John A. Miller

Women's Unemployment Patterns in Postwar Business Cycles: Class Difference, The Gender Segregation of Work and Deindustrialization

This paper argues that the gender difference in unemployment rates over postwar business cycles and the changes in that differential in the 1980s (womens unemployment rates dropping below mens rates during the recession) can be explained by the continuing gender segregation of work and deindustrialization. My version of the segmentation hypothesis finds empirical support in the average pattern of mens and womens total unemployment rates, in the gender unemployment rate patterns for major occupational groups and in the fact that working-class womens unemployment rates have dropped below working-class mens rates during most postwar recessions. In addition, econometric analysis shows a tight fit between the gender differential in unemployment rates and deindustrialization, a variable whose explanatory power is rooted in the gender segregation of work. The final section of the paper assesses the implications of my findings for the other two major explanations of the effect of recessions on women: the buffer hypothesis and the substitution hypothesis.

Leaving the Sphere of Exchange with David Houston, Karl Marx, and Even Adam Smith: Insights into the Debate about Sweatshops

Today most economists are critical of the antisweatshop movement. But that was not always the case. At times even the leaders of the economics establishment condemned sweatshop labor or its equivalent and lent their support to social movements intended to eradicate it. My paper traces the change in consciousness about sweatshops and antisweatshop movements among economists by examining what Smith, Marx, and earlier neoclassical economists actually wrote about sweatshop-like conditions and antisweatshop movements.

Interactive Computer Lessons for Introductory Economics: Guided Inquiry-From Supply and Demand to Women in the Economy.

The interactive feature of computers is used to incorporate a guided inquiry method of learning introductory economics, extending the CAI method beyond drills.

Index of economic freedom: Unrealized pedagogical opportunities

ABSTRACT Although the Index of Economic Freedom appears in many economic textbooks, their coverage of the index misses opportunities to teach statistical and policy-related concepts important for the principles course. The standard textbook presentation passes up an opportunity to examine the statistical issues of weighting in composite index numbers and correlation versus causation. In addition, textbook presentations fail to examine the assumptions made in the indexes about key economic concepts. These include inflation rate targets, appropriate government spending levels, tax rates, labor standards, financial regulation, monetary policy, property rights, government regulation, and even the meaning of economic freedom. This study explores how examining economic freedom index assumptions can help students understand key economic policy debates.

Book Reviews : Underconsumption Theories: A History and Critical Analysis by M.F. Bleaney New York: International Publishers, 1976, 262 pp.,

essary disproportionality between investment in producer goods and consumption has several important implications. Most importantly, that recognition makes clear that underconsumption theory does not question whether savings are transferred to investment, and is not concerned with a lack of aggregate demand in general, but rather with a lack of consumption demand. On these grounds, Bleaney eliminates Keynesian theory from the body of underconsumption theory. Furthermore, although Bleaney does not draw it out, this emphasis on disproportionality makes salient the structural similarity between underconsumption theory and the overinvestment theories of Hayek, Wicksell, and Robertson. In Prosperity and Depression, Harberler characterizes both underconsumption theory and overinvestment theory as a &dquo;vertical maladjustment&dquo; in the structure of production. (This is a vertical maladjustment because the industries which are not harmoniously developed are related to each other in vertical order from production to consumption.) In the underconsumption case the bottom of the structure of production (investment in producer goods) is overdeveloped with respect to the top of the structure of production (consumption); while in the overinvestment case the bottom