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The literature on pluralism in economics has focused on the benefits expected from the plurality of theories, methods, and frameworks. This overlooks half of the picture: the costs. Neither have the multifarious costs been systematically analyzed in philosophy of science. We begin rectifying this neglect. We discuss how the benefits of plurality and diversity in science presuppose distinct types of plurality and how various benefit and plurality types are associated with different types of costs. Finally, we ponder how the general mechanisms that give rise to the costs of plurality and diversity are aggravated by various disciplinary characteristics of economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the contributions of Marxist Dependency Theory (MDT) can provide theoretical insights for the analysis of financialized capitalism dynamics, contribute to the debate about the rise of a globalized working class, and help guide a transformative praxis in the periphery, therefore being relevant for the debate of contemporary imperialism. I discuss which traditions of dependency theories were most featured in economics literature and why I believe that MDT is marginalized and misinterpreted, focusing on the historical and political aspects of that process. Next, I debate some contributions of contemporary imperialism theory, and conclude that MDT has the potential to advance some of its core concepts and formulate a powerful synthesis. JEL Classification: B51, F54 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a common stereotype that leaders lie, but for all our beliefs about how normal it is for a president to lie to the public we know next to nothing about how voters might actually view this conduct. Drawing from literature in behavioral economics, we theorize that voters apply their attitudes towards interpersonal lies when judging leaders, with people who see lying as more socially acceptable being less willing to punish leaders for exhibiting this behavior. Using a novel vignette-style survey experiment, we find strong support for our theory: despite widespread willingness to punish leaders who lie, individuals high in Machiavellianism and Self-Monitoring are far less willing to punish presidents for lying than their low-type peers, and in some cases do not punish at all. Using robustness checks and causal mediation analysis, we confirm that views regarding the moral acceptability of lying drive responses to presidential deception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies two fundamental questions regarding probabilistic selling in vertically differentiated markets: When is it profitable and how does one design it optimally? For the first question, we identify an important but overlooked economic mechanism driving probabilistic selling in vertically differentiated markets: the convexity of consumer preferences. In stark contrast to the literature finding that probabilistic selling is never profitable except in the presence of certain capacity constraint or consumer bounded rationality, we find that with many alternative utility functions capable of representing convex preference, probabilistic selling is always profitable. For the second question, we study the optimal strategy of probabilistic selling, including the design and price of the probabilistic good and the prices of the component goods. We show that under some technical conditions, the optimal price of the high‐quality component good increases while the optimal price of the low‐quality component good decreases upon the introduction of probabilistic selling, thereby increasing the market coverage and the economic efficiency without launching an actual new product line. To further illustrate the design of probabilistic selling, we use an example based on the canonical utility function, which is widely used in the economics literature on vertical product differentiation. We derive a closed‐form solution to the problem of optimal probabilistic selling. We also take advantage of the analytical tractability of the canonical utility to further explore the design of multiple probabilistic goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the literature in development economics, psychology and sociology to explicate how decolonised early childhood education and care services can reverse the metacolonial cognition lingering in the postcolonial era. In particular, the author shows that colonial institutions persist even after formal colonisation has ended through the application of de facto power. Self-knowledge developed during early childhood impacts adult socio-economic life outcomes. Thus, decolonising early childhood development and care by ensuring positive representations of self will improve self-perceptions and self-awareness. The implications for practice and policy are discussed within the context of deploying decolonised early childhood development and care services to raise a new generation of confident Africans to accelerate the development of the continent and regions with similar histories of colonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particularly in the social sciences, scientific debates can be understood as a special expression of academic discourse and ideally support the progress of knowledge within a discipline. Very often, there are competing academic schools with greatly differing theoretical foundations, as we have seen, for example, in social sciences-especially by the "Methodenstreit" in economics, or the "Positivismusstreit" in Sociology. This paper aims to introduce a new approach to study academic schools and would like to contribute to the literature on the economics of science. To this end, the paper uses the economic theory of religion in general and the economics of sects in particular by transferring the approach to academic schools for the first time. Our results can help to extend the understanding of scientific decision-making and to explain the membership to an academic school. Although the model is presented in relationship to social sciences in general and economics in particular, the basic model of academic schools is generally transferable. JEL Classification : A12, B13, B21, B40, B53, Z12 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large literature examining the effect of taxes and tax concessions on local economic development. The last comprehensive review of taxes and economic development, however, was Wasylenko's review in 1997, which mostly examined the location response of firms. Subsequent to the last major review of the literature, empirical work in this area sought to address endogeneity concerns that plagued previous studies, resulting in a series of compelling new studies. This article reviews the empirical literature on tax-based economic development incentives produced since Wasylenko's 1997 review and covers property tax (including tax increment financing and business improvement districts); spatially targeted and zone-based tax concessions; firm-specific incentives; and corporate income taxes. The review focuses on academic studies that employ modern program evaluation or quasi-experimental techniques and U.S.