A world-system analysis of the ecological rift generated by capitalism requires as one of its elements a developed theory of the unequal ecological exchange between center and periphery. After reviewing the literature on unequal exchange (both economic and ecological) from Ricardo and Marx to the present, a new approach is provided, based on a critical appropriation of systems ecologist Howard Odum's emergy (spelled with an m) analysis. Odum's contribution offers key elements of a wider dialectical synthesis, made possible in part by his intensive studies of Marx's political-economic critique of capitalism and by Marx's own theory of metabolic rift.

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The theory of unequal ecological exchange: a Marx-Odum dialectic

As we move into the global century, several aspects of social and economic life are changing and post-industrial shifts are unparalleled by virtue of the interconnectedness that brings together the corners of the globe. New technologies, new economic relationships, new social processes, and new political developments are all characteristics of globalization (Hudson and Lowe, 2004: 22) in a post-industrial age featured by information, innovation, finance and services. As the world has contracted, people’s quality of life has changed regardless of where they live. In fact, the propagation of free market mindsets in emerging economies has created collective network connections with considerable good but pervasive inequalities as well. A fundamental aim of this book is to argue that these changes are part of a economic transition to post-industrialism associated with risks and inequalities that shape human experience in the midst of a formidable global financial climate. There is an obvious tension with this. On the one hand, life expectancy, health statuses and per capital incomes are at an all-time high and many feudal practices have been relegated to the past (Phillipson, 2006). On the other hand, vast numbers of people struggle with poverty and significant pockets of poverty portend more than lack of income. Those living on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder labor under the burden of avoidable, lifestyle diseases, hunger and related maladies, not to mention myriad social risks (Turner, 2008). Those on the upper reaches of the same ladder garner disproportionate shares of the resources and are able to support comfortable lifestyles.

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Globalization and Modernity

. This study suggests that the origins of the economics of technical change go back to many years before Schumpeter’s contributions. The Scottish philosopher John Rae with his book Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy , issued in 1834, put forward the basis of the Economics of innovation individuating the nature, causes of technological innovations (e.g., steam engine) and effects of technological progress on economic growth of nations. Rae also discusses the evolution and role of vital technologies for the wealth and employment in Europe and North America. Overall, then, Rae’s work is basic for the origin of the Economics of innovation, for defining the domain of this discipline and for explaining the effects of vital technologies in society. However, the conclusions of this study are tentative. There is need for much more detailed research into this research topic.  Keywords. Invention, History of technology, Economic growth, New technology, Technological change, Economics of innovation, Economics of technical change. JEL. B11, B12, B31, B40, O30.

http://www.kspjournals.org/index.php/JEST/article/download/1574/1591

The origins of the economics of Innovation

Economics is one of the most influential social science disciplines, with a high level of internal consent around a common theoretical and methodological approach to economic analysis. However, marginalised schools of thought have increasingly unified under the term “heterodox” economics, with their critical stance towards the “neoclassical mainstream” as common denominator. This has spawned debates among scholars about how to understand the nature of the mainstream-heterodoxy divide in economics.This thesis sets out to explain how such a common approach to science is generalised and stabilised in modern economics, and how this process is related to heterodoxy. Grounded in the sociology of science, it aims first to provide an empirical account of the mainstream-heterodoxy dynamics in Swedish economics, and second, to contribute to theory development. Drawing on the literature on distinct styles of reasoning in the history of science, I develop a theoretical framework of relational disciplinary styles of reasoning, which is used to analyse two bodies of empirical material from Swedish economics. The first is an in-depth interview study with researchers in economics, and the second is a document study of expert evaluation reports from the hiring of professors of economics at four of the top Swedish universities during 25 years. Through the two empirical studies, the fine-grained qualitative material provides an insight into the ways economists understand their discipline and the character of proper knowledge production.I argue that the mainstream-heterodoxy divide is fruitfully understood in terms of the institutionalised stabilisation of a disciplinary style of reasoning, and show how economists understand their scientific approach and its merits. The maintenance of the style of reasoning is the achievement of the thought collective of economists, where boundaries are constructed in relation to contesting heterodox economics and to other scientific disciplines. I show how the disciplinary style with its conception of good science and the notion of a core of the discipline is linked to the reproduction of disciplinary boundaries. I trace how this plays out through shifting quality evaluation practices, and show how top journal rankings have become a powerful judgement device which links the hierarchical ranking of top journals to the notion of a disciplinary core, and effectively functions as a mechanism of disciplinary stabilisation. In conclusion, I argue that these processes form a self-stabilising system in which the disciplinary style of reasoning and its boundaries is reproduced, with potential implications for how we understand intellectual dynamics and pluralism. (Less)

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Disciplined reasoning: Styles of reasoning and the mainstream-heterodoxy divide in Swedish economics

Milton’s use of economic tropes has attracted very little critical attention, and the connections between economics and theology in his thought have not yet been explored. Blair Hoxby’s Mammon’s Music: Literature and Economics in the Age of Milton (2002) focuses on the influence of economic ideas on Milton’s political thought, arguing that the poet persistently associates trade monopolies with autocratic abuses of monarchical power. David Hawkes places Milton’s lifelong professional usury at the centre of his 2009 biography, John Milton: A Hero of Our Time, and his 2011 essay, ‘Milton and Usury,’ fruitfully reads key passages from Paradise Lost in relation to contemporary tracts on usury. Hoxby and Hawkes have astutely highlighted the relationship between economics and Milton’s thought, but neither scholar has pursued these connections into Milton’s theology. Economic ideas lie at the very heart of Milton’s soteriology, and my thesis offers a historicised investigation of Milton’s corpus, demonstrating that the tropes of contemporary economic thought were crucial to his understanding of sin and, more importantly, salvation.

