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Abstract: Since the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the U.S.-Mexico border has become increasingly open for trade and private investment. But for the movement of people it is a Porous Border. Meanwhile, Open Border proposals are unpopular and unrealistic due to concerns about national security and the economic impact of low-wage immigrant labor.
Discussion is now dominated by Closed Border proposals to build a wall and further militarize the 2000-mile border. Each of these paradigms - the Closed Border, Open Border, and today's Porous Border - fails to address the painful dislocations in Mexican society that inevitably result from the Washington Consensus model of free market fundamentalism, a policy agenda that consists of fiscal austerity, privatization, and the liberalization of trade and private investment.
This Article considers proposals to close the border with a massive Marshall Plan wall of public investment. Such a border would be a central feature in a sequencing of reform, designed to address the underlying causes of illegal immigration, and intended to lead to an open border in the future.
Globalization has weakened the nation-state by undermining its ability to mobilize resources. This Article considers an alternative model premised on the activation of fiscal policy to empower the nation-state, address problems of mass dislocation, and reform U.S.-Mexico relations at the border. This model is contextualized through discussion of the Marshall Plan, the G.I. Bill of Rights, and the European Union's regional development program.
This Article considers proposals of architects, urban and regional planners, and scientific communities that would seek to attract people, technology, and industry to poor border and interior regions. A Closed Border, when constructed as a progressive and fluid response to adjustment demands, becomes a door for opportunity that will set the stage for a truly Open Border in the future.
International Migration, Regional Development, Foreign Assistance, Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy, Central Banks, Public Finance, Immigration Refugee, Citizenship, Immigration Law, Border, Homeland Security, National Security
Abstract: This article, an early draft of which was published in the summer 2008 issue of Dissent magazine, analyzes the Clinton administration's record of financial deregulation, the continuities in policies between Democratic and Republican administrations, and the relationship between deregulatory policy and market developments in housing, credit and currency markets. Deregulation is examined on several levels: (1) selective credit controls in housing, consumer and stock market sectors, with particular attention to rules on minimum down payments (otherwise known as margin requirements); (2) the regulatory barriers between financial entities, with particular attention to the Glass-Steagall Act firewalls that had separated commercial banking, investment banking, insurance and securities; and (3) the regulation of financial instruments, with particular attention to derivatives. The analysis concludes that all three deregulation trends interacted in ways that undermined that safety and soundness of the entire financial system: deregulation of margin requirements contributed to speculative lending in housing and securities; deregulation of derivatives contributed to the securitization of shaky mortgage loans, particularly in the subprime sector; and the demise of Glass-Steagall permitted banks to load up on such derivatives in off-balance sheet entities. The deregulation agenda of the Clinton and Bush administrations is placed in the larger context of the Washington Consensus agenda of central bank autonomy, fiscal austerity, privatization, and trade liberalization. The autonomy of the Federal Reserve was a euphemism for agency capture, making margin regulation a political impossibility and leaving the central bank reliant on one and only one monetary policy instrument, the short-term interest rate. This led to a stop-and-go monetary policy that contributed to an ever larger bubble economy. The article raises important questions about the nature of financial regulation. Some scholars, such as Cass Sunstein, reflecting Chicago School thinking, have called for increased disclosure and transparency. The Securities and Exchange Commission's recent decision to abandon Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) for the London-based International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) gives support to this approach. But the SEC timetable of waiting until 2016 for this move from GAAP to IFRS suggests that disclosure alone is insufficient at a time when many large financial institutions are sitting on mountains of bad debt and would likely be insolvent under IFRS. Canova's approach combines a return to the "command and control" bright line approach of margin requirements with the neutralization of monetary policy and reinvigoration of fiscal policy. The Marginalist school (the pre-Keynesian school which founded economics as a science) is thereby seen as providing the necessary corrective to the excesses of financial deregulation while opening the way to a new Keynesian agenda.
