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The dominant model of exchange between economists and our cousins in the other social sciences is export. We seldom learn or even try to learn from our compatriots. We peddle our analysis (of everything from the virtuous to the profane), our methods (too often borrowed from the natural sciences) and our concepts (think of notions like social capital, the economy of nature, etc.), assured that everyone else has much to learn from us. In some areas we do, indeed, have a lot to offer. I wonder, however, if the exchange between cultural studies and capital theory has benefited either trading partner. The belief that we can profitably think of culture as if it is capital, in my opinion, does not do justice to either capital or culture. Section II outlines what cultural theorists and economists mean by the concept of cultural capital. Section III, then, argues that notions of cultural capital are built on mistaken views of both capital (and its essential characteristics) and culture (and its significance). Culture properly conceived is not just a resource and capital correctly understood is not anything more than just a resource used in production. Section IV, thus, proposes that we jettison the cultural capital language; in my opinion, culture is much more like a constitution, a context where social interactions occur, than it is like a tool, which can be used and put away. Section V summarizes these results.

An entrepreneur's prior knowledge and experience play a critical role in his ability to identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. Although entrepreneurship research has acknowledged the role that prior information and prior knowledge play in opportunity recognition, few studies have explored their role in entrepreneurial discovery. We test the role of a particular prior knowledge in entrepreneurial discovery within a laboratory setting. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. Those in the propitious treatment were given prior knowledge that oriented them toward the arbitrage opportunity within the experiment, and those in the unpropitious treatment were given prior knowledge that oriented them away. As hypothesized, those in the propitious treatment were significantly more likely to discover the arbitrage opportunity.

While there is now a large literature on the negative aspects of social capital, recent discussions of social capital within the public choice literature have tended to focus on the positive role of social capital in solving collective action problems and promoting political accountability. Consequently, two areas of inquiry remain underexplored: (1) the role social capital plays in facilitating rent seeking, and (2) the availability of rents can cause community based groups to re-orient their stocks of social capital away from productive ends and toward rent seeking. This article examines the relationship between social capital and rent seeking in the post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans.

Don Lavoie was the consummate teacher. He embraced the life of the mind, the world of ideas and philosophies and books with all of his being. And, he taught by example rather than by pronouncements, that being a scholar meant that you had to respect but not be bound by disciplinary borders, that being a teacher meant that you had to give generously not only of your ideas but of your time, and that being a student meant that you had to be an ardent and assiduous reader. Indeed, the anchor of Lavoie's pedagogic creed, to borrow a term from Dewey, was a belief that one of the best ways to learn was by meticulously questioning a text and then listening intently to what it and your fellow questioners had to say to you in reply. Consequently, Lavoie (ever the good hermeneuticist) embraced those settings that facilitated this play of questions and answers. Although he was an excellent lecturer and enjoyed teaching in the traditional classroom, he thrived in the workshop, in the readings group, in the one-on-one conversation and in the hypertextual learning environment.

Abstract: Bay Street has always been at the centre of commercial, cultural and political life in the Bahama Islands. It also acts as a gateway for millions of tourists who come to Nassau, the Bahamian capital, via cruise ships every year. Not surprisingly, Bahamians and non-Bahamians have widely divergent impressions of Bay Street. The need to accommodate the tourists who are critical to the Bahamian economy has meant that Bay Street, despite its deep social significance for Bahamians, has increasingly become a tourist space. With reference to the 'sense of place' and place attachment literature, this paper traces the transformation of Bay Street and attempts to tease out the most obvious tensions between the Bay Street that Bahamians experience and Bay Street as a port of call.

Culture shapes economic behavior and colors economic outcomes. Although we may choose to avoid explicitly discussing culture within the social sciences, it will be implicit in our assumptions. The question, then, becomes how to incorporate culture into economic analysis. Some economists have conceived of culture as a tool or a resource as they have attempted to operationalize a difficult concept. Others have discussed culture as if it were a set of blinders, closing off some opportunities and focusing attention on others. Still others have treated culture as a lens through which we view the world, or perhaps colored glasses that establish a certain hue to our vision.