IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/copoec/v7y1996i2p127-131.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Work supply and constitutional order

Author

Listed:
  • Jiro Obata

Abstract

James Buchanan has suggested resolving the issue of labor supply and increasing returns by introducing the concept of a work ethic. This paper offers some additional thoughts to the solution that Buchanan has developed by taking a historical perspective. It was the choice between labor supply to the market and self-employment rather than a choice between work and leisure that the early worker in the transitional period to industrialized labor was confronted with. Starting with this point of view, I argue that the critical motivation for increasing labor supply to the market was the prospect of reaping more benefits under the newly organized firms compared to the benefits that the system of simple labor-ownership rule generated. The paper concludes that entrepreneurship, which promotes the division of labor both within firms as well as among firms, performs a decisive role in increasing labor supply. This in turn made possible the transformation of the constitutional order from the pre-industrialized society to the more advanced civil society of today. Copyright Mower Academic Publishers 1996

Suggested Citation

  • Jiro Obata, 1996. "Work supply and constitutional order," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 127-131, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:7:y:1996:i:2:p:127-131
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00154118
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00154118
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00154118?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Buchanan James McGill, 1994. "Ethics and Economic Progress: Compte rendu par Thierry Sebagh," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 196-204, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Berggren, Niclas, 1997. "Rhetoric or reality? An economic analysis of the effects of religion in Sweden," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 571-596.
    2. Roth, Timothy P., 1997. "Competence-difficulty gaps, ethics and the new social welfare theory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 533-552.
    3. Jorge Iván González, 1999. "Políticos, predicadores y mercados," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 1(1), pages 137-142, July-dece.
    4. José Molinero, 2000. "The Origins of the State from Reciprocity to Coercive Power," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 231-253, September.
    5. Christoph Luetge, 2006. "An Economic Rationale for a Work and Savings Ethic? J. Buchanan’s Late Works and Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 66(1), pages 43-51, June.
    6. Reyes Calderón, 2004. "Fron Neo-classical Entrepreneur to Socio-economic Organization," Faculty Working Papers 01/04, School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Navarra.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    D72;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:7:y:1996:i:2:p:127-131. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.