My diverse research experience concentrates on the dynamics of exchange.
Dissertation: How to Talk - Richard Whately, the Constitutional Conversation, Informal Social Groups, and Reform
Abstract:
This thesis describes opens the black box of “government by discussion” by examining the place of sympathetic exchange in shaping social order through the catallactic lens of Richard Whately. James Buchanan taught us to think about the constitutional stage of rule development. The social contract is the outcome of a conversation, and language is the currency for sympathetic exchange. Therefore, the conversation itself must be governed by rules. The rules of conversation are partially determinative of the constitution that emerges from the constitutional stage. The right constraints on conversation are essential to establishing a legitimate liberal constitution. Whately provides instruction on how to talk, and he walks the walk.
In informal settings, rules for social interaction emerge, just as price emerges in a market. Informal social groups develop a tacit social contract embodied in a repertoire. Informal social groups lack an authorized decision maker, so they have difficulty engaging in exchanges as a unit. Formal associations may emerge from an informal social group, like firms emerging in the market, with local decision makers authorized to engage in exchanges. Formal associations may pursue social profits or social rents, analogous to a market firm. Informal factions may also develop within an informal social group. Factions may simply be specialized sub-groups, or they may adopt party-spirit that demonstrates antipathy to outsiders.
Whately is an exemplar of the sort of engagement in policy development that economists should do, setting the mold that Vining and Buchanan later describe in the abstract. Whately was more involved in the discussions over abolition than has previously been explored. He promotes a plan for compensated emancipation that provides a Pareto improvement for all parties concerned by introducing a revenue neutral shift to a self assessed tax and political representation, inclusion in the discussion over shared rules.
International Trade
I collaborated with others in the Office of Economics and the Office of Industry in the production of reports and papers including statistical analysis of international trade, foreign direct investment, total factor productivity, and intellectual property.
Gazelles and Gazillias in India and China with Michael Ferrantino, Megha Mukim, and Allison Pearson
Abstract:
In the literature on firm-level data, “gazelles” refer to rapidly-growing firms, which are of interest both because of their disproportionate contribution to employment and as an indicator of entrepreneurship. This paper makes three contributions: (1) It focuses on gazelles in China and India, whereas the current literature uses OECD data; (2) It examines the relationship between gazelles and exporting; (3) It focuses on “gazillas,” very large firms which also grow rapidly, and which may be archetypal of the development of markets in a given country. Gazelles exist in all sectors in both China and India. On the margin, exporters of goods are more likely to be gazelles in both China and India, but many non-exporters are gazelles, suggesting that there are substantial opportunities in selling to the domestic market. In both countries, state-owned enterprises are less likely on average to be gazelles and foreign-owned enterprises are more likely, but there are significant counterexamples. Prominent gazillas in China include both foreign-invested enterprises (e.g. Foxconn), which are export-intensive, and state-owned enterprises (e.g. units of Sinopec), which focus on the domestic market. In India, gazillas are featured in both software and in recently reformed service sectors, such as telecom, where they have been key to the explosive diffusion of mobile phones in the last 20 years.
Trade, Offshoring, and U.S. Multinational Corporation Employment in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector, 1999-2008 with Samira Salem, Laura Bloodgood, Isaac Wohl, & Cathy Jabara
Abstract:
A decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs over the last several decades has intensified the spotlight on the role that international trade and offshoring play in determining employment. Despite a growing literature on the subject, the impact of trade and offshoring on manufacturing sector employment is not clear. This study uses qualitative and quantitative analysis to investigate the relationship between trade, offshoring, and U.S. manufacturing employment between 1999 and 2008. As part of the investigation, we examine whether employment is affected by the level of income in countries that originate imports into the United States and/or that benefit from offshoring by U.S. companies. Using a dynamic econometric model and industry-level data, we obtained results that partially support findings in the literature suggesting that location matters when it comes to offshoring. In our preferred specification, we find that offshoring to high-income countries is complementary with U.S. employment (U.S. employment in manufacturing is higher when affiliate employment in high-income countries is higher), while offshoring to low-income countries has little effect on U.S. employment in the manufacturing sector. With regard to trade, higher import penetration is associated with lower U.S. manufacturing employment. However, the data do not permit us to distinguish meaningfully between imports from high-income and low-income countries.
