https://www.sfu.ca/~wainwrig/Econ400/jensen-meckling.pdf

Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure

In this paper, the concept of social capital is introduced and illustrated, its forms are described, the social structural conditions under which it arises are examined, and it is used in an analys...

/pdf/social-capital-in-the-creation-of-human-capital-1836wo2872.pdf

Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital

The social world is accumulated history, and if it is not to be reduced to a discontinuous series of instantaneous mechanical equilibria between agents who are treated as interchangeable particles, one must reintroduce into it the notion of capital and with it, accumulation and all its effects. Capital is accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated,’ embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor. It is a vis insita, a force inscribed in objective or subjective structures, but it is also a lex insita, the principle underlying the immanent regularities of the social world. It is what makes the games of society – not least, the economic game – something other than simple games of chance offering at every moment the possibility of a miracle. Roulette, which holds out the opportunity of winning a lot of money in a short space of time, and therefore of changing one’s social status quasi-instantaneously, and in which the winning of the previous spin of the wheel can be staked and lost at every new spin, gives a fairly accurate image of this imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, in which every moment is perfectly independent of the previous one, every soldier has a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can become anything. Capital, which, in its objectified or embodied forms, takes time to accumulate and which, as a potential capacity to produce profits and to reproduce itself in identical or expanded form, contains a tendency to persist in its being, is a force inscribed in the objectivity of things so that everything is not equally possible or impossible. And the structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at a given moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e. , the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices.

Forms of Capital

This paper considers the prospects for constructing a neoclassical theory of growth and international trade that is consistent with some of the main features of economic development. Three models are considered and compared to evidence: a model emphasizing physical capital accumulation and technological change, a model emphasizing human capital accumulation through schooling, and a model emphasizing specialized human capital accumulation through learning-by-doing.

The mechanics of economic development

http://individual.utoronto.ca/zheli/sa1.pdf

On the mechanics of economic development

When parents are altruistic toward children, the choices of fertility and consumption come from the maximization of a dynastic utility function The maximization conditions imply first, an arbitrage condition for consumption across generations, and second, the equation of the benefit from an extra child to the net cost of rearing that child These conditions imply that fertility in open economies depends positively on the world interest rate, on the degree of altruism, and on the growth of child-survival probabilities; and negatively on the rate of technical progress and the growth rate of social security The growth of consumption across generations depends on changes in the net cost of rearing children, but not on interest rates or tirne preference Even when we include life-cycle elements, we conclude that the growth of aggregate consumption per capita depends in the long run on the growth of consumption across generations Thereby we show that real interest rates and growth rates of consumption per capita would be unrelated in the long run

A Reformulation of the Economic Theory of Fertility

In their Policy Forum “Paying patients for their tissue: The legacy of Henrietta Lacks” (6 July, p. [37][1]), R. D. Truog et al. oppose sharing biomedical research revenues with the patients whose tissues enable that research. They argue that “reconceptualizing tissue acquisition as an economic exchange rather than as a gift relationship” might reduce tissue donation by “crowd[ing] out” altruistic motivations. We are skeptical of this argument.

The possibility of compensation might crowd out some individual donations, but other altruism-motivated donations would increase because of compensation, and nonaltruistic donations would also increase. It thus seems unlikely that net willingness to supply tissue would decline. Patients for whom compensation would truly decrease the enjoyment of donating tissues could pass on their compensation to nonprofits such as the American Cancer Society.

Truog et al. also argue that offering compensation proportional to tissue value would be “unjust” because patients whose tissues yield “financial blockbusters” would be paid more than the vast majority of donors. This argument, too, is unconvincing. “Blockbuster” cell lines make some researchers very rich, whereas other researchers do not benefit at all; is that unjust? Moreover, it is standard to tie compensation to the value of personal characteristics such as intelligence or athletic ability. How could such a system, if applied to compensation for tissue donation, be less fair to patients than the current system, under which all revenues from tissue lines—“blockbuster” or otherwise—accrue to the medical community?

Offering value-based compensation to tissue donors would likely boost tissue supply. The great majority of patients would likely be willing to donate waste tissue in exchange for either a fixed fee or a chance to share in the rewards of financially successful research.

 [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1216888

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/337/6100/1292.2.full.pdf

Paying for tissue: net benefits.

Nieoczywistosci : ekonomiczna teoria wszystkiego

We develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time. Strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption. Such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable. They are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention. Our theory also implies that "cold turkey" is used to end strong addictions, that addicts often go on binges, that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods, and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction.

A Theory of Rational Addiction

The purpose of this paper is to analyze systematically the production of effort and its allocation among different market and non-market sectors. I believe that this analysis can explain much of the variation in earnings that is not explained by human capital. The first section introduces the material. The next section develops the basic theoretical analysis of the production and allocation of effort by a free person. Section III applies this analysis to the value placed on time a1 located to the non-market sector, the effect of hours worked on fatigue and earnings, life cycle variations-in earnings and hours worked, investment in health, and the effect of marriage on the earnings and health of men and women. Section IV considers worker effort from the view point of firms, and shows how various characteristics of firms determine the wage rates offered and the effort supplied by their workers. Section V analyzes the production and allocation of effort by slaves, and derives "expropriation rates'' and other implications about the treatment of slaves .

Gary S. Becker

Papers

A Reformulation of the Economic Theory of Fertility

Paying for tissue: net benefits.

Nieoczywistosci : ekonomiczna teoria wszystkiego

A Theory of Rational Addiction

A Theory of the Production and Allocation of Effort