838 research outputs found
The Economic Problem of Happiness. Keynes on Happiness and Economics
No full textIn their latest book (2008), Bruno Frey and the members of the research group he chairs at the University of Zurich announce that happiness research is leading a revolution in economics. More precisely, the revolutionary character of happiness economics would draw on measurement, on how people value goods and social conditions, as well as on policies. This paper aims to discuss critically this claim and what we identified as five crucial issues of mainstream happiness economics, i.e.: 1. the ambiguous relationship between income and happiness, 2. the “back to Bentham” approach, 3. problems of incommensurability, 4. heterogeneity and multidimensionality, 5. the scope of economics in relation to happiness. In so doing, we attempt to review John Maynard Keynes’s vision about happiness and economics, starting from a revisiting of his essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren in the light of his early unpublished writings on ethics as well as of the whole bulk of his writings in economics. We then provide reasons to argue that the rediscovery of Keynes’s legacy in this respect can be of help to point out and examine the most controversial aspects of today’s happiness research.Happiness, Happiness economics, John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren
Chapter 18 of the General Theory “Further Analysed”: The Theory of Economics as A Method
No full textIn 1987, Greenwald and Stiglitz accused Keynes’s summary of the General Theory in chapter 18 of relying upon “neoclassical and Marshallian tools”. A number of contributions have on the contrary emphasized the methodological importance of this chapter, which this paper revisits in the light of A Treatise on Probability. It thereby shows that the notions of cause and dependence used to discuss the relationships between independent and dependent variables of the General Theory are related to the concept of “independence for knowledge”, which concerns logical connections between arguments rather than material connections between events. We demonstrate that such logical connections established in chapter 18 are rediscussed in chapters 19-21, where Keynes allows for probable repercussions between the factors and removes the simplifying assumptions previously introduced. After stressing the methodological continuity this method provides with the analysis of credit cycles in A Treatise on Money, we argue that chapter 18 is an indispensable tool to decode the internal text structure of the General Theory. We thus characterize the latter as a vademecum to the complex economic world, the author providing an analytical method allowing – and requiring – the readers to emulate his efforts to grasp the complexity and interdependence of the economic material.John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory, complexity, economic methodology
Saltmarshes on the fringe : restoring the degraded shoreline of the Eden Estuary, Scotland
No full textSaltmarshes are highly valued habitats but the majority of the Eden Estuary’s saltmarsh was buried under sea defences and ad hoc rubbish dumps during the last century. Without saltmarsh, the degraded shoreline may be even more vulnerable to rising sea levels and increased wave and tidal energy. This study investigated planting native saltmarsh species, common in the estuaries of Eastern Scotland, to restore saltmarsh development and sedimentation to the Eden Estuary’s shoreline.
The survival and growth of the sedge Bolboschoenus maritimus (Sea Club-rush) and the grasses Phragmites australis (Common Reed) and Puccinellia maritima (Common Saltmarsh Grass) were compared in planting trials. These were seeded or transplanted onto unvegetated upper mudflats in front of eroded P. maritima saltmarsh and a disused rubbish dump. The longer term sustainability of this practice was assessed by comparing sediment deposition and surface elevation in the transplant sites, natural saltmarsh and upper unvegetated mudflats.
B. maritimus outperformed P. australis and P. maritima. Springtime, high density planting was successful, whereas seeds, planting in autumn and low density planting failed. Growth in the transplanted B. maritimus sites was relatively slow for the first three years but subsequently overtook growth of the seaward edge of natural B. maritimus marsh. Sediment was not deposited on natural P. maritima and was low on upper unvegetated mudflats and in young transplant sites. Most deposition occurred in four year old sites of B. maritimus. Sediment surface elevation in natural P. maritima remained constant throughout the year, but increased in all the other sites during the summer. The upper mudflat was the only site to erode during winter. A significant, positive association was found between tide height and sediment deposition, while winds from the south-east were associated with significantly more deposition than winds from the south-west.
