bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Thoughts about America
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the origins and direction of Max Weber's thinking as he set his sights on America. It first considers Weber's enthusiasm as a traveler, citing his trips to various countries as well as the impact of these journeys on his spirits and his historical imagination. It then discusses one reason why Weber's travel to the United States in 1904: it came just as Weber had turned his attention to the problems of his most famous work—the theme of the relationships among economic action, economic development, and the moral order of society, explored in his two-part essay The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism. The chapter explains why the journey became a touchstone for a number of Weber's later reflections on issues on the agenda of American Progressivism, from immigration and race to education, religion, democracy, political economy, and capitalism.
The Color Line
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how Max Weber's travel through the American South helped him gain a better understanding of the problems of race and race relations in the former Confederacy, forty years after the end of the Civil War. Weber's reasons for making the journey from St. Louis, Missouri, through Memphis, Tennessee, to New Orleans, then north through Tuskegee, Alabama, to Atlanta and beyond are not entirely clear. He was interested in questions about race and the consequences of slavery, and his interest in agrarian economies also would have attracted him to the post-Civil War South. The chapter first considers Weber's exchanges with W.E.B Du Bois, which illuminate the former's focused interest in the problem of race in America, before discussing the lessons learned by Weber from his stay at Tuskegee. It also explores how Weber's experience in the South influenced his ideas about race, ethnicity, class, and caste.
American Modernity
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Max Weber's thoughts on American modernity based on his observations during his trip to New York City. It first considers Max and Marianne Weber's experience with religious services in New York, including a Presbyterian service at the Marble Collegiate Church, the service of the First Church of Christ Scientist, and the service of the Ethical Culture Society. It then discusses Max's views about the social implications of religious faith and social capital, as well as Marianne's thoughts about Americanization. It also analyzes Weber's account of the “cool objectivity of sociation” and his ideas on the issues of class, race, and gender; the relationship between religious ethics and economic action; and cultural pluralism.
Interpretation of the Experience
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the results of Max Weber's American journey, particularly in terms of its impact on his work. It begins with a discussion of the popular discourse about America in German-speaking Europe, focusing on two views of which Weber was aware. On the one side were the inspiring romanticism and adventurous spirit of Karl May's depictions of the American frontier, and on the other side was the cultural criticism as expressed in Ferdinand Kürnberger's novella Der Amerika-Müde. The chapter then considers how the American experience influenced Weber's thinking in The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, with particular emphasis on his ruminations on the “Europeanization” of American life and the “Americanization” of European institutions. It also explores Weber's appropriation of American institutions and social practices in his work.
Leaps of Faith
Authors: Nadeem Shehzad
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers how the offshore outsourcing of white-collar service work set off something of a moral panic in Western Europe and the United States. Some believed that such outsourcing was salubrious in the long term and consistent with broad trends of economic restructuring. To others, it heralded a new era of job loss and economic vulnerability. The chapter explains how, in both cases, the international trade in services became a synecdoche for the promise and peril of increasing global interdependence. It examines how offshoring has crept into the service sector and tackles questions that nobody seems prepared to answer: about concession bargaining, about the denial of workers' rights in Export-Processing Zones, and about the impact on wages and working conditions in the United States. Finally, it discusses the offshore outsourcing of service work from the Indian perspective.
Macaulay’s (Cyber) Children
Authors: Nadeem Shehzad
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how globalization affects the identities and aspirations of outsourcing workers, managers, and employers. It first considers the rise of a “new middle class” in India and whether middle-class Indians can be meaningfully described as today's “mimic men” (and women) before discussing the ways that companies shape the identities and behavior of the employees within the workplace. It shows that Indian workers find the adoption of foreign accents, identities, and timings both exciting and disorienting. They increasingly identify with lifestyles and customs that are global in reach. Executives and managers, too, use their close engagement with the West to define themselves as something other than the “traditional” Indian. The chapter argues that globalization gives rise to an Indian morality play where the pleasure principle clashes with the demands of custom and obligation, where an uneasy relationship between kama (pleasure) and dharma (duty) is established.
Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies
Authors: Wokler Robert , Brooke Christopher
Published: November 2017

