Download or read book Economic Efficiency Versus Democracy written by Josef Drexl and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The efficiency approach, as advocated by the Chicago School in particular, only provides a very narrow approach to competition law analysis that relies on the preferences of consumers. This approach remains especially insufficient for the regulation of firms that provide citizens with politically relevant news and information. In times of digitisation, citizens increasingly rely on news disseminated by Internet intermediaries such as Facebook, Twitter or Google for making political decisions. Such firms design their business models and their algorithms for selecting the news according to a purely economic rationale. Yet recent research indicates that dissemination of news through social platforms in particular has a negative impact on the democratic process by favouring the dissemination of false factual statements, fake news and unverifiable conspiracy theories within closed communities and, ultimately, leads to radicalisation and a division of society along political and ideological lines. Experience based on the Brexit referendum in the UK and the recent presidential elections in the US highlights the ability of populist political movements to abuse the business rationale of Internet intermediaries and the functioning of their algorithms in order to win popular votes with their 'post-truth politics'. This article relies on competition law principles to discuss future approaches to regulating the market for political ideas at the interface of competition law and media law in the new digital age. Based on constitutional considerations the article rests on the assumption that media markets should not only provide news that responds best to the psychological predispositions and subjective beliefs of the individual citizen, but also provide correct information and diversity of opinion as a basis for making informed democratic decisions.

Download or read book When More Is Not Better written by Roger L. Martin and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American democratic capitalism is in danger. How can we save it? For its first two hundred years, the American economy exhibited truly impressive performance. The combination of democratically elected governments and a capitalist system worked, with ever-increasing levels of efficiency spurred by division of labor, international trade, and scientific management of companies. By the nation's bicentennial celebration in 1976, the American economy was the envy of the world. But since then, outcomes have changed dramatically. Growth in the economic prosperity of the average American family has slowed to a crawl, while the wealth of the richest Americans has skyrocketed. This imbalance threatens the American democratic capitalist system and our way of life. In this bracing yet constructive book, world-renowned business thinker Roger Martin starkly outlines the fundamental problem: We have treated the economy as a machine, pursuing ever-greater efficiency as an inherent good. But efficiency has become too much of a good thing. Our obsession with it has inadvertently shifted the shape of our economy, from a large middle class and smaller numbers of rich and poor (think of a bell-shaped curve) to a greater share of benefits accruing to a thin tail of already-rich Americans (a Pareto distribution). With lucid analysis and engaging anecdotes, Martin argues that we must stop treating the economy as a perfectible machine and shift toward viewing it as a complex adaptive system in which we seek a fundamental balance of efficiency with resilience. To achieve this, we need to keep in mind the whole while working on the component parts; pursue improvement, not perfection; and relentlessly tweak instead of attempting to find permanent solutions. Filled with keen economic insight and advice for citizens, executives, policy makers, and educators, When More Is Not Better is the must-read guide for saving democratic capitalism.

Download or read book Reconciling Efficiency and Equity written by Damien Gerard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a new conceptualization of competition law as economic inequality and its interaction with efficiency become of central concern to policy and decision-makers.

Download or read book Economic Efficiency and Democratic Control written by and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Economic Democracy written by J. W. Smith and published by Instittute for Economic Dem, Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 2 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Permanent global peace and sustainable development. Eliminating monopolies we are told are not there. Creating a modern commons. Increasing economic efficiency equal to the invention of money, the printing press, and electricity. The efficiency increase measures the previously wasted labor, capital, and resources. Each person works 2-3 days per week without loss of food, fiber, shelter, or recreation Under full and equal rights, poverty can be eliminated in 10 years. Under full and equal rights, within 50 years each citizen of the world can have a quality life. Plunder by trade and Capital destroying capital eliminated through superefficient capitalism. Empowering the powerless.

Download or read book Efficiency Instead of Justice written by Klaus Mathis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-03-18 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic analysis of law is an interesting and challenging attempt to employ the concepts and reasoning methods of modern economic theory so as to gain a deeper understanding of legal problems. According to Richard A. Posner it is the role of the law to encourage market competition and, where the market fails because transaction costs are too high, to simulate the result of competitive markets. This would maximize economic efficiency and social wealth. In this work, the lawyer and economist Klaus Mathis critically appraises Posner’s normative justification of the efficiency paradigm from the perspective of the philosophy of law. Posner acknowledges the influences of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham, whom he views as the founders of normative economics. He subscribes to Smith’s faith in the market as an ideal allocation model, and to Bentham’s ethical consequentialism. Finally, aligning himself with John Rawls’s contract theory, he seeks to legitimize his concept of wealth maximization with a consensus theory approach. In his interdisciplinary study, the author points out the possibilities as well as the limits of economic analysis of law. It provides a method of analysing the law which, while very helpful, is also rather specific. The efficiency arguments therefore need to be incorporated into a process for resolving value conflicts. In a democracy this must take place within the political decision-making process. In this clearly written work, Klaus Mathis succeeds in making even non-economists more aware of the economic aspects of the law.

