Comment on Pommerehne et al., “concordia discors: Or: What do economists think?”

Conclusion Why do Pommerehne and associates apparently overlook the point that both their hypothesis and data contain elements which are not compatible? Their findings in fact might be interpreted as contradictory to a human capital explanation for the behavior of their sample of economists. Kuhn (1970) would propose that mainstream economics has provided a set of assumptions to place over these findings that allows a neo-classical interpretation. However, the human capital theory does not address the contradictions in the data they gathered. As Berger and Luchman (1966, pp. 62–63) would conclude, institutionalization may take place in any area of relevant conduct to provide a corresponding canopy of legitimations, stretching over a protective cover of both cognitive and normative interpretation. Once again, the institutionalization of mainstream science has been successful in suppressing alternative assumptions that could explain the data more adequately and with greater consistency.We conclude that the paper by Pommerehne and associates contains shortcomings of theorizing and method. Likewise we conclude that a theoretical formulation which takes into account the normative and therefore the cultural factors of science will provide an explanation of the opinion and behavior of economists more in keeping with their empirical findings than one based on self-interest alone.     

Dynamic decision making: what do people do?

Potentially dynamically-inconsistent individuals create particular problems for economics, as their behaviour depends upon whether and how they attempt to resolve their potential inconsistency. This paper reports on the results of a new experiment designed to help us distinguish between the different types that may exist. We classify people into four types: myopic, naïve, resolute and sophisticated. We implement a new and simple experimental design in which subjects are asked to take two sequential decisions (interspersed by a random move by Nature) concerning the allocation of a given sum of money. The resulting data enables us to classify the subjects. We find that the majority are resolute, a significant few are sophisticated, rather few are naïve and similarly few are myopic.     

L.克里斯伯格:《国际冲突的解决》,耶鲁大学出版社,1992年.

随着冷战的结束,世界关注的焦点也有所转称,局势紧张的中东地区就是当前世界政局的热点之一。本书由解决国际争端问题的权威人士撰写,分析了1948年以来的美、苏关系和阿拉伯世界与以色列之间的冲突,运用其成少败多的谈判史,提出了一个有助于解决当前和今后的国际争端的原则。与同类著作不同,该书首次着重阐述了调解争端的全过程而非其某一阶段或过程。通过对许多旨在消除美、苏之间和阿、以之间逐步升级的冲突的努力的研究,作者分析了下     

Review of Ch. Roulette,Jean-Paul II—Antonov—Agca: La filière. Paris: Editions du Sobier, 1984. 319 pp.

History has known its share of political provocations that reaction has organized in the hope of calumniating and denigrating democratic, progressive forces and arousing public opinion against socialism and communism. For example, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, the Dreyfus affair was fabricated; and in 1933, after organizing the burning of the Reichstag, the Hitlerites accused Communists of the deed and set up the trial of Dimitrov. And so it is today that, in the aftermath of the crime of the century," the attempt on the life of the Roman Pope on 13 May 1980, we are witness to the spectacle of the Antonov affair. A considerable number of pages, mainly antisocialist and provocative, have already been written on this topic in the West. All the more important and timely, then, is the book by the French lawyer and publicist Ch. Roulette, in which he undertakes what is, in our view, a successful attempt to show the true state of affairs in the Antonov affair and its political aims on the basis of considerable factual material and a competent legal analysis of the evidence purportedly in the hands of the Italian authorities.     

J.L.克斯博格:《老年人的家庭护理》,塞奇出版社,1992

世界各国的护理体系和机构正由于我们所经历的无数社会和文化的变革而不断地面临挑战。本书以这些看护体制为焦点,探讨了文化的变革对传统的照顾、护理老人的方式的影响,提供了一个了解不同国家在此方面的差异和认清其共同发展趋势的理论框架。本书涉及的国家和地区包括:加纳、墨西哥、泰国、中国、哥斯达黎加、埃及、阿根廷、香港、以色列、澳大利亚、希腊、日本、美国、奥地利、英国和瑞典。对各国家、地区的论述主要围绕下列问题展开:     

L.理查德:《表现主义简明百科》,Derbibooks,1987年,英文版

表现主义不仅是一场艺术运动,而且是艺术界的一种长期趋势,它反映了当时北欧在社会压力和政治骚乱下的特征。表现主义运动开始时体现了新艺术和象征主义的影响,其代表人物包括梵高(Van Gogh)、土鲁斯·劳特累克(Toulouse-Lautrec)、恩索尔(Ensor)、芒奇(Munch)。德国的德·布鲁克(Die Brucke)、     

C.舒尔兹伯格:《世界与尼克松》,1987年,英文版

尼克松由于水门事件,在国内搞得名声很臭。但是他处理外交事务的能力,可以说是当代美国总统中没有人能与之相比的。不论过去或现在,他在国际政治中都得到赞誉,这说明他在这方面的才能。本书作者舒尔兹伯格是纽约时报的主要外事记者,23年来,一直是该报外事评论专栏撰稿人。他在本