In tort law, including Lithuanian tort law, damage usually is divided into two types: pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage. The concept of non-pecuniary damage has recently become a focus of attention of Lithuanian legal researchers. However, it has to be noted that the issues related to the concept of pecuniary damage remain scarcely analysed. As a result, the unique type of pecuniary damage, i.e. the damage of purely economic character, has received no attention whatsoever in Lithuanian tort law. It is (...) usually believed that the defence of the values of purely material character fall into the sphere of contractual law, while tort law is not concerned with the protection of these values. However, in the course of the development of social relations it has become apparent that in the present-day society personal financial losses have become equally important to the cases of actual damage to a person or a property. On the other hand, the fear to overextend the limits of tort law and, thus, limit the persons’ freedom to act, coupled with the different nature of the values protected by tort law provide grounds for the position that relatively abstract financial interests and absolute values or relative personal values should be protected in different ways. Referring to the doctrine and practice of foreign countries as well as the results of the analysis of Lithuanian positive law and court practices, in this article we aim at giving an answer to the question of where and how the ambit of protection under the tort law in the cases of damage of purely economic character should be defined. (shrink)

A decision was made at the UNFCCC, COP-18 meeting in Doha in 2012 to create a work programme on loss and damage. Part of this programme was to include the production of a technical paper to enhance the general understanding of non-economic losses from climate change. The following article looks carefully at that paper in order to discover whether it provides an adequate conceptual understanding of non-economic losses. Several shortcomings of the paper’s conceptualization of these losses are (...) identified. An alternative ethical framework with methods better suited for capturing a fuller range of non-economic losses is considered. This framework is likely to be most useful if used prospectively for the purpose of devising better adaptation policies to head off potential future losses rather than if used retrospectively for quantifying losses that have already occurred for the purposes of providing compensation. (shrink)

The English Court of Appeal is currently faced with three analytically distinct approaches to the question of when one party owes another a duty of care in respect of her economic interests, all of which bear the authority of the House of Lords. Unable to choose between them, it has recently adopted a fourth approach combining which combines them, in the apparent belief that the combination will eradicate any individual deficiencies. Against the background of a recent case, the author (...) argues that this is a holding strategy at best and methodologically deficient. He also challenges the continuing lip-service paid by courts to models of liability based upon ‘assumptions of responsibility,’ examining and criticising the causes of their persistence in the law in the face of widespread academic criticism. Instead, the author argues, the House of Lords should now clearly endorse a single reasoning strategy to economic loss cases based on the three-stage approach in Caparo Industries v Dickman. Properly understood, this approach offers the best prospect of facilitating consistent and transparent decision-making in the longer term. (shrink)

Human activity is causing high rates of biodiversity loss. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the extent to which socioeconomic factors exacerbate or ameliorate our impacts on biological diversity. One such factor, economic inequality, has been shown to affect public health, and has been linked to environmental problems in general. We tested how strongly economic inequality is related to biodiversity loss in particular. We found that among countries, and among US states, the number of species that (...) are threatened or declining increases substantially with the Gini ratio of income inequality. At both levels of analysis, the connection between income inequality and biodiversity loss persists after controlling for biophysical conditions, human population size, and per capita GDP or income. Future research should explore potential mechanisms behind this equality-biodiversity relationship. Our results suggest that economic reforms would go hand in hand with, if not serving as a prerequisite for, effective conservation. (shrink)

Transhumance is a form of extensive livestock production that involves seasonal movements among ecological zones or landscape types. Rangeland-based transhumance constitutes an important social and economic relationship to nature in many regions of the world, including across the Western US. However, social and ecological drivers of change are reshaping transhumant practices, and managers must adapt to increased demands for public rangeland use. Specifically, concerns for wildlife conservation have led to reduced access to seasonal public lands grazing for western US (...) livestock producers. To understand how managers adapt to loss of grazing areas (called “seasonal ranges”) we create agroecological calendars from manager records spanning 35 years (1986–2021) at the US Sheep Experiment Station in Idaho and Montana, US. The calendars illustrate how a loss of winter and summer ranges after 2013 coincided with shifts in the operation’s adaptive strategies, leading to more grazing of fall crop residue and purchased winter feed, and reducing flexibility to move livestock to cope with variable forage conditions. These changes shifted the job duties and experiences of farm workers and managers, and raised several new questions related to sheep production and vegetation management outcomes that merit future research. Transhumant system transformation has implications for human relationships with nature, rural communities, sheep genetics, production, and vegetation communities. For livestock operations that rely on government-managed lands to sustain transhumant traditions, innovative forms of collaboration and social adaptation that help secure access to seasonal ranges will be as important as technological innovations to address biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, and food system sustainability issues that are reshaping access to grazing lands. (shrink)

