Download or read book An Ecosystem Approach to Economic Stabilization written by Rodrick Wallace and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-11 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The creation of economic institutions that can function well under substantial uncertainties -- Black Swans -- is analogous to the dilemmas confronting our hunter-gatherer forefathers in the face of large-scale ecological unpredictability. The ultimate solution was not the development of a super hunter-gatherer technology that could ride out repeated catastrophe, but rather the invention, in neolithic times, of culturally-adapted 'farmed' ecosystems constructed to maximize food yield and minimize risks of famine. Recent advances in evolutionary and ecosystem theory applied to economic structure and process may permit construction of both new economic theory and new tools for data analysis that can help in the design of more robust economic institutions. This may result in less frequent and less disruptive transitions, and enable the design of culturally-specific systems less affected by those that do occur. This unique and innovative book applies cutting-edge methods from cognitive science and evolutionary theory to the problem of the necessary stabilization of economic processes. At the core of this book is the establishment of a statistics-like toolbox for the study of empirical data that is consistent with generalized evolutionary approaches. This toolbox enables the construction of both new economic theories and methods of data analysis that can help in the design of more robust economic institutions. This in turn will result in less frequent and less disruptive Black Swans, and enable as well the design of culturally-specific systems less affected by those that do occur.
Download or read book The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Ecological and Economic Foundations written by Pushpam Kumar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-20 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human well-being relies critically on ecosystem services provided by nature. Examples include water and air quality regulation, nutrient cycling and decomposition, plant pollination and flood control, all of which are dependent on biodiversity. They are predominantly public goods with limited or no markets and do not command any price in the conventional economic system, so their loss is often not detected and continues unaddressed and unabated. This in turn not only impacts human well-being, but also seriously undermines the sustainability of the economic system. It is against this background that TEEB: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project was set up in 2007 and led by the United Nations Environment Programme to provide a comprehensive global assessment of economic aspects of these issues. This book, written by a team of international experts, represents the scientific state of the art, providing a comprehensive assessment of the fundamental ecological and economic principles of measuring and valuing ecosystem services and biodiversity, and showing how these can be mainstreamed into public policies. This volume and subsequent TEEB outputs will provide the authoritative knowledge and guidance to drive forward the biodiversity conservation agenda for the next decade.
Download or read book Valuing Ecosystem Services written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2005-05-14 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nutrient recycling, habitat for plants and animals, flood control, and water supply are among the many beneficial services provided by aquatic ecosystems. In making decisions about human activities, such as draining a wetland for a housing development, it is essential to consider both the value of the development and the value of the ecosystem services that could be lost. Despite a growing recognition of the importance of ecosystem services, their value is often overlooked in environmental decision-making. This report identifies methods for assigning economic value to ecosystem servicesâ€"even intangible onesâ€"and calls for greater collaboration between ecologists and economists in such efforts.
Download or read book The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Local and Regional Policy and Management written by Heidi Wittmer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human well-being is dependent upon 'ecosystem services' provided by nature for free, such as water and air purification, fisheries, timber and nutrient cycling. These are predominantly public goods with no markets and no prices, so their loss is often not detected by our current economic incentive system and therefore continues unabated. A variety of pressures resulting from population growth, changing diets, urbanisation, climate change and many other factors is causing biodiversity to decline and ecosystems to be degraded. The world's.
Download or read book System of Environmental economic Accounting 2012 written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Politics Hierarchy and Public Health written by Deborah Wallace and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steep socioeconomic hierarchy in post-industrial Western society threatens public health because of the physiological consequences of material and psychosocial insecurities and deprivations. Following on from their previous books, the authors continue their exploration of the geography of early mortality from age-related chronic conditions, of risk behaviors and their health outcomes, and of infant and child mortality, all due to rigid hierarchy. They divide the 50 states into those that gave their electoral college votes to Trump and those that gave theirs to Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and compare the two sets for socioeconomic and public health profiles. They deliberately apply only simple standard statistical methods in the public health analyses: t-test, Mann-Whitney test, bivariate regression, and backward stepwise multivariate regression. The book assumes familiarity with basic statistics. The authors argue that the unequal power relations that result in eroding public health in the nation and, in particular, in the Trump-voting states, largely cascade from the collapse of American industry, and they analyze the Cold War roots of that collapse. In two largely independent chapters on economics, they explore both the suppression of countervailing forces, such as organized labor, and the diversion of technical resources to the military as essential foundations to the population-level suffering that expressed itself in the 2016 presidential election. This interdisciplinary book has several primary audiences: creators of public policies, such as legislators and governmental staff, public health professionals and social epidemiologists, economists, labor union professionals, civil rights advocates, political scientists, historians, and students of these disciplines from public health through the social sciences.
