Theory of Economic Regulation

Does capitalism generate prosperity and well-being in an atmosphere of freedom, as its defenders claim, or is it an unjust system in which workers are exploited for the benefit of a capital-owning minority, as its critics assert? Does capitalism lead inexorably to greater inequality, or does it have mechanisms that in the long run reduce inequalities? Do capitalist markets regulate themselves and manage to overcome the difficulties and turbulences generated by their functioning, or, on the contrary, do they lead to increasingly serious crises which, in one way or another, will lead to their collapse or their replacement by another social system? Beyond these dichotomies, which sketch a black and white world, this book explores the diversity of capitalisms, with all their colors, shades and nuances. Instead of repeating the discussion about whether capitalism is good or bad, it is about changing the questions: How diverse can capitalism be? Why do capitalisms differ? What factors provoke their transformations? What are the scope and limits of this form of economic and social organization? These and other questions are the
questions animate this work, which takes as its starting point a polemic thesis: other capitalisms are possible.

This textbook of Economic Policy is made of four parts:
1. Methodological questions;
2. Welfare Economics;
3. Economic models in a closed economy
4. Economic Policy in an open economy.

La Politica Economica è la disciplina che studia il processo decisionale delle istituzioni economiche e finanziarie interne di un paese, come il mercato, lo Stato, la banca centrale, e i comportamenti aggregati degli operatori economici, come le famiglie e le imprese, con riferimento agli effetti delle politiche micro e macroeconomiche destinate a modificare l'andamento del sistema economico per raggiungere obiettivi prestabiliti.
Il corso di Politica Economica, previsto negli ordinamenti didattici delle lauree di primo livello in Economia, Scienze Politiche, Giurisprudenza, Statistica, Ingegneria, risponde all'obiettivo di dotare di una preparazione professionale, oltre che culturale, soggetti destinati a svolgere studi specialistici di economia, compiti di carattere direttivo o ad assumere posizioni di elevata responsabilità nelle istituzioni e nelle amministrazioni pubbliche e private, come pure in organismi imprenditoriali e associativi operanti in settori che implicano relazioni con organismi pubblici o richiedono competenze riguardanti atti e costi della regolamentazione.
Le lezioni contenute in questo volume indicano i filoni principali del pensiero teorico che ha seguito i successi e gli insuccessi dell’azione dei mercati e dei poteri pubblici sui sistemi economici. Il piano dell’esposizione è articolato in tre parti. Alle questioni metodologiche principali della ricerca economica e delle relazioni della politica economica con le altre discipline, segue, nella prima parte, la trattazione dell’economia del benessere, ovvero l'analisi di tipo normativo delle regole che orientano il sistema economico al suo miglioramento. La seconda parte è dedicata ai modelli principali con cui il pensiero economico ha affrontato i problemi posti dal perseguimento degli obiettivi macroeconomici in economia chiusa. La terza parte tratta gli stessi temi, ma nel contesto di un’economia aperta alla internazionalizzazione dei mercati in presenza dei vincoli posti dalla loro progressiva globalizzazione.

Indice generale

Premessa
Indice dei grafici
Indice delle tabelle
Acronimi
Piano delle lezioni

Lezione 1-Introduzione

Questioni di metodo

Lezione 2-I limiti dello studioso e la varianza comportamentale
Lezione 3- Errore e non prescrittività delle proposizioni di politica economica
Lezione 4-Analisi economica e principi di politica

Parte prima: l’economia del benessere

Lezione 5-Paradigmi e modelli di politica economica
Lezione 6-Le preferenze sociali
Lezione 7-Miglioramento e ottimo paretiani
Lezione 8-I limiti dell’economia del benessere paretiana e i tentativi di superarli
Lezione 9-La teoria delle votazioni
Lezione 10-Funzioni del benessere, ottimo sociale e teorie della giustizia
Lezione 11-Il mercato e lo Stato
Lezione 12-I due teoremi fondamentali dell’economia del benessere e quello del second best
Lezione 13-I limiti del mercato per gli obiettivi microeconomici
Lezione 14-Il teorema di Coase e le sue critiche
Lezione 15-I limiti del mercato per gli obiettivi macroeconomici

