Why does capitalism triumph in the West but fail almost everywhere else? Elegantly, and with rare clarity, Hernando de Soto revolutionizes our understanding of what capital is and why it has failed to benefit four-fifths of mankind -- and explains the solution. 'A revolutionary book ...may not be in the class of Das Kapital, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations or Keynes's General Theory. But if the criteria for joining that exclusive club is a capacity not only to change permanently the way we look at the world, but also to change the world itself, then there are good grounds for thinking that this book is surely a contender.' Donald Macintyre, The Independent 'Few people in Britain have heard of Hernando de Soto ...but The Mystery of Capital has already led the cognoscenti to put him in the pantheon of great progressive intellectuals of our age.' Mark Leonard, New Statesman 'A crucial contribution. A new proposal for change that is valid for the whole world' - Javier Perez de Cuellar (Former Secretary United Nations)

http://capeyorkpartnership.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/The-Mystery-of-Capital_Hernando-de-Soto-book-review-by-Noel-Pearson.pdf

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Scholars of culture, humanities and social sciences have increasingly come to an appreciation of the importance of the legal domain in social life, while critically engaged socio-legal scholars around the world have taken up the task of understanding "Law's Empire" in all of its cultural, political, and economic dimensions. The questions arising from these intersections, and addressing imperialisms past and present forms the subject matter of a special symposium issue of Social Identities under the editorship of Griffith University's Rob McQueen, and UBC's Wes Pue and with contributions from McQueen, Ian Duncanson, Renisa Mawani, David Williams, Emma Cunliffe, Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue, Fatou Camara, and Dianne Kirkby. This paper introduces the volume, forthcoming in late 2007. The central problematique of this issue has previously been explored through the 2005 Law's Empire conference, an informal but vibrant postcolonial legal studies network.

Law's Empire

We document the widespread existence of antisocial punishment, that is, the sanctioning of people who behave prosocially. Our evidence comes from public goods experiments that we conducted in 16 comparable participant pools around the world. However, there is a huge cross-societal variation. Some participant pools punished the high contributors as much as they punished the low contributors, whereas in others people only punished low contributors. In some participant pools, antisocial punishment was strong enough to remove the cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. We also show that weak norms of civic cooperation and the weakness of the rule of law in a country are significant predictors of antisocial punishment. Our results show that punishment opportunities are socially beneficial only if complemented by strong social norms of cooperation.

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Antisocial Punishment Across Societies

A substantial literature over the past thirty years has evaluated tradeoffs between money and fatality risks. These values in turn serve as estimates of the value of a statistical life. This article reviews more than 60 studies of mortality risk premiums from ten countries and approximately 40 studies that present estimates of injury risk premiums. This critical review examines a variety of econometric issues, the role of unionization in risk premiums, and the effects of age on the value of a statistical life. Our meta-analysis indicates an income elasticity of the value of a statistical life from about 0.5 to 0.6. The paper also presents a detailed discussion of policy applications of these value of a statistical life estimates and related issues, including risk-risk analysis.

/pdf/the-value-of-a-statistical-life-a-critical-review-of-market-4vq0tnp3xu.pdf

The value of a statistical life: A critical review of market estimates throughout the world

The Common European Sales Law is designed as an optional instrument that European parties engaged in cross-border transactions could choose for their transactions in preference to national law. The goal is to increase cross-border transactions and perhaps to enhance European identity. But the CESL is unlikely to achieve these goals. It raises transaction costs while producing few if any benefits; it is unlikely to spur beneficial jurisdictional competition; its consumer protection provisions will make it unattractive for businesses; and its impact on European identity is likely to be small.

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The Questionable Basis of the Common European Sales Law: The Role of an Optional Instrument in Jurisdictional Competition

This paper builds on contributions to a Conference on Benefit-Cost Analysis of Financial Regulation, held at the University of Chicago, to show how benefit-cost analysis (BCA) of financial regulations should be conducted. Our major themes are that (1) on theoretical grounds, BCA should be easier for financial regulation than for other areas of regulation where it is already used, such as health and safety regulation; (2) while many needed valuations for BCA of financial regulation do not yet exist, those valuations are theoretically measurable; (3) once regulators commit to using BCA, economists will have incentives to work on supplying those valuations; (4) BCA will improve financial regulation and make it less vulnerable to judicial challenge; (5) the specific protocols or paradigms of BCA will differ across different areas of financial regulation; and (6) in the regulation of systemically important financial systems the primary trade-off is between risk that increases the probability of a crisis or leaves debts to the taxpayer against the profits generated by firms.

/pdf/benefit-cost-paradigms-in-financial-regulation-5g8rigex0q.pdf

Benefit-Cost Paradigms in Financial Regulation

Why do we have a bankruptcy law? The conventional story is that bankruptcy law reflects two requirements of a modern commercial economy: a method for the orderly payment of debts owed to multiple creditors and a means to ensure that individual debtors retain sufficient assets and rights to maintain a dignified or at least nonpenurious existence. No doubt this story contains elements of the truth, but it also has many limitations. The story does not explain many significant attributes of the Bankruptcy Code, including the administrative structure it establishes, its reliance on a mixture of federaland state-determined rights, and its balancing of interests between creditors and debtors.

/pdf/the-political-economy-of-the-bankruptcy-reform-act-of-1978-2jah9gfhcg.pdf

The Political Economy of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978

A treaty satisfies what we call International Paretianism if it advances the interests of all states that join it, so that no state is made worse off. The principle might seem obvious, but it rules out nearly all the major proposals for a climate treaty, including proposals advanced by academics and by government officials. We defend International Paretianism, and for that reason urge commentators in the debate over climate justice to abandon efforts to right past wrongs, redistribute wealth, and achieve other abstract ideals through a climate treaty.

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International Paretianism: A Defense

Cost‐benefit analysis is routinely used by government agencies in order to evaluate projects, but it remains controversial among academics This paper argues that cost‐benefit analysis is best understood as a welfarist decision procedure and that use of cost‐benefit analysis is more likely to maximize overall well‐being than is use of alternative decision procedures The paper focuses on the problem of distorted preferences A person's preferences are distorted when his or her satisfaction does not enhance that person's well‐being Preferences typically thought to be distorted in this sense include disinterested preferences, uninformed preferences, adaptive preferences, and objectively bad preferences; further, preferences may be a poor guide to maximizing aggregate well‐being when wealth is unequally distributed The paper describes conditions under which agencies should correct for distorted preferences, for example, by constructing informed or nonadaptive preferences, discounting objectively b

/pdf/implementing-cost-benefit-analysis-when-preferences-are-2md7fq8f8d.pdf

Eric A. Posner

Papers

The Questionable Basis of the Common European Sales Law: The Role of an Optional Instrument in Jurisdictional Competition

Benefit-Cost Paradigms in Financial Regulation

The Political Economy of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978

International Paretianism: A Defense

Implementing Cost-Benefit Analysis when Preferences are Distorted