Structuralist School Research Articles

Technological sovereignty: Evolution of theory

The evolution of the theory of technological sovereignty is considered. It has been established that some of the first works devoted to this topic were published by M. Merkhov, who identified three basic conditions affecting the technological dependence of states. It was revealed that in the mid-70s of the last century, a theory of dependence was formed, including two directions: the structuralist school and the Marxist movement. Representatives of this theory called the restraining influence of highly developed states as a source of technological dependence. In addition, modern EU program documents aimed at ensuring technological sovereignty are reviewed.

The Price (and Costs) of Macroeconomic Stability in Peru: Some Lessons on the Implications of FDI‐driven Growth

ABSTRACTIn the period 2000–2019, Peru enjoyed sustained GDP growth and a long period of macroeconomic stability; as a result, poverty was reduced markedly in comparison to the 1980s and early 1990s, when the country faced severe recessions and hyperinflation. This positive economic performance coincided with the implementation of a mainstream macroeconomic framework which, alongside favourable external conditions, allowed for continuous external financing of current account deficits, mainly through foreign direct investment (FDI). Against the background of current debates regarding the resurgence of debt crises and the advocacy of FDI as a way to avoid such crises, this article uses balance of payments and international investment position statistics to assess whether Peru's acquired macroeconomic stability can be deemed sustainable. Drawing on the contributions of the Latin American structuralist school and more recent analyses that have raised concerns, the article shows that Peru's external position has taken on a Ponzi profile, casting doubt on the idea that FDI is a superior way of external financing compared to external debt. It concludes with a discussion of the social and environmental implications of Peru's widely praised macroeconomic framework, highlighting the limits that peripheral economies face when their growth relies excessively on external financing.

Inflation Everywhere is a Monetary Phenomenon: An Introductory Note

Ever since the 1970s, when inflation became a virtually global phenomenon, controlling inflation has become a high priority for policy-makers. Given the well-known costs of inflation, policy now in all countries is inflation-averse. Perhaps one of the more important adverse consequences of inflation may be that high and persistent inflation is a regressive tax1 which adversely impacts the poor.2 The poor are extremely limited in their options to protect themselves against inflation; they are normally asset-poor, while most of their saving is in the form of cash. Inflation erodes cash savings and protects the rich who hold real assets.3 It is not surprising that inflation may be politically costly for the government. Studies have also found that high and volatile inflation has been detrimental to growth and financial sector development. Resource allocation is inhibited as inflation obscures relative price changes and thus inhibits optimal resource allocation. For policy to control inflation, it is important to understand the factors that drive inflation. Unquestionably, empirical evidence points to “inflation being always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” [Friedman (1963)]. However, there still remains some debate on whether supply-side factors could cause inflation without monetary accommodation.4 The structuralist school of thought holds that supply constraints that drive up prices of specific goods can have wider repercussions on the overall price level. Similarly, there are a number of possible sources of rising costs such as wages, profits, imported inflation-exchange rate, commodity prices, external shocks, exhaustion of natural resources, and taxes. For example, in Pakistan, increases in the wheat support price have frequently been blamed for increasing inflation.5 ........

Centre–Periphery in the EU-20: a classification based on factor analysis and cluster analysis

Abstract One of the main targets of the European Union (EU) is the achievement of economic convergence among its member states. However, economic and social differences have not been diminishing. Over the past decade, asymmetries have become more obvious and use of the expression ‘European periphery’ has increased significantly. The ambiguity around this term has led to the development of a classification based on the Latin American Structuralist School and Dependency Theory, adapting these approaches to the European economies at present. Through factor analysis, we obtain a rigorous and consistent classification of a representative group of European countries, the EU-20, which allows us to identify the most relevant asymmetries between two clusters: the centre and the periphery. Moreover, analysis over time, examining data from 1995 to 2014, enables us to detect important changes in these classifications as well as the composition of the two clusters.

Distribution and Productivity Growth: An Empirical Exercise Applied to Selected Latin American Countries

ABSTRACT The paper investigates whether productivity growth is affected by the rate of growth of income and by that of employment for a representative sample of Latin American countries from the 1980s to the early 2010s. Having post-Kaleckian models as background, the paper empirically assesses the relationship between these variables, which are believed to be behind the underdeveloped trap, low productivity growth, high income concentration and low-income growth. The results show a positive impact of the rate of growth of income over productivity, the so called Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficient. However, the vast majority of the sample, the effect of employment growth on productivity growth was not significant. The latter results are consistent to the interpretation offered by the Latin American Structuralist School, who has long argued that one of the hallmarks of underdetermine is uneven spread of the productivity gains though the economy. This is the framework used to interpret the results.