Objective: Losing the only child is considered as the most severe kind of bereavement. It can trigger intense grief symptoms along with loss of psychosocial resources, but meanwhile, it can also lead to posttraumatic growth (PTG). The current study aimed to examine (a) whether a curvilinear relationship exists between grief and PTG, and (b) the moderating role of resources-loss among Chinese bereaved parents who lost their only child (shidu parents). Methods: 199 shidu parents from five provinces completed the (...) assessment packet covering prolonged grief symptoms and PTG, as well as resource loss. Hierarchical regression analyses were computed to examine the curvilinear relationship and the moderating effect of interpersonal loss and socio-economic loss. Results: There was no significant curvilinear relationship between grief and PTG in shidu parents. Under the high levels of interpersonal loss, shidu parents’ PTG scores decreased as the severity of grief increased. However, the socio-economic loss did not show a significant moderating effect. Conclusion: The results of the current study did not show a significant curvilinear relationship between grief and PTG in shidu parents. High levels of grief coupled with high levels of interpersonal loss may interfere with their ability to achieve PTG. Therefore, evaluating degrees of interpersonal loss seems to be an important part of the treatment process when working with shidu parents. To facilitate their adaptation from a positive perspective, helping them maintain existing or develop new interpersonal relationships may be helpful. (shrink)

Ultrasociality refers to the social organization of a few species, including humans and some social insects, having a complex division of labor, city-states, and an almost exclusive dependence on agriculture for subsistence. We argue that the driving forces in the evolution of these ultrasocial societies were economic. With the agricultural transition, species could directly produce their own food and this was such a competitive advantage that those species now dominate the planet. Once underway, this transition was propelled by the (...) selection of within-species groups that could best capture the advantages of (1) actively managing the inputs to food production, (2) a more complex division of labor, and (3) increasing returns to larger scale and larger group size. Together these factors reoriented productive life and radically altered the structure of these societies. Once agriculture began, populations expanded as these economic drivers opened up new opportunities for the exploitation of resources and the active management of inputs to food production. With intensified group-level competition, larger populations and intensive resource exploitation became competitive advantages, and the “social conquest of Earth” was underway. Ultrasocial species came to dominate the earth's ecosystems. Ultrasociality also brought a loss of autonomy for individuals within the group. We argue that exploring the common causes and consequences of ultrasociality in humans and the social insects that adopted agriculture can provide fruitful insights into the evolution of complex human society. (shrink)

Corruption involves greed, money, and risky decision-making. We explore the love of money, pay satisfaction, probability of risk, and dishonesty across cultures. Avaricious monetary aspiration breeds unethicality. Prospect theory frames decisions in the gains-losses domain and high-low probability. Pay dissatisfaction (in the losses domain) incites dishonesty in the name of justice at the individual level. The Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI, signals a high-low probability of getting caught for dishonesty at the country level. We theorize that decision-makers adopt avaricious love-of-money aspiration (...) as a lens and frame dishonesty in the gains-losses domain (pay satisfaction-dissatisfaction, Level 1) and high-low probability (CPI, Level 2) to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity. We challenge the myth: Pay satisfaction mitigates dishonesty across nations consistently. Based on 6500 managers in 32 countries, our cross-level three-dimensional visualization offers the following discoveries. Under high aspiration conditions, pay dissatisfaction excites the highest- (third-highest) avaricious justice-seeking dishonesty in high (medium) CPI nations, supporting the certainty effect. However, pay satisfaction provokes the second-highest avaricious opportunity-seizing dishonesty in low CPI entities, sustaining the possibility effect—maximizing expected utility. Under low aspiration conditions, high pay satisfaction consistently leads to low dishonesty, demonstrating risk aversion—achieving ultimate serenity. We expand prospect theory from a micro and individual-level theory to a cross-level theory of monetary wisdom across 32 nations. We enhance the S-shaped Curve to three 3-D corruption surfaces across three levels of the global economic pyramid, providing novel insights into behavioral economics, business ethics, the environment, and responsibility. (shrink)

I am a behavioral economist, who is interested in both behavioral sciences and economic behavior. By the term “economic behavior” I refer to the calculative reasoned domain of economic analysis, whereas by “behavioral economics” I address aspects of human feelings, emotions and everything that is not captured by the “rational” paradigm. Evidently, erroneous calculations, as well as unhinged sentiments lead to economic losses, and every change in the economics of the world has both calculative and behavioral (...) sides to it. In what follows, we examine these two sides of behavior in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic by drawing on contemporaneous data, forecasts, and images. Each side of behavior reveals distinctive insights, and intriguingly, not all outcomes count as loss. As we face this crisis, there is a clear environmental gain that we would be smart to preserve post pandemic. (shrink)