Chapter 1 traces the roots of this economic soteriology to the economic and theological treatises of the 1620s and early 1630s, which argued that money must be not stockpiled but circulated, and that salvation was a transaction between man and God. Chapter 2 considers how Ben Jonson and George Herbert, whose work Milton was familiar with in his youth, used The Staple of Newes (1626) and The Temple (1633) to respond to contemporary developments in economic and theological thought. Chapter 3 reads Milton’s early works as studies of hoarding and consumption, traced through the debate over sexual stockpiling in Comus (1634), the sinfulness of a hoarding nation in the History of Moscovia (early 1640s), and the clergy torn between their compulsions to covet and consume in Of Reformation (1641). Chapter 4 finds in Gerrard Winstanley’s Fire in the Bush (1650) an explicitly economic understanding of the Fall, and demonstrates how Milton’s political and religious writings of the 1650s betray an anxiety that the English cannot govern their economic appetites and, therefore, themselves. Chapter 5 examines how Milton uses tropes of investment, profit, loss, and repayment in the Christian Doctrine and Paradise Lost (1667) to represent redemption as a transaction between Jesus and God on man’s behalf. Chapter 6 reads the History of Britain (1670) as an indictment of isolationist economic policies, with Milton demonstrating that free interactions between peoples facilitate national refinement, and thus strangers become saviours.

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'Nature's coyn must not be hoorded' : Milton and the economics of salvation, 1634-1674

individuals. In a classical paradigm, the concept of class is more useful than individual agents in analyzing social phenomena. In this way, classical economy has roots in holism, and accommodates social categories like class. Usually the neoclassical economics is firmly grounded on a research program of methodological individualism, which generally posits that individuals with given preferences and endowments, and firms with given technologies, enter the market process as autonomous entities. Indeed, the adherence to the tradition of methodological individualism has an important bearing on the nature of the neoclassical model. For neoclassical economists, society is the collection of individuals. Individual wants, thoughts, and deeds combine to make society what it is. To understand an economy is then to make sense of the aggregate effects of individual wants and acts. Neoclassical theory does this by demonstrating how individuals maximize their material self-interests by utilizing their resources and the available technology in market transactions. What happens in an economy is always explained as the result of individuals acting in this way. The economy, as neoclassical economists theorize it, is the aggregate end product of individuals. Historical vs. Ahistorical In classical economics tradition, historical analysis is called for and mathematical models and statistical investigations are of limited usefulness. The classical economists have made consistent efforts to explain the rise of the capitalist mode of production in terms of historical analysis. They from the beginning have sensed that it was the essence of capitalist production to generate an accumulating surplus, and that the manner of this accumulation was crucially related to the character of the newly emerging social relations of capitalist society. The classical theory of value would be limited to the goods and services that were typical products of competitive capitalism. They regarded the explanation of this historical phenomenon as their primary task. Instead of the characteristic features of a given socioeconomic system, the starting point of neoclassical economics is the ahistorical individual and therefore the neoclassical theories are expressed in mathematical models which exclude the concept of history. For example, in neoclassical traditions, there are only factors of production, namely, labour, land and capital, each of which receives a reward commensurate with its productivity. There are no essential differences among them. This shows the lack of the notion of class which is unique to the stage of capitalist society. This methodological features arises from the fact that though the great themes of classical economy are dynamic and developmental, the great themes of neoclassical economy are static and allocational.

History of Economic Thought

As a result of economic stressors experienced by vulnerable populations during the Great Recession of 2007–09, participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the nation’s largest food assistance program—nearly doubled from 2006 to a postrecession peak in 2013. Drawing on data from the 2006 to 2015 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Diary Survey, this article compares SNAP-recipient households to non-SNAP recipient households in the New York area and the United States as a whole for the period before, during, and after the recession. Among the major findings, this study shows substantial differences in characteristics between SNAP and non-SNAP households, including rates of renting, percentage of bachelor’s degree holders, and levels of weekly food-at-home expenditures. The regression analysis shows that food-at-home expenditures remain stable over the business cycle. SNAP participation is positively associated with the probability of making weekly food shopping trips and with an increase in the amount spent per trip nationwide, whereas in the local area, the differences are not significant. Further analysis shows that an income increase from SNAP benefits or other sources results in relatively small increases in food-at-home expenditures.

Lisa Boily

Papers

History of Economic Thought

SNAP participation and food-at-home expenditures through the Great Recession: United States and the New York Area