-based policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fundamental assumption we base this Special Issue on is that narrow concepts of growth have become the ruling ideas of this age, entrenched both in everyday life and to a considerable extent in the theoretical thinking and traditions of research conducted by organization and management studies scholars. We explain how tacit (or overt) endorsement of unbridled economic growth (the growth imperative) has pernicious practical effects and how it tends to restrict the intellectual base of the field. We argue that notions of degrowth present scholars with challenges as well as opportunities to reframe core assumptions and develop new directions in theory and research. Envisioning a post-COVID 19 world where societies and organizations can flourish without growth is one of the most difficult tasks facing theorists. We approach this challenge first by discussing the hegemonic properties of growth ideology and second by sketching an alternative political economy as a context for reimagining social and economic relations within planetary capacities in a post-growth era. Drawing on degrowth literature in ecological economics, sociology and political ecology, we identify key principles relevant to processes of organizing for a more just and environmentally sustainable future: frugal abundance, conviviality, care, and open relocalization. We conclude by introducing the three articles we feature in this issue along with some thoughts about theorizing policy and regulatory changes needed to generate transformational change and a future research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a strand of the economics literature that considers the regionalized economic effects of natural resource endowments. The so-called Natural Resource Curse suggests that natural resource endowments are associated with lower longterm growth rates in the areas in which the resources are located. Lower growth arises because these areas tend to specialize in the development and exploitation of the natural resources at the expense of other dynamic economic activities that offer higher long-term growth potential. Empirical evidence has, however, not reached consistent conclusions. In this paper, we take advantage of the rapid growth in oil and gas development and production in Texas over the course of a decade to consider the localized effects on inter-industry county-level employment at the NAICS-2, county-level mean and median income, and key public finance measures at both the county and school district levels. Considering the effects within a single, large and economically diverse state enables us to control for important state-level variables that influence local public finances. We find little evidence of short term effects necessary to generate the circumstance of a resource curse over the longer term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has recently reinvigorated reforms to its electricity sector, focusing on increasing the role of markets and improving regulation. While restructuring an electricity sector is difficult and can require years of detailed planning, China's approach relies upon broad central guidelines with many details and initiatives left to provincial governments. We assess the current state of reform efforts through the lens of five "pitfalls" based on well-established regulatory economics literature and international lessons, focusing on contract structure, system operation, and regulation. We find that while market efforts are likely to achieve efficiency gains with respect to the planned system, they may fall short of crucial functions of a market, such as incentivizing flexibility given increasing renewable energy penetrations. Making markets work will likely require a stronger centralization of market design and regulatory oversight authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a field experiment investigating the mechanism by which community currencies enhance trust. Our question is the following: do I trust more when using a community currency because I am a trusting-type person or because I think that you are trustworthy? We call the former preference-based trust; while the latter is belief-based trust. We apply a modification of the standard trust game from the experimental economics literature to disentangle these mechanisms. Player A has to choose whether or not to trust player B, and player B can either reciprocate that trust or not. Our innovation is in experimentally separating the currency in which the game is played (effective currency), from the currency preferred by the participant (preferred currency). If the mechanism is preference-based, then preferred currency will determine trust more than effective; if it is belief-based, then the effective currency will be determinant. We find strong evidence of the preference-based mechanism of community currencies on trust, and only weak evidence of the belief-based mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Steps for conducting Conjunctive Analysis of Case Configurations (CACC) are well documented in the literature; however, methods for identifying and quantifying "situational clustering" vary and are often based on subjective interpretation of a CACC truth table. In response, the current article presents two new techniques that (a) enable researchers to determine whether data used to populate a truth table cluster significantly within dominant case configurations and (b) apply an established metric from the economics literature and modified for configural analysis to quantify its relative magnitude. These new methods are applied to four existing CACC studies, demonstrating how they offer a more systematic, transparent, and replicable approach to analyzing and interpreting case configurations than what is currently used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we identify a fundamental attribute of the organizational structure of the firm--the intensity of interdivisional transaction relatedness and complementarity--which contributes to earnings management. We draw from the theoretical economics literature that demonstrates that intrafirm collusion is more likely in hierarchical and complex organizational structure. We posit that intrafirm collusion toward a common organizational goal is more prevalent in highly related organizational structure because the economic welfare of economic agents is highly interdependent. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that earnings management is positively associated with organizational relatedness. We also find that, for firms with high organizational relatedness, those with a high proportion of outside directors and high institutional equity ownership have less pronounced earnings management. Collectively, our result suggests an interaction between corporate governance structure and organizational relatedness in affecting earnings quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines a study conducted by Kin Wai Lee, Baruch Lev, and Gillian Yeo, which asserted that organizational relatedness is a predictor of earnings management and is negatively correlated with earnings quality. The article serves to question the theories presented by Lee, Lev, and Yeo, and build upon the data that was collected. It is the author's belief that the study conducted by Lee, Lev, and Yeo is an important one to economic literature, and presents an interesting application of the theory of organizational design and collusion to the financial reporting setting.

