Showing papers in "EconStor Open Access Articles in 2016"

Between the Hammer and the Anvil: The Impact of Economic Sanctions and Oil Prices on Russia’s Ruble

Abstract: Exchange rate fluctuations strongly affect the Russian economy, given its heavy dependence on foreign trade and investment. In the aftermath of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine that broke out early 2014, the Russian ruble lost 50% of its value against the US dollar. The impact of the conflict on Russia may have been amplified by sanctions imposed by Western countries. However, as Russia is heavily dependent on natural resource exports, another factor behind the deterioration could be the sharp decline in oil prices starting in summer 2014. Using high-frequency data on nominal exchange and interest rates, oil prices, actual and unanticipated sanctions, we provide evidence on forces underlying the ruble exchange rate. The analysis is based on cointegrated VAR models, where fundamental long-run relationships are implicitly embedded. The results indicate that the bulk of the depreciation can be related to the decline of oil prices. In addition, unanticipated sanctions matter for the conditional volatility of the variables involved.

The "Problem of Extension" revisited: new modes of digital participation in science

Abstract: Citizen Science is part of a broader reconfiguration of the relationship between science and the public in the digital age: Knowledge production and the reception of scientific knowledge are becoming increasingly socially inclusive. We argue that the digital revolution brings the “problem of extension” — identified by Collins and Evans in the context of science and technology governance — now closer to the core of scientific practice. In order to grasp the implications of the inclusion of non-experts in science, the aim of this contribution is to define a role-set of non-certified knowledge production and reception, serving as a heuristic instrument for empirical clarifications.

Rationalizing the GMO debate: The ordonomic approach to addressing agricultural myths

Abstract: The public discourse on the acceptability of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is not only controversial, but also infused with highly emotional and moralizing rhetoric. Although the assessment of risks and benefits of GMOs must be a scientific exercise, many debates on this issue seem to remain impervious to scientific evidence. In many cases, the moral psychology attributes of the general public create incentives for both GMO opponents and proponents to pursue misleading public campaigns, which impede the comprehensive assessment of the full spectrum of the risks and benefits of GMOs. The ordonomic approach to economic ethics introduced in this research note is helpful for disentangling the socio-economic and moral components of the GMO debate by re- and deconstructing moral claims.

Risk factors for repetition of a deliberate self-harm episode within seven days in adolescents and young adults: A population-level record linkage study in Western Australia

Abstract: Objective: The risk of repetition of deliberate self-harm peaks in the first 7 days after a deliberate self-harm episode. However, thus far no studies have examined the risk factors for repeating deliberate self-harm during this short-term period. We aimed to investigate the effects of socio-demographic factors, self-harm method and mental health factors in adolescents (10–19 years old) and young adults (20–29 years old). Methods: We used data linkage of population-wide administrative records from hospital inpatients and emergency departments to identify all the deliberate self-harm–related episodes that occurred in adolescents and young adults in Western Australia from 2000 to 2011. Logistic regression with generalised estimating equations was used for the analyses. Results: The incidence of repeating deliberate self-harm within the first 7 days after an index episode was 6% (403/6,768) in adolescents and 8% (842/10,198) in young adults. Socio-demographic risk factors included female gender and socioeconomic disadvantage. Compared with non-poisoning, self-poisoning predicted increased risk of having a repeated deliberate self-harm episode in males, but not in females. Borderline personality, impulse-control and substance use disorders diagnosed within one week before and one week after an index deliberate self-harm episode conferred the highest risk, followed by depressive and anxiety disorders. Having a preceding deliberate self-harm episode up to 7 days before an index episode was a strong predictor for the future repetition of a deliberate self-harm episode. Conclusion: Having a repeated deliberate self-harm episode within the first 7 days was related to a wide range of factors present at an index deliberate self-harm episode including socio-demographic characteristics, deliberate self-harm method and co-existing psychiatric conditions. These factors can inform risk assessments tailored to adolescents and young adults respectively to reduce the repetition of deliberate self-harm within a short but critical period, potentially contributing to reduce the repetition of deliberate self-harm in the long term.

