'Support-Bargaining, Economics and Society links support-bargaining to Darwin's theory of natural selection and traces the implications of support-bargaining and money-bargaining across society. It provides a wholly different account of the functioning of human societies from anything that has gone before. Social scientists, ever since there have been such people, have missed the crucial human characteristic - the propensity to seek support - that has given rise to group formation and the myriad activities that are feasible in groups.
It is clear even to casual observation that economies evolve from year to year and over centuries. Yet mainstream economic theory assumes that economies always move towards equilibrium. One consequence of this is that mainstream theory is unable to deal with economic history. The Evolution of Economies provides a clear account of how economies evolve under a process of support-bargaining and money-bargaining. Both support-bargaining and money-bargaining are situation-related - people determine their interests and actions by reference to their present circumstances. This gives the bargaining system a natural evolutionary dynamic. Societies evolve from situation to situation. Historical change follows this evolutionary course. A central chapter of the book applies the new theory in a re-evaluation of the industrial revolution in Britain, showing how specialist money-bargaining agencies, in the form of companies, evolved profitable formats and displaced landowners as the leading sources of employment and economic necessities. Companies took advantage of the evolution of technology to establish effective formats. The book also seeks to establish how it came about that a ‘mainstream’ theory was developed that is so wildly at odds with the observable features of economic history and economic exchange. Theory-making is described as a process of ‘intellectual support-bargaining’ in which theory is shaped to the interests of its makers. The work of major classical and neoclassical economists is contested as incompatible with the idea of an evolving money-bargaining system. The book reviews attempts to derive an evolutionary economic theory from Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Neoclassical economic theory has had enormous influence on the governance of societies, principally through its theoretical endorsement of the benefits of ‘free markets’. An evolutionary account of economic processes should change the basis of debate. The theory presented here will be of interest immediately to all economists, whether evolutionary, heterodox or neoclassical. It will facilitate the work of economic historians, who complain that current theory gives no guidance for their historical investigations. Beyond the confines of professional theory-making, many will find it a revelatory response to questions that have hitherto gone unanswered.
This book brings an exciting and innovative new approach to the study of politics today. It introduces political bargaining, a process at the heart of all political and economic exchanges in contemporary society and the very essence of politics itself, to provide a new framework and fresh insights to modern political science. The authors trace the prevalence of bargaining processes in politics from the abstract level of individual human interaction and the `state of nature′ to the more concrete political or institutionalized level. They introduce students to theory -- the basic models of game theory, rational choice theory and positivist approaches; practice -- the practical manifestations of political bargaining in everyday national and international political life; and process -- its setting, the interests of the players involved, the conditions and properties that affect their calculations and, consequently, their ability to obtain desired outcomes. Political Bargaining provides students with the basic tools for learning about and participating in politics today by richly illustrating how the authoritative allocation of scarce resources is arrived at through a complex bargaining process between competing interests in society. It will be essential reading for student and lecturer alike across political science and the social sciences more widely.
This book provides an introduction to the theory of support-bargaining and money-bargaining. Support-bargaining arises from the propensity of all individuals to seek the support of those around them and is the underlying mechanism of democratic societies. It is also the underlying mechanism of theory formation. Intellectual support-bargaining is the process by which support is assembled for ideas and theories. Mainstream economic theory, or ‘neoclassical theory’, can be seen as formulated to advance individual interest. It is mainstream because it has assembled sufficient support to give it ascendancy in academia. It reconciles private and public interest in a mathematical account of resource allocation. Money-bargaining, in contrast, explains the process of economic exchange. Transactions are based on information, so that the character of information itself influences the conduct of exchange. This volume provides a radically new explanation of the functioning of human societies that will be recognised as entirely consistent with common observation and experience.
For many decades economists have disputed with economic anthropologists over the origins of money. Economists claim that money emerged from barter exchange; anthropologists claim that it originated as a ‘unit of account’ in the temples and palaces of ancient Mesopotamia. This book argues that money originated as a bargaining counter in a system of money-bargaining, emerging almost seamlessly from barter-bargaining. This is not the ‘money’ of mainstream economic conception – a ‘veil’ cast over a system of resource allocation defined in mathematical terms. Confidence in the bargaining counter is sustained through ‘support-bargaining,’ a process in which individuals seek the support of their associates but seek at the same time to advance their own interests. A comprehensive ‘Introduction to Support-Bargaining and Money-Bargaining’ is provided by the work. The arrival of coin-money is recognised by many as a crucial event in the history of mankind, and it is argued here that the distinctive character of support-bargaining in ancient Greek city states made possible the introduction of coin-money. The dependence of coin-money on a particular form of support-bargaining also suggests the reason why coin-money was not introduced much earlier, given that the technology for producing coins was available long before their adoption. This book will be of great interest to researchers in the history and origins of money, banking and economic theory more broadly.
