scholarly journals Retrospectives: The Cyclical Behavior of Labor Productivity and the Emergence of the Labor Hoarding Concept

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff E. Biddle
Keyword(s):  
Labor Productivity ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Accepted Part ◽  
Cyclical Behavior ◽  
Labor Hoarding ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Form

The concept of “labor hoarding,” at least in its modern form, was first fully articulated in the early 1960s by Arthur Okun (1963). By the end of the 20th century, the concept of “labor hoarding” had become an accepted part of economists' explanations of the workings of labor markets and of the relationship between labor productivity and economic fluctuations. The emergence of this concept involved the conjunction of three key elements: the fact that measured labor productivity was found to be procyclical, rising during expansions and falling during contractions; a perceived contradiction with the theory of the neoclassical firm in a competitive economy; and a possible explanation based on optimizing behavior on the part of firms. Each of these three elements—fact, contradiction, and explanation—has a history of its own, dating back to at least the opening decades of the twentieth century. Telling the story of the emergence of the modern labor hoarding concept requires recounting these three histories, histories that involve the work of economists motivated by diverse purposes and often not mainly, if at all, concerned with the questions that the labor hoarding concept was ultimately used to address. As a final twist to the story, the long-standing positive relationship between labor productivity and output in the US economy began to disappear in the late 1980s; and during the Great Recession, labor productivity rose while the economy contracted.

From Competition to Cooperation: A History of Canada–US National Park Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Young ◽  
Alan MacEachern ◽  
Lary Dilsaver
Keyword(s):  
National Parks ◽  
National Park ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
The Relationship

This essay explores the evolving international relationship of the two national park agencies that in 1968 began to offer joint training classes for protected-area managers from around the world. Within the British settler societies that dominated nineteenth century park-making, the United States’ National Park Service (NPS) and Canada’s National Parks Branch were the most closely linked and most frequently cooperative. Contrary to campfire myths and nationalist narratives, however, the relationship was not a one-way flow of information and motivation from the US to Canada. Indeed, the latter boasted a park bureaucracy before the NPS was established. The relationship of the two nations’ park leaders in the half century leading up to 1968 demonstrates the complexity of defining the influences on park management and its diffusion from one country to another.

The Historiography of Environmental History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. McNeill
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Industrial Pollution ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental history, which developed in the context of the environmental concerns that began in the 1960s with worries about local industrial pollution, but which has since evolved into a full-scale global crisis of climate change. Environmental history is ‘the history of the relationship between human societies and the rest of nature’. It includes three chief areas of inquiry: the study of material environmental history, political and policy-related environmental history, and a form of environmental history which concerns what humans have thought, believed, written, and more rarely, painted, sculpted, sung, or danced that deals with the relationship between society and nature. Since 1980, environmental history has come to flourish in many corners of the world, and scholars everywhere have found models, approaches, and perspectives rather different from those developed for the US context.

History of the Incap Longitudinal Study on the Effects of Early Nutrition Supplementation in Child Growth and Development

1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merrill S. Read ◽  
Jean-Pierre Habicht
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Child Growth ◽  
Nutrition Intervention ◽  
Pilot Studies ◽  
Childhood Health ◽  
Early Childhood Health ◽  
Nutrition Supplementation ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

In the mid-1960s a longitudinal, multidisciplinary nutrition intervention study was undertaken in rural Guatemala by the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama in conjunction with the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The goal was to elucidate the relationship between undernutrition in pregnancy and early childhood, health, and subsequent behavioural development in infants and young children. Extensive detailed planning coupled with three years of pilot studies in the field preceded the initiation of the longitudinal study in 1969. This article outlines the problems encountered in planning and implementing the study, and their resolution. Many of these experiences will be helpful to others considering community-based intervention studies.

scholarly journals The Economics of Tipping

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-236
Author(s):  
Ofer H. Azar
Keyword(s):  
Social Norm ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Income Source ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Motivations ◽  
The Relationship

