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Can economics explain everything and solve all our problems?
No full textEconomics, in its mainstream guise, has begun to permeate popular culture in the form of an expanding range of books that seek to provide explanations of human behaviour and society through the application of standard neoclassical economic tools and principles. Current well-known books, generally targeted at the general public and positioned as an attempt to demystify and promote economics, are titles such as Freakonomics (Dubner and Levitt 2006), The Undercover Economist (Harford 2007), and The Economic Naturalist (Frank 2008). The topics of these books are not necessarily the economy, but rather take an economic approach to a wide range of issues such as whether sumo wrestlers cheat (Dubner and Levitt 2006), why American teenagers are having more oral sex (Harford 2007) and why your fridge has a light but your freezer does not (Frank 2008). Whilst the need for these issues to be explained or not can be debated, the manner in which they are approached is illustrative of the way that economic tools are applied to topics that are not traditionally considered to be within the scope of the field of economics. These books are very clear about the sort of economic principles that are being applied. For example, Frank (2008) discusses the opportunity cost and the cost-benefit principle (essentially the marginal principle) in which the additional benefits are weighed against the additional costs (of a given action), and Harford (2007) places central importance on the rational behaviour of individuals (see Chapter 2) as a vital tool in helping us peel back the layers and understand the complexity of the world around us (Harford 2007). These principles have been discussed at length in this book, and should be recognisable as central to the standard textbook economics that most students are exposed to. The importance of this application of the core neoclassical concepts also rests on the degree of explanatory power ascribed to this framework, with Harford noting that ‘if you do not understand the rational choices that underlie much of our behaviour, you cannot understand the world in which we live’ (Harford 2007), and Frank (2008) claiming that ‘economics explains almost everything’ (Frank 2008).
The final chapter of this book discusses the question of whether economics can explain everything and solve all our problems. As previous chapters have shown, economics as a discipline addresses many important issues that are related to our daily lives and the society that we live in, from shedding light on questions concerning why and how we consume products (Chapter 5), how we produce these goods in the first place (Chapter 6), to broader issues concerning global economic crises (Chapter 10), the environment (Chapter 14), and gender relations (Chapter 13). This has hopefully convinced the reader that economics, in its many and varied guises, has something important and unique to say about the real world. Further, the motivation for this question arises not just from the books discussed above that lay claims to the explanatory power of the mainstream Neoclassical framework, but a general recognition that economists working from different perspectives throughout the recent history of economic thought have exerted great influence. As Heilbroner (2000) notes:
[The great economists] commanded no armies, sent no men to their deaths, ruled no empires, took little part in history-making decisions. A few of them achieved renown, but none was ever a national hero; a few were roundly abused, but none was ever quite a national villain. Yet what they did was more decisive for history than many acts of statesmen who basked in brighter glory, often more profoundly disturbing than the shuttling of armies back and forth across frontiers, more powerful for good and bad than the edicts of kings and legislatures. It was this: they shaped and swayed men’s minds.
This chapter will compare and contrast a range of approaches that put forward claims of the overarching explanatory power of economics and the ability of economics to solve all our problems. The chapter commences with a comparison of the Neoclassical and Marxist frameworks, which both lay claims to an expanded explanatory power, though in very different ways. This is followed by a discussion of Keynes’ views on the power of economics to solve the central human problem, and his speculation that this could lead to a downgrading of the importance of economics. However, alternative approaches view economics as the problem, including calls for a new direction that focuses on human well-being and sustainability above economic growth
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
Author Under Sail The Imagination of Jack London, 1893-1902
No full textIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Spirit Truth -- 2. From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again -- 3. "I Will Build a New Present" -- 4. Sons as Authors -- 5. Fathers as Publishers -- 6. The Daughter as Author -- 7. Lovers as Authors -- 8. At Sea with the Family -- 9. Yellow News, Yellow Stories -- 10. The Return Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About Jay WilliamsIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
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