Peacebuilding tourism, a subset of peace tourism, has been defined as a form of tourism through which individuals “engage in peace-oriented travel specifically due to their professional capacity” (Antoniou, 2022). In other words, peace experts and peace-oriented professionals travelling for work can be considered peacebuilding tourists. In September 2023, I had the opportunity to become a peacebuilding tourist myself, when I travelled to South Korea to join the Global Korea Forum on Peace Education as a speaker, an initiative organised by Okedongmu Children in Korea (OKCK).
Advanced Introduction to New Institutional Economics: Institutions and Economic Development Why are some countries rich and some countries poor? This famous question captivated Adam Smith and still preoccupies economists today. It is one of the many issues analyzed in the Advanced Introduction to New Institutional Economics (Menard and Shirley, 2022, the main source for this blog). At one time economic development was largely attributed to the accumulation of human knowledge, the discovery of new technologies and the infusion of capital. These three ingredients proved to be insufficient. Foreign aid for advice, technology and investment largely failed to boost poorer countries into sustained economic success.
With the arrival of New Institutional Economics (NIE) in the 1970’s, a missing ingredient – institutions — was added to the mix. Douglass North argued that a country’s laws, rules, norms and conventions – its institutions — determine its economic performance (North 1990). Knowledge, technology and capital all matter, but institutions are crucial in shaping incentives to learn, innovate and invest. Institutions are the rules of the game and determine whether an economy rewards corruption, patronage and monopoly, or innovation, competition and entrepreneurship. This idea was not new. But North’s message was strengthened by meticulous empirical studies showing that institutions played a crucial role in the Industrial Revolution and economic history more broadly, plus extensive statistical evidence that institutions are significantly and positively correlated with economic growth and prosperity.
Simultaneously with these macro discoveries, NIE produced a micro vision of development, founded on Ronald Coase’s insight that whether a firm makes a product or buys it on the market depends on transaction costs (Coase 1937). Coase explained that a transaction is the transfer of the right to use a resource from one holder of that right to another. Transaction costs are the costs of establishing, transferring, and policing those rights, including, for example, the costs of discovering a trading partner, conducting negotiations, drawing up a contract, enforcing the contract, etc. The cost of transacting varies from market to market depending on its institutions, since institutions determine how costly it is to access information, establish and enforce property rights, and the like. Transaction costs are fundamental to development; when they are too high, an exchange will not even occur.
Why do damaging institutions persist? NIE gives several reasons. One is that elites strive to preserve the institutions that empower them and prevent efforts to erode or overturn them. For example, in many places colonial powers imposed institutions that exploited and subjected native peoples and made it hard for them to access education, information, wealth or political power. After the end of colonialism, the post-colonial elites used the same institutions that had sustained and enriched the former colonial powers to exploit non-elites and solidify their position over the long term.
A second reason why institutions persist is path dependency. Over time societies evolve an interdependent web of organizations, norms, beliefs, constraints and laws that are costly to change. For example, Poland and Ukraine share a border, a similar language and a long history of overlapping experience, but developed very different property rights (Hartwell, 2017). In 14th century Poland, peasants had full rights of ownership of movable property and even of land in some cases; rights which were then largely absent in Ukraine. The Polish institutions of broad based property rights supported by diffused political power persisted through partition, occupation, communism, and help explain why Poland became an economic success story after the transition. Ukraine’s history of centralized power and insecure property rights set it back during the transition.
Beliefs are another reason why institutions are hard to change. Over time, people evolve shared beliefs about the right thing to do, leading them to conform to the rules, to expect others to conform and to punish non-conformers. A related reason for institutional persistence is culture. Culture encompasses beliefs, values, norms and conventions that are transmitted largely unchanged from one generation to the next. For example, willingness to trust strangers, central to the impersonal exchanges that characterize modern economies, is not the norm in societies where only members of families, networks, or neighborhoods are trusted.
Given these forces for persistence, how do institutional changes ever occur? One reason is that elites are not cohesive; rival elite factions may favor more representative institutions to gain support against their opponents. For example, struggles between merchants and the Crown were key to institutional changes in 17th century England. Second, numerous, marginal changes in day-to-day rules of the game sometimes build up over time to create a window for change. Third, exogenous shocks, such as invasion or civil war, may overturn institutions. For example, Napoleon’s armies wiped out the aristocracy in the Netherlands and imposed legal and educational innovations that were welcomed by enough people to become permanent. Finally, a large deviation between outcomes and expectations may undermine beliefs and erode cultural resistance to change. For example, the growth and prosperity of China’s increasingly market driven economy helped push the leaders of Taiwan to accept an open access economic and social order that underpinned their later success (Shirley, 2008).
