Economic Sociology - Science topic

To strengthen your proposal, consider including specific measurable outcomes or success criteria for each objective. This will provide a more tangible framework for evaluating the effectiveness of the ecosystem. The evaluation criteria you have outlined are relevant. Additionally, consider incorporating a feedback mechanism from both industry and academia stakeholders to continuously improve the ecosystem. Feedback loops will help identify areas of improvement and allow for iterative enhancements.

It would be beneficial to expand your list of interested stakeholders to include a diverse range of industries and educational institutions. This will increase the potential for collaboration and enhance the ecosystem's impact. Kindly also include details on how the revenue generated will be reinvested in the ecosystem's growth, sustainability, and further research initiatives.

“Simply expanding reading resources is not enough,” write psychologists Sakshi Ghai, Lee de-Wit and Yan Mak after they revealed a striking lack of voices from under-represented groups and regions in their university’s undergraduate psychology reading material. The team has four recommendations for others wanting to do similar audits: tailor the definition of diversity to your field, start by dissecting the curriculum’s foundational courses, gather diversity data while remaining aware of its limits, and place people from minority ethnic groups at the heart of the audit...

The terms "effect" and "affect" are often used in research and project management, but they have different meanings.

"Effect" refers to the change or outcome that occurs as a result of a particular cause or intervention. For example, a researcher might study the effect of a new drug on blood pressure, or a project manager might study the effect of a new workflow on productivity. In research, the term is often used to describe the outcome or result of an experiment or study.

"Affect" refers to the emotional state or feelings of a person or group of people. For example, a researcher might study the affect of a new policy on employee morale, or a project manager might study the affect of a new software on user satisfaction. In psychology, it refers to the experience of feeling or emotion.

It's important to keep in mind that "affect" is also a verb which means to influence or produce an effect or change on something or someone. For example, a new policy affects employee morale, or a new software affects user satisfaction.

In research and project management, it is important to be aware of the different meanings of these terms and use them correctly in order to accurately describe the results of a study or project.

Some publications from last millennium showing how long this discussion has been going on--with no resolution:

1. https://scarp.ubc.ca/sites/scarp.ubc.ca/files/1989%20May_Defining%20Sustainable%20Devt_Rees.pdf

2.

3.

4.

Instead, we propose practical ways forward:

1. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8959-2_2

2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imic.2015.04.001

Great discussion

In my new paper, I discuss resilience on multiple levels. One of these levels is the resilience of our planet. You could certainly argue that resilience on this level is closely related to sustainability. I believe that social-ecological resilience theory is quite powerful to guide change. This could also be about change that will put our planet back on track. See my paper:

Knowledge is a public good. They should have a free access.

I feel depending on your data set you can go for Parametric and Non parametric statistics. Sample size also matter while using any staistical tool. Qualtative data can be converted to quantitative data for using inferential statistics. So, lot of options are there in Para and Non parametric stat. I am also agree with Dr.Wilfred Omwansa Orori and Dr. Joseph Chukwuma.

Interesting question Henrik. The trouble is that the term 'post-modernism', when used by people who are neither philosophers nor sociologists, has become an empty term used to deride critical social science. It reminds me a little bit of the way that the term 'Marxist' is now used by the American Centre-Right media to designate any politician with a strong redistributive platform - including people like Corbyn and Sanders, whose policies in no way propose to dismantle the Capitalist economy.

In a similar way, people like Jordan Peterson use "post-modernism" as a slur. Peterson's online lectures on the "damages" of postmodern academia clearly show that he does not really understand what the concept really means. He just throws Marxism, cultural Marxism, critical theory, structuralism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism, into the same bag.

I haven't read Bloom and I didn't quite understand in your previous post what he defines as post-modernism. I suppose that most detractors of so-called post-modernism object to one or more of the following broad approaches in social science (all of which have at best a loose connection with actual postmodernist philosophy):

1. The notion that contemporary societies are fundamentally shaped by, and continuously reproduce, dynamics of domination, exploitation and repression. Language is an important vehicle for this (see below).

2. The idea that people's behaviours, preferences and notions of what is True largely derive from deeply rooted narratives and linguistic structures that (mostly) unconsciously shape people's minds. These narratives and other linguistic structures are socially constructed - i.e. they do not reflect some fundamental truth of 'human nature'.

3. The idea that racism and other malevolent forms can inhere not just in individuals' consciousnesses, but also in institutional structures and collective representations that are ostensibly value-neutral.

4. Methodologically, the belief that knowledge about society is found through qualitative forms of social analysis, like for example discourse and narrative analysis, grounded theory, ethnography, etc. Social analysis relying on logical-positivism and mathematical inductivism are viewed with suspicion.

Now the funny thing is that Most/all of these elements existed in social science decades before postmodernism as a social theoretical movement came to the stage. I also suspect that real postmodernist thinkers would probably object to the first element in the above list, since postmodernism is at heart an approach to knowledge that questions any inherent connection between belief systems and the world as is. Be that as it may, the point I'd make here is that the "Leftist takeover" of some social science has little to do with the (mostly imagined) popularity of "post-modernism". Many social scientists are Left Wing not because they discovered postmodernism but for a variety of reasons.

