Unity in the Social Thought of Adolph Lowe: A Review of "Essays in Political Economics: Public Control in a Democratic Society"

Abstract . From the economist Adolph Lowe's voluminous-writings, Allen Oakleyh has selected eight essays which present the gist of Lowe's thought. It unifies his structural analyses and his instrumental analyses into the system Lowe calls “Political Economics.” This pre-orders desired ends or effects and then determines or applies goal-adequate means to achieve these ends. Lowe's Essays in Political Economics sketches the economic paradigm by which he expands the evolutionary way of thinking from the subject —economic behavior— to the object, the socioeconomic world. He argues that instability is fundamental, basic and inherent in contemporary industrial capitalism as it has evolved physically, technologically and socially and stability can be restored by an approach which reverses the continuum to end-means. He holds that if the world evolves, and it does, so must the goal-adequate methods and instrumentalities to deal with it.     

An intelligent tutoring system for the accounting cycle: Enhancing textbook homework with artificial intelligence

This paper describes an electronic tutoring system, developed using principles of artificial intelligence (AI), to help students learn the accounting cycle. Unlike other educational technologies, the tutoring system provides instruction and feedback that is tailored to each individual student and addresses not only problem-solving outcomes but also problem-solving processes. To assess the effectiveness of the tutoring system, we administered a pre-test and then required students in a sophomore accounting course to use either the tutoring system or their textbook as a reference when journalizing transactions for a homework assignment. We then administered a post-test. A pre-post analysis showed that the tutor group’s test performance increased approximately 27% points, whereas the textbook group’s test performance improved by only 8% points. Implications of these findings for instructors and researchers are discussed.     

A dynamic segmentation of U.S. women during the COVID-19 pandemic

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a vast, but uneven, influence on consumers. Diversity in consumer reactions, and the extent to which those reactions lead to lasting preference and lifestyle changes, present challenges for implementing effective marketing strategies during a period of societal crisis. To address this, we conducted a dynamic segmentation analysis involving over 14,000 U.S. women by assessing relevant psychological, experiential, and other personal factors at multiple time points during the pandemic. This analysis identified seven unique consumer segments who varied in their current and future degree of change, and who indicated responsiveness to specific forms of brand and advertising content. This seven-segment clustering was highly stable over time, suggesting that certain segmentation approaches hold continuing value for marketers even as widespread events like pandemics evolve.     

Adolph Lowe's Paradigm Shift for a Scientific Economics: An Interpretive Perspective

A bstract . The economist Adolph Lowe has developed a methodological alternative, designated Political Economics , for the development of economic theory and the application of economic policy. In totality his system—with a methodology he calls instrumental—makes up a unity that can be seen as a logically derived paradigm shift for economics as a scientific discipline. Under it, by a democratic political process , some desired end-state is first consciously and systematically determined. Then economic means are instrumentally employed to bring about the economic and social behavior necessary to attain and maintain that end-state. Available knowledge and tools are useful for this model; however, there is no question that the approach raises significant technical, political and philosophical issues. But these are overshadowed by Lowe's paradigmatic vision, and its corollary modular framework of Political Economics.     

Structural-Functional Dynamics in the Analysis of Socio-economic Systems: Development of the Approach to Understanding the Processes of Systemic Change

Theory can be equated with analogy. Both attempt to convey the unfamiliar and/or the complex through use of more familiar and/or simple constructs. The theoretical analogies of “modern” economics have been by and large patterned after a prestigious and powerful Newtonian model, i.e. they have been of the mechanical genre. It has been argued, however, that models of a biological, or evolutionary, nature would be more appropriate to analyzing economic processes and systems. This article is the first of two aimed at suggesting a form for such an evolutionary model. In this article, the analytical concepts of structure and function and their interrelationships are discussed as they apply to non-human biological systems. Resulting feedback effects which produce dynamic change are placed within the context of the evolutionary model of stratified stability. This model explains developmental change as always tending toward more complex but more stable levels of structure, and thus unidirectional. However, the process of societal change is non-teleological in that the particular path of change is not deterministic.