bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Short Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Benfordʼs Law
Authors: Berger Arno , Hill T. P.
Published: November 2017

This chapter embarks on a brief discussion of the mathematical theory of Benford's law. This law is the observation that in many collections of numbers, be they mathematical tables, real-life data, or combinations thereof, the leading significant digits are not uniformly distributed, as might be expected, but are heavily skewed toward the smaller digits. More specifically, Benford's law states that the significant digits in many data sets follow a very particular logarithmic distribution. The chapter lays out the basic theory of Benford's law before highlighting its more specific components: the significant digits and the significand (function), as well as the Benford property and its four characterizations. Finally, the chapter presents the basic theory of Benford's law in the context of deterministic and random processes.
Explicit Error Bounds via Total Variation
Authors: Dümbgen Lutz , Leuenberger Christoph
Published: November 2017

This chapter concerns the obtaining of explicit error estimates for convergence to Benford's law, with an analysis done through the total variation of the densities. This method yields reasonable estimates for Benford's law in many cases, and is often simpler to calculate and more elementary than Fourier methods. Here, the chapter provides the distribution of the remainder U in the case of Y having a Lebesgue density f, defines the measures of non-uniformity of this distribution, and collects some basic facts about the total variation of functions. The main results, examples, and proofs are then presented in the final three sections of this chapter.
Can Vote Countsʼ Digits and Benfordʼs Law Diagnose Elections?
Authors: Mebane, Walter R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter illustrates how the conditional mean of precinct vote counts' second digits can respond to strategic behavior by voters in response to the presence of a coalition among political parties. The digits in vote counts can help diagnose both the strategies voters use in elections and nonstrategic special mobilizations affecting votes for some candidates. The digits can also sometimes help diagnose some kinds of election fraud. The claim that deviations in vote counts' second digits from the distribution implied by Benford's law is an indicator for election fraud, generally fails for precinct vote counts. This chapter shows that such tests routinely fail in data from elections in the United States, Germany, Canada and Mexico, countries where it is usually thought that there is negligible fraud.
Testing for Strategic Manipulation of Economic and Financial Data
Authors: Moul Charles C. , Nye John V. C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter surveys applications of Benford's law within economics, such as its use in investigating the validity of macroeconomic data series. It argues that, given the strong interest in strategic behavior in economics, it makes sense to use Benford's law to investigate possible anomalies that suggest manipulation or other interference, especially when incentives increase for such tampering. The chapter then considers how a first-digit analysis informs Value at Risk (VAR) data from the U.S. financial sector over the past ten years. It finds that Benford's law fits precrisis data very well but is rejected for postcrisis data. Opportunities and incentives for such misreporting are then discussed.
Generalizing Benfordʼs Law
Authors: Lee Joanne , Tam Cho Wendy K. , Judge George
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines and searches for evidence of fraud in two clinical data sets from a highly publicized case of scientific misconduct. In this case, data were falsified by Eric Poehlman, a faculty member at the University of Vermont, who pleaded guilty to fabricating more than a decade of data, some connected to federal grants from the National Institutes of Health. Poehlman had authored influential studies on many topics; including obesity, menopause, lipids, and aging. The chapter's classical Benford analysis along with a presentation of a more general class of Benford-like distributions highlights interesting insights into this and similar cases. In addition, this chapter demonstrates how information-theoretic methods and other data-adaptive methods are promising tools for generating benchmark distributions of first significant digits (FSDs) and examining data sets for departures from expectations.
The Roman Market Economy
Authors: Temin Peter
Published: November 2017

The quality of life for ordinary Roman citizens at the height of the Roman Empire probably was better than that of any other large group of people living before the Industrial Revolution. This book uses the tools of modern economics to show how trade, markets, and the Pax Romana were critical to ancient Rome's prosperity. The book argues that markets dominated the Roman economy. It traces how the Pax Romana encouraged trade around the Mediterranean, and how Roman law promoted commerce and banking. It further shows that a reasonably vibrant market for wheat extended throughout the empire, and suggests that the Antonine Plague may have been responsible for turning the stable prices of the early empire into the persistent inflation of the late. The book vividly describes how various markets operated in Roman times, from commodities and slaves to the buying and selling of land. Applying modern methods for evaluating economic growth to data culled from historical sources, the book argues that Roman Italy in the second century was as prosperous as the Dutch Republic in its golden age of the seventeenth century. The book reveals how economics can help us understand how the Roman Empire could have ruled seventy million people and endured for centuries.
Economics and Ancient History
Authors: Temin Peter
Published: November 2017