LIkewise, I would question whether your colleagues in social psychology and Business studies manifest a "post-modernism"-inspired Lefty-ism. As a discipline social psychology remains firmly moored to logical-positivism and statistical inductivism. And similarly, I don't see how your Business studies colleagues could be Left-Wing. There's some good research on business school curricula and teaching that actually shows the opposite. Perhaps you meant to say that your colleagues are Left wing and/or influenced by postmodernism in a purely private capacity? This is definitely the case in economics - the discipline in and of itself is criticized by sociologists for being methodologically uncritical and right-wing; yet the majority of American Economists in the US are actually on the Left side of the political spectrum. See for example:

So I guess one would need to understand what you are concerned about more precisely.

- Is it the feeling that most social scientists (or specific disciplines therein) are politically Left-Wing?

- Is it the feeling that most social scientists are specifically 'postmodernist' Lefties?

- Is it the feeling that social sciences DISCIPLINES tend to reflect/defend Left-wing views of the world?

- Is it the feeling that social science DISCIPLINES tend to reflect so-called POSTMODERNIST epistemology?

More generally, methodological and epistemological pluralism is generally a good think, so to the extent that there is a "takeover" as you say, that's probably bad. That said, from what I see in sociology, which perhaps is the most "non conformist" discipline in the social sciences, the "take over" by "postmodernism" is far from reality. The top journals in the discipline mostly favour articles employing standard statistical methods. The arguments in such studies do not usually take serious account of narratives, hermeneutics and historicity - all of which would be amply found in so-called postmodernist research. What IS true, however, is that the vast majority of sociologists have Left-wing political views. And I'd guess that most research does seem to align itself with Left-wing concerns (e.g. women's rights, equality, racism research, migrant issues, etc). I'm not sure what the consequences are of this on the general state of the discipline. The damages I've seen have to do with the harshness of debates taking place between more radical social thinkers and their less radical (though still largely left-wing) colleagues. Perhaps the answer to your question is that politics and the media in most countries already give disproportionate space to Centre-Right and Right-wing thinking, without ever allowing serious discussion of more genuinely left-wing stances. Hence, the Left positioning of social sciences is kind of a corrective.

It really depends on the the scales you are using:

DV= EWB (comprises from 8 variables in dichotomous nature, based on yes and no): To address DV, you could either use the sum of all responses, in which case you need to examine the KR20 score first to establish internal consistency reliability. This slide includes how to calculate KR20 in Stata: https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2016/10/harvard-lecture-series-session-2_Reliability.pdf

Alternatively, you can use latent class analysis to identify the latent groups. In Stata, you can find instructions here: https://www.stata.com/features/overview/latent-class-analysis/

IV= Social exclusion (comprises from 6 indicators and each indicator has 5-8 statements based on categorical and continuous data): In this case, you need to create a latent variable using GSEM (assuming you use STATA) and specify the distribution of each indicator. https://www.stata.com/meeting/italy13/abstracts/materials/it13_huber.pdf

Given the feature of your IV, it might be inevitable for you to use GSEM in STATA. Alternatively, R and Mplus can also do the above. Mplus software is probably the most powerful one. But I know more about Stata, yet GSEM often encounters situations of non-convergence.

Left Behind

Dear researchers,

It would be useful to distinguish A.I. marketing from honest scientific research.

Best regards,

Konstantin M. Golubev

There was a time when people said that radiation from a stone was impossible, that would be magic… they could not belief... Today X-Ray is common known phenomenon…

What is magic? Special skills to elevate over the laws of matter?

Everything is Energy which can be converted so matter can be formed in this way. This is magic, because we do not know the rules of energy, we belief that consciousness is a product of matter (Darwin) so our imagination is already limited and because of that we explain some things as 'magic'. But Levitation or to control the 'chi' is just a skill which can be trained, like playing an instrument as well.

Every skill level deppends on the imagination which depends on the mind set. It is always the following cascade: 1. Conception 2. Perception 3. Action

An Exapmle: Track reading. I you are the first time in your life together with an Indian track reader he can say "...look over there, a fox-track, there the fox stopped a short time an saw a duck flying away…" An you think that this is imposible (magic) because you see nothing on the ground. But you are hungry and the ability of that Indian is important to chase an animal, because there is Nothing else to eat in this great forest. After some day yo decide to belief and you Change your conception (he can see tracks, although you can't, so the track is there). Than you follow the Indian for one year and more and more you learn to see tracks in the snow, in the dirt and within the years yo can detect every little aspect on the ground and so you change your perception. Through all the years in the forest you learned a lot about every animal living there and some day you have the ability to find any animal you want, you are able to act like the Indian... Every other would say that your action-level is magic (like you did it the first time).

To summon an individual ( a deamon or whatever) in the whide sphere of beeings (when you know the rules) is complex bit you just need to know the rules. Than you can force a beeing to do things for you (a lot of people would call that 'magic' as well). This is certainly black magic, because you force and do not respect the will of the summoned individual. This is the general definition of 'black' in this context.

When you do things not in harmony with the will of the absolute AND the will of the beeing, the person, or whoever is involved, you do not respect their free will or the will of the absolute and what you do is 'black'. In this way you can practice black magic, black healing, black regulating, black trading and so on... Black means: NOT in harmony. When you do your stuff in harmony, you do not Need 'magic', and if you need it nevertheless - you will get the magic power suddenly from the absolute. We knor examples of this magic powers when People rescued another for example...

