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This book provides an interesting and refreshing collection of economic research conducted in the broadly heterodox tradition. A variety of topical issues are addressed, including labor market inequalities, welfare reform, interest rate policies, international trade, and global financial instability. What unites these diverse essays is their common perspective that social institutions and structures "matter" to the performance of economies, and hence should receive more attention from economists. Conventional economic thought focuses unduly on the functioning of so-called "free-markets." The persistent influence of social structures, institutions and practices - and the unequal extent to which differing social constituencies are able to exert power through those structures - often receives short shrift in this traditional research. However, this volume makes a significant contribution by helping to reverse this trend. The chapters, all written by top economists from around North America, address a range of topical issues, utilizing a rich variety of methodological techniques from empirical investigations to game theory and opinion surveys. Furthermore, the book, which is dedicated to the memory of David M. Gordon, has as its unifying theme the incorporation of structural analysis into economic science - an important goal for academics and students alike.
List of contents
Introduction: Power, Employment, and Accumulation Part I: Power, Work, and Distribution 2 Skill Mismatch, Bureaucratic Burden, and Rising Earnings Inequality in the U.S.: What Do Hours and Earnings Trends by Occupation Show? 3 Voluntary Downshifting in the 1990s 4 The Future of Egalitarian Politics Part II: Power and the Macroeconomy 5 Conflict, Distribution, and Finance in Alternative Macroeconomic Traditions 6 Macroeconomic Performance and Labor Market Discrimination Part III: Power and the Global Economy 7 Social Structures and Economic Mobility: What's Really at Stake? 8 Institutions and the Persistence of Global Inequalities 9 Engendering the Economics of Globalization: Sites and Processes 10 Capital Market Crises: Liberalization, Fixed Exchange Rates, and Market-Driven Destabilization
About the author
Jim Stanford, Lance Taylor, Brant Houston
Summary
This is a collection of original essays by leading critical economists and policy analysts addressing the importance of social structures and institutions to the functioning of real-world economies and the formulation of economic policy.
