Academic economists behaving badly? A survey on three areas of unethical behavior

This article measures the degree to which academic economists have engaged in unethical behavior and the degree to which academic economists believe the profession as a whole engages in unethical behavior. Three main types of unethical behavior are examined: (1) falsification of research; (2) expropriation of graduate student research or including an undeserving co-author on a research paper; and (3) exchange of grades for gifts, money, or sex. Using a unique data set gathered at the 1998 American Economic Association (AEA) meetings, we find that there is a significant amount of misconduct, particularly in the second category.     

From Structure to Agency to Process: The Evolution of Charles Tilly’s Theories of Social Action as Reflected in His Analyses of Contentious Politics

Charles Tilly’s social theories shifted over the course of his career from an early focus on quantitative and macro-sociological approaches to a later focus on relations and agency. His studies of state-making also shifted, from a focus on conflict and capitalism to explorations of democracy. This paper details these shifts and places them in the context of broader trends in comparative-historical and political sociology.     

Population and Progress in the Middle Ages: A Review Essay*

Book reviewed in this Article: Julian L. Simon, The Great Breakthrough and Its Cause, edited by Timur Kuran Angela Hattery, Women, Work, and Family: Balancing and Weaving John I. Clarke, The Human Dichotomy: The Changing Numbers of Males and Females Giovanni Andrea Cornia and Renato Paniccia (Eds.), The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies Caleb E. Finch, James W. Vaupel, and Kevin Kinsella (Eds.), Cells and Surveys: Should Biological Measures Be Included in Social Science Research?     

The paradox of victory: social movement fields,adverse outcomes,and social movement success

Theory and Society - Recent work on social movement fields has expanded our view of the dynamics of social movements; it should also expand our thinking about social movement success. Such a...     

Developing expert systems for management applications

The Alvey Report has resulted in a growing interest in the UK in ‘expert systems’. It is fairly generally accepted, at least in the UK, that such systems function in a particular type of way, i.e. they arrive at decisions through a process of rule based inference. It is suggested that it may be more fruitful to regard rule based inference as one approach to the construction of expert systems, and that proven techniques of operational research may well be more useful in constructing other types of expert system. Alternative applications of expert systems are derived on the basis of a broader definition of an expert system in terms of what it does rather than how it does it. A parallel is drawn between these applications and some typical concerns of business research. It is suggested that a useful aid in identifying promising business applications of expert systems is to set up four ‘dimensions’ along which different types of system differ. Examples are given of where other techniques might conceivably be useful in applications of expert systems.