Advanced Industrial Economies Research Articles

The EU's Geoeconomic Turn: From Policy Laggard to Institutional Innovator

AbstractHeightened geopolitical tensions and the growing securitization of economic exchange over the past decade have prompted many countries to adopt new geoeconomic tools. Long resistant to this geoeconomic turn, the European Union (EU) has since 2017 created a panoply of innovative policy tools that blend trade and investment with essential security concerns. This article asks why and how the EU has been able to operate the doctrinal and policy changes necessary to put economic tools at the service of geopolitics. After introducing a typology of the defensive and offensive geoeconomic tools deployed by advanced industrial economies, we present the novel geoeconomic toolkit quickly assembled by the EU, which we explain by the confluence of external factors that triggered European leaders' beliefs that change was necessary and internal factors that made such change institutionally and politically possible, a trend reinforced by the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

How do fiscal policies, energy consumption and environmental stringency impact energy transition in the G7 economies: Policy implications for the COP28

In recent decades, stringent environmental policies have gained prominence to tackle rising ecological and environmental threats and achieve energy transition. The current research extends fiscal and environmental deliberations by analyzing how fiscal, environmental and energy policies impact energy transition in advanced industrial economies. Our empirical analysis helps us identify that renewable energy, economic developments and environmental stringency ensure energy transition. On the other hand, fossil fuels, governmental expenditures and taxation revenues hinder ecological progress and energy transition. Based on our analysis, we propose that policymakers must align fiscal and environmental policies to bring structural changes and upgrade energy infrastructure to combat environmental threats from climate change.

Evaluating the roles of energy innovation, fossil fuel costs and environmental compliance towards energy transition in advanced industrial economies

Given the dire state of climate change, investigating key elements that impact the energy transition process and help monitor progress in greenhouse gas emissions to achieve environmental sustainability is of critical importance. The current study explores the association between energy transition, compliance with environmental agreements, fossil fuels costs, environmental technologies, economic growth, and environmental degradation in G20 economies from 1995 to 2019. Our findings from extensive econometric analysis reveal that economic growth, environmental innovation, renewable energy, and environmental compliance facilitate while fossil fuels and environmental degradation hinder the energy transition process. Our findings conclude that developed countries must focus on alternate energy resources to overcome environmental challenges and subsidize renewable energy and environmental technologies to replace fossil fuels with green energy resources methodologically. Further, policy measures have been discussed in detail in the study.

Labor Studies: Who and Where? A Global Perspective on the Future of Work(ers)

This article argues that a global approach to labor studies that takes equal account of labor's Fordist-Keynesian as well as its colonial and anti-colonial histories in the Global North and South would make an important contribution to emerging discourses and debates on the future of work. It contrasts the evolution of workers and work in both developing and advanced industrial economies from the inter-war period onwards, highlighting ways in which political struggles and legal transformations produced distinct labor institutions: ‘good’ union protected jobs for some in the Global North and pervasive informality for most in the Global South. Yet despite these different starting points, the article argues that the emergence of new technologies of production such as artificial intelligence and advanced automation amidst the broader context of neoliberalism is prompting convergence rather than divergence in the trajectories of workers in the developing and industrialized worlds, as mostly clearly seen in the rising casualization of work. The article thus suggests that a truly global approach to labor studies that takes account of the historical and institutional trajectories of work in different contexts would strengthen both the analytic foundations and normative commitments of the discipline as scholars address the anxieties and concerns associated with the future of work.

Fed Up: The Global Ascension of the Federal Reserve in the Era of Migration

Abstract In recent decades, the Federal Reserve has emerged as a global lender of last resort. In this article, we investigate whether the prospect of unwanted migration has driven lawmakers’ support for the Fed's increased international role. During an economic crisis, declines in investor confidence and capital flight to developed economies often cause economic hardship in the developing world, thus encouraging increased migration into advanced industrial economies. Concerned about voter opposition to increased immigration, immigration-averse policymakers of migrant-receiving states will seek ways to reduce the economic distress of migrant-sending states. To corroborate our argument, we analyze congressional voting on the “Audit the Fed” bills in the US House of Representatives from 2012 to 2015. Using the district-level foreign-born population as an indicator of migration pressure, our evidence suggests that anti-immigrant lawmakers are more likely to support the Federal Reserve's international initiatives when their districts face a disproportionately high level of migrant pressure.

