An Empirical Evaluation of Theories of Saving

The theories of saving presented by Keynes, Duesenberry, and Friedman use three different measures of income to explain saving, and each theory has been supported by empirical evidence. The evidence consists of tests of a wide variety of hypotheses contained within or derived from the theories. The tests use many different kinds of data. The objective of this paper is to submit the basic behavioral hypotheses of each theory to a common test on constant data. The results show that the theories are equally acceptable on empirical grounds

"The End of Immortality!" Eternal Life and the Makropulos Debate

Responding to a well-known essay by Bernard Williams, philosophers (and a few theologians) have engaged in what I call “the Makropulos debate,” a debate over whether immortality—“living forever”—would be desirable for beings like us. Lacking a firm conceptual grounding in the religious contexts from which terms such as “immortality” and “eternal life” gain much of their sense, the debate has consisted chiefly in a battle of speculative fantasies. Having presented my four main reasons for this assessment, I examine an alternative and neglected conception, the idea of eternal life as a present possession, derived in large part from Johannine Christianity. Without claiming to argue for the truth of this conception, I present its investigation as exemplifying a conceptually fruitful direction of inquiry into immortality or eternal life, one which takes seriously the religious and ethical surroundings of these concepts