Download or read book Elements of an Evolutionary Theory of Welfare written by Martin Binder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-05-04 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has always been an important task of economics to assess individual and social welfare. The traditional approach has assumed that the measuring rod for welfare is the satisfaction of the individual’s given and unchanging preferences, but recent work in behavioural economics has called this into question by pointing out the inconsistencies and context-dependencies of human behaviour. When preferences are no longer consistent, we have to ask whether a different measure for individual welfare can, and should, be found. This book goes beyond the level of preference and instead considers whether a hedonistic view of welfare represents a viable alternative, and what its normative implications are. Offering a welfare theory with stronger behavioural and evolutionary foundations, Binder follows a naturalistic methodology to examine the foundations of welfare, connecting the concept with a dynamic theory of preference learning, and providing a more realistic account of human behaviour. This book will be of interest to researchers and those working in the fields of welfare economics, behavioural and evolutionary economics.

Download or read book Elements of an Evolutionary Theory of Welfare written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Feasibility of Citizen s Income written by Malcolm Torry and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first full-length treatment of the desirability and feasibility of implementing a citizen’s income (also known as a basic income). It tests for two different kinds of financial feasibility as well as for psychological, behavioral, administrative, and political viability, and then assesses how a citizen’s income might find its way through the policy process from proposal to implementation. Drawing on a wide variety of sources of evidence from around the world, this new book from the director of the Citizen’s Income Trust, UK, provides an essential foundation for policy and implementation debates. Governments, think tanks, economists, and public servants will find this thorough encompassing book indispensable to their consideration of the economic and social advantages and practicalities of a basic income.

Download or read book Islamic Economics as Mesoscience written by Masudul Alam Choudhury and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the building blocks of Islamic economics as meso-science, offering an in-depth study of the Qur’anic worldview of the monotheistic unity of knowledge, which is the universal and unique message of Tawhid in the Qur’an. This primal ontological premise is formalised in an analytical approach that introduces and unpacks the philosophical concepts of ontology, epistemology, and phenomenology in relation to the Tawhidi methodological worldview. The analysis of Qur’anic logical consistency is then cast in a phenomenological perspective by applying the complete model of the unity of knowledge of the Qur’an in a specific study of the Tawhidi methodological approach to Islamic financial-economic theory. In doing so, it tackles the problems of meso-economics given its socio-scientific holism in world affairs. It hones in on the results of the symbiotic modulation of evolutionary learning processes in the world system of the unity of knowledge and its material embedding across knowledge, and knowledge-induced space and time dimensions. The author poses that Shari’ah is only partial in its scope, and excludes an analytical methodological worldview. Shari’ah is thus cast in the midst of a meso-socio-scientific absence of any appertaining methodology. The book is a landmark work in the conceptual and applied understanding of Tawhid as the methodological worldview of the monotheistic unity of knowledge in the meso-socio-scientific realm of ‘everything’, particularised to Islamic economics. Adopting an inter-disciplinary view integrating various fields, it challenges pervasive Western academic and institutional thinking in terms of economics. It will be of interest to students and researchers in Islamic economics, religious theory, Islamic philosophy, development studies, and finance.

Download or read book From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities written by Geoffrey M. Hodgson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are humans at their core seekers of their own pleasure or cooperative members of society? Paradoxically, they are both. Pleasure-seeking can take place only within the context of what works within a defined community, and central to any community are the evolved codes and principles guiding appropriate behavior, or morality. The complex interaction of morality and self-interest is at the heart of Geoffrey M. Hodgson’s approach to evolutionary economics, which is designed to bring about a better understanding of human behavior. In From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities, Hodgson casts a critical eye on neoclassical individualism, its foundations and flaws, and turns to recent insights from research on the evolutionary bases of human behavior. He focuses his attention on the evolution of morality, its meaning, why it came about, and how it influences human attitudes and behavior. This more nuanced understanding sets the stage for a fascinating investigation of its implications on a range of pressing issues drawn from diverse environments, including the business world and crucial policy realms like health care and ecology. This book provides a valuable complement to Hodgson’s earlier work with Thorbjørn Knudsen on evolutionary economics in Darwin’s Conjecture, extending the evolutionary outlook to include moral and policy-related issues.

Download or read book Poverty and Social Exclusion written by Gianni Betti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty and inequality remain at the top of the global economic agenda, and the methodology of measuring poverty continues to be a key area of research. This new book, from a leading international group of scholars, offers an up to date and innovative survey of new methods for estimating poverty at the local level, as well as the most recent multidimensional methods of the dynamics of poverty. It is argued here that measures of poverty and inequality are most useful to policy-makers and researchers when they are finely disaggregated into small geographic units. Poverty and Social Exclusion: New Methods of Analysis is the first attempt to compile the most recent research results on local estimates of multidimensional deprivation. The methods offered here take both traditional and multidimensional approaches, with a focus on using the methodology for the construction of time-related measures of deprivation at the individual and aggregated levels. In analysis of persistence over time, the book also explores whether the level of deprivation is defined in terms of relative inequality in society, or in relation to some supposedly absolute standard. This book is of particular importance as the continuing international economic and financial crisis has led to the impoverishment of segments of population as a result of unemployment, bankruptcy, and difficulties in obtaining credit. The volume will therefore be of interest to all those working on economic, econometric and statistical methods and empirical analyses in the areas of poverty, social exclusion and income inequality.

