Economic Theories and the Science of Inter-Branch Relations

One of the fastest-developing areas of political science studies the relationship between the different branches of government. Within that literature, the most popular research questions concern the delegation of powers by one branch to another, the resulting levels of discretion of the delegate, and the control mechanisms available to the delegator. The resulting analyses draw heavily from a handful of economic theories, such as principal-agent, the positive theory of agency, transactions cost economics, and incomplete contracts theory. This article (a) differentiates between those theories, (b) argues that mixing those theories is a self-defeating mistake, and (c) makes a strong and comparative point in favour of re-directing our studies in inter-branch relations towards transactions cost economics. Yet, a truly consistent political-scientific theory of transactions cost economics is still to be developed. The conclusions point to the way forward for the construction of such a theory.Branches of government; Policy-making; Principal-Agent; Transaction cost economics

Minding the Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, and the Constitutive Structure of Distributive Assessment

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours with locutions of the form “warmth versus clothing” or “35 mph versus tennis balls.” Framing disputes in this way leads us nowhere. It only miscarries our thinking. A more venerable source of perplexity is found in the hallowed Pareto criterion (PC) and its conceptual kin. One proffered advantage of the PC is its purportedly enabling “us” to sidestep contested questions of interpersonal comparison, aggregation and distribution. But what manner of collective agent – what “we” – might plausibly be expected to take interest in unavoidably resource-distributive prescriptions, without view to the propriety with which these treat each member of the collectivity effectively addressed by the prescriptions, is left unidentified. And as soon as we plausibly fill-in the gap, the PC and kin prove prescriptively sterile. We get nowhere until we confront distributions – and de facto distributors – head-on. This Mongraph seeks to lay out with some care both when, and how, such confronting should be done. It specifies both the conditions, and the appropriately structured mode of analysis, under which distributive-ethical assessment is called for and apt to bear fruit. The means to success lie in carefully mapping the constitutive structure – the full valence grammar – of distribution-implicative claims. Effectively normative claims concerning distributions wrought by legal rules, programs or policies, if they would be so much as cognitively complete let alone ethically assessable, must assign values to all variables opened by the case grammar of “to distribute” and cognate infinitives – “to allocate,” “to apportion,” “to mete out,” etc. They must, that is, determinately and inter-compatibly indicate to whom claims are in effect being addressed, what is effectively being distributed, pursuant to what pattern the latter is being distributed, by what means and to whom. To be normatively defensible, in turn, such claims must not only carefully specify, but also must ethically justify, the jointly compatible values they proffer for filling those variables. The normative payoff of the mode of analysis proposed here is a compelling distributive ethic, a means of rendering past and present foundational disputes both tractable and conclusively resoluble, and in the end a new research agenda for what the Article labels an “ethically intelligible law and economics.

Texas Law Review

Journal containing articles, notes, book reviews, and other analyses of law and legal cases. Topics in this issue cover patent law, behavioral antitrust, ending the discriminatory enforcement of prostitution laws, and GAAP

Agency & Choice : On the cognitive and conceptual foundations of agency in economics and behavioral decision research

This thesis offers a philosophical perspective on the different conceptions of agency and choice as they are understood and employed in economics and behavioral decision research—this perspective is two-fold: on the one hand, philosophical analysis can clarify ambiguities in definitions and concepts that can and do arise within interdisciplinary research. This is of particular importance given how philosophical concepts such as mind, cognition, and intentionality feature in economic studies of rational choice. Hence, one project of this thesis is to subject contemporary research on questions about agency and choice to such philosophical scrutiny. On the other hand, the questions and topics discussed in this thesis can be understood as an exercise in philosophy of science: they deal explicitly with questions and topics that pertain to the theoretical and empirical practices of scientists. This includes traditional microeconomic disciplines, such as decision and game theory, as well as interdisciplinary collaborations in behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, and experimental psychology

Habitus and Embodied Institutions; A Study of Manufacturing Enterprises in Kabul’s Conflict-Affected Market Economy and Adaptive Strategies for Enterprise Continuation during 2002-2018

