Home birth: Consumer choice and restriction of physician autonomy

It is frequently argued that home birth is morally irresponsible because it involves the taking of risks on behalf of the fetus. Against this position, I argue three things. First, the fact that home birth involves risks does not necessarily entail that choosing or attending one is morally unacceptable, irresponsible or wrong. Second, parents have a prima facia prerogative to decide on behalf of their fetuses and children whether risks should be taken. While this prima facia prerogative can be overridden, reasonable and widely accepted criteria for doing so are not met in the case of home birth. Third, since the current attitudes and behaviours of physicians with regard to home birth constitute a de facto morally and socially unjustifiable overriding of an informed parental decision, physician autonomy should be restricted so as to preserve the autonomy of the medical consumer.Paul Thompson is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the University of Toronto. He has numerous publications in philosophy of science and in applied ethics and currently is finishing a book on theory structure in biology.Previous versions of this paper were read at the University of Waterloo and York University. I am grateful for constructive comments on both occasions and especially those of Jan Narveson and Donald McNiven. I also am grateful to physicians John McCulloch and Maarten Bokhout for helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Actors-in-Time: A Proposed Real Time,Decisional Model for Evaluating the Ethical Content of Decisions in the Financial Services Industry

A number of theoretical approaches to ethicaldecision making in the business context arecriticized as being too complex and cumbersometo be useful in day to day decision making. Byway of a potential solution, the authorspresent a universalistic, real-time model forassessing and resolving ethical decisions. Utilizing this model requires students andpractitioners to evaluate their decisionsaccording to two dimensions. In the firstdimension, stakeholders are identified aseither ``insiders' or ``outsiders' relating tothe differential advantages and/ordisadvantages a decision has on these twogroups. With the second dimension, consequences for the short term and long termfor these two stakeholder groups are assessed. The paper concludes with an illustration fromreal financial services business decisions asviewed through the model. These examplesprovide readers a sense of the model'spotential for consulting and pedagogicalpurposes.     

Assessing the economic costs of high school noncompletion

Disparities in educational attainment exist across states. There are costs, both to the individual and society, associated with low levels of educational attainment. This research estimates the costs of high school noncompletion in terms of income loss for each state. The results suggest that: 1) there are substantial economic costs associated with high school noncompletion ($727 billion in lost income nationally); 2) costs vary widely across states; and 3) in general, states with relatively low levels of per capita expenditures on education incur the greatest losses in income from high school noncompletion.     

Incremental vs. Comprehensive Reform of Economic Regulation: Predictable Outcomes and Unintended Consequences

A bstract . Examination of the theory and politics of reform of government regulatory policy leads to the conclusion that comprehensive reform of economic regulation is desirable and possible, given that we understand how existing regulatory decision-making processes operate and how reform efforts in the past have failed. Options exist along a dimension of magnitude of change: incremental versus comprehensive reform. Under certain conditions regulatory reform is best achieved through comprehensive change and equilibration to new policy, rather than marginal adjustments to existing policy that often lead to more rather than less government regulation.
Comprehensive reform is held to be complete or nearly complete relaxation of government control over price, market entry and other aspects of competition among firms across an entire industry , or assumption by government of new , broad-scale controls over private lector market behavior. Comprehensive reduction of government control, i.e., deregulation , is in accord with the observation that government decision-makers sometimes behave as if economic efficiency were an important objective.     

Diversification strategy and systematic risk: An empirical inquiry

This paper presents some empirical tests of the impact of strategic diversification on a market-based measure of firm risk. Instead of considering merely the consequences of isolated diversifying mergers, as most previous work in this area has done, the study examines the impact of all quoted acquisitions over a five year period using a sample of 100 large companies and a period of intense merger activity. The results cast further doubt on risk reduction as a general motive for diversifying merger, although they do not support the positive association between systematic risk and conglomerate status found in many US studies.     

Cultural Values and Social Planning: A Control Theory Approach to Satisfying a Social Welfare Criterion

A bstract . A method of social planning is presented which can be used to fulfill a social welfare criterion with normative values. The purpose is to show how a social welfare model which includes cultural norms can be optimized using classical control theory. Current literature stresses the importance of incorporating social indicators in welfare economics. Given a social welfare function which actively includes a hierarchy of cultural values , control theory can be used to set social policy to reach social goals. The approach is to define a set of desired cultural norms at some future time and then determine the social policy necessary to reach this state. Control theory is used to find the social plan consistent with attaining the set of desired values.     

4D cadastres: First analysis of legal,organizational, and technical impact—With a case study on utility networks

The increasing complexity and flexibility of modern land use requires that cadastres need an improved capacity to manage the third dimension. As the world is per definition not static, there also will be needs in relation to the representation of the temporal (fourth) dimension either integrated with the spatial dimensions or as separate attribute(s). In this paper, registration of utility networks in cadastre are considered in this 3D + time (=4D) context. A number of countries in the world have developed methods to register utility networks complying with their legal, organizational, and technical structure. We researched the different approaches of three specific countries: Turkey, The Netherlands and Queensland, Australia. These are analysed to evaluate a solution that matches legal, organizational, and technical cadastral requirements in the most optimal way.     

Uncertain outlays in time-to-build problems

In this paper we analyze investment projects in which there is uncertainty in the total investment cost in addition to uncertainty in the completed project value. We deal with an uncertain time-to-build. Uncertainties in investment cost are quite common in long-term, large-scale, path-breaking undertakings such as some R&D projects. We find that the inclusion of uncertainty in investment cost tends to mitigate the impacts of the uncertainty of completed project value. The implications of the results are significant. First, when uncertainty of investment cost is ignored, the value of the project is underestimated and a tendency toward underinvestment will result; and second, the existence of uncertainty in investment cost will cause long-term projects to require larger declines in value before discontinuation of investment should occur.