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If there’s one method economists have neglected the most, it’s qualitative research. Whereas economists favour mathematical models and statistics, qualitative research seeks to understand the world through intensive investigation of particular circumstances, which usually entails interviewing people directly about their experiences. While this may sound simple to quantitative types the style, purpose, context, and interpretation of an interview can vary widely. Because of this variety, I have written a longer post than usual on this topic rather than doing it a disservice. Having said that, examples of qualitative research in economics are sadly scant enough that it doesn’t warrant multiple posts. In this post I will introduce qualitative research in general with nods to several applications including the study of firm behaviour, race, Austrian economics, and health economics. More than usual I will utilise block quotes, which I feel is in the spirit of the topic.
Qualitative Methods in Economics: "You Can Observe a Lot Just by Watching"
As opposed to the conventional over-simplified assumption of self-interested individuals, strong evidence points towards the presence of heterogeneous other-regarding preferences in agents. Incorporating social preferences – specifically, trust and reciprocity - and recognizing the non-constancy of these preferences across individuals can help models better represent the reality.
A fresh perspective to economic theory: Social preferences and their impact on gender and policy
A central question in development economics literature is, “Why do countries stay poor?” The key disagreements are whether the lack of economic growth stems from institutions or from geography (Nunn 2009). From an institutional perspective, hostile tariff regimes and commodity price dependencies form a barrier to a sectoral shift that would otherwise lead to economic development in developing countries (Blink and Dorton 2011) (Stiglitz 2006).[i]
Trade Barriers to Development explored through various lenses
The notion that the demand and supply side are independent is a key feature of textbook undergraduate economics and of modern macroeconomic models. Economic output is thought to be constrained by the productive capabilities of the economy - the ‘supply-side' - through technology, demographics and capital investment. In the short run a boost in demand may increase GDP and employment due to frictions such as sticky wages, but over the long-term successive rises in demand without corresponding improvements on the supply side can only create inflation as the economy reaches capacity. In this post I will explore the alternative idea of demand-led growth, where an increase in demand can translate into long-run supply side gains. This theory is most commonly associated with post-Keynesian economics, though it has been increasingly recognised in the mainstream literature.
It’s Demand All the Way Down
Marx’s theory of the falling rate of profit is not only empirically borne out, but the theory he proposed seems to describe accurately how that happens. Furthermore, the whole process is useful for understanding the history of contemporary capitalism.
On the Rate of Profit
Economic sociology is an entire subfield and one could write an series on it, so I’m going to stick to probably the most prominent economic sociologist and the founder of ‘new economic sociology’, Mark Granovetter.
Economic Sociology: the Contributions of Mark Granovetter
Quinn Slobodian a historian of modern Germany and international history analysis of current development in the Mont Pèlerin Society and therefore neo-liberalism. He sees neo-liberalist thinkers less as believers in the self-healing power of markets, but more as ordo-liberal Globalists who wanted to protect the markets from post-war politics and especially mass democracy. Their goal of global capitalism is still strong, however sceptics in the Mont Pèlerin Society are rising, which see international migration as a threat to Globalisation. Therefore, turning neo-liberal policies away from international institutions like the EU back towards the national states as new defenders of the markets as well as international trade and investments.
(A development which can be seen in the Friedrich A. von Hayek-Gesellschaft and especially in the "liberal" wing of the German rightwing populist party AfD)
Neo-liberal Globalism and the Backlash from Within
In this lecture, Branko Milanovic gives an overview of the concept of inequality as conceptualized within the classical school of thought.
Income Inequality in Quesnay, Smith, Ricardo and Marx (Part 1: Quesnay, Smith)
This course will introduce key concepts, theories and methods from socioeconomics. The first part of the course, will deal with the main economic actors and how their interactions are governed. Markets are seen as sets of social institutions. Institutions shape how consumers, firms and other economic actors behave. While it is difficult to understand how novelty emerges, we can study the conditions that are conducive to innovation. We will review how economic performance, social progress and human wellbeing are measured and what progress has been made. In the second part of the course, we will study a specific macroeconomic model that accounts for biophysical boundaries and inequality.
Foundations in Socioeconomics
This course focus on the behaviour of individuals from an pluralist economic and an interdisciplinary bevavioural science apprach.
Actors, Behaviours and Decision Processes
This graduate-level course examines issues related to women’s paid and unpaid work during a time of rapid integration of world markets. Students will analyze the role of government policy, unions, corporate responsibility, and social movements in raising women's wages, promoting equal opportunity, fighting discrimination in the workplace, and improving working conditions.
Women and Work
This course is an introduction to Development Economics and is concerned with how economists have sought to explain how the process of economic growth occurs, and how – or whether – that delivers improved well-being of people.
Development Economics
Getting to the policy discussion table is one of the objectives pursued by feminist scholars and advocates. However, some participants in this process have remarked that “you cannot get to the policy discussion table until you have proven that you can crunch the numbers.”
Statistics for Feminists
This report to the DEFRA summarizes the main approaches, opportunities and difficulties that come with individual carbon trading.
