Judgment Analysis in Policy Formation: A New Method for Improving Public Participation

Effective communication between citizens and public officialsis essential to a representative democracy, but conventionalmethods of communication are inade- quate for the process ofcomplex policy formation. Such inadequacy is due, at least inpart, to known difficulties of understanding and describingcognitive processes. A new method, derived from social judgmenttheory, which enhances the quality of communication betweenthe public and its representatives, is described and illustrated.     

ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY IN AN EVOLVING SOCIETY*

A debate that has raged for centuries is unlikely to be resolved by me in one lecture. However, I shall do my best to set forth the issues and indicate what ought to be the crucial factors that a jury should consider in rendering its verdict on the matter. The issue is one between forestry experts and the general public on the one side and professional economists and profit-conscious businessmen on the other. At first blush this would seem to suggest that economists are on the side of the interests and are not themselves members of the human race. But, as I hope to show, sound economic analysis is needed to do justice to the cases put forward by either of the adversary parties.     

UNCERTAINTY IN THE DEMAND FOR MONEY DURING HYPERINFLATION

Much recent empirical work on hyperinflation has centered on the direct and indirect effects of uncertainty on the demand for money. We test the hypothesis, originally put forward by Klein, that uncertainty positively affects the demand for real balances. A variant of Cagan's demand for money function is utilized and operational measures of uncertainty are derived by fitting autoregressive integrated moving average models to the inflation series for each of three hyperinflation nations. We find that the most reasonable measures of variation do not significantly enter the money demand function for any of the three hyperinflations studied.