This chapter asserts that the economy of the early Roman Empire was primarily a market economy. The parts of this economy located far from each other were not tied together as tightly as markets often are today, but they still functioned as part of a comprehensive Mediterranean market. There are two reasons why this argument is important. First, it brings the description of the Roman economy as a whole into accord with the fragmentary evidence about individual market transactions. Second, this synthetic view provides a platform on which to investigate further questions about the origins and eventual demise of the Roman economy and about conditions for the formation and preservation of markets in general.
Price Behavior in the Roman Empire
Authors: Temin Peter
Published: November 2017

This chapter takes the scattered price data that have survived in order to make an index of Roman inflation. The index cannot describe the details of inflation, but it allows comparison between periods of time. The chapter suggests that the persistent inflation of the late Roman Empire came from political instability at the top of the hierarchy. It also raises an important problem in going from correlation to causation—the identification problem. As a result, economists propose an identification strategy to suggest how Roman inflation got its start in the late second century. The chapter also shows how, despite a great scarcity of price data for the Roman Empire, ancient historians appear to have conventional opinions about Roman price movements.
Land Ownership
Authors: Temin Peter
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the terms of Roman land ownership. It demonstrates how land is the basis of all agrarian economies. Yet land markets are different from commodity markets even today because land does not move. Three attributes of land ownership can indicate a functioning market for land. First, there is a price for land that can change freely when conditions change. Second, people can buy and sell land at this price without reference to many outside authorities, that is, they can make their own decisions rather than reflecting the decisions of people not directly involved in the land sale. Finally, there are few restrictions on or obligations from most landholdings and land transfers other than the payment of taxes.
Per Capita GDP in the Early Roman Empire
Authors: Temin Peter
Published: November 2017

This chapter draws together the implications of the previous chapters in order to investigate the size of the Roman economy at its maximum extent. If one takes Roman Italy as being comparable to the Netherlands in 1600, then the Roman Empire as a whole is comparable to Europe as a whole. The putative advantages of the early modern Netherlands over Roman Italy are less clear than their advantages over the Roman Empire as a whole. Roman Italy was heavily urbanized, and it is probable that the proportion of the labor force in agriculture there was less than 50 percent. Rome did not have a bond market, but it had a more sophisticated financial system than the Netherlands. The comparability is enhanced by noting that neither the Netherlands nor Rome had an industrial revolution.
Roman Microeconomics
Authors: Temin Peter
Published: November 2017