Structural economic dynamics in actual industrial economies

Despite the tight articulation between Pasinetti’s natural economic system and measurable inter-industry magnitudes, contributions inspired by his framework of structural economic dynamics have either focused on analytical developments or empirically implemented some of its features in isolation. To bridge the gap between theory and empirics, this paper introduces a computable formulation of Pasinetti’s dual system of prices and quantities, including its natural configuration, starting from a set of inter-industry accounting identities. The analytical properties of the computable framework are discussed, using the logical structure of a closed Input–Output model. By articulating a dataset collating different OECD databases, the scheme is empirically implemented to explore the structural dynamics of six advanced industrial economies between 1995 and 2015. In particular, we quantify the required injection to close a country’s unemployment gap via a public intervention, use the natural configuration of the economy to relate the evolution of demand, productivity, wages and the general price level, and compare the emerging trends of job creation and displacement across countries and hyper-integrated sectors.

“The Way We Build”: Craft, Innovation, and Sustainability in Japanese House-Carpentry

Abstract This article expands and complicates the literature on “craft” by examining the seeming anomaly of a craft community dominating a significant production sector within an advanced industrial economy, and despite the existence of cheaper high-tech and labor-saving alternatives. Japanese house-carpenters, organized into very small firms with very local markets, and producing “traditional” house-frames in small batches, have long held prefabrication and other alternatives at bay through a process of conservative innovation. The primary goal of their innovative process has been the protection and continuance of house-carpentry as a relevant and marketable skill, and of its practitioners as a self-sustaining community. This craft is not an exemplar of sustainability in other ways, however, despite its association with the traditional and organic. Its house-products have unnaturally short lives given Japanese methods of accounting for property value, and its raw material, foreign-sourced old-growth forests, are increasingly subject to global conservation efforts.

Policy interactions with research trajectories: The case of cyber-physical convergence in manufacturing and industrials

From the early 2010s, policymakers and firms in advanced industrial economies began introducing approaches to systemically exploit manufacturing and industrial data using the notion of cyber-physical convergence. Three innovation concepts have been especially highlighted: Smart Manufacturing, the Industrial Internet and Industrie 4.0. In parallel, academics have employed these concepts in numerous ways to advance their work. Despite this broad interest, precise definition and delineation of the cyber-physical convergence research domain have received little attention. Also missing is systematic knowledge on the interactions of these concepts with research trajectories. This paper fills these gaps by operationalising a newly constructed definition of convergence, and delineating the associated research domain into five data-centric capabilities: Monitoring, Analytics, Modelling and Simulation, Transmission and Security. A bibliometric analysis of the domain is then performed for 2010–2019. There are three findings. First, Analytics and Security have assumed strategic positions within the domain, coinciding with a “strategic turn” in policy. Second, backed by concerted policy and funding efforts, growth in Chinese scientific output has outpaced key competitors, including the U.S. and Germany. Finally, the patterns of promoting their works in terms of the three concepts differ significantly amongst U.S.-, Germany- and China-based authors, which mirrors the different policy discourses prevalent in those countries.

Productivity homogenisation trends of six advanced industrial economies: A vertically hyper-integrated approach

The present paper applies an Input-Output accounting framework, based on the logical device of vertical hyper-integration, to measure productivity trends across six advanced industrial economies (US, Germany, Japan, UK, France and Italy) during recent decades. Rather than measuring performance from the income side of the economy, as in traditional TFP growth analyses, disaggregated productivity changes are approximated from the expenditure side, i.e. the nominal counterpart to the system of physical quantities. Empirical findings suggest that the central tendency for convergence of hyper-integrated productivity levels across countries within each growing subsystem between 1995 and 2007 has been reversed between 2007 and 2015. And while service subsystems coincided in their direction of change, primary-cum-manufacturing sectors experienced more heterogeneous dynamics. Moreover, productivity gains accruing to wages were amongst the lowest in the three economies with highest overall hyper-integrated labour productivity growth.