But there are a lot of human inkarnations in the world who belief (god-averted) in "needings" and fear of having too little and sattisfite their starvation by consuming others or the planet - this is black magic as well. And sadly this plays an importand role in the direction of the mass (politics) today, because the black mind-set behind is widespread and popular…

Thanks Gloria Lee Mcmillan

you might find the following helpful

https://jech.bmj.com/content/jech/56/3/177.full.pdf

The Gilens and Page Measure of Political Inequality

However, it's more likely that you will find measures if you define your variables of interest more as it's unlikely that one measure can capture all aspects of power and inequality.

Is it possible to chat with O.E.Williamson?

Indeed. Mauritius is one of the rare countries in the world which has no army, and it is no coincidence that is prosperous & democratic.

First, I would keep a distance from sustainability concepts, concerning human life quality (because this burns down to economic reform in a capitalist system=systems maintenance). Second, the human bias is built into every questionnaire, concerning life quality; it is always built on the subjective perspective of the interviewer. Third, I do think, all research that is based around happiness is a good starting point for your work; most foundations do apply a happiness index, and this indexes could be methodically compared.

Indeed a very interesting topic! And a bit puzzling, if you want to undertake empirical research on it. How could you observe, if people, who use blockchain technology (for what purpose), do trust the technology or, if the technology itself disburdens users from seeking for trustful relationships. Maybe it makes sense to start with a rather shirt-sleeved preliminary examination. Observe/interview blockchain users (broker or someone els engaged in fintech) how they use blockchain technology and what the changes are to their prior working/business strategies.

On the function of trust i still recommend Luhmanns' analysis: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Trust+and+Power-p-9781509519453

Would be interested to know how you will continue, so please post an update.

Look at literature under "creative capitalism", "the creative class", "urban futures" etc. Boltanski may not be menitoned, but his thesis can be fruitfully applied there. You should also include the Situationists' notion of "recuperation" to get a better grasp of what's going on. My 2 cents.

Having served as an educator in the United States and in Europe, I would suggest that we might consider clearly defining the term apprenticeship within the context of the US. For example, there is a legal difference between and Apprenticeship (with a capital A), which pertains to a formal agreement with trade and business organizations (and is protected within US labor law), and informal apprenticeship, and an internship when it comes to High School aged students in the US. If there might be a bit more information I might be able to more appropriately respond as this is an area where I have experience. Thank you for your consideration.

Emergence

I have read through the responses and they are all informational. There are plans to increase nuclear power stations in South Africa. Thank you all.

thanks, the site doesn`t permit me to access, i think that i need the number of new construnction started and ended, some prices index, and, if exists, some data about the differences in  trends in houses building and offices building. Best, FL

Thank you Sir.

Any other comment ?

Thank you all very much for your helpful replies. I understand that I didn't give many details. I have now added an update which contains a file showing the potential layout of the index.

The index is based on a principal component analysis of all the indicators and will be calculated for 3 age groups because we assume that not all indicators are relevant for all age groups. The distribution by sex is not really a problem because we only anticipate differences in the health domain.

My question about standardisation is due to a practice in the public health field: when populations have quite different demographic profiles (some regions having much higher proportions of children or older persons than others) the measures of health outcomes (such as mortality rates, cancer rates, etc.) cannot be compared directly with each other due to underlying population structures affecting those outcomes. Usually, in epidemiology and public health, a population structure of a reference population (or simply the mean population structure of all regions) is attributed to regional populations and only then those health measures are calculated. Traditionally, the index is calculated for each of Quebec's 18 sociosanitary regions and standardisation had been applied to make health measures comparable. However, this new index includes mainly socio-demographic indicators for which age and sex are important stratifiers. In my opinion, it is important to keep the effects of age and sex visible when regions are compared because they help explain observed deprivation. Standardisation would give the regions artificial population structures and thus potentially under- or overestimate deprivation. I haven't found any work about standardisation in socio-demographic indicators (such as unemployment rates or educational attainment). Are you aware of such practice?

Human beings have a hard time co-operating within the boundaries of  the nation state[ that national boundaries are  softening does not change the situation. Getting to know people other different from oneself does not necessarily mean love or even respect, as we learn from Ulster, the Balkans, Rwanda-Burundi, etc. etc.  I now a woman who became less gay-friendly living near the Castro.  Sometimes the better we understand someone, the more we dislike him.

So I, We, and Them are the categories of social life, like Space, Time, and Causality in the natural order.  This does not mean that we should give up on promoting peace and justice, only that a certain sobriety is in order.

I suggest you the book named "Beyond Reforms: Structural Dynamics and Macroeconomic Vulnerability" edited by Jose Antonio Ocampo

but I note you , it is not a permanent rule in every economic systems that technological change and automation cause inequality and unemployment. of course you can test. 

in this book you will find a theoretical framework based on a linkage between Learning Process and Technological Change. as a simple if Learning process is weak , technological change will cause unemployment but if Learning Process is strong, Technological Change will cause employment rising  and productivity growth (virtuous circle)

Become truly independent

you can refer to

1.Pension Reforms and Gender Equality

in Latin America

2.http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/571363/IPOL_STU(2016)571363_EN.pdf

3.http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0305750X97100092/1-s2.0-S0305750X97100092-main.pdf?_tid=f001865e-5c84-11e7-8174-00000aab0f26&acdnat=1498711349_eb9306e49ca03fcd1d4bd0b7521631a0

I suggest you to use the compound Index of "GDP per capita" and "Gini coefficient".

and I should note that Harvey Leibenstein in the first chapter of his book named "Economic Backwardness and Economic Growth" dispute and consider "GDP per capita" as the comprehensive indicator for economic development. and for a perfect index you can combine  "Gini Coefficient" with it.  