Law and Economics Consulting
I provided economic and econometric analysis of matters involving intellectual property, standard essential patents, pay television, and undersea cable investment. Work is proprietary to clients.
Independent Consultant to Criterion Economics, LLC
Political Economy of Religious Organizations
I investigate the collective decision making of religious organizations in isolation, in relationship to one another, and in relationship to secular groups and government.
Abstract:
Public Choice explains the composition of the Evangelical Coalition, why fringe groups identify as Evangelical despite marginalization by the core of the Coalition, and under what circumstances the composition of the Coalition shifts. As the democratic franchise expands direct influence of religion over state decisions decreases. Evangelicalism is a political coalition among religious factions that emerges to capture the median voter and maintain influence over secular politics. Among pluralistic populations no single religious organization can capture the median voter, so collusion among rival religious factions emerges as the Evangelical Coalition. The problem of agenda control over that coalition leads to factional competition. The distribution of those factions is multi-dimensional. Electoral chaos provides a model for movement within and entry and exit from the Evangelical Coalition by marginal factions. I provide snapshots of the composition of the Evangelical Coalition and the dominant faction within the Coalition over time as evidence of electoral cycling.
History of Economic Thought
I am interested in the interaction between Theology, Missiology, and Political Economy in the development of each discipline. I look at key events and doctrines and to discover how exchanges occur across disciplinary lines.
Abolishing Transitional Gains Traps
Abstract:
Slavery was abolished in Great Britain through the compensation principle. Evangelical Christians had a role in bringing about this improvement. By their aid a transitional gains trap may have been escaped. However, the Pareto efficiency losses were not fully compensated for. Reform was successful, but at some expense.
In searching for a practical definition of “doing justice” I employ the theory of transitional gains traps and analyze abolitionism. Through spectatorship, sympathy can develop within individuals motivating them to action and personal expense on behalf of innocents. This mechanism for internalizing efficiency losses is effective for overcoming injustices. However, broader application and appeals to sympathy become misdirected when channeled through legislative procedures. Reform becomes more likely, but the efficiency losses are imposed upon the losers of a coalition-building competition. Abolitionism held sufficient appeal to galvanize a new Evangelical coalition, that when joined to Utilitarians effected reform. Modern Evangelical coalition builders would point out the reform without accounting for the costs. Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill provide arguments for the development of sympathy and spectatorship in motivating reform. My own contribution identifies personal sacrificial action as an effective catapult out of transitional gains traps.
Abstract:
Biblical injunctions against usury, lending at positive interest rates, have been misapplied by various faiths. The rule as presented provides a method for monitoring a social safety net as a collusive agreement, encouraging solidarity. The rule does not apply to lending for investment. The rule further does not apply to outsiders who have not invested in the social safety net. The presence of a rule against usury may have encouraged individuals to extend their personal time horizons, and lowered their personal discount rates. These peculiarities generate more cohesive communities, bound together by a similar vision of the future, and more readily able to develop institutions of social cooperation than groups lacking the simple rule against usury, even in the absence of a centralized state. Why then, had the economics discipline failed to identify the rule against charging usurious interest as a stable equilibrium? I provide model of usury laws as efficient, explore the failure of economics to identify them as such, when and why economics overcame that hurdle, and then analyze a recent misapplication of the rule by religious groups. Clarification on this issue may help prevent rejection of sound economic analysis in the future.
Reviews
I review works close to my research agenda.
Opening Paragraph:
Most of what each of us does in our everyday lives relies on forms of organization and cooperation that are not centrally directed. People find a way to get along. We are hardwired to cooperate when it is in our long-term self-interest. In James C. Scott’s book Two Cheers for Anarchism, six chapters provide us with twenty-six fragments designed to develop in the reader what Scott calls an “anarchist’s squint” on the world. Scott shows us how much we already do without the state and how much we achieve through mutuality, or cooperation without hierarchy or state rule”