When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism, 1920-1945

The Michigan Historical Review 46:1 (Spring 2020): 29-67©2020 Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism, 1920-1945 By Salaina Catalano In his 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis urged readers to appreciate America’s susceptibility to the influence of fascism. In the novel, Bishop Prang, a clergyman with a national radio broadcast, throws the weight of his organization, the League of Forgotten Men, behind Buzz Windrip, guaranteeing Windrip’s presidential victory and eventually his fascist dictatorship. Lewis’s book was fiction, but he based his characters on real-life right-wing demagogues. The inspiration for Bishop Prang was Father Charles Coughlin, the “Radio Priest” from Royal Oak, Michigan. Coughlin’s power, according to Lewis, was potentially fatal for democracy. As one of many contemporary observers of the proliferation of American right-wing extremists in the 1930s, Lewis warned readers about the threat of an American brand of fascism. It would be neither an outgrowth of American “nativist” sentiment, nor a purely foreign import of European fascism, but rather a combination of the two that would spell the downfall of American democracy.1 While fascism pervaded Europe from the 1920s through the 1940s, hundreds of right-wing extremist groups operated in the United States, primarily in Midwestern states like Michigan. Was the simultaneous occurrence of these two phenomena purely coincidental? How did American right-wing extremists conceptualize themselves in relation to a global fascist ideology? In what ways did European fascist regimes support and view right-wing activities in the United States? How can the interwar apogee of nativism—defined as hostility to immigration—be explained? This essay argues that a distinct brand of fascism developed in the United States from the 1920s to the 1940s by means of a transnational ideological network embracing native-born Americans, immigrants from 1 Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1935). 30 The Michigan Historical Review European fascist countries, and officials of European fascist regimes. The network was based on the transnational movement of ideas, people, and resources. An analysis of this exchange reveals how right-wing extremists on both sides of the Atlantic combined traditional American nativism with European fascism, creating a hybrid ideology to propagate to the American public.2 In a time of mass unemployment and the apparent inefficiency of democracy, this American brand of fascism resonated with many people. Michigan was fertile ground for American fascists because of the state’s diverse immigrant population, advanced industrial economy, and active left-wing movements. Fascism did not operate in a national vacuum; instead, it was a global ideology that took different forms in the various countries where it existed. An analysis of the interaction between American right-wing extremism and European fascism could easily comprise the whole of twentieth-century history in both North and South America. However, some geographical and temporal limits are required. Here the geographical scope is confined to Michigan and Germany. Michigan was a hotbed of American fascist sentiment, hosting dozens of nationallyknown , extreme right-wing individuals and organizations. Together, these served as a representative sample of each “type” of American fascist; including industrialists (Henry Ford), anti-communist crusading clergymen (Father Coughlin and Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith), militarized secret societies (Black Legion), and immigrant veterans’ and fascist groups (Steel Helmet, Friends of New Germany, and German American Bund).3 While connections with Italian fascism were present, Nazi Germany was the ideal fascist type, as supported by the conclusions of leading scholars of fascism like Stanley G. Payne and Robert O. Paxton, 2 Historians of American right-wing extremism have attached the term “hybrid” to individual groups operating during the 1930s, particularly the Black Legion, but never to describe the transnational movement as a whole. See Peter H. Amann, “Vigilante Fascism: The Black Legion as an American Hybrid,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no. 3 (July 1983): 490-524 and David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 247-248. 3 For...

