Economic theories of state or ‘economics imperialism’: Rentseeking analysis as an exemplar

Download

13.pdf

Date

2007-12-1

Author

Yalman , Galip L.

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

201
views

100
downloads

‘State’ and ‘market’ are concepts so grossly abused that they have almost lost their heuristic value as analytical categories. They have also come to symbolise not only alternative strategies of capitalist development, but also rival premises upon which hegemonic strategies were to be developed. In the era of neoliberal hegemony, it has been contended that a ‘theory of state’ is required so as to make up for the deficiencies of the mainstream economics. This study focuses on the antinomies of an influential attempt to develop an economic theory of politics, namely, the rent-seeking analysis. It highlights the fact that the concept of the state as a neutral guarantor of contractual relations is no more than a ‘mental construct’, hardly relevant to account for the phenomena in question, but one which would be instrumental in providing the circumstances conducive for the ‘rational economic man’ to operate according to the assumptions of a particular model. This, in turn, indicates the need for conceptual categories to come to terms with ‘collective action’ in ways in which theories premised on individualistic foundations and/or limited by empiricist epistemologies could not provide.

Subject Keywords

State, Market, Property rights, Rent-seeking, Choicetheoretic, Second-best

URI

http://www2.feas.metu.edu.tr/metusd/ojs/index.php/metusd/article/view/169
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/58456

Journal

ODTÜ Gelişme Dergisi

Collections

Department of Economics, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Labor market institutions and industrial performance: an evolutionary study Kilicaslan, Yilmaz; Taymaz, Erol (2008-08-01) This study investigates the impact of labor market institutions on industrial performance from a Schumpeterian perspective. We suggest that labor market institutions play a very important role in the process of creative destruction, because they may create an environment that encourages and enforces innovation, and help to reallocate resources, most importantly labor, through swift elimination of weak performers. We specifically look at the effects of the quantity of labor market regulations and inter-indus...
An alternative market organization: The case of cut flower Exchange in Turkey Öz, Özlem; Çalışkan, Koray (Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (Ankara, Turkey), 2010-8) Markets have frequently been criticized for their structural bias towards producing inequality. Yet the cut-flower market in Turkey provides the literature, the peasants and consumers with an alternative form of designing markets that introduces democratic participation to the organization of exchange relations. This paper scrutinizes the structure and functioning of the cut-flowers market in Turkey with the purpose of contributing towards a better understanding of how more sustainable and less asymmetrical...
Economic liberalism and performance of developing countries: a comparative analysis Altun, Gizem; Şenses, Fikret; Department of Economics (2009) Economic liberalism has always been a very controversial issue in the content of development economics. The relation of neo-liberalism with economic development, as today’s dominant discourse of economics, has been highly debated in the last decades. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate this relationship via comparing four countries’ development experiences; Argentina, China, Turkey and Poland, in between 1965-2005. In addition to that purpose, this thesis aims to analyze whether the experien...
Investment climate parameters in transition economies : the case of Russia Nikitin, Sergei; Özveren, Eyüp; Department of Economics (2003) This thesis incorporates institutional definition of the economies in transition into the economic analysis of the investment variable. Probability environment of the real world is another point of analysis. Decision-making framework is analyzed and incorporated into analysis as well. Thesis tries to answer questions such as: Why same projects are treated differently in different circumstances. Finally the Russian experience is investigated and used to prove hypothesis about investment climate parameters an...
ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CORRELATES OF SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING IN COUNTRIES USING DATA FROM THE ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT (OECD) Gaygısız Lajunen, Esma (SAGE Publications, 2010-06-01) The correlations among indicators of objective well-being, cultural dimensions, and subjective well-being were investigated using Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data from 35 countries. The subjective well-being measures included life satisfaction as well as six positive and six negative indexes of experience. Positive and negative experience scores were subjected to principal component analysis, and two positive experience components (labeled as "positive experiences" and "tim...

Citation Formats

G. L. Yalman, “Economic theories of state or ‘economics imperialism’: Rentseeking analysis as an exemplar,” ODTÜ Gelişme Dergisi, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 387–412, 2007, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: http://www2.feas.metu.edu.tr/metusd/ojs/index.php/metusd/article/view/169.