This section contains most of the material that I anticipated gathering when I drew up my research plan in Roman economic history more than a decade ago. I surveyed these markets briefly in the initial research plan I took around at the Oxford conference where everyone laughed at me. That proposal grew into ...
Introduction
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This book is about Max Weber's 1904 journey to the United States—what he and his wife Marianne did, who they met, and what they saw and thought during their stay there. It shows that Weber's American journey played a pivotal role in the larger scheme of his life and work, for it occurred just as he was beginning to emerge from the debilitating psychological collapse of 1898. It also examines the use, interpretation, and dissemination of Weber's thought in the United States following his death in 1920, initially by American scholars such as Frank Knight and Talcott Parsons and later by German émigrés and others from the English-speaking world. The book suggests that Weber's problematics emerged from an immersion in social and cultural world history, the civilizations of the West and the East, and through engagement with complex debates in the sciences over the origins, nature and meaning for the contemporary world of “capitalism.”
The Land of Immigrants
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on Max and Marianne Weber's arrival in New York on the evening of August 29, 1904. It first describes the Webers' New York itinerary, with a particular focus on their trip to the German immigrant community in North Tonawanda. It then considers Max Weber's thoughts on church and religious sects, status and class based on his observations in North Tonawanda, as well as education and the problems of the modern university. It also examines the Webers' views on the dual challenge of the “social question” and the “woman question,” posed often in stark ways by the conditions of immigrants and working-class families, and more specifically on the issues of settlements and urban space.
Capitalism
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how Max Weber's time in Chicago shaped his views on capitalism. Chicago in 1904 was the world's fifth largest urban center (behind London, New York, Paris, and Berlin). The city was a new industrial and commercial magnet and transportation hub, with a rapidly increasing working class and major labor, public health, and social issues. The chapter first considers Weber's impressions of Chicago before discussing his thoughts on political reform and the consequences of it in the face of corruption, rule by bosses, and the big city political machines. It then describes the Webers' visit to Hull House and their interest in the Women's Trade Union League, a chapter of the association founded by Jane Addams. It also analyzes Weber's opinion regarding the conditions of the working class in the stockyards, along with his notion of character as social capital.
Science and World Culture
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Max Weber's views on science and world culture by focusing on his lecture at the Congress of Arts and Science held in September 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis Congress featured hundreds of papers assessing the state of knowledge in the human, biological, and physical sciences; medicine; law; the humanities; religion; and education. Weber spoke in a social science panel concerned with rural communities. The discussions centered on the methodological unity of the sciences. The chapter first considers Weber's insistence on science as an experimental inquiry into the phenomena and actualities of the world, which also assumed that scientific knowledge was a product of culture, before discussing his views on “rural society,” European capitalism and American equality of legal rights, and his implicit questioning of American “exceptionalism.” It also analyzes Weber's thoughts about art, gender, education, and authority.
Remnants of Romanticism
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Max Weber's exploration of the American heartland and frontier, with particular emphasis on his experiences in Oklahoma and the Indian Territory. It first considers how the idea for Weber's Oklahoma and Indian Territory trip originated in the first place before discussing the “unique problems” that Weber encountered in the Indian Territory, including questions of tribal membership or citizenship, and land allotment. It then analyzes Weber's claim that the coming of modern industrial civilization led to the rapid disappearance of the romanticized past. As he put it, the “Leatherstocking romanticism” of native life and the frontier was coming to an end. The chapter also explores Weber's views on the construction of “nature,” the emergence of a new world, and traditionalism and concludes with an assessment of the significance of the frontier to Weber's work.
The Creation of the Sacred Text
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the politics and sociology underlying the translation of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism (PESC). Published in 1930 with Talcott Parsons as the translator, PESC was described as sociology's “most famous” work. The story of the first translation and publication of PESC is a complicated episode as far as Weber translations are concerned. The chapter first traces the origins of Parsons's effort to translate Weber's work to the time he was a student at the University of Heidelberg in the 1920s before discussing the questions raised for the translation, including publication rights. It shows that Parsons's reading captured accurately the overarching terminology of rationalism, rationality, and rationalization that was central to Weber's account of asceticism and the capitalist “spirit.”
The Invention of the Theory
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how Max Weber's work has been recast as canonical for the social sciences and central to its current agendas. It first considers the substantial body of translations that became the basis for the postwar permeation of Weber's work into the social sciences, and especially into the subfield specializations of sociology, including Talcott Parsons' The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, before discussing the role played by the interwar émigrés in the struggle over the mastery of Weber. It then explains how Weber achieved an intellectual synthesis through a combination of structural and institutional analysis, notions of rationality, propositions about social action, awareness of cultural particularities, and a deep appreciation for historical inquiry and evidence. It also analyzes the expansion of the horizon for Weber's ideas beyond the boundaries of sociology to the Western philosophical and political tradition.
Dead Ringers
Authors: Nadeem Shehzad
Published: November 2017

In the Indian outsourcing industry, employees are expected to be “dead ringers” for the more expensive American workers they have replaced—complete with Westernized names, accents, habits, and lifestyles that are organized around a foreign culture in a distant time zone. This book chronicles the rise of a workforce for whom mimicry is a job requirement and a passion. In the process, it reveals the complications of hybrid lives and presents a vivid portrait of a workplace where globalization carries as many downsides as advantages. The book suggests that the relatively high wages in the outsourcing sector have empowered a class of cultural emulators. These young Indian workers indulge in American-style shopping binges at glittering malls, party at upscale nightclubs, and arrange romantic trysts at exurban cafés. But while the high-tech outsourcing industry is a matter of considerable pride for India, global corporations view the industry as a low-cost, often low-skill sector. Workers use the digital tools of the information economy not to complete technologically innovative tasks but to perform grunt work and rote customer service. Long hours and the graveyard shift lead to health problems and social estrangement. Surveillance is tight, management is overweening, and workers are caught in a cycle of hope and disappointment. Through lively ethnographic detail and subtle analysis of interviews with workers, managers, and employers, the book demonstrates the culturally transformative power of globalization and its effects on the lives of the individuals at its edges.
Introduction
Authors: Nadeem Shehzad
Published: November 2017