Abstract: As the pace of globalization has intensified, lawyers and scholars continue to develop an appreciation for the many ways their own areas of expertise and practice relate to the global economy. This symposium issue of the Chapman Law Review, featuring papers presented at the inaugural conference of Chapman University's Center for Global Trade & Development, reflects the dynamic and evolving relationship between international law and the global economy, and the profound impacts of each on the course of democracy and human rights in the world today. Each of our contributors were asked to consider the various ways that international law confronts the global economy for the purposes of protecting labor rights, human rights, and substantive and procedural norms of democracy. The term confrontation suggests an encounter of two expanses, international law and international economics, each worthy of study in its own right, and each suddenly filled with great uncertain potentials to alter and shape the other. Contributors presented papers on a wide range of international legal confrontations, including global efforts to protect the environment, address future energy demands, and promote sustainable development; the many consequences of the emergence of the People's Republic of China in world trade; human rights litigation in U.S. and foreign forums; the role of international financial institutions in addressing labor standards and human rights in developing countries; the protection of indigenous rights and culture; the legal and extra-legal treatment of immigrant workers; and the development of socially responsible investment policies and codes of conduct for the protection of labor and human rights.
International Trade, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy, World Trade Organization, International Litigation, Globalization
Abstract: This article offers a critique of the deregulation of banking and finance that started with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed exchange rates during the Nixon administration, accelerated with interest rate deregulation during the Carter administration, and was deepened during the Reagan administration. Deregulation is seen as a changing of paradigms, from the New Deal regulatory model that limited price competition and channeled credit to socially useful purposes. The monetary and fiscal implications are significant. The regulatory model, particularly in its heyday, served to limit the authority of the Federal Reserve, neutralized monetary policy, and invigorated other policy tools to maintain price stability, especially in monopolistic and oligopolistic markets. As a result, the elected branches of government were able to activate fiscal policy, thereby financing the World War Two effort, as well as the Cold War military buildup, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe and Japan, and the G.I. Bill of Rights to educate and house returning U.S. war veterans. Particular emphasis is given to the distortions and inconsistencies in the deregulation model, including the resort to bailout of large financial institutions, such as U.S. commercial banks and savings and loans, as well as defaulting foreign nations. The irony of deregulation was that it led inevitably to a state of receivership and implicit subsidy for those with market and political power, while extracting rents from others. The Article concludes by proposing a return to a model of regulated competition that would be suited to a financial environment that is increasingly globalized. Any restoration of national sovereignty over monetary and fiscal policy would require multilateral mechanisms, tax and market incentives to limit the volume of destructive speculative activity. Canova offers one of the first discussions in a law journal of the proposed Tobin Tax, named after the late Nobel laureate, Dr. James Tobin.
Banking, Finance, Central Banking, Monetary Policy, Fiscal Policy, Incomes Policies, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Regulation
Abstract: This article considers the financial panic of 2008 in historical context by analyzing the institutional and regulatory factors that contributed to the financial and economic crisis. The move away from a Keynesian regulatory model was a function of larger institutional flaws. The Keynesian regime of command-and-control regulation focused on macroeconomic policy objectives designed to achieve full employment, more equitable distributions of wealth and income, greater transparency in the regulatory process, and reduction in monopoly exploitation of consumers. Central to this regime was a model of central banking that required greater accountability to elected branches of government and the use of selective credit controls to complement general monetary policy measures. As the Federal Reserve (the Fed) became increasingly subject to agency capture by its private financial constituencies, it also became a leading force behind the deregulation of interest rates and lending standards, and the adoption of risk-based capital requirements. These trends, in turn, undermined the transparency of financial institutions and markets, and encouraged the development of an unsustainable, bubble economy. The privatized Federal Reserve System represents a profound rule-of-law failure that is reflected in today’s bailout model which socializes losses and privatizes gains for “too big to fail” financial institutions. This captured Fed represents a significant impediment to effective financial regulation and a proper balance of constitutional authority on monetary and fiscal policymaking between elected and appointed branches and private actors. This article recommends reviving the model of institutional law and Keynesian economics by suggesting a more complete and integrated approach to financial regulation that would keep competition within prescribed limits while allocating credit and capital away from private, speculative activity and into longer-term public investment in physical and social infrastructure. A necessary precondition is reform of the Fed’s institutional structure to safeguard monetary policy and financial regulation from a self-serving financial industry.
