Arjun Jayadev

The Boom Not The Slump: The Right Time For Austerity

Arjun Jayadev et al. — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 07:05:14 PDT

Should the United States cut its deﬁcit in the short term? This has been the subject of intense debate among politicians, policy analysts and thinkers over the past year. What are the consequences of cutting the deﬁcit with interest rates low, unemployment high and growth uncertain?

The Correlates of Rentier Returns in OECD Countries

Arjun Jayadev et al. — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:52:14 PDT

This paper examines the correlates of rentier returns – returns to the ownership of financial assets -- in a sample of OECD countries between 1960 and 2000. We develop a simple bargaining model among three classes – industrial capitalists, rentiers and workers – and show that rentier income returns increase when domestic and foreign real interest rates costs of capital mobility fall, and the power of labor declines. Using an unbalanced panel dataset, the paper also econometrically investigates the impacts of proxies for these variables on rentier incomes. We find that interest rate liberalization, the reduction in the unionization rate of labor, and increased returns from foreign financial investments increase rentier returns. These results provide support both for the simple model and for common Post-Keynesian and Marxian stories of the impact of financialization and neo-liberal policy changes on income shares.

Estimating Guard Labor

Arjun Jayadev — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:52:10 PDT

As a background paper to Jayadev and Bowles (2006), this paper provides details on our measure of guard labor as we measure these in labor units. Data from the United States indicate a significant increase in its extent in the U.S. over the period 1890 to the present. Cross-national comparisons show a significant statistical association between income inequality and the fraction of the labor force that is constituted by guard labor, as well as with measures of political legitimacy (inversely) and political conflict.

Financial liberalization and its distributional consequences: An empirical exploration

Arjun Jayadev — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:52:07 PDT

Although there has been growing interest in the social impacts of financial deregulation in economies across the world, a large research gap persists. Despite voluminous literature, there has been very little empirical work addressing the distributional consequences of a liberal financial regime. ^ This dissertation seeks to make such an assessment. Developing a theoretical model and a new and improved index of deregulation, this dissertation uses panel data analysis to test the effects of international capital mobility on the share of labor in national income. The results suggest that capital account openness reduces the labor share of national income, thereby providing evidence for the thesis that capital mobility alters the bargaining power of labor and capital to the detriment of the former. ^ The cross country study is supplemented by two case studies of India and Indonesia which assess the impacts of both international and domestic deregulation on other aspects of distribution. The results suggest that despite the contrasting approaches to financial liberalization, in both economies it has considerably reduced the scope for policy makers to undertake egalitarian developmental policies and to protect vulnerable sections of society. ^

The Class Content of Preferences Towards Anti-Inflation and Anti Unemployment Policies

Arjun Jayadev — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:52:04 PDT

This paper assesses class based preferences towards anti-inflationary and anti-unemployment policy. Using a consistent cross-country social survey, I find that the working class broadly defined, and those with lower occupational skill and status are more likely to prioritize combating unemployment rather than inflation. The result is robust to the inclusion of several plausible controls. The idea that the working class is less ‘relatively inflation averse’ is consistent with earlier predictions coming from large body of political economy research in the 1970s. The finding that inflation and unemployment aversion have a distinct class character has implications for current debates on the implications of macroeconomic policies such as inflation targeting.

Garrison America

Samuel Bowles et al. — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:52:00 PDT

Samuel Bowles and Arjun Jayadev estimate that America devotes about a quarter of its labor force to conflicts over dividing up the pie rather than producing it--far more than other nations. Inequality may be among the reasons.

Guard Labor: An Essay in Honor of Pranab Bardhan

Samuel Bowles et al. — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:51:56 PDT