Use of mathematical models in automotive transportation policy analysis: A case study

Mathematical models are used widely in automotive transportation policy analysis. The limitations, benefits, and uses of a case-study model, the Sweeney Passenger Car Gasoline Demand Model, were examined. It was found that because of users' lack of awareness of the model's characteristics, the model has sometimes been misused, although the misuse appears to have had no major negative policy impact. However, the model use has had some impact on major automotive/energy policy decisions of the 1970s. Involvement by the model author in applications of the model contributed to effective use of the model in the policy process.     

John Stuart Mill's Theory Of Justice

John Stuart Mill has traditionally been portrayed as self-contradictory and failing to construct a unified social theory. Recent scholarship, however, has challenged this view, finding Mill's work to be creatively synthetic in bridging the antinomies inherent in liberal democratic thought. This revisionist interpretation of Mill is advanced by an understanding of his theory of justice and its role in shaping his policy positions on issues such as welfare, education, voting rights, property rights, taxation, government intervention, and the future of capitalism.     

Choosing one’s own informal institutions: on Hayek’s critique of Keynes’s immoralism

In the main, Hayek favored rules that apply equally to all and located such rules in tradition, beyond conscious construction. This led Hayek to attack Keynes’s immoralism, i.e., the position that one should be free to choose how to lead one’s life irrespective of the informal institutions in place. However, it is argued here that immoralism may be compatible with Hayek’s enterprise since Hayek misinterpreted Keynes, who did not advocate the dissolving of all informal rules for everybody. By avoiding this misinterpretation, immoralism can be seen as institutional experimentation at the margin, which Hayek himself favored.

Adam Smith's growing concern on the issue of distributive justice

According to the accepted view, Smith carved out distributive justice from his concept of justice and argued that distributive justice would follow in the wake of natural liberty. In recent contributions, however, it is emphasized that a system of natural liberty will only generate beneficent distributional outcomes if the rules of commutative justice safeguard natural liberty and mirror community standards of justice. In this paper it is argued that Smith increasingly came to question whether commercial society could meet this requirement. Given their subservience to sectional interests, rules of justice neither safeguard natural liberty nor conform to community standards. Moreover, the inherent strain in commercial society to corrupt man's moral sentiments erodes community standards of justice. In the development of Smith's views his growing concern for distributive justice is reflected.     

论新自由主义对当代中国的影响

新自由主义的核心思想为自由化、私有化和放松管制.它传入中国20多年来,在学术界和思想界的传播和推动下,影响当代中国的理论与实践.我国应正视当前国有资产流失严重、过度依赖外资、贫富差距拉大、失业率居高不下的社会现实,借鉴新自由主义资本市场化、贸易自由化和放松管制等合理因素,坚持市场导向,缩减政府管制,加快经济改革和对外开放步伐.同时,要采取有力措施,应对和消除新自由主义在中国的负面影响.     

Liberty and national security in Adam Smith’s possible world

Thomas P. M. Barnett argues that globalization’s spread presents the United States and other liberal democracies with two unprecedented national-security problems, and proposes an ambitious military strategy for their solution. This work argues that a successful strategy to solve one of these problems must also include rational policy, public policy that makes Adam Smith’s simple system of natural liberty a reality. Thus, Barnett’s military strategy and rational policy become complementary elements of a more comprehensive strategy to solve this national-security problem. Knowledge that Smith’s simple system of natural liberty moves the world toward peace can create a need for rational policy among voters.