Documents economics 332 results

"Economics is often described as the most politically influential social science and yet economic advice is often largely irrelevant to prominent policy debates. We draw on literatures in political science, sociology and science and technology studies to explain this apparent contradiction. Existing research suggests that the influence of economics is mediated by local circumstances and meso-level social structures, and that much of it flows through indirect channels. We elaborate three sites of analysis useful for unpacking these influences: the broad professional authority of economics, the institutional position of economists in government, and the role of economics in the cognitive infrastructure of policymaking, including the diffusion of economic styles of reasoning and the establishment of economic policy devices for seeing and deciding."

"Ecological economics and its policy recommendations have become overwhelmed by economic valuation, shadow pricing, sustainability measures, and squeezing Nature into the commodity boxes of goods, services and capital in order to make it part of mainstream economic, financial and banking discourses. There are deeper concerns which touch upon the understanding of humanity in its various social, psychological, political and ethical facets. The relationship with Nature proposed by the ecological economics movement has the potential to be far reaching. However, this is not the picture portrayed by surveying the amassed body of articles from this journal or by many of those claiming affiliation. A shallow movement, allied to a business as usual politics and economy, has become dominant and imposes its preoccupation with mainstream economic concepts and values. If, instead, ecological economists choose a path deep into the world of interdisciplinary endeavour they will need to be prepared to transform themselves and society. The implications go far beyond the pragmatic use of magic numbers to convince politicians and the public that ecology still has something relevant to say in the 21st century."

"The objective of this literature survey was to appraise the methodological quality of economic evaluations of occupational safety and health (OSH) interventions conducted from a corporate perspective published in various OSH databases. A total of 37 articles were selected based on seven criteria addressing study population, type of intervention, comparative intervention, outcome, costs, language, and perspective. Only 44% of the studies met more than 50% of the quality criteria. Of the 19 quality criteria, eight were met by 50% or more of the studies. The overall methodological quality of the economic evaluations of OSH interventions from a corporate perspective was poor. As such, there is a risk of biased results. The quality of future evaluations needs to be improved to increase the validity of their conclusions and recommendations."

"There are a limited number of studies on the cost-effectiveness of occupational health and safety (OSH) interventions. Applying the results of a cost-effectiveness study from one country to another is hampered by institutional differences in national health care and social security systems. In order to find out how these problems can be overcome, this study transferred the results of a Dutch occupational cost-effectiveness study to the Finnish situation and vice-versa. Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) were calculated for the target country, allocating costs to employers, employees and taxpayers. It is concluded that results of cost-effectiveness studies can be transferred from one country to another, but many adjustments are needed. An extensive description of the intervention, a detailed list of resource use, allocation of costs to various parties and detailed knowledge of the health care systems in the original studies are necessary to enable calculations."

"This review article discusses various types of incentives for promoting occupational safety and health (OSH) in light of economic theory and evidence from research. Governments can subsidize employers' investments in OSH with subsidies and tax structures. These incentives are successful only if the demand for OSH responds to the change in the price of OSH investments and if the suppliers of OSH are able to increase their production smoothly, failing which the subsidy will only lead to higher prices for OSH goods. Both public and private insurance companies can differentiate insurance premiums according to past claims. There is evidence that this can effectively lower the frequency of claims, but not the severity of cases. Policy implications of these and other findings are discussed."

"This article discusses the factors that influence the transferability of different types of occupational safety and health (OSH) economic incentives from one country to another, based on data collected by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) by means of a survey among EU member states and a literature review of relevant reports, articles and databases. Despite the wide differences in Europe's social security systems, a high degree of similarity was observed between the countries regarding the basic system design criteria. When it comes to insurance incentive schemes, the fundamental difference between countries is whether the workers' compensation scheme is based on a competitive market between private insurance companies or a monopoly structure adopted by 19 of the 27 EU member states. Subsidy systems, tax incentives, and insurance-based incentives are theoretically possible in all EU countries. Implications are discusseed."

"Policy discussions play an important role in labour law, and labour lawyers draw on a wide range of disciplines and approaches in order to construct their arguments. This 2009 overview of the basic principles of labour law and the related policy arguments introduces two of the main perspectives used in the analysis of labour law today – human rights and economics. It offers a brief history of the influence of human rights and economics on labour law since the 1950s, explains neoclassical and new institutional economics and summarises the historical development of international human rights law. The insights of rights theorists and economists are then applied to a selection of topics in labour law, including anti-discrimination law, dismissal, working time, pay, consultation and collective bargaining, trade union membership and industrial action, in order to demonstrate the interplay between the two perspectives."

"During the last 30 years or so, different theoretical and empirical perspectives have come to see economies as embedded in institutional, social and cultural structures. Such perspectives developed in contrast to the neoclassical economic paradigm of a rational actor isolated from his/her social and cultural context, as well as to sociological functionalism, which sees economic action as heavily determined by values and social–structural factors. The general idea behind these perspectives is that economic action is always shaped by institutions rooted in history, and by the structures of social relationships in which economic actors are embedded; with the consequence that the former cannot be explained without including the latter in the explanation. This article shows how this perspective is shared by the ‘comparative political economy' approach, which developed starting in the 1970s especially in Western Europe, and the ‘new economic sociology' approach, which developed a decade later in the United States.After reviewing the main features of both approaches, the article shows how Italian economic sociology has built a relevant research tradition. More specifically, it reviews the main contributions that this ‘school' has given to our understanding of how modern capitalist societies work, especially regarding labour markets, welfare systems, local economies and industrial relations. The lack of a strong dominant and unifying paradigm has often been seen as a weakness of Italian economic sociology, as well as of economic sociology tout court. Yet this weakness has to some extent been turned into an advantage, since Italian economic sociologists have been more willing to cooperate with scholars in other disciplines and sub-disciplines and have also been more interested in entering new territories, from both a theoretical and a substantive point of view."