Distribution Of Social Wealth Research Articles

The socioeconomic correlates of global complication prevalence in type 1 diabetes (T1D): A multinational comparison

We sought to determine the extent to which the geographic variation in the complications of type 1 diabetes (T1D) may reflect the socioeconomic status (SES) conditions and health care performance (HCP) of countries around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) DiaMond complications study (DiaComp) is a multinational, cross-sectional study of complications in T1D. Information on complications was identified for 892 subjects from 14 clinical centers in 12 countries. All participants were diagnosed with diabetes in childhood (<15 years of age) and had disease duration of 5–24 years. Complications were assessed by self-report, and by clinical exam, with microalbuminuria identified by Micral II dipstick, neuropathy by the Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument exam and hypertension using the HDFP protocol. These data were linked to center-specific information on the local social and economic landscape, health care access and diabetes management practices and health care costs. Country-specific indicators of social and economic development were also linked to the complications data. Both diabetes complications and economic and health care factors vary widely across the DiaComp centers. Health system performance, as measured by disability adjusted life expectancy (DALE), gross national investment (GNI) per capita and purchasing power all showed strong consistent correlations with complications, and significant independent associations with complication prevalence after controlling for HbA1c and hypertension. In conclusion, health system performance, social distribution of wealth and purchasing power may play important roles in explaining the geographic variation of diabetes complications.

The Politics of Market Liberalization: A Comparative Study of the South Korean and Philippine Telecommunications Service Industries

Introduction A large number of studies have examined the East Asian developmental model, (1) in which the state is said to maintain its autonomy and strength, or capacity to implement effective economic policies. This thesis has, however, been challenged by other competing schools of thought. Some scholars have found that changes in the domestic power structure contradict the thesis. (2) The state's monopoly in economic policy-making in many developing countries has been eroded in the course of economic development. The conception of the state as the engine of growth has been gradually fading away. The business sector has been finding its own way of doing business outside state protection and support. The wave of democratization stimulated the suppressed demands of populations in developing countries. (3) Economic development has not distributed benefits equally to people at large. The labour sector, whose contribution to development was immense, received a disproportionately lesser share of the benefits. The strategic coalition (4) between the state and the business sector has monopolized the fruits of economic development, and has largely ignored the distribution of social wealth. Ideological and moral support from domestic and international society has, however, enabled the labour sector to become one of the influential political players in state policy formulation. Furthermore, the market guided by the state has frequently distorted the price system, favouring selected beneficiaries from the business sector at the expense of consumers. However, growing average educational levels have raised the social consciousness of the general population. People are no longer ignorant and tolerant of the trampling of their rights. They have learned how to organize themselves, such as in consumer associations, and to impose group pressure on entities/institutions that affect their lives. Under the pressures of democratization, state autonomy in economic policy-making has been questioned in many developing as well as newly developed countries. (5) Without proper consultation and consensus from the private sector, policy formulation and implementation have become increasingly difficult. On the other hand, the strong international trend towards neo-liberalism has affected a restructuring of the global economic landscape. The strong advocates of this ideology, particularly the United States, have pressured other states to adjust themselves to the new trends by adopting this ideology in their domestic and foreign policy frameworks. Many countries, whose economic backbones are mainly dependent upon the international market, have little choice but to follow the global trend. As Stephan Haggard has put it, (6) the appropriate economic function of government has become linked to the prevalence of liberal economic ideas in the international system. Thus, governments have tended to retrench interventio nist economic policies and allow market forces to have greater economic sovereignty. Under such domestic and international pressures, the state in some developing countries has been pressured to open up its monopolized sectors of industry and privatize government-owned enterprises. This trend may be interpreted as either one step forward towards economic development or as a means of getting out of an economic deadlock. (7) Whatever the interpretation, many developing countries face the irresistible long-term trend of market liberalization. Liberalization refers to the removal of entry barriers to a previously monopoly market situation. However, liberalization is only a necessary condition for market competition since non-structural barriers, such as the lack of sufficient market size and the hostility of incumbent market players, discourage potential entrants. It is one reason why the role of the state is a critical factor in bringing out the meaningful results of market liberalization. …

Power laws of wealth, market order volumes and market returns

Using the Generalized Lotka Volterra model adapted to deal with mutiagent systems we can investigate economic systems from a general viewpoint and obtain generic features common to most economies. Assuming only weak generic assumptions on capital dynamics, we are able to obtain very specific predictions for the distribution of social wealth. First, we show that in a ‘fair’ market, the wealth distribution among individual investors fulfills a power law. We then argue that ‘fair play’ for capital and minimal socio-biological needs of the humans traps the economy within a power law wealth distribution with a particular Pareto exponent α∼ 3 2 . In particular, we relate it to the average number of individuals L depending on the average wealth: α∼ L/( L−1). Then we connect it to certain power exponents characterizing the stock markets. We find that the distribution of volumes of the individual (buy and sell) orders follows a power law with similar exponent β∼α∼ 3 2 . Consequently, in a market where trades take place by matching pairs of such sell and buy orders, the corresponding exponent for the market returns is expected to be of order γ∼2 α∼3. These results are consistent with recent experimental measurements of these power law exponents (S. Maslov, M. Mills, Physica A 299 (2001) 234 for β; P. Gopikrishnan et al., Phys. Rev. E 60 (1999) 5305 for γ).

The “real” cultural significance of accounts

Typically, accounting is portrayed as a passive information service, dedicated to faithfully reporting on economic reality. This paper, in contrast, investigates the re-presentional aspects of accounting, and the part it plays as a symbolic, cultural and hegemonic force, in struggles over the distribution of social income. The issues are examined empirically through the publishing patterns of the Journal of Accountancy, Accounting Review, and Fortune magazine between 1960 and 1973. Chronicling the changes in accounting literature is not our primary concern however. Rather, this work explores the relationships between accounting discourses and the conditions of social conflict in which these discourses are embedded. The evidence suggests that: different accounting journals specialize in different rhetorical functions; that these functions are discharged in harmony with other media and cultural forces (data on Fortune's discursive practices is provided for comparison); and that, over time, the discursive roles of accounting journals change with the evolving hegemonic climate. This paper contends that viewing accounting literature as disinterested inquiry or rigorous scholarship understates the social origins of research. Instead, we suggest that discursive accounting practices are more productively regarded as ideological weapons for participating in conflicts over the distribution of social wealth.

Exploitation

According to Marx one of the primary evils of capitalism (and any other class society) is that it is exploitative-and necessarily so. Socialist and communist societies will (necessarily) not be exploitative and this is one of the reasons why they will in some sense be better. To understand such claims we have to determine exactly what Marx means by “exploitation” and what it is about exploitation that Marx finds to be bad. Neither of these questions is as simple as it might seem.A common misunderstanding of Marx is this: exploitation consists simply in an unequal distribution of social wealth. Workers are exploited because they get so much less of the pie than do capitalists. Another interpretation of Marx's concept is that exploitation consists in the fact that workers to not get the whole pie. They produce all value and, therefore, deserve to get it all back. I will show that both of these interpretations are inadequate or simply mistaken. An error common to both is an overemphasis on distribution.