Experiments in Economics

Experiments in Economics PDF

Author: Ananish Chaudhuri

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-11-19

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 113402391X

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This book provides an easy to follow guide to economic experiments and specifically those that explore notions of fairness, altruism and trust in economic transactions and how findings in the field can change the way we approach a variety of economic problems.

Fair Economics

Fair Economics PDF

Author: Irene Schoene

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-09-10

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0857843117

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Have you ever questioned our economic model? Wondered how the financial crash was able to happen? Thought about what we can do stop it happening again? Modern economics bases its view of the world on assumptions Adam Smith made about nature and people nearly three hundred years ago, in a time when people travelled by horse and carriage and wrote by the light of candles. We now live in a globally connected, post-industrial world of digital communication and advanced technology – and yet, our economic model remains stuck in the past. Taking a thorough look at economics, including the history and how we reached our current way of thinking, Irene Schoene puts forward an alternative economics that is not only relevant to our modern world of technology and industry, but which also shows an awareness of environmental considerations. Read this to be enlightened about how economics can be considerate of our environmental situation.

Economics and Computation

Economics and Computation PDF

Author: Jörg Rothe

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-08-18

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 3662479044

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This textbook connects three vibrant areas at the interface between economics and computer science: algorithmic game theory, computational social choice, and fair division. It thus offers an interdisciplinary treatment of collective decision making from an economic and computational perspective. Part I introduces to algorithmic game theory, focusing on both noncooperative and cooperative game theory. Part II introduces to computational social choice, focusing on both preference aggregation (voting) and judgment aggregation. Part III introduces to fair division, focusing on the division of both a single divisible resource ("cake-cutting") and multiple indivisible and unshareable resources ("multiagent resource allocation"). In all these parts, much weight is given to the algorithmic and complexity-theoretic aspects of problems arising in these areas, and the interconnections between the three parts are of central interest.

The Economics of Human Rights

The Economics of Human Rights PDF

Author: Ruud Bronkhorst

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-01-05

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 3030591662

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This book provides new insights into combining economic theory and ethics, and how to formulate policies to combat the roots of poverty. Since a large part of the world’s working population is underpaid, and does not have enough income to feed themselves and their families, there is a need for an alternative approach to producer prices than the usual neo-classical approach with its emphasis on market and equilibrium prices. This book is an introduction to the Living Income / Fair Price approach, a price theory based on ethics and Universal Human Rights. The book explains why there is a need for a paradigm change in our thinking about prices by explaining why the usual market prices rarely are equilibrium prices. Besides market disturbing elements like monopolies and oligopolies, the needs of the poorest parts of the population are not taken into consideration because they are not reflected in the effective demand. This means that the way our producers are paid needs a drastic overhaul, especially in a critical area like food production. An important part of the book is devoted to the need to pay, and the possibilities for paying, a decent price to smallholder farmers. The underpayment of small food producers means they have no possibility to invest and are not able to prepare for the future. This is even more pressing now that climate change demands that every farmer must adjust to changing circumstances and adapt new production methods. Although primarily meant for economists, the book meant also to stimulate discussion amongst those involved in agricultural policies, both in developing and developed countries.

Fair Division and Collective Welfare

Fair Division and Collective Welfare PDF

Author: Herve Moulin

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2004-08-20

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9780262633116

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The concept of fair division is as old as civil society itself. Aristotle's "equal treatment of equals" was the first step toward a formal definition of distributive fairness. The concept of collective welfare, more than two centuries old, is a pillar of modern economic analysis. Reflecting fifty years of research, this book examines the contribution of modern microeconomic thinking to distributive justice. Taking the modern axiomatic approach, it compares normative arguments of distributive justice and their relation to efficiency and collective welfare. The book begins with the epistemological status of the axiomatic approach and the four classic principles of distributive justice: compensation, reward, exogenous rights, and fitness. It then presents the simple ideas of equal gains, equal losses, and proportional gains and losses. The book discusses three cardinal interpretations of collective welfare: Bentham's "utilitarian" proposal to maximize the sum of individual utilities, the Nash product, and the egalitarian leximin ordering. It also discusses the two main ordinal definitions of collective welfare: the majority relation and the Borda scoring method. The Shapley value is the single most important contribution of game theory to distributive justice. A formula to divide jointly produced costs or benefits fairly, it is especially useful when the pattern of externalities renders useless the simple ideas of equality and proportionality. The book ends with two versatile methods for dividing commodities efficiently and fairly when only ordinal preferences matter: competitive equilibrium with equal incomes and egalitarian equivalence. The book contains a wealth of empirical examples and exercises.

All Together Now

All Together Now PDF

Author: Jared Bernstein

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2006-04-12

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1576759482

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So said American patriot Tom Paine. He, like the other Founders, saw this country as a unique opportunity to build a society that valued the wellbeing of all of its people over the interests of the few. In the past 230 years, we've lost sight of Paine's vision. Our government has adopted a YOYO (you're-on-your-own) response in the face of even the most pressing national problems—diminished job security, the rising number of Americans without health coverage, stagnant incomes, decaying public schools, and more. “Here's a tax cut and a private account,” they tell us, “now go fend for yourself.” It hasn't worked. The YOYO strategy has proven to be incapable of addressing the economic challenges that confront us and has instead led to a massive upward shift in wealth and opportunity favoring the few and deteriorating living standards and increasing insecurity for the rest of us. All Together Now details an alternative WITT (we're-in-this-together) strategy for solving our most daunting problems. Detailing practical, collaborative responses to globalization, health care, employment, and other areas that could improve the lives of millions of Americans without increasing national spending, All Together Now shows that the challenges we face can be solved. Together, we can wield the tools of government to build a more just and equitable society.

