Abstract Across the many forms of organization that distinguish our social species – surgical teams, firms, markets, bureaucracies, professions, caste orders – labour is divided, and the divided activities are integrated coherently by distinctive schemes that fall across a range of possibilities. We require a principled account of the dimensions along which such schemes vary. This paper supplies one organized around two axes. The primary axis distinguishes task, role, and station differentiation , according to the unit on which the differentiated labour assignment lands. The secondary axis is governed by the placement of coordinative labour itself (the labour by which first-order labour is organized): non-mediated , intermediated (through a coordinator or organization), or diffuse (across signals, practices, and inherited arrangements). Across these three categories, the paper develops six (non-exhaustive) mechanisms of integration: mutual adjustment or negotiated coordination ; direction or administered rule ; and signal-mediated coupling or sedimented normative coordination . The paper distinguishes civic self-government by the placement not only of ongoing coordination but of vigilance and the labour of revising the scheme. The resulting taxonomy, available to all social science, distinguishes the terrain of division-cum-coordination from the economic forces that produce movement across it, including specialization gains, coordination and communication costs, technological change, and entrepreneurial judgement.
Childcare has held a place in national and international policy conversations in recent decades as governments seek to expand economic opportunities for women. Germany has passed several policies towards this end since reunification, including a legal right, or guarantee, for all children to have access to subsidised care. Scholars across disciplines have taken note of the regional patterns that persist in citizens' uptake of subsidised childcare programmes. This article analyses the patterns through an institutional economics lens, applying Boettke, Coyne, and Leeson's (2008) institutional stickiness framework to policy changes that have exhibited varying levels of success in former East and West Germany. Subsidiarity acts as a channel for institutional stickiness, allowing local values to shape both the supply of and the demand for public childcare.
This paper analyses executive discretion under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which gives the President of the United States the unilateral authority to designate national monuments on federal lands. Designations are intended to protect objects of historic or scientific interest and must be confined to the smallest area compatible with their protection. Since 1906, presidents have interpreted the law broadly, designating over 150 monuments, many of which span large areas. Congress and the courts have done little to curb presidential discretion. Using public choice economics, this paper argues that presidents use monument designations to (1) improve electoral prospects for themselves and fellow party members, (2) engage in strategic political exchanges, and (3) enhance their presidential legacy. Several case studies provide evidence that recent presidents have rationally used their broad discretion under the Antiquities Act to improve electoral outcomes, exchange with strategic entities, and bolster their legacy.
Abstract The paper revisits the place of social institutions in the development of postwar mathematical economics through the work of Kenneth Arrow and Leonid Hurwicz. The rise of formal economic theory is often associated with a turn away from institutions. This paper argues, however, that efforts to bring institutions within the scope of economic analysis were themselves an important dimension of mathematisation. Drawing on published works and archival materials, the paper traces how Arrow and Hurwicz sought to extend economic analysis beyond the competitive market to broader forms of social and economic organisation. Their efforts proceeded through abstraction: by reformulating problems posed in terms of markets and prices as more general problems of information, coordination, communication, and incentives, they developed frameworks within which markets and other institutional arrangements could be represented and compared. The paper thus highlights the conceptual work required to make social institutions into objects of mathematical economic analysis.
Abstract This article explains why Ghana’s weak, building-focused property rating regime has persisted despite fiscal arguments for bringing land value more directly into local revenue systems. It argues that the problem lies not only in poor records, valuation constraints, weak enforcement, and low compliance but also in the relationship between the tax authority and the land authority. Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies have formal authority to raise property rates, yet the land relations needed to support land-based taxation, including information, valuation evidence, liability, legitimacy, and revenue expectations, remain partly shaped by customary authority. The article develops the concept of tax authority/land authority divergence to explain how land-based property tax reform can be constrained when the authority to tax and the authority to define, allocate, and legitimate land rights do not fully coincide. Drawing on documentary analysis, historical evidence, and 32 qualitative interviews, it shows how Ghana’s building-focused regime can remain fiscally weak but institutionally durable: it gives local governments a formal property tax instrument while leaving land value largely outside the recurrent local tax base.
