long student council meeting. Like any economic model that purports to
be "worker managed" we provide full opportunities for workers to participate
in decisions about what they will make and how they will make it. We also
provid
WhileB. Rosser is correct that many advocates of socialist planning
do NOT address the issue of what classes might or might not develop,
and do NOT explain HOW workers (and consumers) would exactly participate
in the planning process; that is NOT true of either Pat Devine whose
book and articles o
Regarding the implications of endogenous preferences for normative
economics, what parts of traditional welfare economics does, and does not
"go out the window" is the subject of a long, painstaking treatise titled:
Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics, by Hahnel and Albert, Princeton Univ
Press,
I'm sorry your request for information about PhD programs in political
economy stirred up such a hornets nest. I think you should take a look at
our program at AU. I would not say this if I didn't believe that it is
an excellent program for students right now. There were times over the past
20 yea
Someone on pen-l recently made a reference to a symposium on Coase being
published by a journal? Could anyone provide that reference again?
Thanks
Eric, you should have gotten a sample copy of "Social Justice in Political
Economy" from McGraw Hill recently. It is a 23 page piece on economic
justice, exploitation, alienation, the logic of labor and credit markets,
and rising income and wealth inequality in the US and the World.
I use it in t
I, like others, have long taught that one of the ceteris paribus
assumptions is that expectations remain constant. This allows for the
usual interpretation of the kind of situations Doug listed -- that
the market demand curve is sloping downward -- sigh of relief since
this means the "law of deman
I think Laurie Dougherty has stated the case perfectly. Ole.
South End Press will be publishing "The ABCs of Political Economy" by
me during the spring of 1997. It is an attempt to fill the gap you're
discussing.
Only very weak neoclassicals "define efficiency as what the market does
and then miraculously deduce that the market is efficient."
I have many students entering my classes these days who have been
bombarded with the western -- and now eastern -- medibarage that
markets always do the efficient th
Nuclear power is NOT efficient when all social costs and benefits are
taken into account -- including the probability of accidents and the
disposal impossibility problem. One of the inefficiencies of real world
capitalism was that it allowed -- worse still sponsored this terribly
inefficient energ
Disequilibrium inefficiency -- landing us inside the proverbial
production possibilities frontier -- is certainly inefficiency.
I call it "Keynesian inefficiency" because it was the only kind
of inefficiency that Keynes and his followers focus on regarding
capitlism.
My long answer was in Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics,
Princeton University Press, 1990. It took 15 years and a long
book to come up with an answer that satisfied me to the question:
what should a radical mean by efficiency?
My short answer is: While radicals are right to be more worried
ab
I am in charge of working with all graduate students teaching
sections of economics courses at American University this next
year. So I help them select materials. In that capacity I'd like
you to send me one instructors, or review copy of everything you
listed in your apologetic email advertiseme
The Center For Popular Economics and Nancy Folbre's book provides
excellent eye popping statistics on the astounding trends of what
I have taken to calling "Robber Baron Capitalism II."
I think it's New Press -- I don't have my copy in front of me.
You should definitely consider The American University. Our PhD program
is very strong in both traditional and political economy theory and our
econometrics sequence is quite rigorous. I will let other penlers from
other programs toot their own horns, but I think our PhD political economy
curricul
Doug, I have a working piece on the myth that the Coase theorem
somehow proves -- or even suggests -- that clarifying property rights
will lead to an efficient resolution of pollution through voluntary
negotiations between polluters and pollution victims. I doubt I can
get it to you in time for yo
Long time no see/no talk. Hi. Hope all is well.
Nice touch Gil. I wonder if the Library of Congress will name you,
after the fact, so to speak, as that elusive economist who discovered
the precise point where Marx went wrong.
I think your finger tickles as well as anyone's could.
In solidarity,
Just to tell you I am using your environmental text in a course
at American University with 35 eager students. I and they like it
a lot. You did a great service to those of us who teach under-
graduate environmental economics and were tired of retching over
Tietenburg. As we come up with questions
I have no disagreements with Kevin Quinn's recent posting at all.