This book explores the paradoxical effects of globalization on young Indians employed in the outsourcing industry: they are reaping the benefits of the corporate search for cut-rate labor but also shouldering the weight of the global restructuring of work. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in India and the United States, the book highlights the cyclical humiliations and joys of life under transnational capitalism by focusing on factors such as managerial styles, workplace culture, and family and social relations. It argues that while Indian workers receive relatively high wages (in India), they are also subject to what Karl Marx called the “dull compulsion of economic relations,” and the forms of discipline and surveillance issuing thereof. It also considers the culture of the economy and the economy of culture: the strictures and structures by which social life and human creativity are hedged.
The Infantilizing Gaze, or Schmidt Revisited
Authors: Nadeem Shehzad
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the globalization of corporate culture. It first considers the balance of control and consent in the workplace before discussing managerial views of Indian workers. It then explores how professionalism plays itself out in the lives of outsourcing workers and describes some of the less than salutary effects of this push for moral reform. It also analyzes the ways that rule-bending undermines the meritocratic aspirations of the contemporary workplace. The chapter shows that management's infantilizing gaze, its project of moral reform, and the “flexible” labor regime are mutually supportive. Frustrated by what they perceive to be the submissiveness and excessive “Indianness” of their employees, management attempts to instill nominally Western professional values in the workforce.
The Manuscript Authority of Political Thoughts
Authors: Wokler Robert , Brooke Christopher
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the insights that manuscripts may shed upon writings destined to become more sharply focused through later refinement but which, in their initial and sometimes explosive utterance, offer glimpses of the interpenetration of themes that cross their authors' minds perhaps more clearly than do published works. It argues that in insisting upon the contextual analysis of political doctrines, we risk just relocating ambiguities of interpretation from one domain to another. What counts as a proper context is not an independent variable but inescapably our own construction, as open to challenge as are the abstractions it is meant to supplant. As well as constituting drafts of other texts, manuscripts can point towards meanings their authors might later refine, sharpen, blunt, suppress, abandon, or deem insignificant. They may articulate a free association of ideas and give expression to dreams that wend across disciplines.
Ernst Casirer’s Enlightenment: An Exchange with Bruce Mazlish
Authors: Wokler Robert , Brooke Christopher
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents a treatment of Cassirer's account of the Enlightenment, Die Philosophie der Aufklärung. First, it shows that his text does indeed encapsulate the Enlightenment Project, in the only sense in which that term genuinely merits serious scrutiny—that is, with respect to the avowed ideals and objectives of the eighteenth-century republic of letters itself. Second, it shows that the circumstances of Cassirer's commitment to and completion of Die Philosophie der Aufklärung in the period between, on the one hand his famous exchange with Heidegger at Davos in the spring of 1929 and his appointment as Rector of the University of Hamburg in the autumn of that year; and on the other his flight from Germany in the spring of 1933, also encapsulate the central lessons to be learnt from “The Enlightenment Project” in our time.
Projecting the Enlightenment
Authors: Wokler Robert , Brooke Christopher
Published: November 2017

This chapter retraces Alasdair MacIntyre's own construal of the Enlightenment Project's trajectory in order to show how his interpretation of an intellectual tradition depends above all on his assessment of its impact. It argues that MacIntyre's Enlightenment Project is largely unreconstructed, unredeemed, and undiminished in its failure, even after substantial embellishment. His three principal works comprise an extraordinary indictment of the theoretical and practical legacy of eighteenth-century philosophy. His account projects the Enlightenment's implications and influence as they stem from its aims. He holds it to blame for some of the most sinister aspects of a morally vacuous civilization, cursed by the malediction of unlicenced Reason. His intellectual history of the period forms one of the mainsprings of his own philosophy.
Group Problem Solving
Authors: Laughlin Patrick R.
Published: November 2017