Since the choice of a particular loss function strongly influences the resulting inference, it seems necessary to rely on “intrinsic” losses when no information is available about the utility function of the decision-maker, rather than to call for classical losses like the squared error loss. Since this setting is quite similar to the derivation of noninformative priors in Bayesian analysis, we first recall the conditions of this derivation and deduce from these conditions some requirements on the intrinsic losses. (...) It then appears that these loss functions should only depend on the sampling distribution and that they should be independent of the parameterization of the distribution. The resulting estimators are therefore transformation equivariant. We study the properties of two natural intrinsic losses, namely entropy and Hellinger losses, and show that they can be expressed in closed form for exponential families. Moreover, the entropy loss also provides analytic expressions of Bayes estimators under conjugate priors; the derivation of Bayes estimators associated with the Hellinger loss is more cumbersome, as shown in Poisson and Gamma cases, while leading to similar estimators. (shrink)

Loss aversion can occur in riskless and risky choices. We present novel evidence on both in a non-student sample (660 randomly selected customers of a car manufacturer). We measure loss aversion in riskless choice in endowment effect experiments within and between subjects and find similar levels of average loss aversion in both. The subjects of the within study also participate in a simple lottery choice task which arguably measures loss aversion in risky choices. We find substantial (...) heterogeneity in both measures of loss aversion. Loss aversion in riskless choice and loss aversion in risky choice are strongly positively correlated, but on average riskless loss aversion is higher than risky loss aversion. We find that in both choice tasks, loss aversion increases in age, income, and wealth, and decreases in education. Our results provide novel supportive input to the debate about the reality of loss aversion. (shrink)

The article identifies real losses of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises of Ukraine under the influence of modern challenges. The main purpose of the study is to implement a scientific and methodological approach to assess the impact of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of enterprises. A critical analysis of the content of scientific publications on the studied issues revealed the lack of an integrated approach to establishing the real losses of foreign economic (...) activity of enterprises under the influence of modern challenges. The urgency of solving a certain problem is due to the scale of the impact of modern challenges on the dynamics of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises, which requires an assessment of such an impact for the further development of measures that will be aimed at minimizing the negative impact of modern challenges. The methodological basis is the system of methods used to obtain the results of the study: theoretical generalization and analytical methods ‒ to clarify scientific approaches in determining the impact of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of enterprises; generalization, grouping and integral evaluation ‒ to determine the level of influence of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises in 2013‒2021; relative and absolute deviations, coefficient analysis of changes in foreign trade turnover ‒ to establish the volume of losses of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises of Ukraine under the influence of modern challenges; logical generalization ‒ to obtain conclusions and develop recommendations based on research results. The object of research in the work is the foreign economic activity of enterprises. The article presents the results of assessing the impact of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises, which became possible due to the developed and implemented author's scientific and methodological approach. Analysis and logical generalization of the results of assessing the impact of modern challenges on the development of foreign economic activity of industrial enterprises became the basis for determining the real volumes of losses of their foreign trade turnover. The results of the study have practical value for the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine and the Entrepreneurship and export promotion office, because they can serve as the basis for developing a program of recommendations for activating the export initiative of industrial enterprises under modern conditions. (shrink)

A cash-flow viability model is used to evaluate the impacts of land-use zoning on farm households in New Jersey. Findings suggest that zoning results in increased production expenses, lower efficiency and profitability, and the devaluation of land assets. Cash flow and economic viability are, thus, reduced. Impacts of zoning on farm incomes, off-farm incomes, revenues from land sales, indebtedness, and farm sizes were not statistically significant. The results suggest that the use of land-use zoning statutes to guarantee the existence (...) of agriculture may not be equitable unless transferable development rights or other methods of compensating farmers for their losses are simultaneously implemented. (shrink)

The last financial crisis revealed a gap between business practice and ethics. In Value Economics, Griffiths and Lucas examine some of the reasons for this ethical gap and discuss the resulting loss of confidence in the financial system. One of the reasons has been hazy or inadequate thinking about how we value economic enterprises. With the close link between the creation of value and business ethics in mind, this book proposes that economic value should become the basic (...) metric for evaluating performance in the creation of value, and for establishing fair and reasonable standards for executive compensation. Value Economics considers a number of rational philosophical principles for business management, on which practical codes of business ethics can be based. As the creation of value has moral implications for economic justice, the book reaffirms the argument for economics as a moral science, and seeks, within the context of proposed changes in the regulation and control of financial services, to answer the following question: will things really change after the last financial crisis? (shrink)