Download or read book Trust and Economics written by Yanlong Zhang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lot of recent attention has been given to one of the central paradoxes of trust: namely how people can restrict self-interest in order to trust. Existing perspectives, theories, and models offer partial explanations, but this volume presents a novel framework that expands on the findings of recent studies of trust and exchange. This book offers a new angle for the understanding of exchange and trust in an interactive context, describes the interactive characteristics of trust in exchange systems, and develops a theory explaining the co-evolution of trust and exchange systems. A new framework is used to incorporate the theory of systems of trust and evolutionary game-theoretical approach to investigate four important questions: How can trust emerge in exchange when people pursue self-interest? After its emergence, how does exchange affect trust in a dynamic process? When are dynamics of trust stable? Do interactive trust phenomena differ under different exchange systems? This book concludes with a discussion of the implications of the theoretical findings for three areas: the improvement of trust, potential economic growth, and mechanism design in exchange systems. This volume makes a significant contribution to the literature on evolutionary and institutional economics and is suitable for those who have an interest in political economy, economy theory and philosophy as well as economic psychology.
Download or read book The Heterodox Theory of Social Costs written by K. William Kapp and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: K. William Kapp’s heterodox theory of social costs proposes precautionary planning to pre-empt social costs and provide social benefits via socio-ecological safety standards that guarantee the gratification of basic human needs. Based on arguments from Thorstein Veblen, Karl Marx, and Max Weber, social costs are conceptualized as systemic and large-scale damages caused by markets. Kapp refutes neoclassical solutions, such as bargaining, taxation, and tort law, unmasking them as ineffective, inefficient, inconsistent, and too market-obedient. The chapters of this book present the social costs of markets and neoclassical economics, the social benefits of environmental controls, development planning, and the governance of science and technological standards. This book demonstrates the fruitfulness of the heterodox theory of social costs as a coherent framework to develop effective remedies for today’s urgent socio-ecological crises. This volume is suitable for readers at all levels who are interested in the theory of social costs, heterodox economics, and the history of economic thought.
Download or read book Computational Psychiatry written by Rodrick Wallace and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores mental disorders from a uniquely evolutionary perspective. Although there have been many attempts to mathematically model neural processes and, to some extent, their dysfunction, there is very little literature that models mental function within a sociocultural, socioeconomic, and environmental context. Addressing this gap in the extant literature, this book explores essential aspects of mental disorders, recognizing the ubiquitous role played by the exaptation of crosstalk between cognitive modules at many different scales and levels of organization, the missing heritability of complex diseases, and cultural epigenetics. Further, it introduces readers to valuable control theory tools that permit the exploration of the environmental induction of neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as the study of the synergism between culture, psychopathology and sleep disorders, offering a distinctively unique resource.
Download or read book The Problem of Production written by Per L Bylund and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of the firm has been fertile ground for economists. Bylund proposes a new theory, rooted in Austrian economics, which examines the firm as a part of the market, and not as a free-standing entity. In this integrated view, a theory is offered which incorporates entrepreneurship, production, market process and economic development.
Download or read book Information Studies And The Quest For Transdisciplinarity Unity Through Diversity written by Mark Burgin and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the second volume of a two-volume edition based on the International Society for Information Studies Summit Vienna 2015 on 'The Information Society at the Crossroads. Response and Responsibility of the Sciences of Information' (see summit.is4is.org).The book gives an up-to-date multiaspect exposition of contemporary studies in the field of information and related areas. It presents most recent achievements, ideas and opinions of leading researchers in this domain reflecting their quest for advancing information science and technology. With the goal of building a better society, in which social and technological innovations help make information key to the flourishing of humanity, we dispense with the bleak view of the dark side of information society.It is aimed at readers that conduct research into any aspect of information, information society and information technology, who develop or implement social or technological applications. It is also for those who have an interest in participating in setting the goals for the sciences of information and the social applications of technological achievements and the scientific results.
Download or read book Canonical Instabilities of Autonomous Vehicle Systems written by Rodrick Wallace and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The asymptotic limit theorems of control and information theories make it possible to explore the dynamics of collapse likely to afflict large-scale systems of autonomous ground vehicles that communicate with each other and with an embedding intelligent roadway. Any vehicle/road system is inherently unstable in the control theory sense as a consequence of the basic irregularities of the traffic stream, the road network, and their interactions, placing it in the realm of the Data Rate Theorem that mandates a minimum necessary rate of control information for stability. It appears that large-scale V2V/V2I systems will experience correspondingly large-scale failures analogous to the vast, propagating fronts of power network blackouts, and possibly less benign but more subtle patterns of individual vehicle, platoon, and mesoscale dysfunction. The central matter is the synergism between poorly-understood traffic flow dynamics and similarly cryptic multisource information network dynamics, leading to highly punctuated phase transition analogs.
