Comparing social security programs with leisure and bequests

This paper compares social security programs in the AK model with leisure and bequests. It will show that the unfunded program with contribution-dependent benefits has smaller distortions than programs (funded or unfunded alike) with contribution-independent benefits. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Fiscal Divergence and Business Cycle Synchronization: Irresponsibility is Idiosyncratic

Using a panel of 21 OECD countries and 40 years of annual data, we find that countries with similar government budget positions tend to have business cycles that fluctuate more closely. That is, fiscal convergence (in the form of persistently similar ratios of government surplus/deficit to GDP) is systematically associated with more synchronized business cycles. We also find evidence that reduced fiscal deficits increase business cycle synchronization. The Maastricht "convergence criteria," used to determine eligibility for EMU, encouraged fiscal convergence and deficit reduction. They may thus have indirectly moved Europe closer to an optimum currency area, by reducing countries’ abilities to create idiosyncratic fiscal shocks. Our empirical results are economically and statistically significant, and robust.

La question du marché des organes : apports d'une co-analyse éthique et économique

L’objectif de cet article est de montrer les apports d’une co-analyse éthique et économique pour traiter des problématiques liées à la santé. Une co-analyse éthique et économique apporte un éclairage supplémentaire pouvant même conduire à modifier les conclusions de l’analyse économique. A cet égard, le thème des transplantations d’organes est emblématique.

Quelle éthique médicale ? Une relecture à partir de l’hypothèse de «crowding out effect».

L’avènement, en microéconomie de la santé, de la théorie de l’agence et de son corollaire en terme de régulation qu’est l’incitation, ont exclu la question du statut théorique de l’éthique médicale en la rendant dénuée d’intérêt pratique. En effet, que l’éthique soit utilitaire, (conditionnelle à la maximisation d’utilité), ou anti utilitaire (norme inconditionnelle), l’incitation est la seule politique publique pertinente. Cependant, selon nous, l’émergence d’une importante littérature en économie sur le « crowding out effect » vient redonner une place capitale au statut de l’éthique. Si les motivations sont substituables alors, l’incitation peut être contreproductive. La faible compatibilité entre théorie des motivations et théorie de l’agence renforce alors la pertinence de l’hypothèse d’éthique antiutilitaire.

Dictionary of philosophy and psychology : including many of the principal conceptions of ethics, logic, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, mental pathology, anthropology, biology, neurology, physiology, economics, political and social philosophy, philology, physical science, and education, and giving a terminology in English, French, German, and Italian /

Mode of access: Internet.

Teaching economic philosophy: Economics, ethics and the search for the right maximand

Economic philosophy is not often taught, and is not necessarily easily taught. It involves enquiry into implicit assumptions within orthodox economics and within alternatives to it. It seeks to highlight why it is that some critics object that neoclassical economics is too atomistic, hedonistic, and rationalistic, or why others lament that there is much hidden metaphysics in Friedman and his Chicago School colleagues. It addresses the issue of whether - in a reversal of the view that economics is the imperialistic social science - significant philosophical assumptions have been silently but inescapably imported into orthodox economics. This paper seeks to facilitate the presentation of such material with illustrations selected from social economics, development economics, and critiques of utilitarianism.

The Axiomatic Approach to Population Ethics

This paper examines several families of population principles in the light of a set of axioms. In addition to the critical-level utilitarian, number-sensitive critical-level utilitarian and number-dampened families and their generalized counterparts, we consider the restricted number-dampened family (suggested by Hurka) and introduce two new families : the restricted critical-level and restricted number-dependent critical-level families. Subsets of the restricted families have nonnegative critical levels and avoid both the repugnant and sadistic conclusions but fail to satisfy an important independence condition. We defend the critical-level principles with positive critical levels.

Ethique et Conflits, leçons de la Muqaddima d'Ibn Khaldûn

Ibn Khaldûn(1332-1406) fut homme d’Etat et historien des conflits et des changements politiques au Moyen-Orient et en Afrique du Nord. Il a écrit la Muqaddima, une vaste analyse du déclin de la civilisation arabe. Dans cet ouvrage l’ «éthique du Juste » est présentée comme l’obéissance à la loi et l’application des sciences rationnelles à la tradition. Ceci le mène à condamner l’ « éthique du Bien » en tant que calcul de son propre bonheur. Le conflit actuel reflète bien ce dualisme sous de nouvelles formes d’eudémonisme telle que l’utilitarisme. Sa théorie du changement politique et des conflits est toujours d’actualité : le développement économique conduit à la destruction des dynasties au pouvoir ; ce dernier repose sur l’Asabiya, une forme spécifique du capital social. Le pouvoir politique dure trois générations et connaît une évolution faite d’essor, d’apogée et de déclin. Cette théorie des « trois phases » du développement permet de mieux comprendre les conflits que connaît actuellement le monde arabe.

A Reading of the conception of man in Hans Jonas’ works: Between Nature and Responsibility. An Environmental Ethics Approach

Hans Jonas is considered one of the principal leaders of the ecological doctrine that fights against the hegemony of technical power upon society. We will study the conception of man in Jonas’ ideology through the lens of nature and of responsibility. He brandishes the specter of disaster (“heuristics of fear”) as a guard against technological excesses. He appeals to a prospective, universal and categorical responsibility to protect nature and to save future generations. Jonas considers responsibility as a method of anticipating the threat to that which is vulnerable, ephemeral, and perishable. Thus, the responsibility that Jonas decrees implies an ethics of conservation. Jonas’ writings aim to procure a new dimension of acting, which necessitates an ethics of foresight and responsibility.

Is There Personal Identity in Economics?

John B. Davis explores the question of what the economic individual is. He bases his considerations of orthodox economics on the assumption that these theories implicitly rely on a conception of the individual that has its origin in Locke’s idea of the self as subjective inwardness. Economic history then is the attempt to deal with Locke’s inherent problems that this view involved. If neoclassical economics still has aspects of human psychology, mainstream economics dropped the subjective concept of the individual out of their considerations. However, Davis demonstrates that even the neoclassical concept of the individual fails to pass the existence test of individual identity. The latter is an idea developed in analogy to philosophers’ concern about personal identity and examines if the individual can be distinguished among different individuals and if he or she can be reidentified as the selfsame individual through time. The failure of the theory of the individual in orthodox economics led Davis to develop a concept of a socially embedded individual in accordance with heterodox accounts of economics. He submits this conception to the same test of individual identity. It appears that the socially embedded individual can be said to hold an identity in specific circumstances.

Introduction: Working in Development Ethics – a tribute to Denis Goulet

Denis Goulet (1931-2006) was probably the main founder of work on ‘development ethics’ as a self-conscious field that treats the ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning and practice. This overview of a selection of papers presented at a conference of the International Development Ethics Association (Uganda, 2006) surveys Goulet’s work and compares it with issues and approaches in the selected papers. Ideas raised by Goulet provide a framework for discussing the set of papers, which especially consider corruption, professional ethics and the rights to water and essential drugs. The papers in turn provide a basis for comparing Goulet’s ideas with actual directions of work on development ethics. Rather than as a separate sub-discipline, development ethics takes shape as an interdisciplinary meeting place, aided though by the profile and intellectual space that Goulet strikingly strove to build for it.