One of the most important principles of the European Community law is the prohibition of the abuse of a dominant position based on Article 82 of the EC Treaty. Predatory pricing is one of the forms of the abuse of a dominant position. It is likely that the world financial and economic crisis will lead to an increase in competition among the undertakings. The fact that some dominant undertakings seeking to sustain or increase their market share might decide to (...) engage in predatory pricing and that no comprehensive research on predatory pricing has been carried out by legal scholars in Lithuania and the European Union up to date, underlines the relevance of this study. To decide whether dominant undertaking has become a “predator”, it is necessary to evaluate several issues, such as the ability of the dominant undertaking to recoup its losses incurred during the alleged application of predatory pricing strategy. The judicial institutions of the European Union pay little attention to this issue and might recognize that predatory pricing took place even without the evidence on the possibility for the undertaking to recoup its predatory losses. This study analyses the recovery of predatory losses by the dominant undertaking and the importance of such recovery in determining whether or not the dominant undertaking engaged in predatory pricing. (shrink)

Economic models of addiction are choice-based. These models push the choice paradigm too far by modeling addiction as rational, normative behavior. Heyman's target article provides a sensible alternative to this economic approach by emphasizing that addiction is characterized by ambivalence and a perceived loss of self control. However, matching may not be a satisfactory platform on which to build this alternative model. Matching experiments do not provide evidence of ambivalence or perceived loss of self control.

This paper offers an economic rationale for compulsory licensing of needed medicines in developing countries. The patent system is based on a trade-off between the “deadweight losses” caused by market power and the incentive to innovate created by increased profits from monopoly pricing during the period of the patent. However, markets for essential medicines under patent in developing countries with high income inequality are characterized by highly convex demand curves, producing large deadweight losses relative to potential profits when monopoly (...) firms exercise profit-maximizing pricing strategies. As a result, these markets are systematically ill-suited to exclusive marketing rights, a problem which can be corrected through compulsory licensing. Open licenses that permit any qualified firm to supply the market on the same terms, such as may be available under licenses of right or essential facility legal standards, can be used to mitigate the negative effects of government-granted patents, thereby increasing overall social welfare. (shrink)

The SARS-COVID-2 virus that causes the Coronavirus has been having a challenging and devastating impact on finances and jobs worldwide. More specifically, in South Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a crippling effect on jobs. Companies and businesses are struggling to operate and retain workers as revenue streams are drying up. Owners of companies and businesses have been forced to make difficult decisions. An example is the retrenchment of workers by some organizations because of the financial fall-out due to the (...) coronavirus pandemic. Also, before the pandemic, South Africa had unemployment challenges, economic downgrading, and high levels of inequality. These challenges bring to mind what the employment method and strategy will look like during the -COVID-19. In view of these challenges, one question that comes to mind is: given the COVID-19pandemic and the fact that the job losses affected people of all races, should the policies of affirmative action and preferential hiring still be considered in South Africa? Thus, this paper is a philosophical reflection on COVID-19, job losses, affirmative action, and preferential hiring in South Africa. In reflecting on the above, this paper aims to show that affirmative action and preferential hiring should not be considered in South Africa during the -COVID-19. I conclude that in the face of this tragedy, for the sustainability of the economy, everyone needs to work together to re-establish and reconstruct the country and build an inclusive economy. Keywords: Affirmative action, COVID-19 pandemic, Job losses, Preferential hiring, South Africa. (shrink)

Ideally, the government of any nation is in a contract with the citizens for protection of life, property and freedom while the citizens are obliged to obey government laws. Moreso, the government is to discharge her duties without discriminating against any person or group. In Nigeria there are economic and administrative policies that discriminate against the Igbo nation resulting in dire consequences. Since economic policies make or mar the wellbeing of citizens especially in business, the need for fairness, (...) equity, and justice in the formulation and execution of policies is unquestionable. The Igbo of South East Nigeria, who are very active in business and entrepreneurship, suffer untold disadvantages and massive economic losses due to the lopsided and discriminatory economic policies churned out by successive Nigerian governments. Here we examine and argue against such policies based on their ethical implications and effects on individual and national development. (shrink)

The possibility of enhancing human abilities often raises public concern about equality and social impact. This chapter aims at one particular group of technologies, cognitive enhancement, and one particular fear, that enhancement will create social divisions and possibly expanding inequalities. The chapter argues that cognitive enhancements could offer significant social and economic benefits. The basic forms of internal cognitive enhancement technologies foreseen today are pharmacological modifications, genetic interventions, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and neural implants. Cognitive enhancements can influence the economy (...) through reduction of losses, individual economic benefits, and society‐wide benefits. The strongest objection to the introduction of any enhancement technology is that it will create inequality, injustice, and unfairness. While there are clear economic and social benefits to cognitive enhancement, there exist anumber of obstacles to its development and use. One obstacle is the present system for licensing drugs and medical treatments. (shrink)

