Griffin McCarthy Bur | University of Wisconsin-Madison (original) (raw)

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In this article, I analyze the causes of the relative shift away from manufacturing employment to... more In this article, I analyze the causes of the relative shift away from manufacturing employment towards service employment in two large, semi-peripheral “developing countries”: Argentina and Brazil. This shift is interesting because it mirrors, in some ways, recent patterns of employment change in significantly wealthier countries; but, in fact, the dominant scholarly explanations of this global employment-pattern shift, which focus on the developed countries’ experience, suggest that the reasons for this change are largely due to factors stereotypically associated with high levels of development in the conventional sense. In other words, only the most wealthy capitalist countries are at a point in their respective “development” where this change is immediately explicable using the dominant theories. I attempt to explain why this change is happening, statistically testing these dominant theories as well as more heterodox theories produced by researchers in the Global South. My approach makes a contribution to the literature in two ways. First, I use a novel dataset of my own construction, which includes data from the path-breaking Groningen Growth and Development Centre’s (GGDC) 10-sector Database. Secondly, I use a statistical technique (a fixed effects model on first differenced data) which is more precise than those of many existing studies, which may only use descriptive statistics; no existing study uses my combination of data and technique.

Focusing my analysis on the case of Brazil and Argentina, I find that productivity, the manufacturing share of output, and the trade-to-GDP ratio explain about half of the variation in manufacturing employment. I argue that the modernization-type theories miss this explanation (which is the same explanation given for the Global North, although it “should not” work for the Global South) because they tend to assign global economic divergence to causes such as supposedly-vast productivity differentials between the Global North and Global South, even though this kind of naturalizing-apologetic explanation is not a generally valid hypothesis.

The article is organized as follows: in section 1), I begin with a discussion of the question, its relevance, existing explanations, and my statistical approach to the question; in section 2), I review the existing literature; in section 3), I give a preliminary discussion of the statistical analysis and the data; in section 4), I discuss the novel dataset I have produced and discuss its validity; in section 5), I carry out the statistical analysis; and, in section 6), I summarize the findings of the article.

Review essay of David Abraham's The Collapse of the Weimar Republic.

In this essay, I review Samir Amin's recent work on Marx's theory of value with an orientation to... more In this essay, I review Samir Amin's recent work on Marx's theory of value with an orientation towards value-form theory as well as contextualizing Amin's essay within his prodigious corpus (to which it frequently refers back). I conclude that his rendering of value-analysis is solid at its core; that his amendment of Arghiri Emmanuel's theory of unequal exchange is promising but inconsistent; and, that his appropriation of the theory of monopoly capital is ultimately unhelpful and a drag on his theory of underdevelopment.

Papers by Griffin McCarthy Bur

Submitted to Historical Materialism

In this article, I analyze the causes of the relative shift away from manufacturing employment to... more In this article, I analyze the causes of the relative shift away from manufacturing employment towards service employment in two large, semi-peripheral “developing countries”: Argentina and Brazil. This shift is interesting because it mirrors, in some ways, recent patterns of employment change in significantly wealthier countries; but, in fact, the dominant scholarly explanations of this global employment-pattern shift, which focus on the developed countries’ experience, suggest that the reasons for this change are largely due to factors stereotypically associated with high levels of development in the conventional sense. In other words, only the most wealthy capitalist countries are at a point in their respective “development” where this change is immediately explicable using the dominant theories. I attempt to explain why this change is happening, statistically testing these dominant theories as well as more heterodox theories produced by researchers in the Global South. My approach makes a contribution to the literature in two ways. First, I use a novel dataset of my own construction, which includes data from the path-breaking Groningen Growth and Development Centre’s (GGDC) 10-sector Database. Secondly, I use a statistical technique (a fixed effects model on first differenced data) which is more precise than those of many existing studies, which may only use descriptive statistics; no existing study uses my combination of data and technique.

Focusing my analysis on the case of Brazil and Argentina, I find that productivity, the manufacturing share of output, and the trade-to-GDP ratio explain about half of the variation in manufacturing employment. I argue that the modernization-type theories miss this explanation (which is the same explanation given for the Global North, although it “should not” work for the Global South) because they tend to assign global economic divergence to causes such as supposedly-vast productivity differentials between the Global North and Global South, even though this kind of naturalizing-apologetic explanation is not a generally valid hypothesis.

The article is organized as follows: in section 1), I begin with a discussion of the question, its relevance, existing explanations, and my statistical approach to the question; in section 2), I review the existing literature; in section 3), I give a preliminary discussion of the statistical analysis and the data; in section 4), I discuss the novel dataset I have produced and discuss its validity; in section 5), I carry out the statistical analysis; and, in section 6), I summarize the findings of the article.

Review essay of David Abraham's The Collapse of the Weimar Republic.

In this essay, I review Samir Amin's recent work on Marx's theory of value with an orientation to... more In this essay, I review Samir Amin's recent work on Marx's theory of value with an orientation towards value-form theory as well as contextualizing Amin's essay within his prodigious corpus (to which it frequently refers back). I conclude that his rendering of value-analysis is solid at its core; that his amendment of Arghiri Emmanuel's theory of unequal exchange is promising but inconsistent; and, that his appropriation of the theory of monopoly capital is ultimately unhelpful and a drag on his theory of underdevelopment.

Submitted to Historical Materialism