Experimental research by social and cognitive psychologists has established that cooperative groups solve a wide range of problems better than individuals. Cooperative problem solving groups of scientific researchers, auditors, financial analysts, air crash investigators, and forensic art experts are increasingly important in our complex and interdependent society. This comprehensive textbook presents important theories and experimental research about group problem solving. The book focuses on tasks that have demonstrably correct solutions within mathematical, logical, scientific, or verbal systems, including algebra problems, analogies, vocabulary, and logical reasoning problems. It explores basic concepts in group problem solving, social combination models, group memory, group ability and world knowledge tasks, rule induction problems, letters-to-numbers problems, evidence for positive group-to-individual transfer, and social choice theory. The conclusion proposes ten generalizations that are supported by the theory and research on group problem solving. The book is an essential resource for decision-making research in social and cognitive psychology, but also extremely relevant to multidisciplinary and multicultural problem-solving teams in organizational behavior, business administration, management, and behavioral economics.
Memory and Group Problem Solving
Authors: Laughlin Patrick R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores research on group memory, which is important in itself and is also frequently a necessary preliminary process for further group problem solving. Research on group recognition memory indicates that group memory is better than the memory of the average individual. Assigning different information to be learned by different group members is more effective than having all members learn all information. Meanwhile, research on shared versus unshared information indicates that groups are more likely to make correct decisions when they believe they are solving a problem rather than making a judgment. Lastly, research on the common knowledge effect demonstrates that the more group members who know an item of information before discussion, the greater the impact of that information on both group judgment and group choice. This indicates the importance of supportive group memory on tasks that have correct answers which are difficult to demonstrate.
Group Ability Composition on World Knowledge Problems
Authors: Laughlin Patrick R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines group ability composition and social combination processes on world knowledge tasks. On difficult world knowledge tasks, high-ability persons performed better in cooperative groups with other high-ability members than they did alone, and this difference increased with group size. In contrast, low-ability persons did not perform better in cooperative groups with other low-ability members than they did alone, and there was little improvement as group size increased. Low-ability members contributed very little unique information to one another and virtually none to high-ability members. Medium-ability members displayed an intermediate pattern that was more like low-ability than high-ability members. Consequently, the performance of groups of mixed high-ability, medium-ability, and low-ability members was basically proportional to the number of high-ability members: the greater the proportion of high-ability members, the better the group performance.
Collective Induction
Authors: Laughlin Patrick R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses collective induction, the cooperative search for descriptive, predictive, and explanatory generalizations, rules, and principles. As a psychological process induction begins with the perception of some pattern, regularity, or relationship. The two basic processes in induction are hypothesis formation and hypothesis evaluation. This inductive process occurs for both single individuals and cooperative groups such as scientific research teams, auditing teams, securities and intelligence analysts, art experts, or air crash investigators. Theoretically, collective induction is a divisible and complementary group task in which groups may perform better than individuals by dividing the task into subtasks and combining the different insights, understandings, strategies, and other cognitive processes of the group members.
Conclusions
Authors: Laughlin Patrick R.
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter proposes generalizations that emerge from theory and research on group problem solving and a brief retrospective and prospective. Group tasks are ordered on a continuum anchored by intellective and judgmental tasks. Intellective tasks have a demonstrably correct solution within a mathematical, logical, scientific, or verbal conceptual system. Judgmental tasks are evaluative, behavioral, or aesthetic judgments for which no generally accepted demonstrably correct answer exists. The underlying basis of the intellective-judgmental continuum is a continuum of demonstrability. The proportion of group members that is necessary and sufficient for a group response is inversely proportional to the demonstrability of the proposed response.
Teichmuller Space
Authors: Farb Benson , Margalit Dan
Published: November 2017

This chapter deals with Teichmüller space Teich(S) of a surface S. It first defines Teichmüller space and a topology on Teich(S) before giving two heuristic counts of its dimension. It then describes explicit coordinates on Teich(Sɡ) coming from certain length and twist parameters for curves in a pair of pants decomposition of Sɡ; these are the Fenchel–Nielsen coordinates on Teich(Sɡ). The chapter also considers the Teichmüller space of the torus and concludes by proving the 9g – 9 theorem, which states that a hyperbolic structure on Sɡ is completely determined by the lengths assigned to 9g – 9 isotopy classes of simple closed curves in Sɡ.
Conclusion
Authors: Loss Christopher P.
Published: November 2017

This chapter offers an overview of the state of higher education in an age of diversity. Without the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War to thicken the relationship between the state and higher education, a rightward political shift commenced during the economic downturn of the 1970s. Ideological differences dating back to the campus turmoil of the 1960s, combined with real financial concerns, helped to drive a wedge between the government and higher education. Ultimately, the drift toward “privatization” in the final two decades of the twentieth century readjusted higher education's role as a mediator between citizens and the state once again—changing how students paid for college and moving students closer to a privatized conception of democratic citizenship inextricably tied to the “personal politics” of identity.
Post-Soviet Social
Authors: Collier Stephen J.
Published: November 2017