The UK national minimum wage's impact on productivity

Abstract: Low pay poses issues for managers internationally. We examine productivity in low-paying sectors in Britain, since the National Minimum Wage’s (NMW) introduction. We use a multiple channel analytical strategy, emphasising the wage-incentives channel and linking it to a model of unobserved productivity. We estimate firm-specific productivity measures and aggregate them to the level of low-paying sectors. Difference-in-differences analysis illustrates that the NMW positively affected aggregate low-paying sector productivity. These findings highlight increased wages’ incentive effects with implications for management practice and public policy since ‘living’ wages may be productivity enhancing.

Freedom and equality in democracies: is there a trade-off?

Abstract: In political philosophy, economic theory and public discourse, there is a seemingly endless debate on what the essence of equality and freedom is and what relation between the two is essential to a good political order. Views range from the conviction that too much socio-economic equality jeopardises freedom to the position that a certain level of equality is necessary for the proper realisation of freedom. Building on these conflicting normative claims, we look at data from more than 50 established and emerging democracies for a period of more than 20 years to investigate whether there is indeed a trade-off between freedom and equality or whether they are mutually reinforcing. In the process, we distinguish between two types of equality – political and socio-economic. Our findings suggest that there is a positive relationship between freedom and both types of equality – even if we control for the level of economic development.

Konfliktpartnerschaft - still alive: veränderter Konfliktmodus in der verarbeitenden Industrie

Abstract: Die deutschen industriellen Beziehungen haben sich in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten strukturell in drei Welten der Arbeitsbeziehungen segmentiert. Zugleich hat sich der Konfliktmodus in der ersten Welt, die durch die exportorientierte Industrie gepragt ist, stark modifiziert: Durch komplexe Systeme der feinjustierten Interessenverarbeitung ist der offentlich wahrnehmbare Groskonflikt die Ausnahme geworden, dezentrale Konflikte sind dagegen der Regelfall. Mit Bezug auf das von Muller-Jentsch pointierte Konzept der Konfliktpartnerschaft wird die These vertreten, dass auch mit diesem veranderten Konfliktmodus weiterhin von einer Konfliktpartnerschaft, die ein spezifischer Modus der Sozialpartnerschaft ist, in der exportorientierten Industrie gesprochen werden konne.

Orders of worth and the moral conceptions of health in global politics

Abstract: The article analyzes the contested concept of global health through the lens of orders of worth. Drawing on pragmatist political and social theory, especially the work of Boltanski and Thevenot, I conceptualize orders of worth as moral narratives that connect visions of universal humankind to ideas about moral worth and deficiency. They thereby differ from the self/other narrative of political identity that is emphasized in International Relations scholarship. Orders of worth do not pitch a particularistic identity against foreign identities, but tie collective identity to a higher common good. They provide tools for moral evaluation and the justification of hierarchy. I use this heuristic to reconstruct four main conceptions of health in global politics: The order of survival, the order of fairness, the order of production, and the order of spirit. Each of them articulates a distinct political identity, as ‘we species’, ‘we liberals’, ‘we bodies’ and ‘we souls’, and implies different notions of virtuous and selfish conduct in the global community. These orders are derived from scholarly writings and the policies of global health institutions. Finally, I discuss the nature of compromises between the four orders regarding contested issues such as health emergencies or digital medicine.

Aktuelle Entwicklungen in der deutschen Familiensoziologie: Theorien, Daten, Methoden

Abstract: Wie und in welchen Bereichen hat sich in den letzten 10 Jahren unser Wissen von familialen Strukturen und Dynamiken sowie den Ursachen ihres Wandels verbessert? Wo liegen die inhaltlichen Schwerpunkte der Forschung und welche Fragestellungen werden vernachlassigt? Welche Methoden werden in der empirischen Familienforschung verwendet, und welche Daten stehen zur Verfugung? Der Beitrag resumiert den Diskussions- und Forschungsstand zu diesen Fragen in der deutschen Familiensoziologie unter Bezugnahme auf die internationale Literatur. Neben einer Bestandsaufnahme der Forschungsschwerpunkte in den letzten 10 Jahren und einem Uberblick uber verfugbare Daten und Methoden fokussieren die Autoren auf die Identifikation von aktuellen inhaltlichen Forschungslucken und methodischen Defiziten. Es werden in drei Thesen Forderungen an die aktuelle sozialwissenschaftliche Familienforschung formuliert: Eine zeitgemase, sozialpolitisch relevante familiensoziologische Forschung muss 1) neben strukturellen Faktoren starker subjektive, kulturelle und soziale Einflussfaktoren familialen Wandels berucksichtigen; 2) mehr belastbares Wissen uber die Leistungen und die Leistungsfahigkeit der Familie in unserer Gegenwartsgesellschaft gewinnen; und 3) sich starker in angrenzende Forschungsbereiche einmischen, u.a. Bildung, Ungleichheit und Migration.

