Jamie Morgan

Paris COP 21: Power that Speaks the Truth?

Abstract In this paper, I set out some of the key aspects of the Paris COP 21 Climate Change Agreement. The Paris Agreement was initially reported as a major success. However, this was in so far as many thought any kind of agreement at all was unlikely, and because the Agreement includes Article 2: an aspiration to maintain average global temperature increases to significantly less than 2°C. I then ask the question: if the Paris Agreement is a success of sorts, has anything fundamental changed in order to translate the conditional success of achieving an agreement into an actual success that will realise the goals of the Agreement? I address this in terms of early assessment of trends and the Nationally Determined Contributions, how responsibility is positioned in the Agreement, and the political economy context, which has called forth the need for an agreement.

Brexit: Be Careful What You Wish For?

Abstract In this paper, I focus on the British future from Brexit. The institutional form this will take is not yet fixed. However, one can consider likely outcomes based on dominant economic frameworks. From this perspective, it seems unlikely that Brexit will address the actual grievances that resulted in Brexit. These transcend European Union membership.

Is Economics Responding to Critique? What do the UK 2015 QAA Subject Benchmarks Indicate?

Abstract The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education provides subject benchmarks which inform but do not determine the content of university and college academic programmes in the United Kingdom. These are revised every few years and have recently been completed in economics for the first time since the global financial crisis. Given the extensive criticism of mainstream economics since the crisis, one might anticipate the benchmark revisions to be extensive. However, this has not been the case. This article explores why this is so. The analysis may also be considered of broader significance because the conditions under which the review has occurred involve general processes that will be familiar, albeit with local variation, to heterodox economists elsewhere. In the conclusion, a more fundamental reconstruction of the benchmarks is provided. These will also be of interest as general orienting statements for a different kind of economics.

Aspiration problems for the Indian rural poor: Research on self-help groups and micro-finance:

Our paper explores how poor rural households in India are increasingly accumulating debt through micro-finance initiatives channelled through local self-help groups (SHGs). The aim of micro-finance and SHGs is to provide a cheap source of capital for investment in self-sustaining economic practices — typified by the Velugu programme. However, the reality of micro-finance has been more complicated. It has created a class- and caste-related debt-dependency and vulnerability whilst also channelling poor households, and women in particular, into subordinate areas of the economy, which ultimately serve to maintain fundamental inequalities in Indian society. The initiatives may, in addition, be viewed as aspects of broader processes of financialisation.

Corporation tax as a problem of MNC organisational circuits: The case for unitary taxation:

Research Highlights and Abstract Contextualises and clarifies the case for unitary taxation In so doing sets out the structural and institutional constraints of the current system of taxation for multinational corporations (separate entity status and the arms length principle) Explores the limits and potentials of current policy initiatives that are shaping the ongoing response to issues of taxation for multinational corporations (from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), within the UK and the EC) The tax practices of multinational corporations have become a matter of significant public and political concern. The underlying issues are rooted in the capacity of multinational corporations (MNCs) to construct organisational circuits that shift where sales, revenue and profit are reported. This capacity in turn becomes a focus because of the way MNCs are treated as a series of separate entities, subject to the arm’s length principle. This has become a classic example of a system whose current form and consequences were not foreseen when the original principles were set out. The continued existence of that system owes more to specific interests and inertia than it does to the absence of a viable alternative. Unitary taxation based on formula apportionment clearly resolves the underlying issues and unitary taxation may well ultimately emerge as a new generalised basis for corporate taxation. However, for it to do so, the problems of the current system and the advantages of the alternative need to be more clearly understood within academia, business and on a societal basis. This paper is a contribution to such an understanding.

Conceptual issues in institutional economics: clarifying the fluidity of rules

This paper addresses the issue of how rules are conceptualized by Hodgson in Old Institutional Economics (OIE). The argument is put forward that the concept of rules can be constructively clarified. Rather than provide a general form of single rules within a rule system, we argue for a taxonomic range of single rule forms. This approach has the additional advantage of providing a more explicit account of how rules operate as part of a rule system. It also provides one way to address the fluidity of rules. Rules are understood to be more or less fluid (incomplete) and subject to a practical dynamism. This, we argue, can be differentiated from the idea of tendency based on the capacity of agents not to follow rules. A useful concept here is that of ‘mezzo rules’ or recodifications that both define the rule and distance the agent from their own rule-following behaviour. In pursuing the argument we also highlight various methodological implications. First, conceptual development is a key aspect of the OIE, particularly when it is located within Dows structured pluralism. As such elaboration on rule forms enhances the consistency of OIE as methodology. Second, the exploration of a taxonomic range of rules and of forms of fluidity can provide useful resources in mapping out institutional processes in real research.

Piketty's Calibration Economics: Inequality and the Dissolution of Solutions?

Abstract By popularising interest in inequality, Thomas Pikettys Capital in the Twenty-First Century has made a significant contribution. It has helped to change the basic terms of debate regarding wealth and income. However, Capital exhibits several weaknesses. The overall statement of Pikettys 3 laws tends to confuse the reader by conflating capital with all forms of wealth, and capital with the current market valuation of wealth assets. The whole creates a form of empiricism by metrics or calibration. The aggregation also lends itself to data as history rather than as historically grounded explanation of evidence. Concomitantly, it lacks a theorisation of capitalism, of power, of the state, of social movements, and of social transformations. This affects the way in which possible solutions to inequality are conceived. However, it does provoke further grounds for ethical counterargument productive of more progressive solutions to the problems it highlights.

What is Meta-Reality?

eta-Reality is, for many critical realists, a controversial argument. As such it makes sense to carefully situate it in order to allow a balanced analysis of its latest incarnation. Accordingly, before discussing it, I set out a context in terms of critical realism’s role in philosophical discourse, and in terms of the development of Bhaskar’s characteristic mode of philosophizing and the aporiai that inform his work.

Institutional change from within the informal sector in indian rural labour relations

The paper applies a theory of institutional change enriched with mezzorules, fluidity and agency to Indias informal sector institutional evolution using two illustrative examples. The concrete examples are rooted in unfree labour and rural casual labouring in India, a country which has a high degree of informality. Section 1 introduces some concepts, and section 2 examines processes of institutional change in the informal sector. In section 3, two illustrations are explored: (1) the norms for girl child bonded labour; (2) the individualisation of women labourers. Section 4 concludes. The fluidity of institutional rules demands a recognition of the supra-economic nature of the context within which economic-institutional change occurs. We propose the analysis of mezzorules in a dialogic research context, i.e. interactions among workers and collective agents – as a helpful and transformative approach for sociologists specialising in the informal economy.

Defining Objectivity in Realist Terms

Abstract Our aim is to explore and develop notions of objectivity that are useful and appropriate for critical realist empirical research. Part I explores the values associated with objectivity, Part II the linkages between objectivity and situated action. (Part II will appear in the next issue of this journal.) The introductory section of Part I explains why it is worthwhile in realist terms to develop the notion of objectivity; that is, develop it as opposed to remaining content with murky hidden notions or connotations that the term ‘objectivity’ brings to mind and that tend to cause confusion in how it is accepted and rejected. This is important as a clarification exercise for social research. In Part II, we argue that the growth of knowledge requires engagement and critical analysis. We develop the idea that if subjects are engaging objectively with reality and its multiple standpoints, then the results will tend to be transformative. Again, our aim is to be of use to practical researchers by providing underlying arguments. Specifically, we argue that objectivity is a bridge between the subjectivities of subjects and the rest of the real world.