Reflection, Intelligibility, and Leibniz’s Case Against Materialism

Leibniz’s claim that it is possible for us to gain metaphysical knowledge through reflection on the self has intrigued many commentators, but it has also often been criticized as flawed or unintelligible. A similar fate has beset Leibniz’s arguments against materialism. In this paper, I explore one of Leibniz’s lesser-known arguments against materialism from his reply to Bayle’s new note L (1702), and argue that it provides us with an instance of a Leibnizian “argument from reflection”. This argument, I further show, does not constitute a flawed appeal to mere introspection, but is in fact securely grounded in an important corollary of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: Leibniz’s Principle of Intelligibility

A Report to the Committee on the Nobel Prize in Economic Science, 1985: The Contributions of James M. Buchanan to Economics and Political Economy

Buchanan's contributions through 1984 are surveyed in six areas: (A) debt, fiscal illusion, and Keynesian criticisms, (B) London School of Economics cost approach, (C) methodological individualism and the economics of politics, (D) welfare price theory, (E) rent-seeking and polity failure, and (F) political economy and constitutions. A comprehensive bibliography of ten books, four monographs, forty-three refereed articles, thirty essays in books, ten short papers, thirty-three papers in collected works, and a translation is offered.

Group Consumption, Free Riding, and Informal Reciprocity Agreements

We examine conditions under which group consumption is likely to involve informal and tacit reciprocity agreements rather than formal contracts and the price system. Our model shows that informal reciprocity agreements are more likely to be used when transaction costs of formal agreements are high, the good is relatively inexpensive, each consumer's demand is not too responsive to price changes, the group is likely to continue to interact over time, the consumers are patient, the time between interactions is short, and the group is small and homogeneous. Further, the results suggest that informal sharing agreements are more likely to involve goods that are consumed along with other group benefits, such as conversation and companionship. We conclude by analyzing investments in social capital and discussing the effects of deeper social interactions constrained by norm structures on our results.club; institution; non-market; reciprocal; social capital

Strategies, programs, and projects pertaining to policy on transport: research in selected European states, the United States, and Japan (short title: 'SmartBench') ; final report on Sweden

"The government in Sweden champions the international competitiveness of the country' s economy and industry. The structure and substance of transport research in Sweden is in constant flux. Because Sweden has its own automotive industry, extensive and cost-intensive research programs on vehicle development are conducted in cooperation with industry, the research community, and the government and are largely financed by the Swedish state. Setting priorities in transport research also seems to come easier to Sweden than to Germany, where authority is shared by the federal government, state governments, and their respective ministries in a way unknown in Sweden. On the whole, Sweden is one of the world's innovative leaders in both applied and basic research on transport, an assessment reflected in the ambitious objectives of the country' s transport policy. An outstanding example thereof is 'Vision Zero', Sweden's long-term goal of completely eliminating deaths due to accidents. Sweden, like other countries, is grappling with the impacts of mass motorization. In comparison to the German way of dealing with these problems, the Swedish approach seems to focus pragmatically more on environmental objectives and safety standards and devotes greater attention to the needs of disadvantaged road users. The social sciences, a traditional strength in Sweden, play a major role. Swedish transport research addresses the topics of safety, environment, and future technologies. The independent Swedish local authorities conduct their own environmentally ambitious transport projects, which are scientifically grounded political decisions promoting informed efforts to help the environment." (author's abstract)"Der schwedische Staat fördert massiv die Sicherung der internationalen Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der nationalen Wirtschaft und Industrie. Die Verkehrsforschung in Schweden befindet sich dementsprechend in einem permanenten strukturellen und thematischen Veränderungs- und Anpassungsprozess. Da Schweden ein Land mit einer eigenen Fahrzeugindustrie ist, werden umfangreiche und kostenintensive Forschungsprogramme zur Fahrzeugentwicklung in Kooperation von Industrie, Forschung und Staat aufgelegt und zum größeren Teil vom Staat finanziert. Die politische Steuerung der Akzentsetzungen in der Verkehrsforschung scheint leichter als hier zu Lande, da es eine Aufteilung von Kompetenzen zwischen dem Bund, den Ministerien und den Ländern in Schweden so nicht gibt. Insgesamt ist Schweden im internationalen Vergleich sowohl in der angewandten Verkehrsforschung als auch in der Grundlagenforschung innovativ. Dies korrespondiert nicht zuletzt mit den ambitionierten Zielen der Verkehrspolitik. Die 'Vision Zero', das langfristige Ziel keine Verkehrstoten mehr zu wollen, ist dabei ein herausragendes Leitbild. Auch Schweden hat die bekannten Probleme mit den Folgen der Massenmotorisierung. Im Unterschied aber zu Deutschland wirkt der Umgang mit diesen Problemen stärker und pragmatisch an Umweltzielen und Sicherheitsstandards ausgerichtet, wobei den Anforderungen schwächerer Verkehrsteilnehmer/innen mehr Beachtung geschenkt wird. Hier spielt die starke sozialwissenschaftliche Verkehrsforschung eine wichtige Rolle. Die Themen der Verkehrsforschung insgesamt sind Sicherheit, Umwelt und Zukunftstechnologien. Die unabhängigen schwedischen Kommunen führen eigene, umweltpolitisch ambitionierte Verkehrsprojekte durch, die die wissenschaftlichen Anstrengungen unterstützen und umgekehrt auch verkehrswissenschaftlich begründet werden." (Autorenreferat

Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel\u27s Philosophy of Religion

This introduction is designed to aid a person with the desire to study the Hegelian philosophy of religion; it is not itself an introduction to his philosophy of religion (this ought to be obvious from the relative length of the early chapters and the relative brevity of the last two chapter0. It is hoped that three particular enemies of the reader in Hegel\u27s philosophy can be overcome in this paper: the tracing of origins, the identification of main principles, and the vast literature

Growth in the Real Size of Government since 1970

From at least 1893 economists have viewed income as an important determinant of government size and the hypothesis that government size increases with income is now enshrined in the literature as Wagner’s Law. More recently, however, public choice economists and growth theorists have tended to reverse that causality by questioning whether government size is a constraint on (or promulgator of) economic growth. Typically, increases in government size arising from increased consumption are viewed as constraints on growth, while increases in size that arise from government investment are viewed as positive in their effect on growth. In this paper we are concerned with the two-way interrelationship between government size and income growth highlighted by these separate literatures and investigate this relationship in three distinct stages. In the first part of the paper we set out what has actually happened to the real size of government for twenty OECD countries over the period since 1970 and survey some of the newer factors and approaches used to explain its more recent evolution. The second part re-estimates the parameters of the demand curve for government allows us to speculate whether the changing pattern of government growth represents a break in the structure of the model determining government size or, more simply, represents a change in the variation of the underlying variables. We find that the same model works at least as well as it did in earlier periods with coefficients that are close to their earlier estimates. We follow this by estimating a simple growth model that highlights the size of government consumption in relation to income and output growth for the same countries over the same time period. Increases in size do appear to constrain economic growth. The third part of our paper recognizes that while each of the two causal relationships has received considerable attention in their own right, less attention has been given to effecting a separation of their co-mingled effects. To do so, we estimate the two relationships simultaneously in the context of our panel. This allows us assess whether ignoring the simultaneity of the two-way relationship seriously biases the measure of either the income effect (in determining government size) and/or the measure of government’s effect on economic growth when each are estimated separately. While our discussion suggests that single equation estimates of the income elasticity in Wagner’s Law may have been biased upwards (in absolute terms) and the constraining effect of government size on growth biased downwards, our three stage estimates finds only modest support in the data. The paper concludes by exploring the interrelationship between government size and government regulation. In particular, we test the hypothesis that the appearance of slower growth in government side is due to the increased substitution of indirect control of private production for direct governmental output. On cross sectional data, we find the opposite. In our sample, larger government size is associated with more rather than less regulation.