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In this article, we analyse the role that entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship have played in the construction and consolidation of capitalism in Poland. We question the line conventionally drawn between entrepreneurs and the working class, arguing that the vast majority of so-called entrepreneurs in Poland are disguised workers who were rejected from the labour market during the transition to capitalism or forced into self-employment as Poland's precariat labour market crystallised. We outline a critical historical analysis of the origin of these disguised workers to provide space for a discussion of the specific 'labour problem' that Poland has faced during its transition to capitalism. A central argument of our study is that the top-down creation of entrepreneurship is a partial and often contradictory response to this 'labour problem'. We then illustrate these contradictions, showing how those commonly defined as entrepreneurs have performed relatively poorly in their designated roles of creating employment and innovation, while their living standards and wellbeing have deteriorated. We historically frame how this group of disguised workers in Poland embody the tension between the normative and actual aspects of capitalist development in Poland since 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social finance, an arena of international finance comprising social banking, impact investing, and microfinance, offers a powerful conceptual lens through which to interrogate the interface of finance and labor in financial capitalism. This article investigates social finance's development at the crossroad of two processes. Social finance emerged in the context of a process of laboring finance, an often-coercive inclusion of workers and households into financial circuits of accumulation and expansion made possible by labor market changes that began in the 1970s. The global financial crisis occasioned the growth of social finance, which, by means of financing labor, placed the reproductive needs of labor—the needs of society's most disadvantaged agents, the poor, the homeless, the marginal, and unemployed workers—at the center of financial accumulation. By informing an oscillatory movement between laboring finance and financing labor, and, affectively, between trust and distrust, social finance primes and cultivates financial market participants' belief in purported solutions to the social problems financial capitalism has contributed to create. As a critical investigation of the complex interface between finance and labor that animates social finance's operations, this article aims to provide conceptual resources that can contribute to releasing labor's social cooperation from finance's hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HIV/AIDS knowledge deprivation fosters fear, discrimination, and stigma and, thus, reduces the impact of prevention efforts. This article investigates the socioeconomic determinants of HIV/AIDS knowledge deprivation in Bangladesh, a country largely affected by HIV incidence, using the 2011 and 2014 waves of the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey. To analyze the factors impacting the unequal distribution of HIV/AIDS knowledge deprivation among socioeconomic groups, the study proposes a multidimensional knowledge deprivation index and constructs a knowledge deprivation concentration index. Results show that the concentration of knowledge deprivation among the most disadvantaged groups (those with low household wealth) significantly correlates with the concentration of women's empowerment among the least economically disadvantaged. These findings highlight the role of institutional support for programs improving women's agency as an important complement to programs that focus on traditional forms of deprivation and disadvantage. HIGHLIGHTS In Bangladesh, women are disproportionally exposed to the risk of HIV/AIDS. Multidimensional HIV/AIDS knowledge deprivation is concentrated among disadvantaged women. Key prevention strategies are those focused on knowledge deprivation. Policies targeting women's education and employment will reduce the risk of infection. Women's empowerment and agency improve HIV/AIDS knowledge deprivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many believe the growth in outsourcing contributed to the decline in U.S. unionization up to the 1990s, this argument has never been investigated systematically. In this article, we analyze the effect of outsourcing on unionization between 1973 and 1993. Instrumental variables estimation shows outsourcing contributes to higher quasirents and industry productivity. We find the union wage premium increases with the extent of outsourcing--both for workers that are substitutable by outsourcing services and workers in jobs that are not substitutes of the tasks being outsourced. Finally, we find no support for the claim that outsourcing reduces unionization. (JEL J5, L2, L6), The largest employer in America is a temp agency now. So we have to figure out how to organize this segment, what the glue is.... Not in my lifetime. --A [...]

We study how access to the international capital market affects domestic employment. Using a large firm‐level panel data set that covers over 60 countries between 1982 and 2014, we find that access to the international capital market positively affects firm‐level employment, and the magnitude of this impact is economically significant. This causal effect is identified through a generalised triple‐differences identification strategy that exploits variations in both external financial dependence and the progress of capital account openness. We also show that there are substantial heterogeneous effects across countries and firms; the effect is more pronounced for firms in industries that depend more on external finance and those in countries with weaker employment protection legislation. In addition, financially constrained firms respond more positively to international capital market access. Overall, our findings suggest that a strategy of gradually opening international capital markets will support employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Elisabetta Magnani, Adeline Tubb Internationally, political and academic discourse is increasingly focussed on two intensifying trends: the underprovision of environmental quality and population ageing. However, the potential interrelationship between these two phenomena has been virtually completely ignored. Importantly, the social preference for environmental care is a critical factor explaining the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), the purported inverted U-curve relationship between environmental degradation and Gross Domestic Product. However, little is known about the potential impact of population ageing on the social preference for environmental protection. This is alarming as micro based surveys reveal that demographic factors may indeed affect social preferences for environmental quality (Hersch and Viscusi, 2005). This study explores if and how population ageing contributes to an explanation of the EKC via willingness to pay. The main results can be summarised as follows. In three EKC specifications for air pollutants, we find that the estimated coefficients for population ageing are positive and statistically different from zero, indicating that population ageing may increase pollution emissions. Using Baldwin's (1995) decomposition of actual pollution emissions, we propose alternative explanations for this result. In particular, population ageing may negatively impact abatement expenditure either through individual preferences or a tighter government budget constraint which channels expenditure away from the environmental protection.