1,720,993 research outputs found
The Other Side of Paradise: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean
No full textThe development of indigenous tourism in the Caribbean is inhibited by several challenges such as the inability to achieve economies of scale and scope through structural and resource constraints. These challenges are further exacerbated by the heavy prominence of transnational conglomerates who own and operate most of the large hotels, airlines, cruise ships, travel agencies and tour operators that market and control tourism on the islands. Foreign domination of the foregoing sectors has contributed to substantial leakage of foreign exchange revenues - weakening exchange rates, social polarization, social exclusion and social degradation. While most Caribbean islands achieved constitutional independence from Europe, this did not necessarily involve a restructuring of economic relationships or a shattering of colonial ideologies. Today, the legacy of slavery and the plantation society underpins much of the regions’ contemporary culture, values and economic relationships despite the attainment of political independence. This paper aims to trace the nature and antecedents of foreign domination and control of Caribbean tourism and explores possible solutions to combat transnational intervention and economic dependency
The State Issue of Currency without Usury
Full text linkWe humans are in the midst of a potentially terminal economic, social and environmental crisis. In order to address that crisis this chapter outlines a proposal for the structural reform of a national monetary system, with practical and beneficial consequences. It is recognised, of course, that monetary reform per se is not a holistic panacea to all of our global ills. Yet, it is hoped that the incremental transition recommended, using the national bank to issue interest-free currency (credit-money), could promote the cause of social and economic justice through a more sustainable monetary system. In addition, interest-free currency could be used to finance other reform proposals such as the spread of capital ownership or the creation of a basic income. At the core of the reform is the insight that, usury (defined here as an interest-charge in excess of justifiable administration cost) is not necessary. Whilst it can be argued that administration charges, collateral and properly conceived repayment plans are imperative for the proper functioning of credit markets, usury is not so easily defended (especially for state expenditure) unless the motive is to profit the private financial sector and their investor
Corporate and Social Transformation of Money and Banking:Breaking the Serfdom
No full textAs the real economy is increasingly digitalized, banking lags behind. It is thus not well placed to support the new economy. The book provides some perspective on the changes taking place, identifying the systemic weaknesses in the traditional financial infrastructure, and proposing some radical rethinking to address systemic financial instability
The past and the future
No full textA new society—the Risk Society—is emerging, based not on the production of goods but on the avoidance of ‘bads’. We now face massive risks cutting across time and space, which are untestable and unquantifiable. The Risk Society is marked by challenges to expertise and authority, and requires new ways of thinking about science and society. The chapter uses Critical Theory to show how we can rethink economics. Economics should be viewed not as a neutral science but as part of a political power structure. Uncovering past arguments within economics demonstrates this and reveals how economics has been driven by a struggle to avoid planning and egalitarian policies. This has rendered orthodox economics vacuous. The economics of the environment exposes this well. The orthodox approach revolves around commodification and market creation or tax, but these are essentially just politics with numbers, and are inadequate for depleted environmental resources.
A new definition of economics as allocation is therefore suggested. Markets are only one part of this decision-making process. A Green New Deal is proposed based on economic security instead of risk, and utilizing methods of market management and demand management
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
When Is a Financial Crisis not a Financial Crisis?
No full textI shall attempt to explain why Marx thinks that the behaviour of the financial system, let us imagine it as the tail, follows from the tendential behaviour of the productive economy, our dog. Marx does not think that the tail wags the dog; rather the tail merely helps the dog run faster to where it was going anyway. The productive economy is running inevitably to crisis because profitability has a tendency to fall in boom; our dog becomes fat with constant capital and begins to slow. Crisis is a crash diet/destruction of constant capital, which is absolutely necessary to restore the profit rate and let a leaner dog run free again. Attempting to cure crisis by state encouraged creation of credit is no solution precisely because crisis is necessary to restore the profit rate, so postponing crisis merely prolongs low profitability and leads to stagnation. It is akin to our fat old dog becoming lost, following its tail into various disruptive dead-ends (fictitious capital bubbles, usurious lending to people and governments, and numerous other speculative adventurous paths), unable to find the only place, the crisis, it needs to renew itself. It is for this reason that I will argue that interpreting the current crisis as an avoidable ‘accident’ of the financial systems own making is naïve, as no reform of the tail can hope to change the nature of the dog
The dissolution of the financial state: an examination of the political economy of contemporary money with case studies of the United Kindom and German Financial systems since WW2
Full text linkIn this thesis, I argue that the financial authorities in the United Kingdom and Germany have experienced a waning in their ability to influence the quantity and allocation of (domestic) credit money, and its domestic and international value i.e. purchasing power, since WW2. This ability is called financial power. It is then argued that post-Keynesian (PK) endogenous money theory (EMT) can be combined with Marxian analysis in order to give insight into the changing financial power relationships between state, finance sector and real economy from
1945 to 2007. In particular, the ability to influence the provision of credit is identified as a primary (but not exclusive) source of social power for those that wield it.