Parte seconda: i modelli di economia chiusa

Lezione 16-La neutralità della moneta
Lezione 17- La Grande Crisi e l’economia di Keynes
Lezione 18- La sintesi neoclassica
Lezione 19- La Nuova Macroeconomia Classica
Lezione 20- Le rifondazioni keynesiana e neoclassica e le relazioni tra disoccupazione e inflazione
Lezione 21- La programmazione economica
Lezione 22- I limiti dell’intervento pubblico
Lezione 23- Le politiche micro: obiettivi e strumenti
Lezione 24- Le politiche micro: alcune applicazioni
Lezione 25- L’analisi costi benefici: aspetti teprici
Lezione 26- L’analisi costi benefici: le fasi procedurali
Lezione 27-La moneta e l’economia monetaria
Lezione 28-La politica monetaria: obbiettivi e strumenti   
Lezione 29-La politica di bilancio: aspetti storici e teorici
Lezione 30-Le politiche del debito pubblico
Lezione 31-La politica dei redditi

Parte terza: la politica economica in economia aperta

Lezione 32-Le teorie del commercio internazionale
Lezione 33-Le politiche commerciali e le giustificazioni del protezionismo
Lezione 34-Bilancia dei pagamenti, regimi valutari e operazioni finanziarie
Lezione 35-Le politiche di riequilibrio della bilancia dei pagamenti
Lezione 36-Il modello di Mundell-Fleming
Lezione 37-Le politiche di mercato aperto

Bibliografia
Indice dei nomi

Mobile money is a relatively new phenomenon that allows banking services to be accessed through a cellular device. It has become a significant tool for poor and rural populations in developing countries to gain access to financial services. As the service is in its infancy, understanding the environmental factors that influence the growth of mobile money is an expanding area of research in academic and practitioner literature. These environmental issues relate to the socio-economic factors, market conditions and regulations that enable mobile money services to grow. By utilizing the economic theory of regulation to create a framework to comparatively analyse the impact that market forces have on regulatory outcomes and mobile money growth, two hypotheses are derived and tested.

This paper argues that certain regulations are not as determinant as identified in the literature, and that certain market and socio-economic conditions have a significant impact on mobile money growth. Specifically, this paper estimates that agent network regulations predict a 7.7% higher mobile money account rate, while consumer protection regulations predict a 10.7% decrease in accounts. Further estimates show that MNO concentration can explain 4% of the mobile money accounts amongst the country sample and financial accounts can explain 5% of the mobile money accounts. In addition, this paper posits that the market forces of competition and concentration within telecommunications and banking industries influence the regulatory outcomes of mobile money regulations. MNO competition reduces the industry’s regulatory influence of consumer protection regulations while banking competition increases the agent network regulation. MNO concentration increases the industry’s influence of e-money legislation and banking concentration decreases it.

Ph.D. thesis Economic History, Uppsala University

In 1971, the Swedish parliament approved a government bill that introduced extensive state regulation of marketing. Because of this, the business community’s self-regulation of advertising, which until then had dominated regulation, became obsolete. While self-regulation initially was a minor operation, by the time it was overtaken by state policies in 1971, it included several interlocking systems. This has been the point of departure for the analysis of this thesis – how can these profound regime transitions in this private form of marketing regulation of postwar Swedish advertising be understood? To uncover the agency behind the changes, analytical focus has been on the business interest organizations that controlled self-regulation and their regulatory strategies. Results show that organizations of advertisers, and to lesser degree media carriers, due to higher levels of exposure to regulation and public badwill, successfully supported stronger market regulation, while those representing the less exposed ad agencies, as well as a peak industry organization for marketing, long opposed such measures, preferring a more lenient regulation. However, due to increased exposure in the 1960s and growing negative views on advertising in public and politics, the ad agencies abandoned their opposition and, shortly before the coming of the state regime, spearheaded regulatory innovation through their introduction of an extensive publishing clearance program for advertising. This program inspired similar efforts among advertisers and media carriers, contributing greatly to business avoiding a complete state takeover of marketing regulation, and instead laying the foundation for the co-regulatory structure that followed.