A Rough Guide To Individual Carbon Trading
Is capitalism the context where gender inequalities are reproduced, or is capitalism something more than a context? What are the differences among women and how can we place them theoretically and politically. Reproductive work, is it a women’s work? These questions are disscused in a three-session workshop.
Feminist Economics
This syllabus provides an overview of the content of the Philosophy of Economics course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Philosophy of Economics
In a capitalist system, consumers, investors, and corporations orient their activities toward a future that contains opportunities and risks. How actors assess uncertainty is a problem that economists have tried to solve through general equilibrium and rational expectations theory. Powerful as these analytical tools are, they underestimate the future's unknowability by assuming that markets, in the aggregate, correctly forecast what is to come.
Imagined Futures
Economic development is a process of continuous technological innovation and structural transformation. Development thinking is inherently tied to the quest for sustainable growth strategies. This book provides a neoclassical approach for studying the determinants of economic structure and its transformation and draws new insights for development policy.
New Structural Economics
This book tells the story of the search for disequilibrium micro-foundations for macroeconomic theory, from the disequilibrium theories of Patinkin, Clower and Leijonhufvud to recent dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with imperfect competition.
Transforming Modern Macroeconomics
Three dominant forces worldwide are driving change today in our financial markets: competition, technology and regulation. But their collective impact in reshaping the markets, though they may be viewed individually as desirable or well-intentioned, is producing challenging results that are difficult to predict, hard to control and not easy to understand.
Rethinking Regulatory Structure
In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution.
The Great Transformation
Written by the Nobel Prize winners in Economics Robert Shiller and George Akerlof, this book shows how deception and manipulation play a big role in the economic behavior of individuals, as well as showing how the assumption of "perfect information" is far away from the truth. Through both quantitative data and stories of how to reduce this noxious phenomenon, the authors paint a pretty different picture of how markets really works in a hyper-communicative scenario like nowadays.
Phishing for Phools
The Currency of Politics explains why only through greater awareness of the historical limits of monetary politics can we begin to articulate more democratic conceptions of money.
The Currency of Politics
This essay focuses on the sources of government revenue within the Middle East and North African (MENA) region and proposes the implementation of a regional tax reset through increased taxation and tax reforms, deregulation in the private sector and economic diversification to reduce macroeconomic volatilities caused by the hydrocarbon industry.
Taxation in the MENA region
Exploring Economics, an open-access e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
The Political Economy of Inequalities
This article explores the production function, the prevailing view of capital that underpins it, and the main alternative perspective. By exploring these perspectives, the authors aim to provide students with a foundational understanding of the controversies surrounding the treatment of capital in production, a topic expressly excluded from mainstream textbooks.
Why We Should Think Twice About Production Functions
How has financialisation changed saving What are its implications on a macro economic level and from a welfare state perspective Craig Berry I PEEL
Saving
An essay of the writing workshop on contemporary issues in the field of Nigerian economics: The adverse effect of climate change is overwhelming, not just in Nigeria but globally. Global warming is the result of hostile human activities that have impacted the environment negatively. This is the principal variable the government should tackle through practical innovations such as the acceptable implementation of Adaptation Policies and also through the adequate implementation of environmental tax. These will enhance pro-environmental behaviour which is fit for socio-political and economic activities for sustainability.
The Role of Fiscal Policy in Climate Change Mitigation Via Environmental Management and Sustenance in Nigeria
Here we look at the effect of the 2008 Climate Change Act passed in Parliament in the United Kingdom as an effort to curb emissions in all sectors. The Act aside from setting goals to become a low-carbon economy sets up an independent committee on Climate Change to ensure the implementation of policies to comply with the ultimate goal of 80% reduction in total emissions in 2050. I make use of the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) to create a comparative case study in which the creation of a synthetic UK serves as a counterfactual where the treatment never occurred (Cunningham, 2018).
Synthetic Control Method for Estimating the Effect of the Climate Change Act of 2008 in Britain
In this TedTalk Dan O Neil explains why GDP and infinite growth are concepts that we should leave behind and which other perspectives have been developed Degrowth post growth well being or steady state economy The goal is to rethink a new paradigm that puts society and the environment at …
The Economics of Enough
Michael Kalecki famously remarked “I have found out what economics is; it is the science of confusing stocks with flows”. Stock-Flow Consistent (SFC) models were developed precisely to address this kind of confusion. The basic intuition of SFC models is that the economy is built up as a set of intersecting balance sheets, where transactions between entities are called flows and the value of the assets/liabilities they hold are called stocks. Wages are a flow; bank deposits are a stock, and confusing the two directly is a category error. In this edition of the pluralist showcase I will first describe the logic of SFC models – which is worth exploring in depth – before discussing empirical calibration and applications of the models. Warning that there is a little more maths in this post than usual (i.e. some), but you should be able to skip those parts and still easily get the picture.
Stock Flow Consistent Macroeconomics
The course will teach students to analyze the goals, implementation, and outcomes of economic policy.
Advanced Economic Policy 2
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