This article analyzes the history of the Chilean personal income tax (PIT) to explain the persistence of a class-based and progressive PIT within a context of a regressive fiscal system. We provide new archival evidence regarding fiscal politics since the nineteenth century to estimate the generalization of the PIT between 1925 and 2014. Combining statistical information and parliamentary records, we follow the PIT’s trajectory in relation to elites’ self-interest, paternalistic understandings of the fiscal pact and citizenship, and the looming presence of natural resources. By keeping the PIT class-based, allegedly to protect workers, fiscal politics defined citizenship through expenditure instead of taxation. Those excluded from income taxation bear the brunt of indirect taxes—which support social spending—albeit without voice over fiscal policies.

This paper studies the effects of social status—a socially recognized ranking of individuals—on prosocial behavior. We use a laboratory experiment and propose a theory to address this issue. In a one-shot game, two players, whose social status is either earned or randomly assigned, jointly make effort contributions to a project. Player 1 first suggests an effort level for each player to player 2 who then determines the actual effort levels. Deviation from the proposal is costly. We find causal evidence that high-status players are less selfish than their low-status counterparts. In particular, high-status players 2 provide relatively more effort, ceteris paribus, than those with low status. The experimental results and theoretical framework suggest that a high social ranking yields more social behavior and that this can be attributed to the sense of responsibility that it gives.

In this paper we explore the micro-level determinants of conformity. Members of the social networking service Facebook express positive support to content on the website by clicking a Like button. We set up a natural field experiment to test whether users are more prone to support content if someone else has done so before. To find out to what extent conformity depends on group size and social ties we use three different treatment conditions: (1) one stranger has Liked the content, (2) three strangers have Liked the content, and (3) a friend has Liked the content. The results show that one Like from a single stranger had no impact. However, increasing the size of the influencing group doubled the probability that subjects expressed positive support. Friendship ties were also decisive. People were, on average, four times more likely to press the Like button if a friend, rather than a stranger, had done so before them. The existence of threshold effects in our experiment clearly shows that both group size and social proximity matters when opinions are shaped.

This paper studies the effect of social relations on convergence to the efficient equilibrium in 2 × 2 coordination games from an experimental perspective. We employ a 2 × 2 factorial design in which we explore two different games with asymmetric payoffs and two matching protocols: “friends” versus “strangers”. In the first game, payoffs by the worse-off player are the same in the two equilibria, whereas in the second game, this player will receive lower payoffs in the efficient equilibrium. Surprisingly, the results show that “strangers” coordinate more frequently in the efficient equilibrium than “friends” in both games. Network measures such as in-degree, out-degree and betweenness are all positively correlated with playing the strategy which leads to the efficient outcome but clustering is not. In addition, ‘envy’ explains no convergence to the efficient outcome.

Collusive agreements in the form of corporate cartels are complex structures. The involved firms need to agree on terms that are legally not enforceable. However, the interplay between the involved firms in a collusive agreement, i.e., the governance dimension within a cartel, has received surprisingly low attention. Using a comprehensive OECD dataset of 191 cartels from 2012 to 2018, this paper empirically demonstrates how polycentric governance within a cartel may possibly contribute to understanding its stability. It may be beneficial for the duration and lower sanctions imposed by competition authorities, especially for large cartels. By that, the paper sheds new light on two aspects: the entangled governance structures of corporate cartels and the relevance of the concept of polycentricity beyond public administration.

Non-standard patterns of paid work are increasing in Australia, and young people are among the most affected. To investigate the impact of non-standard work schedules on young people’s relationships, this article draws on data from 50 interviews conducted in 2008 and 4 surveys conducted between 2007 and 2012 with 636 young people (aged 18–24 years), all participating in the Life Patterns Project longitudinal study of youth in Australia. Over the 6 years, a majority of participants were engaged in non-standard work, working weekends, evenings or public holidays. A significant minority also faced weekly variability in their work schedules. The interview data suggest that these patterns of employment can be considered unsocial, making it more difficult to find regular periods of time together with a group of friends. Interview discussion also suggests that as a substitute for a greater quantity of shared time, some young people seek out shared experiences felt to be intense or out of the ordinary, such as that facilitated by alcohol consumption, to make the most of limited opportunities to bond with a group of close friends.

When viewed against its ostensibly successful management of the global economic crisis between 2008 and 2013, growing electoral disenchantment with the Australian Labor Party government during that time defied standard explanations and calls for further analysis. A major reason for the party’s electoral loss in 2013 was arguably popular disappointment with its eschewal of social democratic principles. Notwithstanding some progressive measures initiated between 2008 and 2013, successive Australian Labor Party governments were constrained by neoliberal strictures, even when they chose to implement progressive policies. Whatever other reasons exist for its decline in popularity between 2007 and 2013, the Australian Labor Party’s unwillingness or inability to mark out a clear alternative to neoliberalism was fundamental. In making this case, this article uses the conceptual framework of ‘depoliticisation’, defined as the displacement of policy decisions from the sphere of democratic accountability and public debate, making them matters for regulation by technocratic experts operating according to supposed edicts of the market.

