Young men choosing a traditional working career 189 Young women making modern choices 191 The struggles of young men versus the success of young women 192 CONCLUSIONS Changing economies, changing households 195 Jane Wheelock and Age Mariussen Summing up 195 Institutional comparisons: empirical analysis 197 Theoretical implications 201 Policy implications 204 Bibliography 207 Index 231 ix ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 1. 1 Institutional change as a theme in economics and sociology 15 1. 2 The household in the total economy 28 2. 1 The household in the production, reproduction and consumption cloverleaf 39 10. 1 Characteristics of the two extreme groups of farmers, 'sceptics' and 'radicals' 155 11. 1 Flexibility in the family economic unit 161 Tables ILl Changing employment structure in Wearside and Mo i Rana, selected years 67 11. 2 Employment change comparisons, Wearside!Great Britain and Mo i Rana/Norway, selected years 68 11. 3 Major industrial sectors, Wearside and Mo i Rana, selected years 69 11. 4 Employment in Wearside and Mo i Rana: gender and part-time! full-time breakdown, selected years 70 The degree of change in the organisation of household work 7. 1 116 Economic status categories and family succession 10. 1 150 12. 1 Economic position of young adults (16-29) in Newcastle 176 12.

Young men choosing a traditional working career 189 Young women making modern choices 191 The struggles of young men versus the success of young women 192 CONCLUSIONS Changing economies, changing households 195 Jane Wheelock and Age Mariussen Summing up 195 Institutional comparisons: empirical analysis 197 Theoretical implications 201 Policy implications 204 Bibliography 207 Index 231 ix ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 1. 1 Institutional change as a theme in economics and sociology 15 1. 2 The household in the total economy 28 2. 1 The household in the production, reproduction and consumption cloverleaf 39 10. 1 Characteristics of the two extreme groups of farmers, 'sceptics' and 'radicals' 155 11. 1 Flexibility in the family economic unit 161 Tables ILl Changing employment structure in Wearside and Mo i Rana, selected years 67 11. 2 Employment change comparisons, Wearside!Great Britain and Mo i Rana/Norway, selected years 68 11. 3 Major industrial sectors, Wearside and Mo i Rana, selected years 69 11. 4 Employment in Wearside and Mo i Rana: gender and part-time! full-time breakdown, selected years 70 The degree of change in the organisation of household work 7. 1 116 Economic status categories and family succession 10. 1 150 12. 1 Economic position of young adults (16-29) in Newcastle 176 12.

Regulatory reform represents a major shift in the government's role toward price determination in the transportation and telecommunication industries. The resulting policy emphasizes dependence on market forces to set prices and to encourage efficient production techniques. While extensive research investigates the influence of deregulation on prices, profits and productivity, the effect on labor markets has not received the same scrutiny. Firms in these industries are of major importance to business operations in other industries because they provide the critical services of transporting goods and transmitting information. This may partly explain such extensive research on the product market aspects of regulatory reform. Examining labor markets in the transportation and telecommunications industries is also highly warranted, as historically these industries represented some of the most heavily unionized sectors in the economy. The extent to which regulatory reform has encouraged product market competition may not necessarily result in the same degree of competition across industries. Regulatory Reform and Labor Markets debates the notion that research on regulatory reform and labor markets should develop within the framework of the competitive model. This is achieved by presenting diverging views on wage and employment determination in distinctly different deregulated industries.

Work and Idleness develops the view that redistributing employment is a `feasible capitalist' solution, not just to the unemployment which particular groups suffer, but also to the work that others have to contend with, including many women. Putting the redistribution of employment on the policy agenda opens up debate on how to ensure a more equitable and fulfilling relationship between the ways we gain our livelihoods and the lives we lead. Growing insecurity in labour markets and changing patterns in the commodification of labour have led to a redistribution of paid and unpaid labour time as the structure of power relations, the gender order, discrimination, and state regulation have been modified. The first main trend affecting insecurity is mass unemployment and the growth of workless households. A second notable trend is a gender-based redistribution of hours worked. The third major trend is a shift from full-time waged work to full-time self-employment. Part I of this book presents the main economic theories driving the continuing divide between the intensification of work and the extension of idleness. Part II documents the ways in which the shift to mass idleness in advanced industrial countries has hit some groups particularly hard: the youngest and oldest age groups and other groups, including disabled workers, have traditionally been subject to discrimination in the labor markets. Part III provides a set of policy prescriptions.

Normative Social Theory James M. Dean and A. M. C. Waterman University of Manitoba 1. Economics and Religion Once Again This hook is a sequel to Economics and Religion: Are They Distinct? (Brennan and Waterman 1994). That volume was motivated by a frustration born of many disappointing encounters between economists and theologians in the 1980s. Can bishops, synods, and other voices of organized religion bring any interesting (and disinterested) contribution to the public policy debate? If so, what is the relation of their contribution to that of the purely "secular" knowledge economists believe they can supply? Can economists bring any interesting (and disinterested) contribution to the public policy debate? If so, what is the relation of their contribution to the fundamental values that inform social ethics and that are still guarded to a large extent by religious tradition? All too often the two sides talked at cross-purposes. Well-intentioned economists coexisted for a few hours or days with well intentioned theologians whose manner of conceiving social reality was radically incompatible with their own. There seemed to be no common ground. The first requisite of any genuine conversation is an agreed conceptual framework that is able to accommodate the peculiar social vision both of the economist and of theologian, and to display the logical relation between the two.

Upon hearing that Ronald Coase had been awarded the Nobel Prize, a fellow economist's first response was to ask with whom Coase had shared the Prize. Whether this response was idiosyncratic or not, I do not know; I expect not. Part of this type of reaction can no doubt be explained by the fact that Coase has often been characterized as an economist who wrote only two significant or influential papers: "The Nature of the Firm" (1937) and "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960). And by typical professional standards of "significant" and "influential" (i. e. , widely read and cited), this perception embodies a great deal of truth, even subsequent to Coase's receipt of the Prize. This is not to say that there have not been other important works - "The Marginal Cost Controversy" (1946) and "The Lighthouse in Economics" (1974) come immediately to mind here - only that in a random sample of, say, one hundred economists, one would likely find few who could list a Coase bibliography beyond the two classic pieces noted above, in spite of Coase's significant publication record. ' The purpose of this collection is to assess the development of, tensions within, and prospects for Coasean Economics - those aspects of economic analysis that have evolved out of Coase's path-breaking work. Two major strands of research can be identified here: law and economics and the New Institutional Economics.

Ideas linked to rational choice theory started to appear frequently in the economics literature in the 1960s and 1970s, but the attention given to rationality widened to include commentators presenting far-reaching appraisals and critiques. The literature grew to a steady flow and spanned diverse areas of thought including socialist and `rational-choice Marxist' assessments, and other approaches including institutional, sociological, psychological, ethical, choice-theoretical, strategic, and game-theoretical treatments of rationality. This diversity of literature led to the creation of this volume. What does rationality mean? Was there some common core of meaning that held all of these seemingly disparate developments together, or were there discernable schools of thought with peculiarities that set them clearly apart from one another? The essays in this volume illustrate that diversity, and despite the variety of approaches there remains a common core of meaning that accommodates not so much a radically different set of concepts of rationality as a highly variegated array of methods and approaches to this subject. Contributors address topics of their choice on the concept of rationality in economics, and the selection of these contributors is meant to represent a variety of backgrounds and approaches.