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11. Operationalizing Growth Models

Author:
Lucio Baccaro and Sinisa Hadziabdic
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
We present a new methodology for operationalizing growth models based on import-adjusted demand components. Applying the methodology to the latest release of OECD Input-Output Tables, we calculate the growth contributions of consumption, investment, government expenditures, and exports for sixty-six countries in the periods 1995 to 2007 and 2009 to 2018 and identify the respective growth models. We find that most countries are export-led or domestic demand-led and that other forms of growth are rare. Our results corroborate previous classifications in comparative political economy but also differ from them in significant respects. Importantly, our classification improves on previous ones by covering not just the advanced capitalist economies but also Central and Eastern European and South-East Asian and Latin American countries. In a further step, we illustrate how the new indicators can be used to analyze the “drivers” of different types of growth. This examination reveals that there is a clear trade-off between consumption- and export-led growth in advanced Western economies in the period 1995 to 2007 and a dependence of export-led growth in these countries on real exchange rate devaluation in the same period, while export complexity is not a significant predictor of export-led growth.
Topic:
Political Economy, Economies, Economic Growth, and Exports
Political Geography:
Global Focus

12. From the pandemic to a reorganization of time? Time sociological perspectives on the relationship between temporality, economy and state.

Author:
Lisa Suckert
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Does the pandemic foreshadow a more sustainable order of time? Can the crisis allow for a departure from the capitalist time regime? This article looks at the Covid-19 pandemic and respective state interventions from a perspective inspired by the sociology of time and eco- nomic sociology. It shows that the social and economic disruptions attributed to the pan- demic can be understood as the result of a collision of opposing temporal logics. In order to contain the pandemic, the state initially enforced ways of dealing with time that contradict the capitalist time regime and its major principles – commodification and rational use of time, acceleration, and appropriation of the future. This “return of the state” as a power governing its citizens’ time does not, however, in itself imply a “new temporal order” that goes beyond the current state of emergency. The article shows that those state interventions intended not to contain the virus but to mitigate its social and economic consequences can often be understood as attempts to mediate between different temporal logics and cushion their collision. They essentially facilitate a “return” to the capitalist time regime and thus perpetuate time-related inequalities.
Topic:
Capitalism, Inequality, Pandemic, COVID-19, and State Capitalism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

13. Scaling Up Alternatives to Capitalism: A Social Movement Approach to Alternative Organizing (in) the Economy.

Author:
Simone Schiller-Merkens
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
In these times of crises, capitalism and the far-reaching marketization of our societies has again become a subject of contestation and critique. Alternative organizing is one response to the critique of capitalism. As an embodied and constructive form of critique it takes place in prefigurative organizations and communities on the ground that experiment with alternative forms of organizing economic exchanges and lives. These prefigurative initiatives are seen as central actors in a social transformation toward an alternative economy. However, they oftentimes remain autonomous and disconnected, questioning their potential to contribute to a broader social change. This paper sets out to explore how and when alternative organizing as practiced in communities and organizations can scale upwards to lead to a more profound social transformation of our societies. Building on insights from scholarship on social movement outcomes, I discuss the collective actions, contextual conditions, and social mechanisms that are likely to allow an upward scale shift of alternative organizing.
Topic:
Economics, Social Movement, Capitalism, and Community
Political Geography:
Global Focus

14. From Industrial Citizenship to Private Ordering? Contract, Status, and the Question of Consent.

Author:
Ruth Dukes and Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper revisits the notions of contract and status found in classical sociology, legal theory, and labour law. Adopting an historical perspective, it explores the fragmentation of the status of industrial citizenship during the neoliberal period and discusses the enduring usefulness of the status/contract distinction in analyzing current trends in the regulation of working relations, including the spread of “gig” or platform-mediated work. Elements of status, it is argued, must always be present if work is to be performed and paid for as the parties require it. Claims to the contrary – for example, that the gig economy creates a labour market without search frictions and only minimal transaction costs: contracts without status – assume an undersocialized model of (monadic) social action that has no basis in the reality of social life (Durkheim, Weber). Still, status may come in a variety of forms that are more or less desirable from the perspective of workers, businesses, and society at large. The paper traces what it conceives as the privatization of status via contracts between employers and workers under the pressure of marketization and dominated by corporate hierarchies. Towards the end of the twentieth century, sociologists observed the division of workers into two groups or classes – core (with relatively well-paid and secure employment) and peripheral (low-paid and insecure). Thirty years later, gross inequalities of wealth and conceptions of the neoliberal self as ever-improving, ever-perfectible, are combining to create novel forms of status not fully anticipated by the literature.
Topic:
Democracy, Inequality, Citizenship, Private Sector, and Industry
Political Geography:
Global Focus

15. Transcending History’s Heavy Hand The Future in Economic Action

Author:
Jens Beckert and Timur Ergen
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper discusses sociological analyses of the formation and role of expectations in the economy. Recognition of the social constitution of expectations advances the understand- ing of economic action under conditions of uncertainty and helps to explain core features of modern capitalist societies. The range of applications of the analytical perspective is il- lustrated by closer examination of three core spheres of capitalist societies: consumption, investment, and innovation. To provide an idea of core challenges of the approach, three major research questions for the sociological analysis of expectations are presented.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Sociology, Capitalism, and Innovation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16. Uncertain Futures Imaginaries, Narratives, and Calculative Technologies