New institutional economics has developed powerful tools for understanding development, organization issues (Williamson, 1985) and many other real world phenomena. NIE has tools to address historical puzzles and such contemporary issues as managing climate change, regulating artificial intelligence, and understanding the changing institutions of China. The Advanced Introduction to New Institutional Economics (Menard and Shirley, 2022) provides a concise and lucid analysis of NIE’s rich and growing body of research.
References Hartwell, C.A. 2017. “Determinant of Property Rights in Poland and Ukraine: The Polity or the Politicians?” Journal of Institutional Economics. 13(1): 133-60. Menard, Claude and Mary M. Shirley. 2022. Advanced Introduction to New Institutional Economics. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. North, Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press. Shirley, Mary M. 2008. Institutions and Development. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Williamson, Oliver E. 1985. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York: The Free Press.
5. Maths, figures, tables, photos, boxes, screenshots – all elements that can add to your work…but only if they’re legible and we can use them. Make sure you read our guidance at https://www.e-elgar.com/author-hub/as-you-write-your-book-or-chapter/. If contributors embed them in chapters ask them to separate them out for you and resend as either eps, png, pdf, jpeg, excel, powerpoint or illustrator files
Good luck and we look forward to receiving your manuscript!
The problem of gender inequality in the labor market is still important and debated not only in the scientific world but in politics and the media. Proof can be found in the awarding of this year’s Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Claudia Goldin “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes.”
The wage gap has for many years been a symbol of women’s inferior position in the labor market and of gender discrimination. In 2014, then president Barack Obama (2014) stated in a speech, “Now, here’s the challenge: Today, the average full-time working woman earns just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns; for African American women, Latinas, it’s even less. And in 2014, that’s an embarrassment. It is wrong.” The issue of wage equality is highlighted by many international institutions. In the World Bank’s (2018) view, “The world is essentially leaving $160 trillion on the table when we neglect inequality in earnings over the lifetime between men and women.”
But is inequality in pay actually the result of discrimination? Too often the wage gap is presented as the difference between the average wages of men and women, or the unadjusted gap. Such a presentation is misleading because it does not compare identical workers. By analogy, we pay more per kilogram of organic apples than chemically fertilized ones, which are considered less healthy. The production process is different, and, as a result, so is the product. Similarly, we should not be surprised that the work of a male worker who graduated from high school, compared to a woman with a university degree, is subject to a different and, on average, lower valuation.
Various statistical methods, including the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition (Oaxaca 1973, Blinder 1973), attempt to compare the wages of similar employees. Thanks to this method we can identify what part of the unadjusted (or raw) wage gap arises because female and male workers differ in age, place of residence, union membership, veteran status, marital status, education, length of working life, profession, and job position held, among other characteristics—the explained component. After subtracting the explained component from the raw gap, we are left with the unexplained component, which is often taken to indicate the scale of discrimination against women in the labor market. But is that correct?
Consider Blinder’s pioneering paper studying, among other things, the wage gap between white men and white women using data from the Michigan Survey Research Center in 1967. He calculated that white men earned on average 45.8 percent more than white women, 15.7 percentage points of which was the explained component, consisting of the above factors. In other words, if women and men were identical, the gender wage gap would be 15.7 percentage points lower. Among the observed variables, the most important were length of working life (women’s wages did not increase over their working lives), education (men had more), and conditions in the local labor market conditions (men were less sensitive) (Blinder 1973). However, around two-thirds of the wage gap remained unexplained.
Does that unexplained gap indicate the scale of wage discrimination against women?
No.
First, the size of the explained component depends on what factors the researcher considers, and this affects the size of the unexplained component.
Second, discrimination can be hidden in the explained component. For example, if we include vertical occupational segregation (the glass ceiling) among the factors that differentiate pay, then we can say that women on average earn less because they are more likely to hold lower positions, but that may be precisely because of discrimination against women by employers who do not want to promote them.
Third, there may be hidden subcomponents in the unexplained component that also determine salary but are most often not considered because they are difficult to measure. Examples include women’s greater aversion to competition or negotiation, job availability, and stereotype threat.