Income Convergence in Poland vis-à-vis the EU: Major Trends and Prospects

Abstract: The chapter intends to assess income convergence among the 11 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that joined the EU in 2004, 2007, and 2013: Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (EU11). Convergence in these countries is analyzed in relation to the old EU members (EU15). We also present a simulative forecast of the catching-up process between the CEE countries and Western Europe. Our forecast (or, more precisely, simulation) will be made according to three hypothetical scenarios.

Varieties of contested multilateralism: positive and negative consequences for the constitutionalisation of multilateral institutions

Abstract: This essay analyses the consequences of contested multilateralism (CM) for the level of constitutionalisation of specific multilateral institutions. We argue that CM has implications for institutions’ constitutional quality in particular if it is polity-driven and not (merely) policy-driven, that is, when actors’ employment of alternative institutions stems from their dissatisfaction with the political order of an institution rather than individual policies. Given the co-existence of constitutionalised and non-constitutionalised multilateral institutions in today’s international order, state and non-state actors can use alternative institutions to contest the constraining or discretionary character of an institution’s polity. We hold that CM is likely to have negative consequences for the constitutionalisation of multilateral institutions if it is employed ‘top-down’ by states to enhance their freedom to wield discretionary authority, but that it is likely to have positive consequence if it is employed ‘bottom-up’ by society actors to constrain the exercise of discretionary authority through multilateral institutions. We illustrate the empirical plausibility of our claims in two cases involving top-down contestation of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and bottom-up contestation of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Excellence through equality of opportunity – Increasing the social inclusiveness of education systems benefits disadvantaged students without harming advantaged students

Abstract: Middle- and upper-class parents tend to think that school systems in which students from different socio-economic backgrounds learn together in the same schools would promote equality of opportunity but would harm their children. I investigate this belief, making both a conceptual and a methodological contribution. Conceptually I broaden the concept of differentiation in education arguing that not only formal differentiation but also more ‘hidden’ forms of differentiation such as residential segregation or private schools might contribute to a segregation of students from different socio-economic backgrounds into separate schools. Methodologically I contribute to the debate by analysing changes within countries, controlling for time-constant unobserved differences between countries. Using five waves of PISA data for 35 countries from 2000 to 2012, I find that in education systems in which schools become more socially inclusive, students from disadvantaged families improve their performance. Students from better-off families perform well independent of whether the education system becomes more socially segregated or inclusive. Thus, there is no conflict between equality of opportunity and excellence in education. In contrast, excellence can be improved through equality of opportunity without hindering advantaged students or top performers.

Risk and Capitalist Power: Conceptual Tools for Studying the Political Economy of Hollywood

Abstract: In this article, the structure of Hollywood film distribution will be analyzed through the lens of risk. In both its technical and conceptual senses, risk is relevant to the study of Hollywood’s dominant firms. In the interest of lowering risk, the business interests of Hollywood look to predetermine how new films will function in an already instituted order of cinema, which includes the creativity of filmmakers and the habits of moviegoers. This presentation of risk will explain why, for the political economy of Hollywood, the social world of cinema is an instrumental order. While risk is specifically about the size and pattern of future earnings, it is also an indirect prediction about the stability of the social conditions that would help translate potential earnings into an actual stream. The social world of cinema has a bearing on the Hollywood film business’s degree of confidence, which refers to the ability of capitalists to make predictions about future earnings.