The author of this book was one of the world's leading experts on Rousseau and the Enlightenment, but some of his best work was published in the form of widely scattered and difficult-to-find essays. This book collects for the first time a representative selection of his most important essays on Rousseau and the legacy of Enlightenment political thought. These essays concern many of the great themes of the age, including liberty, equality and the origins of revolution. But they also address a number of less prominent debates, including those over cosmopolitanism, the nature and social role of music and the origins of the human sciences in the Enlightenment controversy over the relationship between humans and the great apes. These essays also explore Rousseau's relationships to Rameau, Pufendorf, Voltaire, and Marx; reflect on the work of important earlier scholars of the Enlightenment, including Ernst Cassirer and Isaiah Berlin; and examine the influence of the Enlightenment on the twentieth century. One of the central themes of the book is a defense of the Enlightenment against the common charge that it bears responsibility for the terror of the French Revolution, the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth-century and the Holocaust.
Basic Concepts in Group Problem Solving
Authors: Laughlin Patrick R.
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of group problem solving. Group problem solving involves complementary, divisible, optimizing, intellective tasks for which a demonstrably correct answer exists within a conceptual system. Group problem solving may be analyzed in terms of four basic constructs: group task, group structure, group process, and group product. The group task is what the group is attempting to do. Group structure is the organization of the group, including (a) roles, the different positions within the group, (b) norms, the expected beliefs and behaviors for the group members, and (c) member characteristics, the demographic, physical, and psychological attributes of each group member. Group process is how the group members interact with and influence one another. Finally, group product is the collective group response or output. The correspondence of the product to the objective of the group defines success or failure and determines the rewards or punishments for the group members.
Social Combination Models
Authors: Laughlin Patrick R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter studies the historical development of social combination models. The social combination approach assumes that groups combine the group member preferences by some process to formulate a single collective group response. A social decision scheme formalizes any assumption about the group process that assigns probabilities of each group response given each distribution of member preferences. The assumptions may come from the constitutions or bylaws of a group, from previous research, or any other hypothesized group process. Different social decision schemes or social combination models may then be tested competitively against actual group performance as a test of the assumptions formalized by the social decision schemes. Stasser gives an excellent overall presentation of social decision scheme theory, including model formation, model testing, and using the equations for prospective modeling.
A Primer on Mapping Class Groups (PMS-49)
Authors: Farb Benson , Margalit Dan
Published: November 2017

The study of the mapping class group Mod(S) is a classical topic that is experiencing a renaissance. It lies at the juncture of geometry, topology, and group theory. This book explains as many important theorems, examples, and techniques as possible, quickly and directly, while at the same time giving full details and keeping the text nearly self-contained. The book is suitable for graduate students. It begins by explaining the main group-theoretical properties of Mod(S), from finite generation by Dehn twists and low-dimensional homology to the Dehn–Nielsen–Baer–theorem. Along the way, central objects and tools are introduced, such as the Birman exact sequence, the complex of curves, the braid group, the symplectic representation, and the Torelli group. The book then introduces Teichmüller space and its geometry, and uses the action of Mod(S) on it to prove the Nielsen-Thurston classification of surface homeomorphisms. Topics include the topology of the moduli space of Riemann surfaces, the connection with surface bundles, pseudo-Anosov theory, and Thurston's approach to the classification.
Mapping Class Group Basics
Authors: Farb Benson , Margalit Dan
Published: November 2017

This chapter explains the basics of the mapping class group of a surface. It first provides the definition and examples before computing the mapping class group in essentially all of the cases where it can be computed directly. This includes the case of the disk, the annulus, the torus, and the pair of pants. An important method, the Alexander method, emerges as a tool for such computations and is used to prove whether a homeomorphism is or is not homotopically trivial, and whether two homeomorphisms are homotopic or not. One of the computations performed using the Alexander method is a classical fundamental theorem of Dehn.
Dehn Twists
Authors: Farb Benson , Margalit Dan
Published: November 2017

