Economia Politica. Rivista di teoria e analisi

Abstracts of articles published in no.2, 2000

Sommari degli articoli pubblicati nel n.2, 2000

Index 2000 (not available)
Content of no.2, 2000

Summaries

Introductory Note

Some Reflections on Education
by Giannino Parravicini
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During the last forty years education in Italy has undergone a profound transformation which, in many sectors and n many cases, has led to a deterioration in teaching. Universities, in particular, have been burdened with a growing demand to satisfy simultaneously two contrasting requirements the need to increase their presence, also as a supplement to secondary schools which have become inadequate, and the necessity to raise the quality of teaching subsequent to strong scientific and technological progress and the new cultural demand. If one agrees that universities have responded, although not always in a satisfactory manner, to the first requirement, it must be added that they have not given a tangible response to the second. One can say that the establishment of the research doctorate is the only response that has been found, limited however to students who intend dedicating their careers to further study. A real response to the second requirement, accomplished by extending the duration of study, has been achieved essentially through the affirmation and subsequent expansion of the length of university education thanks to the availability of post-doc scholarships to be used mainly abroad. Thus a new phase of superior studies, which is neither part of a public structure nor publicly regulated, has been added to university teaching. It is a free and spontaneous development of high level studies, in a system in which the students, and not the educators, are the creative force. It is a return to the system of roving scholars who, during the Middle Ages, rescued culture from the darkness into which it had receded.

Articles

Roy Harrod's Quest for a Rational Approach to Economic Dynamics. A Case Study (J.E.L.: B031)
by Daniele Besomi
This article inquires into the conditions for the spreading and the success of economic ideas. The case under examination is the strange fate to which Roy Harrod's dynamic theory was subject: although some of his results were incorporated in textbooks, he felt compelled to complain of misinterpretations and misplaced emphasis, and reputed his own approach as more fundamental than mainstream dynamic economics. Harrod was trying to lay the rational foundations of a new theory of cycles and growth without notice by his contemporaries of his attempt. Harrod's failure to win recognition provides an interesting subject for historians of thought, as it enables to appreciate that the production of bright ideas and heuristically valid postulates are not sufficient to convince fellow scientists to adopt a system of thought. Other conditions also seem to be necessary: the author must be able to present his ideas as somewhat new yet belonging to some tradition within the discipline, and must be able to convince researchers that the chosen approach represents the rational solution to the problem at hand.

The Teaching of Economics in the Engineering Faculties (J.E.L.: A2)
by Adriano Birolo
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In this note, topics and sequence of the economic courses within the curricula of the Engineering faculties are discussed. The non-harmonisation of the topics of the economic courses with the cultural and formative design of the Engineering faculties can be seen as an important, though not exclusive, reason to explain why economics is slid into the present marginal position.

Cooperation and Competition in the Learning Organization: Preliminar Results from a Simulation Model (J.E.L.: O33, J41)
by Gian Carlo Cainarca and Francesca Sgobbi
The paper deals with the transaction of labour within the Learning Organisation (LO), i.e. the organisation which turns knowledge creation and knowledge sharing into critical success factors. The model of the LO has gained increasing attention from both the managerial and the academic world thanks to its prospective capability to deal with higher degrees of uncertainty and change than the "traditional" Fordist-Taylorist organisation. In the LO the emphasis on workers as potential knowledge creators derives from recognising the presence of an "intellectual" component into the supplied effort. As a consequence, the metaphor of labour as a "material resource" results no more suitable, and new mechanisms are needed to motivate and to fuel the employees' commitment. In particular, the paper models the interaction among workers at a LO where the principal sets a bonus for those who provide the better performance both in terms of physical productivity and organisational knowledge increase. The workers' commitment to the LO's targets results from the contemporary presence of both co-operative and competitive forces. The model, which builds on Akerlof's model of "gifts exchange" between employer and employees and on the closed rank tournament theory, has been implemented into a simulation programme which relaxes the neo-classical constraint on the individuals' perfect rationality. The parameters driving the tournament outcome relate to the environment where the LO operates, on LO itself, and the characteristics of workers, which are allowed for not homogeneity. The simulations point out the existence of a threshold for the intensity of competition, beyond which the benefits resulting from the accelerated accumulation of organisational knowledge are more than balanced by the lack of motivation of those workers excluded from the competition for the higher bonuses. The simulations also show how the co-operative rather than competitive nature of industrial relations within the LO depends from the boundary conditions which shape the internal and external labour markets.

Economics and the Principle of Uniformity (J.E.L.: B41)
by Donald W. Katzner
This paper argues that both aspects of the principle of uniformity, namely, substantive uniformitarianism or the statement that the rates of change of processes are constant through time, and methodological uniformitarianism or the more general assertion that the laws governing phenomena are invariant over time and across space, have no place in economic explanation because they preclude the consideration of significant components of economic reality. In particular, cultural differences are likely to cause economic laws to vary across space, and the realities of historical time are likely to render both economic laws and rates of change nonconstant through time.

Concorrenza posizionale in istruzione, mobilità e crescita (J.E.L.: J24, J62, C45, D62)
di Raimondello Orsini
In un modello a generazioni sovrapposte con razionamento del credito, l'accumulazione di capitale umano è soggetta a due diverse forme di esternalità: oltre ai consueti effetti esterni positivi derivanti dai benefici sociali dell'istruzione, vi è una esternalità posizionale dovuta al fatto che ogni agente prende le proprie decisioni di consumo e investimento sapendo che la remunerazione del proprio lavoro sarà basata sul livello relativo di capitale umano posseduto, e non sul suo livello assoluto. Le simulazioni numeriche del modello, caratterizzato da particolari ipotesi riguardo al comportamento degli agenti e alla struttura delle retribuzioni dei fattori di produzione, mostrano una relazione positiva tra mobilità sociale, livello di meritocrazia e crescita economica.

Review Article

Habit Forming Preferences: The Role of the Rationality Hypothesis (J.E.L.: D11, D19)
by Maria De Paola
The aim of this paper is to present in a systematic and critical way the literature on habit forming preferences in order to understand the role played in these models by the hypothesis on individual rationality. Overall, the question raised is whether the possible causes of endogenous preference depend on the hypothesis concerning individual rationality and whether the idea of endogenous preferences is compatible with any of these hypotheses, or if, on the contrary, there is any extreme rationality hypothesis that undermine its content. In trying to answer these questions the most important myopic and rational habit forming models and the interpretation that the case base decision theory gives to the phenomena of changing preferences are analysed.

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