Although intellectual property is just a sidelight of Roger Blair's work, he has published at least seven articles and coauthored a book on this subject. Blair's work sets out robust economic models that address nearly all of the significant economic issues in intellectual property. Moreover, by using the property rules framework, he has offered a useful counterweight to the reward-to-loss theory that dominates the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature, one finds various explanations for the rise of financialized capitalism. In the different strands of financialization literature, housing either plays a minor role or is simply seen as one of the bearers of financialization. The relations between housing and financialization are under-researched and under-theorized. This article, first, looks at the rise of housing finance as an integral part of macro-economic policy, and second, at the role of financial globalization in the rise of housing finance. Housing is seen as an absorber of a ‘wall of money’, but the absorption of finance by housing is a very uneven process. Four trajectories of national institutional structures are suggested, and it is discussed how capital flows are absorbed in each of these trajectories. Finally, it is discussed what this tells about the geographies of financialized capitalism, and its relations to debt, housing, mortgage markets and the spatial fix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the concept of transportation ecoefficiency (TE) is described, and it is argued that this concept offers coherence to theoretical discussions of the environmental impact of transportation. A TE measure using readily available data is proposed, with four components: (1) percentage of commuters driving to work; (2) percentage of commuters taking public transit; (3) percentage of commuters walking or riding a bicycle; and (4) population density. A confirmatory factor analysis suggests that these components are useful for measuring TE and consistent in their relationships over time. This TE index is used to analyze TE in metropolitan areas in the United States (1980-2008) and in the United Kingdom (1981-2001): TE is decreasing in both countries despite very different starting points, with worrisome implications for climate change and other transportation-related environmental impacts. The paper concludes with a discussion of some uses for the TE metric in empirical research and planning practice, and how the concept could enhance the literature on transportation and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agro-food system (AFS) is an integrating component of the networks behind interindustrial systems. This implies that the structure of AFSs affects and is affected by the characteristics and evolution of the more complex networks in which they are embedded. This article uses national and regional input—output data to analyze the network structure of the Spanish interindustry system for the period 1980— 2000. Network theory (NT) and social network analysis (SNA) have been applied to examine the structural position and evolution of the AFS in the whole interindustrial system. Following a systemic view, it is stated that the Spanish interindustry network follows a hierarchical topology, in which a core and a periphery can be identified. The AFS is a cohesive module occupying a peripheral position in the interindustrial structure. Those findings are very relevant from a policy perspective, as it is essential to have a deep knowledge of the structure of a system before acting on it. According to the dynamics of the analyzed national and regional AFSs, actions would imply coordination with policies focused on core sectors, mainly business services, trade and hotels and restaurants, and on sectors belonging to other production systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In recent years, a large body of literature has bemoaned the lack of influence of the marketing function within organizations. Yet, there is limited evidence to support or reject claims of a crisis of influence of marketing subunits. This paper reviews the extant literature and discusses survey data regarding perceptions of marketing’s influence relative to other departments. The study employs data from senior managers in medium and large Australian firms. Marketing departments are found to be influential vis-à-vis other functional areas, thus suggesting that marketing is rather healthy in Australian organizations. The key findings are also compared to the results of previous studies that have employed US and European data, and further evidence pertaining to CEO background, marketing training and marketing’s communication channels are presented. The paper discusses the implications of the findings and presents a number of future research directions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Radical uncertainty is a concept currently debated, for example, in the economics literature to theorize the impossibility of foreseeing the outcomes of scientific and technological development work. The purpose of this study is to extend the concept to articulate and theorize the minute-to-minute transactions in scientific laboratories. Empirical materials resulting from five years of ethnographic work in one laboratory focusing on fish vision are used to show how scientists produce a material continuity between some natural phenomena and the way they are represented in scientific discourse. Because the outcomes of scientists' actions (i.e., observations) sometimes turn out to be uncertain, the material (practical) actions that produce this continuity themselves retroactively become uncertain. Scientists may at any one point determine that what they had done is not what they thought and said to have done. Actions and the objects they produce therefore stand in a dialectical relationship: they produce, mutually presuppose, and in their respective materiality, stabilize one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A list of books received by the publication is presented, including "Coming of Age in a Globalized World: The Next Generation," by J.M Adams and A. Carfagna, "Economics Transformed: Discovering the Brilliance of Marx," R. Albritton, and "Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis," by B. Bonner and A. Wiggin.

