Labor market institutions and the political economy of power

From Moudud and Ilkkaracan new special issue of ROKE on labor market institutions and the political economy of power:

The drive for labor market flexibility has become something of an intellectual and political crusade in the past several decades. As part of the conventional ‘best practice’ view of economic policy, labor market flexibility can be considered to be at the heart of what Thomas Friedman calls the Golden Straitjacket into which all countries need to fit themselves in order to be successful [...] in the same vein as Margaret Thatcher's ‘There Is No Alternative’ (or TINA).
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This collection of papers makes a unique contribution towards a theoretical conceptualization of labor markets and their complex interactions with macroeconomic phenomena (unemployment and productivity), institutions (workplace organization, regulatory frameworks, labor or employer organizations) and the political economy of power. By bringing these papers together, the special issue aims to provide the elements of a theoretical reconceptualization supported by empirical analyses and firmly rooted in the real world; far more convincing than the dominating neoclassical model rooted in a chimerical idealized model of competition. Hence the collection also suggests the possibility of an alternative social democratic policy framework, where the goal of increasing prosperity is compatible with decent work and equality.

Get the whole issue here.

Alternative Theories of Competition

New book by Cyrus Bina, Patrick Mason and Jamee Moudud has just been published. A few friends from the New School and elsewhere, and at least one alumnus from the University of Utah. From the jacket:

"The history of policymaking has been dominated by two rival assumptions about markets. Those who have advocated Keynesian-type policies have generally based their arguments on the claim that markets are imperfectly competitive. On the other hand laissez faire advocates have argued the opposite by claiming that in fact free market policies will eliminate "market imperfections" and reinvigorate perfect competition.

The goal of this book is to enter into this important debate by raising critical questions about the nature of market competition in both the neoclassical and Kaleckian traditions

By drawing on the insights of the classical political economists, Schumpeter, Hayek, the Oxford Economists' Research Group (OERG) and others, the authors in this book challenge this perfect versus imperfect competition dichotomy in both theoretical and empirical terms. There are important differences between the theoretical perspectives of several authors in the broad alternative theoretical tradition defined by this book; nevertheless, a unifying theme throughout this volume is that competition is conceptualized as a dynamic disequilibrium process rather than the static equilibrium state of conventional theory. For many of the authors the growth of the firm is consistent with a heightened degree of competitiveness, as the classical economists and Schumpeter emphasized, and not a lowered one as in the conventional 'monopoly capital' and imperfect competition perspectives."

Contributions by Rania Antonopoulos, Serdal Bahc¸e, Cyrus Bina, Scott Carter, Benan Eres, Jason Hecht, Jack High, William Lazonick, Andrés Lazzarini, Fred S. Lee, J. Stanley Metcalfe, Jamee Moudud, John Sarich, Anwar Shaikh, Persefoni Tsaliki, Lefteris Tsoulfidis, and John Weeks.