This book deals with the social costs of markets from a heterodox perspective. It deals with the degrading of work, decline of community, and rising income inequality in the United States as markets and especially financial markets come to dominate society. Of course, if there is an attempt to point out the social costs of markets, the response of mainstream economists is to silence the critics or even in Orwellian fashion redefine their critiques so as to eliminate any negative comments about markets. While critique is necessary, there also needs to be a constructive agenda, that is, the developing of an alternative, heterodox economic theory. So overall the book presents a critique of the social costs markets and the beginning of a heterodox economic theory of how the capitalist market system actually works.
Frederic S. Lee is a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He has published extensively on heterodox microeconomics, on the history of heterodox economics. He was the editor of the Heterodox Economics Newsletter and the executive director of ICAPE. He is currently the editor of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. He has published in numerous heterodox journals including the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Review of Radical Political Economics, Review of Social Economy, and the Journal of Economic Issues.
Editor's Introduction 1
An Essay on Distributive Justice and the Equal Ownership of Natural Resources John Pullen 6
Degraded Work, Declining Community, Rising Inequality, and the Transformation of the Protestant Ethic in America: 1870-1930 Jon D. Wisman Matthew E. Davis 37
The Making of the Institutional Theory of Social Costs: Discovering the K. W. Kapp and J. M. Clark Correspondence Sebastian Berger 68
The Problem of Epistemic Cost: Why Do Economists Not Change Their Minds (About the "Coase Theorem")? Altug Yalcintas 93
Financialization and Income Inequality in the United States, 1967-2010 Bradford M. Van Arnum Michele I. Naples 120
Conspicuous Consumption as Routine Expenditure and its Place in the Social Provisioning Process Zdravka Todorova 145
Classical Surplus Theory and Heterodox Economics Nuno Ornelas Martins 167
Schumpeter, Commons, and Veblen on Institutions Theofanis Papageorgiou Ioannis Katselidis Panayotis G. Michaelides 194
Lost in Translation: Why Generalized Darwinism is a Misleading Strategy for Studying Socioeconomic Evolution George Liagouras 217
When Heterodoxy Becomes Orthodoxy: Ecological Economics in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Óscar Carpintero 249
Are Mainstream and Heterodox Economists Different? An Empirical Analysis Michele Di Maio 277
Index 311