The article presents an introduction to the academic literature concerning economic market devices. The author contextualize their introduction within shifts in the study of the sociology of economics toward more pragmatic approaches to studying markets that rely less ex-ante or a priori statements of principles. The authors contend that this approach is better able to handle the uncertainty that is a part of economic predictions. The authors use the term "market devices" to describe the various aspects that compose a functioning market.

While we have gained considerable knowledge since the late 1980s regarding the phenomena of international new ventures, less is known about the influence of industry structure on these ventures. In the present paper, we draw on literature from industrial economics, international business and entrepreneurship to identify industry structure variables that fit within the theoretical framework of international new ventures. We then offer propositions as to how the identified industry structure variables individually and jointly influence the likelihood of new venture internationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditions of fiscal stress in local governments prompt researchers and public officials to seek to assess citizens' attitudes about public services and their inclination to fund enhanced service levels and quality. This study explores the questions of how citizens' attitudes about services influence their willingness to pay for them and how direct and mediated experience with services influence attitudes about them. The authors draw from two broad bodies of work: the public finance literature about demand and the psychology literature about attitudes. The authors propose a conceptual model of the relationships between citizens' direct and mediated exposure to public services, their attitudes about these services, and their willingness to pay for them. The authors present data from a survey of Connecticut adults and use these data to estimate statistical models of the relationship between media exposure and attitudes with regression analysis. They find evidence that direct experience and media exposure affect attitudes and that attitudes predict willingness to pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wide participation, in the urban planning context, is justified as the means of balancing multiple interests outside the traditional decision-making setup. However, this article argues that the participatory paradigm provides at best inadequate justification to the planning process. Particularly if consensus building is the aim of the participatory process, it suffers from a number of impossibility results well documented in the political economics literature. ‘Lazy deliberators’ will arrive at the acceptance of a priori median preference, and participatory processes necessarily exclude some groups, even under equitable capability and power distribution. This article intends to contribute to the debate on the nature of participatory planning by critically analyzing the motivations of participation and limitation of the participatory planning paradigms, and advocates a temperate view on their efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case studies as well as cross-country studies suggest that countries with an abundance of natural resources are more prone to violent conflict. This collection of articles analyzes the link between natural resources and civil war in a number of different ways. So far the literature falls broadly into two camps. First, in the economics literature the well-documented "resource curse" leads to low-income growth rates and low levels of income. These in turn constitute low opportunity costs for rebellion and make civil war more likely. On the other hand, political science literature concentrates on the link between natural resources and weak institutions. States with natural resources often rely on a system of patronage and do not develop a democratic system based on electoral competition, scrutiny and civil rights. Based on further empirical evidence in this volume we conclude with a brief overview of current policy initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local governments often contract out many public services, including solid waste management. Although waste collection contracting is relatively straightforward, recycling is more complicated. Local governments have to figure out how to achieve multiple objectives: low-cost provision of service and a minimum level of service quality, along with attainment of recycling and waste-reduction goals. Who should own key assets, how fully to specify ex ante the service to be provided- including exactly what materials to collect what prices to charge households, and how to compensate contractors are but three of the difficult questions they must address. In this study, the author summarizes the economics literature on incomplete contracts to shed light on current waste management practices. She then shows results from an international City/County Management Association survey of over 1,000 U.S. communities and a detailed analysis of the structure of contracts in seven communities that have achieved high recycling rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While literature on the research productivity of economists in general is significant, very little is known about the research productivity of black economists. This paper examines the research productivity of black Ph.D. economists employed in academic institutions. Based upon bibliographic data reported in the Journal of Economic Literature's (JEL) EconLit Database, we provided rankings across four different measures of research productivity. We also provided a ranking of Ph.D.-granting institutions based on the number of black economists produced, and on the number of black economist alumni who are ranked as individual researchers. We find that William Darity Jr. is the highest ranked black economist, regardless of the measure of research productivity used. Darity's alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has produced the largest number of ranked black economists. Other institutions that have been quite successful in producing ranked black economists include Harvard, University of California-Berkeley, Stanford, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys various economic literature which tries to model loss of control in hierarchies. Hierarchies have been studied by sociologists, management theorists and economics over this century. In most of these studies it has been assumed that supervisory effort is observable, although, imperfectly. The idea is that if a supervisor has worked at a reasonably high level, then layers below should have worked reasonably well and consequently production ought to be reasonably good. In pure supervision models, it might be easy for the firm not to show loss of hierarchical control when it grows. This is more so when it grows and when the supervisory effort is not directly visible. in all models discussed in this paper, theorists have talked about pure hierarchies,where every employee has a unique boss. This has been done for modeling convenience, in realty one has a matrix and other forms of organization. One key problem of modeling supervision and planning together is the difficulty in objectively defining the relationship between the two.

