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This paper argues for broadening the application of hysteresis to institutions, policy lock-in, psychology, identity, and economic ideas. Hysteresis is an element of historical processes, and the real world is historical. That explains why hysteresis is pervasive and important. Hysteresis should be a fundamental building block of political economy. Expanding its application in economics is […]

from Maria Alejandra Madi  Podcasts, which can now be easily accessed online, have had a recent surge in popularity, which may be attributed to their convenience. These podcasts discuss a wide range of topics that are related to the professional and academic spheres. The issue that naturally emerges is what exactly makes it qualified to be regarded as a scholarship approach. To put this another way, what exactly is it about this method that qualifies it to be used as an academic...

from Dean Baker The first decade of this century was pretty awful for U.S. manufacturing workers. In December of 1999 we had 17.3 million manufacturing jobs. This number had fallen to 11.5 million by December of 2009. This amounted to a loss of 5.8 million jobs, or one-third of all the manufacturing jobs that had existed at the start of the decade. That looks like a pretty big deal. It’s also worth pointing out that most of these jobs were lost before the onset of the Great Recession. We...

I’m pretty despairing about the prospects for the Voice referendum. The current strategy is failing badly. There is an alternative that I believe might work, but I have pitched it in a few places and had no interest. So I’m putting it for the record and on the off-chance that someone might pick it up. On present indications, the Voice referendum is doomed to defeat. Polls show the Voice failing to win either a majority of votes or a majority of states. Past experience suggests that...

Σαν σήμερα, την 5η Αυγούστου του 1895, πέθανε ο συνιδρυτής του Μαρξισμού Friedrich Engels. Η συνεισφορά του τόσο στην θεωρητική ανάλυση όσο και στην επαναστατική πολιτική υπήρξε καθοριστική, άσχετα με το γεγονός ότι ο ίδιος επέλεξε να κάνει το «δεύτερο βιολί». Σήμερα, η συμβολή του αυτή βρίσκεται στο στόχαστρο της επίθεσης «άσπονδων φίλων του Μαρξισμού». Τα βασικά σημεία της επίθεσης αυτής είναι ότι: (α) Ο Marx ήταν ένα φιλελεύθερο πνεύμα που ερευνούσε συνεχώς ζητήματα και που...

from Lars Syll Justice is an ambiguous concept. We use it daily and constantly. But what is justice, really? What should be considered just? How do we measure justice? Is justice the same as equality and impartiality? And is there only one form of justice, or do different notions of justice coexist? These are important questions to try to shed light on and answer. Otherwise, the concept of justice risks becoming just one of many empty and abstract clichés we use to dress our own interests...

from Peter Radford This is how I explain what has happened to myself. Nobody should begin without warning.  So we ought jot down some initial observations that provide a starting point for what follows.  Some will become highly relevant.  Others will fade as we dig deeper into our subject and discover that they were not germane to the main theme.  They are in no particular order, since imposing order suggests a level of understanding unjustified by experience.  We simply do not know what...

from Dean Baker That line is effectively the conventional wisdom among people in policy circles. If that seems absurd, then you need to think more about how many politicians and intellectual types are approaching climate change. Just this week, John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, was in China. He was asking the Chinese government to move more quickly in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. President Xi told Kerry that China was not going to move forward its current target,...

In my previous post on utilitarianism, I started with two crucial observations. First, utilitarianism is a political philosophy, dealing with the question of how the resources in a community should be distributed. It’s not a system of individual ethics Second, (this shouldn’t be necessary to state, but it is), there is no such thing as utility. It’s a theoretical construct which can be used to compare different allocations of resources, not a number in people’s heads that can be...

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