financial, markets, rule of law, regulation, economics, central banking, fiscal, monetary, employment, distribution, income
Abstract: At the time of publication, this article provided the most in-depth critique of capital account liberalization in any U.S. law journal. The article stemmed from a paper presented by the author to the Seventh Annual Conference of the United States-Mexico Law Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 3, 1998, during the climax of one of the most volatile periods in the global financial markets. The Russian ruble was in free fall, and so was Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that was threatening to bring down its own large creditors. The crisis was averted only by an emergency multi-billion dollar bailout brokered at the offices of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. This article situates that financial volatility within the context of the 1990's global currency contagion that had spread from Mexico and Latin America to East Asia. Canova identified a recurring pattern associated with the liberalization of portfolio capital. The initial dependence on short-term foreign investment requires a restrictive monetary policy and higher interest rates to maintain the inflow. The inflow, however, contributes to overvalued exchange rates that in turn contribute to unsustainable trade and current account deficits. What follows is an inevitable panic sell-off and flight to foreign-denominated assets. The sudden outflow of capital then leads to fiscal austerity and other disciplines imposed as conditions for International Monetary Fund (IMF) assistance. After describing the dynamics of contagion, Canova inventories the range of legal instruments and institutions prematurely pushing capital account liberalization on developing countries. From the IMF Articles of Agreement to IMF loan conditions, from Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) to provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canova demonstrates that the program of capital account liberalization is part of a Wall Street agenda. The symbiotic relationship between regulators and private financial actors raises fundamental constitutional questions about accountability in a representative democracy. The article concludes by proposing several reforms of the international monetary system, including various restrictions on short-term capital flows, the recycling of surpluses through foreign aid flows, and the issuance of global currency in the form of Special Drawing Rights. The analysis synthesizes various methodological approaches, including comparative, historical and institutional approaches: prudential restrictions on portfolio inflows (such as the Chilean ¿encage¿); a global turnover tax on currency transactions (such as the Tobin Tax proposal, named after former Nobel economist, the late James Tobin); reform of the burdens of adjustment (modeled on the Marshall Plan); and use of the dormant Scarce Currency clause in the IMF Articles of Agreement. The article deals with obscure and often technical matters in an easy-to-read conversational style that is accessible to non-experts.
Banking, Financial Reform, Currency Contagion, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Central Banking
Abstract: The Constitution protects the rights of Americans to participate in politics through assembly and membership in private interest groups. Yet the Founders recognized that interest groups and factions posed a particular danger in a democracy. According to James Madison, there was no way to remove the causes of faction without destroying liberty itself. The only solution, he said, was to control the effects of faction by encouraging the proliferation of factions to oppose and counter the influence of any particular faction. This is a legalistic judicial discourse that ignores the realities of power imbalances in contemporary society. The modern theoretical incarnation of counterveiling power was premised on the idea that individual interests would be adequately represented by either large corporations or large unions. But the suppression of organized labor (the rollback in legal protections for union organizing and collective bargaining) should be seen as the disfavored first method for curing the mischiefs of faction. Here the cause of a particular faction is undermined by destroying the liberty of people to organize into interest groups. With the labor faction neutralized, institutions and policies of government have fallen under the influence of big business and management interests. Using empirical records of campaign finance reports, this Article describes the iron triangles and captured sub-governments that plague our liberal pluralist order. The capture of federal communications policy by self-interested media companies has reduced the range and level of political discourse, and effectively privatized the public commons. A review of early American history of postal rate subsidies for newspapers provides support for present-day proposals to mandate free air time for political candidates across broadcast, cable and satellite mediums. Without reform of communications policy, the campaign finance system will continue to contribute to a public and political discourse devoid of meaning.