Dear Saher,

In your question you say that you are working on measurement in social sciences and ask for interesting pieces on this issue. You also say that you are going to be looking at the differences in the natural and social sciences in terms of measurement, conceptual clarity and the like.

As you certainly know, your questions have been, are, and will be highly debated among epistemologists, philosophers of science, philosophers, scientists and researchers.  

As for the differences between the natural and social sciences, D. Zeaman, in 1959, pointed to a common, albeit overlooked, procedure. Whereas in “… the natural sciences, each succeeding generation stands on the shoulders of those that  have gone before …, in the social sciences each generation steps in the face of its predecessors.” (p.167). A couple of years later, critic John Horgan (1991) voiced the same idea when saying that “theories of human nature never really die; they just go in and out of fashion” (pp. 6–7). Note, for example, that there are Piagetian theories, neo-Piagetian theories, post-Piagetian theories, anti-Piagetian theories, and even neo-neo-Piagetian theories. If the number of theories were a token of scientific progress in psychology, let alone other social sciences, then psychology would be the queen of science, which is not the case.

As for measurement in social sciences, social scientists often appeal to questionnaires, surveys, psychological tests, Likert-scales, and the like. By so doing, we get an impression of rigor when an illusion of rigor is  generally the case. For example, on a Likert scale, the same score (50, for example), can be got by answering differently to the several items the focal scale contains. This means that the same score can have different psychological meanings. According to P. Meehl (1978), this illusion of rigor is partly responsible for what he called the slow progress of soft psychology (see his seminal paper published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology). In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein cogently argued that in psychology there are experimental methods but conceptual confusion. Conceptual clarity is a big issue in any science. As J. Laudan (1977) pointed out: “The increase of the conceptual clarity of a theory through careful clarifications and specifications of meaning is.one of the most important ways in which science progresses” (p. 50). Social sciences in general, and psychology in particular, deal most of the time with elusive concepts such as cognitive maps, internal switchers, and the like. For example, it makes good sense to speak of maps in the geographical domain or that we have a roads' map in our car. However, it is misleading and even nonsensical to speak of maps in the cognitive domain for there is no map in our mind or even brain. So, when we say of a child that s/he solves a given intellectual problem because s/he formed a cognitive  map of the problem at hand we are speaking either literally or metaphorically. Literally, it cannot be the case for there is no map in our head/mind in the sense that there is a map in our car. Metaphorically, to say of a child that s/he solves a given intellectual problem because s/he formed a cognitive map of the problem at hand gives us the illusion of an explication, when none is being provided. Note also that the concept of attractor is now a fancy concept in dynamic systems approach to action and cognition. Again, it makes good sense to say that, in physics, a magnet attracts steel. However, when the term attractor is used in a language-game or context other than the physical domain, its meaning in this new context is not exactly the same as that it had in, say, its original domain.

I hope  I has got you posting and that this helps.

Best regards, Oralndo

Realmente considero que lo mas importante es la filosofia de vida y de sociedad que puedas tener, puesto que en funcion del conjunto de valores y normas que tu tengas establecido sobre la vida, podras desarrollar un proceso que genera estabilidad o por lo mneos que se oreinte a promover las mejoras en todos los ambitos de la vida, incluido el proceso tecnologico que es parte importante para nuestro desarrollo.

Based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it is easy to see how priorities could differ from one community to the next, if their basic need fulfillments are vastly different.

Anecdotal experience;

Growing up in a trailer park in Alaska, and going to school on the other side of town, the side with nice houses and the library within walking distance, it was clear from a young age that these were two very different populations and I was somehow caught between them. What I observed as I grew up was that people from my neighborhood often drove nice cars, wore nice clothes, ate out often and generally enjoyed the finer things of life, although that often meant going without the essentials (like gas, one particularly cold winter) and education. The other way to fund this lifestyle was through crime, as a lack of education generally meant viable jobs were unavailable. 

I grew up in a couple different ghettos in Anchorage, two trailer parks and an apartment community type ghetto. My experience with employment is that all available jobs were long hours OR not enough hours, often smelly places like fast food restaurants and the pay was never enough. Even while working, we all had to live some type of life of crime. I knew so many people that routinely committed welfare fraud to attempt to escape the employment prison. There was also those that would deal drugs from a young age well into adulthood who never had the need to try to live better.  The priority remained to appear as rich as possible, while ignoring the realistic requirements to achieve legal financial independence. Also, the lack of employment for youth (as adults got to work even the crappy jobs) meant that kids often went unsupervised for long hours and would almost always find negative ways to entertain themselves, leading to even more crime activity. This activity was actually a boon to social status, as when everyone is a criminal, obviously the coolest person is going to be the one with the most criminal experience, much like in the richer neighborhoods they maybe looked up to their successful relatives or something. What I'm saying is, there wasn't a wealth of positive influences in any of these neighborhoods.

