The conjoint quest for a liberal positive program: "Old Chicago", Freiburg and Hayek

James M. Buchanan's latest contribution to the post-crisis debate in political economy underpins the necessity to reexamine the legacy of the Old Chicago School of thought, being urged by Buchanan's recently stressed plea at the 2009 Regional Meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society and at the Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economic Thought in 2010. The focus of the current paper is to follow his plea by exploring the central topoi of the 1930's debate of the Chicago School as seen from the work of Henry Simons and discuss its impact on the academic arena on both sides of the Atlantic thereafter. With respect to this impact, we highlight Friedrich A. von Hayek as the focal scholar who possibly transmits these topoi that later influenced the rise of Freiburgean ordoliberalism in Germany from the mid-1930's onwards as youngest archival findings suggest. By revisiting the MPS 1947 first meeting's minutes and papers, we stress the proximity in mind of Old Chicago, Hayek and the Freiburg School ordo-liberals by contributing an explanation for the surprisingly homogenous direction of these yet unconnected schools of thought. n a next, enhanced version of this project, we will subsequently re-discuss the intellectual origins of Constitutional Political Economy's research program. Following Viktor Vanberg, we argue that CPE can be interpreted as a modernized perspective on economics that carries forward three strands of transatlantic liberal programs, being precisely Old Chicago, Freiburg and Hayek. --

Zur Zukunft der Ordnungsökonomik

In diesem Beitrag setzen wir uns mit der zukünftigen Positionierung der Ordnungsökonomik innerhalb der Wirtschaftswissenschaften in dem zuvor angelegten Spannungsfeld zwischen positiver Analyse und normativer, auf wirtschaftspolitische Beratung zielender Disziplin auseinander. Ausgangspunkt der Betrachtung ist ein streng normativ-individualistischer, gemäß welchem der Bürger als Individuum Legitimationsquelle für politische Handlungsempfehlungen ist. Ganz im Sinne des verfassungsökonomischen Forschungsansatzes von James Buchanan werden die Bürgerinteressen als Referenzkriterium herangezogen. Um eine dem normativen Individualismus entsprechende Referenzgröße zu finden, bieten sich das Legitimationskriterium der individuellen Zustimmung bzw. die Steuerungsideale der Bürger- und Konsumentensouveränität an. Unter dieser Zielstellung gehen wir wie folgt vor: Zunächst wird ein Überblick über den aktuellen Stand der wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Reflexion - dem Methodenstreit - geliefert und eine kurze Einordnung vorgenommen (Abschnitt 2). Anschließend diskutieren wir jüngste Beiträge zur zukünftigen Ausrichtung der Ordnungsökonomik vor dem Hintergrund des verfassungsökonomischen Forschungsprogramms (Abschnitt 3). In einem dritten Schritt wird unsere Perspektive zur Weiterentwicklung des ordnungsökonomischen Forschungsansatzes dargestellt (Abschnitt 4). --

Flows over time with load-dependent transit times

Flow variation over time is an important feature in network flow problems arising in various applications such as road or air traffic control, production systems, communication networks (e.g., the Internet), and financial flows. Another crucial phenomenon in many of those applications is that the time taken to traverse an edge varies with the current amount of flow on this edge. Since it is already a highly nontrivial problem to map these two aspects into an appropriate and tractable mathematical network flow model, there are hardly any algorithmic techniques known which are capable of providing reasonable solutions even for networks of rather modest size

Collective additive tree spanners for circle graphs and polygonal graphs

AbstractA graph G=(V,E) is said to admit a system of μ collective additive tree r-spanners if there is a system T(G) of at most μ spanning trees of G such that for any two vertices u,v of G a spanning tree T∈T(G) exists such that the distance in T between u and v is at most r plus their distance in G. In this paper, we examine the problem of finding “small” systems of collective additive tree r-spanners for small values of r on circle graphs and on polygonal graphs. Among other results, we show that every n-vertex circle graph admits a system of at most 2log32n collective additive tree 2-spanners and every n-vertex k-polygonal graph admits a system of at most 2log32k+7 collective additive tree 2-spanners. Moreover, we show that every n-vertex k-polygonal graph admits an additive (k+6)-spanner with at most 6n−6 edges and every n-vertex 3-polygonal graph admits a system of at most three collective additive tree 2-spanners and an additive tree 6-spanner. All our collective tree spanners as well as all sparse spanners are constructible in polynomial time

Ist die Ordnungsökonomik zukunftsfähig?

