Tradeoffs Among Resource,Social, and Managerial Conditions on Mountain Summits of the Northern Forest

This research examined the relative importance of indicators and standards of quality at three mountain summits in the Northern Forest. The three summits ranged from low to high levels of use, development, and management. Computer-generated photographs were used to present a range of resource, social, and managerial conditions in a stated choice survey. Results suggest that visitors prefer minimal resource impact, few other people, and low intensity management. However, when faced with tradeoffs, respondents accept more intensive management to help ensure resource protection. Findings also suggest that a range of recreation opportunities should be provided at mountain summits in the Northern Forest.     

The trade wind,the statesman and the system of commerce: Sir James Steuart's vision of political economy

In the conception of history of the abbé de Condillac, one thing is really original. He establishes a causal relation between the functioning of the human mind and the history of societies. First, the understanding of humankind is not disordered: society develops, stages follow one another. But the commercial stage leads societies to divide into classes, the landowners are interested only in frivolous, luxurious objects: they have become denatured. Their behaviour entails society in a long phase of decline. However, this course is not inevitable. Condillac wishes to reform the individual in order to modify society and he proposes economic safeguards capable of reducing disparities. Life is simple, but history is not halted.     

The price of the market: pursuit of self-interest as annihilation of self

The paper criticizes the view that the market provides for the well-being of individuals by offering the widest field for the pursuit of self-interest. It argues, first, that this view is disastrously mistaken because it misunderstands what individuals are, but, second, that proponents of this view??notably Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations and the neoclassical economists??actually show the opposite of what they claim: that is, they show that pursuit of self-interest in the market is the annihilation of self. Thus, the proponents of the view show that it is untenable and at least point toward the terms necessary for a more adequate alternative. The paper then asks whether the market must be like this, first, through considering a line of thought on the possibility of a non-predatory market that runs from Aristotle, through the Italian Civil Happiness school, to modern socialist writers. Second, it offers an alternative view of the individual, according to which individuality is in part constituted through substantial relations with other individuals, a version of which can be found in Smith??s Theory of Moral Sentiments and Lectures on Jurisprudence. On the basis of these two discussions, a market order that sustains rather than destroys individuals can be imagined. However, this order would have lost many central characteristics of the capitalist market order.     

A Monopoly Classroom Experiment

The author uses a simple classroom experiment to develop the economic model of monopoly. As a pedagogical tool, the experiment introduces students to the nature of the monopoly problem and motivates them to think of the associated efficiency issues as a divergence between private benefits and social contributions. As a test of economic principles, the experiment highlights the role of information and fairness ideals in determining economic outcomes.