Energy, Capital as Power and World Order

Abstract: Until late, the subject of energy and its importance for capitalism and the constitution and reconstitution of world order has been sorely overlooked in the international political economy (IPE) literature. Indeed, only two of the major textbooks in IPE have chapters on energy (Di Muzio and Ovadia 2016). This is also true of the literature known as classical political economy. With few exceptions, the main questions that animated the classics such as the origins of the wealth of nations and the distribution of wealth are somehow disconnected from the production and consumption of energy. Marginal exceptions granted, there is little acknowledgement that the last three centuries of uneven and combined “progress” and “development” have anything to do with the exploitation of coal, oil and natural gas. However, if recent scholarship is any indication, this appears to be changing both within IPE and within other academic fields such as geography, sociology and environmental studies. In this emergent literature, we can find an argument that energy should not be treated as auxiliary to our analysis of the global political economy but essential to understanding and interpreting its emergence, transformations and future trajectories (Di Muzio 2015). Since fossil fuels make up an overwhelming share of global energy production and consumption (see Fig. 14.1) I will mainly concentrate of non-renewable fossil fuels and aim to provide a critical political economy approach to energy, capitalism and world order by using the capital as power perspective.

Social distance and wage inequalities for immigrants in Switzerland

Abstract: This study investigates the impact of the social distance between immigrants and Swiss natives on wage inequalities. Social distance is assumed to be high when immigrants come from a different culture, a different education system and speak a different language. By combining these three aspects, this article goes beyond existing studies that only focus on cultural differences. The empirical findings indicate that, net of education, immigrants with a high or very high social distance from the receiving society are strongly disadvantaged in terms of their salaries. Additional analyses show that the impact of typical explanatory factors for labour market success such as education, citizenship and length of stay also vary by the degree of social distance between immigrants and their destination country. The analyses are based on data from the Swiss Labour Force Survey for the years 2010 and 2011, which allow for detailed analyses on individual immigrant groups due to oversampling.

Changes in the Local Government System and Regional Policy in Poland: The Impact of Membership in the European Union

Abstract: This chapter presents the successive stages to make changes in the Polish development policy after 1989. The national administration reform of 1990 in the Third Commonwealth of Poland restored the local government after 40 years of non-existence during the time of Polish People's Republic (1944-1989) that was a satellite state of the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Another reform took place in 1998 as a part of preparations for the country's membership in the European Union (EU) from 2004. Currently developed strategic documents are suggesting the use of the "polarization and diffusion model of the development." The authors also discuss the regional policy currently implemented in Poland, which was designed in years 2009-2014. The process of creation of new policy includes plans to reform the policy instruments and to update the strategic framework. Conclusions highlight a need for a clearer division of powers between the center and regional governments and the importance of strengthening the financial basis and institutional capacity building.

Youth transitions and job quality: How long should they wait and what difference does the family make?

Abstract: This chapter explores how youth unemployment, discontinuous employment, and working in low-quality jobs affect individuals’ subsequent occupational conditions. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal EU-SILC data (2005–2012) for five countries, the chapter distinguishes between different types of good and bad jobs, examining the effect of family background on successful transitions. Findings show that young people from families of higher social class have better chances of making transitions into good-quality jobs than do youth from lower class families. Securing a good entry job is crucial to achieving a successful outcome, whereas experiencing either brief periods of unemployment or employment continuity has limited effects. These mechanisms are evident across all countries considered. The findings reinforce established knowledge on patterns of stratification, evidencing a direct channel of social transmission of inequalities through education and an indirect channel through better labor market entries.

Capital as Power and the Corporatization of Education

Abstract: Building on the definition of critical education residing in the crossroads of cultural politics and political economy, this theoretical article offers an inquiry into the intersection between critical education research and the central ritual of contemporary capitalism – capitalisation. This article outlines four current approaches in education research literature to the corporatisation of education. This article argues that the approaches must rely implicitly on one of the two major theories of capitalism: modern neoclassical economics or Marxist political economy, even when the approaches are built on cultural and sociological arguments. Without an explicit engagement with the concept of capital and capitalisation, the approaches risk appearing theoretically weak and reliant on moral assumptions. In this sense, critical education literature would be strengthened by engagement with international political economy (IPE) literature. This article proposes to redress this lacuna in the literature by mobilising Jonathan Nitzan's and Shimson Bichler's theory of capital as power to better understand the corporatisation of education.

