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1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Illegal Markets: Boundaries and Interfaces between Legality and Illegality.

Author:
Renate Mayntz
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
In sociology generally, the infringement of legal norms is not treated as a special kind of norm violation, the sociology of law being an obvious exception. The study of illegal markets therefore faces the challenge of distinguishing illegality from legality, and relating both to legitimacy. There is no conceptual ambiguity about the distinction between legal and illegal if legality is formally defined. In practice, (formal) legality and (social) legitimacy can diverge: there is both legitimate illegal action and illegitimate legal action. Illegal markets are a special kind of illegal social system, constituted by market transactions. Illegal markets are empirically related to organized crime, mafia and even terrorist organizations, and they interact both with legal markets and the forces of state order. Where legal and illegal action systems are not separated by clear social boundaries, they are connected by what has come to be called “interfaces”: actors moving between a legal and an illegal world, actions that are illegal but perceived as legitimate or the other way around, and a gray zone of actions that are neither clearly legal nor illegal, and neither clearly legitimate nor illegitimate. Interfaces facilitate interaction between legal and illegal action systems, but they are also sources of tension and can lead to institutional change.
Topic:
Crime, Markets, Sociology, and Law
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Constructing Quality: Producer Power, Market Organization, and the Politics of High Value-Added Markets.

Author:
Elizabeth Carter
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Economists assume increased producer flexibility creates production advantages. So why do inefficient French quality wine producers dominate their flexible, efficient Italian counterparts? French AOC wine producers created “corporatist” producer organizations which served three purposes: encouraged increased product quality information across the supply chain; allowed for the emergence of a unique production style; and enabled producers to define their production methods as “quality” via state regulation. Italian DOC wine producers have fragmented political structures at both the regional and national levels, causing producers to rely more on the price mechanism and less on political structures to coordinate supply chain transactions. Market asymmetries persist across the supply chain, making it difficult for producers to guarantee quality and adversely shaping their potential production and brand strategies. Solving supply chain problems through representative political institutions yields superior economic outcomes than uncoordinated market transactions because the former corrects market power asymmetries.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Politics, and Regulation
Political Geography:
France, Italy, and Global Focus

9. Quality of Government and the Relationship between Natural Disasters and Child Poverty: A Comparative Analysis.

Author:
Adel Daoud, Bjorn Hallerod, and Debarati Guha Sapir
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper explores the degree to which exposure to reoccurring natural disasters of various kinds explains seven dimensions of severe child poverty in 67 middle- and low-income countries. It also analyzes how certain institutional conditions, namely the quality of government (QoG), have moderating effects on the relationship between disasters and child poverty. Two main hypotheses are tested. The first is that disasters do have an adverse average effect on severe poverty. The second is that disasters reveal a positive coefficient (i.e., more disasters, more deprivation) but that higher levels of QoG negatively moderate this effect, i.e., the adverse effect of disasters is diminished by increasingly high QoG levels. From 70 possible combinations of relationships (7 types of deprivation combined with 10 types of natural disaster measures), 11 have the expected correlation between disasters and child deprivation and only one has the expected interactive correlation between quality of government, disasters, and child poverty. Several unexpected results could also be observed which are discussed in the paper along with recommendations for future research.
Topic:
Economics, Natural Disasters, Governance, Research, and Child Poverty
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. How the Eurobarometer Blurs the Line between Research and Propaganda

Author:
Martin Höpner and Bojan Jurczyk
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper reviews Eurobarometer surveys from 1995 to 2010 and shows how Eurobarometer selects and frames questions in ways that systematically produce “integrationist” outcomes. The violations of the rules of good public opinion research concern incomprehensible, hypothetical, and knowledge-inadequate questions, unbalanced response options, insinuation and leading questions, context effects, and the strategic removal of questions that led to critical responses in previous Eurobarometer waves. It is highly unlikely that the violations happen unintentionally. Eurobarometer therefore blurs the line between research and propaganda.
Topic:
Sociology, Public Opinion, and Research
Political Geography:
Global Focus