The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism, these institutions were profoundly shaken—casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. This book examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. It turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s, the book uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding—that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity—lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.
Introduction: Post-Soviet, Post-Social?
Authors: Collier Stephen J.
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter provides a background of neoliberalism. During the 1990s, the Russian case and the battles over “transition,” the Washington Consensus, shock therapy, and structural adjustment, stood as emblems of the neoliberal project's grandiose transformative ambition—and catastrophic failure. However, the dynamics of this period proved to be both contingent and temporally circumscribed, bracketed roughly by Soviet breakup in 1991 and the devaluation of 1998. Ten years beyond the collapse of the Washington Consensus—and with the luxury of a broadened and perhaps historically deepened perspective—the Russian case provides a good site for revisiting the legacy of an important and distinctive form of social government, and for asking how neoliberal reforms propose to reshape it.
City-building in Belaya Kalitva
Authors: Collier Stephen J.
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at Soviet developments in the industrial city of Belaya Kalitva. The first part examines the plans that were developed for the city in the early 1960s in order to illustrate how the concepts of settlement and city khoziaistvo allowed city-builders to take hold of a specific reality and formulate proposals for its transformation. The second part describes the process through which some of the works anticipated in Belaya Kalitva's plans were actually built, focusing on urban utilities, material and bureaucratic structures, patterns of resource flow, and developments in industrial production. Through this analysis, the chapter shows that city-building provides a window on the process through which a new kind of collectivity was assembled in Soviet cities, as urban populations were linked together and plugged into a new substantive economy. In this sense, the city-building apparatus will be understood as a key dimension of the Soviet social.
Adjustment Problems
Authors: Collier Stephen J.
Published: November 2017

This chapter studies structural adjustment, the reform paradigm that took up the basic proposals established in “Window of Opportunity”—a vision of transition to a market economy through “shock” liberalization, privatization, and stabilization, backed by largescale foreign aid. By the middle of the 1990s, elements of structural adjustment were achieved, including large-scale privatization of industrial enterprises and liberalization of most prices. However, growth remained frustratingly elusive for reformers, and they increasingly turned their attention to inflexibilities created by sociotechnical systems such as infrastructures and the government budget that were not easily reorganized through a market mechanism. The problem was still one of structural adjustment—that is, one of correcting the distortions created by the Soviet patterns of urban and spatial development.
The Intransigence of Things
Authors: Collier Stephen J.
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at the reform of communal services, particularly centralized heating systems. The heating system was a key element of the Soviet variant of “infrastructural” social modernity. Soviet planners recognized heat as an “elementary need”; through pipes, boilers, transfers, and radiators, the norms of social modernity were hard-wired into the very material structure and spatial layout of Soviet cities. As such, during the Soviet period, the provision of heat to the Russian population had been established as a basic responsibility of the state. It is no surprise that as the character of that responsibility was called into question, heat became the topic of contentious debate and urgent political concern. By the early 2000s, it was widely recognized that Russia faced an “infrastructure crisis” that was simultaneously financial, technical, political, and social.
Culture and Anxiety
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