Campaign Finance, Federal Communications Commission, Regulated Industries, Agency Capture, Broadcast Regulation
Abstract: The role of private, non-state actors in the international institutional and legal order is often praised for providing greater pluralism, public participation and transparency in the formulation of legal norms. Often overlooked are the ways that non-state actors undermine the sovereignty and practical capabilities of nation-states to provide for the welfare and security of citizens. The growth of global capital and currency markets, fueled and dominated by non-state actors, has undermined the ability of states to incur deficits or to otherwise stimulate their economies. Non-state actors also shape today's global order by capturing the institutions of the state, contributing to the problem of ¿democratic deficits.¿ The capture of the Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, has been widely noted by critics of the Washington Consensus. In contrast, there has been a relative silence about the capture of central banking institutions, perhaps the most significant agency capture by non-state actors in today's international legal order. This has been largely modeled on the ¿autonomous¿ Federal Reserve, which in turn reflects a distinctly biased reading of history, one that forgets an entire decade of Federal Reserve history, 1941 to 1951, which strangely happens to be the most successful decade in U.S. economic and social history. This forgotten decade of U.S. monetary history included massive federal spending on World War Two and the two most expensive Cold War programs, the Marshall Plan and the G.I. Bill of Rights. Federal spending and real economic growth were magnitudes greater than before or since, and the Federal Reserve was not functionally autonomous, but rather was under the strict direction of the Treasury Department. Today's monetary amnesia is a collective forgetting of our own American history and now one of the country's most insidious ideological exports.
International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Central Banks, Monetary Policy, Fiscal Policy, Public Finance, Deficits, Public Debt
Abstract: This article provides a history of Sweden's financial liberalization, with special attention on the deregulation of interest rates and the ceiling on housing loans from banks and finance institutions. Throughout the 1980's, Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme stood out on the international stage as one of the leading opponents of the financial deregulation, monetarism, and fiscal austerity. The article recounts his efforts to resist and then compromise with this neoliberal agenda. After Palme's sudden assassination, in February 1986, the new government accepted a Riksbank proposal for elimination of Sweden's long-standing system of foreign exchange controls - the transnational policy analog to the domestic credit controls that had been abolished just months earlier. As a result, the government and the central bank were soon without the policy tools to slow down an overheating economy and housing bubble, or to protect the currency from speculative attack. In September 1992, the Riksbank raised the interest rate on overnight borrowing to 500 percent. What followed was a collapse and bailout in the banking sector, a redistribution of wealth and power to creditor groups, severe recession and double-digit unemployment rates.
Regulation, Central Banking, Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy, Incomes Policies, Inflation, Unemployment
Abstract: This paper explores the range of values implicated by war and compares today's dominant values with those that prevailed during previous American wars, with a particular emphasis on the World War Two and early Cold War period. War is related to values, and as economists like to remind us, what we value becomes apparent in the movement of people and prices. Part I of this Article considers the moral, ethical and monetary values that prevailed throughout the 1940's and early 1950's. The normative threads that kept the World War Two effort on track were those of mobilization and shared sacrifice. These dominant assumptions and policies represented a distinct ¿mobilization model¿ with big government serving as the central counter-force to private business interests. The mobilization model empowered the federal government to achieve its most important public policy objectives while enforcing limits on the self-interested activities of private actors. Those limits are perhaps best reflected in the neutralization of monetary policy and the application of administrative and regulatory authority to maintain price stability while channeling credit to the public sector. The Congress appropriated and the Executive spent on a massive scale. Resources - financial, human, technological and industrial - were mobilized. War today reflects far different values. Today we see the imagery and rhetoric of war, but rarely the ethic of shared sacrifice. Government power is routinely constrained by private interests. Part II contrasts the World War Two mobilization with the relative complacency of America's response to September 11th and the conduct of war ever since, which is characterized by private spending, consumption and ¿business as usual.¿ It is the failure to mobilize massive resources under conditions of shared sacrifice that has left the United States weakened at home and therefore with limited capabilities to exert its will abroad.
