Introduction to the Phillips Machine and the Analogue Computing Tradition in Economics

In this paper I try to argue for the desirability of analog computation in economics from a variety of perspectives, using the example of the Phillips Machine. Ultimately, a case is made for the underpinning of both analog and digital computing theory in constructive mathematics. Some conceptual confusion in the meaning of analog computing and its non-reliance on the theory of numerical analysis is also discussed.

Optimal Commodity Taxation when Land and Structures must be Taxed at the Same Rate

We show that the optimal property tax rate rises with the ratio of land rents to structure and land development costs. California’s high ratio of income to property tax revenue and the distribution of Federal housing subsidies thus appear geographically misplaced. Proportional taxation of non-housing commodities is not optimal, even when elasticities with respect to wages are identical. Absent externalities, the desirability of transportation taxes and “anti-sprawl” growth controls hinge on the relative importance of time versus money in commuting costs.

Menorah Review (No. 19, Summer, 1990)

Jewish Historiography -- Dreyfus and French Catholicism -- Child of Israel -- Behind the Scenes of the Forty-Year War -- Learning the Lessons of History: Reflections on the Writing of Michael Marru

The Ups and Downs of the Environmental Kuznets Curve

By now the observation that some pollutants appear to increase and then decrease with economic development has become a widely accepted stylized fact. This paper argues that the fundamental insight of the empirical literature is merely that pollution does not necessarily increase with economic growth, and that the fundamental insight of the theoretical literature is that the observed inverse-U-shaped pollution-income relationship is neither necessary nor sufficient for Pareto-efficient environmental policies. Furthermore, the inverse-U-shaped path is not unique to environmental phenomenon, and may exist wherever a desirable good generates an undesirable side-effect. Finally, all of these points can be made without most of the econometric or theoretical mechanics that fill this literature.

Informal social networks, organised crime and local labour market

This paper’s purpose is to show a new informal social networks interpretation, according to which social networks change their nature if they are located in social contexts where organised crime is relevant. Here the perusal of a social network is just a necessary condition to enter the labour market rather than a deliberate choice. Moreover this labour market is the ground where favouritisms and social and electoral consensus policies take placesocial networks, organised crime, labour market

Moral Intuitions and Organizational Culture

Many efforts to understand and respond to a succession of corporate scandals over the last few years have underscored the importance of organizational culture in shaping the behavior of individuals. This focus reflects appreciation that even if an organization has adopted elaborate rules and policies designed to ensure legal compliance and ethical behavior, those pronouncements will be ineffective if other norms and incentives promote contrary conduct. Responding to the call for creating and sustaining an ethical culture in organizations requires appreciating the subtle ways in which various characteristics of an organization may work in tandem or at cross-purposes in shaping behavior. The idea is to identify the influences likely to be most important, analyze how people are apt to respond to them, and revise them if necessary so that they create the right kinds of incentives when individuals are deciding how to act. This can be a tall order even if we assume that most behavior is the result of a deliberative process that weighs multiple risks and rewards. It’s even more daunting if we accept the notion that conscious deliberation typically plays but a minor role in shaping behavior. A focus on what two scholars describe as “the unbearable automaticity of being” posits that most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by conscious intentions and deliberate choices but by mental processes outside of conscious awareness. In this article, I discuss a particular strand of research that is rooted in the study of non-conscious mental processes, and consider its implications for ethics and culture in the organizational setting. This is work on the process that we use to identify and respond to situations that raise what we think of as distinctly moral questions. A growing body of research suggests that a large portion of this process involves automatic non-conscious cognitive and emotional reactions rather than conscious deliberation. One way to think of these reactions is that they reflect reliance on moral intuitions. When such intuitions arise, we don’t engage in moral reasoning in order to arrive at a conclusion. Instead, we do so in order to justify a conclusion that we’ve already reached. In other words, moral conclusions precede, rather than follow, moral reasoning. If this research accurately captures much of our moral experience, what does it suggest about what’s necessary to foster an ethical organizational culture? At first blush, the implications seem unsettling. The non-conscious realm is commonly associated with irrational and arbitrary impulses, and morality often is characterized as the hard-won achievement of reason over these unruly forces. If most of our moral judgments are the product of non-conscious processes, how can we hope to understand, much less influence, our moral responses? Are moral reactions fundamentally inscrutable and beyond appeals to reason? If reason has no persuasive force, does appreciation of the non-conscious source of our moral judgments suggest that any effort to promote ethical conduct must rest on a crude behaviorism that manipulates penalties and rewards? I believe that acknowledging the prominent role of non-conscious processes in shaping moral responses need not inevitably lead either to fatalism or Skinnerian behaviorism. Research has begun to shed light on how these processes operate. Related work has suggested how our moral responses may be rooted in human evolution. This perspective focuses on the ways in which our capacity for moral judgment is embedded in physical and mental processes that have provided an adaptive advantage in human evolution. These bodies of research contribute to a richer portrait of human cognition and behavior that can be valuable in thinking about how to promote ethical awareness and conduct. As Owen Flanagan has put it, “seeing clearly the kinds of persons we are is a necessary condition for any productive ethical reflection.” If there were such a thing as a normative theory of human movement, it would be futile if it exhorted us to fly. Efforts to create an organizational culture that encouraged people to fly would be doomed as well. In thinking about ethics, we need to have a sense of what lies between simply accommodating what we tend to do and demanding that we fly. My hope is that this article takes a small step in that direction

The Phillips Machine, The Analogue Computing Traditoin in Economics and Computability

In this paper I try to argue for the desirability of analog computation in economics from a variety of perspectives, using the example of the Phillips Machine. Ultimately, a case is made for the underpinning of both analog and digital computing theory in constructive mathematics. Some conceptual confusion in the meaning of analog computing and its non-reliance on the theory of numerical analysis is also discussed. Digital computing has its mathematical foundations in (classical) recursion theory and constructive mathematics. The implicit, working, assumption of those who practice the noble art of analog computing may well be that the mathematical foundations of their subject is as sound as the foundations of the real analysis. That, in turn, implies a reliance on the soundness of set theory plus the axiom of choice. This is, surely, seriously disturbing from a computation point of view. Therefore, in this paper, I seek to locate a foundation for analog computing in exhibiting some tentative dualities with results that are analogous to those that are standard in computability theory. The main question, from the point of view of economics, is whether the Phillips Machine, as an analog computer, has universal computing properties. The conjectured answer is in the negative.Phillips Machine, Analogue Computation, Digital Computation, Computability, General Purpose Analogue Computer