Tipping involves dozens of billions of dollars annually in the US alone and is a major income source for millions of workers. But beyond its economic importance and various economic implications, tipping is also a unique economic phenomenon in that people pay tips voluntarily without any legal obligation. Tipping demonstrates that psychological and social motivations can be a substantial reason for economic behavior, and that economic models should go beyond a selfish economic agent who has no feelings in order to capture the full range of economic activities. This article discusses some aspects of tipping, with an emphasis on economic issues: the history of tipping, the main reasons for tipping, why tipping could be a welfare-increasing and sustainable social norm, the relationship between tipping and service quality, how tipping represents a struggle over rents, and issues of discrimination and sexual harassment related to tipping.

scholarly journals Whitewashing Capitalism: Mainstream Economics’ Resounding Silence on Race and Racism

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 562-571
Author(s):  
Tim Koechlin
Keyword(s):  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Mainstream Economics ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of

This paper is about the gaping silence in mainstream economics regarding the relationship among capitalism, race, racism, and enduring racial inequality in the USA. Racial inequality is a glaring and enduring fact about the US economy. And yet mainstream economics has little to say about race or racism. Gregory Mankiw’s bestselling textbook devotes seven pages to “discrimination.” There is no discussion of racism per se. Mainstream economists and textbooks typically conflate racism and “discrimination,” and reassure the reader that “markets contain a natural remedy for employer discrimination” (Mankiw, 2008: 409). A student is likely to leave ECON 101 (or an economics major) with a sense that “economic science” has “shown” that discrimination is not that big a deal, and that the history of racist plunder and exploitation in the USA (of which there likely has been no discussion) is not relevant to “economics.” I argue here that the mainstream narrative (its assumptions, its logic, its conclusions, and its rhetorical choices and emphases) systematically obscures, dismisses, and ignores essential ways that racial inequality has been (re)produced by US capitalism. Especially striking is the resounding silence about the legacy of racist economic practices—in particular, the ways in which the enormous black/white wealth gap (and its effects) in the USA are linked to centuries of racist exclusion, violence, and plunder. The mainstream narrative thus whitewashes capitalism and exonerates “the market system.” The final section argues for a radical multidisciplinary economics. JEL classification: J15, D63

A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE CONSUMER

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 709-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHERYL KROEN
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
International Negotiation ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the relationship between the consumer and the citizen from the eighteenth century to the present in Europe and the United States. Part I highlights the political narrative underlying the opposition between courtly consumption (absolutism) and the inconspicuous consumption of the middling sorts, and explores early formulations of the relationship between consumption and democracy. Part II looks at the first half of the nineteenth century, defined by the opposition between consumers (coded feminine, and as ‘despised’) and citizens (coded masculine, and as ‘restrained’). Part III goes from the 1860s to the 1930s. American historians have emphasized the positive political agency of consumers in this period, and their contribution to the notion of social citizenship. This article emphasizes the less democratic aspects of consumer politics, and the contributions of anti-liberal movements on the extreme left and right to a stronger tradition of social citizenship in Europe. Part IV takes Lizabeth Cohen's claim that a ‘Consumers' Republic' was forged in the US in the post-war period, and casts the Marshall Plan and the Cold War as the context that gave rise to an international negotiation over the relationship between consumption and democracy that continues to the present.

“Different than an infantry unit down in Georgia”: Narratives of queer liberation in the post-DADT military

Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 776-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Connell
Keyword(s):  
Officer Training ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Don't Ask Don't Tell ◽  
The Us ◽  
Rotc Cadets ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Unanimous Approval

More than five years out from its implementation, we still know relatively little about how members of the US military and its ancillary institutions are responding to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Contrary to what one might expect given the long history of LGBTQ antipathy in the military, I found in interviews with Boston area Reserve Officer Training Core (ROTC) cadets unanimous approval for the repeal of DADT. When pressed to explain why there was so much homogeneity of favorable opinion regarding the repeal, interviewees repeatedly offered the same explanation: that Boston, in particular, is such a progressive place that even more conservative institutions like the ROTC are spared anti-gay sentiment. They imagined the Southern and/or rural soldier they will soon encounter when they enter the US military, one who represents the traditionally homophobic attitudes of the old military in contrast to their more enlightened selves. This “metronormative” narrative has been critiqued elsewhere as inadequate for understanding the relationship between sexuality and place; this article contributes to that critique by taking a new approach. Rather than deconstruct narratives of queer rurality, as the majority of metronormativity scholarship has done, I deconstruct these narratives of urban queer liberation. I find that such narratives mask the murkier realities of LGBTQ attitudes in urban contexts and allow residents like the ROTC cadets in this study to displace blame about anti-gay prejudice to a distant Other, outside of their own ranks.