Rural Labor Mobility in the Process of Industrialization under Triple Dimensions

Rural-to-urban labor migration in developing economies, if beyond employment absorption capacity, is both a symptom of underdevelopment and the factor that exacerbates underdevelopment. Although various theories in development economics, in particular, the dual economy, together with numerous migration literature, bore intention to explore a balanced development approach in rural labor mobility, content-based studies are often overwhelmed, whereas the context/circumstance-based angle (like industrialization) in the research of labor mobility is always neglected. This paper reviews, under an ancient Chinese epistemological methodology that consists of time, space, and people, labor mobnility theories. It combines the old institutionalist and new structuralist schools of thought, searching a dynamic theoretical framework to deconstruct the overarching labor mobility in the process of industrialization.

Raúl Prebisch y el pensamiento estructuralista latinoamericano

El presente trabajo aborda el pensamiento de Prebisch y de la escuela estructuralista latinoamericana. Se destaca que mucho de dicho pensamiento, aunque similar a la visión de Keynes para solventar crisis y mantener el nivel de actividad económica, se distingue porque considera una de las restricciones más importantes que una economía en desarrollo por lo general enfrenta: la restricción externa. Es en este sentido que el trabajo intenta rescatar los aportes de dicho pensamiento y señalar su vigencia en la persecución de metas de crecimiento y desarrollo económico.

“Again, as before, alone…” On the signs of self-intertextuality in the late works of P.I. Tchaikovsky

The article considers the problem of textual borrowings from his own compositions as a way of author’s self-understanding and self-interpreting, in the style formation of the latest period of Tchaikovsky’s work (1890-1893). The research is based on the last vocal cycle of the composer - Six Romances, op. 73 (1893). The problem field of the research also covers a range of compositions related to the last four years of the composer’s life: “The Queen of Spades” opera, Sixth Symphony, “The Nutcracker” ballet, and an opera “Iolanta”. Special attention is given to the integral stylistic substantiation of such specific techniques of “self-hermeneutics” as anagrammatizing, self-citing, tonal reminiscences, and composition-drama correlations. The author considers the declared problem in the intertextual context, classifying it as “self-intertextuality”, and uses the intertext methodology of the French structuralist school (F. Saussure, Ju. Kristeva), and the Russian researchers of the phenomenon of self-intertextuality (V. Toporov, T. Fateeva). An additional methodological direction is a mythopoetic substantiation of anagrammatizing (the detection of an author’s monogram), for which the author uses the instruments of onomastic concepts of myth (A. Losev, Yu. Lotman). As a result of such an integrative (intertextual and mythopoetic) approach, very “unexpected” (at least at first sight) manifestations of self-intertextuality (the presence of a monogram “SNA”, citations from various compositions, non-conventional tone plan and “anti-final” cyclic composition in the music cycle) are comprehensively semantically substantiated by the author’s myth about “Name acquisition”. Thus, the discovered methodological strategy can be used for studying particular opuses and corpus-based text forms.   

Class and ambition in the status attainment process: A Spanish replication.

There are two principal theoretical schools that seek to explain status outcomes in early adulthood: those focusing on intergenerational transmission of class privilege and those emphasizing individual characteristics, particularly ambition. The first may be called the structuralist school and the second the psycho-social school, following the Wisconsin Model of Status Attainment. A second structuralist perspective, Segmented Assimilation, highlights transmission of socio-economic status across immigrant generations, but emphasizes the positive role of co-ethnic resources for upward mobility and preventing downward assimilation. We examine these alternative predictions using a large longitudinal sample of youths in Spain that includes both children of native parentage and children of immigrants. Spain possesses characteristics that make it uniquely suitable to examine these predictions. Results show that both family socio-economic status and ambition, measured by adolescent educational aspirations and expectations, play important roles in educational and occupational attainment, but the influence of family status persists even after controlling for ambition. The influence of co-ethnic nationalities disappears after these controls, except among Chinese and Filipino youths, a result consistent with segmented assimilation. Predictive models of status attainment yield identical results for children of immigrants and children of natives, indicating that in Spain, they have become part of a common youth universe. Theoretical and practical implications of the analysis are discussed.

