‘Post-Keynesian’ became an umbrella term for those heterodox economists wanting to move away from the dominant neo-classical paradigm but not comfortable with another umbrella term of ‘political economy’. This review is about the contributions to understanding societal and economic change from an established and internationally recognised group of post-Keynesian economists. Many of the features which differentiate them from other, and sometimes fluid, subsets of post-Keynesian economists derive from their Kaleckian inspiration.

GC Harcourt made many fundamental and essential contributions to the development of capital investment theory – most famously via his development of the Cambridge Capital Controversies, exposing conceptual and analytical flaws and contradictions in neoclassical approaches to defining and measuring capital. Relatedly, Harcourt also made essential contributions to our understanding of how accounting rules, used by real-world businesses to guide their investment decision-making, create anomalies and deficiencies in the accumulation of capital at a microeconomic level – with significant, deleterious consequences for the accumulation of capital at a macroeconomic level. In developing Harcourt’s contributions, this paper links Harcourt’s early insights about accounting rules with subsequent developments in behavioural economic models of business decision-making, thus aligning Harcourt’s contributions with insights from behavioural models of investment decision-making. These insights are then combined in showing how the misapplication of investment appraisal criteria at a microeconomic level contributes to under-investment and investment volatility in the macroeconomy, with negative implications for output, employment, labour productivity, wages and cyclical volatility.

The effect of trade liberalisation on the welfare of workers depends on the nature and magnitude of switching costs that workers face in moving across sectors. This paper investigates the impact of trade liberalisation on the gender wage gap in China, emphasising the role of sectoral switching costs in driving the effect. Using the local labour market approach as the identification strategy, I find that a one-standard-deviation increase in regional trade exposure is associated with a 3.2% increase in the gender wage gap during the 1992–2009 period. The emergence of the empirical pattern is mainly because the sectoral switching costs are larger for females than males. Since trade liberalisation leads to labour reallocation across sectors, the presence of asymmetric sectoral switching costs thus prevents female workers initially employed in the manufacturing sector from accessing advanced service industries, resulting in a rising gender wage gap after the trade. As a response, female manufacturing workers are forced to either be employed in low-skill service industries or exit the labour market. This paper carries strong implications for policies that both promote gender equity and help trade-displaced workers.

Protests differ and so do protest outcomes. This is also the case in food delivery gig work, which is characterised by frequent labour unrest. Various cross-country analyses have pointed to the importance of the national context for the strategies and outcomes of courier protests. However, as the article shows, the protests already differ at the level of different cities. To analyse this, the study argues that the heterogeneity of protests in platform-mediated courier work is due to the spatially distinct logic of the respective cities. The research is based on two case studies of food delivery platforms in Germany, which were investigated with a mixed methods research design consisting of interviews, multi-sited ethnography and a survey. The findings show that the intrinsic logic of the two centres of courier protests studied (Cologne and Berlin) played a central role in the composition of the protesting groups, their strategies and subsequently the outcomes. However, it turns out that intrinsic logics are not homogeneous and in fact may exist in various forms, which can be complementary or in conflict with each other and are supported and realised by different social groups. In addition, the size of the cities also proves to be decisive for the dynamics of the protests.

Geoffrey Harcourt remained a steadfast left Keynesian all his life. He applied his economic analysis in framing policy recommendations targeting the welfare of the poor. He undertook incisive and comprehensive surveys of the work of Cambridge post-Keynesians, some of whom were involved intellectually or practically in the economics of developing economies. Keynes, remaining an imperialist as far as India was concerned, nevertheless produced a corpus which has been immensely helpful in understanding developing economies and prescribing policy solutions for them. First, Keynes created the modern macroeconomics discipline and refined the concept of national income, allowing methods of collecting and organising economic and social data enabling assessment of intersectoral impacts. Second, still relevant today is his idea of an International Clearing Union, disciplining countries with excessive balance of payments surpluses or deficits, even though American opposition at Bretton Woods prevented its adoption. Third, although an economist of the short run, Keynes took up issues of vital concern for the development of an underdeveloped economy, departing from his long-held fears about excessive population growth and contributing to policies for stabilising commodity prices. While Keynes remained a Eurocentric imperialist, his dreams for Europe in general and Britain in particular proved relevant for many developing countries today. He supported public investment and state involvement in solving problems of unemployment and industrial restructuring. His analysis of the instability of stock markets and dangers of financialisation remains highly relevant in a world experiencing major stock market crashes in almost every decade since the 1970s.