"In diesem Beitrag setzen wir uns mit der zukünftigen Positionierung der Ordnungsökonomik innerhalb der Wirtschaftswissenschaften im Spannungsfeld zwischen positiver Analyse und normativer, auf wirtschaftspolitische Beratung zielender Disziplin auseinander. Im Sinne des normativen Individualismus bieten sich das Legitimationskriterium der individuellen Zustimmung oder die Steuerungsideale der Bürger- und Konsumentensouveränität als Grundlage für die moderne Ausrichtung der Ordnungsökonomik an. Ganz im Sinne des verfassungsökonomischen Forschungsansatzes von James Buchanan werden daher die Bürgerinteressen als Referenzkriterium herangezogen. Nach einem Überblick über den neueren Methodenstreit diskutieren wir jüngste Beiträge zur zukünftigen Ausrichtung der Ordnungsökonomik vor dem Hintergrund des verfassungsökonomischen Forschungsprogramms. In einem dritten Schritt stellen wir unsere Perspektive zur Weiterentwicklung des ordnungsökonomischen Forschungsansatzes dar." (Autorenreferat)"This paper deals with the future of 'Ordnungsökonomik' (constitutional economics) within economic science regarding its dual character as a positive science on the one side and as a normative analysis trying to give policy advice on the other. From the perspective of normative individualism the criteria of legitimacy of individual consent or the ideals of governance of citizen and consumer sovereignty can serve as a Basis for a modern adjustment of constitutional economics. In accordance with the constitutional economics approach of James Buchanan citizens' interest will therefore be used as reference criteria. After an overview on the recent methodological debate ('Methodenstreit') among economists the authors will discuss, based on the constitutional economics approach, recent arguments on the future development of constitutional economics. Finally, they will present their own Position concerning the future of the constitutional economics approach." (author's abstract

Extending partial suborders and implication classes

We consider the following problem called transitive ordering with precedence constraints (TOP): Given a partial order P=(V,&;) and an (undirected) graph G=(V,E) such that all relations in P are represented by edges in G. Is there a transitive orientation D=(V,A) of G, such that P is contained in D

Minimizing Total Delay in Fixed-Time Controlled Traffic Networks

We present two different approaches to minimize total delay in signalized fixed-time controlled inner city traffic networks. Firstly, we develop a time discrete model where all calculations are done pathwise and vehicles move on "time trajectories" on their routes. Secondly, an idea by Gartner, Little, and Gabbay is extended to a continuous, linkwise operating model using "Link Performance Functions" to determine delays. Both models are formulated as mixed-integer linear programs and are compared and evaluated by PTV AG's simulation tool VISSIM 3.70

More-Dimensional Packing with Order Constraints

We present a first systematic study on more-dimensional packing problems with order constraints. Problems of this type occur naturally in applications such as logistics or computer architecture. They can be interpreted as more-dimensional generalizations of scheduling problems. Using graph-theoretic structures to describe feasible solutions, we develop a novel exact branch-and-bound algorithm. This extends previous work by Fekete and Schepers; a key tool is a new order-theoretic characterization of feasible extensions of a partial order to a given complementarity graph that is tailor-made for use in a branch-and-bound environment. The usefulness of our approach is validated by computational results

Traffic Networks and Flows Over Time

In view of the steadily growing car traffic and the limited capacity of our street networks, we are facing a situation where methods for better traffic management are becoming more and more important. Studies show that an individual „blind“ choice of routes leads to travel times that are between 6 % and 19 % longer than necessary. On the other hand, telematics and sensory devices are providing or will shortly provide detailed information about the actual trafficfows, thus making available the necessary data to employ better means of trafficc management. Traffic management and route guidance are optimization problems by nature. We want to utilize the available street network in such a way that the total network „load“ is minimized or the „throughput“ is maximized. This article deals with the mathematical aspects of these optimization problems from the viewpoint of network flow theory