Herbert Malena GINTIS

Background

Gintis, Herbert Malena was born on February 11, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Gerson and Shirley (Malena) Gintis.

Education

Bachelor of Arts (Mathematics) University Pennsylvania, 1963. Master of Arts(Mathematics), Doctor of Philosophy Harvard University, 1965, 1969.

Career

Lector Economics, Research Association Education, Harvard Graduate School Education, Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard University, 1969-1971, 1969-1974, 1973-1974. Association Professor of Economics, University Massachusetts, 1974-1977. Fellow, Institute, Institution Advanced Study, Princeton, 1977-1978.

Visiting Professor Economics and Sociology, Visiting Professor of Economics, Harvard University, 1982, 1982-1983.

Professor of Economics, University Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States of America, 1977-. Editorial Board, Book Review Editor, Review Radical Political Economics 1969-1976, 1980-1984.

Editor, Socialist Review, 1979-1981.

Achievements

• Herbert Malena Gintis has been listed as a noteworthy Economics educator by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

• book

  • Schooling In Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life

    ( "This seminal work . . . establishes a persuasive new p...)

  • Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life

Views

My work has dealt with two major themes. First, that economic behaviour can only be understood by taking preferences as the product as much as the source of economic activity. And second, that labour can be treated properly in economic models only if the incompleteness of the labour contract, and the abiding conflict between employer and employee, are carefully understood and properly modelled.

My early efforts in this direction consisted of the critique of neoclassical welfare economics on the grounds that it considered preference satisfaction at the expense of ignoring preference development. At the same time, I argued through the use of quantitative evidence that the returns to education, traditionally considered as human capital of the skill-oriented variety, were in fact largely returns to forms of preference development, broadly conceived. I moved on to reassess the nature of the labour exchange, in an attempt to apply organisational theory, Marxian analysis, and the mocroeconomics of incomplete contracts (then a quite novel field) towards supporting the Marxian labour/ labour-power distinction as the basis for an improved theory of the firm.

The theory of the firm and the theory of education/economy interaction deriv ing from these investigations were then applied in an extended analysis of education, growth, and economic inequality by myself and Samuel Bowles. My work has since turned to the application of these principles to the area of macroeconomic performance — investment, profit and productivity, in particular. First, the incompleteness of the labour contract implies that the conceptual split between economics as allocation and distribution and the State as politics and power must be abandoned. Thus, I and my colleagues have argued for macro models in which the State/economy interface is explicitly modelled.

Second, I have moved towards developing macro models of labour market behaviour which take involuntary unemployment as the cost of labour discipline, and which are capable of explicitly modelling labour productivity changes in response to alterations in unemployment rates and the level of social services. This endeavour is conceived as an alternative to Keynesian treatments of labour market behaviour.

Membership

Member American Economics Association, Union Radical Political Economics, Amnesty International.

Interests

• 020 General Economic Theory. 220 Economic and Social Statistical Data and Analysis. 820 Labour Markets; Public Policy.

Connections

Married Marci Susan Greisler, August 26, l96l. L child, Daniel.

Father:

Gerson Gintis

Mother:

Shirley (Malena) Gintis

Spouse:

Marci Susan Greisler