Gig work is defined by a (mostly) automated management, operating remotely through an app. Without human interaction, workers are left with only guesses about the functioning of the algorithms they are subjected to. To better position themselves in their competition for tasks, they try to influence the data profile that platform build about them. Made of performance indicators, personal information, and sensor data, these profiles are an essential part of algorithmic management. This paper will identify data profiles as core sites of the struggle in the gig economy. It will discuss the benefits and limitations of bringing data at the centre stage through a workers’ inquiry of food delivery platforms. The analysis will distinguish three actors in this inquiry and discuss their uses of data profiles: the couriers themselves, as they attempt to make sense of algorithmic management; the researcher, and how they can use personal data in order to reconstitute this field of struggle; and the trade unions, which can provide a way to collectivise data governance and gain better information in building their case in favour of gig workers’ rights.

This case study finds that disrespect by international expatriate managers towards local employees triggered long-term industrial unrest in the Indian subsidiary of the global car maker Toyota. Whilst innovative production models and their tools provide economic advantage to the company, the interaction of the application of the lean production model within the context of host country institutions often creates workplace disputation and unrest due to unilateralism and managerial hegemonies that overrides local customs and norms. The power of multinational enterprises to override or ignore institutional resistance and to inflict disrespect towards the local workforce can result in worker resistance, a lack of trust, and ongoing industrial unrest. This case study demonstrates how a lack of respect of local customs and workers grievances had long-lasting consequences in terms of the subsequent conflict and a poor industrial relations climate at the production plant in India.

This paper focuses on the migrant pay gap in Spain. Going beyond descriptive evidence of the differences between immigrants and nationals in terms of wages, we analyse which part of the gross wage is most affected by features that cannot be captured using econometric models. Relying on microdata from the Wage Structure Survey, we divide the total gross wage into two main parts: base wage and wage supplements. Then we decompose the migrant wage gap into the explained and the unexplained terms, using a simple decomposition methodology, the Oaxaca-Blinder model. Our results show that a part of the differences in wage supplements does not seem to be explained by the set of control variables introduced in the model and that this effect is more pronounced when only men are considered. These findings offer a new perspective on the migrant pay gap in Spain and point to the importance of wage-setting practices related to wage supplements in explaining (and widening) the total migrant pay gap in our country.

This study investigates the impact of the massive and unexpected influx of Syrian refugees on the job vacancy rates (JVRs) and job-finding rates (JFRs) in Turkey between 2009–2015 and 2009–2018. We employed the instrumental variable approach to address potential endogeneity issues. While we found no significant causal impact of the Syrian refugees on JVR, they decreased JFR between 2009 and 2018. A reduction in JFR indicates that the Beveridge Curve shifted inwards, thereby raising matching efficiency and facilitating an improvement in labour market conditions. Furthermore, our research indicated differences in coefficients and significance in JVR and JFR across occupations, as well as different effects in these areas between the short and long term. However, the results demonstrate that the rapid and unexpected influx of Syrian refugees alleviated JVR and JFR in most of the occupation groups.

Faced with platforms such as Uber, riders are resisting individually and organising actions such as Riders X Derechos in Spain. Some of these ‘new proletarians’ have even organised themselves into cooperatives. To the global utopia of investor-owned platforms, platform cooperativism opposes the utopia of delivery without exploitation or carbon emissions through local cooperatives owned by riders. Based on the case study of the Mensakas cooperative in Barcelona, this ethnography analyses the link between riders’ protests and cooperative platforms. It questions the concrete effects of ‘counter-platform politics’ and the relationship between politics and labour. It also examines the strategies of intercooperation in the ‘cyclelogistical’ sector to understand the institutional, social, and political conditions that foster the ‘re-embeddedness’ of the bike delivery market.