Monetary Policy, Fiscal Policy, Central Banks, Wartime Planning, Foreign Assistance, Constitutional Law, Public Finance
Abstract: This article started as a plenary paper that was presented to the annual International Economic Law conference of the American Society of International Law. The conference itself posed the question of whether the new international economic order was leading to greater peace, stability, fairness and justice. At a time when American post-Cold War triumphalism was perhaps at its zenith, Canova answered with an unequivocal indictment of the global order for failing to deliver peace or justice. The first part of the article critiques the international monetary system, and argues that the primary negative consequence of capital liberalization is the undermining of the public sector. Free portfolio capital flows constitute an undemocratic check on once-sovereign nation-states to pursue progressive social and economic policies. Neoliberal capital goes hand in hand with a neoliberal state with declining capabilities to provide for the public safety and general welfare. Part two of the article analyzes the relationship between central bank autonomy, another institutional pillar of the new world order, and questionable economic assumptions, dubious constitutional foundations, and flawed historical narratives that constrain discussion of alternative models. The final part of the article considers alternative futures and paths of globalization.
International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Financial Liberalization
Abstract: This article considers Lincoln’s system of public finance in a broad historical perspective. In the weeks prior to Lincoln‘s inauguration, the financial markets were swept by panic, the hoarding of gold, and a crisis perhaps more dangerous than other classic Keynesian liquidity traps, such as in March 1933 and September 2008. In 1861, there was no central bank with the authority to issue currency and inject liquidity into the financial system to try to restrain the psychology of hoarding. The Lincoln administration was able to break the downward spiral and provide the resources to mobilize for war, as well as for a massive infrastructure investment program, by adopting a populist model that imposed federal sovereignty over the nation’s public finances. The Treasury Department issued $450 million in currency directly into circulation pursuant to express authority delegated by Congress under the Legal Tender Acts. This was the nation’s first fiat currency - “United States Notes,” also known as the greenback - which made up about 40 percent of the nation’s money supply during the peak of the Civil War. This expanded scope of federal authority found precedent in the emergency measures of the Continental Congress during the American Revolution and the economic development strategies of the colonies prior to the Revolution. It also foreshadowed New Deal financing during the Great Depression and is comparable to the low interest rate financing of the U.S. effort in World War II and the early Cold War spending on the Marshall Plan and G.I. Bill of Rights. At a time when the U.S. economy and financial system remains in serious trouble, with unemployment and home foreclosures at dangerously high levels, there are serious concerns how the federal government will finance its growing budget deficits which have increased from more than $485 billion last year to about $1.6 trillion this fiscal year. This article considers Lincoln’s greenback as a model for dealing with the significant financial needs of the federal government today.
financial, markets, rule of law, regulation, economics, central banking, fiscal, monetary, employment, distribution, income, wealth, transparency
Abstract: This article analyzes the work of the late Dr. William Vickrey, the McVickar Professor Emeritus of Columbia University and 1996 Nobel-laureate in Economics. In choosing Vickrey for the Nobel prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences notes Vickrey's fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives, which he applied to the areas of taxation, auction theory, and pricing. His work focused on the economics of asymmetric and private information. Critics of Vickrey's full-employment macroeconomic vision have noted that his Nobel was awarded not for such progressive views but for his earlier work in microeconomics. This article connects Vickrey's early theoretical work with his full-employment blueprint.
Macroeconomics, Inflation, Unemployment, Microeconomics, Pollution Credits, Central Banking, Monetary Policy
Abstract: This Article places recent Lat-Crit scholarship in an institutional and inter-disiplinary context. It serves not just as an indictment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agenda of structural adjustment and liberalization. It also questions the positioning of Lat-Crit scholars to remain silent or complicit with the IMF's agenda. Canova provides a counter-narrative that is rich in historical revisionism, heterodox economics, and sociological conclusions. His recognition of the global unemployment crisis - made largely invisible by orthodox economics and flawed government measurements - is combined with existential insights about the nature of underemployment on the formation of individual identity and cultural pluralism. Originally entitled "Put the Crit Back Into Lat-Crit", but changed to its less controversial title due to pressure from leading Lat-Critters, the Article closes with a discussion that links the tension between acquiescence and critical distance among legal scholars to similar tensions within policymaking institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.