Aggregation with a mix of indivisible and continuous labor supply decisions: the case of home production

Abstract: This note explores the problem of non-convex labor supply decision in an economy with both discrete and continuous labor decisions. In contrast to the setup in Mc-Grattan, Rogerson and Wright (1997), here each household faces an indivisible labor supply choice in the market sector, while it can choose to work any number of hours in the non-market sector. We show how lotteries as in Rogerson (1988) can again be used to convexify consumption sets, and aggregation over individual preferences. With a mix of discrete and continuous labor supply decisions, disutility of non-market work becomes separable from market work, and the elasticity of the latter increases from unity to infinity.

Discussion on the Social Rate of Discount: from Sen to Behavioural Economics

Abstract: This survey paper discusses the links between (1) research done by Amartya K Sen on the social rate of discount and (2) behavioural economics studies on intertemporal and interpersonal choice Sen’s idea on the need to differentiate social rate of discount allowed to pave the way further followed by behavioural economists who do research on both (i) time (also known as delay or temporal) discounting and (ii) social discounting Canonical works of Sen, Marglin, Tullock and Baumol on social rate of discount and newer (even recent) behavioural economics literature on choices made within time and social distance horizon strongly complement each other As shown, the works of Sen considerably broadened the standard approach (discounted utility model) to the intergenerational choice as well as significantly affected economic debate in that area for years to come Brief presentation of the discounted utility model and its implications is a first research task of this paper The concise elaboration of research findings of (a) Sen and (b) behavioural economists comprises two remaining research tasks of this paper

Changes in Total Factor Productivity

Abstract: The chapter includes the analysis of total factor productivity (TFP) for 11 CEE countries, referred to as the EU11 (Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia) during the 2006–2015 period. To assess changes in total factor productivity during that period, we also present the average TFP growth rates for the following subperiods: 2006–2007, 2008–2010, 2011–2014, and 2015. The analysis is conducted using the growth accounting framework. Growth accounting is an empirical exercise aimed at calculating how much economic growth is caused by changes in measurable factor inputs and in the level of technology.

India and the BRICS: global bandwagoning and regional balancing

Abstract: Indian policy makers have welcomed India’s framing as a ‘rising power’ and celebrated the BRICS initiative as a common front in reforming aspects of global governance. Yet China’s rise in Asia has unsettled the balances of power which have underpinned the region, as a consequence of which India has hesitantly pursued a strategic rapprochement with the United States. Assessing New Delhi’s multilateral and geo-strategic diplomacy, this article argues that India bandwagons with the BRICS on a global level, but seeks to balance China at the regional level. On the global multilateral level, India has common cause with other rising powers in reforming the policies and structures of most international organizations. The exceptions are the United Nations Security Council and the Non-proliferation Treaty, where China and Russia can be qualified as established powers. On the regional level, however, India has maintained ties to Russia and cultivated a strong relationship with the United States in an effort to balance and increase leverage relative to a rising China. This underlines that major power rivalries are strongly mediated by issue area and institutional context.

Insurance-markets Equilibrium with Sequential Non-convex Private- and Public-Sector Labor Supply

Abstract: This paper describes the lottery- and insurance-market equilibrium in an economy with non-convex private- and public-sector employment. In contrast to Vasilev 2017, 2015, the public-sector labor supply decision is a sequential one. This requires two separate insurance market to operate, one for private-sector work, and one for public-sector employment. In addition, given that the labor choice for private and public-sector hours is made in succession, the insurance market for public employment needs to open once the other insurance market has closed. This segmentation and sequentiality of insurance markets operation is a new result in the literature and a direct consequence of the double non-convexity, and the sequential nature of the sectoral labor supply decision.

On the cost of opportunistic behavior in the public sector: A General-Equilibrium approach

Abstract: This paper studies the wasteful effect of bureaucracy on the economy by addressing the link between opportunistic behavior of government bureaucrats and the public sector wage bill. In particular, public officials are modeled as individuals competing for a larger share of those public funds. A simple extraction technology in the government administration is introduced in a standard Real-Business-Cycle (RBC) setup augmented with detailed public sector. The model is calibrated to German data for the period 1970-2007. The main findings are: (i) the model performs well vis-a-vis the data; (ii) Due to the existence of a significant public sector wage premium and the high public sector employment, a substantial amount of working time is spent in opportunistic activities, which in turn leads to significant losses in terms of output; (iii) The model-based loss measures obtained for the EU-12 countries are highly-correlated to indices of bureaucratic inefficiency.