When I would visit my friends house in the richer side of town, I would marvel at her pantry full of expensive, organic snacks. Heck, I would visit for the snacks. Food with real ingredients in it, I sensed that it was somehow laughable, I would tell my mom how expensive all their food was and we found it amusing, wasting so much money on organic food. Well, I am and have been morbidly obese since age 17 or so. My youngest sibling, my brother, has been morbidly obese since he was 10. My mother was also obese, she eventually died of complications from gastric bypass surgery combined with drug and alcohol addiction interfering with her medications. Looking back, it is obvious to me that her priorities were not in line with the other mother's, whom had healthy children.

From my experience, the priorities are very, very different between one population who has enough to survive, and one whom inherently does not. I witnessed this to be true first hand for many, many years. If you were curious, I got the heck out of there as soon as I could, never looked back. Bye, Alaska!

I agree it has a significant role. I expect the inequalities will be easier accepted in the countries, that are less individualistic, having higher power distance (you can check what those mean on geert hofstede home page - you will find there some culture indexes, you can run a correlation or regression).

From a historical perspective - some religions stronger then others will push people to accept inequalities - like i.e. hinduism or buddhism, where the inequalities are a part of a karma, and they are having their meaning. On other hand, when you look at the european values, built on French Revolution ideas: freedom, equality, brotherhood- there is distinctively less 'space' for inequality in that vision of the world. 

This is just a VERY short answer, if you would like to discuss it more, I'am open.

Dear Jana, just sharing some spontaneous thoughts about your question:

If we talk about "invention" does that imply that we are considering a deliberate choice for choosing "means to an end"? If this is the case, I would generally reject the notion of a social invention since it is always individuals that act rational not the collective itself. The collective might of course be considered of an aggregate of rational beings and , hence, might appear as being rational, optimizing means to an end (collective goods), although this is not necessarily the case. On this discussion see also Barry and Hardin (1982): Rational Man and Irrational Society?).

I would propose to distinguish between structural (social) developments like "globalization" or TDR (as one aspect of the latter), that can appear like being "rational behaviour" and individual rational behaviour - the distinction is important for understanding the differences in the rewards that trigger collective outcomes and individual behaviour.

Best regards, Volker

Thank you Tae-yeol_Kim and all for your contributions.

A large part of psychological theories consider man and woman as a person. In other words to focus only on gender differences, make disappear the differences of personalities larger that the gender segmentation. It is not politically correct  but try to consider the idea. Regards

Jakob

RCT are somewhat hard research work . I suggest the research is done in collaboration with other researchers. And as Kristy suggested you need adequate reading on RCT and consultation and some training also. In these trials you need careful selection of candidates  to study, then random allocation to groups and finally, the analysis is affected by drop out from the study.

Congratulations on the interesting topic of the post 

With interest I will follow her development.

Hi Hendrik,

nicht genau das was in dem Paper beschrieben wird aber auf jeden Fall aehnlich:

Insgesamt muss man sich natuerlich fragen wie realistisch eine "Loesung" ist die external enforment braucht um druchgesezt zu werden.

Viele Gruesse

Check this index, in relation to crime by countries. 

Good luck!

I guess Newton's method for optimization qualifies: it is based on the solution of a system of linear equations, and a line search, both of which in general have multiple solutions. Even the very basic algorithm called "steepest descent" is an implicit such method, as it relies on a line search which may have more than one solution. In effect, most known methodologies within nonlinear optimization - at least - are implicit.

By using real world data, Uber has an API now (like twitter and facebook), and anonymized data

Thank you very much for your answer. But I wanted to know how I should change the CGE model based  on Lofgren to consider the impact of drought on health economics. Could you please guide me?

Best Regards

This is probably a subset of a broader topic around how risk aversion to change (or perception of change) could influence stock picking decisions. The phenomenon of Trump is perhaps seen as an introduction of an "unknown" given that he appears to devote from what is perceived as "accepted" presidential comportment. Who defines what is "accepted" is a good place to start.

You may need to refine the definitions so that your research will be more manageable. For instance, over the span of presidential elections history, there are regressions made that appear to suggest how stock market indices tend reform under a democratic or republican presidency. However, I am not aware if they have gone deeper into what the perceived policy stance was to warrant certain responses by the stock market indices.

One approach is to take the sector indices and examine how they differ in their performances. I suspect you may find that the correlation, if any, may not be as clear cut as what some previous regressions would have suggested. 

Trust this helps in at least framing your research question.

Maybe you can start your research reading this thesis. I hope it's useful.

Dear Kumara

Though I have not worked about the issue. However, the phenomenon (say, climate change) may be cyclic, still it is not conclusive. Moreover, may be possible that the total population of all creatures may be same since centuries, and some may be increasing, while some may be decreasing and became extinct. Similarly, earth productivity, it may be constant, as we do't know all the interactions and feedbacks between different processes and entities.   It is only a perspective and may and may not be right, pl.

Regards

Well being for individual differs from person to person as their can not be only one line of well being . The main end of well being is to have the full satisfaction of our action of our life . This may be of our working environment or even for our family . With this to have continuity of well beings we have to make our life happy & joyful with our successive result & if their is a negative performance for any reason in our working environment we have to find out the solution with a calm & quite without disturbing our phase of well beings.

To have the continuity of our mission of life any form we must keep our mind calm & quite if necessary by undertaking an impartial mode to carry out our own introspection & in this way , we can certainly accept the challenge of our destiny .

This is my personal opinion 

You can check K. Marx's "Class Conflict and Law" in Jacoby's Classics of Criminology. This article might help, too. (https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/slaughte.htm) 

Also, this book might be of assistance to you: Experiencing Homelessness: A Review of Recent Literature by Emily Meanwell. 