Author:
Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Dynamic capitalist economies are characterised by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. How then do economic actors form expectations and decide how to act despite this uncertainty? This pa­ per focuses on the role played by imaginaries, narratives, and calculative technologies, and argues that the market impact of shared calculation devices, social narratives, and contin­ gent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of ‘narrative economics’ and a the­ ory of fictional (rather than rational) expectations. When expectations cannot be anchored in objective probability functions, the future belongs to those with the market, political, or rhetorical power to make their models or stories count. The paper also explores the dangers of analytical monocultures and the discourse of best practice in conditions of uncertainty, and considers the link between uncertainty and some aspects of populism.
Topic:
Economics, Science and Technology, Capitalism, and Innovation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

17. Comparative Political Economy and Varieties of Macroeconomics

Author:
Lucio Baccaro and Jonas Pontusson
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper provides a historical overview of comparative political economy as an interdisci- plinary field of study anchored in political science and focused on advanced capitalist states. We argue that this field of inquiry has reached an impasse and that a more sustained engage- ment with macroeconomics provides a way forward. Against this backdrop, we review two distinct traditions of macroeconomics – New Keynesian and Post-Keynesian macroeco- nomics – and discuss their relative merits as vehicles for renewing the research agenda of comparative political economy.
Topic:
Capitalism, Macroeconomics, and Keynes
Political Geography:
Global Focus

18. A Small History of the Homeownership Ideal

Author:
Sebastian Kohl
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
America’s “infatuation with homeownership” has been identified as one cause of the latest financial crisis. Based on codings of 1,809 party manifestos in 19 OECD countries since 1945, this paper addresses the question of where the political ideal to democratize homeownership came from. While conservative parties have defended homeownership across countries and time, center-left parties have oscillated between a pro-homeownership and a pro-rental position. The former occurs in Anglo-Saxon, Northern and Southern European countries, while the latter prevails among German-speaking countries. Beyond partisan effects, once a country has a majority of homeowners and parties defending homeownership, larger parties are more likely to support it. The extent of center-left parties’ support for homeownership is conditionally associated with higher homeownership rates, more encouraging mortgage regimes, and a bigger housing bubble burst after 2007. The ideational origins of the financialization of housing and private Keynesianism are, after all, not only conservative and market-liberal.
Topic:
International Political Economy and Domestic Politics
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19. Anomie or Imitation? The Werther Effect of Celebrity Suicides on Suicide Rates in 34 OECD Countries, 1960–2014

Author:
Mark Lutter, Karlijn L. A Roex, and Daria Tisch
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Anomie and imitation have been prominent mechanisms explaining the Werther effect, i.e., the effect of celebrity suicides on a general population’s suicide rate. This study presents a new approach to empirically disentangle both mechanisms. Imitation theory suggests that celebrities act as role models, and that the Werther effect is triggered by the status of the celebrity in question. Anomie theory, on the other hand, suggests that the Werther effect is triggered by the unexpectedness of the event. To this end, we empirically compare the effects of celebrity suicides with the effects of celebrities who died unexpectedly from causes other than suicide (accidents, illnesses, alcohol abuse). Based on language and page-link data from 3,855 Wikipedia pages of 495 celebrities who committed suicide between 1960 and 2014, we measure the status a celebrity has in a particular country and calculate the potential country-specific imitation effect of their suicide. In the same manner, we measure status effects of celebrities who died unexpectedly from accidents, illnesses, or alcohol abuse to reflect anomie-related effects. We use these measures in a time-series cross-sectional dataset for 34 OECD countries to assess their effects on a country’s overall annual suicide rate. Fixed-effects analyses reveal that country-specific status effects of celebrity suicides lead to significant increases in overall suicide rates, while anomie-related, unexpected celebrity deaths show no effects. The findings remain robust across a number of alternative specifications, such as controlling for further anomic factors at the macro level (divorce or unemployment rate, for instance). We conclude that the results support the imitation mechanism as an essential social explanation for the Werther effect.
Topic:
International Relations and Health
Political Geography:
Global Focus

20. Porous Borders: The Study of Illegal Markets from a Sociological Perspective.

Author:
Matias Dewey
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
State concerns about crime and security issues have strongly affected conceptions of economic action outside the law, a traditional field of research in sociology. This increasing encroachment by policy-related concerns on the intellectual framework of the discipline has led, on one hand, to an almost exclusive focus on criminal organizations in the analyses of illegal economic activity. On the other hand, it has led to the downplaying of the importance of classic topics of sociological reflection, such as the embeddedness of action, the moral dimension of illegal products, or the relationship between social change and the spread of illegal exchanges. This short paper problematizes economic action outside the law by taking legal definitions and their effects seriously. It begins with the problem of naturalizing state definitions. This is followed by a discussion of the illegality of illegal markets, which illustrates sociological contributions. Finally, three dimensions of the study of illegal markets are suggested. Overall, the paper lays out a research program for this field of sociological inquiry.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Markets, and Sociology
Political Geography:
Global Focus