Symbolic capital, informal labor, and postindustrial markets: the dynamics of street vending during the 2014 world cup in São Paulo

In contrast to industrial markets based on mass-production of material goods, postindustrial markets hinge on images, experiences, and emotions produced and exchanged on screens and in real life. Because postindustrial markets tend to be highly concentrated and technology-driven, they pose a threat to small businesses and low-skill workers in both advanced industrial economies and the Global South, where a large share of the population makes a living in the informal economy. Using the 2014 World Cup as a case of postindustrial economic activity hinged on spectacle, emotional experience, and intellectual property, I analyze the income-making strategies used by street vendors in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I show that organizers’ control of fan markets was limited by local conceptions of ownership over national symbols as well as informal workers’ flexible relation to legal norms and enforcement-dodging practices. Circumventing market barriers required risky and sophisticated strategies, however, which were more readily available to the more marginal section of the street vending population.

Regulating white-collar crime in Ireland: an analysis using the lens of governmentality

A new way of governing corporate wrongdoing has emerged to address Ireland’s changed social, political and economic context. Traditional methods of laying blame, forged in the agrarian Irish State, are no longer capable of dealing with the contemporary challenges of an advanced industrial economy which is more willing to recognise the risks posed by increased corporate activity. The conventional crime monopoly became fragmented as specialist regulatory enforcement agencies were established to enforce the law. Moreover, contemporary enforcement became much more sophisticated, moving away from the “command and control” model to a “responsive” model of enforcement. Also, paradoxically, this model is explicitly cooperative and employs sanctions as a last resort but, also can actually be more instrumental and punitive in addressing corporate wrongdoing. More recently, however, since the financial crisis, the architecture seems to have shifted again. Corporate and financial crimes become politicised and new laws were passed to make it easier to hold wrongdoers to account. In addition to resolving problems in enforcing the law, they also had ostentatiously political purposes. They reflect the political desire to “tool up” executive power and “act out” for public approval, to “govern through” white-collar crime.

Author's Response: Assessing China's Potential Growth

Author's Response:Assessing China's Potential Growth Nicholas R. Lardy (bio) The commentators on The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China? for the most part agree with the first of the two key themes of the book: that the increased role of the state in resource allocation in recent years has been an important contributor to China's slowing economic growth. They mostly disagree with the second key theme: that since China's level of GDP per capita is only about one-quarter of the level of advanced industrial economies, it potentially has substantial room for convergence toward higher levels of development that might be captured by a return to the more market-oriented economic policies of the past. In this response, I will focus on addressing some of their concerns around both of these themes. The State Contribution to China's Slowing Growth Loren Brandt focuses in his review on the state's role in the economy. He acknowledges that productivity growth in the state sector has slowed, but he argues that the most important reason for China's slowing economic growth is the declining productivity of private firms. In support of this, he points to research showing how productivity growth in industry slowed after 2005 and eventually turned negative. Industry, he contends, is largely private, so the productivity growth of private firms must have fallen. There are two problems with this approach. First, in 2005, one-third of value added in industry was contributed by state firms.1 The decline in return on assets of state firms by two-thirds after 2007 may explain most of the downturn in industrial productivity that Brandt reports. Second, Brandt's approach ignores China's service sector, which as early as 2005 was as important as industry in terms of its contribution to output and is much more heavily dominated by state firms than industry. But the return on assets of state service companies is lower than for state industrial firms and also fell substantially after 2007. [End Page 174] Brandt questions the use of return on assets, which looks at profits relative to assets, as a proxy for productivity—a measure of value added in constant prices relative to an appropriately weighted basket of assets and labor. For two reasons, however, the sharp decline in the return on assets of state industrial firms relative to private industrial firms is a good proxy for underlying trends in the productivity in firms of the two types of ownership. First, to claim that the productivity of state firms did not fall relative to private firms after 2007, one would have to show that there was some combination of accelerated employment growth relative to assets in private industry and an unusual slowdown in employment growth relative to assets in state industrial firms. Second, Brandt also points out that changes in market power can influence profitability and thus the return on assets, making the latter an unreliable guide to underlying productivity. But the consolidation of large state firms under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, established in 2003, likely gives state companies more influence on pricing relative to the influence of private firms. This suggests that the data in the book showing a sharp decline in the return on assets of state companies understates the pace of deterioration in their underlying economic performance. The Potential for Convergence China faces three potential headwinds that were absent or possibly less significant in the other East Asian economies that converged toward advanced-economy levels of per capita output—demographics, the environment, and corruption. One or more of these is mentioned by each of the reviewers. Kenneth Pomeranz refers to the demographic issue of China's workforce. China's ratio of the working-age population to the non-working-age population began to decline in 2010, a trend that will continue for at least two more decades. Other things being equal, this is certainly adverse for China's potential growth. But other things need not be equal. Most importantly, as I point out in the book, China has a very low labor force participation rate among older age cohorts. This is a function...