Experiments in Economics

Experiments in Economics PDF

Author: Ananish Chaudhuri

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-11-19

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1134023901

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Are humans fair by nature? Why do we often willingly trust strangers or cooperate with them even if those actions leave us vulnerable to exploitation? Does this natural inclination towards fairness or trust have implications in the market-place? Traditional economic theory would perhaps think not, perceiving human interaction as self-interested at heart. There is increasing evidence however that social norms and norm-driven behaviour such as a preference for fairness, generosity or trust have serious implications for economics. This book provides an easily accessible overview of economic experiments, specifically those that explore the role of fairness, generosity, trust and reciprocity in economic transactions. Ananish Chaudhuri approaches a variety of economic issues and problems including: Pricing by firms Writing labour contracts between parties Marking voluntary contributions to charity, Addressing issues of environmental pollution, Providing micro-credit to small entrepreneurs, Resolving problems of coordination failure in organizations. The book discusses how norm-driven behaviour can often lead to significantly different outcomes than those predicted by economic theories and these findings should in turn cause us to re-think how we approach economic analysis and policy. Assuming no prior knowledge of economics and containing a variety of examples, this reader friendly volume will be perfect reading for people from a wide range of backgrounds including students and policy-makers. The book should appeal to economics undergraduates studying experimental economics, microeconomics or game theory as well as students in social psychology, organizational behaviour, management and other business related disciplines.

How Much Inequality Is Fair?

How Much Inequality Is Fair? PDF

Author: Venkat Venkatasubramanian

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-08-08

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 0231543220

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Many in the United States feel that the nation’s current level of economic inequality is unfair and that capitalism is not working for 90% of the population. Yet some inequality is inevitable. The question is: What level of inequality is fair? Mainstream economics has offered little guidance on fairness and the ideal distribution of income. Political philosophy, meanwhile, has much to say about fairness yet relies on qualitative theories that cannot be verified by empirical data. To address inequality, we need to know what the goal is—and for this, we need a quantitative, testable theory of fairness for free-market capitalism. How Much Inequality Is Fair? synthesizes concepts from economics, political philosophy, game theory, information theory, statistical mechanics, and systems engineering into a mathematical framework for a fair free-market society. The key to this framework is the insight that maximizing fairness means maximizing entropy, which makes it possible to determine the fairest possible level of pay inequality. The framework therefore provides a moral justification for capitalism in mathematical terms. Venkat Venkatasubramanian also compares his theory’s predictions to actual inequality data from various countries—showing, for instance, that Scandinavia has near-ideal fairness, while the United States is markedly unfair—and discusses the theory’s implications for tax policy, social programs, and executive compensation.

Free, Fair, and Alive

Free, Fair, and Alive PDF

Author: David Bollier

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1771423102

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The power of the commons as a free, fair system of provisioning and governance beyond capitalism, socialism, and other -isms. From co-housing and agroecology to fisheries and open-source everything, people around the world are increasingly turning to 'commoning' to emancipate themselves from a predatory market-state system. Free, Fair, and Alive presents a foundational re-thinking of the commons — the self-organized social system that humans have used for millennia to meet their needs. It offers a compelling vision of a future beyond the dead-end binary of capitalism versus socialism that has almost brought the world to its knees. Written by two leading commons activists of our time, this guide is a penetrating cultural critique, table-pounding political treatise, and practical playbook. Highly readable and full of colorful stories, coverage includes: Internal dynamics of commoning How the commons worldview opens up new possibilities for change Role of language in reorienting our perceptions and political strategies Seeing the potential of commoning everywhere. Free, Fair, and Alive provides a fresh, non-academic synthesis of contemporary commons written for a popular, activist-minded audience. It presents a compelling narrative: that we can be free and creative people, govern ourselves through fair and accountable institutions, and experience the aliveness of authentic human presence.

American Fair Trade

American Fair Trade PDF

Author: Laura Phillips Sawyer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 1108548040

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Rather than viewing the history of American capitalism as the unassailable ascent of large-scale corporations and free competition, American Fair Trade argues that trade associations of independent proprietors lobbied and litigated to reshape competition policy to their benefit. At the turn of the twentieth century, this widespread fair trade movement borrowed from progressive law and economics, demonstrating a persistent concern with market fairness - not only fair prices for consumers but also fair competition among businesses. Proponents of fair trade collaborated with regulators to create codes of fair competition and influenced the administrative state's public-private approach to market regulation. New Deal partnerships in planning borrowed from those efforts to manage competitive markets, yet ultimately discredited the fair trade model by mandating economy-wide trade rules that sharply reduced competition. Laura Phillips Sawyer analyzes how these efforts to reconcile the American tradition of a well-regulated society with the legacy of Gilded Age of laissez-faire capitalism produced the modern American regulatory state.