Market structure and knowledge acquisition by firms

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Hemsley ◽  
Rafael Morais ◽  
Karinna Di Iulio
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Open Economy ◽  
Perfect Competition ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Firm Theory ◽  
Market Structures ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Main Input ◽  
The Relationship

PurposeRecent models in firm theory assume that problems have to be solved for production to take place and that knowledge is the main input for problem-solving. This paper characterizes the relationship between the predictability of production prcesses and investment in knowledge.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a theoretical model of firm theory to study investment in knowledge by a simplified one-layer firm with a stochastic technology, across different market structures, and develops a calibration exercise to illustrate the results.FindingsFirms working closer to the production frontier (those with a larger efficient scale in perfect competition, facing a higher demand in monopoly or more competitive internationally in an open economy) react more in terms of investment in knowledge when problem predictability changes. Investment in knowledge becomes nearly insensitive to such changes for firms with a low output, i.e. those far from the frontier. A calibration exercise suggests that the elasticity of knowledge with respect to the predictability of problems was around 0.59 for the US economy for the period 1980–2020.Originality/valueThese are the first nonambiguous results on the relationship between the predictability of production processes and investment in knowledge and help understanding knowledge acquisition by different firms in distinct competitive environments.

scholarly journals The Global History of Inequality

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-323
Author(s):  
Pim de Zwart
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Inequality has increased in most Western countries since the early 1980s. In a recent report, the international non-governmental organization Oxfam noted that the twenty-six richest people in the world own as much wealth as the poorest fifty per cent of the world's population. Discontent with the growing disparities in wealth and income has soared in recent years, especially in the wake of the 2007/2008 financial crisis and the “Great Recession” that followed. The Occupy movement protested against the greed of the “one per cent”, referring to the highly skewed income distribution in the US. Former US president Barack Obama proclaimed the growth of within-country economic inequality as “the defining challenge of our time”. Yet, he enacted few policies that reduced inequality during his two terms in office; the Gini coefficient in the US actually increased slightly between 2007 and 2016. His successor, whose election has often been explained as a consequence of these high levels of inequality, has slashed taxes for the wealthy, probably causing further rises in inequality in the future. In this essay, I will review two recent economic history books that examine the historical roots of within-country inequality on a global scale: Branko Milanovic's Global Inequality (2016) and Walter Scheidel's The Great Leveler (2017). Formerly a lead economist at the World Bank, Milanovic is a well-known scholar working in the field of economic inequality, while Scheidel has a background as a specialist in the economic, social, and demographic history of antiquity.

scholarly journals Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry: who pays the piper?

2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 84-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Moncrieff ◽  
Steve Hopker ◽  
Philip Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
Private Investment ◽  
Marketing Strategies ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
Development Costs ◽  
Major Development ◽  
The Us ◽  
Public Citizen ◽  
Disease Concepts ◽  
The Relationship

There is increasing concern about the relationship between medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. In July the BMJ devoted a themed issue to this, and critical discussions have featured in other leading medical journals recently. The industry has grown in profitability and influence over the past 20 years, and is now second only to armaments in the US economy (Public Citizen, 2002). Its influence is enhanced through its control of research, and it employs sophisticated and wide-reaching marketing strategies. This level of influence is concerning because the private investment necessary to enable drug development demands ever more vigorous struggles to maintain and expand market presence. In other words, commercial rather than clinical or scientific demands are becoming the dominant driving force for ‘innovation’. This leads to the popularity of developing cheaper ‘me too’ options, and the promotion of new ‘disease concepts' to allow the re-badging of old products to expand markets without major development costs.

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