Diminished Expectations

In Latin America, the relationship between income and support for redistribution is weak and variable despite the region's extreme income inequality. This article shows that this condition is rooted in the truncated structure of many Latin American welfare states. Heavy spending on contributory social insurance for formal-sector workers, flat or regressive subsidies, and informal access barriers mean that social spending does far less for the poor in Latin America than it does in advanced industrial economies. Using public opinion data from across Latin America and original survey data from Colombia, the author demonstrates that income is less predictive of attitudes in the countries and social policy areas in which the poor gain less from social expenditures. Social policy exclusion leads the poor to doubt that they will benefit from redistribution, thereby dampening their support for it. The article reverses an assumption in political economy models that welfare exclusion unleashes demands for greater redistribution. Instead, truncation reinforces skepticism about social policy helping the poor. Welfare state reforms to promote social inclusion are essential to strengthen redistributive coalitions.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF REAL ESTATE: DECISION SUPPORT MODEL AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE PERIOD OF CRISIS

The aim of this paper is to propose a decision support model for real estate development and recommendations that could help Lithuania during economic crises. Research, theoretical and practical tasks of sustainable real estate development process were revised, particular examples presented. Different models and methods for analysis of real estate development discussed. Decision support model, encompassing extensive analysis of the global trends, best crisis management practices, assessment of the factual situation and provision of recommendations for different stakeholders under conditions of market instability presented. According to proposed model, the research was performed by studying the expertise of advanced industrial economies and by adapting such to Lithuania while taking into consideration its specific history, development level, needs and traditions. Basing on these findings, accumulated know-how, the results of previous scientific studies and practical insights of the other authors, specific recommendations to avoid crisis and minimize its consequences in macro-, meso- and micro- levels were provided. Recommendations illustrate holistic point of view and assumption that real estate development consists of creativity, research and art.

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP AND THE PARADOX OF AFRICAN ECONOMIC UNDERDEVELOPMENT 1960 – 2010: A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF NIGERIA AS A CASE STUDY

At her Independence in 1960, Nigeria held out prospects of being one of the fastest economies of the world and attainment of industrial status within a generation. This was because she seemingly had all that was needed to attain the objective: a buoyant agriculture, an assertive entrepreneurial class, a bourgeoning middle class, an adequate financial base and a friendly external financial environment. So bright were her prospects that Malaysia came and got oil palm seedlings from her Institute of Oil Palm Research (NIFOR). Yet over fifty years on, while her contemporaries have joined the league of advanced industrial economies, Nigeria is still trapped in the back waters of the underdeveloped world, much to the embarrassment of her erstwhile contemporaries and chagrin of her citizens. This paper argues that the cause of this tragic experience is leadership failure. Whose multiplier effects are bribery, corruption, treasury looting and the various shades of political instability? The aggregate effects of all these is a prostrate Nigerian state groaning under the weight of its political misfortune.