Global Finance, Internation Monetary Fund, World Bank, Ethnic Identity, Cultural Pluralism, Economic Development
Abstract: Management and labor are adversaries in both U.S. and Swedish industrial relations. The Swedish model, however, is marked by a continual dialogue between the adversaries with the objective of achieving mutual understanding on a wide range of issues. This dialogue has been fostered by Swedish labor law reforms, particularly the Swedish Act on Co-Determination, along with a comprehensive labor market policy to promote employment. The result of such reasoned dialogue is greater labor support for industrial restructurings and management support for the technological modernization of industry.
The American system could better be characterized as a monologue. In the U.S. the legitimacy of union representation is systematically undermined by employer hostility, there are far fewer mandatory subjects of bargaining between labor and management, and there is no active labor market policy to comprehensively promote worker retraining and employment. American labor is in a more vulnerable position in terms of job insecurity in a time of rapid technological change.
In this article, the author has translated and analyzed more than sixty cases of the Swedish Labour Court, including the leading cases arising from the Swedish Act on Co-Determination, and contrasted these holdings with the development of a restrictive subjects of bargaining doctrine under U.S. labor law.
This article focuses on the legal bargaining duties of both Swedish and American employers. According to the author, the Swedish Act on Co-Determination has found significant acceptance among many employers and is a positive step towards increasing worker influence in management decisions. In contrast, American labor lacks a voice in the decision-making process due to the very restrictive legal development of bargaining duties. U.S. employers are not legally obligated to bargain over many of the most important decisions affecting American workers. As a result, labor and management consistently fail to reach consensus on the rationalization and technological development of industry.
The author concludes that dialogue is superior to monologue. A system based on reasoned dialogue is a more advanced technology, while a monologue is sure to result in alienation, fear and narrow protectionism.
According to University of Stockholm law professor Ronnie Eklund, "Canova's comparative study is an important contribution in the literature of comparative labor law, highlighting both significant similarities and differences in Swedish and American labor law and policy."
comparative labor law, subjects of bargaining doctrine, labor market policy, collective bargaining, codetermination act, Sweden, Swedish welfare state, industrial relations
Abstract: The approach of law and economics raised the visibility of the business law curriculum in legal education. But its narrow focus on efficiency and aggregate growth failed to explain the weaknesses of the orthodox free market model. In contrast, law and socioeconomics should enrich legal education by offering more compelling descriptions of market realities while also providing the opening for richer and wider discussions about alternative reform possibilities. Two legal fields that have acutely felt the pressures of globalization are labor and finance law. This article describes how both of these areas affect and are affected by globalization. The authors discuss the contribution of socioeconomics to our understanding of both the impacts of globalization on labor and finance, and potential responses to those impacts. They discuss the importance of consciously and explicitly recognizing the consequences of globalization and integrating socioeconomic concepts into our teaching of these areas of law.
Labor, Finance, Transnational, Globalization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Portfolio Capital, Monetary Policy, Fiscal Policy, Labor
Abstract: This book review provides a critique of Robert Solomon's' Money on the Move: The Revolution in International Finance since 1980'. According to the reviewer, Solomon has written a highly descriptive account of some of the major developments in global financial markets over the past two decades. His impressive compilation of events is couched in an objective, value-neutral narrative, thereby suggesting that the tide of orthodox policy reforms is as inevitable as the sun rising. But lurking just beneath the surface are the usual neoclassical assumptions that one might expect of a former chief international economist of the Federal Reserve Board: that markets work best when free of government restrictions; and that the best way for countries to foster economic development is to attract private foreign investment - particularly short-term portfolio capital. Solomon's Money on the Move represents a real contribution to global financial studies by providing an excellent description and chronology of events in global markets. But until more economists are willing to imagine alternative visions of progressive institutional reform, public discussion of global finance will remain trapped in a conformity that serves the interests of the few.