I personally think the question is *much* more interesting the other way around. 

Moreover, my advice would be to look at the question of embeddedness much more critically. Granovetter and others that have followed him have adopted quite a narrow idea of embeddedness. I much prefer Polanyi's approach, which predates Granovetter by about 40 years. The history of embeddedness as a concept is actually really fascinating and if you look at Jens Beckert's paper on the Great Transformation of Embeddedness, you will see that there is much more theoretically rich stuff that you could draw upon to tackle this question. Perhaps you could look at the dialectical relationships between configurations of markets and various forms of resources / cultural capital (to bring Bourdieu into play). Polanyi might also provide the tools to critically examine the notion of what he calls the "market society"'and viewing everything through a market lens. How does reciprocity play a role, for example? How does the state, through (re)distribution of resources? These aspects are not strictly speaking "market" forms of exchange but are definitely "economic" in nature, to take a substantivist perspective. I wish you every success and let us know how you get on?

Uh huh

Hello Yves-Marie Rault 

please check the attachments related to your topic

Chaimaa, your question is probably too general. You have to define first what you mean by globalization. Also, agreement between whom?

I understand the key aspect of globalization as the free movement of capital, also at low cost. Thus, investment moves easily across the globe, creating areas of high labor demand or high unemployment. Then local governments (if they are good) pursue some public policies to make people happier.

Suppose that some government has managed to improve local welfare. For example, by introducing high royalties on natural resources and then distributing them across population. This may not make multinational companies happier, because it lowers their profits. They may try to force local government to accept some international public policy that will lower their costs. Good government (staying for people) will not accept that. Another will accept a bribe and agree... Do you mean a story like that?

The most effective use of power is that which determines which issues appear on the political agenda, and which issues are submerged.  Even in an open society, such as a democracy, not all issues of interest can receive equal attention or will even find their way onto the agenda for public debate or consideration by public policy makers.  Issues struggle with one another for public visibility.  The political scientist, E.E. Schattschneider, referred to this struggle as "the conflict of conflicts" and claimed that all political systems are structurally biased in favor of the inclusion of some kinds of issues on the public agenda, and the exclusion of  others.  Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz coined the phrase "non-decision making power" to refer to the exercise of power to submerge issues or to keep them completely out of public debate.  This non-decision making power is most often exercised to submerge issues which are threatening to the dominant interests of political, social, and economic elites, or issues which clash with dominant values embedded in a society's political culture.  

Absolutely, the Critical Theory gives a broad framework that permit to understand the deep topics behind visible topics. However, when a researcher uses this lens, sometimes your findings could dispute the mainstream. It isn't bad but implies that the researchers have to be braves.

Hi Nataliya, now I understand.  These are provocative questions and now I have a frame of reference.

I will post here if I find any documents.  Thank you.  Jan Vinita White, PhD, Gerontologist. 

You might find this review of a New Zealand Court of Appeal decision useful, or at least food for thought.

Hi Ramiro. You might find something by looking at the development discourse around direct cash transfer as it gives ultimate decision making to the recipient. The other place that this is coming into the discourse is around the Australian National Disabiliy insurance Scheme (NDIS) where the push is for 'user choice' .

Hello Abdullah,

It depends on whether by "card" you are referring to a debit card or a credit card.

For a debit card, it may simply be the case that a particular consumer prefers not having to deal with physical currency; therefore, convenience is their motivation. However, convenience also depends on how many outlets accept this card. If such is the case, see the attached link.

For a credit card, on the other hand, it depends on (a) one's own "discount rate" and (b) the prevailing rate of interest on credit card debt. The articles posted above should be able to help in that regard.

I hope this helps

My book "Economic Aspects of Omnipotence" could help you understanding better the fetishism of commodity and culture.

Best regards.

Thank you for the clarity. That is a challenging question. What comes to the top of my mind would be some ethnographic survey. I have never seen "language acquisition."

Beware of buzzwords as policy. "Smart" is one of these buzzwords that substitute for thought. In allocating funds, always have an overview of what your priorities are: providing potable water, collecting garbage, treating sewage, transportation improvements, education, policing, and so on. In acquiring funds, one should develop a sense of what various taxes do to the local economy: user charges, sales taxes, income taxes, etc. What revenue devices contribute to allocating scarce public capital? Is parking priced appropriately? What about water, is it priced appropriately?

Ideally there should not be any relationship between religion and entrepreneurship. This is because any religion does not impart entrepreneurial skills in an individual, it is just that the individual has to acquire those skills.

But at the same time, the surroundings will have an impact on one's interest and skills. So probably because of the entrepreneurial culture developed in the middle east had an impact and not the islamic values/principles. So i don't think it is because of the Islamic values/principles affecting those qualities. (May be i am wrong because i haven't worked on this thing. It is just what i thought).

Regards,

Bhanu Phani Krishna. 