Analysing UK economic data over an extended historical timespan, from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, the authors use 'quantitative' or 'empirical' Marxist techniques to test key Marxian theses and categories. They argue that Marxian economics has nothing to fear from a confrontation with empirical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the lessons of conservative political philosophy applicable to the process of economic change in Eastern Europe. It is stated that the Eastern European economic revolution does not center its efforts on the processes of socioeconomic change. However, there are few scholarly traditions that have placed the analysis of change at the center of concern. The important thing among these is a set of works that group under the rubric principles of democratic social reconstruction. The leading works are of Edmund Burke, Karl Popper and Michael Oakeshott.

This paper estimates an earnings function, familiar to the economic literature, in order to study the effect on income of the type of college attended. The scheme developed by the Carnegie Commission is used to classify colleges by type. It is shown that there are systematic differences in college types as shown by a variety of college quality measures. There are statistically significant differences in the predicted earnings of graduates from the various types of college, which suggests that college type and quality are important determinants of the returns to education. The study also examines the effects of ability and socioeconomic class on the choice of college and on the earnings effect of college type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most economics literature on East Asian industrialization falls victim to the assumption that only those features of economic policy consistent with neoclassical principles could have contributed to good economic performance. Explanations of good performance accordingly ignore nonneoclassical features. This article suggests that new, insights can be gained by carefully examining what these governments actually did. We find that much of what they did is consistent with the principles of old-style pre-1970 development economics. In particular, they gave central attention to ways of augmenting and directing the composition of investment, and much less attention to ways of increasing efficiency of resource use. They used protection as an instrument to enhance innovation and international competitiveness. In important industries they regulated both quantities and prices so as to achieve government-selected goals, preventing those parts of the economy from being guided by international prices. Economics has much to learn by embracing such nonneoclassical facts and seeking to build a theory to accommodate them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides an overview of the book "The CBI," by Wyn Grant and David Marsh.

Presents a list of periodicals received for articles featured in this issue of the journal "The Sociological Review." Some of them are American Economic Review, American Journal of Sociology, Economica, Chinese Economic Journal, Eugenics Review, International Review of Agricultural Economics, Journal of London Society, and Journal of Negro History.

In a communication which appeared in the February 1959 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review" on the basis of an analysis of available data, the "Theory of Status Integration and Its Relationship to Suicide" of Jack P. Gibbs and Walter T. Martin fails to explain Elwin H. Powell's observation that among the white males in the Standard Metropolitan Area of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the suicide rate of those in the professional-managerial category has been consistently higher than the rate for those in the sales-clerical and craftsmen categories. Powell's theory, though void of operational measures or indexes, was described by the writer measure of status integration of other than occupational suicide differentials; but the communication apparently was a factor in the latter's decision to apply their theory to Powell's Tulsa data. Gibbs and Martin report that the relative magnitude of the suicide rate for those in the professional-managerial category represents an isolated "incorrect prediction" among data which generally support their theory. Furthermore, they show that if "professional" and "managerial" are viewed as two distinct status categories their integration with white and with male status based on the relative number of white males in these occupations is much lower and therefore more in line with the observed suicide rates.

Provides an overview of the book "Uncommon Market," by S. Holland.

Provides an overview of the book "Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England," by J. O. Appleby.

Provides an overview of the book "Europe and the World: The External Relations of the Common Market," edited by K. J. Twitchett.

Provides an overview of the book "Revenue Sharing," by D. A. Caputo and R. L. Cole.

Provides an overview of the book "Government and Industry," by Gabriele Ganz.