Download or read book Equality and Efficiency written by Arthur M. Okun and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary American society has the look of a split-level structure. Its political and social institutions distribute rights and privileges universally and proclaim the equality of all citizens. Yet economic institutions, with efficiency as their guiding principle, create disparities among citizens in living standards and material welfare. This mixture of equal rights and unequal economic status breeds tensions between the political principles of democracy and the economic principles of capitalism. Whenever the wealthy try for extra helpings of supposedly equal rights, and whenever the workings of the market deny anyone a minimum standard of living, "dollars transgress on rights"—in the author's phrase. In this revised and expanded version of the Godkin Lectures presented at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University in April 1974, Arthur M. Okun explores the conflicts that arise when society's desire to reduce inequality would impair economic efficiency, confronting policymakers with "the big tradeoff." Other economic systems have attempted to solve this problem; but the best of socialist experiments have achieved a greater degree of equality than our mixed capitalist democracy only at heavy costs in efficiency, and dictatorial governments have reached heights of efficiency only by rigidly repressing their citizenry. In contrast, our basic system emerges as a viable, if uneasy, compromise in which the market has its place and democratic institutions keep it in check. But within the existing system there are ways to gain more of one good thing at a lower cost in terms of the other. In Okun's view, society's concern for human dignity can be directed at reducing the economic deprivation that stains the record of American democracy—through progressive taxation, transfer payments, job programs, broadening equality of opportunity, eliminating racial and sexual discrimination, and lowering barriers to access to capital.

Download or read book Industrial Democracy written by Glenn Edward Plumb and published by [London?] : G. Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 1923 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Economic Efficiency democratic Empowerment written by Ingolfur Blühdorn and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germany and Britain are two major European economies that have been trying to confront the challenges of globalisation in very different ways. Britain has favoured market liberal strategies; Germany has endeavoured to retain its tradition of consensualism and the strong welfare state. Focusing on the period since 1997/8, this book explores the controversies and struggles surrounding the agendas of social, economic, and political modernisation in the two countries. The New Labour governments in Britain and the Social Democratic coalition governments in Germany have been introducing a range of reform policies designed to reform the welfare state and increase the respective country's competitiveness in the global market. In both countries, however, these policies have triggered societal resistance. The governing parties had to confront electoral setbacks, an exodus of party members, strains on the relationship with traditional political allies, and an increasingly alienated public. Within this context, this book focuses on the tensions between two key parameters in contemporary modernisation discourses: economic efficiency and democratic renewal. Political elites in many European countries are presenting the achievement of efficiency gains as a primary objective of globalisation-induced societal reform. At the same time civic empowerment and the engagement of civil society are widely regarded as essential for increasing the quality, legitimacy, and effectiveness of public policy making. But can these two goals be achieved at the same time? What exactly does the highly contested term efficiency imply? What is its relationship towards the equally ambiguous goal of democratic renewal? Focusing on a variety of political actors, structures and strategies in Germany and Britain, the individual chapters in this book trace how the tensions between economic efficiency and democratic renewal surface, how definitional struggles surrounding these ideals are being managed, and how new syntheses between the two parameters are being forged.

Download or read book Markets and Democracy written by Samuel Bowles and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The market does not spontaneously generate democratic or participatory economic institutions. This book asks whether a modern, efficient economy can be rendered democratically accountable and, if so, what strategic changes might be required to regulate the market-mediated interaction of economic agents. The contributors bring contemporary microeconomic theory to bear on a range of related issues, including the relationship between democratic firms and efficiency in market economies; incentives and the relative merits of various forms of internal democratic decision-making; and the effects of democratically accountable firms on innovation, saving, investment, and on the informational and disciplinary aspects of markets. Various approaches to the study of economic interaction (game theory, transactions' cost analysis, social choice theory, rent-seeking, etc.) are considered in an attempt to understand the relationship between power and efficiency in market economies.

Download or read book Deliberation and Decision written by Anne van Aaken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deliberation and Decision explores ways of bridging the gap between two rival approaches to theorizing about democratic institutions: constitutional economics on the one hand and deliberative democracy on the other. The two approaches offer very different accounts of the functioning and legitimacy of democratic institutions. Although both highlight the importance of democratic consent, their accounts of such consent could hardly be more different. Constitutional economics models individuals as self-interested rational utility maximizers and uses economic efficiency criteria such as incentive compatibility for evaluating institutions. Deliberative democracy models individuals as communicating subjects capable of engaging in democratic discourse. The two approaches are disjointed not only in terms of their assumptions and methodology but also in terms of the communication - or lack thereof - between their respective communities of researchers. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the recent debate between the two approaches and makes new and original contributions to that debate.