The reason I want to see what kind of behavior different institutions
promote is that I want to "choose" what kind of person I would rather
become. But the way to know what kind of agent is going to "go with"
a particular institutio
The essential issue, I believe, is whether or not particular social
institutions promote socially productive or socially unproductive
behavior. [I'm sure we could argue for a while about how to define
what is socially productive and unproductive, but let's assume we
could agree on that for the mom
I have been eaves dropping on the great Penl rationality debate.
At this point I would like to second the posting from Gil Skillman
that argues that most important progressive critiques of capitalism
can be conducted within the confines of reasonable rationality
assumptions.
I have always thought
You might tell David that Gil Skillman presented a paper at the AEA
meetings in Washington this week that goes a long way toward explaining
why capitalist firms will always "out compete" labor managed firms in
a market environment -- even if there were perfect credit markets and
no institutional d
I am glad to hear that Gil Skillman thinks that the static efficiency
properties of markets are the "least important" features that recommend
them. In other words, Gil is conceding that markets generate reasonably
accurate estimates of social benefits and costs of different goods and
services -- o
We progressives have two favorite sports, it seems. Freaking out at how
incredibly neanderthal the right really is, especially when they do well
in elections and remind us that they have a solid base among the masses.
[Solid probably doesn't mean even 25%, but who are we to knock it, right?]
Our o
In an earlier message Gil Skillman said that while he could not endorse
my call for a vision with an economy with zero markets in the limit, that
he could certainly endorse a call for having n-1 markets if we have n right
now.
That amounts to saying that some sort of market socialism would be an
Glad to see that Doug found Roemer's book irritating. I sure did. But I
also found many pen-lers responses to Roemer's book -- not to speak of
the little club that Erik Olin Wright organized to comment on the book --
even more irritating.
For your interest, Doug, I vented all my spleen on the sub
Please email me a copy of the poverty reports -- 97k. thanks.
I agree with my colleague from AU: In a dynamic model with endogenous
preferences, such as spelled out in Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics,
which none of the nasty neoclassical famous fellows has ever read or cited,
the tobacco companies would be seen as maximizing over time, which would
be b
Got to love people who organize as well as blab! Way to go Susan Fleck.
Hasta la Victoria Siempre
In response to Doug Henwood's question: I don't believe there is any point
to coupons if you can't trade them. If you couldn't trade them there would
be no need to hand them out. The government chould simply send each citizen
an equal size annual dividend check -- which was Lange and Lerner's orig
Sorry Gil. My earlier posting to you, asking you questions never got
posted, surely because of my technical blundering. So apologies for
chastizing you for not responding when you had never received anything.
But I am happy you did respond to my two queries. In response to your
responses: I don't
In Roemer's model the coupons all get evenly distributed by taking
all their stocks away from today's capitalists and handing out new
coupons to every citizen so they all have identical portfolios --
although if you think about that it makes for very strange porfolios.
But then, if there is any po
I fail to understand why presenting a specific argument as to why
Roemer's model of a coupon economy -- his label, not mine -- is neither
egalitarian, equitable, nor democratic is an "ad hominem" attack on
Roemer himself. I also think that it is a matter of public record that
Roemer does not place
After considering apologizing for being a little "testy" in some of
my postings on coupon socialism and people's comments about coupon
socialism, I've decided not to. Instead I'll offer an opinion about why
diminishing returns set into discussions: People do not respond to other
peoples' direct qu
Jim Devine points out that the greater atomistic individualism, the
more serious principal/agent problems become and the greater the degree
of social conscience the less seriuos p/a problems will be. Doug Henwood
asks "how do you begin to encourage cooperation and a social conscience
in a society
There are only two substantial recommendations in Roemer's model of
coupon socialism: 1) Expropriate present day capitalists and start every-
one out as a capitalist with an identical portfolio with a ban on selling
stocks for money or goods. Hopefully we all now understand that this would
NOT equ
While Bob Pollin "urged Jim Devine to look more carefully into the Roemer
model before being so dismissive," I would urge Bob Pollin to read Roemer's
book more thoroughly before endorsing the model. Pollin writes: "capital
assets have been evenly distributed, so that all non-wage income is evenly
I would like to second many of your observations about John Roemer's
"vision" of a coupon economy -- I am reluctant to call it "coupon
socialism" even though I no longer am anxious to use the label "socialism"
for the kind of participatory economy I favor. In the case of Roemer's model
I think the
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