Abstract This article conceptualizes growth models as structured sector–demand configurations, extending existing approaches that focus primarily on aggregate demand components. Using OECD input–output data for thirty-four countries across two periods (1995–2007 and 2009–19), we create new measures of growth contributions by aggregate demand component, sector, and their intersections. Combining comparative mapping of selected countries, principal component analysis, and regression analysis, we identify two dominant demand patterns—domestic demand-led and export-led—and three sectoral patterns, centered on construction and domestic services, high-tech manufacturing, and low-end services. Demand and sectoral patterns are systematically linked: domestic demand-led growth is strongly associated with construction and domestic services, while export-led growth is positively associated with high-tech manufacturing and low-end services—representing “high” and “low” roads to export-led growth—but negatively associated with construction and domestic services. These findings suggest that understanding growth models requires examining the “elective affinities” linking sectors and demand.
Crypto research highlights the anarcho-libertarian feature of the crypto movement, characterizing the industry as a radical departure from governmental and corporate influence. This study investigates the characteristics of the US crypto elite, highlighting how the demographic structure and the institutional connections of the industry resemble those of the established financial elite. Drawing on original data from board members of top US crypto and financial firms, Fortune 1000 companies, and major policy-planning organizations, it develops three comparisons. Results show that crypto elites share similar socio-educational traits with traditional finance leaders and engage with powerful corporate and political affiliations, despite being more peripheral in corporate networks-likely due to the sector's recent emergence. Notably, the White House appears in the career paths of both groups, suggesting a shared pattern of revolving door integration into state structures. Rather than a structural transformation, crypto appears to align with the broader elite configuration of the US political economy.
Abstract This article traces the growth trajectories of Southern European economies (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) over the decade 2010–9. Drawing on Comparative Political Economy (CPE) literature, we derive three propositions regarding their growth profiles, performance in high value-added exports, and employment outcomes during this period. We then empirically assess these propositions using growth decompositions of adjusted aggregate demand as well as sectoral output and employment indicators. Our results show that Southern European economies share important similarities: export-led growth has been insufficient to boost aggregate growth, stimulate high value-added exports, reverse pro-cyclical employment declines, or create high-wage employment opportunities. At the same time, these economies have diverged in their sectoral growth profiles and overall growth performance. We consider the implications of these findings for potential growth-enhancing policies in the region. In this regard, boosting domestic demand appears to be a crucial precondition for sustainable growth across Southern Europe.
Many scholars have argued that either the political economy of oil or the oppression of migrant labor has led to widespread social demobilization in the Gulf states. However, these accounts have never addressed the counterexample of the Bahraini labor movement. Asking what factors made unionization possible in Bahrain, this paper shows how oil-led industrialization both enhanced workers' structural power by building a heavy industrial base and undercut their associational power by driving migratory flows large enough to reorganize and resegment the labor market. Thus, unionization has been possible due to a specific trajectory of industrialization that produced a heavy industrial base but did not fully replace citizens in key productive sectors. This argument shows the limits of oil-exceptionalist theories, modifies top-down theories of migrant labor in the Gulf, and highlights the key role of royal families in the politics of repression.
This article examines early withdrawals from tax-advantaged pensions and retirement accounts among prime working-age adults (ages 25-54) in the USA, a key component of what has been called a "hidden welfare state." Using the 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation linked to restricted-access Internal Revenue Service tax records, the analysis shows that household surveys capture only 30 per cent of total retirement income and just 11 per cent of recipients in this age group. Correcting for this underreporting reveals that pension and retirement account withdrawals constitute a larger source of cash income for prime working-age adults than all social program income combined. Withdrawal behavior is widespread across demographic groups and not confined to households experiencing observable shocks. Treating retirement accounts as an income source rather than solely a tax expenditure provides new evidence on how tax-advantaged private savings function as a social policy institution.
Economic expertise influences climate policy through various institutional channels, including academic research, think tanks, government offices, and councils. National economic councils are particularly relevant because close to political realities and accepting politically defined climate and environmental goals. Based on a systematic analysis of their publications, we find that the Danish Economic Councils (DEC) have consistently opposed all forms of support for green energy (wind power) in favor of a single and allegedly market-efficient policy instrument-a uniform and universal carbon tax. This constant policy advice spans three decades of changing technological, institutional, political, and economic context. Our analysis reveals the policy advice to be heavily theory-driven and negligent of uncertain, dynamic, and strategic aspects of innovation, politics, and markets. We suggest that policy advise on climate and environmental transition should contrast the idea of optimization with a perspective on political strategy.
The Coronavirus pandemic was a unique crisis in Europe as an unprecedented health and labour market shock barely disrupted long-term trends towards active ageing. We study the role of social policy responses and pre-existing welfare state institutions in moderating older workers' early exit following the crisis. Using a cross-nationally harmonized panel survey in Europe, we examine whether variations in national labour market policies and pension institutions explain older workers' exit outcomes following COVID-19, net of the economic shock and pre-pandemic employment levels. Results show that, across countries, the rollout of novel job retention schemes was consistently associated with the retention of older workers, whereas extended unemployment insurance likely had a limited influence. Higher retirement ages and greater reliance on private pensions were modestly associated with lower exit rates only among low-educated workers. Our findings confirm the significance of welfare states managing the crisis-driven economic shock and offer policy implications.