In the 1970s, Oaxaca (1973) aptly noted, “If it were possible to control for virtually all sources of variation in wages, one could pretty well eliminate labour market discrimination as a significant factor in determining wage differentials by sex (or race)” (p. 699). We, however, still make the mistake of treating the gender wage gap as a definite sign of large-scale discrimination against women in the labor market. Such discrimination may exist, but its scale is not accurately conveyed to us by the wage gap even in its adjusted form.
Blinder A. S. (1973). Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates. Journal of Human Resources, 8(4), pp. 436–55.
Oaxaca R. (1973). Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labour Markets. International Economic Review, 14(3), pp. 693–709.
Tumultuous times offer opportunities for transformation. Pandemics, like wars and other tumults, not only expose vulnerabilities and inequities, but offer possibilities for developing collective strategies based on shared needs and responsibilities. The necessity and opportunities for such transformation have become obvious in those places variously called long term residential care, care homes and nursing homes. High death rates resulting from the combinations of COVID-19 isolation, and horror stories of neglect, along with critical shortages in care staff, have called attention to these homes in ways seldom seen before, raising demands for new strategies for older people’s care -including demands to eliminate care homes altogether.
In Care Homes in A Turbulent Era: Do They Have a Future? we consider whether and how care homes could be transformed to offer conditions of dignity and respect for all those who live in, work in and visit in nursing homes. But we go further, to ask, can care homes be transformed to promote pleasure and joy? Our answer to these questions of care home transformation is YES. But we offer caveats and cautions about the challenges ahead. Addressing care home issues is not a merely matter of repair or minor reform, although both could provide improvements. To achieve the goals of dignity and respect, care homes need a revolution. This book sets out ways forward. In doing so, it attends to context and populations as well as to other global and local forces, offering ideas worth sharing and promising practices rather than a single model or right way for care homes in the future. And it includes everyone who lives in, works in, manages, and visit in care homes.
This book is innovative in a number of ways.
First, our research team and the methods we employ are innovative, providing an interdisciplinary, international approach to care home questions. It includes sociologists, social workers, nurses, anthropologists, historians and more who have been researching together on care homes for more than 15 years., Over this time, we have developed enough trust to challenge each other about important issues in ways that help us move forward. We embrace diversity and differences in our group, seeking to learn from these differences.
Our diversity in disciplines and educational backgrounds is our strength, providing us with multiple ways of perceiving care home issues. This not only means that we capture more than we would individually but, in working together, each team member developed a more multifaceted understanding as we learned from and with each other. Our mixed methods (discussed in Armstrong and Lowndes 2018 Creative Teamwork: Developing Rapid Site-Switching Ethnography) also means that we are always comparing and assessing data gathered in different ways, seeking complex, nuanced analyses to inform change.
Our research teams include those who investigate the available statistical, financial, and other quantitative data available on nursing homes, those who research the history of nursing homes, and those who investigate ownership and other aspects of nursing homes. But unusually, in this project most of our team members –including our most senior members –have spent a long time conducting research in care homes. In six countries and in multiple cities and towns, our teams of about 12 researchers interviewed, observed, and participated in care home life. We worked in teams and shifts, starting at 7 am and continuing until midnight each day throughout the course of a week. Each team included locals and members from the other countries in our project, allowing us to draw on knowledge of the local context as well as on new perceptions from those less familiar with the country and place. Our collective analysis during and after these site studies located our findings within the research we also did on the forces and structures, policies, and practices shaping what we saw and heard.
Second, we assume context matters. In our research we were not seeking care home best practices or one right way. Instead, we aimed to identify promising practices and ideas worth sharing from Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and the US, while acknowledging the possibility of not finding anything promising. We also learned how hard this is, given that our training focuses more on finding and analyzing problems.
Third, we assume that gender, race, sexuality, and class matter, and not just at the level of individual residents and staff, but as factors shaping care and work at the levels of organizations, systems, and states. And these social relations always matter, albeit in different ways, at different times and in different relationships
Fourth, our concept of care understands care as a relationship. From our perspective, this relationship involves all those who live in care homes, who provide paid and unpaid care in them and who visit in these homes. So, we include not only families and residents but also volunteers and housekeeping, dietary, laundry, security, and managerial staff. In contrast to both those who conceptualize care for this population as the inevitable domination by carers over those who require support, and those who focus exclusively on the needs of either residents or staff, we perceive care as a relationship of mutual trust and respect, requiring conditions that allow care to flourish. For us, the conditions of work are the conditions of care.
Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, we assume that care homes are not only socially necessary. They can, and indeed should, be places that put life into years rather than years into life, places where people are choose to live and work.
This book draws on our many forms of data, together with our reflections and contemporary debates about nursing home care, going beyond specific evidence to dare to dream about promising ways to practice long-term care.
Avoiding prescriptive formulas and in keeping with our understanding that contexts and populations matter, we do not set out a new care home model. Rather, we identify key principles and some critical ingredients that can be adapted to specific contexts. We invite readers to dare to dream with us, taking inspiration for the care home transformations so badly needed.
What do we suggest? We argue that publicly funded and operated nursing homes have the highest potential to offer the most cost effective, high quality, accessible, and equitable nursing home care. In our chapter on financialization across the care home sector internationally, the tensions between profit and care become clear across the system. Further, the chapter reveals how accountability for care is disappearing in the maze of increasingly complex ownership arrangements across borders that make it difficult to identify who is responsible for a specific care home.
Further, working conditions need to be central to any revolution in care. All staff-including not only those who provide direct nursing care but also those who cook, clean and do laundry need the time, training, teamwork, autonomy, consistent assignment, and supportive supervision to develop knowledgeable care relationships with residents. This is not possible unless workers have secure employment and sufficient pay to stick with care home work, and conditions that allow them to go home knowing they have provided care, and not just a bare minimum of bodily maintenance. And we must also attend to the working conditions of those who do unpaid work as family, friends, and volunteers.
Over and over, we have found that care homes’ physical environments matter. Important to infection control, safety, welcome, comfort, and mobility, physical environments can also make access to the outdoors inviting and pleasant, provide a sense of belonging in its colours, artwork, symbols, and architecture, make it easier for workers to respond to resident needs, and support families to enjoy their visits with residents. Homes need to bring the outside in and the inside out, integrating with rather than separating from the community. Care homes are not individual dwellings but collective ones, and physical environments need to welcome, reflect, and support all who live, work, and visit them.
We argue that the future of care homes is contingent on whether and how equity and diversity are addressed. Our research shows that care homes have the potential to be collaborative, culturally diverse, equitable organizations with deep, daily connections to the diverse communities and groups who live around them and review promising approaches that can advance this goal.
How accountability is understood, developed, and embedded in processes is also important to care, and not just accountability to funders, but to residents, workers, families, and communities. Instead of reviewing the research on regulation and accountability, one chapter approaches these issues through interviews with those who have spent years studying care homes in multiple countries. More a conversation than a standard academic approach, the participants explore the lessons learned and questions to ask.
And finally, we argue that joy is central to quality in care homes. We discuss ways in which quality assurance methods both support and fail to measure quality of life, quality of relationships, and opportunities for meaningful sharing and pleasure that include all who live, work, and visit care homes. Our analysis includes supplemental or alternative approaches to ensuring quality in care homes, encouraging all those concerned with care for older people to consider the problem of quality by beginning with joy.
Locating the analysis in the research and perspectives of multiple disciplines and scholars from multiple countries, the book challenges readers to go beyond what’s wrong to think about how to make care homes a positive option for provide those who need such care and those who provide it.
Those of us who teach federalism to undergraduates know that it can be a tough slog. Students often relate better to personalities and hot-button policy issues than to institutions and policy formation. In the U.S. for many years, the simplistic ‘cake’ analogy of layer or marble cakes seemed to resonate and serve as a quick, if inadequate, depiction of federalism.
The food insecurity crisis is characterised by the triple burdens of malnutrition, of which undernourishment is just one aspect, it also includes micronutrient deficiencies and overnutrition. Globally, over 821 million people suffer from undernutrition, 2 billion people with micronutrient deficiencies and over 2 billion adults are overweight or obese. In some economies obesity can be seen as a proxy indicator of the new food insecurity, as populations consume more processed foods and less fruit and vegetables. The overall burden is one that impacts more on low and emerging economies. Malnutrition during pregnancy and the early years development leads to stunted physical and cognitive development, increased susceptibility to diseases, and reduced productivity and economic opportunities. Women and children bear the brunt of food insecurity, with women being more likely to be affected by hunger than men and 144 million children under the age of five being stunted (too short for their age) due to chronic undernutrition.
