published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Urban Studies / Master / Master of Social Sciences

No description available.

Recent transformations within modern economies have often been discussed under the concept of “restructuring”. However this term, despite its widespread use in sociology, has little explanatory power. What is needed instead is a consideration of how restructuring has taken place. Three major theoretical positions which attempt to provide this understanding are Marxist monopoly captialism, post-fordism and post-industrialism. Each of these paradigms provides a different understanding of the nature and operation of contemporary capitalist formations. My purpose in this thesis is to determine which of these different viewpoints is most applicable to the Canadian situation. I will do so through an examination of changes in the self-employed sector of the Canadian economy since 1960. The self-employed sector, besides being of intrinsic interest because of its recent attention by politicians and the popular media, is an important testing ground for the relative validity of the above theories in the Canadian context. Each framework is consistent with a set of well-defined and contrasting predictions about what should happen to the overall size of the self-employed sector, as well as expectations about the direction of ascriptive inequality, both within the sector and in the larger society. Using time series regression procedures, declines and increases in the size of the entrepreneurial sector over the last thirty or so years are documented. In addition, the importance of increases in the sector is examined by modelling the effect of unemployment on self-employment. Predictions about ascriptive inequalities are tested through an investigation of earnings functions within the self-employed and employed populations. The results of these analyses suggest that a post-fordist understanding of the contemporary Canadian economy is most appropriate. Self-employment has clearly increased since 1960, and ascriptive inequalities, particularly by gender, have persisted throughout much ofthe latter half of this period. The implication of this is that in order to understand the larger processes shaping our economy, as well as the nature of work beyond self-employment, we are most likely to find answers in discussions about post-fordism.

This thesis represents the first attempt at the empirical estimation of Marxian categories in the Canadian economy for the 1961-76 period. The thesis also addresses the question of the relevance of Marxian economics for an understanding of contemporary capitalism. The first part of the thesis presents an overview of Marxian economics, more particularly a summary of Marx's Capital, Michio Morishima's Marx's Economics, and Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism. The second part of the thesis reviews the conventional economic statistics in Canada over the 1961-76 period, elaborates the Marxian input-output frame-work as applied to the Canadian economy and estimates the basic Marxian categories such as variable capital, surplus value, and constant capital and the relationships between categories as expressed by the organic composition of capital, the rate of surplus value and the rate of profit. The final chapters of the thesis appraise the strengths and weaknesses of Capital and Late Capitalism and present an agenda for future research in empirical Marxian economics.

No description available.

Recent transformations within modern economies have often been discussed under the concept of “restructuring”. However this term, despite its widespread use in sociology, has little explanatory power. What is needed instead is a consideration of how restructuring has taken place. Three major theoretical positions which attempt to provide this understanding are Marxist monopoly captialism, post-fordism and post-industrialism. Each of these paradigms provides a different understanding of the nature and operation of contemporary capitalist formations. My purpose in this thesis is to determine which of these different viewpoints is most applicable to the Canadian situation. I will do so through an examination of changes in the self-employed sector of the Canadian economy since 1960. The self-employed sector, besides being of intrinsic interest because of its recent attention by politicians and the popular media, is an important testing ground for the relative validity of the above theories in the Canadian context. Each framework is consistent with a set of well-defined and contrasting predictions about what should happen to the overall size of the self-employed sector, as well as expectations about the direction of ascriptive inequality, both within the sector and in the larger society. Using time series regression procedures, declines and increases in the size of the entrepreneurial sector over the last thirty or so years are documented. In addition, the importance of increases in the sector is examined by modelling the effect of unemployment on self-employment. Predictions about ascriptive inequalities are tested through an investigation of earnings functions within the self-employed and employed populations. The results of these analyses suggest that a post-fordist understanding of the contemporary Canadian economy is most appropriate. Self-employment has clearly increased since 1960, and ascriptive inequalities, particularly by gender, have persisted throughout much ofthe latter half of this period. The implication of this is that in order to understand the larger processes shaping our economy, as well as the nature of work beyond self-employment, we are most likely to find answers in discussions about post-fordism. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

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published_or_final_version / Urban Studies / Master / Master of Social Sciences