Download or read book The Capability Approach written by Francesca Panzironi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a unique laboratory of ‘capabilities in practice’ in the Asia-Pacific region. It explores the application of the capability approach in development practice and public policy from a multidisciplinary perspective by bringing together scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including development studies, health policy, political science, political theory, political economy, architecture, indigenous studies, urban planning and communication technologies. The first part of the book provides a foundational theoretical framework to introduce the empirical applications of the capability theory in different areas of development practice and public policy in the Asia-Pacific region. This part discusses thorny issues in capability theory and raises the potential for capability theory to lead to new ways of thinking about old problems. The second part discusses the application of the capability approach to intransigent problems of marginalisation and the articulation of public policy in New Zealand and Australia. In particular, this part focuses on the potential implications that a capability-based approach can have on the well-being of indigenous peoples in both countries, as well as children, older renters, and urban dwellers in Australia. The third part elucidates how capability theory is being applied by researchers in the Asia-Pacific region to local issues in developing countries such as Samoa, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka. In doing so, it provides original content to the world market in capability theory by focussing on this often-neglected area of scholarship. As a whole, this volume offers a unique and innovative scrutiny of a multifaceted capability-based analysis of development practice and public policy. The scope and breadth of this volume advance the application of the capability approach and offer an indispensable resource to scholars, researchers, policy makers and policy practitioners interested in the theoretical insights and practical implications of the capability approach.

Download or read book Social Capital and Economics written by Asimina Christoforou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-30 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a collection of critical new perspectives on social capital theory by examining how social values, power relationships, and social identity interact with social capital. This book seeks to extend this theory into what have been largely under-investigated domains, and, at the same time, address long-standing, classic questions in the literature concerning the forms, determinants, and consequences of social capital. Social capital can be understood in terms of social norms and networks. It manifests itself in patterns of trust, reciprocity, and cooperation. The authors argue that the degree to which and the different ways in which people exhibit these distinctively social behaviours depend on how norms and networks elicit their values, reflect power relationships, and draw on their social identities. This volume accordingly adopts a variety of different concepts and measures that incorporate the variety of contextually-specific factors that operate on social capital formation. In addition, it adopts an interdisciplinary outlook that combines a wide range of social science disciplines and methods of social research. Our objective is to challenge standard rationality theory explanations of norms and networks which overlook the role of values, power, and identity. This volume appeals to researchers and students in multiple social sciences, including economics, sociology, political science, social psychology, history, public policy, and international relations, that employ social capital concepts and methods in their research. It can be seen as a set of new extensions of social capital theory in connection with its themes of social values, power, and identity that would advance the scholarly literature on social norms and networks and their impact on social change and public welfare.

Download or read book Financial Exclusion and the Poverty Trap written by Pamela Lenton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses one of the main causes of poverty, financial exclusion – the inability to access finance from the high-street banks. People on low or irregular incomes typically have to resort to loan sharks, ‘doorstep lenders’ and other informal credit sources, a predicament which makes escape from the poverty trap doubly difficult. This book will be vital reading for those concerned with social policy, microfinance and anti-poverty policies in industrialised countries and around the world.

Download or read book An Actological Metaphysic written by Malcolm Torry and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-12-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An actology—introduced by the first book in this series, Actology: Action, Change and Diversity in the Western Philosophical Tradition—understands reality as action in changing patterns. Actological Readings in Continental Philosophy reads a number of continental philosophers through this lens, and An Actology of the Given explores the concepts of the gift, givenness, and giving in the light of reality understood as action in changing patterns. Mark’s Gospel: An Actological Reading is what it says it is. This fifth book in the series, An Actological Metaphysic, is a more systematic treatment of cosmology and of such concepts as truth, knowledge, causality, time, space, life, and society, to see what happens when they are understood actologically: that is, with reality understood as action in changing patterns.

Download or read book The Economics of Resource Allocation in Health Care written by Andrea Klonschinski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of how to allocate scarce medical resources has become an important public policy issue in recent decades. Cost-utility analysis is the most commonly used method for determining the allocation of these resources, but this book counters the argument that overcoming its inherent imbalances is simply a question of implementing methodological changes. The Economics of Resource Allocation in Health Care represents the first comprehensive analysis of equity weighting in health care resource allocation that offers a fundamental critique of its basic framework. It offers a critique of health economics, putting the discourse on economic evaluation into its broader socio-political context. Such an approach broadens the debate on fairness in health economics and ties it in with deeper-rooted problems in moral philosophy. Ultimately, this interdisciplinary study calls for the adoption of a fundamentally different paradigm to address the distribution of scarce medical resources. This book will be of interest to policy makers, health care professionals, and post-graduate students looking to broaden their understanding of the economics of the health care system.

