The New Classical Counter-Revolution: False Path or Illuminating Complement?

In this paper the author responds to Laurence Seidman’s recent article, ‘The New Classical Counter-Revolution: A False Path for Macroeconomics’. The author challenges the view that new classical macroeconomics has been a false path and provides a critique of Seidman’s arguments with respect to his interpretation of the 1970s ‘stagflation’, the relevance of new classical macroeconomics for practical policymaking, the contribution of real business cycle theory, and the new classical content of contemporary macroeconomic textbooks. The author concludes that the new classical counter-revolution has had an extremely productive influence on the current mainstream new neoclassical synthesis framework.

Towards a Unified Theory of Economic Growth: Oded Galor on the Transition from Malthusian Stagnation to Modern Economic Growth

An interview with Oded Galor on the development of unified growth theory.Unified Growth Theory; Population; Technology; Demographic Transition; Sustained Growth

Exploring the beliefs of young people with cerebral palsy and their families about sport and physical activity in relation to paediatric physiotherapy exercise

Background and Purpose Physiotherapy programmes are an important part of therapeutic input for young people with cerebral palsy (YPwCP), but adherence can be problematic. The involvement of physical activities (PA) could be a possible solution, but YPwCP have lower levels of physical leisure participation than their typically developing peers. Method This qualitative study aimed to explore the beliefs of young people with disabilities and their families about PA in relation to physiotherapy programmes. PA was broadly defined to include not only disability sports, but any aerobic exercise and ‘beliefs’ as perceptions, knowledge and attitudes. A purposive sample of participants from the researcher’s physiotherapy service was invited to undertake semi-structured interviews. Inclusion criteria were 8-19 years of age, having a disability, cognitively able and able to understand and express themselves in English. Parents/care givers were included to capture their discrete perspectives and enable reflective discussion about any synergies or differences between their beliefs and those of their children. Data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results Two YPwCP and their mothers participated. Three main themes arose: • The feelings evoked by PA, in particular feelings of otherness were underpinned by the desire for ‘normal’ participatory experiences alongside typically developing peers. • External factors and others attitudes affect participation in PA, in particular unfavourable judgements and tokenism within mainstream environments contrasted with a normalising acceptance in disability sports settings. • Physiotherapy and PA are different, participants believed that physiotherapy, physiotherapists and medical venues possessed superior quality, legitimacy and potency. Conclusion The study revealed YPwCP and families’ unique beliefs and preferences concerning PA and the status of physiotherapy and physiotherapists within daily life. Physiotherapists should consider the influence of these beliefs when seeking to signpost to PA or enhance longer-term adherence to programmes within a context of reduced clinical contact

Unity, Objectivity, and the Passivity of Experience

In the section ‘Unity and Objectivity’ of The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson argues for the thesis that unity of consciousness requires experience of an objective world. My aim in this essay is to evaluate this claim. In the first and second parts of the essay, I explicate Strawson's thesis, reconstruct his argument, and identify the point at which the argument fails. Strawson's discussion nevertheless raises an important question: are there ways in which we must think of our experiences if we are to self-ascribe them? In the third part of the essay, I use Kant's remarks concerning the passivity of experience to suggest one answer to this question: in self-ascribing experiences, we must be capable of thinking of them as passive to their objects. This can be used to provide an alternative route from unity to objectivity

Assessing the value of forest landscapes: a choice experiment approach

Landscape planning and design occupies a major role in forest policy in the UK. Since the 1980s, UK forests have been managed increasingly for multi-purpose objectives, a policy which has been underpinned by international agreements on sustainable forestry. Within this context, there is a need to understand public preferences for forest landscapes in designing policies that meet the needs of multi-purpose forestry. This paper is based on a study to investigate public willingness to pay (WTP) for regular visual and recreational access to a wide variety of generic forest landscapes. A total of thirty-three forest landscapes were investigated, each of which was defined as a combination of the configuration of the planting and the landscape factors. Computergenerated images of each of these landscapes were used to underpin a series of choice experiments conducted as part of a questionnaire survey of over 400 households across Great Britain. The results confirm the importance of landscape in contributing to the social and environmental benefits provided by forests, and suggests that current policies of woodland expansion may generate additional benefits, especially if more woodland is located close to urban populations. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these results for forest policy across the UK. © AB Academic Publishers 2009