I . L'Etat dans le spectre théorique régulationniste.
I.A. La régulation étatique structurelle, nouveau visage de la théorie du Capitalisme Monopoliste d'Etat.
I.B. De la régulation inintentionnelle par la crise à la régulation
intentionnelle par l'Etat.
I.C. La régulation par l'institutionalisation de compromis sociaux ou l'Etat comme mode implicite de régulation.
II . D'une place de l'Etat par son rôle en l'état actuel des théories
de la régulation à une place sans rôle dans le système des
pratiques régulatrices.
II.A. "Le face à face de l'Etat et de l'Economie est vide de sens".
II.B. "Le temps d'aujourdhui date à la fois d'hier, d'avant-hier, de jadis"
II.C. "Ce qui est fait, l'objet, s'explique par ce qu'a été le faire à chaque moment de l'histoire, c'est à tort que nous nous imaginons que le faire, la pratique, s'explique à partir de ce qui est fait".

Turkey became an EU member candidate in 1999, and its economy achieved greater stability in the 2000s, compared to that observed before the 2000–2001 economic crisis. Nevertheless , it remains unclear whether this performance could help Turkey become a member of the economic and monetary union (EMU), following EU membership. Between 1995 and 2002, Turkey experienced severe infl ation, at rates highest among the countries analyzed in this study. It also experienced macroeconomic instability as per the Maastricht Criteria. After 2002, Turkey successfully met the criteria regarding ratios of government defi cit to gross domestic product (GDP) and gross government debt to GDP. However, certain persistent problems could create economic instability if Turkey were to join the EMU. Turkey's infl ation rate is higher than the limit established by the criteria; therefore, Turkey should follow a stronger anti-infl ationary policy. In doing so, wage growth should decrease and keep pace with the productivity growth of export goods; this would ameliorate the disparity between wage growth and productivity growth of non-tradable goods, and the over-valued Turkish lira should come to balance with purchasing power parity (PPP).

Banks and other financial institutions which were „too-bigto- fail“ (TBTF) played a central role in the Global Financial Crisis of 2007– 2009. The article lays out how misguided policies enabled banks to grow both in size as well as in complexity and therefore acquire TBTF status, particularly in the 10-year period preceding the crisis. The article then proceeds by detailing how an ill-designed policy framework, relying on supposed market approaches to regulation – including self-regulation and credit rating agencies – enabled TBTF financial institutions to game the system. They were thereby able to exploit the negative externalities which the flawed policy framework – in connection with TBTF status – had granted to large, systemically important financial institutions. The article therefore identifies defective government policies as the chief cause of the financial crisis of 2007–2009, revealing an urgent need for financial sector reform.

This article as an attempt to introduce the work of the French economist André Orléan to the new research paradigm of the cultural studies of the economy and the economy of literature. The text focuses not so much on the role economy plays in literary texts, but on the analysis of the cultural determination of economy, especially on the role of fiction in economy and economics. After the reconstruction of the research done so far in this field, the article moves toward the introduction of Orléan’s work on the autoreferential nature of value on the financial markets as a key aspect of the analysis of the fictitious character of contemporary economy. Reconstructing the basic aspect of Orléan’s theory – the cognitive turn in finance theory – the text finishes with the suggestion to include Orléan’s analysis of contemporary financial capitalism in the research on the cultural determination of finance.