A study on material requirement project implementation in Thai automotive organizations

ln response to ever-increasing regional and global competition, automotive manufacturing companies in Thailand are looking to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations through the adoption of sophisticated manufacturing planning and control systems in general, and Material Requirements Planning (MRP) systems in particular. Despite its growing popularity, an in-depth review of the academic literature has revealed no systematic studies of how, and how successfully, Thai automotive manufacturers have managed to implement MRP in practice. Indeed, there appears to be general dearth of studies of this kind, at least as far as newly-industrialising countries are concerned. This study begins this paper by presenting a brief literature review on MRP implementation, first in advanced industrial economies and then – as far as the evidence allows – in newly-industrialising countries. The major part of the paper concerns our empirical investigation of the way in which MRP systems are being implemented in Thai automotive manufacturing companies. The investigation is based on a major questionnaire survey of about 120 companies, of which about 67 companies are currently using some kind of MRP system. In addition to more general questions on the nature of the companies concerned and the production processes used, the survey posed specific questions on the (actual or expected) costs and benefits to be obtained from MRP, as well as the implementation process used. The findings from the survey suggest that MRP implementation in Thai automotive companies is relatively similar to implementation in manufacturing companies in the newly industrialised countries; however, there are some dissimilarities to MRP implementation in Western countries.

Who are the Regulators of Occupational Safety and Health Standards in Advanced Industrial Economies?

This paper provides an insight for how occupational safety and health (OSH) standards are regulated by the State, and social partners, in five advanced market economies. It argues that historically, within the field of OSH regulation, the role of the State as regulator of OSH standards changes but yet key in regulation. Depending on which type of market economy in focus, the social partners or just the employer actively partake in various ways as co-regulators of OSH standards. With a historical and comparative approach, regulatory patterns of coordinated market economies (CMEs) and a liberalised market economy (LME) are analysed, to show that the former is corporatist and allows more active participation of the social partners in regulation, while the latter is pluralist, hence in the later system, employers play much more dominant role than employees as co-regulators. In conclusion it is argued that i) the role of the State in CMEs is merely complementary to the fulfilment of OSH goals, but the role of the State in the LME is quite central to the realisation of envisaged OSH goals; and ii) employees in the CMEs of Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden, due to their more powerful roles as co-regulators, tend to enjoy higher OSH protection standards than employees in the LME system of the US.

What Can Art Do about Pipeline Politics?

This text explores the consequences of the massive flow of Canadian heavy crude oil from the Alberta Tar Sands to the Chicago metropolitan area. The boom in North American oil extraction has literally strained petroleum infrastructure to its bursting point. How do urban populations react to the intensifying pressure of “pipeline politics” on their daily lives? In the Chicago case, at least some of them have responded with grassroots mobilization, cultural engagement, and the timid beginnings of institutional transformation. The interplay between community activists threatened by a refinery by-product (petroleum coke, or petcoke) and experimental artists seeking to engage both immediate environmental justice issues and long-term problems of climate change offers insights into the complex social formations that may someday shift the present suicidal course of advanced industrial economies, if voluntary blindness, managed oblivion, and pervasive institutional paralysis can be overcome through the exercise of what I call a “politics of perception.”

The State, Civil Society, and the Canadian Agricultural Biotechnology Industry

There are complex ways in which agricultural production, biotechnology, and the interventions by the state and civil society are interconnected. Advanced capitalism is characterized by a general (albeit temporally and spatially uneven) tendency towards technological change in its various forms. In contemporary times, biotechnology is one such form. As with all forms of technology, its emergence is a contradictory process. As an industrial phenomenon, biotechnology may be seen as an opportunity for individual segments of the capitalist class for accumulation of exchange value as well as a capitalist growth strategy at the sectoral level. Its emergence is indicative of an instantiated counter-struggle on the part of specific capitals against impinging price competition in the agricultural industry and, at a macro-scale, of the intensifying decline in the rate of profit in advanced industrial economies. The emergence and utilization of biotechnology both as a means of production and as a means of increasing (monopolistic) profit is part of a wider process of market-oriented reforms in the agrarian sector occurring at national and international scales. However, interventions on the part of the state which generally tends to play an enabling role, and of civil society whose aim is to at least partly resist the expansion of the market for biotechnology, have not ceased, so the outcomes of market-based restructuring in general and the use and consequences of biotechnology in particular are anything but automatic. The argument is illustrated with empirical evidence from the development, adoption, and production of agricultural biotechnology in Canada.