Lynne Kiesling dismantles Christina Rosen’s Republic.com qualms about “egocasting.” Check it out.
The issue of informational fragmentation and social coherence is an issue I’m putting on the “to do” list. Hmm, I guess I really should have a bigthink “to do” list. No doubt it is too much, and too hard, for me to do. So think of it as a bigthink assignment desk. If you’re game, go for it!
- Rebut: unrestricted liberty to choose the content of one’s entertainment, news, art, children’s education, etc., threatens the existence of a common culture, which is necessary to maintain a viable liberal social order.
- Understand: how institutional change alters behavior by changing preferences and belief systems, and not simply by changing relative prices (i.e., get a grip on likely processes of endogenous preference change), and how to apply this rigorously and in a non-ad hoc way to policy analysis without the ability to resort to traditional notions of efficiency.
- Defend: Behavioral economics does not provide an argument for regulation or paternalism, unless we think of regulation and paternalism as the implementation of market institutions that economize on (neo-classical) “rationality.”
- Clarify: the difference between “social engineering” in the rationalistic or constructivistic sense, and institutional design in the Madisonian/Buchanan sense; how dynamic renegotiation of constitutional contract/institutional structure politically resembles “regulation,” but how, once in place, changes are robustly self-regulating, “ecologically rational.”
- Illuminate: how it is possible to distinguish between norms or social practices that have an adaptive function in preserving the main properties of a desirable social order and mere self-reinforcing equilibria, which may be opressive or illiberal, without resorting to rationalist/constructivist fallacies. The possibility of being a principled selective or progressive conservative; i.e., the inherent interdepedence of conservatism (rightly understood) and liberalism (rightly understood).
- Investigate: what, if any, are the policy implications of “happiness research”? What, if any, are the implications for implicitly or explicitly hedonist or eudaimonist theories of efficiency, or of the good?
Oh, and there’s more. I’m just not thinking of it right now. Did you not drop out of grad school? Well, you know where to come for dissertation topics!
Problem three is right in my area of research, but I can tell you it’s way too hard: there aren’t even any rigorous ways to talk about bounded rationality except in certain special cases, and I don’t think that there will be short of an amazing advance in computer science. (Computer scientists are, after all, the ones who study the computational cost of problems.)
Problem two is very, very interesting, but out of my area of research.
Clarify: the difference between “social engineering” in the rationalistic or constructivistic sense, and institutional design in the Madisonian/Buchanan sense; how dynamic renegotiation of constitutional contract/institutional structure politically resembles “regulation,” but how, once in place, changes are robustly self-regulating, “ecologically rational.”
See The Future and Its Enemies by Virginia Postrel.
These aren’t dissertation topics. They’re lifetime programs of research–and very interesting ones.
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Problem three is right in my area of research, but I can tell you it’s way too hard: there aren’t even any rigorous ways to talk about bounded rationality except in certain special cases, and I don’t think that there will be short of an amazing advance in computer science. (Computer scientists are, after all, the ones who study the computational cost of problems.)
Problem two is very, very interesting, but out of my area of research.
Clarify: the difference between “social engineering” in the rationalistic or constructivistic sense, and institutional design in the Madisonian/Buchanan sense; how dynamic renegotiation of constitutional contract/institutional structure politically resembles “regulation,” but how, once in place, changes are robustly self-regulating, “ecologically rational.”
See The Future and Its Enemies by Virginia Postrel.
These aren’t dissertation topics. They’re lifetime programs of research–and very interesting ones.
Raivo Pommer
raimo1@hot.ee
Europabankrotte
nur auf Portugal
Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa – das Gespenst des Staatsbankrotts. Die Investoren sind alarmiert durch enorm hohe Prämien für Kreditausfallversicherungen auf europäische Länder wie Griechenland, Irland oder Österreich. Diese sogenannten Credit Default Swaps auf fünfjährige Anleihen Irlands sind binnen Jahresfrist um mehr als 300 auf 360 Basispunkte hochgeschossen. Das sind 3,6 Prozent für die zu versichernde Summe. Will ein Anleger eine Millionen Euro an irischen Schuldtiteln gegen den Ausfall versichern, kostet ihn das eine Prämie von 36.000 Euro im Jahr.
Darin kommt zum Ausdruck, dass die Marktteilnehmer befürchten, dass die Stützungsmaßnahmen für das marode Bankensystem den irischen Staat gerade in einer sich täglich verschärfenden Rezession überfordern könnten. Hinzu kommen die strukturellen Schwierigkeiten im Zuge des Platzens der irischen Immobilienpreisblase. Doch am Anleihemarkt kann sich der ehemalige keltische Tiger noch immer zu erstaunlich günstigen Konditionen refinanzieren. Die in dieser Woche begebenen dreijährigen Titel im Volumen von 4 Milliarden Euro muss Irland mit einem Zinskupon von lediglich 3,9 Prozent ausstatten.
Portugal's long-term sovereign debt was recently downgraded by the international ratings agency Standard and Poor's to “A plus,” the same level as Greece and Ireland.
All three countries must pay higher rates of interest to sell their bonds on international markets as a result.
But Pinho said Portugal's situation was not comparable with those of Greece and Ireland, in part because Lisbon had considerably reduced its public deficit in recent years.
Portugal also is not suffering from a real-estate crisis, and banks in the country are faring better than those in Greece and Ireland, he said.
But Portugal, like many European countries, fell into recession last year, and its gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by two percent in the fourth quarter of 2008.