Das Versagen internationaler Finanzmärkte in den Jahren 2007-2009 ging mit einer Infragestellung eines auf freien und selbstregulierten Märkten basierenden Kapitalismus einher, dessen Vorherrschen im Mittelpunkt vieler Erklärungsversuche für die Weltfinanzkrise steht. Vorliegende Dissertation untersucht, inwiefern diese Einschätzung gerechtfertigt ist und kommt zum Ergebnis, dass die Finanzkrise nicht das Resultat freier Märkte war, sondern dem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen denselben einerseits und weitreichender staatlicher Regulierung sowie staatlichen Interventionen andererseits zuzuschreiben ist. Im Zentrum der Forschung dieser Arbeit steht die Einführung staatlicher Einlagensicherung in den USA als Antwort auf die Weltwirtschaftskrise von 1929-1933. Die Folge der Versicherung von Bankverbindlichkeiten durch den Staat war das Eingehen erhöhten Risikos („Moral Hazard“), das insbesondere infolge der Erosion der gleichzeitig mit der Einlagensicherung 1933 eingeführten Restriktionen seit den 1980er Jahren zunahm. Diese staatlichen Restriktionen waren nämlich durch die Versicherung von Bankverbindlichkeiten erforderlich gemacht worden und sollten der exzessiven Aufnahme von Risiko entgegenwirken. Die zunehmende Anzahl an Finanz- und Bankenkrisen infolge des erhöhten Risikoprofils des Bankensektors machte vermehrt staatliche Intervention notwendig, um die negativen Folgen eines sonst möglichen Kollapses des sukzessiv dominanter werdenden Finanzsektors zu verhindern. Mit jedem staatlichen Eingriff, der Finanzinstitutionen nicht den vollen Umfang ihrer Verluste tragen ließ, wurde diesen ein weiterer Anreiz dafür geliefert, zukünftig exzessives Risiko einzugehen, welches nicht sie – die Finanzinstitute – selbst, sondern der Staat zu tragen. So ist der Zeitraum seit 1980 von einem auf Moral Hazard zurückzuführenden fragilen Bankensektor geprägt. In Zusammenhang mit den staatlichen Versuchen, den zunehmend fragilen Finanzsektor zu stabilisieren, ist vor allem die Entwicklung des Phänomens „Too-Big-to-Fail“ zu nennen. Dieses beschreibt den Unwillen politischer Entscheidungsträger und Regulatoren, große und systemisch bedeutsame Finanzinstitute bei drohendem Bankrott normalen Marktgesetzen zu unterwerfen; stattdessen werden diese Institute aufgefangen („Bailout“). Darüber hinaus kommen der Ausweitung der historisch eng definierten Rolle der Federal Reserve als „Lender-of-Last-Resort“ einerseits und „Regulatory Forbearance“ sowie dem „Greenspan Put“ andererseits eine zentrale Bedeutung zu.

In vorliegender Arbeit wird die Entwicklung oben genannter Phänomene historisch nachgezeichnet und deren Bedeutung in Hinblick auf die Finanzkrise 2007-2009 erläutert. Somit ergibt sich für die Arbeit eine Bedeutung für das Verständnis einerseits der Finanzkrise 2007-2009 selbst und andererseits für die historische Entwicklung der Finanzmärkte generell, welche seit dem frühen 19. Jahrhundert sporadisch und seit den 1970/80er Jahren eingehend analysiert wird. Besondere Beachtung erfährt hier die etwa 1980 einsetzende Phase, die häufig als eine der „Deregulierung“ aufgefasst wird. Die Dissertation soll dazu beitragen, die Charakterisierung des Zeitraums seit 1980 als „Laissez-Faire“ einer Neubewertung zu unterwerfen. Zentrale Aussage der Dissertation ist, dass dieser Zeitraum weniger durch eine Liberalisierung als vielmehr durch eine „selektive Liberalisierung“ gekennzeichnet ist. Basierend auf einem Komplex an Entwicklungen seit etwa der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts, die zu einem oft als Laissez-Faire-Markt wahrgenommenen Regulierungszustand führten, wurden Banken zunehmend befähigt, aufgrund des herrschenden Zeitgeists für eine Lockerung der historischen Restriktionen zu lobbyieren. Parallel hierzu wurde aber der staatliche Einlagenschutz aufrechterhalten und das staatliche Sicherheitsnetz generell ausgeweitet. Dies hatte eine Destabilisierung der Finanzmärkte zur Folge, indem die Aufnahme extremen Risikos insbesondere durch große Banken staatlich gefördert wurde. Dementsprechend sollten große Finanzinstitute eine maßgebliche Rolle sowohl hinsichtlich der Bildung der Immobilienblase, die zur Weltfinanzkrise 2007-2009 führte, als auch während der Krise selbst spielen und einen kausalen Faktor für deren Ausbruch darstellen.

