IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uto/dipeco/201405.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A challenge to normativity and economic theory, the case ofdebtors movements

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Due to contemporary economic situation, with systemic financial and real economy crisis, many studies started to investigate the nature of debt. Not that the subject (and its controversy) was ignored before, but one of the major limit of current theory is the uniformity of treatment and analysis as if there were no fundamental difference in the variety of debt, bankruptcy and possible bailout with no relevant distinctions in terms of causes, categories of agents involved and respective relationships, normative framework and uses of the loan money. Economic theory defines debt as a relationship between someone with surplus of money and somebody in “need”, with a temporal partition between one exchange and the other. Distinct models for different loan types are necessary, in particular when related to norms and social concept of justice, such as the issues raised by debt revolts, debt imprisonments and debt slavery. Debtors’ movements appeared in different situation, but generally have in common the type of debtors involved: household or small family-level businessmen that experience great pressure related to collaterals nature. Insolvency highly influences welfare, both in terms of reputation in their social network, and in terms of material life. This characteristic reveals itself to be crucial in the study, both for the birth and rise of movements, and for the comprehension of the moral and power mechanisms that withstand this kind debt, and should give economic theory a starting point to develop new types of models on debts.

Suggested Citation

  • Bertazzi, Ilaria, 2014. "A challenge to normativity and economic theory, the case ofdebtors movements," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201405, University of Turin.
  • Handle: RePEc:uto:dipeco:201405
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.est.unito.it/do/home.pl/Download?doc=/allegati/wp2014dip/wp_5_2014.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David de Meza & David C. Webb, 1987. "Too Much Investment: A Problem of Asymmetric Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 281-292.
    2. Kathrin Berensmann & Angélique Herzberg, 2009. "Sovereign Insolvency Procedures – A Comparative Look At Selected Proposals," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(5), pages 856-881, December.
    3. Michelle Alexopoulos & Ian Domowitz, 1998. "Personal Liabilities and Bankruptcy Reform: An International Perspective," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 127-159, October.
    4. William Waller, 2001. "Kickin’em while They’re Down: Consumer Bankruptcy Reform," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 871-888, December.
    5. Oded Galor & Joseph Zeira, 1993. "Income Distribution and Macroeconomics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(1), pages 35-52.
    6. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1972. "Some Aspects of the Pure Theory of Corporate Finance: Bankruptcies and Take-Overs," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 3(2), pages 458-482, Autumn.
    7. Herman, Barry, 2003. "Unfinished business in the international dialogue on debt," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), December.
    8. Banerjee, Abhijit V & Newman, Andrew F, 1993. "Occupational Choice and the Process of Development," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(2), pages 274-298, April.
    9. Axelrod, Robert, 1986. "An Evolutionary Approach to Norms," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(4), pages 1095-1111, December.
    10. Manasse, Paolo & Roubini, Nouriel, 2009. ""Rules of thumb" for sovereign debt crises," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 192-205, July.
    11. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2014. "A Decade of Debt," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Miguel Fuentes D. & Claudio E. Raddatz & Carmen M. Reinhart (ed.),Capital Mobility and Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 18, chapter 4, pages 97-135, Central Bank of Chile.
    12. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1989. "Markets, Market Failures, and Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 197-203, May.
    13. Stanley D. Longhofer, 2004. "Protection for Whom? Creditor Conflict and Bankruptcy," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 6(2), pages 249-284.
    14. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1981. "Information and Capital Markets," NBER Working Papers 0678, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Schabert, Andreas, 2011. "Exchange rate policy under sovereign default risk," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 179-181, August.
    16. John Gathergood, 2012. "Debt and Depression: Causal Links and Social Norm Effects," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(563), pages 1094-1114, September.
    17. repec:bla:intfin:v:1:y:1998:i:1:p:127-59 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Keith M. Carlson, 1993. "On the macroeconomics of private debt," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jan, pages 53-66.
    19. Gintis, Herbert, 1989. "Financial markets and the political structure of the enterprise," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 311-322, May.
    20. Loury, Glenn C, 1981. "Is Equal Opportunity Enough?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(2), pages 122-126, May.
    21. Heaton, J. B., 2000. "Incomplete Financial Contracts and Non-contractual Legal Rules: The Case of Debt Capacity and Fraudulent Conveyance Law," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 169-183, April.
    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. Besley, Timothy, 1995. "Savings, credit and insurance," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 36, pages 2123-2207, Elsevier.
    2. Bardhan, Pranab & Bowles, Samuel & Gintis, Herbert, 2000. "Wealth inequality, wealth constraints and economic performance," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 541-603, Elsevier.
    3. Gruner, Hans Peter, 2003. "Redistribution as a selection device," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 194-216, February.
    4. Inci, Eren, 2013. "Occupational choice and the quality of entrepreneurs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 1-21.
    5. Maitreesh Ghatak & Massimo Morelli & Tomas Sjoström, 2001. "Credit rationing, wealth inequality, and allocation of talent," ICER Working Papers - Applied Mathematics Series 23-2001, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    6. Alessandro Spiganti, 2020. "Inequality of opportunity, inequality of effort, and innovation," Economics Working Papers MWP 2020/02, European University Institute.
    7. Gokmen, Gunes & Morin, Annaig, 2021. "Investment shocks and inequality dynamics," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 570-579.
    8. Hidalgo-Cabrillana, Ana, 2004. "Does asymmetric information promote talented people?," UC3M Working papers. Economics we042809, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    9. Karlan, Dean & Morduch, Jonathan, 2010. "Access to Finance," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4703-4784, Elsevier.
    10. Jiang, Neville & Wang, Ping & Wu, Haibin, 2010. "Ability-heterogeneity, entrepreneurship, and economic growth," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 522-541, March.
    11. Aney, Madhav S. & Ghatak, Maitreesh & Morelli, Massimo, 2016. "Credit market frictions and political failure," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 48-64.
    12. Hidalgo Cabrillana, Ana, 2009. "Endogenous capital market imperfections, human capital, and intergenerational mobility," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 285-298, November.
    13. Grossmann, Volker, 2008. "Risky human capital investment, income distribution, and macroeconomic dynamics," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 19-42, March.
    14. Azariadis, Costas & Stachurski, John, 2005. "Poverty Traps," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, Elsevier.
    15. Boukraine, Wissem, 2020. "The finance-inequality nexus in the BRICS countries: evidence from an ARDL bound testing approach," MPRA Paper 101976, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Juliano Junqueira Assunção, 2005. "Non-agricultural land use and land reform: theory and evidence from Brazil," Textos para discussão 496, Department of Economics PUC-Rio (Brazil).
    17. Michael P. Keane & Eswar S. Prasad, 2002. "Inequality, Transfers, And Growth: New Evidence From The Economic Transition In Poland," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 324-341, May.
    18. Benabou, Roland, 2005. "Inequality, Technology and the Social Contract," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1595-1638, Elsevier.
    19. Javier Parada Gómez Urquiza & Alejandro López-Feldman, 2013. "Poverty dynamics in rural Mexico: What does the future hold?," Ensayos Revista de Economia, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Facultad de Economia, vol. 0(2), pages 55-74, November.
    20. Takuma Kunieda & Masashi Takahashi, 2022. "Inequality and institutional quality in a growth model," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 189-213, April.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:uto:dipeco:201405. 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: Piero Cavaleri or Marina Grazioli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detorit.html .

    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.