Scholars have long argued that social policies affect people's employment chances in interconnected ways, where a given policy intervention might have employment effects that are strengthened or dampened by other interventions. This article theorizes and empirically assesses how national active labor market polices (ALMP) and early childhood education and care (ECEC) interact in affecting individuals' employment chances. The objective is to address scholarly controversy over whether this policy interaction entails complementarity, substitution, or non-interaction. Analyses draw on EU-SILC individual-level true-panel survey data 2005-2019 from twenty-six European countries and aggregate policy indicators. Results show that ALMP and ECEC have complementary positive implications for employment probability among individuals with children, especially women. ALMP effort tends to have a more positive association with employment probability as ECEC effort becomes more substantial, and vice versa. Such patterns remain after controlling for individual characteristics, previous year's employment status, country fixed effects, and macro-economic conditions.
While research on policymaking during economic crises highlights the role of narratives for policy responses, few studies have examined the impact of crisis narratives after measures to avert the crisis have been implemented. This study addresses this research gap, presenting a case study of the Social Democratic Party of Sweden, which has remained committed to austere fiscal rules over the past three decades. Analyzing its economic policymaking, I argue that the party's narrative legitimation of the fiscal consolidation programme, designed as a response to the recession of the early 1990s, is central to understanding the party's enduring commitment to fiscal austerity. Reproducing this narrative has increased the political cost of reorientation and prevented alternative policies from being considered. Theoretically, these arguments demonstrate that narratives of economic crisis can operate as positive feedback mechanisms long after the narrated events have passed.
This paper empirically explores the effects of an unconditional basic income (UBI) on labour power for marginalised and precarious workers in Indian slums. Drawing on mixed-methods research over an 18-month pilot, we find that a modest, time-limited UBI does little to unsettle the structural forces that shape labour choices for those in 'indecent' work. At the level and duration it was trialled, the UBI neither served wage-replacement nor alternative-generating functions to generate movement out of such labour relations. However, even at this level, we find significant positive effects, with the UBI providing material, social and psychological resources to improve workers' agency and their ability to improve the conditions and organisation of their work. We also find notable improvements in their self-esteem, resilience and aspirations in relation to life and work. We argue that this has significant policy implications, and for the theoretical framing of discussions around UBI and labour.
Pay-for-performance systems are a defining feature of contemporary workplaces, yet their implications for inequality remain unclear. This paper examines how collective performance pay-where rewards are tied to team-, department-, or firm-level outcomes-shapes gender wage inequality through relational processes of reward distribution. Using linked employer-employee data on 21,339 full-time white-collar employees across 660 South Korean firms between 2006 and 2012, we show that collective performance pay widens the gender wage gap within organizations, especially when collective performance rewards form a larger share of compensation. The gap-increasing effect is strongest under team-level performance pay, where claims-making and negotiation are most active, and under distributional rules that allow greater managerial discretion. These findings reveal that inequality arises from relational dynamics in reward distribution rather than evaluation bias alone. The study highlights how meritocratic and team-based pay systems can inadvertently deepen gender inequality, revealing the relational foundations of the meritocracy paradox.
Charitable food provision (CFP) has become a central response to poverty in high-income countries. Despite growing scholarly attention, there is a notable lack of conceptual tools for the systematic comparison of CFP across different contexts. To address this gap, this article proposes a relational research framework grounded in field theory. It situates CFP at the intersection of three institutional domains: welfare systems, civil society, and the agri-food system. It then introduces three dimensions for comparative study: the diachronic (field emergence and consolidation), the synchronic (field structure, boundaries, and coordination), and the everyday life (recipients' navigation of the CFP field). The framework offers a complementary perspective to existing studies by emphasizing institutional embeddedness, meso-level interactions, and survival strategies, while enabling systematic yet context-sensitive comparison. This article thus lays a foundation for future comparative research and invites further theoretical development that would advance understanding of CFP's role in contemporary poverty governance.
In this paper, we focus on individuals' perceptions of their own position within the income distribution and argue that ideological biases influence these perceptions. In particular, we take into account the two-dimensional ideological space of European party systems and develop arguments about social class misidentification (economic dimension) and cultural threat and privilege (cultural dimension), leading to either over- or underestimation. We use novel survey data from the Konstanz Inequality Barometer (2020 and 2022) and find that socially conservative individuals are more likely to underestimate their relative income position, i.e. they perceive themselves to be worse off than they are. By contrast, individuals with a rightist position on economic ideology are more likely to overestimate their relative position. These biases have downstream consequences for electoral behavior as well. Our findings have important consequences for our understanding of individuals' perceptions of inequality but also, more broadly, for the politics of redistribution.
