Documents Huo, Jingijng 3 results

"In this article, I suggest that different types of capitalism specialize in communicating different types of information. Strongly coordinated capitalism communicates insider information but suppresses public information, and vice versa for weakly coordinated economies. Selectively targeted insider information credibly signals intention for long-term cooperation, while indiscriminately revealed public information credibly reveals intention for opportunism. Since the same hidden knowledge cannot be revealed both indiscriminately and selectively, coordinated capitalism forces the two types of information to crowd each other out. Using the external financing of R&D as an example, I test this theory in informational environments typical for different types of capitalism (mature technologies for some and cutting-edge for others). When investors rely on public information (Initial Public Offerings), strongly coordinated capitalism exhibits severe symptoms of poor information; when investors rely on insider information (venture capital and banking), symptoms of poor information shift to weakly coordinated economies."

"In Esping-Andersen's influential work decommodification appears as the central characteristic of the welfare state, and efforts to decommodify labour are posited to be the main goal of social democracy. Since decommodification is defined as exit from the labour market with little or no loss of income, social democrats' emphasis on decommodification clashes with another purported goal of social democracy, high labour force participation. Drawing on research demonstrating the divergent employment effects of various decommodifying social policies, we resolve the existing paradox by showing that social democratic parties are supportive of decommodifying social policies insofar as these policies do not reduce aggregate levels of employment. Pooled time series analysis of employment-impeding policies (long-term unemployment replacement rate, social security and payroll taxes, and employment protection) suggests that they are associated with Christian democracy rather than social democracy. Instead, we find that social democracy is a key determinant of employment-friendly policies, such as active labour market spending and short-term unemployment replacement rate. Given the radically divergent employment effects of different types of decommodifying social policies and the importance of employment-friendly policies for the viability of generous welfare states, our analysis further underlines the future viability of the social democratic model."

"The rise of the super-rich has attracted much political and academic attention in recent years. However, there have been few attempts to explain the cross-national along with the temporal variation in the rise of top incomes. Drawing on the World Wealth and Income Database, we study the income share of the top 1% in current postindustrial democracies from 1960 to 2012. We find that extreme income concentration at the top is a predominantly political phenomenon, not the result of increasing marginal productivity of top managers in markets of increasing size. Top income shares are largely unrelated to economic growth, increased knowledge-intensive production, export competitiveness, financialization and wealth accumulation, though they are related to stock market capitalization. Instead, they are closely associated with political and policy changes such as union density and centralization, secular-right governments, top marginal tax rates and investment in public tertiary education."