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James Devine

Department of Economics
Loyola Marymount University

One LMU Drive, Suite 4200
Los Angeles, CA 90045

phone: 310/338-2948
FAX: 310/338-1950 (off)

E-mail: jdevine@lmu.edu

Papers available:

Ø   political economy. Political theory, Accumulation & Crisis, the Law of Value, and Exploitation.

Ø   macroeconomics & economic history. The Great Depression and Stagflation.

Ø   other material. Current Events Talks, Old Talks, Other Popular Talks, Growing Inequality, and Notes on Various Topics.

I. Political Economy.

1. Political-Economic Theory.

A. The Positive Political Economy of Individualism and Collectivism: Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau,” Politics and Society (2000).

(i) Cover page for the above – with a summary and comments.

(ii) the technical appendix.

B. Psychological Autism, Institutional Autism and Economics” published in the Post-Autistic Economics Review, issue no. 16, September 16, 2002 (article 2) at www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/review/issue16.htm. Republished in Edward Fullbrook, ed. The Crisis in Economics: The Post-Autistic Economics Movement: the First 600 Days. pp. 212-20. London: Routledge, 2003.

C. Utopia” from the Encyclopedia of Political Economy (1999).  

2. Accumulation and Crisis.

A. Marx’s Absolute General Law of Capitalist Accumulation Reconsidered” (as yet unpublished).

B. Accumulation” from the Encyclopedia of Political Economy (1999).

C. See also Macroeconomics and History and Current Events, below.

3. The “Labor Theory of Value” (or what should be called the “law of value”).

A.  The Utility of Value: the ‘New Solution,’ Unequal Exchange, and Crisis,” Research in Political Economy (1990).

B. What Is 'Simple Labor": the Value-Creating Capacity of Skilled Labor,” Capital & Class (1989).

C. The Law of Value and Marxian Political Ecology,” in Jesse Vorst, Ross Dobson, and Ron Fletcher, eds., Green on Red: Evolving Ecological Socialism (Society for Socialist Studies/Fernwood, 1993).

D. The Marxian “Labor Theory of Value” This is somewhat rough.

E. More on this subject (a shorter version of the above).

F. The Wikipedia entry – to which I contributed (especially the “Alternative Interpretation”). Note that this entry could change at any time, changing any content I added.

4. The Theory of Exploitation.

A. Roemer’s “General” Theory of Exploitation is a Special Case. This paper – written with Gary Dymski, now at the University of California-Riverside, argues against the well-known Walrasian-Marxist theory of exploitation presented by John Roemer. Our article was published in Economics and Philosophy, vol. 7 (1991), pp. 235-75.

B. Taxation without Representation: Reconstructing Marx’s Theory of Capitalist Exploitation,” in William Dugger, ed., Inequality: Radical Institutionalist Views on Race, Gender, Class, and Nation (Greenwood, 1996).

C. Here’s a paper which outlines a longer paper on the Marxian theory of exploitation, stated in terms of neoclassical economics. This is a revised version of the hand-out I used in my talk to URPE at the ASSA convention on January 4, 2004.

D. Here’s the longer draft paper on that subject. This is a preliminary version (dated August 21, 2006) and will change due to your comments and criticisms.

(i) the main paper (draft).

(ii) the abstract.

E. Here’s a more accessible article on the Marxian theory of exploitation. It’s an early version of a paper I published in Bill Dugger’s book, Inequality: Radical Institutionalist Views on Race, Gender, Class, and Nation (1996). For the published article, see here.

II. Macroeconomics and Economic History.

5. The Great Depression.

A.  The Causes of the 1929-33 Great Collapse: A Marxian Interpretation,” Research in Political Economy. (1994).

(i) For charts and tables in separate files, click here.

B. The Great Depression” from the Encyclopedia of Political Economy (1999).

C. Another Depressing Article (1/99) –published only in 2002 as “The Causes of the Great Depression of the 1930s and Lessons for Today.” Revista da FEA-PUC [Faculdade de Economia, Administração, Contrabilidade e Atuária da Pontifica Universidade Católica de  São Paulo (Brazil)], 2000: 43–50.