This chapter deals with Dehn twists, the simplest infinite-order elements of Mod(S). It first defines Dehn twists and proves that they are nontrivial elements of the mapping class group. In particular, it considers the action of Dehn twists on simple closed curves. As one application of this study, the chapter proves that if two simple closed curves in Sɡ have geometric intersection number greater than 1, then the associated Dehn twists generate a free group of rank 2 in Mod(S). It also proves some fundamental facts about Dehn twists and describes the center of the mapping class group, along with algebraic relations that can occur between two Dehn twists. Finally, it explores three geometric operations on a surface that each induces an algebraic operation on the corresponding mapping class group: the inclusion homomorphism, the capping homomorphism, and the cutting homomorphism.
Generating the Mapping Class Group
Authors: Farb Benson , Margalit Dan
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the Dehn–Lickorish theorem, which states that when g is greater than or equal to 0, the mapping class group Mod(Sɡ) is generated by finitely many Dehn twists about nonseparating simple closed curves. The theorem is proved by induction on genus, and the Birman exact sequence is introduced as the key step for the induction. The key to the inductive step is to prove that the complex of curves C(Sɡ) is connected when g is greater than or equal to 2. The simplicial complex C(Sɡ) is a useful combinatorial object that encodes intersection patterns of simple closed curves in Sɡ. More detailed structure of C(Sɡ) is then used to find various explicit generating sets for Mod(Sɡ), including those due to Lickorish and to Humphries.
Presentations and Low-dimensional Homology
Authors: Farb Benson , Margalit Dan
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents explicit computations of the first and second homology groups of the mapping class group. It begins with a simple proof, due to Harer, of the theorem of Mumford, Birman, and Powell; the proof includes the lantern relation, a relation in Mod(S) between seven Dehn twists. It then applies a method from geometric group theory to prove the theorem that Mod(Sɡ) is finitely presentable. It also provides explicit presentations of Mod(Sɡ), including the Wajnryb presentation and the Gervais presentation, and gives a detailed construction of the Euler class, the most basic invariant for surface bundles, as a 2-cocycle for the mapping class group of a punctured surface. The chapter concludes by explaining the Meyer signature cocycle and the important connection of this circle of ideas with the theory of Sɡ-bundles.
Torsion
Authors: Farb Benson , Margalit Dan
Published: November 2017

This chapter deals with finite subgroups of the mapping class group. It first explains the distinction between finite-order mapping classes and finite-order homeomorphisms, focusing on the Nielsen realization theorem for cyclic groups and detection of torsion with the symplectic representation. It then considers the problem of finding an Euler characteristic for orbifolds, to prove a Gauss–Bonnet theorem for orbifolds, and to use these results to show that there is a universal lower bound of π‎/21 for the area of any 2-dimensional orientable hyperbolic orbifold. The chapter demonstrates that, when g is greater than or equal to 2, finite subgroups have order at most 84(g − 1) and cyclic subgroups have order at most 4g + 2. It also describes finitely many conjugacy classes of finite subgroups in Mod(S) and concludes by proving that Mod(Sɡ) is generated by finitely many elements of order 2.
Braid Groups
Authors: Farb Benson , Margalit Dan
Published: November 2017

This chapter introduces the reader to Artin's classical braid groups Bₙ. The group Bₙ is isomorphic to the mapping class group of a disk with n marked points. Since disks are planar, the braid groups lend themselves to special pictorial representations. This gives the theory of braid groups its own special flavor within the theory of mapping class groups. The chapter begins with a discussion of three equivalent ways of thinking about the braid group, focusing on Artin's classical definition, fundamental groups of configuration spaces, and the mapping class group of a punctured disk. It then presents some classical facts about the algebraic structure of the braid group, after which a new proof of the Birman–Hilden theorem is given to relate the braid groups to the mapping class groups of closed surfaces.
Teichmuller Geometry
Authors: Farb Benson , Margalit Dan
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the metric geometry of Teichmüller space. It first explains how one can think of Teich(Sɡ) as the space of complex structures on Sɡ. To this end, the chapter defines quasiconformal maps between surfaces and presents a solution to the resulting Teichmüller's extremal problem. It also considers the correspondence between complex structures and hyperbolic structures, along with the Teichmüller mapping, Teichmüller metric, and the proof of Teichmüller's uniqueness and existence theorems. The fundamental connection between Teichmüller's theorems, holomorphic quadratic differentials, and measured foliations is discussed as well. Finally, the chapter describes the Grötzsch's problem, whose solution is tied to the proof of Teichmüller's uniqueness theorem.
Introduction
Authors: Loss Christopher P.
Published: November 2017

This chapter lays out the history and background of the federal government's growing involvement in American higher education, arguing that the latter had emerged as a predominant “parastate” in the twentieth century. Situated between citizens and the state, completely beholden to neither party but expected and committed to serve both, higher education proved perfectly suited for the task. The potential for higher education's ideas and individuals to migrate into the heart of society proved particularly seductive to state builders. That higher education could be used to shape citizens' political commitments resonated with national leaders, such as Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, who wanted to build a new and more powerful state but had to do so using homegrown materials, all the more effective if they were locally produced. From such stuff was the American state made.
Building the New Deal Administrative State
Authors: Loss Christopher P.
Published: November 2017

