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An essay is presented which addresses the the impacts that employment regulations have on companies' firing costs, efforts to reduce their demand for labor, and youth employment rates in the U.S. American labor markets and the hiring of workers are mentioned, along with job opportunities for young people in America. Other topics include minimum wage laws, monopolies, and neoclassical economic theory. Labor supply and demand in the U.S. and age discrimination statutes are also examined.

Economic development, especially in the Least Developed Countries (LDC), requires use of intellectual property without always compensating the rights holders in the most developed countries.2 Unconventionally, this Article uses neoclassical economics to provide a rational solution to access rights in the LDC while respecting the first principle of intellectual property right--utilitarianism. The price discrimination model provides a useful rubric to segregate developed country markets from developing country markets. Furthermore, it also provides a subtle test in the case of individual uses of intellectual property as to which should be tolerated in developing nations as uncompensated uses and which should be punished as piracy due to their subverting the economic incentive necessary to promote the creation of intellectual property in the more developed nations. This Article concludes that in the long run, tolerated uncompensated uses in nascent LDC markets are more efficient engines of economic development than direct foreign or sporadic technology transfer and therefore, are in the developed countries' best interests to promote a stable global community through economic development in the LDC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, commentators and politicians demonstrate a deep-rooted persistent adherence to a neoclassical model of the labor market, where a minimum wage increase is seen as an inevitable cause of unemployment, as it is assumed to occur at a point where the labor market was initially in equilibrium. The work of the Minimum Wage Study Commission (1981) uncovered the small size of the unemployment inflation effect, and the new minimum wage research also has corroborated this. Seen against these findings, the persistent rhetoric of sizeable “unemployment effects” of minimum wage increases simply shows the power of employers in a capitalist system. This paper suggests that counteracting the rhetoric is best done by recognizing the agency of the minimum wage worker and portraying this worker not as one who may “suffer unemployment” under a wage increase but who chooses to work fewer hours if hourly wages and benefits become sufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral economics is both mainstream and timely. The financial crisis raised important issues of market failure, weak regulation, moral hazard, and our poor understanding of how key markets operate. One therefore expects lawyers and economists to bring the current economic thinking to competition agencies, some of which are already taking note. How should the competition agencies respond? This article examines how competition agencies can consider behavioral economics' implications on four levels: first as a gap filler, that is, to help explain “real world” evidence that neoclassical economic theory cannot explain; second, to assess critically the assumptions of specific policies, such as merger review and cartel prosecutions; third, to revisit fundamental questions, such as what is competition and what are the goals of competition law; and fourth, to assess how behavioral economics will affect the degree of convergence of competition law among the over 100 jurisdictions with competition laws today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on U.S. Judge Guido Calabresi's contributions to contemporary American legal theory. Topics include Calabresi's book "The Costs of Accidents," critical legal studies in the U.S., and liberal-rights theory. Information is provided on law and neoclassical economics, tort law in the U.S., and products liability.

The article focuses on U.S. Judge Guido Calabresi's article "Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Torts." Topics include neoclassical law and economics, free market economics, and the development of tort law in the U.S. Information is provided on property rights in the U.S., tort liability, and resource allocation theory.

The article presents an analysis on the factors that caused the 2008 global financial crisis in the U.S. It discusses various explanations of the crisis and the solutions offered by economists from the four schools of thought which include Neoclassicals, Keynesians, Institutionalists and Marxists. It also provides useful insight and view from the different schools of thought regarding the government's response to address the problem and the economic imbalances of the nation. Furthermore, it explores the Marxists' concept on the systemic causes of the crisis and its suggestion on the need for the government to initiate investigations and interventions.