Dear Michael, 

I am surprised of finding this very interesting question. I did research on a policy rule and had to tackle very difficult practical and theoretical issues, apparently moving in an almost unexplored terrain. I understand therefore your question of perceived legitimacy in the following way. 1. A policy rule can offer an advantage to a social group, compared to other groups: under this viewpoint, perceived legitimacy has to do with perceived social utility of the policy rule. I would expect a scale measuring legitimacy as perceived social utility being inversely correlated with the self-perception of being part of a social group that does not benefit or is disadvantaged from the policy rule. 2. I would also expect that a an higher degree of conformism generally increases perceived legitimacy for "all rules", regardless their content, aims, effectiveness. There are social personality scales measuring traits of conformism or authoritarianism at individual level (authoritarian personality scales). 3. At a more general level, I would think about the cultural or political environment: how far the culture legitimates having "opinions" about rules? The most authoritarian assertions might sounds like: "rules are just rules and you have just to conform to them". Societies where this assertion is frequently spoken, heard, or just assumed, do not worry about legitimacy of rules. Sometimes they may allow questioning the procedure adopted in order to introduce a rule, which is the legal interpretation of the word legitimacy, but it does not have anything to do with perception... I would expect a less authoritarian society admitting a public debate about the utility of specific rules, their effectiveness, who takes advantage from those rules, and so forth. Therefore, thank you for asking your interesting question.

Dear Gianrocco,

I had a brief look at your article. Also was a bit surprised that you are from dept of economic theory and so critical to mainstream. Well, I think that Italian school of economics is much less neoclassical than let say American. Is institutional economics dominant in your department? I was also interested in such issues as trust and altruism about 15 years ago; you may even find my conference paper about trust (200). I know that Sam Bowles was also interested in altruism and he even published a book in early 2000s.

Hello Dr Barcelos-Ferreira

These papers might be of interest:

This paper looks at emotional resilience and the 2nd is written by Lounsbury and a similar team of researchers:

Lounsbury, J. W., Loveland, J. M., Sundstrom, E. D., Gibson, L. W., Drost, A. W., & Hamrick, F. L. (2003). An investigation of personality traits in relation to career satisfaction. Journal of Career Assessment, 11(3), 287-307.

Lounsbury, J. W., Smith, R. M., Levy, J. J., Leong, F. T., & Gibson, L. W. (2009). Personality characteristics of business majors as defined by the big five and narrow personality traits. Journal of Education for Business, 84(4), 200-205.

Logue, C. T., Lounsbury, J. W., Gupta, A., & Leong, F. T. (2007). Vocational interest themes and personality traits in relation to college major satisfaction of business students. Journal of Career Development, 33(3), 269-295.

Rauch, A., & Frese, M. (2007). Let's put the person back into entrepreneurship research: A meta-analysis on the relationship between business owners' personality traits, business creation, and success. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 16(4), 353-385.

This paper might be relevant but I did not request the full text:

Noël, N. M., Michaels, C., & Levas, M. G. (2003). The relationship of personality traits and self-monitoring behavior to choice of business major. Journal of education for business, 78(3), 153-157.

This paper looks at resilience but does business specifically:

Youssef, C. M., & Luthans, F. (2007). Positive organizational behavior in the workplace the impact of hope, optimism, and resilience. Journal of Management, 33(5), 774-800.

This looks at resilience to a lesser extent:

van Eeden, R., Cilliers, F., & van Deventer, V. Leadership styles and associated personality traits: Support for the conceptualisation of transactional and transformational leadership. South African Journal of Psychology, 38(2), 253-267.

I hope some of these are of help, but you are possibly aware of them.

Very best wishes

Mary

Do you mean that the effect of the donated drugs on individuals who received them should have been measured?  Or do you mean there should have been a laboratory experiment with donated drugs?  Or do you mean that there should have been a measure of whether the drugs were actually used?

It was really a hard work to read through more than 100 posts. Many of them in this question page are very long and it took me a long time. Many strands of arguments are intertwined in a complex way. I want to confine myself in a very limited topic that is the state-of-the-art understanding of rationality and self-interest in economics and do not enter into the moral and ecological aspects of economics. This does not mean that I estimate these aspects of little importance. I am afraid my post will be excessively long. Forgive me if my argument is too abrupt. Some expressions may lack sufficient accuracy.

First of all, it is necessary to distinguish the market economy and the (mainstream) economics. Guy Jakeman (104th post) defends vehemently the market economy. Admittedly, market economy has many good points that cannot be expected in planned economy, but it does not mean that the actual economics we have is a good one. The economics we have is full of flaws and one cannot say it describes what are happening in the market economy. 

Although there are many factors which lead into the actual state of economics, one concept is particularly responsible for the present state of mainstream economics. It is the concept of rationality, which is one of Israr's main concerns. 

Rationality and self-interest are closely related in most of discussions, but as Charls A. S. Hall (21st post, referring to H. Gintis) and Francisco Javier Melendez Hernandez (80th post) suggested it, concept of rationality is now much wider than the concept of self-interest. Self-interest is a name given to the propensity of a man or woman who seeks the well-being of him- or herself without paying any consideration on the state of others. Self-interested person can be rational as well as irrational (I will give the definition of rationality soon). Other-regarding person can be rational as well as irrational. 

As I will later argue that the rationality in economics is roughly equivalent to the maximization of a utility function. All depends on what arguments you include in the function. Normally we only employ variables that determine consumer's consumption. In this case, rationality means self-interest, or more precisely all behavior that maximizes the utility function describes self-interested one.  However, it is possible to include in arguments such variables as the empathy or the state of others. Ivan Dario Hernandez (1st post) is trying to do this. Bowles in his Microeconomics (2004) is also doing this. Bowles calls this kind of utility functions social preference. When an agent acts in such a way to maximize this kind of utility function, the agent is other-regarding to some extent. 