This chapter turns to venues that linked the New Deal state and higher education in the 1930s, when federal policymakers used higher education to help adjust the American people to life in a bureaucratic state. The country's land-grant colleges and universities proved absolutely indispensible to this state-building effort. Resting at the literal and metaphoric intersection of the state and society, but completely beholden to neither, the land grants captured the attention of entrepreneurial New Dealers in search of discreet ways to extend federal power at the grassroots. Attention to the land grants eventually spilled over to the entire higher education sector as President Roosevelt and a handful of top New Deal administrators encouraged and rewarded higher education institutions, and many of the students who attended them, for their help in combating the Great Depression. Higher education won, extending the government's reach into citizens' lives.
An Ineffective Controversy
Authors: Collier Stephen J.
Published: November 2017

This epilogue presents three strategies for making a critical discussion of neoliberalism more effective, some of which have been taken up by other scholars in recent years. The first is simply to develop greater critical consciousness about dominant narratives of neoliberalism—where they come from, and what their effects are likely to be. The second strategy, related to the first, is to turn greater attention to the flexibility of many elements of neoliberal reforms, and to the relationships they may have to diverse political projects. The third and final strategy is simply to take more seriously the question of what makes a particular tradition “neoliberal”; to ask in what, precisely, its neoliberalism consists.
The Making of Modern Liberalism
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This book is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of more than four decades during which the author reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism. The book consists of five parts. It covers subjects such as liberalism, freedom, the liberal community and the death penalty, Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy, individualism, human nature, John Locke on freedom, John Stuart Mill's political thought, utilitarianism and bureaucracy, pragmatism, social identity, patriotism, self-criticism, and more.
Preamble
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This book explores the history and nature of liberalism and includes the views of political thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, Isaiah Berlin, Alexis de Tocqueville, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and G.W.F. Hegel. Part 1 of the book deals with conceptual and practical issues and covers topics ranging from liberalism and freedom to culture, and death penalty. Part 2 deals with liberty and security and includes Hobbes's political philosophy as well as Locke's thoughts on freedom. Part 3 examines liberty and progress and includes topics such as Mill's political thought, utilitarianism and bureaucracy, democracy, and Berlin's political theory. Part 4 focuses on liberalism in America, and Part 5 is concerned with work, ownership, freedom, and self-realization.
Freedom
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter describes a method of doing philosophy, the method of “ordinary language” philosophy, or more appropriately, “piecemeal philosophical engineering.” It then applies this method to three questions connected with the concept of freedom: What makes the problem of free will so difficuult to grasp, and hence so difficult to solve? What is the moral value of freedom, that is, does it have an “absolute” value rather than a “conditional” value? In what respects is freedom a “negative” concept? The chapter first considers reasons why we should avoid saying either that philosophy is or is not linguistic before explaining the use of “free from” as a verbal and adjectival phrase, along with adverbial freedom and adjectival freedom. It also looks at cases of the idiom “free to,” plus a couple of sentences just involving “free” as a contrast, and concludes with an analysis of freedom as “trouser-word.”
Mill’s Essay On Liberty
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines John Stuart Mill's arguments in his essay On Liberty. It first considers Mill's early allegiance to utilitarianism as well as his reaction to the rise of democracy before expounding on the question Mill asks himself: on what general principle is the coercive interference of society toward its members to be organized? In particular, it explores what Mill has to say about the notion that we have the right to force other people to live according to our standards, noting that it is coercion that Mill is concerned to circumscribe. It also analyzes how Mill comes to think that utility implies the principle that the only basis of a right to dictate how others behave is self-defense. Finally, it evaluates Mill's views on other issues such as “antagonism of opinions,” bureaucracy, freedom of speech, individuality, and punishment.
Popper and Liberalism
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Karl Popper's commitment to political liberalism and its connection to his account on the rationality of science. It begins with the observation that liberalism must place a high value on liberty and equality, noting Popper's claim that although equality might be a good thing, it was excessively costly in terms of liberty. The sort of equality Popper has in mind is something like equality of wealth or income. The chapter also explains what kind of liberalism is espoused by Popper and considers his defensive view of democracy and constitution building, as well as his negative utilitarianism. It concludes with the argument that Popper's account of scientific rationality is political and that what sustains his commitment to some awkward epistemological views is his liberalism. That is, it is not so much that Popper's philosophy of science supports his liberalism as that it expresses it.
Staunchly Modern, Nonbourgeois Liberalism
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines John Dewey's liberalism, arguing that his social and political theory expressed the self-understanding of modern society—“modern” being no more precise in its denotation than “postmodernist,” but certainly meaning at different times both the society that lived off and built on the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and the society that came into existence with the capitalist Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After expounding on Dewey's views on the demands of modernity, the chapter considers his belief in the need for industrial democracy as a complement to political democracy. It also discusses postmodernist bourgeois liberalism, Dewey's views on idealism and naturalism, his Democracy and Education and its references to freedom and equality, and the impact of World War I on Dewey's poise. Finally, it describes Dewey's non-Marxian radicalism and argues that Dewey was a philosopher rather than a political activist.
Ecosystem Function and Dynamics
Authors: Post Eric
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the distinction between ecosystem function and ecosystem dynamics. Ecosystem function refers to the manner in which the ecosystem of interest works, and interactions among its component parts and fluxes, including biotic and abiotic compartments. Meanwhile, ecosystem dynamics refers to variation in ecosystem function through time in response to perturbations that are continuous or stochastic in nature, or in relation to changes in ecosystem components. Therefore, the study of ecosystem dynamics derives from an understanding of ecosystem function, and this, in turn, depends critically on successful identification of the important drivers within the ecosystem. Inevitably, a discussion of ecosystem function and dynamics boils down to the factors that influence and contribute to variation in net ecosystem production—the result of net primary productivity and ecosystem respiration.
Brief Remarks on Some Especially Important Considerations
Authors: Post Eric
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter argues that Earth's climate is warming at a pace that may very well be unprecedented, and it is doing so from a higher baseline average temperature than that which was the starting point for the most recent episode of rapid warming, which signaled the end of the Pleistocene and the demise of most of its large mammals. That most recent warming episode also coincided with geographically widespread biome shifts. Perhaps more tellingly, current warming, still in its early stages, has already heralded similarly geographically widespread and taxonomically broad shifts in phenological dynamics, population dynamics, species distributions, and ecosystem carbon dynamics. Indeed, some have asserted that Earth may be on the threshold of the sixth major extinction event.
The Emergence of Organizations and Markets
Authors: Padgett John F. , Powell Walter W.
Published: November 2017