Portfolio Capital, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Monetary Policy, Fiscal Policy, Capital Restrictions, International Tax, Regulation
Abstract: According to University of Stockholm law professor Ronnie Eklund, ¿Canova's comparative study is an important contribution in the literature of comparative labor law, highlighting both significant similarities and differences in Swedish and American labor law and policy.¿ Management and labor are adversaries in both U.S. and Swedish industrial relations. The Swedish model, however, is marked by a continual dialogue between the adversaries with the objective of achieving mutual understanding on a wide range of issues. This dialogue has been fostered by Swedish labor law reforms, particularly the Swedish Act on Co-Determination, along with a comprehensive labor market policy to promote employment. The result of such reasoned dialogue is greater labor support for industrial restructurings and management support for the technological modernization of industry. The American system could better be characterized as a monologue. In the U.S. the legitimacy of union representation is systematically undermined by employer hostility, there are far fewer mandatory subjects of bargaining between labor and management, and there is no active labor market policy to comprehensively promote worker retraining and employment. American labor is in a more vulnerable position in terms of job insecurity in a time of rapid technological change. In this article, the author has translated and analyzed more than sixty cases of the Swedish Labour Court, including the leading cases arising from the Swedish Act on Co-Determination, and contrasted these holdings with the development of a restrictive ¿subjects of bargaining¿ doctrine under U.S. labor law. This article focuses on the legal bargaining duties of both Swedish and American employers. According to the author, the Swedish Act on Co-Determination has found significant acceptance among many employers and is a positive step towards increasing worker influence in management decisions. In contrast, American labor lacks a voice in the decision-making process due to the very restrictive legal development of bargaining duties. U.S. employers are not legally obligated to bargain over many of the most important decisions affecting American workers. As a result, labor and management consistently fail to reach consensus on the rationalization and technological development of industry. The author concludes that dialogue is superior to monologue. A system based on reasoned dialogue is a more advanced technology, while a monologue is sure to result in alienation, fear and narrow protectionism.
comparative labor law, subjects of bargaining doctrine, codetermination act, Sweden, Swedish welfare state, labor market policy, industrial relations, collective bargaining
Abstract: The authors of this article review the late E. Lynn Turgeon's contributions to economics, including his studies of the Soviet economy, use of qualitative and demographic analyses, his Keynesian critique of U.S. economic performance, and his critique of international financial markets. Turgeon's comparative approach led to unique insights about the challenges that confronted planned economies, including the differential impact of military spending on the demand-constrained economy of the United States and the supply-constrained economy of the Soviet Union. His study of the Soviet and planned economies also informed his analysis of the U.S. economy and international adjustment mechanisms. Turgeon argued for expansionary fiscal and neutral monetary policies, prudential restrictions on portfolio capital flows, and increased foreign direct investment and foreign assistance to shift the burdens of adjustment from deficit to surplus countries. Throughout his career, Turgeon measured economic policies by their effects on real people, including impacts on employment, the environment, living standards, and distributions of income and wealth.
Keynesian Economics, Comparative Economics, International Monetary Fund, Capitalist Development, World Bank
Abstract: This article focuses primarily on the monetary and exchange rate policies that are routinely promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an institution that is heavily influenced by U.S. Treasury Department views since the United States has an effective veto power in voting within the IMF. The thesis of this paper is that the range of responsible institutions - the IMF, the World Bank, and the U.S. Treasury, among them - are constrained by orthodox economic models. These institutions are essentially confined by ideological straight-jackets: their adherence to a particular set of policy responses in the face of mounting evidence of failure suggests a fear of open discussion and debate about alternative theories and modes of analysis. Part I of this paper will describe the ideological constraints arising from today's dominant trade theories. In Part II, the author analyzes the particular mix of policies pushed by the IMF and other institutions, and suggests that the policies themselves are undermining economic well-being and social and political stability. Part III offers alternative directions for policy. Part IV suggests that critics within the IMF and World Bank are already struggling to escape the confines of their ideological straight-jackets.
Latin America, International Monetary Fund, Exchange Rate Policy, Portfolio Capital, World Bank, Monetary Policy, Fiscal Policy
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