While one in nine people in the world are undernourished there are regional disparities, Africa has the highest prevalence of undernourishment, with over 250 million people (19% of the population) suffering from hunger, within Africa emerging economies such as South Africa are experiencing rising levels of obesity alongside hunger. Asia follows closely with over 500 million people (11.4% of the population) facing food insecurity. In contrast, Latin America and the Caribbean have the lowest prevalence of undernourishment, with 9.5% of the population affected. High-income economies such as the UK and the US -have seen increased levels of food insecurity driving by changing economic circumstances. The nature of food insecurity in high-income countries is different from that in low and middle-income income but nonetheless damaging in its impact. It is more likely to be characterised by the consumption of highly processed foods high in calories, fat, salt and sugar interspersed with periods of hunger.
The UN estimates that by 2050, climate change will push an additional 100 million people into poverty and increase the number of undernourished by 20%. Conflict and political instability play a large part in food insecurity. The World Food Programme reports that 60% of the world’s hungry live in countries affected by conflict. This is a major challenge in countries such as Yemen, South Sudan, and Syria, where ongoing conflicts have contributed to food insecurity and malnutrition. Such conflicts and lack of global food governance can be further impacted by natural disasters and global events outside the control of national governments. The recent floods in Libya acerbated an already precarious situation, with only 1% of the land suitable for growing of grains resulting in a heavy reliance on imports. Adding to all of this was the war in Ukraine which resulted in less grain being available for export to Libya either directly or through the World Food Programme. Libya, since 2011, has had periodic wheat and cereals supply disruptions, shortages driven by speculative trading on global markets and higher local prices due to currency devaluation. Seventy-five per cent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, with many facing increasing challenges such as limited access to land, water, and other resources. They may live next to where food is grown but not have physical access to land and lack sufficient income to buy food.
Despite these alarming statistics, there have been some improvements in global food security, the prevalence of undernourishment decreased from 23.3% in 1990-1992 to 8.9% in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic saw some of these advances being reversed, demonstrating the fragility of the global food system and the need for continued efforts to address food insecurity and malnutrition. The pandemic provided us with lots of initiatives by governments, civil society and the food industry to tackle the issue of supply, examples of these are included in our edited handbook (Caraher, Coveney & Chopra, 2023). Despite this the contribution of both governments and the private sector to the SDGs is not encouraging. WHO, FAO and other United Nations agencies are predicting an increase in food insecurity in 2024. Among the reasons for this are a lack of actions to meet the targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Global Nutrition Targets (GNTs). Only 15% of the SDG targets are on track to be met by 2030 and the GNTs date for achievement, previously 2025, have been extended to 2030. Figure 1, shows that ranked by their contribution to each of the 17 SDG goals, global companies fell mostly in the middle with 38% aligned and 55% misaligned or neutral in their commitment and only 0.2% of companies strongly aligned to meeting the SDGs. The most strongly aligned goal was ‘Responsible Production and Consumption’, indicating a commitment, often under a CSR banner(Neufeld, 2021).
Figure 1 Source Neufeld (2021)
A key issue highlighted by many studies, including those in our edited volume, is the importance of cash transfers to families to address food insecurity, in the post pandemic era these are gradually being abandoned by governments using the excuse of austerity.
Conclusions
The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns were not about always about food per se in terms of its amount and production but the pandemic had impacts on the food chain and the ability and resources to source food. This raises the need to plan for disruptions in the food supply chain as a fallout from other crises such as floods, conflict or trade wars. Amartya Sen noted, famines are not conditional on a lack of food or its not being available, but on how the entitlement to access is conceived (Sen, 1981). Food security at the household level can be influenced by skills, resources and lack of money or physical access to food; however, it is often not about an overall shortage of food within a community or society but about access. Within late-capitalist societies, access is often defined by consumerist models of access rather than a right to food.
There is a lack of action by the corporate sector in relation to addressing the SDGs and the GNTs, the global food and health agencies have little power to ensure compliance or to regulate the situation. These gaps need to be addressed as matters of urgency. The issues of global governance and regulation need to be revisited by food policy and food insecurity researchers. For example there has been little research on how to regulate global speculation around food and concentrations in the food chain this despite the issues being (Clapp, 2021).
