A review essay on Ronald Findlay, Lars Jonung and Mats Lundahl, eds. Bertil Ohlin: Centennial Celebration (1899–1999). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Pp. xvi, 546. $60.00.The…
Abstract
A review essay on Ronald Findlay, Lars Jonung and Mats Lundahl, eds. Bertil Ohlin: Centennial Celebration (1899–1999). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Pp. xvi, 546. $60.00. The Swedish economist Bertil Ohlin was born in 1899 and died in 1979. Less than half of his professional life he spent as a full time academic scholar in economics. He was a student at the University of Stockholm and was supervised by his teachers, Gustav Cassel and Eli Heckscher. In 1922, Ohlin presented his licentiat thesis where he set out the ideas later conceptualised as the Heckscher-Ohlin model. Two years later, in 1924, he took his doctoral degree under Cassel with a dissertation simply called Handelns teori (The Theory of Trade). A longer version of this dissertation was later published in English as Interregional and International Trade (1933). This work made him a famous trade theorist in a line of tradition going back to Ricardo and Torrens. Paul Samuelson in 1941 coined and immortalised the term “the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem” which he and Wolfgang Stolper developed further in a famous article in the Review of Economic Studies (1941) entitled “Protection and Real Wages.” Already at the age of 26 the bright young man Ohlin became a professor in economics at the University of Copenhagen and five years later he was appointed to a chair in the same subject at Handelshogskolan (The Stockholm School of Economics) in Stockholm.
The article questions a recent interpretation of increased intergenerational sharecropping in Haiti as a labour‐mobilising device and offers a re‐interpretation based on the…
Abstract
The article questions a recent interpretation of increased intergenerational sharecropping in Haiti as a labour‐mobilising device and offers a re‐interpretation based on the increasing relative price of land.
In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of…
Abstract
In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.
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This paper revisits old questions of the proper subject and bounds of economics: does economics study “provisioning”? or markets? or a method of reasoning, self‐interested…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper revisits old questions of the proper subject and bounds of economics: does economics study “provisioning”? or markets? or a method of reasoning, self‐interested rational optimization?
Design/methodology/approach
A variety of scholars and others in many fields make use of a taxonomy of society consisting of three “spheres”: markets, governments, and communities. It is argued here that this tripartite taxonomy of society is fundamental and exhaustive. A variety of ways of understanding this taxonomy are explored, especially Fiske's (1991, 2004) “Relational models theory.” Then – after communities and their products, social goods, are defined more thoroughly – a visual model of interactions among the three spheres is presented.
Findings
The model is first used briefly to understand the historical development of markets. The model is then applied to understanding how economic thinking and market ideology, including the notion of social capital, can be destructive of communities and their production of social goods (and their production of social capital as well).
Research limitations/implications
It is not possible to measure these effects monetarily, so calculating precisely “how this affects results” in a standard economic model is impossible.
Practical implications
Nevertheless we could better prepare students for real‐world analysis, and better serve our clients, including the public, if – whenever relevant, such as in textbook introductions and in benefit/cost analyses – we made them aware of the limitations of economic analysis with respect to communities and social goods.
Originality/value
The three‐spheres model offered here, based on Fiske's “Relational models theory,” facilitates this awareness.
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Marianne Dovemark and Dennis Beach
The main policy discourses in education in Sweden now emphasise personal flexibility, creativity, responsibility for learning and freedom of choice for learners and the aim to…
Abstract
The main policy discourses in education in Sweden now emphasise personal flexibility, creativity, responsibility for learning and freedom of choice for learners and the aim to produce creative, motivated, alert, inquiring, self-governing and flexible users and developers as opposed to just recipient reproducers of knowledge. These curriculum ideas are reflected in National Curricula (such as Lpo 94; Lpf 94) in statements relating to such things as “students developing capacities to take personal responsibility for learning…by taking part in planning and evaluation and by choosing courses, subjects, themes and activities” (Lpo 94, p. 85). However they derive from policy writing at the political level of the education system internationally (Zackari, 2001) as exemplified in writing such as OECD (1992) and (1995), which states that individual schools should create their own profiles and help individual pupils to influence the content of their studies’ (OECD, 1995, s. 137) and exhort the “willingness and ability of individual citizens and families to take responsibility for choices and priorities of their own” (OECD, 1995, s. 86). These ideas have filtered through things like official national propositions (Dir. 1991, p. 117; SOU, 1992, p. 94) and reports (e.g. Skolverkets rapport 1999, p. 443) to the arenas of action comprised by schools and colleges, where they are developed into new working aims for our modern schools and are described as contributing toward a new school vision (see also Lundahl, 2001).
We are undergoing a “subtle revolution” (Smith 1979) in the traditional relationship of women to work and family. One indicator of this change is the massive increase in women's…
Abstract
We are undergoing a “subtle revolution” (Smith 1979) in the traditional relationship of women to work and family. One indicator of this change is the massive increase in women's economic activity, especially among married women with children. The total labour force of OECD countries increased by around 30 million in the 1950s and 1960s, and by 43 million in the 1970s. In the first two decades women's contribution to the increase was slightly more than half, whereas in the last decade it amounted to 63.8 per cent. In the European OECD countries women's share of labour force change in the 1970s was even higher and amounted to 96.4 per cent (OECD 1984:10, 11).
This study aims to consider the complexities of planning and implementation of a reform in the Swedish system of higher vocational education and training (VET). The study object…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to consider the complexities of planning and implementation of a reform in the Swedish system of higher vocational education and training (VET). The study object of this article is the Swedish reform with advanced vocational education (AVE). The two main questions the study aims to address are: “What are the main driving forces behind the formulation of AVE?” and “How is AVE implemented into the system of continuing vocational training?”.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is designed as a multiple case study, exploring different issues in the reform of AVE. These issues comprise organisation and structure, workplace learning and transition from AVE into working life. From a theoretical perspective, this study uses the analytical model of educational reform development by Lindensjö and Lundgren where reforms are perceived to take place at two different contexts in society.
Findings
The findings of this study suggest that with AVE a number of educational innovative features were introduced which generally had a positive impact. From the context of formulation, findings suggest that consensus among the central level stakeholders for how AVE should be designed was reached through the joint work of organising programmes during the three‐year pilot project, in combination with the concurrent restructuring of working life. From the context of realisation both educationalists and employers perceived the possibility of designing AVE programmes in co‐operation based on local level requirements as positive.
Research limitations/implications
To achieve demands for validity and trustworthiness, this study uses multiple sources of data gathering, applying data‐triangulation. Nonetheless, this study has some methodological limitations that need to be addressed. In terms of theoretical perspective, the analytical model could appear as simplifying the complex social processes that take place when reforms are being implemented in educational institutions and within working life.
Originality/value
This study provides evidence that developments in Swedish society and working life have together created conflicting demands among the stakeholders about how VET should be organised, the mode of delivery and relations towards the labour market.