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.

/pdf/antisocial-punishment-across-societies-45ue2he7yk.pdf

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

Ricerche recenti mostrano come il potere datoriale nel mercato del lavoro abbia contribuito ad aumentare le diseguaglianze salariali e la stagnazione economica. Sebbene la legislazione anti-trust impedisca alle imprese di restringere la concorrenza nei mercati del lavoro come nei mer-cati del prodotto, il governo federale statunitense non ha fatto molto per affrontare il problema del mercato del lavoro, e le azioni legali sono state rare e in gran parte infruttuose. Una ragione e che le tecniche di analisi antitrust ideate per valutare il potere datoriale nel mercato del lavoro sono di gran lunga meno evolute rispetto alle regole ideate per stimare il potere (di mercato) nel mercato del prodotto. Per correggere questa asimmetria, il saggio individua una serie di metodi per stimare gli effetti delle concentrazioni nei mercati del lavoro. Gli Autori estendono poi que-sto approccio ad altre condotte anticoncorrenziali realizzate dai datori di lavoro nei confronti dei lavoratori. Da ultimo, il saggio evidenzia alcuni argomenti e prove che indicano come il potere di mercato possa essere addirittura piu significativo nei mercati del lavoro che nei mer-cati del prodotto.

Potere datoriale nel mercato del lavoro e rimedi antitrust

102 Cornell Law Review 87 (2016)Regulatory agencies are required to perform cost-benefit analysis of major rules. However, in many cases regulators refuse to report a monetized value for the benefits of a rule that they issue. Sometimes, they report no monetized value; at other times, they report a monetized value but also state that not all benefits have been quantified. On occasion, regulators also refuse to monetize or fully monetize costs. These practices raise a puzzle. If a regulator chooses not to monetize all the benefits or all the costs, it is not doing cost-benefit analysis. If it is not doing cost-benefit analysis, what is it doing? To investigate this question, we compiled a data set consisting of all major regulations issued by agencies from 2010 to 2013. We come to three conclusions. First, there are countless examples where agencies fail to fully monetize the benefits and costs of regulations. Second, in most cases, agencies could easily monetize or partially monetize those benefits and costs. Third, even where monetization would be difficult, the agencies could and should have made explicit the implicit valuations they relied on and supported those valuations as much as possible with empirical evidence. We then proceed to explain how agencies could engage in cost-benefit analysis even when they do not have a reliable basis for estimating valuations. Even where they lack complete data, agency regulators may be able to make reasonable guesses about the harms or benefits from regulations. In many cases, these guesses will be based on the experience and latent knowledge of the agency staff. These preliminary guesses constitute Bayesian prior probabilities. While agencies should be permitted to “guess” — that is, supply a subjective prior probability — they must also be required to update their estimates as they gain new information.

/pdf/unquantified-benefits-and-the-problem-of-regulation-under-37ra5acxry.pdf

Unquantified Benefits and the Problem of Regulation under Certainty

Dockets of War

Balance-of-powers arguments are ubiquitous in judicial opinions and academic articles that address separation-of-powers disputes over the President’s removal authority, power to disregard statutes, authority to conduct foreign wars, and much else. However, the concept of the balance of powers has never received a satisfactory theoretical treatment. Possible theories of the balance of powers are examined and all are rejected as unworkable and normatively implausible. Judges and scholars should abandon the balance-of-powers metaphor and instead address directly whether bureaucratic innovation is likely to improve policy outcomes. Additionally, implications for the underenforcement controversy are discussed.

/pdf/balance-of-powers-arguments-the-structural-constitution-and-4vrxy2kpj6.pdf

Balance‐of‐Powers Arguments, the Structural Constitution, and the Problem of Executive “Underenforcement”

The Limits of International Law received a great deal of criticism when it was published in 2005 but it has aged well. The skeptical, social-scientific methodology that it recommended has become a normal mode of international law scholarship. And the dominant idealistic view of international law that the book criticized is today in shambles, unable to explain the turmoil in international politics. This essay reflects on the book’s reception and corrects common misperceptions of its arguments.

/pdf/the-limits-of-international-law-fifteen-years-later-1misob8tkt.pdf

Eric A. Posner

Papers

Potere datoriale nel mercato del lavoro e rimedi antitrust

Unquantified Benefits and the Problem of Regulation under Certainty

Dockets of War

Balance‐of‐Powers Arguments, the Structural Constitution, and the Problem of Executive “Underenforcement”

The Limits of International Law Fifteen Years Later