The Fallacy of Wage Cuts and Keynes's Involuntary Unemployment

2007 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Levendis

The lingering economic problem for economists in the 1920s and 1930s was unemployment. What caused it? More importantly, what could cure it? John Maynard Keynes's work offered new insights regarding both the reasons for, and the cures of, lingering and massive unemployment—what Keynes called “involuntary unemployment.” Keynes's definition of the term evolved as he gradually came to realize the role of the fallacy of composition in explaining why nominal wage rate adjustments might not induce full employment. I argue that it was Richard Kahn's multiplier article, more than anything, which guided Keynes's own understanding of the phenomenon. This paper, then, is a narrative history of how Keynes came to grips with the unprecedented level of unemployment in the 1920s and '30s interpreted through the lens of the Kahnian multiplier.

2018 ◽  
Vol 04 (03) ◽  
pp. 1850013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard O. Barraqué ◽  
Patrick Laigneau ◽  
Rosa Maria Formiga-Johnsson

The Agences de l’eau (Water Agencies) are well known abroad as the French attempt to develop integrated water management at river basin scale through the implementation of the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP). Yet, after 30 years of existence, environmental economists became aware that they were not implementing the PPP, and therefore were not aiming at reducing pollution through economic efficiency. Behind the purported success story, which still attracts visitors from abroad, a crisis has been recently growing. Initially based on the model of the German (rather than Dutch) waterboards, the French system always remained fragile and quasi-unconstitutional. It failed to choose between two legal, economic and institutional conceptions of river basin management. These principles differ on the definition of the PPP, and on the role of levies paid by water users. After presenting these two contrasting visions, the paper revisits the history of the French Agences, to show that, unwilling to modify the Constitution to make room for specific institutions to manage common pool resources, Parliament and administrative elites brought the system to levels of complexity and incoherence which might doom the experiment.


Author(s):  
Ana Cabana ◽  
Colin R. Johnson ◽  
Henry French ◽  
Leen Van Molle

The aim of this debate article is to promote a discussion of a historiographical nature (not ideological, not political) about the meaning, place and role of gender in both the rural past and the rural historiography. The discussion revolves around a variety of questions, ranging from the relevance, the opportunity and the very history of the use of gender category in rural history, to the analysis of gender (im)balances in the community of historians working in this broadly defined field of studies, not to mention the very definition of what is meant by gender. These and other related topics, for which there are no single or definitive answers, are debated here in a roundtable format.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-28
Author(s):  
Yasuhito Tanaka

AbstractWe show the existence of involuntary unemployment without assuming wage rigidity using a neoclassical model of consumption and production. We consider a case of indivisible labor supply and increasing returns to scale under monopolistic competition. We derive involuntary unemployment by considering utility maximization of consumers and profit maximization of firms in an overlapping generations (OLG) model with two or three generations. In a two-periods OLG model it is possible that a reduction of the nominal wage rate reduces unemployment. However, if we consider a three-periods OLG model including a childhood period, a reduction of the nominal wage rate does not necessarily reduce unemployment.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anupamaa Seshadri ◽  
Ali Salim

The concept of “brain death” is one that has been controversial over time, requiring the development of clear guidelines to diagnose and give prognoses for patients after devastating neurologic injury. This review discusses the history of the definition of brain death, as well as the most recent guidelines and practice parameters on the determination of brain death in both the adult and pediatric populations. We provide specific and detailed instructions on the various clinical tests required, including the brain death neurologic examination and the apnea test, and discuss pitfalls in the diagnosis of brain death. This review also considers the most recent literature and guidelines as to the role of confirmatory tests making this diagnosis.  Key Words: apnea test, brain death, brainstem reflex, death examination


This chapter extends the book’s insights about nature, technology, and nation to the larger history of the modern period. While the modern nation loses its grip as a locus of identity and analysis, attempts to understand the operation, disruption, and collapse of continental and global infrastructures continue to mix the natural and the machinic in ways that define them both. Those vulnerabilities emphasize large-scale catastrophe; historiographically, they mask the crucial role of small-scale failures in the experience and culture of late modernity, including its definition of nature. Historical actors turned the uneven geographical distribution of small-scale failures into a marker of distinctive local natures and an element of regional and national identity. Attending to those failures helps not only situate cold-war technologies in the larger modern history of natural and machinic orders; it helps provincialize the superpowers by casting problematic “other” natures as central and primary.