A New Historiography of the Origins of the Cold War

The Cold War that occurred between 1945 and 1991 was both an international political and historical event. As a political event, the Cold War laid bare the fissures, animosities, mistrusts, misconceptions and the high-stake brinksmanship that has been part of the international political system since the birth of the modern nation-state in 1648. As a historical event, the Cold War and its end marked an important epoch in human social, economic and political development. The beginning of the Cold War marked the introduction of a new form of social and political experiment in human relations with the international arena as its laboratory. Its end signaled the end of a potent social and political force that is still shaping the course of political relationship among states in the 21st century. The historiography of the Cold War has been shrouded in controversy. Different factors have been given for the origins of the conflict. This work is a historical and structural analysis of the historiography of the Cold War. The work analyzes the competing views of the historiography of the Cold War and create an all-encompassing and holistic historiography called the Structuralist School.

A Premature Postmortem on the Chicago School of Antitrust

The Chicago School of antitrust is often thought to have killed off antitrust enforcement beginning in the late 1970s. In fact, although Chicago school prescriptions were significantly more laissez-faire than the structuralist school Chicago replaced, antitrust enforcement did not die under Chicago's influence. Rather, by directing antitrust to focus on technical economic analysis, Chicago contributed to the creation of a large and entrenched class of antitrust professionals—economists and lawyers—with a vested interest in preserving antitrust as a legal and regulatory enterprise. Today, Chicago School's consumer welfare standard and specific enforcement prescriptions are coming increasingly under political pressure and may be replaced or supplemented in the near term. But Chicago's redirection of antitrust toward technical economic analysis and technocratic reasoning seems likely to remain a durable legacy.

Prebisch, el Estado y la “debilidad del imprescindible”

<p>Partiendo de reconocer la centralidad del Estado en la propuesta de Raúl Prebisch, pero señalando, al mismo tiempo, los límites que ésta contenía para problematizar<br />la condición periférica de los Estados latinoamericanos, se analizan los cambios manifestados en relación con el rol del Estado para el desarrollo en la producción temprana del autor en la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (Cepal). Con el objeto de explicar aquellos cambios y de reconocer los fundamentos de esa condición periférica, se introducen elementos teórico-analíticos que reconocen las dinámicas conflictuales que históricamente actuaron sobre –y se retroalimentaban en– los Estados latinoamericanos, conformando determinadas estructuras y formas de implicación que les impidieron dirigir una estrategia de industrialización tal como lo planteó el estructuralismo en general, y Prebisch en particular.</p>

Income distribution and the balance of payments: a formal reconstruction of some Argentinian structuralist contributions Part I: Technical dependency

In this two-part paper, we explore the interaction between income distribution and the balance of payments, by assessing the contributions of three Argentinian exponents of the Latin American Structuralist School: Oscar Braun, Marcelo Diamand and Adolfo Canitrot. With this aim, we introduce a two-sector model inspired by the classical tradition. Part I of the article examines the implications for prices and quantities of the phenomenon of ‘technical dependency’. That is, the inelastic demand for imported inputs observed in peripheral economies, a true constraint to growth during the Bretton Woods era. We leave until Part II of the paper the assessment of the implications of ‘financial dependency’, namely the influence exerted on the profit rate of peripheral economies by the international profit rate.

Estructuralismo y desarrollo económico regional: contabilidad social en Cartagena de Indias

La Escuela Estructuralista tuvo importantes implicaciones en el ámbito de las política públicas orientadas a promover estrategias de desarrollo económico hasta la década de 1970, con particular presencia en América Latina. Una de sus principales características es el estudio de las estructuras económicas y de las instituciones de la economía. Para tal fin, las Matrices de Contabilidad Social se emplean como metodología esencial previa a la construcción de modelos económicos siguiendo los trabajos desarrollados por Defourny y Thorbecke (1984), Stone (1985), Adelman,Taylor y Vogel (1987), y Round (2003). Bajo esta metodología, los resultados para el caso de la ciudad de Cartagena de Indias, indican la importante influencia del sector Gobierno en el dinamismo de la economía local.

Bakhtinʼs Influence on Croatian Literary Theory and Criticism

The School of Stylistics in Zagreb and the School of Literary Studies in Zagreb had a dominant role in the shaping of literary studies in Croatia. From its beginnings in the late 1950ʼs, it can be only investigated in correlation with the other Yugoslav centres of literary studies, mainly with the literary researches and translations carried out at the University of Belgrade. The School of Literary Studies in Zagreb was influenced by the Structuralist schools and Russian Formalism. In the research focusing on the history of the novel (Viktor Žmegac, Milivoj Solar and others), the interest was raised in Bakhtinʼs theoretical works (both the Russian editions and their translations). Especially the notions of carnivalization, chronotope and the concept of the novel’s polyphony are discussed in works on the history of the novel. The influence of the latest Russian and international readings of Bakhtin’s work can be seen in Croatian literary studies in the researches and editions by Vladimir Biti and his co-workers, from the beginning of the 1990’s onwards.

