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The Political Economy of Meritocracy: A Post-Kaleckian, Post-Olsonian Approach to Unemployment and Income Inequality in Modern Varieties of Capitalism

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  • Arne Heise

    (Faculty of Economics and Social Science, Department of Politics and Economics, Hamburg University, VMP 9, D-20146 Hamburg, Arne.Heise@wiso.uni-hamburg.de)

Abstract

The “big trade-off,†described by Arthur Okun some thirty years ago, is back again: equality or efficiency, or to put it differently, modern highly developed economies and societies have to choose between the Scylla of income inequality and the Charybdis of unemployment. Furthermore, it looks like the continental European economies—foremost Germany and France—sided with more egalitarian ends accepting higher unemployment while the liberal economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom chose higher inequality for lower unemployment. In this paper it is argued that the trade-off is not a supply-side necessity to maintain work effort in a situation of incomplete contracts, but is a politico-economic issue of particular interest groups seeking rents. However, unlike in Mancur Olson's seminal approach, it is not the trade unions that are forming distributional coalitions on the labor market, but rather the meritocracy which is happy to use Keynesian-type demand management to advance their material interests by pursuing a “meritocratically optimal rate of unemployment†(MORU).

Suggested Citation

  • Arne Heise, 2008. "The Political Economy of Meritocracy: A Post-Kaleckian, Post-Olsonian Approach to Unemployment and Income Inequality in Modern Varieties of Capitalism," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 40(1), pages 67-88, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:40:y:2008:i:1:p:67-88
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    Cited by:

    1. Höpner, Martin & Petring, Alexander & Seikel, Daniel & Werner, Benjamin, 2014. "Liberalization policy: An empirical analysis of economic and social interventions in Western democracies," WSI Working Papers 192, The Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), Hans Böckler Foundation.
    2. Heise, Arne & Serfraz Khan, Ayesha, 2018. "The welfare state and liberal democracy: A political economy approach," ZÖSS-Discussion Papers 71, University of Hamburg, Centre for Economic and Sociological Studies (CESS/ZÖSS).
    3. Ismail M. Cole, 2023. "The political economy triangle of government spending, interest‐group influence, and income inequality: Evidence and implications from the US states," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 1122-1176, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    unemployment; income inequality; political economy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • P51 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems

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