Download or read book The Economics of Values Based Organisations written by Luigino Bruni and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-13 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the governance of values-based organizations (VBOs), which are organizations with a mission and identity based on ideals. Examples of VBOs include non-profit organizations, charities, NGOs, environmental, educational or cultural organizations, and social enterprises. The main objective of any VBO is to evolve and grow without losing its identity, which its survival is linked to in the medium and long terms. The focus of this book is the study of the relational and motivational dynamics during identity crisis, using critical mass models and Hirschman’s "exit and voice" framework. This book analyses the dynamics that arise in VBOs when the quality of the ideal deteriorates. On the basis of Hirschman’s "exit and voice" model, it analyses the factors that lead the best members – the intrinsically motivated ones who care most about the mission and ideals of the organization – to leave if their voice is ignored. We show that the possible cumulative effects caused by the "exit" of intrinsically motivated members can lead the organization to a process of deterioration. This book offers an analysis of these phenomena, which are usually studied in sociology or political science, by using an economic approach and the language of evolutionary game theory. By combining sociological politics and economics as a theoretical tool, we create a fresh approach to explore crises in organizations.

Download or read book Demand Complexity and Long Run Economic Evolution written by Andreas Chai and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-11 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this contributed volume is to consider how global consumption patterns will develop in the next few decades, and what the consequences of that development will be for the economy, policymakers, and society at large. In the long run, the extent to which economic growth translates into better living conditions strongly depends on how rising affluence and new technologies shape consumer preferences. The ongoing rise in household income in developing countries raises some important questions: Will consumption patterns always continue to expand in the same manner as we have witnessed in the previous two centuries? If not, how might things evolve differently? And what implications would such changes hold for not only our understanding of consumption behavior but also our pursuit of more sustainable societies?

Download or read book Understanding Economic Change written by Ulrich Witt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how thinking in evolutionary terms enhances our understanding of the economic and social change taking place at all levels.

Download or read book Complexity and Evolution written by David S. Wilson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-08-19 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of how approaches that draw on evolutionary theory and complexity science can advance our understanding of economics. Two widely heralded yet contested approaches to economics have emerged in recent years: one emphasizes evolutionary theory in terms of individuals and institutions; the other views economies as complex adaptive systems. In this book, leading scholars examine these two bodies of theory, exploring their possible impact on economics. Relevant concepts from evolutionary theory drawn on by the contributors include the distinction between proximate and ultimate causation, multilevel selection, cultural change as an evolutionary process, and human psychology as a product of gene-culture coevolution. Applicable ideas from complexity theory include self-organization, fractals, chaos theory, sensitive dependence, basins of attraction, and path dependence. The contributors discuss a synthesis of complexity and evolutionary approaches and the challenges that emerge. Focusing on evolutionary behavioral economics, and the evolution of institutions, they offer practical applications and point to avenues for future research. Contributors Robert Axtell, Jenna Bednar, Eric D. Beinhocker, Adrian V. Bell, Terence C. Burnham, Julia Chelen, David Colander, Iain D. Couzin, Thomas E. Currie, Joshua M. Epstein, Daniel Fricke, Herbert Gintis, Paul W. Glimcher, John Gowdy, Thorsten Hens, Michael E. Hochberg, Alan Kirman, Robert Kurzban, Leonhard Lades, Stephen E. G. Lea, John E. Mayfield, Mariana Mazzucato, Kevin McCabe, John F. Padgett, Scott E. Page, Karthik Panchanathan, Peter J. Richerson, Peter Schuster, Georg Schwesinger, Rajiv Sethi, Enrico Spolaore, Sven Steinmo, Miriam Teschl, Peter Turchin, Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh, Sander E. van der Leeuw, Romain Wacziarg, John J. Wallis, David S. Wilson, Ulrich Witt

Download or read book An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change written by Richard R. Nelson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1985-10-15 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.

Download or read book Human Evolution beyond Biology and Culture written by Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both natural and cultural selection played an important role in shaping human evolution. Since cultural change can itself be regarded as evolutionary, a process of gene-culture coevolution is operative. The study of human evolution - in past, present and future - is therefore not restricted to biology. An inclusive comprehension of human evolution relies on integrating insights about cultural, economic and technological evolution with relevant elements of evolutionary biology. In addition, proximate causes and effects of cultures need to be added to the picture - issues which are at the forefront of social sciences like anthropology, economics, geography and innovation studies. This book highlights discussions on the many topics to which such generalised evolutionary thought has been applied: the arts, the brain, climate change, cooking, criminality, environmental problems, futurism, gender issues, group processes, humour, industrial dynamics, institutions, languages, medicine, music, psychology, public policy, religion, sex, sociality and sports.