Economy, Society, and Public Policy is a new way to learn economics. It is designed specifically for students studying social sciences, public policy, business studies, engineering and other disciplines who want to understand how the economy works and how it can be made to work better. Topical policy problems are used to motivate learning of key concepts and methods of economics. It engages, challenges and empowers students, and will provide them with the tools to articulate reasoned views on pressing policy problems. This project is the result of a worldwide collaboration between researchers, educators, and students who are committed to bringing the socially relevant insights of economics to a broader audience.KEY FEATURESESPP does not teach microeconomics as a body of knowledge separate from macroeconomicsStudents begin their study of economics by understanding that the economy is situated within society and the biosphereStudents study problems of identifying causation, not just correlation, through the use of natural experiments, lab experiments, and other quantitative methodsSocial interactions, modelled using simple game theory, and incomplete information, modelled using a series of principal-agent problems, are introduced from the beginning. As a result, phenomena studied by the other social sciences such as social norms and the exercise of power play a roleThe insights of diverse schools of thought, from Marx and the classical economists to Hayek and Schumpeter, play an integral part in the bookThe way economists think about public policy is central to ESPP. This is introduced in Units 2 and 3, rather than later in the course.
“Timely and important . . . It should be our North Star for the recovery and beyond.” —Hillary Clinton “Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in people’s deepest aspirations—in their sense of purpose and self-worth.” —The New York Times When Gene Sperling was in charge of coordinating economic policy in the Obama White House, he found himself surprised when serious people in Washington told him that the Obama focus on health care was a distraction because it was “not focused on the economy.” How, he asked, was the fear felt by millions of Americans of being one serious illness away from financial ruin not considered an economic issue? Too often, Sperling found that we measured economic success by metrics like GDP instead of whether the economy was succeeding in lifting up the sense of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and security of people. In Economic Dignity, Sperling frames the way forward in a time of wrenching change and offers a vision of an economy whose guiding light is the promotion of dignity for all Americans.
Collective bargaining and workers’ voice are often discussed in the past rather than in the future tense, but can they play a role in the context of a rapidly changing world of work? This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the functioning of collective bargaining systems and workers’ voice arrangements across OECD countries, and new insights on their effect on labour market performance today.
The European economic crisis has been ongoing since 2008 and while austerity has spread over the continent, it has failed to revive economies. The media have played an important ideological role in presenting the policies of economic and political elites in a favourable light, even if the latter’s aim has been to shift the burden of adjustment onto citizens. This book explains how and why, using a critical political economic perspective and focusing on the case of Ireland. Throughout, Ireland is compared with contemporary and historical examples to contextualise the arguments made. The book covers the housing bubble that led to the crash, the rescue of financial institutions by the state, the role of the European institutions and the International Monetary Fund, austerity, and the possibility of leaving the eurozone for Europe’s peripheral countries. Through a systematic analysis of Ireland’s main newspapers, it is argued that the media reflect elite views and interests and downplay alternative policies that could lead to more progressive responses to the crisis.
After the ‘financial crisis’ and ‘Great Recession’, some have called for replacing standard economic theory by heterodox models based upon behavioural approaches. The Responsible Economy argues that there is nothing wrong with economic theory. Instead, the problem has been a ‘devil’s pact’ of simplistic pro-market economics combined with simplistic Keynesian monetary policy. This book revisits the fundamental theorems in economics that state the conditions for markets to achieve efficiency. It has long been known that there are limitations of markets in dealing with externalities, increasing returns to scale and monopoly. The role of information in the economy was developed in economic theory in the 1970s onwards and in a world of imperfect and asymmetric information, markets perform poorly. Managers of firms engage in short-termism, take on excessive risk and misstate their own and their firm’s performance. While finance theory makes clear that much of the activity in the financial services sector is of no economic value and represents wasteful ‘financial engineering’. In this real world, it is economically inefficient for firms to maximise shareholder value. On the macroeconomics side, monetary expansion cannot be an effective substitute for addressing real problems of infrastructure and education investment. This book maintains that markets work best if individuals and firms behave ethically and responsibly. Employment should be a long-term relationship; firms should pay living wages, produce good products at a fair price, and pay their share of taxes. Where these standards don’t hold, governments should not try to micromanage through regulation, but set up simple and straightforward policies.