Korea’s Post-1997 Restructuring: An Analysis of Capital as Power (Postprint)

Abstract: [This paper is a postprint of an article published by the Review of Radical Political Economics (0486613415594147, first posted on August 20, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0486613415594147, and later published in Volume 42, Number 2, May, pp. 287-309).] This paper aims to transcend current debates on Korea’s post-1997 restructuring, which rely on a dichotomy between domestic industrial capital and foreign financial capital, by adopting Nitzan and Bichler’s capital-as-power perspective. Based on this approach, the paper analyzes Korea’s recent political economic restructuring as the latest phase in the evolution of capitalist power and its transformative regimes of capital accumulation.

Das "Problem of Extension" revisited: neue Modi digitaler Partizipation in der Wissenschaft

Abstract: Citizen Science ist Teil einer Rekonfiguration des Verhaltnisses von Wissenschaft und Offentlichkeit im Kontext des digitalen Wandels: Sowohl die Produktion als auch die Rezeption wissenschaftlicher Ergebnisse werden sozial inklusiver. Damit aber stellt sich das „problem of extension“, das Collins und Evans im Hinblick auf die wissenschaftliche Politikberatung ausgemacht haben, nun in neuer Weise. Es betrifft nicht mehr nur Fragen politischer Partizipation, sondern wird im Zuge des digitalen Wandelns nun auch im Kernbereich wissenschaftlicher Tatigkeit relevant. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist die Definition eines Rollen-Sets nicht-zertifizierter Wissensproduktion und -rezeption, das als heuristisches Instrument weitere empirische Forschung anregen soll, um die Implikationen der sozialen Inklusion von Nicht-Professionellen in die Wissenschaft genauer zu eruieren.

Short- and long-term participation tax rates and their impact on labor supply

Abstract: Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to hamper employment. This paper investigates the importance of incentives inherent in the tax-benefit system for the individual decision to take up work. Using German microdata over the period 1993-2010, we find that recent reforms in Germany increased work incentives at the extensive margin measured by the participation tax rate (PTR), particularly for low-income individuals. Work incentives are even higher if the time horizon is extended to more than one year, pointing at an overestimation of the disincentives by standard measures. Regression analysis reveals that a decrease in the PTR increases the probability of taking up work significantly.

Crisis Region Western Africa: The Cradle of African Migration to Europe

Abstract: In the last decades the number of refugees from conflict regions in Africa increased dramatically. West Africa is the cradle of migration from Sub-Saharan Africa to Europe, were most African migrants with overseas destinations live. The European Union shares dual responsibility for the continuing migration pressure: First, because they fostered over decades corrupt and autocratic regimes with dire disregard to principles of "good governance". The aftermath of these regimes is still to be felt today, and constitutes one of the underlying factors for politically motivated migration. Secondly, the EU contributed to Africa's growing economic misery, due to the damaging effects of European selfish external trade policy. Nevertheless, the prevailing perspective of the EU concerning African immigration remains to be focused on security, the foreclosure of its external borders and prevention. Current EU programs to combat African migration by development orientated instead of adequate immigration policies is bound to fail, according to available evidence and literature. The drain of human capital from Africa is most pronounced in the employment sector for highly qualified personnel. Another remarkable trend is the "feminization" of the brain drain in recent years, caused by the growing number of highly skilled African women looking for employment abroad. However, migration is not necessarily a zero-sum game. There are also positive - although often neglected - economic and socio-cultural effects of the brain drain. Remittances of African migrants contribute considerably not just to the wellbeing of their extended families at home, but to poverty reduction and development on a national level in general. They constitute the second largest source of external private finance, besides foreign direct investment. In addition, a counteracting "brain gain", i.e. new value systems, political and spiritual orientations, acquired by migrants in Europe, results in a transfer of knowledge and of innovations.