Panagiotis Karadimas’s research while affiliated with National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and other places

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Publications (8)


Self-sustained economic calculation
Elliptic setting for economic calculation
The epistemic impossibility of economic calculation
  • Article
  • Publisher preview available

November 2023

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47 Reads

Synthese

Panagiotis Karadimas

Events regarding individuals’ preferences that do not always follow from standard measures such as “value of statistical life” or “quality-adjusted life years” as well as events that occur in some market-related settings which distort the information conveyed by price mechanisms, suggest that a notable chunk of what Hayek called “local knowledge” remains inaccessible by scientific tools and that only the individuals who interact in these local frameworks can have access to it. This casts serious doubt on the epistemic possibility of economic calculation for if events in the local world do not observe the economic models, it is hard to see how central planners can have knowledge on them. Refined modeling strategies and cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence systems do not manage to overcome this hurdle. They may provide huge datasets in a data model, but since not all events represented in the data model are embeddable in known economic models, the knowledge problem is not evaded. Even if a theory ever manages to capture all possible events as they appear in the data model then we are left with a relationship between models (the theoretical model and the data model) with no direct access to the local world and thus the problem of accessibility of local knowledge remains unresolved.

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The World Stampeded: From Mass Hysteria to Prolonged Mass Hysteria

February 2023

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38 Reads

During the Covid-19 pandemic, people were constantly under the delusion of an exaggerated threat. When Sars-Cov-2 started circulating, the public was inundated with warnings (primarily due to media coverage) that serious disease and death are around the corner, and mass hysteria was ignited. The irrational fear that everybody faces high likelihood of death was taken as gospel, and this belief led to the development of emergent norms in the society which in turn helped spread the hysteria across the population. While episodes of mass hysteria in the past suggest that mass hysteria wanes sooner rather than later, in the Covid-19 crisis, governmental interventions, mainly lockdowns, exacerbated the effect by leading to a novel kind of mass hysteria, what I would like to call as prolonged mass hysteria.


Public Choice Theory: An Explanation of the Pandemic Policy Responses

February 2023

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50 Reads

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2 Citations

Public choice theory suggests that the pandemic policy responses were in fact the result of politicians’ and bureaucrats’ ambition to pursue their own interest. The main target of politicians during the Covid-19 pandemic was the one that politicians typically aim at, i.e., to maximize votes. Lockdowns, mass vaccination, and vaccine passports are largely explained by the vote maximizing premise. Bureaucrats such as scientists who work for the government but who do not appear as candidates in the elections also engaged in utility maximizing during the Covid-19 pandemic by pursuing their own goals which include, among others, increased popularity and willingness to establish their reputation. A budget maximizing analysis is used to illustrate how an ever-increasing budget satisfies nearly all groups involved in the pandemic, i.e., politicians, bureaucrats, and voters. Findings from polls and election results verify the public choice analysis.


Viral Mitigation: Weak Theoretical Underpinnings

February 2023

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10 Reads

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1 Citation

Mitigation measures included primarily lockdowns and masks and, later in the pandemic, mass vaccination. All of them were supposed to eradicate the disease or at least to “flatten the curve.” To stress the need for disease eradication and/or the need for reduced transmission rates, three postulates were put forward by the proponents of the pandemic policy responses. First, it was claimed that the virus poses a high death risk to all age-groups, and so we need policies that will be able to offer protection to all people. This is the first postulate, which I would like to call the “equal vulnerability thesis.” Second, the claim that there is no pre-existing immunity and hence all people are equally susceptible to the virus, which is the “equal susceptibility thesis.” The third postulate is that the coronavirus can be transmitted not only by symptomatic but also by asymptomatic people. This is the “equal infectivity thesis.” These three premises were mistaken, and the pandemic policies, i.e., lockdowns, masks, and mass vaccination, failed to achieve their declared goals, i.e., they did not eradicate the disease and they did not impact on transmission rates.


Tradeoffs and Knock-On Effects

February 2023

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6 Reads

Apart from failing to tackle the pandemic, lockdowns caused serious side effects. In fact, policy makers did not take into account the fundamental tradeoff between the lives that are threatened by the mitigation measures and the lives that are threatened by the virus and claimed that the tradeoff was between the lives that are threatened by the virus vs. the money that some will lose and the fewer chances for entertainment and social activity. The money lost and the restricted socialization were considered as innocuous outcomes, and they could have been so if they were not linked to reduced lifespan. There are strong theoretical and empirical reasons in support of the proposition that the mitigation measures that were in place, especially the economic shutdown as well as the school closures, reduced the longevity of people that would have hardly died from the virus. The years of life lost (YLL) and the hazard ratios (HRs) help us estimate the consequences of this policy.



Construction of the mingling
The representational mingling bearing information to the explanandum
Making use of one representation of the representational mingling
Thought Experiments and The Pragmatic Nature of Explanation

May 2022

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41 Reads

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2 Citations

Foundations of Science

Different why-questions emerge under different contexts and require different information in order to be addressed. Hence a relevance relation can hardly be invariant across contexts. However, what is indeed common under any possible context is that all explananda require scientific information in order to be explained. So no scientific information is in principle explanatorily irrelevant, it only becomes so under certain contexts. In view of this, scientific thought experiments can offer explanations, should we analyze their representational strategies. Their representations involve empirical as well as hypothetical statements. I call this the “representational mingling” which bears scientific information that can explain events. Buchanan’s thought experiment from constitutional economics is examined to show how mingled representations explain.

Citations (3)


... Moreover, the positive impact of vaccines extends to other diseases, including pneumococcal conjugate, rotavirus, and hepatitis A, demonstrating remarkable effectiveness in reducing illness and hospitalization rates (Karadimas, 2023). The cumulative effect of vaccination emerges as a cornerstone in public health, showcasing the substantial strides made in disease prevention and overall healthcare outcomes globally. ...

Reference:

Deciphering the complexity of COVID-19 transmission: Unveiling precision through robust vaccination policies and advanced predictive modeling with random forest regression
Public Choice Theory: An Explanation of the Pandemic Policy Responses
  • Citing Chapter
  • February 2023

... Specifically, negative news from authoritative sources tends to increase anxiety. As is well documented, much of the institutional information transmitted through the media about COVID was negative (Karadimas, 2023). In this way, the negative media messages about COVID-19 from the state made it easier for mass hysteria (and, in turn, financial worry) to develop. ...

The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Public Choice View
  • Citing Book
  • January 2023