The present study discusses the current wage situation in India and the need for living wages as workers and employees grapple with the cost of living crisis. A case study of two districts of Madhya Pradesh (MP) state is presented to demonstrate how the living wage benchmarks based on the Anker Methodology compare with existing minimum wage fixations and other development indicators. The living wage benchmarking is based on field surveys conducted in Ratlam and Chhindwara districts in October–December 2021, and a rigorous analysis of nationally representative consumption and expenditure surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation and the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. Our living wage estimates are 1.8 times the minimum wages for agricultural labourers and 43% more than those earned by non-agricultural unskilled labourers. Moreover, the actual wages reported are less than half of the estimated living wages, indicating that the current incomes and wages for workers and farmers of rural MP are far from adequate to lead a decent life.

Samsung has largely shifted its electronics manufacturing out of China, and mostly to Vietnam. In that process, it has, to date, avoided local labour market (LLM) difficulties faced by its subsidiaries in industrial parks in China: in particular, pervasive skill shortages among the electronics assembly workers on whom Samsung’s manufacturing depends. Labour retention problems in China had significantly challenged its commitment to invest in necessary employee training. By contrast, Samsung’s domination of foreign direct investment (FDI) within particular Vietnamese industrial parks has removed the inter-employer competition it experienced in China. A deeper explanation involves Samsung’s development – as Vietnam’s largest single source of FDI, and major producer of that country’s exports – of synergistic and symbiotic relationships with Vietnam’s national and subnational governments. These relationships have allowed Samsung to influence development strategies for industrial parks and their LLMs. Samsung has invests expansively in forms of education and training whose benefits extend beyond the areas in which its manufacturing facilities operate, to populations that the company does not employ. Providing benefits beyond typical success criteria for FDI in developing economies, Samsung has helped Vietnam’s party-state meet its own legitimacy needs with its internal constituencies, contributing to a broader practical consensus in favour of the party-state’s development policies. This article therefore widens the perspective of FDI to embed it in national and subnational business–government relations.

In Australia and many other advanced economies, housing is playing a central role in accentuating and perpetuating inequality. This paper, drawing on primary and secondary data, discusses the various ways in which housing tenure in Australia contributes to wealth and income inequality. It argues that a neoliberal housing policy framework and accompanying financialisation of housing have facilitated a dramatic increase in house prices, the neglect of social housing, and a deepening wealth and income divide based on housing tenure. With respect to wealth, the key divide is between outright homeowners versus low-income private renters and low-income households in mortgage stress. The wealth of outright homeowners has grown substantially in recent decades and many have been able to acquire a holiday home and/or investment properties, thereby intensifying the wealth divide. Approximately a third of Australian households are now locked out of home ownership for an extended period or even lifelong. Housing tenure status also has an impact on the disposable income of households. For example, low-income outright homeowners are invariably in a far better position with respect to disposable income than their counterparts who have large mortgages or are private renters.

Financial literacy is a dangerous illusion. The article builds on existing critiques, notably the work of Lauren Willis, to show that the discourse of financial literacy education raises fundamental epistemological issues about the nature of financial markets and financial behaviour. The difficulties of achieving financial literacy are ill conceived simply as the outcomes of market imperfections. Instead, structural inequalities, financial reform, and the nature of financial assets preclude consumers from achieving adequate levels of financial competence and the claim that they can do so diverts attention from the causes of unequal economic outcomes.

The vulnerability associated with the drudgery of drivers in the ride-hailing enterprise of the platform economy has come under both public scrutiny and scholarly study. There remains, however, a dearth of knowledge around how driver vulnerabilities are produced and maintained, and which actors drive those. This paper contributes to the discourse by unpacking how the political economy of digital capitalism plays out to undermine the fortunes of ride-hailing drivers in Ghana. Using qualitative interviews and focus group discussions, the paper shows that drivers’ vulnerabilities stem primarily from the unbridled control over the means of production, which are the digital platforms and the vehicles, as well as the ensuing unequal power relations between capital owners and drivers as capital producers. The paper also characterises the ambivalent role of the State as a capitalist agent that maintains the status quo, albeit nuanced. The need to interrogate alternatives to augment State regulation is therefore recommended for mediating the relationship between capital owners and drivers as capital producers. Effective alternatives would be reducing capital’s monopoly by replacing private, foreign platforms with local public platforms and strengthening drivers’ collective agency to mediate the excessive power of the capital owners.