Ordnung und Abweichung. Jurij M. Lotmans Grenzüberschreitungstheorie aus modallogischer Perspektive

AbstractIn the 1970s and 1980s, literary theorists, particularly in the German-speaking world, showed increasing interest in appropriating the distinctive methodologies of both the positivist social sciences and the natural sciences. Alongside empirical (e. g. Groeben 1982) and analytical approaches to literature (e. g. Fink/Schmidt 1984), the structuralist school shaped by Lotman’s narrative theory attempted a scientific turn in literary theory (cf. Köppe/Winko 2010), aiming for an exact science, or at least one more exact than the traditional ›art of interpretation‹ admitted by Staiger (1955). We trace the structuralist approach, or more precisely, the central aspect of structuralist narratology, the theory of boundary-crossing, first in Lotman (1979), and then criticise Renner’s remodelling based on formal logic (1983), and finally remodel boundary-crossing theory by means of modal logic. By doing this, we hope to demonstrate the potential of a methodologically self-aware, terminologically precise text analysis that is therefore capable of intersubjectivity.At the beginning of the 1970s, the Estonian literary scholar and cultural semiotician Jurij M. Lotman took as his starting point the strong human affinity for the replication of abstract systems (The most influential formulation of Lotman’s boundary-crossing theory – at least in the German speaking world – was that of Karl N. Renner in the early 1980s. Renner understood events to be disruptions of order, and disruptions of order in turn as logical contradictions. In addition to the formal logic representation of disruptions of order, Lotman and Renner differ in that Renner presupposes that the ›eventful situation‹ arisesThe consequences of the principle of non-contradiction do not occur to Renner. While Renner is, in fact, dissatisfied with his model, for him the problem lies in a different circumstance: his ordering statements lack the characteristics of postulates. It can be deduced from his writings that he wishes his ordering statements to be understood as normative statements. However, non-modal sentences, and these are precisely what Renner uses, do not describe, even in the case of subjunctions/implications, what should be, but merely whatThis problem, addressed but not explored by Renner, can be solved with the help of normative reasoning/deontic modal logic. Instead of an operator of necessity, here an operator of obligation is used. Using this operator, we can produce contradiction-free statements about how something should be, which can be placed in relation to selective statements about how things are. Our aim, however, is not exclusively or primarily to criticise Renner, but rather to develop the particular benefits which these consideration of formal logic bring to cross-boundary theory – namely the connection between the quality of the ordering statements, and the durative and non-durative aspect of events.We demonstrate this using Pierre Boulles’ 1963 novel

Mantegna the Grammarian

A number of art historians in recent decades have found in Mantegna's paintings a favourable ground for the demonstration of semiotic theories descended from structuralist schools of thought. While arguably removing the art of Mantegna from its historical and social context, such readings, it is argued, raised the possibility of an original and productive approach still to be developed, notably by investigating the skewed rapport between the sign and its effects, and the incongruence between the transparency of the representation and the necessary opacity of an image.

Caught in the Middle: Philosophy of Science between the Historical Turn and Formal Philosophy as Illustrated by the Program of “Kuhn Sneedified”

This article is concerned with the development of philosophy of science in the 1970s. The explanatory framework is the picture of two fundamental split-offs: the controversial establishment of history and sociology of science and of formal philosophy of science as independent disciplines, against the background of more traditional “conceptual” varieties of philosophy of science. I illustrate these developments, which finally led to somewhat “purified” versions of the respective accounts, by examining a case study, namely, that of the structuralist school, which emerged in the 1970s as an attempt to reconcile historical and formal approaches in philosophy of science. I try to explain the failure of this initial program of “Kuhn Sneedified” and its transition to a more purified formalist version, on the basis of the fact that the former attempt was caught somewhere amid the purism of conceptual, historical, and formal accounts of philosophy of science.

Endogenous Money: A Note on Some Post-Keynesian Controversies

Keynes's theory of liquidity preference sought to illuminate the essential properties of money under the conditions of uncertainty that often lead to involuntary unemployment. Subsequent Post-Keynesian literature built upon this concept to show that a deregulated financial system could induce phases of endemic financial instability and crises. Keynes's finance motive provides an important starting point in Post-Keynesian theories of endogenous money. This article examines the controversies between two major contending analytical approaches, the Horizontalist and Structuralist schools.

History, a Literary Artifact? The Traveling Concept of Narrative in/on Historiographic Discourse

History, a Literary Artifact? The Traveling Concept of Narrative in/on Historiographic Discourse