Insights from History of Economic Thought to Understand the Economy's Future
Paper Session
Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (PST)
- Chair: John T. Harvey, Texas Christian University
Horses, Serfs, Slaves, Investment and Transitions Debates: An Exploratory Analysis
Abstract
This paper examines several factors that have been mentioned and debated as determinants of how Britain moves from feudalism to mercantilism and then capitalism through agricultural and industrial innovations and how it arrives at the cusp of the industrial revolution. Of special interest are somewhat recent conjectures of macroeconomic data and investment estimates of and/or deployment data on horses, serfs, and slaves of previous centuries that perhaps can better contribute to and add some clarification to the debates. The estimates and analyses in this paper partially support the Brenner theses or concept of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and also support the notion that the proceeds of slave sales and slave production provide a substantive portion of British investment amounts leading up to the industrial revolution of the 18th Century. The mainstream economic notions of property rights, thrift, free markets, and free trade are only part of the picture of how Britain achieves economic prominence in the 19th Century. Exploitation of people and animals play a very significant role that has been ignored in most history and economic history accounts.Consensual Servitude and Virtual Property
Abstract
Thorstein Veblen and John R. Commons developed their institutional theory to address intangible property. With the rise of the Internet, virtual property arises as a specific case of intangible property whose understanding benefits from an original institutional economic perspective.According to Veblen, intangible property is exploitative because of the differential advantage derived from private appropriation of community embedded knowledge. Applied to virtual property, the most pervasive form of exploitation of consumptive users (hereinafter abbreviated to users) of digital platforms, apps, and devices (hereinafter abbreviated to platforms) is the extraction of personal data/content (hereafter abbreviated to data) that harms various aspects of well-being, even though online services/experiences may also have positive effects on welfare.
Especially, artificial intelligence (hereafter abbreviated to A.I.) based virtual property brings us to the brink of a multi-decade economic transformation. By extracting raw material in the form of personal data/content, agents’ individuality that pertains organically to them becomes consensually owned by others. Providers of platforms conceal this Veblenian exploitation mark by providing services/experiences for “free” in exchange for consensual data-servitude. From Commons’ perspective, I find that disparities in legal rights and duties, and disparities in liberties, and exposures between customers and suppliers of platforms tend to favor providers and negatively influence dimensions of well-being of users.
The creation of data vaults, or data licensing for a fee are no viable options to address exploitation. If one wants to protect the well-being of customers of evolving platforms, new individual and organizational behaviors, laws, statutes, regulations, and (forward looking) international cooperation are necessary. This third option could be assisted with taxation of Big Tech to compensate or support exploited people.
John R. Commons and Irving Fisher: Contrasting Methodologies but Allies in Policy Reform
Abstract
The institutionalist economist John R. Commons of the University of Wisconsin and his contemporary, the neoclassical capital theory, monetary economist and general equilibrium pioneer Irving Fisher of Yale University, had contrasting approaches to the methodology of economics, as indicated, for example, in Commons’s 1907 QJE review of Fisher’s The Nature of Capital and Income (1906). Nonetheless, despite their contrasting theoretical approaches, Commons and Fisher had a long, close and fruitful collaboration in campaigning for reforms in public policy. This collaboration was expressed through the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) and through a series of organizations for monetary reform, which sought to replace the gold exchange standard with a mandate for price-level stabilization. The AALL, of which Commons was the founding secretary, was the leading research and advocacy organization promoting the “Wisconsin idea” Progressive agenda of policy reform at the national level. The AALL was not an exclusively institutionalist initiative but rather was made more effective by enlisting a group of non-institutional economists in support of Progressive ideas: the first four AALL presidents, all economics professors, were Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons of the University of Wisconsin and Henry Farnam and Irving Fisher of Yale. Fisher advanced the same extensive agenda of policy reform, with a central role for universal, compulsory health insurance, in his presidential addresses to the AALL in 1917 and the American Economic Association in 1918. In addition to Fisher’s active participation in the AALL, founded by Commons, the role of Commons in the price-level stabilization campaign is shown by his many appearances in Fisher’s Stable Money: A History of the Movement (1934, pp. 51, 63-64, 105, 170-71, 222, 240, 246, 248-49, 255, 258, 271-72). Drawing on archival research I explore the methodological differences between Commons and Fisher and their policy collaboration in the AALLFrom Individuals to Self-Entrepreneurs: A Dialogue between Institutional Economics and Social Anthropology
Abstract
Original Institutional Economics and Social Anthropology shares similar points of view that intertwined several times throughout the 20th century. Both perspectives understand that human beings are historically situated and that culture determines a large part of their subjectivities, behaviors and their understanding of themselves. Given this, this paper seeks to establish a dialogue between Social Anthropology and Original Institutionalism regarding the notion of person in Western societies. The work begins with a discussion about how Veblen understood human action within industrial societies based on his critique of neoclassical economics. At the same time, compare Veblen's vision with the critique of formalist economics offered by recognized social anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins, Pierre Clastres and Maurice Godelier. Based on the convergences of this initial dialogue, the work will explore the notion of individual, showing how the ideas of French anthropologist Louis Dumont on this topicoffer important elements for advancing the institutionalist understanding of human action in western history. Finally, the paper presents some possibilities for interaction and integration between social anthropology and the OIE to understand the notion of the neoliberal person that emerged between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
The Institutional Economics and Public Service of Edwin A. Elliott
Abstract
Edwin A. Elliott, born in Troy, Texas, in 1891, was a product of the Texas school of Institutionalism, having earned his PhD there in 1930. He had a storied career that included among other things being an ordained minister, a decorated veteran of WWI, study body president and later chair of the economics department at Texas Christian University, regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, and a lifelong supporter of progressive causes. He was, by all accounts, an inspirational and influential individual. And yet despite this, he is all-but-forgotten, even on the campus of the very university where he served in leadership roles during both his undergraduate days and as a member of the faculty. This is representative of what has happened in general to the many significant contributions Institutionalists have made to economics and policy. This article is an attempt to reverse that in at least some small way. In addition to biographical details, the piece links his work to the influence of his dissertation coordinator, C.A. Wiley, and to one of Wiley’s mentors, Richard Ely. It will be shown that Wiley’s contention that the economy must be understood as an integrated whole and Ely’s that the government plays a key role in attacking social and economic problems and that intellectuals should devote themselves to the problems of laypeople–including if necessary in public service–show up throughout Elliott’s career. This is not someone who should be forgotten, but celebrated.JEL Classifications
- B2 - History of Economic Thought since 1925
- B1 - History of Economic Thought through 1925