{"title":"Review: Wendy A. Bach, Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care","authors":"Anna Arons","doi":"10.5070/lp63259638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/lp63259638","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127059957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gambling in the Moral Economy: A Case Study of Law and Regulation in a Pandemic","authors":"Kate Bedford","doi":"10.5070/lp63259635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/lp63259635","url":null,"abstract":": This article adapts the concept of the moral economy and applies that adapted concept to UK gambling regulation during the early years (2020-21) of the COVID-19 pandemic. I extend the moral economy concept beyond the eighteenth-century English food riot, and beyond food staples. I also examine the role of law and regulation in the moral economy and highlight charity's importance to moral economy debates. I then consider gambling through a moral economy lens by exploring the pandemic-era regulation of horserace betting, lotteries, and bingo. I show that gambling in some forms (horserace betting and lotteries) was important to pandemic recovery projects and to spectacles of national coming together. Via lotteries, for example, the state sought to adjust customary expectations about the role of volunteers in providing essential services. Although regulators generally ignored bingo, there was a pandemic resurgence in self-organized games that is especially significant for work on the moral economy. I conclude by identifying some broader implications of this study, including on how essentiality is legally constructed, and on charity and volunteering within the moral economy.","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115305170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Great Reversal: How an Influential International Organization Changed Its View on Employment Security, Labor Market Flexibility, and Collective Bargaining","authors":"J. Evans, W. Spriggs","doi":"10.5070/lp63159036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/lp63159036","url":null,"abstract":": The claim that labor market flexibility — the lack of regulations and collective bargaining constraints on employers — is essential to maximizing employment, minimizing unemployment, and obtaining growth does not have empirical support. That the claim lacks evidence can be seen by tracing how the market fundamentalist assertions made in the initial OECD Jobs Strategy in 1994 have been reversed by the OECD and by other international financial institutions. The OECD now notes that new evidence “ shows that countries with policies and institutions that promote job quality, job quantity, and greater inclusiveness perform better than countries where the focus of policy is predominantly on enhancing market flexibility.” It has also rejected the argument that collective bargaining defends the interest of “insiders” against “outsiders” in the labor market. While OECD reports previously made almost indiscriminate calls for lowering labor standards to increase labor market flexibility, they now caution that irregular work can be a danger.","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"140 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123317785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Talking About Private Government: A Review of the Economic Claims Made to Rebut Anderson’s Analysis","authors":"Chetan Cetty","doi":"10.5070/lp63159031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/lp63159031","url":null,"abstract":": In Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It), Elizabeth Anderson argues that most people in the United States and other liberal societies spend their working lives under the kind of autocratic rule we would normally associate with communist dictatorships. They are forced to work in oppressive environments, deprived of many freedoms, and given practically no say over working conditions. Even in their nonworking lives workers are frequently subjected to employer scrutiny and sanction. And the legal framework and economic realities surrounding employment are such that exit is viable for only a small minority. Anderson’s work has generated great interest and, along with it, several criticisms that take exception to her observations, economic assumptions, and conclusions. This paper delineates the various economic claims made against Private Government so as to facilitate further inquiry of these issues.","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115928022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Front Matter Vol 3 Issue 1","authors":"Jlpe Editors","doi":"10.4148/2334-4415.1055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1055","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134261582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Persistent Absence of Full Employment: A Critical Flaw in the Legal “Freedom of Contract” Framework","authors":"Lawtrence Mishel","doi":"10.5070/lp63159034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/lp63159034","url":null,"abstract":": The “freedom of contract” presumption that employment arrangements negotiated between employers and employees are necessarily optimal exchanges between equal parties willfully ignores the fact that workers rarely enjoy full employment. Without full employment, employers enjoy plentiful access to willing new workers, while employees face difficulties finding alternative jobs. Many groups of workers, particularly Blacks and those without college credentials, have higher-than-average unemployment and never enjoy full employment, even when the aggregate economy is thought to be at full employment. Excessive unemployment matters: when unemployment is high, quitting and the ability to switch jobs diminish, unemployment spells are longer, finding a good job is harder, and, correspondingly, wage growth is subdued for low- and middle-wage workers. Employers, though, are able to fill vacancies with qualified workers more quickly and with less effort. Acknowledging the persistent absence of full employment renders the freedom-of-contract framework a flawed basis for assessing employment relationships.","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122497907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Turnover, Prices, and Reallocation: Why Minimum Wages Raise the Incomes of Low-Wage Workers","authors":"Ben Zipperer","doi":"10.5070/lp63159038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/lp63159038","url":null,"abstract":": The research on the minimum wage contributes insights into claims raised in legal arguments that employers and workers have equal power and that an employer’s management power must be unrestricted lest the firm or the economy suffer. Mandated minimum wages, the conventional argument goes, will force firms to pay a wage higher than the market rate, resulting in job losses and, potentially, bankruptcy. But evidence from minimum wage increases and expansions finds that the policy can improve labor market conditions without causing harmful side effects because of such “channels of adjustment” as reduced worker turnover, consumer price increases, and the reallocation of low-wage workers to higher-paying establishments. In general, employer mandates can increase the prevalence of good jobs. By altering the mix of firms and reallocating workers across them, the minimum wage creates or at least shifts the composition of jobs toward those that are more productive and pay higher wages.","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114137177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preface to Special Issue: Not So Free to Contract: How Unequal Workplace Power Undercuts the “Freedom of Contract” Framework","authors":"Elizabeth Anderson","doi":"10.5070/lp63159029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/lp63159029","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133562446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction—The Goliath in the Room: How the False Assumption of Equal Worker–Employer Power Undercuts Workplace Protections","authors":"Lawrence R. Mishel","doi":"10.5070/lp63159027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/lp63159027","url":null,"abstract":"The belief that employers and workers have equal power and are therefore “free to contract” continues to hold sway among employers and jurists, but not among those who live in the real world of work. The papers in this issue rebut this assumption of equal power by examining the claims made in philosophy and law to support it, contrasting those claims with the realities of the labor market, and showing that limitations on management power do not generate adverse economic outcomes—and may even enhance it.","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128623462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Worker Mobility in Practice: Is Quitting a Right, or a Luxury?","authors":"K. Edwards","doi":"10.5070/lp63159033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/lp63159033","url":null,"abstract":"have access to considerable savings to cover advance rent and security deposits or to cover expenses while awaiting the sale of a home. And much like in the labor market, there is persistent and well-documented discrimination in the housing market that raises these costs for people of color. Finally, access to credit can smooth out job transition costs, but it is not universal and reflects clear racial differences. Black and Hispanic Americans also have considerably less wealth to tap into than white Americans. Our assessment of these and other labor market and financial considerations illustrates the extent to which barriers to mobility can make moving jobs a luxury, rather than a right. The theoretical context of these findings is dynamic monopsony: the harder it is for a worker to leave, the more power an employer has over that worker’s wages.","PeriodicalId":425370,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Political Economy","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123386604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}