Beyond "the Relationship between the Individual and Society": broadening and deepening relational thinking in group analysis

The question of ‘the relationship between the individual and society’ has troubled group analysis since its inception. This paper offers a reading of Foulkes that highlights the emergent, yet evanescent, psychosocial ontology in his writings, and argues for the development of a truly psychosocial group analysis, which moves beyond the individual/society dualism. It argues for a shift towards a language of relationality, and proposes new theoretical resources for such a move from relational sociology, relational psychoanalysis and the ‘matrixial thinking’ of Bracha Ettinger which would broaden and deepen group analytic understandings of relationality

Globalization and the Human Development Trap

The feeble results of liberalization policies in Latin America are explained in terms of a multiple steady state model including a dynamic human development trap, endogenous technological change, technology transfer and trade. Divergent and convergent steady states, with and without a human development trap, exist under both autarchy and free trade. The model explains why import substitution is inferior to export promotion. While globalization is a necessary condition for convergence to development, it is not sufficient. Both trade and foreign direct investment create innovation assymetries hindering lagging countries that need to be balanced with export promotion and technological transfer for their successful integration with the global economy. In addition, so long as the human development trap persists, unskilled and skilled workers will have a conflict of interest between supporting human capital investment and innovation. If only innovation is supported, the human capital trap will persist. If mainly human capital investment is pursued, technology levels will fall behind; switching to innovation will be necessary eventually. The world growth rate is maximized by regulating globalization so as to attain development in all countries.trade, investment, technology

Institutions and Long-Term Development Policy

Market failures in human capital investment and innovation explain the main features of human development and economic growth. This is shown in a Schumpeterian multi-country model with technology transfer and trade. Thus, only institutions expanding investments in nutrition, education, health, skills, know-how and research in LDC’s, beyond what markets can supply, will succeed in promoting long-term development. It is in the interest of leading countries to supplement home investments with concerted transfers, since the long-term world growth rate increases with world-wide knowledge levels and living standards. Underdevelopment consists of a series of policy-dependent lower steady states, with parallel or divergent growth rates, and with or without a human development trap. Free commerce raises the growth rate of countries able to support production at the global scale. Smaller or more backward countries grow slower and require aid to emerge. Skilled and unskilled workers in LDC’s have a conflict of interest between supporting innovation or human capital investment. If innovation is favored, the human capital trap can persist, provoking opposition to globalization. If human capital investment is prioritized, a switch to innovation will eventually be necessary, requiring institutional change.Human Capital Investment, Schumpeterian, Market Failures, Development Policy

Fate of density functional theory in high-pressure solid hydrogen

This paper investigates some of the successes and failures of density functional theory in the study of high-pressure solid hydrogen at low temperature. We calculate the phase diagram, metallization pressure, phonon spectrum, and proton zero-point energy using three popular exchange-correlation functionals: the local density approximation (LDA), the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) generalized gradient approximation, and the semi-local Becke-Lee-Yang-Parr (BLYP) functional. We focus on the solid molecular P$6_3$/m, C2/c, Cmca-12, and Cmca structures in the pressure range from $100<P<500$ GPa over which phases I, II and III are observed experimentally. At the static level of theory, in which proton zero-point energy is ignored, the LDA, PBE and BLYP functionals give very different structural transition and metallization pressures, with the BLYP phase diagram in better agreement with experiment. Nevertheless, all three functionals provide qualitatively the same information about the band gaps of the four structures and the phase transitions between them. Going beyond the static level, we find that the frequencies of the vibron modes observed above 3000 cm$^{-1}$ depend strongly on the choice of exchange-correlation functional, although the low-frequency part of the phonon spectrum is little affected. The largest and smallest values of the proton zero-point energy, obtained using the BLYP and LDA functionals, respectively, differ by more than 10 meV/proton. Including the proton zero-point energy calculated from the phonon spectrum within the harmonic approximation improves the agreement of the BLYP and PBE phase diagrams with experiment. Taken as a whole, our results demonstrate the inadequacy of mean-field-like density functional calculations of solid molecular hydrogen in phases I, II and III and emphasize the need for more sophisticated methods.Comment: Accepted for publicatio

Minimal and maximal constituents of twisted Foulkes characters

We prove combinatorial rules that give the minimal and maximal partitions labelling the irreducible constituents of a family of characters for the symmetric group that generalize Foulkes permutation characters. Restated in the language of symmetric functions, our results determine all minimal and maximal partitions that label Schur functions appearing in the plethysms $s_\nu \circ s_{(m)}$. As a corollary we prove two conjectures of Agaoka on the lexicographically least constituents of the plethysms $s_\nu \circ s_{(m)}$ and $s_\nu \circ s_{(1^m)}$

R&D, Implementation and Stagnation: A Schumpeterian Theory of Convergence Clubs

We construct a Schumpeterian growth theory consistent with the divergence in per-capita income that has occurred between countries since the mid 19th Century, and with the convergence that occurred between the richest countries during the second half of the 20th Century. The theory assumes that technological change underwent a transformation late in the 19th Century, associated with modern R&D labs. Countries sort themselves into three groups. Those in the highest group converge to a steady state where they do leading edge R&D, while those in the intermediate group converge to a steady state where they implement technologies developed elsewhere. Countries in both of these groups grow at the same rate in the long run, as a result of technology transfer, but inequality between them increases during the transition. Countries in the lowest group grow at a slower rate, with relative incomes that fall asymptotically to zero. Once modern R&D has been introduced, a country may have only a finite window of opportunity in which to introduce the institutions that support it.