IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chu/wpaper/17-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

No Mere Tautology: The Division of Labor is Limited by the Division of Labor

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Smyth

    (Department of Economics, Marquette University)

  • Bart J. Wilson

    (Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy and the Economic Science Institute, Chapman University)

Abstract

We explore the intersection of growth theory and the theory of the firm with an experiment. Economic growth is possible in our experiment when agents specialize to exploit increasing returns. We find that low opportunity costs are sufficient for Marshallian internal economies, but that Marshallian external economies are slow to emerge in four probing treatment conditions. Transaction costs do not hamper external economies as we anticipated prior to collecting data. When external economies falter, it is because new ideas about the cost and value of more extensive specialization fail to emerge. Ideas are what make further divisions of the division of labor—and thus economic growth—either possible or impossible.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Smyth & Bart J. Wilson, 2017. "No Mere Tautology: The Division of Labor is Limited by the Division of Labor," Working Papers 17-21, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:17-21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.chapman.edu/research/institutes-and-centers/economic-science-institute/_files/WorkingPapers/smyth-wilson-2017.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sean Crockett & Vernon L. Smith & Bart J. Wilson, 2009. "Exchange and Specialisation as a Discovery Process," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(539), pages 1162-1188, July.
    2. McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen, 2006. "The Bourgeois Virtues," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226556635, September.
    3. Nick Feltovich, 2003. "Nonparametric Tests of Differences in Medians: Comparison of the Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney and Robust Rank-Order Tests," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 6(3), pages 273-297, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Victor Klockmann & Alicia von Schenk & Ferdinand von Siemens, 2021. "Division of Labor and the Organization of Knowledge in Production: A Laboratory Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 8822, CESifo.
    2. Wilson, Bart J. & Farese, Gian Marco, 2022. "A Universally Translatable Explication Of Adam Smith’S Famous Proposition On “The Extent Of The Market”," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(3), pages 393-412, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bart J. Wilson, 2012. "Contra Private Fairness," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71(2), pages 407-435, April.
    2. Nadine Chlass & Jens J. Krueger, 2007. "Small Sample Properties of the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test with Discontinuous and Dependent Observations," Jena Economics Research Papers 2007-032, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    3. Niclas Berggren & Therese Nilsson, 2013. "Does Economic Freedom Foster Tolerance?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(2), pages 177-207, May.
    4. Harry Hummels & Patrick Nullens, 2022. "‘Other-wise’ Organizing. A Levinasian Approach to Agape in Work and Business Organisations," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 211-232, October.
    5. Hernán Bejarano & Joris Gillet & Ismael Rodriguez‐Lara, 2018. "Do Negative Random Shocks Affect Trust and Trustworthiness?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(2), pages 563-579, October.
    6. Attallah, May & Abildtrup, Jens & Stenger, Anne, 2022. "Non-monetary incentives for sustainable biomass harvest: An experimental approach," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    7. Randall G. Holcombe, 2017. "Bourgeois Virtues Foster Capitalism; Does Capitalism Foster Bourgeois Virtues?," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 32(Winter 20), pages 95-107.
    8. Yalcintas, Altug, 2012. "İktisat doga bilimlerinin Mekke’si mi oluyor?: Toplumsal ve doga bilimleri iliskisi uzerine bir atıf analizi [Is economics becoming the Mecca of Biology?: A citation analysis of the relationship be," MPRA Paper 43493, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Verdier, Thierry & Bisin, Alberto, 2017. "On the Joint Evolution of Culture and Institutions," CEPR Discussion Papers 12000, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Brent Butgereit & Art Carden, 2011. "Capitalism, Socialism And Calculation," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 41-45, October.
    11. Mark Pennington, 2015. "Realistic Idealism and The Project of Political Economy," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 366-379, October.
    12. Pies, Ingo, 2023. "Ethik des Kapitalismus," Discussion Papers 2023-06, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Chair of Economic Ethics.
    13. Kelly, Morgan & Ó Gráda, Cormac, 2022. "Connecting the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions: The Role of Practical Mathematics," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(3), pages 841-873, September.
    14. William Kingston, 2014. "Schumpeter and the end of Western Capitalism," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 449-477, July.
    15. van Bavel, Bas, 2016. "The Invisible Hand?: How Market Economies have Emerged and Declined Since AD 500," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199608133.
    16. Aki Tomizawa & Li Zhao & Geneviève Bassellier & David Ahlstrom, 2020. "Economic growth, innovation, institutions, and the Great Enrichment," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 7-31, March.
    17. Ernan E. Haruvy & Christos A. Ioannou & Farnoush Golshirazi, 2018. "The Religious Observance Of Ramadan And Prosocial Behavior," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 226-237, January.
    18. Michelle Albert Vachris & Justin P. Isaacs, 2017. "The Role of Cultural Values in the Formation and Survival of Pro-Growth Institutions," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 32(Spring 20), pages 89-113.
    19. Aimee E. Barbeau, 2017. "Ethics in a Commercial Age: McCloskey, Constant and Tocqueville on the Bourgeois Virtues," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 32(Winter 20), pages 59-70.
    20. Giovanna Devetag, 2000. "Coordination in "Critical Mass" Games: An Experimental Study," LEM Papers Series 2000/03, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    growth theory; theory of the firm; experimental economics; specialization; increasing returns; transaction costs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:17-21. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Megan Luetje (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esichus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.