Conceptions of Individual Rights and Freedom in Welfare Economics: A Re-examination

This paper examines the literature in welfare economics with a focus on individual rights and freedom, two important components in welfare economics. The paper discusses conceptions of rights and freedom intuitively and presents a critical examination of the existing literature. Working Paper 07-3

Football's coming home ? digital reterritorialization, contradictions in the transnational coverage of sport and the sociology of alternative football broadcasts.

This article critically utilizes the work of Manuel Castells to discuss the issue of parallel imported broadcasts (specifically including live-streams) in football. This is of crucial importance to sport because the English Premier League is premised upon the sale of television rights broadcasts to domestic and overseas markets, and yet cheaper alternative broadcasts endanger the price of such rights. Evidence is drawn from qualitative fieldwork and library/Internet sources to explore the practices of supporters and the politics involved in the generation of alternative broadcasts. This enables us to clarify the core sociological themes of ‘milieu of innovation’ and ‘locale’ within today's digitally networked global society

Introduction to \u3cem\u3eThe Economics of Social Institutions\u3c/em\u3e

This volume includes thirty-six important contributions to the economics of social institutions by leading figures in the history of the field. Its nine Parts are: Early Contributions, Methodological and Conceptual Issues, Old Institutionalism, New Institutionalism, Social Costs, Growth and Development, Institutions and Change, Institutions and Organizations, and The Third Sphere of the Economy and Institutions. This set of topics provides a comprehensive review of the origins and development of the economics of social institutions. It addresses the main theoretical and policy concerns that have occupied contributors to the approach. The economics of social institutions has a been well-established research program for over a century, and continues to evolve and develop new areas of investigation. This collection provides researchers, scholars, and interested students and extensive review of the leading contributions to the subject. It can be used to advance future thinking about the economics of social institutions and as a key resource for university teaching and education

On Initial Conferment of Individual Rights

An extended social choice framework is proposed for the analysis of initial conferment of individual rights. This framework captures the intuitive conception of decision-making procedure as a carrier of intrinsic value along with the instrumental usefulness thereof in realizing valuable culmination outcomes. The model of social decision-making consists of two stages. In the first stage, the society decides on the game-form rights to be promulgated. In the second stage, the promulgated game form rights, coupled with the revealed profile of individual preference orderings over the set of culmination outcomes, determine a fully-fledged game, the play of which determines a culmination outcome at the Nash equilibrium. A set of sufficient conditions for the existence of a social choice procedure, which can choose a game form in the first stage that is not only liberal, but also uniformly applicable to every revealed profile of individual preference orderings over the set of culmination outcomes, is identified.Extended alternative, Extended constitution function, Uniformly rational choice, Liberal game form, Non-consequentialist evaluation of rightssystem

Quota: From Experimental Computer Game to Fishery Management Education Tool

Quota, a computer-based simulation game, originated as an experimental game for testing alternative multi-resource management regimes or systems. Highly flexible, it allows specification for a standard common-property, open-access fishery with user-specified bio-economic fishery growth model and multiple sized producers with individual harvest and cost functions. In addition to demonstrating overfishing under open-access, various forms of Property Rights Systems can be implemented, including the setting of an overall Total Allowable Catch (TAC) and further allocation of the TAC to individual producers -- Individual Quota Rights (IQR) -- that may be based on historical catch during initial periods of Open Access fishing or equal shares or shares determined by bargaining amongst the players (producers). Subsequent trading of IQRs is also implemented using a highly developed computerized trading game. Recent use of the game have been as an educational tool in university classes on resource economics and in the field at meetings of Regional Fishing Management Organizations that govern the major tuna fisheries around the world

The co-evolution of the “social” and the “technology": a netnographic study of Social movements in virtual worlds

Virtual worlds provide new forms of social interaction. They offer alternative spaces where social functions can be carried out in online three-dimensional virtual environments. One social phenomenon which has moved into the virtual world is the social movement, which are an important means of bringing out social, cultural and political changes through collective action. These social movements exist in an immersive technological ecosystem which is constantly evolving as designers release patches which change the way users “live” within these environments. Using a biography of artifacts approach, we explore not just the evolution of the technological artifact itself (the virtual world), but also its co-evolution with the social phenomena (a social movement). Using Netnography, a modified version of ethnography, and actornetwork theory, we explore a social movement in World of Warcraft, and observe how it evolves over time as changes to the virtual world are implemented

On Initial Conferment of Individual Rights

An extended social choice framework is proposed for the analysis of initial conferment of individual rights. It captures the intuitive conception of decisionmaking procedure as a carrier of intrinsic value along with the instrumental usefulness thereof in realizing valuable culmination outcomes. Our model of social decision-making consists of two stages. In the first stage, the society decides on the game form rights-system to be promulgated. In the second stage, the promulgated game form rights-system, coupled with the revealed profile of individual preference orderings over the set of culmination outcomes, determines a fully-fledged game, the play of which determines a culmination outcome at the Nash equilibrium. A set of sufficient conditions for the existence of a democratic social choice procedure, which chooses a game form in the first stage that is not only liberal, efficient and Nash solvable, but also uniformly workable for every revealed profile of individual preference orderings over the set of culmination outcomes, is identified.Extended alternative, Extended constitution function, Uniformly rational choice, Liberal game form, Non-consequentialist evaluation of rightssystem

Constitutional Democracy and Public Judgements

This paper proposes a new conceptual framework of a liberal social order, which emphasizes the freedom of action in social interaction and the freedom of participation in social rule-making process. Our articulation of public decision-making process can be interpreted as a formal way of capturing the essence of constitutional democracy, which is an impure mixture of constructivist rationalism and evolutionary rationalism, since we are bringing what is spontaneously evolved through individual experiments into the stage of public design and social choice of a new institutional set of rules. It is also construed as an impure mixture of perfect procedural fairness and pure procedural fairness, since the public judgements to be formed through public deliberations should pay due attention to the intrinsic value of procedures in conferring agency freedom to individuals, as well as to the instrumental value of procedures in expanding well-being freedom of individuals.