Bayesian rationality is the paradigm of rational behavior in neoclassical economics. An economic agent is deemed rational when she maximizes her subjective expected utility and consistently revises her beliefs according to Bayes's rule. The paper raises the question of how, when and why this characterization of rationality came to be endorsed by mainstream economists. Though no definitive answer is provided, it is argued that the question is of great historiographic importance. The story begins with Abraham Wald's behaviorist approach to statistics and culminates with Leonard J. Savage's elaboration of subjective expected utility theory in his 1954 classic The Foundations of Statistics. The latter's acknowledged fiasco to achieve a reinterpretation of traditional inference techniques along subjectivist and behaviorist lines raises the puzzle of how a failed project in statistics could turn into such a big success in economics. Possible answers call into play the emphasis on consistency requirements in neoclassical theory and the impact of the postwar transformation of U.S. business schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Recession of 2008 and onward has drawn attention to the American economic and financial system and has cast a critical spotlight on the theories, policies, and assumptions of the modern, neoclassical school of law and economics--often labeled the "Chicago School"--because this school of legal economic thought has had great influence on the American economy and financial system. The Chicago School's positions on deregulation and the limitation or elimination of oversight and government restraints on stock markets, derivative markets, and other financial practices are the result of decades of neoclassical economic assumptions regarding the efficiency of unregulated markets, the nearreligious- like devotion to a hyper-simplified conception of rationality and self-interest with regard to the persons and institutions participating in the financial system, and a conception of laws and government policies as incentives and costs in a manner that excludes the actual conditions and complications of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the intellectual and structural change that German economics experienced after the Second World War. This development often was described as ‘Americanisation’, since it seemed to rest upon the influences of the American occupation regime. In contrast, the paper applies another meaning of ‘Americanisation’. It is considered a ‘discourse’ that serves to structure the disciplinary procedures to produce progress. As it can be shown by the adoption of Keynesianism and neoclassical microeconomics, the change of the discipline was not primarily driven by direct American influences. Rather, in some respect the German reception took a path of its own. That contradiction can be solved by a theoretical modification of the classical concept of ‘Americanisation’. ‘Americanisation’ there meant a change of the operational procedure of German economics to generate progress. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on the historical institutionalists' emphasis on the effects of ideas on policy making, this paper focuses on the importance of economic ideas and ideologies on China's trade policy making with regard to the signing of the WTO agreement with the United States in 1999. The paper argues that trade liberalization in China was a result of top Chinese leaders' embrace of neoclassical economic ideas which conceive a small role for the state in the marketplace, mainly as the regulator of the macro-economic environment and as the enforcer of the rule of law, rather than as a major player in the marketplace. Top Chinese leaders' socialization with neoclassical economic ideas enabled them to forge a political consensus to link state-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms with speedy WTO accession and led to China's major concessions in WTO negotiations with the United States in 1999 which were inconceivable just a few years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like most capitalist crises, today's challenges economists, journalists, and politicians to explain and to overcome it. The post-1930s struggles between neoclassical and Keynesian economics are rejoined. We show that both proved inadequate to preventing crises and served rather to enable and justify (as “solutions” for crises) what were merely oscillations between two forms of capitalism differentiated according to greater or lesser state economic interventions. Our Marxian economic analysis here proceeds differently. We demonstrate how concrete aspects of U.S. economic history (especially real wage, productivity, and personal indebtedness trends) culminated in this deep and enduring crisis. We offer both a class-based critique of and an alternative to neoclassical and Keynesian analyses, including an alternative solution to capitalist crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies industry-level dynamics and demonstrates the ability of a modified neoclassical growth model to capture a range of empirical facts. The paper begins by using U.S. data to document skilled and unskilled labor trends within industry sector classifications as well as industry sector output trends. Using Current Population Survey data from 1968 to 2004, it is shown that the ratio of skilled workers to unskilled workers employed has risen in all industries. The absolute increase in this ratio was larger in the more skilled industries, while the growth rate was larger in the less skilled industries. Furthermore, using national income account data, it is shown that relatively high-skilled industries have accounted for an increasing share of output over time. A version of the neoclassical growth model is then constructed to match these observations. One important feature of this model is a structure that introduces new goods into the economy at each moment of time. The model is able to capture a rich set of labor market movements between sectors and between skill levels as well as changes in the relative output shares across industries, yet preserves many nice features of the neoclassical growth model.( JEL E13, J20, 030) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious diversity—the suite of options available to believers in a given area—is an intriguing phenomenon that is under-researched by geographers, though not by other social scientists. This paper examines the geography of religious diversity in the southeastern U.S. It offers an alternative to the neoclassical economics and social ecology perspectives by employing an approach borrowed from island biogeography to explain the spatial structure of religious diversity. Regression analyses using data from the Glenmary Research Center reveal that the relationship between denomination counts and county population size is strong and consistent over a wide range of southern states. Several interpretations of the data are provided, including an evaluation of positive and negative residuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents methods to analyze convergence in cross-sectional data collected over time using distribution free statistics that are not sensitive to the magnitudes involved. Measures of concordance and discordance are employed in the empirical analysis of real personal income per capita for 48 U.S. States over the period 1929–2002. Although most States are converging with each other, some are converging faster than others. The methods used have the flexibility to focus on specific characteristics such as convergence in absolute differences or convergence in the ratio of rewards. The methods may also be used to consider convergence without switching and additionally be applied to other features such as the percentiles of the distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout much of the legal community, the term "economics" evokes memories of undergraduate micro- and macroeconomic courses. At most American colleges and universities, these courses focus almost exclusively on neoclassical economic theory,' which forms the foundation of what is thought of as mainstream economics in the United States. Therefore, it also should not be surprising that law professors and others who come from backgrounds that have been marginalized and oppressed by the policy instruments constructed using neoclassical economic theory, both generally and as it has infiltrated the law and legal thinking, would devote greater effort to interrogating mainstream economic theory, than those who benefit from the ideologically determined distributions of assets, resources, and opportunities that this system achieves.