Rationality in economics (I do not defend this concept at all, as you will see later) is logical consistency. Let a person have many states A, B, C and others that he or she can chose. Each state has its benefits and costs. The consistency stands for transitivity of binary relations of the preference: 

The rationality is given in a form of an axiom: 

 If the set of all possible states (adjective "possible" is omitted here after) is finite, any rational preference can be expressed by a utility function u in such a way that 

If the set of all states is infinite and provided with a topology, then any rational preference can be expressed by a continuous utility function if the preference satisfies certain closedness conditions. (Equivalence between utility maximization and rational preference) 

Now, if a person is rational (meaning that he or she has rational or consistent preference), is it obvious that he or she chooses the state whose utility is maximal? No, by all means no!. 

Normally the economics assume this is true and some people (including Guy Jakeman in his 50th post) think this is as sure as what we can call it a postulate, upon which we can construct the whole theory of economics. 

Rationality in economics is flawed in two aspects. It implies the following two propositions: 

(1) It is always possible to build and keep consistent preference among possible states. 

(2) It is always possible to find the solution (maximal solution) that gives the maximal value of the utility function u. 

In order to show you how these two assumptions are flawed, let me cite the case of the game of chess. (1) signifies that you can estimate the game-value of any state in your turn. I will explain soon what the game-value is in an example. (2) signifies that which player will win the game is determined when the first mover is decided. 

In fact the following theorem holds: 

Theorem (Open alternative bounded-step decision game)

(See the Introduction to the classical von Neumann and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 1944. Without appealing to von Neumann and Morgenstern, a short simple proof exists for this theorem.) 

Be careful. This theorem holds in the eyes of omnipotent and omniscient being. For a real human being this theorem is totally false. In the eyes of omniscient being, the game-value is either 0 or 1, because at any state of the game of your turn, you have a sure strategy to win or your opponent has one. (I am supposing that Chess game ends in a predetermined number of steps and with a victory of one of the two players. This is not true in reality and certain modification of the statement is necessary). The wining strategy is to follow the rule: choose always the next state with game-value 1. If you are the winning player, there is always one (and often only one) such state. 

Everybody would agree that this is impossible for Chess, Game of Go and other sufficiently complex games. I cite this example, because this is a counter-example that the assumptions (1) and (2) hold for a set of finite states. 

The assumption that propositions (1) and (2) hold can be called excessive rationality, whereas the rationality we usually use in everyday life may be called moderate rationality. These two concepts of rationality are extremely different but are not recognized as distinct concepts in economics and thought to be identical for a long time. 

The difference between excessive rationality and moderate rationality can be explained by what H.A. Simon named bounded rationality. Human being is a rational animal but not omniscient or omnipotent. Our capacity of reasoning or logical inference is limited within a certain level of rationality. Our rationality is bounded. 

Some of readers of this post may think that this story applies only to artificial cases of chess and others, but economics is free of this kind of misconception. He or she is wrong, because the same thing occurs in the common maximization problem of the utility. (Please read the first one of two papers below. You will find that the case of simple utility maximization problem with a budget constraint has the same problem.)

In a classroom, we normally assume that the number of different goods is two. One seldom considers what happens when this number N increases. Even if you use computer, the computing time to find the maximal solution may increase at the order of 2 at the power N. If you have more than one hundred items, the computing time may exceed millions of years. Of course, all depends on the program you choose and the speed of the computer. However, we have the good reason that the computing time cannot be reduced drastically. The theory of computing complexity has shown that there are many  NP-hard problems and it is conjectured that for this kind of problems there is no computer program (or algorithm) which runs in polynomial time. 

Our life is surrounded by these NP-hard problems and it is rather rare case that we get an exact solution for maximizing problems in an appropriate computing time. Therefore, utility maximization is not such a firm harmless axiom as Lall B. Ramrattan (9th post), Ana Maria Bianchi (11th post), Mario Camberos Castro (19th post), Guy Jakeman (50th and 69th posts) and Stefano Prezioso (84th post) thought it to be. On this very specific point, Paul F. Gentle (5th post), Robin Edward Jarvis (37th and 61st posts) and Mohammad Israr Khan (17th, 25th and 69th posts) are right in doubting validity of rationality formulation in economics and this may be the point when Robin Edward Jarvis (79th post) compared physicist's rationality and economist's rationality. Stefano Prezioso (84th post) and David Harold Chester (85th post) are equally confused because they do not distinguish excessive and moderate concepts of rationality although they are opposed in their discussion. (Please forgive me if I am reading wrongly). 

My comment may seem to be too negative and destructive. Yes, it is, because this is the re-starting point of a new construction of economics as a science. We should rethink of human economic behavior and reformulate it in such a way to incorporate that our rational capacity is limited. A new idea on how to formulate our behavior is presented in the second paper below. My comment is therefore positive and constructive in fact. 

There remains an important question posed by Mohammad Israr Khan (25th post) and reformulated by Charles A S Hall (26th post). The question is this: 

I will try to answer this question but in a next post.

You may look for a validated scale developed by Gould (1990). 

Gould SJ (1990) Health consciousness and health behavior: the application of a new health consciousness scale. American journal of preventive medicine, Department of Marketing, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick 08903. 6(4): 228–237.

Here are some more articles that you may use to modify/adapt health consciousness scale.

Hope they help.