Achieving adequate incomes to sustain people in their retirement years is a challenge. This paper addresses poverty among injured workers of retirement age when they have been receiving workers’ compensation benefits. Guided by governmental management theory, we address procedures that have operated without media or scholarly attention, in order to highlight details in workers’ compensation retirement pension policy that contribute to injured worker poverty in older age in Ontario, Canada. We used a mixed methods approach, applying critical discourse analysis to explain (a) policies related to retirement income; (b) rationales that supported a legislative change that reduced retirement pensions; and (c) workers’ experiences of living with a workers’ compensation pension. Although workers’ compensation board retirement income policy was intended to make up for loss of contributions to the Canadian federal pension fund, the Ontario injured workers’ retirement pension now pays less than half of the amount workers would have received in the federal pension,a trend that is observable across Canadian provincial workers’ compensation boards. Legislative debates about the 1998 bill that halved the Ontario injured workers’ retirement pension centred on neoliberal logic of fiscal responsibility. Injured workers and key informants in this study expressed trepidation about injured workers’ financial futures.

In this paper, we present empirical research on what we call ‘digital worker feedback infrastructures’ (DWFI); these are communication systems based on digital technologies that allow for creating so-called ‘feedback data’ via different forms of information input of workers in global value chains (GVC). The paper provides an overview of over 50 current DWFIs in GVCs and asks about the main differences between management-oriented and worker-centred digital feedback infrastructures in their usage of worker data. In the first part, we trace the emergence of DWFIs at the intersection of different trends: the continuous non-improvement of working conditions through auditing, the permanent politicisation, and contestation of this fact through labour and activist networks as well as the development of new digital technologies. In the second section, we elaborate the main features of DWFIs and analyse potential shortcomings in the context of the ‘ethical’ audit and monitoring regime for GVCs. Third, we use our dataset to present an overview of the heterogeneity of DWFIs. We pay particular attention to examples of civil society developed tools as we suggest that they provide a glimpse of the potential of worker feedback technologies from below, which could contribute to better monitoring of worker rights and facilitate a more democratic coordination of workplaces and GVCs.

Many countries use employer-sponsored visas to regulate migrant worker recruitment. By tying each sponsored migrant to a single employer, employer-sponsored visas have contributed to problems of workers being underpaid and mistreated. Through a critical assessment of temporary visas in Australia, particularly the Temporary Skill Shortage visa, and an analysis of relevant Australian and international literature, we argue that employer-sponsored visas are fundamentally flawed in their design and should be replaced. We consider various alternative options to employer sponsorship for regulating migrant worker recruitment before proposing the creation of a ‘mobility visa’, which would allow migrant workers to move freely between employers. We argue a mobility visa is a superior model for protecting worker equity and voice while also helping to address labour market needs.

This paper focuses on the state of precarious work in Spain: Are all those who work as self-employed persons and interns truly operating under those descriptions, or are many of them employees so precariously engaged that they have no labour contracts? If so, how has this come to pass? Why is it increasingly happening? This paper raises some answers based on the Marxist approach. We link employment instability to increased exploitation of the Spanish labour force. This trend is a reaction by capital to low rates of profit and the implementation of particular governmental economic policies implemented to meet the demands of the European Union. Due to the precariousness of work, prospects for achieving a stable and autonomous life for a large cohort of Spain’s working youth are seriously threatened.

This article uses Loïc Wacquant’s concept of the centaur state to analyse symbolic framings of the meaning and future of work in the Australian policy response to COVID-19 in 2020. In contrast with historical conceptualisations anchored in rights and social security, contemporary Australian social welfare policy discourse is dominated by political representations of the imperative to work. For people currently outside of the labour market, self-reliance through paid work is a primary objective of social security policy. In 2020, economic impacts of national lockdowns were ameliorated by large transfers from the state to businesses and individuals. Concurrent announcements of plans for a ‘business-led’ post-pandemic economic recovery centred the message that the meaning of work lies in its individual and social utility. Prior to the pandemic, transformation of the modes of organisation of work had already brought into question normative claims about the meaning of work, and what is comprehended by the term ‘job’. Analysis of key ‘economic recovery’ policy initiatives illustrates that they combined considerable corporate welfare with a construction of job seekers as having unrealistic expectations of meaningful work, for which there could be no room in the institutional machinery driving economic recovery. In the policy trajectory of the Australian centaur state, the future of work for people currently unemployed is to serve as a resource to fuel the business-led recovery.