The social sciences have sophisticated models of choice and equilibrium but little understanding of the emergence of novelty. Where do new alternatives, new organizational forms, and new types of people come from? Combining biochemical insights about the origin of life with innovative and historically oriented social network analyses, this book develops a theory about the emergence of organizational, market, and biographical novelty from the coevolution of multiple social networks. The book demonstrates that novelty arises from spillovers across intertwined networks in different domains. In the short run actors make relations, but in the long run relations make actors. This theory of novelty emerging from intersecting production and biographical flows is developed through formal deductive modeling and through a wide range of original historical case studies. The book builds on the biochemical concept of autocatalysis—the chemical definition of life—and then extends this autocatalytic reasoning to social processes of production and communication. The chapters analyze a wide range of cases of emergence. They look at the emergence of organizational novelty in early capitalism and state formation; they examine the transformation of communism; and they analyze with detailed network data contemporary science-based capitalism: the biotechnology industry, regional high-tech clusters, and the open source community.
Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods, and Capabilities
Authors: Cohen G. A.
Published: November 2017

In A Theory of Justice in (1971), John Rawls laid out his objections to utilitarianism and advanced a powerful critique of the welfare metric, replacing it by attention to primary goods. Sen later advanced arguments against the welfare metric and called for attention to something like opportunity (under the title “capability”). This chapter argues that Sen moved away from Rawlsian and other views in two directions which were orthogonal to each other. If Rawls and welfarists fixed on what a person gets in welfare or goods, Sen fixed on what he gets in a space between welfare and goods (nutrition is delivered by goods supply and it generates welfare), but he also emphasized what a person can get, as opposed to (just) what he does. The chapter exposes the ambiguity in Sen's use of “capability” (and cognate terms), and proposes an answer to the question, “Equality of What?” which departs from his own in a modest way.
Two Addenda to “Freedom and Money”
Authors: Cohen G. A.
Published: November 2017

a. I here take up the issue suspended in the course of “Freedom and Money,” that of the relationship between freedom and ability, or, equivalently, the question whether the first premise of the right-wing argument is true. It is customary for the Left to deny that premise, but the Left overestimates the significance of doing so. The Left says: since the Right cherish freedom, and, contrary to what they say, inability ...
“Something In Between”: On the Nature of Love
Authors: Jollimore Troy
Published: November 2017