Author(s):  
Matthew Guah

By examining the history of what was earlier considered project management, this chapter not only points out lessons from past practices but also justifies the selected definition of VLITP. It also explains the role of project management in a fast business environment. The author has demonstrated such importance by representing VLITP in the form of a major initiative that contains a series of relevant processes in the host organization.


Author(s):  
Alexis Keller

This chapter identifies the principal moments when the definition of arbitration and the institutions and techniques associated with it underwent major changes. It specifically highlights inter-state arbitration, yet its proposed historical lessons illuminates the entire field of international dispute settlement. This history can be divided into five distinct moments. The first, which could be described as the ‘Greek moment’, refers to the systematic use of arbitration by Greek cities to resolve their conflicts. The second, covering the period between 1200 and 1400 ad, witnessed the emergence of the first arbitration procedures under the influence of canonical law and acknowledged the growing power of the popes in the settlement of disputes between states. The third, marked by the Jay Treaty of 1794, initiated a major turning point in the history of arbitration, as it confirmed the role of diplomatic commissions in the peaceful resolution of disputes. The fourth moment, which began with the Alabama case (1871), saw the establishment of the first impartial and independent tribunal. Finally, the fifth moment began with the setting up of the Permanent Arbitration Court in 1899 and the harmonization of arbitration procedures.


1986 ◽  
Vol 149 (6) ◽  
pp. 780-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Sturmey ◽  
P. D. Slade

Anorexia nervosa is frequently associated with neurotic traits and symptoms. The symptomatology and history of a housebound 20-year-old woman with anorexia nervosa and dysmorphophobia are described. The role of the family In maintaining the problems, use of external cues to control behaviour, overvalued somatic ideas and the definition of dysmorphophobia are discussed.


MRS Bulletin ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.H. Westbrook

History is replete with examples of the enormous impact of data compilations in all fields of science and technology. The advantages and opportunities such aggregations confer include:• convenience of access,• condensation and homogenization of raw data,• formats tailored for the application,• perception of patterns,• detection of errors,• definition of gaps and inconsistencies, and• basis for formulating and testing theories.The opportunities in materials science, and specifically in the subfield of alloy design, are no fewer than in other fields of science. Indeed, as I have remarked in a review of the history of the development of understanding and application of intermetallic compounds, breakthroughs in this field have usually come about not from “a new technique, a unique experimental observation, or an abstruse theory… Rather it was the amassing of a critical volume of experimental data in the literature which permitted an individual with great insight to perceive an underlying pattern not previously apparent.”


2006 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Luke

This paper explores access to the Honduran past with a focus on northwestern Honduras, particularly the Ulua Valley. The foundations of national patrimony legislation and the practice of collecting antiquities are used to explore whether the disassociation of the archaeological community from the collecting sphere over the last several decades has better protected the archaeological record. I argue that early field expeditions led by U.S. archaeologists, the shipment of their finds to U.S. institutions, and subsequent massive looting galvanized Honduran efforts aimed at national patrimony legislation. The roles of the U.S. government and U.S.-based businesses as negotiating bodies in the early days of Honduran expeditions from 1890 to 1940 are explored in detail, particularly in the sphere of opening up the region to collectors and the role of the U.S. antiquities market. We can understand the early days of collecting in Honduras precisely because of the close relationships once forged between collectors, museums, and archaeologists, networks that have now disappeared because of current conceptions of archaeological ethics. The changing definition of a collector represents a key point throughout this analysis; at one time archaeologists, museums, and businesses were the primary collectors. The shift from the labelcollectortoarchaeologistis explored through the lens of the development of archaeology as a discipline, with a particular emphasis on context, and the contemporary legislative efforts aimed at cultural heritage projection. The essay concludes with a look at recent archaeological work in the region and the increasingly strict cultural patrimony legislation, specifically the 2004 U.S.–Honduran Memorandum of Understanding.


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