In this chapter, the author reflects on culture and what he calls “liberal anxieties.” He begins with a little autobiography, mentioning his education to make a general point about the idea of meritocracy and the pursuit of excellence. Liberalism has a natural affinity with meritocracy; it is attracted to an aristocracy of talent and critical of an aristocracy of birth. The author proceeds by discussing three major anxieties from which liberalism has suffered for 200 years, along with the fear of brutalization in Britain and America, anxiety about secularization and disenchantment, and the liberal response to terror. He also examines the interrelationships between politics, culture, and education before concluding with some remarks about the virtues of science and poetry as foundations of a liberal education.
Hobbes and Individualism
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Thomas Hobbes's individualism. It first considers Hobbes's epistemological antiauthoritarianism and individualism before discussing his theory of obligation and its moral basis. It then defends the view that Hobbesian individualism is neither quietist, nor capitalist, nor “bourgeois.” It argues that Hobbes espoused a consistent (though not in all respects persuasive) form of individualism that was moral and intellectual, not economic, a doctrine of moral and intellectual autonomy. It also explains how Hobbesian individualism relates to the atomism of Hobbes's mechanical materialism. The chapter suggests that there is a conceptual affinity between Hobbes's atomism and his intellectual individualism, but something closer to a logical tie between his intellectual individualism and his political individualism. It concludes by asserting that Hobbes was impressed by the self-sufficiency of most individuals in everything other than mere self-preservation.
The Nature of Human Nature in Hobbes and Rousseau
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the similarities and divergences between Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau with regard to their account of human nature. It begins with a discussion of Hobbes's science of human nature, which is part of his science of nature in general. Hobbes's psychology is in principle reducible to physiology, and ultimately to physics. Self-maintenance is the major imperative facing the Hobbesian man. The chapter then considers Rousseau's claims, which he articulated in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, that men without society must be mere isolated animals. For Rousseau, natural man is not the noble savage, nor is he Hobbes's rational egoist. Both these conditions are social conditions and, in an important sense, nonnatural. There is a good deal of straightforward Hobbes-like utilitarianism in the Social Contract.
Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines some unanswered questions in John Stuart Mill's politics, especially with regards to bureaucracy, democracy, and liberty. These questions relate to what Mill thought about the bearing of the way India was governed on the way the United Kingdom should be governed; about the extent to which he had grown out of the anxiety about moral authority that permeated his essay “The Spirit of the Age”; and about the extent to which he felt that he had achieved a stable balance between a utilitarian concern with benevolent management and an “Athenian” concern with the self-assertive, self-critical, engaged, public-spirited, but independent-minded citizen. The chapter first considers Mill's views on the government of India and their implications for his ideas about empire, progress, and pluralism before discussing the issue of authority, along with his arguments in On Liberty.
Bertrand Russell’s Politics
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Bertrand Russell's politics. focusing on three things. First, the Russell whom one might describe as the heir of 1688 and the Whig Revolution was a considerably useful liberal influence. Second, there was about Russell an antipolitical streak. This was not 1688 but 1968, when there was a demand for new visions, for the total reconstruction of everything. In this vein, Russell did not contribute to politics. And lastly, there was the side of Russell that is impossible not to like—he did wonderfully well, not just in his popular work but also in his more academic writing. The chapter discusses the discrepancy between Russell's violent antipathy to the Vietnam War and the philosophical underpinnings of that antipathy. It also explores Russell's liberalism, anti-Americanism, and anti-imperialism, along with his views on Marxism and pacifism.
Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines John Locke's doctrine that “the great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.” There has been a good deal of criticism leveled at Locke's account of property. Complaints of wild and absurd individualism contrast with assertions of Locke's collectivist leanings. The chapter considers the extent to which it is true that Locke's account of property, and his resultant account of natural rights, political obligation, and the proper functions of government, form an ideology for a rising capitalist class. More specifically, it explores the extent to which Locke's argument in the Second Treatise substantiates Macpherson's thesis that he was providing a moral basis for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It also discusses Locke's views on absolute monarchy, capitalism, and despotic authority.
Hegel on Work, Ownership, and Citizenship
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how G.W.F. Hegel combats both a utilitarian and a strictly Kantian account of the connections between work, ownership, and citizenship, with the ultimate aim of showing how various tensions that commonly beset theories of property bedevil his own account. Hegel certainly saw the importance of the distinction between owning one's job and having security of tenure during good behavior. Indeed, he argued that the transition from medieval to modern constitutional arrangements necessarily brought with it a transition from private ownership of public positions to crown appointment on the basis of qualifications and performance. The chapter first provides an overview of the intellectual context of Hegel's exposition, with emphasis on themes associated with John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and David Hume. It then considers Hegel's views on topics such as agriculture, civil society, family, and freedom.
Population Dynamics and Stability
Authors: Post Eric
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the implications of climate change for population dynamics and stability. Population dynamics, or the variation in abundance of a population through time, can be decomposed into two components: density-dependent and density-independent processes. Density-dependent processes are those involving competitive interactions among members of the same species within the same population that influence survival and reproduction. Density-independent processes are those that do not involve interactions with other members of the same species in the same population but rather owe to external factors such as environmental variation. It is this latter set of processes that has relevance to climate change, though density dependence certainly has a role to play in the response of populations to climate change.
The Niche Concept
Authors: Post Eric
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the niche concept. One of the earliest applications of the niche theory in quantitative ecology addressed the seemingly simple question of the extent to which the niches of two species can overlap and allow co-occurrence or coexistence of the species. This question grew out of the then recent development of the notions of limiting similarity and niche packing, according to which coexistence among species with similar resource requirements was assumed to be promoted through minimization of niche overlap through divergence in habitat utilization patterns or character displacement. The answer is highly relevant in the context of climate change, or of any environmental change in general. Fluctuation in abiotic conditions such as mean annual temperature may be seen as just as important, if not more so, to the persistence or maintenance of the degree of niche overlap that is tolerable for co-occurring species as the trend in abiotic conditions itself.
A conversation
Authors: Acs Zoltan J.
Published: November 2017