This chapter proposes an account of love that holds it to be largely a matter of vision and to be in large part guided by reason, while at the same time allowing that love is not purely a matter of reason. This view of love is referred to as the vision view. It sets out eight theses at the core of this account of love. The vision view is taken to be to be a form of rationalism, but it can be developed in a way that avoids making it a form of hyper-rationalism and avoids the universality problem, promiscuity problem, trading-up problem, and inconstancy problem.
The Weitzman Argument
Authors: Gollier Christian
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines a model in which the exogeneous rate of return of capital is constant but random. Safe investment projects must be evaluated and implemented before this uncertainty can be fully revealed, i.e., before knowing the opportunity cost of capital. A simple rule of thumb in this context would be to compute the net present value (NPV) for each possible discount rate, and to implement the project if the expected NPV is positive. If the evaluator uses this approach, this is as if one would discount cash flows at a rate that is decreasing with maturity. This approach is implicitly based on the assumptions that the stakeholders are risk-neutral and transfer the net benefits of the project to an increase in immediate consumption. Opposite results prevail if one assumes that the net benefit is consumed at the maturity of the project.
A Theory of the Decreasing Term Structure of Discount Rates
Authors: Gollier Christian
Published: November 2017

This chapter aims to provide a unified theoretical foundation to the term structure of discount rates. To do this the chapter develops a benchmark model based on two assumptions: individual preferences toward risk, and the nature of the uncertainty over economic growth. Previously, it was shown that constant relative risk aversion, combined with a random walk for the growth of log consumption, yields a flat term structure for efficient discount rates. In this chapter, these two assumptions are relaxed by using a stochastic dominance approach. Stochastic models of economic growth with mean-reversion, Markov switches, and parametric uncertainty all exhibit some forms of positive statistical dependence of successive growth rates. Because this tends to magnify the long-term risk, it is the driving force of the decreasing nature of the term structure.
Inequalities
Authors: Gollier Christian
Published: November 2017

This chapter makes adaptations to the canonical models of the term structure developed so far, to recognize inequalities as crucial features of our world, arguing that even abstracting from the heterogeneous allocation of costs and benefits, the existence of huge wealth inequalities between and within countries necessitates such an adaptation. Two models are considered. In the first model, inequalities in society are introduced in the model examined in Part I of this book. However, it is assumed that individuals in this unequal society are able to share risk efficiently, and that they can implement mutually beneficial long-term credit contracts. In the second model, these assumptions are relaxed.
Discounting Non-monetary Benefits
Authors: Gollier Christian
Published: November 2017

This chapter addresses issues regarding the use of cost-benefit analyses in shaping environmental policies. It defines an ecological discount rate compatible with social welfare when the representative agent cares about both the economic and ecological environments faced by future generations. This ecological rate at which future environmental damages are discounted may be much smaller than the economic rate at which economic damages are discounted, because of the integration of a potentially increasing willingness to pay for the environment into the ecological discount rate. This increased interest in environmental assets is modeled in this chapter by the potential for increased scarcity of these assets, which drives their value upward through time. The chapter shows that the uncertainties surrounding the future evolution of environmental quality and the economy tend to reduce the discount rates, in particular if they are positively correlated.
The Option Value of Uncertain Projects
Authors: Gollier Christian
Published: November 2017