Download or read book Gene Expression and Its Discontents written by Rodrick Wallace and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-23 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes how epigenetic context, in a large sense, affects gene expression and the development of an organism, using the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory to construct statistical models useful in data analysis. The approach allows deep understanding of how embedding context affects development. We find that epigenetic information sources act as tunable catalysts, directing ontogeny into characteristic pathways, a perspective having important implications for epigenetic epidemiology. In sum, environmental stressors can induce a broad spectrum of developmental dysfunctions, and the book explores a number of pandemic chronic diseases, using U.S. data at different scales and levels of organization. In particular, we find the legacy of slavery has been grossly compounded by accelerating industrial decline and urban decay. Individual chapters are dedicated to obesity and its sequelae, coronary heart disease, cancer, mental disorders, autoimmune dysfunction, Alzheimer’s disease, and other conditions. Developmental disorders are driven by environmental factors channeled by historical trajectory and are unlikely to respond to medical interventions at the population level in the face of persistent individual and community stress. Drugs powerful enough to affect deleterious epigenetic programming will likely have side effects leading to shortened lifespan. Addressing chronic conditions and developmental disorders requires significant large-scale changes in public policy and resource allocation.
Download or read book Essays on Strategy and Public Health written by Rodrick Wallace and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-04-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of essays that explore commonalities and contrasts between strategy in armed conflict and strategy in public health. The first part uses the asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories to study strategy as an exchange of messages between adversaries, in the context of underlying power relations. The ‘messages’ to be exchanged are constructed from an ‘alphabet’ of tactics available to each contender, in a large sense. The second part of the book explores four case histories from this perspective, ranging across agribusiness-generated pandemics, through tuberculosis and COVID-19. The final chapter attempts a strategic synthesis applicable more specifically to public health than to the remarkably – and disturbingly -- close parallel of armed conflict. Taking a unique approach to public health tactics and strategy this volume will be of interest to social epidemiologists, public health economists, public policy scientists, as well as public health researchers and practitioners.
Download or read book Neoliberal Ebola written by Robert G. Wallace and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-29 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume compiles five papers modeling the effects of neoliberal economics on the emergence of Ebola and its aftermath. Neoliberalism is currently the world’s primary economic philosophy. It centers international relations around globalizing laissez-faire economics for multinational companies, promoting free trade, deregulating economic markets, and shifting state expenditures in favor of private property. The multidisciplinary teams represented here place both Ebola Makona, the Zaire Ebola virus variant that has infected 28,000 in West Africa, and Ebola Reston, which is currently emerging in industrial hog farms in the Philippines and China, within a multi-plank modeling framework. Using a stochastic extinction model that one group spatializes, environmental stochasticity across the ecologies in which Ebola evolves is treated as an ecosystemic prophylaxis. An agroecological logic gate is developed for epidemic control. A Black-Scholes model explicitly links economic margins across agricultural systems to success in biocontrol. This new control theory is further developed around the data-rate and rate-distortion theorems, a turbulence model, and cognitive symmetry breaking. Lastly, a model of pandemic penetrance is used to explore the domino effects of serious outbreaks amplifying through the cascades of disasters that can follow deadly pandemics. All the models presented are contextualized by socioeonomic geographies specific to outbreak locales.Together the models suggest shifts in regional agroeconomics under the neoliberal doctrine, driving deforestation and monoculture production, destroying the ecosystemic “friction” with which local forests typically disrupt Ebola transmission. The resulting collapse in such an ecological function accelerates pathogen spillover and propagation across the remaining host populations. The failure on the part of current control efforts to assimilate such a structural context may render even an efficacious vaccine dysfunctional. The authors propose an alternate science of disease and an adjunct program of interventions useful to researchers and public health officials alike.
Download or read book Information Theory Models Of Instabilities In Critical Systems written by Rodrick Wallace and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2016-08-18 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a unique exploration of a spectrum of unexpected analogs to psychopathologies likely to afflict real-time critical systems, written by a specialist in the epidemiology of mental disorders. The purpose of this book is to develop a set of information-theoretic statistical tools for analyzing the instabilities of real-time cognitive systems at those varying scales and levels of organization, with special focus on high level machine function.The book should be of particular interest to both industry and academic scientists, and government regulators, concerned with driverless cars on intelligent roads. Many of the same concerns also afflict high-end automated weapons systems. The book should appeal to students, researchers, and industrial and governmental administrators facing the design, operation, and maintenance of real time critical systems ranging across manufacturing facilities, transportation, finance, and military operations.
Download or read book Essays on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis written by Rodrick Wallace and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ‘punctuated equilibrium' of Eldrege and Gould, through Lewontin's ‘triple helix' and the various visions and revisions of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) of Laland and others, both data and theory have demanded an opening-up of the 1950's Evolutionary Synthesis that so firmly wedded evolutionary theory to the mathematics of gene frequency analysis. It can, however, be argued that a single deep and comprehensive mathematical theory may simply not be possible for the almost infinite varieties of evolutionary process active at and across the full range of scales of biological, social, institutional, and cultural phenomena. Indeed, the case history of 'meme theory' should have raised a red flag that narrow gene-centered models of evolutionary process may indeed have serious limitations. What is attempted here is less grand, but still broader than a gene-centered analysis. Following the instruction of Maturana and Varela that all living systems are cognitive, in a certain sense, and that living as a process is a process of cognition, the asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories that bound all cognition provide a basis for constructing an only modestly deep but wider-ranging series of probability models that might be converted into useful statistical tools for the analysis of observational and experimental data related to evolutionary process. The line of argument in this series of interrelated essays proves to be surprisingly direct.