This book examines the interplay between entrepreneurship and philanthropy, on the one hand, and wealth creation and opportunity, on the other. Using historical and institutional evidence, it traces the story of American philanthropy through the centuries. It shows that many philanthropists had humble beginnings, worked hard to make something of themselves, and later used their money to help improve the world. It also demonstrates how most Americans, wealthy and otherwise, historically have exemplified an unstated principle that lies at the heart of American-style capitalism: that those who amass wealth must continually create opportunities by investing in society. The book makes a distinction between philanthropy and charity and argues that philanthropy has the potential to mitigate inequalities as it softens the hard edges of the free market. Finally, it describes philanthropy as consistent with the self-made American values of individual freedom.
The Wealth of Nations
Authors: Acs Zoltan J.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines wealth creation as a defining feature of capitalism. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, American research universities have increasingly moved to the forefront of innovation, playing a more critical role in developing new technologies used by large companies and entrepreneurs. In recent decades, one university and one region in particular have become almost synonymous with knowledge creation and the high-tech industry: Stanford University and Silicon Valley. The chapter shows how Leland Stanford and his contemporaries helped forge the relationship between creative destruction in the American economy and the institutions that promote opportunity. It considers how the economic openness that allowed entrepreneurs to accumulate fortunes has also nurtured social institutions, such as universities and foundations. It also discusses the issue of income inequality, the dilemma of what to do with wealth, the distinction between charity and philanthropy.
American-Style Capitalism
Authors: Acs Zoltan J.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines American-style capitalism from the perspective of the currents of prosperity, and how philanthropy became a part of American-style capitalism. American philanthropists presumably value a strong capitalist system because it is the system that nurtured their individual success. Thus, they seem to recognize that the strength of American capitalism resides neither in the size or influence of an industry or a set of firms nor in a country's GDP. Rather, as philanthropists have put it, the strength of capitalism is measured in a more aspirational way. The chapter first provides an overview of changes in American capitalism and the rise of a new Gilded Age economy before discussing the role of universities in sustaining a society that valued learning, innovation, and competition. It also considers the estate tax as a policy that could strengthen the relationship between entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and opportunity in America.
Changing the Tax Laws
Authors: Acs Zoltan J.
Published: November 2017

This epilogue discusses two issues and how to deal with them: the indiscriminate use of income for personal consumption and the use of wealth for maintaining a class structure. Robert Frank suggests that the way to deal with indiscriminate use of income for personal consumption is to institute a progressive consumption tax. A progressive consumption tax has been supported by both the Right and the Left. Even Milton Friedman suggested in a 1943 article that a progressive consumption tax is the best way to reduce conspicuous consumption and encourage investment. With respect to the use of wealth to maintain a class structure, the epilogue explains why we need an estate tax. It argues that the estate tax is important for sustaining philanthropy, which has been wedded to promoting opportunity creation and innovation throughout American history.
From Chemical to Social Networks
Authors: Padgett John F.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the next frontier in autocatalytic modeling. Building on the model of production in Chapter 3, communication in two forms is added in the formal models in this chapter: symbolic communication through primitive language and genealogical communication through biographies. Language here emerges out of token feedbacks and social-interactional learning. Genealogical descent and family organizations emerge out of reciprocity and teaching. In the terminology of a multiple-network ensemble, the first cross-sectional type of communication is equivalent to the emergence of relational social-network ties, and the second longitudinal type of communication is equivalent to the emergence of constitutive social-network ties. With these human-like extensions beyond biochemistry, three types of autocatalysis emerge: production autocatalysis, where material objects are produced and exchanged; cellular or biographical autocatalysis, where actors are constructed through intercalated biographies; and linguistic autocatalysis, where symbols are passed and reproduced in conversations.