This chapter first illustrates the notion of an option value with a simple numerical example, before examining a more sophisticated application with a Poisson two-armed bandit. In the first case, there is an option value to wait. In the second case, there is an option value to experiment. The theory of real option value has the objective to adjust the standard cost-benefit methodology, which is static by nature, in order to integrate these dynamic aspects of the evaluation problem. The computation of option values must be done by backward induction. At each node of the decision tree, the optimal decision is made by taking into account the optimal decisions in the subsequent nodes of that part of the tree.
Introduction
Authors: Gollier Christian
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter considers the problem of investment project selection, i.e. which projects should be implemented to maximize intergenerational welfare. To address the challenge of allocating present sacrifices for the future in the way that maximizes the increase in welfare of future generations, the chapter introduces the cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The CBA is a set of valuation techniques that enables priorities to be put on the set of investment opportunities to be compatible with maximizing intertemporal welfare. The focus here is on how to compare temporally distributed valuations of different projects’ impacts, once these valuations have been made. One key ingredient in the CBA toolkit is the discount rate, which can be interpreted as the minimum rate of return required from a safe investment project to make it socially desirable to implement.
Locke on Property and Political Obligation
Authors: Cohen G. A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers John Locke's views on property and political obligation. A cardinal tenet of liberalism is the so-called thesis of self-ownership. Locke explicitly affirms liberalism in this sense, but the chapter argues that the passages in the Second Treatise of Government in which he does so raise two problems for him. This is the first problem: if the earth is given by God in “common to all men,” then how may people increase the domain of their ownership so that it extends beyond their own persons to include private property in external things? The second problem is this: if people own themselves, then with what right are social and political obligations of an enforceable kind laid upon them? These problems arise out of Locke's desire to defend the legitimacy of private property and government. The chapter examines Locke's solution to these problems.
The Ancient Greek World
Authors: Katz Victor J. , Parshall Karen Hunger
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the mathematicians of Ancient Greece; more specifically, on the elements of geometrical algebra present in the works of Euclid and Apollonius, as well as the propositions of perhaps the greatest of the ancient mathematicians—Archimedes. Only fragmentary documentation exists of the actual beginnings of mathematics in Greece, though the concept and necessity of proofs in mathematics might have come about due to the unique climate of argument and debate fostered in Ancient Greek society. In fact, most of these early developments took place in Athens, one of the richest of the Greek states at the time and one where public life was especially lively and discussion particularly vibrant.
Oversight
Authors: Minta Michael D.
Published: November 2017

This book answers the question of whether black and Latino legislators better represent minority interests in Congress than white legislators, and it is the first book on the subject to focus on congressional oversight rather than roll-call voting. The book demonstrates that minority lawmakers provide qualitatively better representation of black and Latino interests than their white counterparts. They are more likely to intervene in decision making by federal agencies by testifying in support of minority interests at congressional oversight hearings. Minority legislators write more letters urging agency officials to enforce civil rights policies, and spend significant time and effort advocating for solutions to problems that affect all racial and ethnic groups, such as poverty, inadequate health care, fair housing, and community development. This book argues that minority members of Congress act on behalf of broad minority interests—inside and outside their districts—because of a shared bond of experience and a sense of linked fate. It shows how the presence of black and Latino legislators in the committee room increases the chances that minority perspectives and concerns will be addressed in committee deliberations, and also how minority lawmakers are effective at countering negative stereotypes about minorities in policy debates on issues like affirmative action and affordable housing.
Introduction
Authors: Minta Michael D.
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to demonstrate via an analysis of congressional oversight activities that black and Latino legislators provide superior substantive representation of minority interests compared to white legislators. The book shows that black and Latino legislators are more likely to advocate on issues such as racial profiling and affirmative action. They are also more likely to intervene in agency decision making by attending, testifying, and engaging in deliberations at congressional oversight hearings in support of minority interests. Moreover, minority legislators write more letters urging agency officials to pursue the enforcement of civil rights policies, and they spend significant time and effort promoting and advocating for class-based solutions that benefit all racial and ethnic groups, such as efforts to end poverty and increase Medicaid and community development funding. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Race, Ethnicity, and a Theory of Substantive Representation in Congressional Oversight
Authors: Minta Michael D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter outlines the relationship between race, ethnicity, and substantive representation via an in-depth discussion of how racial and ethnic group consciousness operates among black and Latino representatives in Congress. While all members of Congress face the pressure of making the right decisions to increase their chances at reelection, black and Latino legislators, unlike most white legislators, face an additional pressure: they are motivated by a group norm that requires them to engage in collective group action on issues of concern to other blacks and Latinos. White legislators are mainly responsible for being responsive to the constituents in their districts, whereas black and Latino legislators are also expected to represent the interests of all blacks and Latinos nationally. The strategy they pursue of “strategic group uplift” falls at the intersection of their electoral goals and their commitment to advance group interests.
Black and Brown Voices in Committee Deliberations on Civil Rights
Authors: Minta Michael D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the individual efforts of legislators to advocate for minority interests via the protection of civil rights. Specifically, it takes a closer look at how much time members of Congress spent in committee deliberations supporting minority interests during the 103rd Congress (1993–1995), years of Democratic control of both chambers of Congress; the 104th Congress (1995–1997), years when a Republican Congress opposed a Democratic president; and the 107th Congress (2001–2003), years of continued Republican control of Congress, now under a Republican president. It is argued that strategic group uplift produces systematic racial and ethnic differences between minority legislators and white legislators: black and minority legislators actively promote and defend minority interests through strategic participation in hearings.
The Surprises of Laziness
Authors: Saint-Amand Pierre
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses how Pierre Carlet de Marivaux repeatedly mentions laziness as a private dream. Marivaux's laziness is intimately linked to writing, to its constant renegotiation of the future. The chapter examines Marivaux as a journalist, in writings that could well be described as youthful efforts, produced in the interval between his dramatic publications and his law degree. It becomes apparent that the modernity broached by Marivaux is not confined to the aesthetic sphere; it is clearly epistemological. Marivaux's periodical inaugurates a model of philosophical writing in which the author separates himself from Cartesian thought and its mechanical physics. At the dawn of the Enlightenment, proclaiming his modernity, Marivaux refuses systematic and methodical rationality; he proposes instead a sensory cogito, attentive to the real and subjected to the aleatory.
Philosophy on the Pillow
Authors: Saint-Amand Pierre
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at how Louis-Sébastien Mercier returns to his liberating pillow to explain how the night favors philosophy. It is the ideal time for contemplation: suspending the frenzy of the day, it fosters the peaceful circulation of ideas. The head resting on the pillow releases a particular form of leisure, a happy provocation of consciousness. Scattered through Mercier's Bonnet de nuit are dreams or “celestial” reveries, as he calls them, meditations in which the spirit levitates, absconds from solid reality. These aerial dreams can produce flights of mind unbound by human gravity, moments of utopia wrested from social and political violence.
Shakespeare's Festive Comedy
Authors: Barber Cesar Lombardi , Greenblatt Stephen
Published: November 2017