The direct planting of saltmarsh vegetation has restored a valuable and rapidly disappearing habitat to the degraded shoreline of the Eden Estuary. The low-cost and simplicity of this restoration practice give it great potential as a sustainable coastal management option that should be explored in other Scottish estuaries. This form of restoration could help to increase the resilience and reduce the vulnerability of degraded shorelines to climate change and rising sea levels
The Iacocca management Iacocca: a profile of the Chrysler Chairman's unique key to business success
No full textThe author makes clear that his powers of persuasion played an important role in recruiting the executive talent which eventually brought Chrysler back from the brink of bankruptcy. But just how effective Iacocca's one-man-band brand of leadership would prove in the absence of crisis conditions remains a very open question. In brief, then, a bare-bones account of a remarkable career that others (including Iacocca in his best-selling autobiography) have covered in greater depth and with more insight
Applicator training manual
No full textTitle from PDF cover (viewed on November 28, 2018)."This manual was developed using pesticide safety education materials, Extension manuals and publications from Texas Cooperative Extension, the University of California at Davis; the Universities of Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Nebraska; and from Iowa State, North Carolina State, Oklahoma State and Washington State Universities. Oregon Department of Agriculture reproduced portions of this manual with permission of the copyright holders: The Texas A&M University System and The Regents of the University of California"--Page 5.This archived document is maintained by the State Library of Oregon as part of the Oregon Documents Depository Program. It is for informational purposes and may not be suitable for legal purposes.Mode of access: Internet from the Oregon Government Publications Collection.Text in English
Keynes resurrected
No full textJohn Graham was a pioneer of economics and public finance in Canada. As most economists of his generation, he was fond of the writings of the great British economist John Maynard Keynes - clearly the greatest economist of the twentieth century. Being a macroeconomist myself, I thought the best tribute I could pay to John in this Lecture celebrating his memory was to present a short history of what has happened to Keynesian ideas over the last 65 years or so.Keynes, history of thought
Keynes and Economics: The Early Stage
No full textThe following pages offer a contribution to the understanding of Keynes’s débuts as an economist, in the hope we might dissipate a few myths, some created by Keynes himself, others by disciples or adversaries. Following some preliminary remarks on these misunderstandings, we will recall how Keynes became a professional economist, showing that he did not arrive to economics by chance, that this was indeed a natural result of his early preoccupations and thinking. But, even when he was a confirmed economist, economics remained secondary for Keynes, after ethics and politics, and this until the end of his life. We will examine this in part three of this paper, where we consider how Keynes viewed economics in the first decade of our century. We will show that certain important themes in his economic reflections, his view of laissez-faire in particular, are clearly present in early works, and that the methods he would later apply to economic studies were built up at that date. In the last part of this paper, we will turn to Keynes’s early theoretical economics, examining in particular his reflections on the quantity theory of money, in his lectures notes. We will show that his position towards this theory -- at least in its most simplified version -- was already somewhat critical at that early stage, drawing on his philosophical and methodological views.Keynes, History, Economic Thought
Book Reviews
No full textBook Reviews --Likert, Rensis. New patterns of management. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1961--reviewed by Harold J. Leavitt; --Maass, Arthur, Hofshmidt, Maynard M., Dorfman, Robert, Thomas,Habold A. Jr., Maeglin, Stephan A. and Fair, Gordon M. Design of water resource systems. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962--reviewed by Ernest Koenigsberg; --Riordan, John. Stochastic service systems. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1962, 6.95, 177 pp--reviewed by Martin Shubik. Books Received
The Maynard, J. L., & Haas, M. L. (Eds.). 2022. The Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations. Taylor & Francis.
No full textThe Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations is part of the “Routledge Handbooks on Political Ideologies, Practices, and Interpretations” series, and has been written by two authors and various contributors. The main author is Jonathan Leader Maynard, a lecturer at King's College London, one of the 10 leading universities in the United Kingdom, and the second author is Professor Mark L. Haas, a lecturer at Duquesne University in the United States. In the book, which examines the effect of ideology on international relations, both authors critically address the issues of ideological polarization, ideological disagreements, and conflicts of interest between countries in foreign policy matters. The content of the book comprises four main chapters. The first chapter analyses the relationship between ideology, nation, and state; the second addresses the issues of ideology and conflict; the third reviews the transnational dimension of ideology; and the final presents an evaluation of the ideological strategies and transnational relations of such countries and regions as India, Latin America, Central Asia, China, Africa, Russia, United States, Europe and the European Union and South Korea
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