Searle's Monadological Construction of Social Reality

A BSTRACT . One aim of this paper is to make visible the connection between Searle's views on social reality and his general ontology, and at the same time to show that some peculiar features of his analysis of social reality are a natural outcome of his general ontology. The paper contains five sections. In the first Searle's naturalism is philosophically situated and its differentia specifica explained. Then, Searle's view that intentional states exist only in brains is presented. One might say that, according to Searle, each mind is, although caused by a material brain, a Leibnizian monad. This view is related to an important, but neglected, distinction that Searle himself has made between requirement conditions of satisfaction and required conditions of satisfaction. In the third section, it is pointed out that, necessarily, sometimes there has to exist some kind of relation of satisfaction between the two kinds of conditions of satisfaction. Searle, however, has never really discussed what this satisfaction relation may look like. The upshot of all the remarks is that, fourth, Searle's general ontology automatically implies an ontology of social reality according to which a social fact can only exist as a scattered aggregate whose items exist in the brains of the people who constitute it. Finally and fifth, I try to think with Searle against Searle. His monadological view of social reality cannot, Searle notwithstanding, be regarded as being close to the direct realism of common sense. Searle's realism is an indirect realism. However, if Searle's view that intentional states exist only in brains is rejected, then the rest of his ontology has features that may take us closer to a direct realism. Such a move, which in one respect takes us closer to common sense, takes us in another respect away from common sense. The title of the last section is "Social Reality and the Impossibility of Common Sense."     

Small firms,business dynamics and differential development of economic well-being

In recent years a growing stream of research has examined the relationships between structural characteristics of regions and their levels of new firm formation. This empirical study aims at supplementing such findings with analyses that include other forms of business dynamics, and also the possible well-being effects of such dynamics. From a unique and comprehensive data set that tracks all births, deaths, expansions, and contractions of commercial business establishments in Sweden 1985–89, six groups of regions with different patterns of dynamics are extracted by means of cluster analysis. The clusters' structural characteristics and their development of economic well-being are also compared. The results suggesta) that the patterns of business dynamics are contingent on the structural characteristics of regions,b) that high formation and turnover of establishments are associated with a relative increase in economic well-being, andc) that small, autonomous firms have a vital role in this process.     

The Division of Labor Under Homogeneity: A Critique of Mises and Rothbard

A bstract .   Even the most passionate defenders of free trade, such as Mises and Rothbard, claim that trade cannot occur under conditions of strict homogeneity of land, labor, and capital. We show that specialization, trade, and the division of labor can emerge even when resources are initially homogenous, due to "natural heterogeneity," economies of scale, and learning.     

On optimal control of income generating activities, and the value of flexible production design

The paper provides a closed form solution for the value of a firm which costlessly can change its mode of operation between two activities. The technology is such that production is zero from the inactive production line. In addition we assume that the production potential on any production line is idle when not operated, else the production follows a geometric Brownian motion. Although this framework is rather general, it is motivated by the problem to produce a natural resource located in two separate wells/ores, using a single (flexible) production unit. For what seems to be reasonable parameter values, the flexible unit is seen to achieve a surprisingly large value relative to the value achievable by a comprehensive unit, producing both alternatives simultaneously. In addition it is interesting to note that switching might occur even if the active production line gives the highest immediate income.     

The flypaper effect and political strength

Simple models of local government behavior predict equal effects of private income and unconditional federal grants on local government expenditures. Numerous empirical analyses, however, find that the effect of grants is larger than the income effect. We argue that this flypaper effect may be a result of weak political leaderships in multi–issue and multi–party decision–making environments. In multi–issue institutions, a strong political leadership may reduce inefficiency due to interest group influence and inter–party bargaining in the local council. Utilizing data for Norwegian local governments in the 1930s, we find that political strength reduces the size of the flypaper effect. When the local council consists of only one political party, we cannot reject absence of a flypaper effect, while the flypaper effect is large in fragmented local councils. Received: June 2000 / accepted: February 2001     

Money and insurance in a turnpike environment

Summary We study the effects of introducing a feasible insurance market into the spatial separation model of money described in Mitsui and Watanabe (1989). We show that the insurance contract may or may not drive out money. We also show that, depending on the degree of risk aversion, the additional market can reduce welfare for all agents, increase welfare for all agents, or increase welfare for some agents and reduce it for others.The authors would like to thank Ed Green, Preston Miller, Ed Prescott and Neil Wallace for valuable comments.     

How Often to Sample a Continuous-Time Process in the Presence of Market Microstructure Noise

In theory, the sum of squares of log returns sampled at highfrequency estimates their variance. When market microstructurenoise is present but unaccounted for, however, we show thatthe optimal sampling frequency is finite and derives its closed-formexpression. But even with optimal sampling, using say 5-minreturns when transactions are recorded every second, a vastamount of data is discarded, in contradiction to basic statisticalprinciples. We demonstrate that modeling the noise and usingall the data is a better solution, even if one misspecifiesthe noise distribution. So the answer is: sample as often aspossible.