The increasing concentration of income and wealth on the national and international level is a topic that has received increased attention both in social science research as well as public policy debates. While data availability is a well-known and often-lamented problem in wealth studies, especially the group of high-net-worth (HNW)-households remains largely unexplored. In this study, we contribute to a deeper understanding of their impact and their networks on current wealth distributions. Furthermore, we particularly focus on the role of different types of wealth intermediaries in the corporate networks of and around HNW-networks. Based on an extensive data set of company ownerships of a sample of the sixty-two wealthiest Austrian households, we apply a social network analysis of two-mode networks (institutions and persons) followed by a cluster analysis to identify distinct patterns of corporate ownership and (indirect) control. An overall finding is that numerous HNW-networks involve a multitude of legal entities, creating complex and untransparent control structures that complicates the tracing of economic ownership.
This article examines how bitcoin has acquired religious significance among many techno-libertarians, who hold it as a symbol promising deliverance from a fallen world. Drawing on both participant observation at bitcoin meetups and the 2023 Bitcoin Conference, as well as digital ethnography on X, the article presents a thick description of how bitcoiners construct specific beliefs about the world and their place in it, as well as ritual practices that vivify these beliefs and sanctify those who hold them. These beliefs and practices constitute bitcoin, in turn, as a distinct moral community in which bitcoin is symbolized as an instrument of salvation from a failing institutional order. This Durkheimian analysis contributes to understanding how money in modern society carries with it religious meanings about the world and human history. And it also contributes to an understanding of the specific ideological formation driving techno-libertarianism as an ascendant political interest today.
This article explores why left-wing parties tend to avoid advocating higher taxes for the rich-and why they sometimes do put them on the agenda. The 'tax taboo' is driven by electoral calculations. Public opinion on taxing the rich is ambivalent. Narratives of taxes harming the economy are nurtured by right-wing parties and business lobbies. This discourages the left from mobilizing on the issue. However, recent campaigns by the German Social Democrats (2021) and Labour in Britain (2017) overcame this taboo with distinct pro-tax programs. Our comparative analysis traces common factors and strategic considerations of party actors. It highlights the role of policy entrepreneurs, who act as catalysts through their exceptional motivation and competence. Additionally, our case studies point to party competition as an important factor. Right-wing parties face a trilemma between the goals of balanced budgets, low taxes, and investment, making them less compelling critics of left-wing tax plans.
State-led decarbonization efforts increasingly rely on a derisking approach, where public resources absorb investment risk and create "bankable" green projects to mobilize private capital. Yet, growing research highlights significant challenges in putting derisking into practice. I examine the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) to assess how derisking shapes low-carbon infrastructure development. Drawing on document analysis and a review of its partners' financial structures, I find that the CIB has struggled to mobilize investment at scale despite adopting a derisking strategy. Moreover, several of its partnerships involve firms connected to offshore tax havens, raising concerns about the redirection of public resources toward private gain. These dynamics call into questions the bank's capacity to support Canada's decarbonization goals. More broadly, the study contributes to research on the structural limits of derisking by showing how reliance on green finance can undermine decarbonization efforts, reproduce global inequalities, and shift climate policy away from public accountability.
Since 2021, Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) provide finance to middle-income countries (MICs) whose energy profile is largely powered by coal-those countries with what we call the "power to pollute." Using the case of South Africa's JETP, the most mature of all such agreements, we assess whether the JETP model in fact enables MICs to pursue industrial policy innovations that parallel emergent "post-neoliberal" policy paradigms of rich countries. We draw on analysis of semi-structured interviews with South African policy-makers, policy documents, white papers, and pronouncements at public events between 2021 and 2024. We argue that JETP financing is unlikely to enable the rise of green industrial policies typical of "post-neoliberal" approaches in rich countries, despite the hopes of recipient countries entering into these agreements. This type of financing is instead becoming a mechanism to constrain domestic policy flexibility-and domestic politics-for carbon emissions mitigation, often reinforcing neoliberal principles in practice.
Major changes in tax systems are likely to be met with strong opposition as they inevitably create distinct social groups, which can then be mobilized against each other or against those in power. Why, then, was Poland able to introduce a new income tax system in the 1990s without significant contestation? This article argues that four interrelated factors that facilitated this outcome: taxation through pacification, taxation without cognitive obligations, taxation without negative media representation, and taxation without political articulation. In the case of each factor, I show how actions and inactions of specific actors prevented the new tax system from becoming 'painfully visible'. The article concludes by proposing that, beyond the case, this theoretical framework can be extended to the lack of backlash against, what can be called, the personal data tax that is collected by digital platforms. The article draws on archival work, qualitative interviews, and analysis of the media.
A prevailing perspective in economic sociology suggests that economic forecasts do not need to be accurate to hold political value; instead, what matters is the credibility of the accompanying narrative. However, drawing on the case of the 2012 Kansas tax cuts, I argue that the accuracy of forecasts can significantly influence forecast credibility and the associated politics of expectations. I show how initial supply-side expectations for the policy were embedded in official revenue forecasts, raising the political consequences of their eventual failure. As repeated forecast errors mounted, typical narrative strategies used to defend forecasting errors lost plausibility, making the tax cuts politically untenable and eventually contributing to their repeal. This study highlights that the relationship between forecast accuracy and political credibility is crucial for shaping public perception and policy outcomes.
