Discounting with fat-tailed economic growth

When the growth of aggregate consumption exhibits no serial correlation, the socially efficient discount rate is independent of the time horizon, because the wealth effect and the precautionary effect are proportional to the time horizon. In this paper, we consider alternative growth processes: an AR(1), a Brownian motion with unknown trend or volatility, a two-state regime-switching model, and a model with an uncertain return of capital. All these models exhibit some persistence of shocks on the growth rate of the economy and fat tails, which implies that one should discount more distant costs and benefits at a smaller rate.     

Overseeing organizations: configuring action and its environment

Despite the widespread deployment of CCTV through most major cities and towns in great Britain, and the importance of surveillance to contemporary debates within the social sciences, there remains relatively little detailed research concerned with the practical use of these technologies in the workplace. In this paper, we examine how personnel in the operation rooms in London Underground use CCTV and related equipment to identify problems and events and to develop a co-ordinated response. In particular, we consider how personnel configure scenes to make sense of and interpret the conduct of the travelling public in organizationally relevant ways, and how they shape the ways in which both passengers and staff see and respond to each others' actions. In addressing how personnel constitute the sense and significance of CCTV images, we reflect on the development of information processing systems which are designed to automatically detect conduct and events.     

Introduction: Risk and Uncertainty in Environmental and Resource Economics

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty -     

The retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state: theory and policy

This article discusses a recent retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state. This retreat has occurred both at the level of theory and policy. With the help of some recent liberal critiques of multiculturalism, the first part maps out some shortcomings of the notion of minority integration through cultural recognition, particularly with respect to immigrants. The second part discusses a retreat from multiculturalism policies in three states that had been prominently committed to them: Australia, the Netherlands, and Britain. This practical retreat of multiculturalism is due to a variety of factors, their importance differing across cases: the chronic lack of public support for multiculturalism policies; inherent deficits and failures of multiculturalism policies, especially in socio-economic respect; and a new assertiveness of the liberal state to impose liberal principles.     

Non-welfaristic theories of justice: Is “the intersection approach” a solution to the indexing impasse?

Rawls (1971, 1993) suggests that a primary goods index should be the basis for interpersonal comparisons in a theory of justice, but it is well known that in general this approach is not compatible with the Pareto principle. This is the indexing impasse. Sen (1985, 1991) argues that this is partly due to the fact that the approach does not take note of the citizens orderings of these bundles of valuable objects. He suggests an intersection approach, which is an incomplete approach to interpersonal comparisons based on judgements that are shared implications of the relevant set of weighting schemes. In this paper, we show that the intersection approach does not provide any solution to the indexing impasse. Unless the individuals have identical preferences, the intersection approach is incompatible with the Pareto principle. This paper originates from the second chapter of Brun (1998). An earlier version was presented at a conference on Non Welfaristic Issues in Normative Economics at the University of Caen in June 1999, and we should like to thank the participants at the conference for their discussion of the paper. Moreover, we are grateful to Geir B.Asheim, Alexander Cappelen, Kåre P. Hagen, Aanund Hylland, Marc Fleurbaey, John Roemer, Eivind Stensholt, Gaute Torsvik, and an anonymous referee for valuable comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.     

DSM-IV-J Criteria: A Scoring Error That May Be Modifying the Estimates of Pathological Gambling Among Youths

Previous studies have shown that prevalence rates among youths may be inflated due to a problem in understanding the questions of the SOGS-RA and DSM-IV-MR-J. This article reports another reason why prevalence rates of pathological gambling among youths may be inflated. In 1992, Fisher proposed 9 criteria (the DSM-IV-J) for diagnosing pathological gambling among youths, and formulated 12 questions (the Test questions) to identify the presence of these criteria. An analysis of a sample of studies using the DSM-IV-J reveals that some researchers have incorrectly used the 12 Test questions instead of the 9 criteria, which may have led to overestimated prevalence rates among youths. Other measurement issues may also be contributing to the overestimation of problem gambling in young people. The methodological implications of these issues are discussed.