Criticizes an article in the same issue which examines the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s from the perspective of the neoclassical growth theory. Brief review of the growth theory; Explanation on why the behavior of market hours is the key to explaining the Great Depression; Application of growth theory to Japan's economy in the 1990s.

Examines the Great Depression in the United States from 1929 to 1933 from the perspective of neoclassical growth theory. Background discussion on the neoclassical theory; International comparisons of economic declines; Analysis of three classes of real shocks considered important in typical business cycle fluctuations; Information on monetary shocks.

Basic contemporary portfolio models are applied to an interregional economic analysis of U.S. Census Regions during 1963-1978. The models are well suited to the type of analysis that partitions a region's economic cycle into national and local components. Portfolio theory provides a logic for interregional cross investment; results of an empirical test indicate portfolio theory may be superior to simple neoclassical theory in explaining spatial patterns of capital investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper anlayzes American economics during the period between the World Wars. During those years, two major groups of ecomomists - neoclassicists and insititutionalists - competed for control of the discilpline. I analyze this struggle with the conceptual tools of actor-network theory: black boxes, trials of strength, allies and translation. The neoclassical - institutionalist struggle is depicted as a trial of strength of two competing approaches to the scientific study of the economy. I argue that the parties in such struggles tend to recruit allies from other prestigious discipline, as well as from the field's own past leading practitioners, and to make arguments concerning the potential of their research programmes to solve important problems. The advocates speak in the name of these allies ('translation') and try to create unbreakable links with them. Rivals try to break these links, and the protagonists respond by mobilizing more allies and strengthening the network. Thus methodological controversies resemble controversies over facts and theories, although the materials of which contested networks are made are different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ideological continuity underlying recent changes in U.S. policy, arguing that both the "liberal" policies of the 1960's and the "free market" conservatism of the 1980's were based upon the presuppositions of neoclassical economic theory. The author first considers the intellectual assumptions of postwar liberalism, emphasizing the degree to which the dominant paradigm of the period accepted the neoclassical framework. Next the author examines the conservative neoclassical critique of liberal ideas that developed in the 1970's. The economic upheavals of that decade demonstrated the limits of a postwar liberalism that was only ambiguously committed to state intervention. The result was the reassertion of a more consistent market model in economic policy discourse. The author concludes by considering the ideological effects of the dominant neoclassical paradigm today in directing attention away from crucial social problems, particularly those that result from market forces themselves in a rapidly changing global economy.