This paper empirically examines how wage growth in Turkey has been influenced by workdays lost to strikes, by inflation and by real GDP through the vector autoregression model for the annual period 1963–2015. According to empirical results, wage growth is largely affected by workdays lost to strikes and inflation. This analysis is tested by considering workdays lost to industrial action in order to understand the main dynamics behind wage growth, because this is a significant factor in the elimination of macroeconomic imbalances in the Turkish economy. As a conclusion, the mathematical base social contract, new wage-setting, and inflation policies are recommended to reduce macroeconomic problems in Turkey.

Keywords:
Mathematical base social contract, Vector autoregression (VAR), Input–output analysis, Industrial actions, Turkey

JEL Classification:
C32 C67 E02 J30 J50

Este artigo procura identificar pontos de intersecção entre aspectos da teoria da regulação e interpretações de gênese e evolução de políticas de comunicação. O texto está dividido em três etapas: primeiramente, 1. abordam-se premissas centrais da chamada teoria econômica da regulação; em seguida, 2. aproxima-se essa revisão do debate sobre políticas de comunicação; por último, 3. são listados pressupostos aplicáveis à análise interpretativa de políticas de comunicação, assentados em aspectos centrais da teoria da regulação. Pretende-se, assim, refletir sobre limites e possibilidades do investigador social se apropriar de ferramentas usuais no estudo de regulação, de modo a adequá-las, com originalidade, à análise interpretativa de processos decisórios em políticas de comunicação.

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This article aims to identify points of intersection between specific aspects of the theory of regulation and interpretations of the origin and evolution of communication policies. The text is divided into three stages: first, 1. central premises of the so-called theory of economic regulation are addressed; subsequently, 2. these elements are related to the debate on communication policies; and finally, 3. aspects of the theory of regulation that may be applicable to interpretative analysis of communication policies are listed. It is intended, therefore, to provide a reflection about the limits and possibilities of appropriation by the social researcher of the usual tools of regulation studies, in order to use them with originality in the interpretative analysis of the decision-making processes in political communication.

French societal and "régulation" approaches are based, to a great extent, on international comparisons. As a result, they are confronted with the kind of problems facing international comparative literature which has developed outside France. They find on their way the same difficulty to articulate the development of empirical studies to the progress of theoretical thinking. Indeed, although carefully constructing their research on a theoretical basis, both approaches still elaborate their generalities and stylised facts by following an essentially inductive process. The purpose of this chapter however is to show that, benefiting each other, they have endogenously at their disposal the necessary resources to get out of this situation. To achieve this, they only need to mobilise more systematically and explicitly the genetical structuralism on which they are based, the methodology of structural analysis making it possible to produce intermediary concepts which, like Max Weber's ideal types, "inject a theoretical dimension into the historico-comparative process".
The context of that contribution is the recent reflections on the comparative methodology to reach a synthesis between two methodological traditions in general sociology, i.e. Durkheim's and Weber's. This synthesis should combine inductive and in-depth historical analyses and, in order to study the degree of their generality, extensive geographical (international) confrontations of these analyses by means of theory and statistical methods. That perspective will allow to evaluate more precisely the specific contributions of SA and RA.
In this perspective, the first section of the paper deals with the specific contributions, as well as the present limits in this matter, of the societal and régulation approaches (from now on SA and RA respectively). The second section explains what could be drawn, on the methodological and theoretical levels, from their articulation, and in this perspective, goes back to the structural method of inter-societal comparisons used by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his research on the systems of kinship in the so-called "cold" societies, obviously adapting it to the context of contemporary societies.

On May 3, 1973, the Wall Street Journal carried a story about the struggle by Phelps 'Dodge Corporation to meet environmental qual- ity standards. The Journal reported that "the most economical way to [meet the standards] at the Douglas smelter, Phelps Dodge has decided, is to cut ...