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.

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

The presidents who routinely are judged the greatest leaders are also the most heavily criticized by legal scholars. The reason is that the greatest presidents succeeded by overcoming the barriers erected by Madison's system of separation of powers, but the legal mind sees such actions as breaches of constitutional norms that presidents are supposed to uphold. With the erosion of Madisonian checks and balances, what stops presidents from abusing their powers? The answer lies in the complex nature of presidential leadership. The president is simultaneously leader of the country, a party, and the executive branch. The conflicts between these leadership roles put heavy constraints on his power.

Presidential Leadership & the Separation of Powers

Martii Koskenniemi argues that human rights law is indeterminate, and that arguments based on human rights unavoidably reflect the policy preferences of the speaker. I connect this argument to empirical evidence of the failure of international human rights treaties to improve human rights in countries that have ratified them. I argue that many features of the human rights regime that are celebrated by lawyers—the large number of treaties, the vast number of rights, the large amount of institutionalization, and the involvement of NGOs—actually reflect the failure of the regime. Governments tolerate these developments because they add to the indeterminacy of the legal regime, freeing them to act in the public interest when they are motivated to do so. International law is a vast field governing countless relationships between states, yet a very small part of it receives most of the attention—human rights. This may seem puzzling. The treaties that created the human rights regime are no different from the treaties that created the law of the sea and international trade law. Yet clearly people think about human rights law differently from the rest of international law. Lawyers who discuss the law of the sea or international trade law are likely, sooner or later, to ask whether the rules in those areas are consistent with human rights norms, while human rights lawyers can discuss human rights law without thinking about the law of the sea or the WTO. Many people insist that states are bound to respect human rights even if they have not ratified the relevant treaties, or have ratified them subject to reservations—while countries that do not belong to the WTO are not bound by its rules. Some people believe that human rights law binds states even when states explicitly repudiate it; human rights law is said to have a “constitutional” dimension. An enormous infrastructure has grown up around human rights. Countless NGOs monitor compliance with human rights in various countries. Governments routinely criticize each other for violating human rights. An endless array of commissions, councils, committees, courts, and offices attempt to administer the human rights treaties. While other treaty regimes also are governed by international organizations (the WTO, the Law of the Sea Authority), no other area of law has thrown up quite so many institutions, with complex, overlapping jurisdictions. It is also hard to think of another area of international law where there is so much activity: so many proposals for additional treaties, for expanding the scope of existing treaties, for strengthening and constructing new institutions. And yet the accomplishments of international human rights law seem rather slim. Countries rarely try to enforce the treaties against each other—at least, in a systematic way. They do not “retaliate” against each other for violating the treaties the way they often retaliate against countries that violate trade law. Countries do threaten human-rights violators with sanctions from 1 Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School. Thanks to Adam Chilton for

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Martii Koskenniemi on Human Rights: An Empirical Perspective

In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that noncitizens detained at Guantanamo Bay have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus and that the review procedures established by the Detainee Treatment Act do not provide an adequate substitute. Justice Anthony Kennedy rests his majority opinion on what he calls a theory of separation of powers, but on inspection it becomes clear that the real basis of the opinion lies elsewhere. The holding turns on an implicit theory about the rights of noncitizens, a theory that is prior to the conception of separation of powers and is essentially about who belongs to the political community or demos. Justice Kennedy’s theory is a cosmopolitan theory. Shortly after 9/11, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which authorized the president ‘‘to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.’’2 The Bush administration claimed that the AUMF authorized the military to detain and hold ‘‘enemy combatants,’’ a position that was accepted by the Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.3 But the Court also held that the detainees were entitled to a procedure that allows them to contest their status as

/pdf/boumediene-and-the-uncertain-march-of-judicial-4drqhczhey.pdf

Eric A. Posner

Papers

Presidential Leadership & the Separation of Powers

Martii Koskenniemi on Human Rights: An Empirical Perspective

Boumediene and the Uncertain March of Judicial Cosmopolitanism