Inspired by the work of Susan Strange1, the thesis defends the position that this financial power is derived from the ability to influence the quantity of money issued (and its allocation) and its purchasing power, which are determined by the state and market in varying proportions depending on context (Strange 1988).2 Since virtually all of modern money exists in the form of credit-money held as bank deposits, it is further posited that the focus on the political economy of the banking system is appropriate. It is argued that the state in capitalist economies exercised certain capabilities to influence credit during the Bretton Woods period (1944-1973) but that, as the thesis title suggests, was subsequently eroded. The
thesis establishes empirical support for this proposition, and then provides an explanation of the phenomenon using Marx’s political economy combined with the EMT. If the state has lost financial capability, this reduces its capacity to regulate the economy and increases any democratic deficit. The growth of financial markets in recent decades (so-called financialisation) has led many such as Palley to suggest that finance sector decision-makers increasingly determine economic outcomes (Palley 2007). It is also common to explain these monetary developments with reference to the actual nature and processes of financialisation itself. Inspired by the seminal work of Andrew Kliman, it is argued that this approach
provides insufficient explanation of the root causes of financialisation (1999)3. In contrast, the
thesis argues that systemic drivers of capitalism rooted in production, probably best
1 The late Susan Strange was Professor of International Political Economy at Warwick University. Her theories of financial power are espoused in her States and Markets text (Strange 1988).
2 The control of existing money is also a source of financial (social) power but is not the subject of the enquiry.
3 Andrew Kliman is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Pace University, New York City, United States.
understood by Marx, provide plausible explanation of the causes of financialisation and the erosion of state financial capability.
The thesis first introduces the key concepts and argument and then provides a review of monetary history, monetary theory (including the EMT), Marx’s political economy and an exploration of the role of the state. The objective was to arrive at a robust modern theory of money that could be synthesised with Marx. The study of financial power then examines two research questions, within the context of case studies (from WW2 to 2007) of the United Kingdom (UK) and German financial systems (Federal Republic of West Germany [FRWG] before 1990). The first explores whether or not the capabilities of the UK and German states to determine the level of domestic credit (i.e. offshore currency is ignored), inflation (thus domestic purchasing power) and exchange rate value (international purchasing power) has been diminished. The second question considers the systemic development with respect to the changing roles and interaction between the state, private banks and non-financial businesses in the context of the growth of financial markets. The question asks whether underlying production factors, in particular Marx’s law of value, provide a plausible explanation of the erosion of state financial capability. It is concluded that this is a valid conclusion supported by theory and evidence. The interpretation of Marx that is employed is called the Temporal Single System Interpretation (TSSI) of Marx, which illustrates Marx’s law of value across periods and identifies a tendency for profit rates to fall. In particular, the method used by Kliman in his study of US corporate profitability from the 1930s is used in the German and UK case studies (Kliman 2010). The results indicate that profitability has fallen across the period, especially if Marx’s method of adjusting for inflation is adopted. The thesis then claims that the tendency for the profit rate (measured in abstract labour terms) to fall was a key underlying (albeit indirect) driver of the systemic propensity towards financialisation phenomena. I claim in the thesis that the responses of market financial agents (supported by the state) to the falling profitability have also been responsible for the erosion of state capability to influence the level of credit and the purchasing power of money, since a key feature of the financialisation era manifests a stronger role for market actors at the expense of the UK/German state.
Fundamentally, these conclusions support the Marxian-inspired notion of the state as an entity that primarily exists to represent the interests of capital and capital accumulation
Heterodox economic journal rankings revisited
Full text linkIn 2010 Frederic Lee and Bruce Cronin published an influential ranking of heterodox economic journals, combining traditional citation impact factors with network metrics to indicate a journal's contribution to distinguishing heterodox economics as an academic field distinct from orthodox economics. Since 2010, and particularly in the context of the global financial crisis and great recession, heterodox economics has further consolidated as a distinctive academic field. At the same time, there has been a growing critique of the limitations of traditional citation impact factors as indicators of quality, including the great reductionism inherent in the method, the greatly variation in citation practices from discipline to discipline and the limited conception of academic interaction and collaboration modelled. In this paper I revisit the Lee-Cronin (2010) rankings, updating the metrics and comparing these to an alternative model drawing on recent developments in subject-normalized journal impact factors. I argue that a strong case remains for conceiving heterodox economics as a distinct academic field and consider the implications for institutionalization of the field
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