The Revolution Will be Uploaded: Vernacular Video and the Arab Spring

The vernacular online videos produced by the Arab revolutions constitute an unprecedented (though not unproblematic) historical resource for understanding the subjective experience of the ordinary people who find themselves on the front line of revolutionary struggle. But they also effect a sea-change in the way in which we view and understand YouTube itself. This article argues that the political significance of these videos lies less in their explicit content, than in their aesthetics - that is, in the new formal and sensory propositions that they constitute, the ways in which they “redistribute the sensible” (Rancière). The prologue proposes, following Judith Butler, that “the people” who are the subject of history are essentially a performative event, rather than a pre-existing entity, and that to write about revolution therefore requires a performative and allegorical approach. The first section reviews the current academic notion of “vernacular video” in the light of Ivan Illich’s work of the early 1980s on vernacular language and values, and argues that a stronger, more political conception of the vernacular is necessary to do justice to these works. The second section offers a close reading of one particular video from the Libyan uprising, and argues that it offers less an example, than an allegory of the dialogical relationship be- tween the individual and the collective that defines the moral economy of the vernacular. The article concludes by proposing that the right response to such videos is not (just) more theory or criticism, but rather to seek to emulate their radically egalitarian forms of practice

Condemned to die: housing action and social justice South West Durham 1949-1979

The Thesis is a retrospective examination of housing action consequences and effectiveness in the Bishop Auckland Area, by the author who was involved with the initiation and execution of repair, improvement, closure and demolition of houses in the private sector, carried out within the framework of Durham County Council's controversial Settlement Policy. The local, post-war, housing policy revolved around cherished concepts, that a Development Plan would lead to the "Good Life"; slum clearance processes were designed to protect people from themselves; and relocating residents from outdated villages to modern semi-detached estates heralded a new beginning. The irony of a working class political machine, over which the population had virtually no influence, imposing a policy which destroyed working class life styles is noted, together with the creation of a bitter and inflexible climate which nurtured an unintended but resolute opposition and resulted in a change of political control at local level. Focus is on Witton Park, the devastated archetype Category 'D' village, a victim of prejudice and time seemingly forever to bear a slum label as a shrine to the County Development Plan. A comparison is made with the villages of Binchester, Escomb and Eldon Lane/Coundon Grange also affected by renewal policies. It is contended that undue attention was paid by bureaucracy to a distorted image of slum housing which resulted in extensive and excessive demolition with consequential individual and collective injustice; and that an almost exclusive over emphasis on physical aspects destroyed the territorial basis of community life, and ignored people and their aspirations. Direction altered, belatedly, in the late 1960s after nearly 2,300 houses had been demolished. The newer policy of gradual renewal rather than total clearance was influenced by political change, more enlightened attitudes and the availability of wider powers. A synopsis of relevant housing legislation from I868 to 1979 is provided by the Appendix

Would “Robot Umpires” Reduce Discrimination? Measuring Racial Bias in Major League Baseball Umpires

Utilizing thirteen years of Major League Baseball pitch-tracking and play-by-play data, this study investigates racial discrimination by umpires when making pitch calling decisions. Two models are formulated, one that predicts the probability of a strike erroneously being called a ball (batter favoritism) and one that predicts the probability of a ball erroneously being called a strike (pitcher favoritism). The probabilities are modeled as a function of whether or not the pitcher’s or batter’s race is the same as the umpire’s. With over 3 million pitch observations, multiple sub-sample and time trend analyses are conducted to examine with whom the discrimination lies and how it changes throughout the sample. The results suggest that umpires are significantly more likely to make calls that favor players of the same race, and that these effects have not diminished between 2008 and 2020. Furthermore, these biases seem mostly held by White umpires, who account for a wide majority of umpires in MLB