This paper assesses the role of ideas in economic change, combining economic and historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Belief systems shape the system of categories ("pre-confirmatory bias") and perceptions (confirmatory bias), and are themselves constrained by fundamental values. We illustrate the model using the historical construction of racial categories. Given the post-Reformation fundamental belief that all men had rights, colonial powers after the 15th century constructed ideologies that the colonized groups they exploited were naturally inferior, and gave these beliefs precedence over other aspects of belief systems. Historical work finds that doctrines of race came into their own in the colonies that became the US after, not before, slavery; that out of the "scandal of empire" in India emerged a "race theory that cast Britons and Indians in a relationship of absolute difference"; and that arguments used by the settlers in Australia to justify their policies towards the Aborigines entailed in effect the expulsion of the Aborigines from the human race. Racial ideology shaped categories and perceptions in ways that we show can give rise to equilibrium fictions. In our framework, technology, contacts with the outside world, and changes in power and wealth matter not just directly but because they can lead to changes in ideology.

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Equilibrium Fictions: A Cognitive Approach to Societal Rigidity

The Balance of Power: History and Theory

are more or less likely to win wars has long been a contentious issue. The Greek general Thucydides’ chronicle of the defeat of democratic Athens in its twenty-four-year struggle with authoritarian Sparta in The Peloponnesian War, particularly his account of the Sicilian debacle, remains the classic indictment of the inability of democracies to prepare for and ght wars.1 Indeed, for most of Western history, pessimism dominated thinking about democracy and war. “Democratic defeatists,” from the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville to mid-twentieth-century realists such as E.H. Carr, George Kennan, and Walter Lippmann, believed that democracy was a decided liability in preparing for and ghting wars. Particularly during the Cold War, the pessimistic perspective on the ghting power of democracies was dominant.2 Even leaders of the free world, such as John F. Kennedy, believed that when democracy “competes with a system of government . . . built primarily for war, it is at a disadvantage.” Despite the end of the Cold War, a few Cassandras remain concerned that democracies are unprepared to meet the next major military threat from authoritarian states such as China or international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.4 Democracy and Victory

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Democracy and Victory: Why Regime Type Hardly Matters

International relations research has paid little attention to why states often spend precious resources building and maintaining domestic institutions in other states. I identify 198 cases of forcible domestic institutional promotion, the most costly form of such interventions, between 1555 and 2000. I note several patterns in the data: these interventions come in three historical clusters; they are carried out by states of several regime types; states engage in the practice repeatedly; target states tend to be undergoing internal instability; states tend to promote their own institutions; and targets tend to be of strategic importance. The most intensive periods of promotion coincide with high transnational ideological tension and high international insecurity. I argue that these two conditions interact: forcible promotion is most likely when great powers (1) need to expand their power; and (2) find that, by imposing on in smaller states those institutions most likely to keep their ideological confreres in power, they can bring those states under their influence. Although in periods of high insecurity domestic variables alone may account for institutional impositions, such impositions may nonetheless extend the promoting states' influence and thereby alter the balance of international power.

The Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions

Part I Coercion and Credibility: 1 Introduction 2 Commitment and signalling in coercive bargaining Part II A Theory of Military Threats: 3 A model of military threats 4 Comparing the instruments of coercion Part III Elements of Militarized Deterrence: 5 Militarization and the distribution of power and interests 6 The expansion of the Korean War, 1950 7 The price of peace and military threat effectiveness Part IV Conclusions: 8 Implications Appendix A Formalities for Chapter 2 Appendix B Formalities for Chapter 3 Appendix C Formalities for Chapter 4 Appendix D Formalities for Chapter 5

Military Threats: The Costs of Coercion and the Price of Peace

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The Peloponnesian War

Companies with technology platforms that address only a tiny part of the drug discovery process risk becoming optional or redundant accessories.

Business models in biotech

Going public with a valuation higher than $300 million may now be necessary to attract interest from institutional investors.

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Evolving paradigms in biotech IPO valuations.

If consolidation is a means for corporate survival, why do so many biotechnology companies consider it a dirty word?

Biotechnology's consolidation conundrum.

Bioentrepreneurs should have a keen grasp of how Wall Street determines value in order to prepare their company for public markets.

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Stelios Papadopoulos

Papers

The Peloponnesian War

Business models in biotech

Evolving paradigms in biotech IPO valuations.

Biotechnology's consolidation conundrum.

Quantifying the dream: Valuation approaches in biotechnology