This research studies the effects of embodied institutions rooted in social structures on the individual decision to enter manufacturing activities in Kabul during 2002-2018 – a political economy characterized by political conflict and a market-oriented ‘enabling environment approach’ (EEA). The EEA taken as the macro-level policy backdrop, the study draws on the dialectical relationship between the patriarchal family and Quranic injunctions pertaining to socio-economic life to draw the embodied institutions, which are then used as micro-analytic tools for explaining data patterns pertaining to the investment decision and the subsequent strategies for enterprise continuation. Using a ‘convergent parallel mixed method’, the research has adopted the Bourdieusian framework, in particular the concepts of habitus and field. Rooted in the family-religion relationship, the effects of investor habitus are observed in structuring the decision to enter manufacturing sector and the subsequent encounter with this field, including strategies for enterprise continuation. The latter, moreover, is seen as closely patterned along the patriarchal family hierarchy, reproducing in large degree the social structure where habitus is produced in the context. Building on this empirical analysis, the study relies on qualitative indicators to argue that the sector has not grown structurally significant in Kabul’s economy during 2002-2018. Habitus’ effect is also observed as a conduit for transmitting the hierarchy of power in the family to the production sector. Targeted state/bureaucratic intervention is therefore required in such a context to promote this sector’s growth within a modified EEA framework, and to moderate the uninterrupted transfer of the patriarchal family hierarchy into this sector through political and regulatory means

The influence of topology and information diffusion on networked game dynamics

This thesis studies the influence of topology and information diffusion on the strategic interactions of agents in a population. It shows that there exists a reciprocal relationship between the topology, information diffusion and the strategic interactions of a population of players. In order to evaluate the influence of topology and information flow on networked game dynamics, strategic games are simulated on populations of players where the players are distributed in a non-homogeneous spatial arrangement. The initial component of this research consists of a study of evolution of the coordination of strategic players, where the topology or the structure of the population is shown to be critical in defining the coordination among the players. Next, the effect of network topology on the evolutionary stability of strategies is studied in detail. Based on the results obtained, it is shown that network topology plays a key role in determining the evolutionary stability of a particular strategy in a population of players. Then, the effect of network topology on the optimum placement of strategies is studied. Using genetic optimisation, it is shown that the placement of strategies in a spatially distributed population of players is crucial in maximising the collective payoff of the population. Exploring further the effect of network topology and information diffusion on networked games, the non-optimal or bounded rationality of players is modelled using topological and directed information flow of the network. Based on the topologically distributed bounded rationality model, it is shown that the scale-free and small-world networks emerge in randomly connected populations of sub-optimal players. Thus, the topological and information theoretic interpretations of bounded rationality suggest the topology, information diffusion and the strategic interactions of socio-economical structures are cyclically interdependent

The influence of topology and information diffusion on networked game dynamics

This thesis studies the influence of topology and information diffusion on the strategic interactions of agents in a population. It shows that there exists a reciprocal relationship between the topology, information diffusion and the strategic interactions of a population of players. In order to evaluate the influence of topology and information flow on networked game dynamics, strategic games are simulated on populations of players where the players are distributed in a non-homogeneous spatial arrangement. The initial component of this research consists of a study of evolution of the coordination of strategic players, where the topology or the structure of the population is shown to be critical in defining the coordination among the players. Next, the effect of network topology on the evolutionary stability of strategies is studied in detail. Based on the results obtained, it is shown that network topology plays a key role in determining the evolutionary stability of a particular strategy in a population of players. Then, the effect of network topology on the optimum placement of strategies is studied. Using genetic optimisation, it is shown that the placement of strategies in a spatially distributed population of players is crucial in maximising the collective payoff of the population. Exploring further the effect of network topology and information diffusion on networked games, the non-optimal or bounded rationality of players is modelled using topological and directed information flow of the network. Based on the topologically distributed bounded rationality model, it is shown that the scale-free and small-world networks emerge in randomly connected populations of sub-optimal players. Thus, the topological and information theoretic interpretations of bounded rationality suggest the topology, information diffusion and the strategic interactions of socio-economical structures are cyclically interdependent