Anita Allen: in the quest for sustainability, we need to accommodate people with mental disorders

The COVID-19 pandemic, allied with the worsening climate crisis, have increased the pressure on governments and societies to help people cope. Anita Allen, the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, has an important reminder: to deal with pandemics, climate change, and inequalities, we need to accommodate people with mental health disorders. Professor Allen gave a brief “walk and talk” interview to LSE Business Review’s managing editor, Helena Vieira, during the World Economic Forum’s Great Narrative Meeting in Dubai

Fiscal risks and the quality of fiscal adjustment in Hungary

The government of Hungary has contained the main fiscal risks of the transition to a market economy. It has paid off and resolved most problems in the banking and enterprise sectors. Since 1995 it has implemented fiscal adjustment with the objective of long-term fiscal stability rather than an immediate deficit target. The main result has been pension reform, which has raised temporary deficits but reduced the long-term public liability. Only the health sector awaits the reform needed for long-term fiscal stability. Levels of government spending, budget deficits, and public service remain high, but the government has made great progress toward rationalizing public spending and improving the management of budget and off-budget fiscal risks. In the transition, the government has taken on new fiscal risks--mainly state guarantees and growing programs of credit and guarantee agencies (operating on behalf of the government) organized after privatization to support, first, industries and, later, exporters. The government has dealt with these new programs of contingent government support prudently and transparently, with reasonable ceilings on (and reporting of) risks. Hungary is likely to face pressure for additional spending. Priorities in fiscal policy should include reforming health financing, establishing checks on hidden subsidies in guarantee programs, and determining the government's optimal exposure to risk. In terms of institutions, the government should aim to create a more flexible, responsive budget process and greater capacity to analyze medium-term fiscal risks, to build a more results-oriented budget management system, and to improve mechanisms for sharing risk between the public and private sectors under government programs.Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Banks&Banking Reform,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Banks&Banking Reform,National Governance,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Municipal Financial Management,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring

The Poetry of Genetics: On the Pitfalls of Popularizing Science

The role genetic inheritance plays in the way human beings look and behave is a question about the biology of human sexual reproduction, one that scientists connected with the Human Genome Project dashed to answer before the close of the 20th century. This is also a question about politics, and, it turns out poetry, because, as the example of Lucretius shows, poetry is an ancient tool for the popularization of science. Popularization is a good word for successful efforts to communicate elite science to non-scientists in non-technical languages and media. According to prominent sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, sexual dominance is a human universal. He meant, of course that men dominate women. Like sociobiology, gene science is freighted with politics, including gender politics. Scientists have gender perspectives that may color what they see in nature. As the late Susan Okin Miller suggested in an unpublished paper tracing the detrimental impact of Aristotle\u27s teleology on western thought, scientists accustomed to thinking that men naturally dominate women, might interpret genetic discoveries accordingly. Biologists have good, scientific reasons to fight the effects of bias. One must be critical of how scientists and popularizers of science, like Genome author Matt Ridley, frame truth and theory. Ridley’s battle of the sexes metaphor and others have a doubtful place in serious explanations of science