References
Caraher, M., Coveney, J. & Chopra, M. (eds) 2023, Handbook of Food Security and Society, Elgar, Cheltenham, UK.
Clapp 2021, “The problem with growing corporate concentration and power in the global food system”, Nature food, vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 404-408.
Neufeld, D. 2021, March 16th-last update, UN Sustainable Development Goals: How Companies Stack Up,.
Sen, A. 1981, Poverty and Famines, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Written by: Michael A. Long Oklahoma State University, USA, Michael J. Lynch, University of South Florida, USA and Paul B. Stretesky, University of Lincoln, UK
The relationship between inequality and the environment, as the title of this post suggests, is complex and not easily unpacked. Inequality exists in numerous ways and at different levels of analysis. For instance, inequalities can emerge between people or between groups. As social scientists we are less interested in inequality at the individual level where two people may, for instance, have different access to environmental resources. Instead, we are more concerned with social level inequalities that are observed between groups and affect many people. It is only through an examination of social inequality that we see how people at different locations in the societal power structure are affected by adverse or positive environmental contexts (e.g., residing near a polluting site versus being able to access a park in a city). In short, power shapes social relationships, some of which are environmental in nature. What this means, then, is that the ways power is structured in society impacts the natural environment.
Let us begin with a simple illustrative example from Jorgenson et al. (2020) which offers an observation that power, defined by racial composition and income inequality, is related to adverse health outcomes resulting from exposure to particulate pollution (PM2.5). As the percentage of black residents, particle matter, and income share of the top 10% of earners increased (a measure of income inequality), life expectancy decreased across US states. Here, an adverse outcome – decreased life expectancy – is not simply a function of increased exposure to particulate pollution as one might expect but is also shaped by the overall racial composition and income inequality in states. Increases in particulate matter are the most detrimental (most strongly correlated) to life expectancy in states with the greatest levels of income inequality and in states with the highest proportion of black residents. Jorgenson et al.’s study is an example of the ways in which inequality and the environment are related and multidimensional.
This example focuses attention on a very specific adverse environmental condition: poor air quality measured by particulate pollution (PM2.5). However, this is just one measure of air quality. Poor quality air can also be defined by ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon levels that are too high. Many of these measures of poor air quality can overlap, and locations with overlapping air pollution measures are likely unhealthier. A further test of the relationship between inequality and air pollution expanding on Jorgenson et al.’s finding might include these additional measures either individually or as an index. For example, Shenassa and Williams (2020) found adolescents living in areas with higher rates of poverty were more likely to be exposed to a class of chemicals known as volatile organic chemicals (or VOCs).
The two examples we provided above focus on air pollution but also demonstrated that the concept of air pollution is a broad term, that air pollution comes in different forms, and can be measured in complex ways with multiple measures. The same would be true for other measures of pollution in the environment. For example, water can be polluted, and it can be polluted with different kinds of chemicals. Moreover, some forms of water pollution might include dimensions of water impurities we might often overlook, such as the extent of salt-water intrusion into drinking water sources, which may also be related to various forms of inequality, and which may be complicated by coastal flooding that results from climate change and may have differential adverse effects on local indigenous peoples (Leonard 2021; Sageghi and Hosseini 2023).
The term “environment” broadly refers to the natural world and the impact of humans on that world. That impact extends beyond pollution and can include access to environmental resources that have beneficial uses for people, including for instance, food (e.g., access to clean waterways with sufficient fish stock to support local peoples). The term “environment” may also include issues for urban residents, and involve equal access to green spaces, or to urban garden areas which allow low-income residents to grow fresh foods to supplement their diets. This complex set of relationships between environment and inequality is the focus of our Handbook on Inequality and the Environment. The Handbook begins with an overview of the theoretical traditions of environmental inequality to provide readers with a framework for understanding the complex and diverse set of relationships between the environment and inequality. The Handbook is then organized into sections that explore key concepts related to inequality and environment and focus on issues such as race, ethnicity and indigenous peoples, gender, class, and economic circumstances for social problems such as climate change, natural resource extraction, and food insecurity. Unlike other volumes in this area the Handbook examines the way environmental inequality is intensified by state responses to environmental challenges. The contributions by leading authors are written in accessible language that should appeal to undergraduates, graduates and others who are looking for an overview of this important and increasingly relevant area of study.