6. Inflation and Unemployment.

A. The Rise and Fall of Stagflation: Preliminary Results,” Review of Radical Political Economics (2000).

B. The Natural Rate of Unemployment,” from Edward Fullbrook, ed., A Guide to What’s Wrong with Economics, Anthem Press (2004).

C. The Cost of Living and Hidden Inflation,” Challenge (2001).

D. The paper that was the basis for the talk I presented at the URPE@ASSA convention in New Orleans on January 7, 2001 on the encouragement of stagflation by falling profit rates. Here's the hand-out that I gave out and one graph that summarizes my thesis very well. The presentation is a development of the paper that I had published during 2000 (“Rising Profits and Falling Inflation: An Empirical Study,” Review of Radical Political Economics, 32(3), 2000: 398-407).

E. Here's a related unpublished paper that examines the connection between the alleged recent speed-up of productivity growth and the seeming fall in the NAIRU (the rate of unemployment below which inflation is theorized to get worse).

III. Miscellaneous Articles.

7. Current Events Talks. These talks were popular in focus, mostly suggesting predictions about future macroeconomic events but do pretty well in hindsight:

A. Here’s a talk that I gave on April 8, 2005, to the Society for Humanistic Judaism in Los Angeles. It sketches the recent business cycle in the U.S. and suggest two possible scenarios.

B. Here’s a talk I gave on March 16, 2004 to the Progress Alliance at Santa Monica College, in California. It’s strangely similar to the talk to the Rotarians below, but with more long-term perspective, including an emphasis on the rate of profit.

C. Here’s  a talk I gave on December 9, 2003 to the Downey (California) Rotarians.

D. Here’s a talk I gave in May 2002, to the Student International Forum, at Ohio State University, in Columbus, Ohio. (It was revised in October, 2002.)

E. The talk above was partly based on the talk I gave to the Concerned Citizens at “Leisure World” (El Toro, CA) in May 2002 and partly on the December 2001 talk to a bunch of Marxists in Sacramento, CA (at the appropriately-named “Marxist School of Sacramento”). (The Ohio and Sacramento talks relate current events to the fluctuations of the rate of profit.)

F. The Concerned Citizens talk is an update of a February 2002 talk I gave to the Economics Society at Loyola Marymount University.

G. Here’s a newsy talk that I gave in July 2001 on the state of the economy, to a bunch of businesspeople. It turned out that this was at about the time that many say the 2001 recession started, though recent data indicate that it started earlier. That fit with what the businesspeople said, since they were receiving the brunt of the economy’s collapse.

8. Older articles on then-current events:

A. A Talk about Current Events (3/99)

B. The Goldilocks Economy and the 3 Bears (2/00)

C. The Three Bears Redux! (3/00)

9. Other current events non-macro topics.

A. Here are the notes for a talk that I gave on the topic of “Capitalism and Militarism” on April 27, 2003 at Woodbury University.

B. Here’s a talk I gave to Dr. Robert Singleton’s economic history class at Loyola Marymount University on the rise and fall of the 1960s prosperity on February 17, 2004. I assumed that the students had read the relevant chapters of Sam Rosenberg’s excellent American Economic Development Since 1945: Growth, Decline and Rejuvenation (Palgrave MacMillan, 2003).

C. Here’s a talk on labor unions that I gave in Dr. Robert Singleton’s Labor Economics course at Loyola Marymount University on April 11, 2005.

10. On recent increases in income inequality:

A. My January 1999 talk at the ASSA (1/99)

B. Growing U.S. Disparities: A Primer and Critique (of Paul Krugman) (Updated 10/2002). This paper will be updated even more in the future.

C. A Note on Recent Profitability (2/99)

11. Miscellaneous notes:

A. An informal Review of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel.

B. Notes on Over-investment

C. Problems with the Social Security System?

D. Notes on “the Economic Problem”

E. Labor Market Segmentation


Last modified: 6/16/2008. Created by: James Devine - jdevine@lmu.edu