Download or read book The Limits of Economic Efficiency in a Democratic Society written by Alejandro Agafonow and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 20th century, Marxism and non-egalitarian or classical liberalism debated the properties of economic reasoning, that is, the way economic institutions value multiple ends. This debate produced an implicit consensus between market socialists and non-egalitarian liberals about democracy. In this consensus, the Rousseau's general will was replaced by the individual will, and popular sovereignty reflected in consumer sovereignty. This essay uses a Rawlsian perspective to analyze the limits of economic efficiency in a democratic society.

Download or read book The Good Reform of the Ether written by Giuseppe Mastrantonio and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Deliberation and Decision written by Anne van Aaken and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deliberation and Decision explores ways of bridging the gap between two rival approaches to theorizing about democratic institutions: constitutional economics on the one hand and deliberative democracy on the other. The two approaches offer very different accounts of the functioning and legitimacy of democratic institutions. Although both highlight the importance of democratic consent, their accounts of such consent could hardly be more different. Constitutional economics models individuals as self-interested rational utility maximizers and uses economic efficiency criteria such as incentive compatibility for evaluating institutions. Deliberative democracy models individuals as communicating subjects capable of engaging in democratic discourse. The two approaches are disjointed not only in terms of their assumptions and methodology but also in terms of the communication - or lack thereof - between their respective communities of researchers. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the recent debate between the two approaches and makes new and original contributions to that debate.

Download or read book Economic Dignity written by Gene Sperling and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Timely and important . . . It should be our North Star for the recovery and beyond.” —Hillary Clinton “Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in people’s deepest aspirations—in their sense of purpose and self-worth.” —The New York Times When Gene Sperling was in charge of coordinating economic policy in the Obama White House, he found himself surprised when serious people in Washington told him that the Obama focus on health care was a distraction because it was “not focused on the economy.” How, he asked, was the fear felt by millions of Americans of being one serious illness away from financial ruin not considered an economic issue? Too often, Sperling found that we measured economic success by metrics like GDP instead of whether the economy was succeeding in lifting up the sense of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and security of people. In Economic Dignity, Sperling frames the way forward in a time of wrenching change and offers a vision of an economy whose guiding light is the promotion of dignity for all Americans.

Download or read book Equality and Efficiency REV written by Arthur M. Okun and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1975, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff is a very personal work from one of the most important macroeconomists of the last hundred years. And this new edition includes "Further Thoughts on Equality and Efficiency," a paper published by the author two years later. In classrooms Arthur M. Okun may be best remembered for Okun's Law, but his lasting legacy is the respect and admiration he earned from economists, practitioners, and policymakers. Equality and Efficiency is the perfect embodiment of that legacy, valued both by professional economists and those readers with a keen interest in social policy. To his fellow economists, Okun presents messages, in the form of additional comments and select citations, in his footnotes. To all readers, Okun presents an engaging dual theme: the market needs a place, and the market needs to be kept in its place. As Okun puts it: Institutions in a capitalist democracy prod us to get ahead of our neighbors economically after telling us to stay in line socially. This double standard professes and pursues an egalitarian political and social system while simultaneously generating gaping disparities in economic well-being. Today, Okun's dual theme feels incredibly prescient as we grapple with the hot-button topic of income inequality. In his foreword, Lawrence H. Summers declares: On what one might think of as questions of "economic philosophy," I doubt that Okun has been improved on in the subsequent interval. His discussion of how societies rely on rights as well as markets should be required reading for all young economists who are enamored with market solutions to all problems. With a new foreword by Lawrence H. Summers

Download or read book Democratic Federalism written by Robert P. Inman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Federalism, defined generally as a collection of self-governing regions under a central government, is widely viewed as a sensible choice of polity both for emerging democracies and for established states. But while federal institutions are positively correlated with valued economic, democratic, and justice outcomes, ultimately it is unclear how they are connected and which cause which. In Democratic Federalism, Robert Inman and Daniel Rubinfeld explore how federalism works and propose concrete and proven policy guidance on how federalist policies can be designed and implemented successfully. The authors define federalism according to three parameters: how much federal revenue comes through local governmental bodies, the number of local governmental bodies, and the extent to which these local bodies are represented federally. In applying these parameters to economic concepts and theory, Inman and Rubinfeld explain how federalism works in a way meant to engage scholars in political science and sociology and policymakers drafting regulation in federalist governments. The book offers applicable ideas and comparative case studies on how to assess potential policies and how to actually design federalist institutions from scratch. Both authors have real experience with both, most notably in their work advising the South African government on how to build a federalist democracy. This book will be an essential guide to understanding and applying federalist concepts and principles"--