This issue of the International Review of Applied Economics contains several papers which explore the way in which the participation of people – as citizens and employees – can and does impact economic and social life, along with the role of regulation. In ‘The heterogeneity of residents’ preference over a wide array of services, provided by a master planned community’, James Yoo and Julianna Browning report on the preferences of residents for various amenities within their neighbourhoods, and on how these may vary between different sections of the community. In ‘The quotas law for people with disabilities in Brazil: is it a guarantee of employment?’, Ana Cléssia Pereira Lima de Araújo, Maria Analice D. Santos Sampaio, Edward Martins Costa, Ahmad Saeed Khan, Guilherme Irffi and Rayssa Alexandre Costa find that by 2016, the effects of establishing legal employment quotas for people with disabilities in Brazil were positive for firms employing between 100 and 500 workers. This demonstrates the importance of such regulatory activity, although in practice the effect across countries over time will depend on the action of people actually enforcing the regulations – including both the regulatory authorities themselves, which requires that they be adequately resourced, and employees, often through trade union involvement.
In ‘Surplus and capital profitability in the Spanish economy, and comparison with the Euro area. A political economy approach’, Juan Pablo Mateo and Maxi Nieto consider economic regulation at a much higher level, as regards the structure and operation of the European Union, particularly as regards the core and peripheral economies of the Eurozone. Thus, they argue that the Spanish economy is suffering from a profitability crisis, consistent with its peripheral role within the Euro zone. In ‘Does property ownership by women reduce domestic violence? A case of Latin America’, Emin Gahramanov, Khusrav Gaibulloev and Javed Younas find that whether empowering women via various material means makes them less vulnerable to intimate partner violence is not straightforward, in the sense of this not following automatically; on the contrary, it may require additional action against a pre-existing high toleration to violence, and male institutional domination. And as referred to above, whether law enforcement is strong or weak will be a key factor. In ‘A balance-of-payments-constrained growth model for a small commodity exporting country: Argentina between 1971 and 2016’, Juan Miguel Massot and Román David Merga study the balance of payments as a constraint on economic growth, focusing on Argentina’s economy between 1971 and 2016. Whil e their main argument is that the degree to which the balance of payments will act as a constraint will depend on other factors – and they focus in particular on whether exporters set their prices in foreign currencies – this has parallels with the high level regulatory architecture point central to the paper described above regarding Spain’s fate as part of the Eurozone periphery. Indeed, as far as exports to the rest of the Eurozone goes, the ability to choose which currency to set prices in was one of the options lost in abandoning separate currencies within the Eurozone.
In ‘Population and economic growth in developed countries’, Theodore P. Lianos, Nicholas Tsounis and Anastasia Pseiridis find that – consistent with many of the above papers in different ways – there is no single relationship that is consistent over time; on the contrary, it will depend on the institutional and regulatory environment at the time, and on how people behave – from choosing family size, through to migration patterns.
Thus, in their different ways these papers demonstrate that to understand economic processes – as well as social ones - one cannot rely on unchanging production functions, utility preferences and the like; on the contrary, one has to determine the institutional and regulatory regimes in place, and to understand how people are likely to behave, as employees, electors and citizens – and how these behaviours may relate to the institutional and regulatory backdrop, and how they may change over time.