Jorgenson, Andrew K., Terrence D. Hill, Brett Clark, Ryan P. Thombs, Peter Ore, Kelly S. Balistreri, and Jennifer E. Givens. (2020). Power, proximity, and physiology: does income inequality and racial composition amplify the impacts of air pollution on life expectancy in the United States? Environmental Research Letters 15 (2): 024013.
Leonard, Kelsey. (2021). WAMPUM Adaptation framework: Eastern coastal Tribal Nations and sea level rise impacts on water security. Climate and Development 13 (9): 842-851.
Sadeghi, Amir-Reza, and Seiyed Mossa Hosseini. (2023). Assessment and delineation of potential groundwater recharge zones in areas prone to saltwater intrusion hazard: a case from Central Iran. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 195 (1): 203.
Shenassa, Edmond D., and Andrew D. Williams. (2020). Concomitant exposure to area-level poverty, ambient air volatile organic compounds, and cardiometabolic dysfunction: a cross-sectional study of US adolescents. Annals of Epidemiology 48: 15-22.
Eladio Febrero (E.F.) Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain) interviews Óscar Dejuán (O.D.) about The Supermultiplier
E.F. On the book’s cover, we find these statements: “The Supermultiplier is a wonderful and much-needed book” (E. Nell); “It offers a new perspective on macroeconomics based on the surplus approach” (J.M. Bricall); “The book arrives at a time when the topic is gaining prominence across all heterodox approaches” (L.P. Rochon). Could you summarize the meaning and working of the supermultiplier?
O.D.The supermultiplier mixes two old, straightforward ideas: multiplier and accelerator. The third element is the vector of autonomous demand. It encompasses the expectations of persistent demand for exports, public expenditure, residential investment, and modernisation investment.
The SM model takes for granted the dominant technology and one distributive variable. Then, it computes the induced demand corresponding to the expected evolution of persistent autonomous demand. The traverse to a faster expansion conveys a structural change led by the supermultiplier. The income share of capacity-creating investment and business savings are supposed to increase.
The SM ensures the validity of the Keynesian principle of effective demand both in the short term (equilibrium level of income) and in the medium term (fully adjusted growth paths acting as a gravity centre).
E.F.You have raised an issue that has always worried me. If the multiplier-accelerator model is so old,why was it not accepted and popularised earlier?
O.D. Harrod’s warning about the extreme instability of the multiplier-accelerator model frightened most economists. Yet, such a hypothesis clashes with the ordinary working of capitalist economies and lacks a convincing rationale. In our view, Harrodian instability stems from an inappropriate correlation between capacity utilisation and demand expectations, a correlation that does not respect the autonomy of “autonomous demand”. Notice that our position does not imply a perfect foresight of entrepreneurs. We only require “prudence”, the key virtue that Adam Smith attributed to entrepreneurs. They will only invest if demand expectations prove to be persistent. Short term capacity adjustments do not affect the expected growth of persistent demand.
The supermultiplier is not only a stable mechanism but also a stabilising one. This can be seen in the “traverse” between two growth paths. The supermultiplier drives a change in the structure of the economy until the shares of induced consumption, induced investment, and autonomous demand ensure a new, fully adjusted path of growth. Even the “warranted” rate, derived from the supply side, is bound to adjust to the autonomous trend. To be efficient and competitive, firms are supposed to use the best technology in the most efficient way (i.e., at full capacity utilisation).
E.F. The Keynesian multiplier has been criticised for ignoring monetary and financial factors. Does the same criticism apply to the SM?
O.D.Your question involves a misconception. Money and finance are essential in both the multiplier and the supermultiplier. Post-Keynesian economists support the money endogeneity hypothesis summed up in Moore’s statement: “Money is credit driven and demand determined”. Graziani distinguishes between initial and final finance. In his examples, initial finance refers to the short term loans that finance variable capital, particularly wages. The eflux phase introduces the means of payment to purchase final goods. After selling them, firms can pay back the loans. This is the reflux phase that he calls “final finance”. In the supermultiplier model, we should consider the part of autonomous demand financed by long term loans and debt. Banks are supposed to reabsorb the liquidity injected in these ways.
