Introduction: The Debate Over Independent Agencies in Light of Empirical Evidence

Constitutional theory has rediscovered the problem of governmental structure. As the rights revolution has matured and entered the mainstream, the debate is returning to the question that preoccupied the Founding Fathers: what organization of government is most likely to establish justice, promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty? The overriding contemporary problem is how to treat the administrative state

Visualizing Coevolution With CIAO Plots

In a previous paper [2], we introduced a number of visualization techniques that we had developed for monitoring the dynamics of artificial competitive co-evolutionary systems. One of these techniques involves evaluating the performance of an individual from the current population in a series of trials against opponents from all previous generations, and visualizing the results as a 2-d grid of shaded cells or pixels: qualitative patterns in the shading can indicate different classes of co-evolutionary dynamic. As this technique involves pitting a Current Individual against Ancestral Opponents, we referred to the visualizations as CIAO plots. Since then, a number of other authors studying the dynamics of competitive co-evolutionary systems have used CIAO plots or close derivatives to help illuminate the dynamics of their systems, and it has become something of a de facto standard visualization technique. In this very brief paper we summarise the rationale for CIAO plots, explain the method of constructing a CIAO plot, and review important recent results that identify significant limitations of this technique

Three myths about central banks

Do central banks control the business cycle? Should price stability be their only monetary policy goal? Do politicians give up a degree of power and gain nothing personally when they grant central banks independence? This Commentary argues that none of these widely held notions is true. The Commentary is based on a speech presented to participants at the conference on the Origins and Evolution of Central Banking, sponsored by the Central Bank Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, in May 2001.Banks and banking, Central

Nonpecuniary Class Action Settlements

Miller and Singer offer a theoretical and empirical analysis of nonpecuniary class action settlements, including coupons, securities and fluid recoveries