This book argues that Elizabethan seasonal festivals such as May Day and Twelfth Night are the key to understanding Shakespeare's comedies. Interweaving anthropology, social history, and literary criticism, the book traces the inward journey—psychological, bodily, spiritual—of the comedies: from confusion, raucous laughter, aching desire, and aggression, to harmony. Revealing the interplay between social custom and dramatic form, the book shows how the Elizabethan antithesis between everyday and holiday comes to life in the comedies' combination of seriousness and levity. “I have been led into an exploration of the way the social form of Elizabethan holidays contributed to the dramatic form of festive comedy. To relate this drama to holiday has proved to be the most effective way to describe its character. And this historical interplay between social and artistic form has an interest of its own: we can see here, with more clarity of outline and detail than is usually possible, how art develops underlying configurations in the social life of a culture.” This new edition includes a foreword that discusses the author's influence on later scholars and the recent critical disagreements that the author has inspired, showing that this book is as vital today as when it was originally published.
Misrule as Comedy; Comedy as Misrule
Authors: Barber C. L.
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the tendency for Elizabethan comedy to be a saturnalia, rather than to represent saturnalian experience. In Elizabethan England, a direct development of comedy out of festivity was prevented by the existence of an already developed dramatic literature—and by the whole moral superstructure of Elizabethan society. When the issue was put to the test, license for festive abuse was never granted by Elizabethan officials. The tendency examined in this chapter bears witness to the saturnalian impulse which did find expression in dramatic fiction. Saturnalia could come into its own in the theater by virtue of the distinction between the stage and the world which Puritans were unwilling to make in London but which fortunately prevailed across the river on the Bankside.
May Games and Metamorphoses on a Midsummer Night
Authors: Barber C. L.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It argues that the whole night's action is presented as a release of shaping fantasy which brings clarification about the tricks of strong imagination. We watch a dream; but we are awake, thanks to pervasive humor about the tendency to take fantasy literally, whether in love, in superstition, or in Bottom's mechanical dramatics. As in Love's Labour's Lost, the folly of wit becomes the generalized comic subject in the course of an astonishing release of witty invention, so here in the course of a more inclusive release of imagination, the folly of fantasy becomes the general subject, echoed back and forth between the strains of the play's imitative counterpoint.
The Antisocial Brain
Authors: Rose Nikolas , Abi-Rached Joelle M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the arguments that claim that human antisocial behavior—notably impulsivity, aggression, and related forms of criminal conduct—have neurobiological roots. While neurobiological evidence from genomics or functional brain imaging is likely to have limited traction in the criminal courtroom itself, a new diagram is nonetheless emerging in the criminal justice system as it encounters developments in the neurosciences. This does not entail a challenge to doctrines of free will or an exculpatory argument that “my brain made me do it,” as some have suggested. Rather it is developing around the themes of susceptibility, prediction, and precaution that have come to infuse many aspects of criminal justice systems as they have come to focus on questions of risk—risk assessment, risk management, and risk reduction.