Markets and Democracy: Participation, Accountability and Efficiency

by Edited by Samuel Bowles , Herbert Gintis , Bo Gustafsson

• ISBN13: 9780521064118
• ISBN10: 0521064112
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-06-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The market does not spontaneously generate democratic or participatory economic institutions. This book asks whether a modern, efficient economy can be rendered democratically accountable and, if so, what strategic changes might be required to regulate the market-mediated interaction of economic agents. The contributors bring contemporary microeconomic theory to bear on a range of related issues, including the relationship between democratic firms and efficiency in market economies; incentives and the relative merits of various forms of internal democratic decision-making; and the effects of democratically accountable firms on innovation, saving, investment, and on the informational and disciplinary aspects of markets. Various approaches to the study of economic interaction (game theory, transactions' cost analysis, social choice theory, rent-seeking, etc.) are considered in an attempt to understand the relationship between power and efficiency in market economies.

Table of Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Preface Bo Gustafsson

Post-Walrasian political economy

Agency, Incentives, and Democratic Accountability

The democratic firm: an agency-theoretic evaluation

Alternative employment and payment systems

Institutions and Institutional Change

Toward a framework for analyzing institutions and institutional change

Imperfect choice and rule-governed behaviour

Organizational equilibria and institutional stability

Agency problems and the future of comparative systems' theory

Conditions For the Success of the Democratic Firm

After the employment relation: problems on the road to enterprise democracy

Unions versus cooperatives

Demand variability and work organization

Democracy versus appropriability: can labor-managed firms flourish in a capitalist world?

Productivity, Distribution, and Power

Cooperation, conflict, and control in organizations

Wage bargaining and the choice of production technique in capitalist firms

Ownership, Participation, and Capital Markets

The motivational role of an external agent in the informationally-participatory firm

Unstable ownership

The simple analytics of a membership market in a labor-managed economy

Political Democracy and Economic Democracy

Investment planning in market socialism Ignacio Ortuno-Ortin

Capitalism and Democracy: a summing up of the arguments

Bibliography

Author Index

Subject index

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