The aim of the article is to analyse the functions that dividends perform in contractual relationships between public companies’ executives and shareholders. The author analyses the income function of dividend, but also considers its sociological aspects. Talcott Parsons' social system theory is the main point of reference, especially, the concept of contract institution. The article justifies the thesis on the relevance of dividends in shaping the equilibrium of power, information policy and the composition of shareholders in a joint-stock company. Dividend policy has a great regulatory potential, which is important in the face of various crises occurring in contemporary capitalism.

In this paper, we present results from of a large-scale replication of Hodgson and Rothman's (1999, The Economic Journal, 109(453): 165–186) seminal analysis of the institutional and geographical concentration of authors publishing in top economic journals. We analyze bibliometric data of more than 49,000 articles published in a set of 30 highly influential economic journals between 1990 and 2018. Based on a random sample of 3,253 authors, we further analyze the PhD-granting institutions of the authors under study to better scrutinize the claim of an ‘institutional oligopoly’. The findings confirm the long-term persistence of strong oligopolistic structures in terms of both, author affiliations as well as PhD-granting institutions.

In this paper we comparatively explore three claims concerning the disciplinary character of economics by means of citation analysis. The three claims under study are: (1) economics exhibits strong forms of institutional stratification and, as a byproduct, a rather pronounced internal hierarchy; (2) economists strongly conform to institutional incentives; and (3) modern mainstream economics is a largely self-referential intellectual project mostly inaccessible to disciplinary or paradigmatic outsiders. The validity of these claims is assessed by means of an interdisciplinary comparison of citation patterns aiming to identify peculiar characteristics of economic discourse. In doing so, we emphasize that citation data can always be interpreted in different ways, thereby focusing on the contrast between a “cognitive” and an “evaluative” approach towards citation data.

The probability of a business paying various amounts of money for ane-commerce presence ultimately depends on demographic features, experienceswith e-commerce from a buyer's and seller's perspective, technologicalexpertise, and knowledge of e-commerce opportunities and limitations.Estimating functions to assign probabilities associated with the willingnessto pay for an e-commerce presence will assist in forecasting regionallikelihood of certain profiles paying various monetary amounts for ane-commerce presence. In addition, if services are provided at no cost by athird party, value to a society will be maximized by selecting profiles withthe highest willingness to pay.

The foundation of specialised economic journals was one of the main traits in the process of institutionalisation of political economy in 19th century Western Europe. Spain joined this trend at an early stage and in the 1850s and 1860s some specialised, albeit ephemeral, journals sponsored by the liberal school of economic thought – the Economist School – emerged. However, when these reviews ceased publication, Spanish economists lacked specialised periodicals as an outlet for their contributions. Miscellaneous literary reviews addressing a wider audience represented an alternative for the diffusion of economic papers into educated society, sharing space with many other scientific and literary disciplines. This paper analyses the presence of texts on political economy in four of the most important of these reviews in the period 1868-1914, when Spain lacked economic publications. In spite of not being specialised reviews, these publications played a central role in the process of diffusion and popularisation of political economy as a valuable field of knowledge, acting as a good substitute for specifically economic journals.

Macroeconomic theory clearly suggests that at the zero lower bound, fiscal contraction will reduce output and slow any recovery. Yet in 2010 the focus of fiscal policy in many countries switched from supporting activity to reducing debt, despite the fact that the recovery from recession often appeared weak. While high levels of public debt can explain this switch in some countries, it does not provide a satisfactory account in others. In addition, the possibility of using balanced budget fiscal expansion or tax switches that bring forward spending remain largely unexplored. This paper suggests that policy has been influenced by an opposition to countercyclical fiscal policy which has ideological roots.

Cet article s'intéresse à la façon dont un sociologue, fondateur de ce que l'on appelle aujourd'hui la « New Economie Sociology », Harrison White, a repris presque à l'identique le modèle d'un économiste, Michael Spence, sur les relations employeurs / employés en situation d'asymétrie d'information et ce, afin de bâtir son propre modèle des marchés.

Il s'agit plus précisément de montrer que cet emprunt (méthodologique) cache en réalité des différences plus profondes entre les deux auteurs, et de déterminer dans quelle mesure il peut donner un éclairage nouveau concernant les rapports entre économie et sociologie.