The supermultiplier can be computed from three different perspectives. (1) The geometric progression that captures the induced demand for consumption and investment (c+h). (2) The inverse of the share of uncommitted income (s=1-(c+h)); it coincides with the value of autonomous demand as a share of income (z). (3) The inverse of the income share of the money collected to pay for autonomous demand (d). The last variable varies according to the autonomous expenditure under consideration. Regarding residential investment, it would be the inverse of the unit financial commitments. An increase in the indebtedness ratio and interest rates reduces the value of the supermultiplier and may lead to a massive default of households. The explanation of the financial crises is more appealing when explained by the supermultiplier model. In the book, we inspect the global financial crisis of 2008.
E.F. You are trying to build macroeconomics from “the surplus approach.” Can you explain the pillars of such a synthesis?
O.D.The theoretical building blocks are three. (1) The Keynesian-Kaleckian principle of effective demand and money. (2) The classical political economy of value and distribution, conveniently restated by Sraffa. (3) The Schumpeterian emphasis on innovative entrepreneurs and the institutions that channel economic decisions.
E.F. To the best of my knowledge, economists usually refer to the “Sraffian supermultiplier” while Schumpeter is never mentioned.
O.D.In my opinion, the adjective conveys an is an overstatement. Sraffa talks little about demand and nothing about the multiplier. It is true, however, that the term surplus approach was coined by Sraffa’s disciples (Pasinetti, Garegnani, Eatwell, Nell), and the supermultiplier mechanism was introduced by Sraffians like Serrano in Brasil, Bortis in Sweetzeland, Cesaratto in Italy …
To your second observation, I must clarify that my book is not intended to describe the current state of the SM studies. It transmits my own perceptions, hoping to contribute to a future synthesis when the issue is mature enough. In my opinion, some Schumpeterian observations should be part of the final synthesis. (1) Capitalist economies tend to stagnate. (2) Innovative entrepreneurs dynamize demand by introducing new goods, new forms to produce traditional goods and new markets. (3) Modernization investment (that transforms capacity instead of increasing it) is the key element of autonomous demand and the ordinary vehicle of technological change. (4) The second task of innovative entrepreneurs is to convince banks to finance the project. (5) Major innovations usually lead to long waves of prosperity.
E.F. What adds the SM model to Keynes’ economics?
O.D. The most important contribution is the validation of the Keynesian principle of effective demand both in the short run (the equilibrium level of output in a given period) and in the long run (fully adjusted path of growth).
It provides Keynes’s macroeconomics with a coherent theory of value that marks the gravity centers forged by competition.
It offers the necessary equilibrium between the objective and subjective forces that influence economic decisions and the formation of expectations. The SM gathers the objective elements: technological parameters and propensities determining induce demand (usually more than 80% of aggregate demand). The “multiplicand” collects the expected levels and growth rates of the autonomous elements driving the economy. Such expectations, however, are not extremely volatile and arbitrary. They also depend on objective factors like the potential market of the elements of autonomous demand driving the system.
The SM model enhances the structure of the economy, usually hidden in Keynes aggregation. The SM connects with the Kaldorian models that emphasise the competitive advantages associated to particular structures of production; with Latin American structuralism and developmentalism; and with Leontief’s input-output analysis. In the last chapter, we build a disaggregated SM to study the decarbonisation process.
The SM model corrects some misconceptions about fiscal policies based on the traditional income multiplier. It provides a better foundation for export-led growth and balance of payment constraints (Thirlwall and McCombie).
E.F. A last question. Who is the target audience of the book?
O.D. First of all, postgraduate students of macroeconomics who search for an alternative to mainstream textbooks. Our didactical priority shows in the attempt to present my ideas as much as possible and to accompany the theoretical presentation with a collection of simulation exercises. The second target audience would be heterodox researchers on dynamic macroeconomics. Hopefully, the interest in the supermultiplier model will expand and eventually conceive a new macroeconomics that integrates the theories of value, distribution, demand, and money into a coherent “surplus approach”.
Oriol Amat and Pilar Lloret identify the warning signs to identify whether fraud has occurred or is likely to occur in a business.
Accounting fraud causes serious damage. In many cases, it ultimately brings down the company concerned and causes significant losses to those who have placed their trust in it, be they shareholders, employees, banks, suppliers or other interested parties. It is therefore a good idea to detect fraud before it is too late.
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Image credit: Adobe Stock
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Editorial Director, Alex Pettifer discusses Elgar’s approach to assessing and publishing new Open Access titles.
February 27, 2024
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