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

Default on sovereign debt is a form of political risk. Issuers and creditors have responded to this risk both by strengthening the terms in sovereign debt contracts that enable creditors to enforce their debts judicially and by creating terms that enable sovereigns to restructure their debts. These apparently contradictory approaches reflect attempts to solve an incomplete contracting problem in which debtors need to be forced to repay debts in good states of the world; debtors need to be granted partial relief from debt payments in bad states; debtors may attempt to exploit divisions among creditors in order to opportunistically reduce their debt burden; debtors may engage in excessively risky activities using creditors’ money; and debtors and creditors may attempt to externalize costs on the taxpayers of other countries. We support this argument with an empirical overview of the development of sovereign bond terms from 1960 to the present.

/pdf/political-risk-and-sovereign-debt-contracts-k6sjyyfgt7.pdf

Political Risk and Sovereign Debt Contracts

Comparative Constitutional Design: Tyrannophobia

THIS ARTICLE USES A SIGNALING MODEL TO EXPLAIN THE ROLE OF SYMBOLS IN PEOPLE 'S BEHAVIOR AND BELIEFS , WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION TO LEGAL MANIPULATION OF SYMBOLS. IT IS ARGUED THAT CERTAIN ACTIONS BECOME SYMBOLIC BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE PROPER COST STRUCTURE AND BECAUSE THEY ARE, FOR HISTORICAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS, FOCAL. THE GOVERNMENT CAN IN THEORY USE STANDARD LEGAL INSTRUMENTS (WHICH MAINLY AFFECT THE COST OF THE SIGNAL ) TO CHANGE EQUILIBRIUM BEHAVIOR AND BELIEF. THE USE OF THE LAW IN THIS WAY IS LIKELY TO HAVE UNPREDICTABLE EFFECTS BECAUSE OF MULTIPLE EQUILIBRIA AND OF THE SENSITIVITY OF BEHAVIOR TO PARAMETERS , BUT IT OCCURS FREQUENTLY BECAUSE LOBBYING AND OTHER ACTIONS THAT INFLUENCE LAWMAKING CAN BECOME SIGNALS THEMSELVES , AND THE LAW IS SIMPLY AN EQUILIBRIUM OUTCOME. THE ANALYSIS IS USED TO DISCUSS FLAG DESECRATION, CENSORSHIP, VOTING, AND ANTIDISCRIMINATI ON LAWS .

/pdf/simbolos-sinais-e-normas-sociais-na-politica-e-no-direito-22wbo9fc5q.pdf

Símbolos, sinais e normas sociais na política e no direito

L'invention concerne un procede permettant de provoquer et de regrouper des preferences sinceres de repondants, qui comprend des etapes consistant a attribuer un budget en monnaie a un repondant et a generer une interface utilisateur. L'interface utilisateur : affiche des budgets pour chaque repondant ; affiche des choix parmi des resultats alternatifs pour chaque repondant et un procede d'attribution de votes parmi des options par paiement selon une fonction quadratique ; affiche le resultat du vote pour chaque repondant ; permet a un tiers de selectionner et de contacter des repondants ; permet au tiers d'observer des choix de vote et des resultats de vote finaux ; et permet au tiers de commander des budgets et des options de vote.

Système et procédé de vote quadratique, quasi quadratique et convexe dans divers types de recherches et de votes

/pdf/unemployment-and-regulatory-policy-3gckgjg75e.pdf

Eric A. Posner

Papers

Political Risk and Sovereign Debt Contracts

Comparative Constitutional Design: Tyrannophobia

Símbolos, sinais e normas sociais na política e no direito

Système et procédé de vote quadratique, quasi quadratique et convexe dans divers types de recherches et de votes

Unemployment and Regulatory Policy