Wagering contingent on a previous decision, or post-decision wagering, has recently been proposed to measure conscious awareness. Whilst intuitively appealing, it remains unclear whether economic context interacts with subjective confidence and how such interactions might impact on the measurement of awareness. Here we propose a signal detection model which predicts that advantageous wagers placed on the identity of preceding stimuli are affected by loss aversion, despite stimulus visibility remaining constant. This pattern of predicted results was evident in a (...) psychophysical task where we independently manipulated perceptual and economic factors. Changes in wagering behaviour induced by changes in wager size were largely driven by changes in criterion, consistent with the model. However, for near-threshold stimuli, a reduction in wagering efficiency was also evident, consistent with an apparent but potentially illusory decrease in awareness of the stimulus. These findings challenge an assertion that post-decision wagering provides a direct index of subjective awareness. (shrink)

Socio-economic life may differ in terms of cultures and beliefs. Today, it is seen that it is impossible for socio-economic life not to be affected by the rapidly developing digitalization. Digitalization proclaims its dominance in most areas of social life, but especially in economic fields its effect is thought to be more different because economic development is the basis of the digital development. Due to digital economic models based on informational, global and network organizations, people (...) interact with more people than in traditional society. Thus, people contribute to the creation of a real competitive environment by participating in economic processes on a more comprehensive and egalitarian basis. Economic models supported by technological communication tools, e-mails, networks and innovative software are getting stronger day by day and spread to most areas of social life. The effect of digitalization on the economic field prepares the ground for important discussions especially in the relationship between religion and economic life. New forms of shopping such as e-commerce and crypto money that emerged as a result of digital developments are closely related to the approach of religion to economic innovation. Should religion or religious people take a stand in the face of new economic models and crypto money developing in the digitalization environment? Has the sociological role of religion in socio-economic life changed with digitalization? What is the functional dimension of crypto money in the relationship between socio-economic life and religion? The answers to such questions are a matter of curiosity. In this study, research will be made within the framework of the problems whose answers are the subject of curiosity. The main purpose of this study is to reveal the equivalence of crypto money, one of the new economic models in social life, and its relationship with religion, which is human and social capital, in an environment where digitalization is rapidly developing. Methods used in this study are literature review, field research and interviews with people using cryptocurrency. According to the findings, it has been observed that people are exposed to religious concerns when using crypto money. There have even been those who think that the losses in cryptocurrencies are also related to ignoring religious sensitivities. As a result, crypto money will make its presence felt more and more in the new world order and this situation should be considered in terms of religious sociological dimensions. It is seen that it will be beneficial to develop the crypto money, which has emerged as a new generation money and has many types, in line with the general economic models and to be developed in a way that will eliminate the concerns of the religious in this context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate RaworthYoko NagaseKate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. London: Random House Business Books, 2017. 372 pp. £20. ISBN 9781847941374.Question: Is this a book about utopia? Answer: Yes, indeed; it is a book about a twenty-first-century utopia represented by the Doughnut.The author presents a vision of a pragmatic utopia, represented by the (...) inside of her Doughnut that is both distributive and regenerative. According to the author, a distributive economy is "one whose dynamics tend to disperse and circulate value as it is created, rather than concentrating it in ever-fewer hands." A regenerative economy is "one in which people become full participants in regenerating Earth's life-giving cycles so that we thrive within planetary boundaries" (156).The emphasis on the fair distribution of income, wealth, and means of production is an ideal pursued by famous utopians, from perfectly equal distribution of everything in Thomas More's Utopia to very libertarian position of "whatever he has justly made he has a right to keep" by H. G. Wells.1 The distributive Doughnut community aims to enable individuals to be, in Amartya Sen's words, "healthy, empowered and creative—so that they can choose to be and do things in life that they value" (43). This ideal of individuals' rights to choose their life and to realise their ends is the centerpiece of libertarians' ideal society.2 The Doughnut, however, leans heavily toward democratic socialism. Arguments for redistributive measures such as a universal basic income and taxes on land and wealth put forward by the author go beyond promoting equal opportunity and emphasize the necessity of economic means to make the best out of the opportunities (164, 180, 200). [End Page 528]The issue of sustainability at the global level is a concept that does not appear in the classical utopian literature, even though the idea of living happily in perpetuity is very much the tenet of many classical utopian societies. Given the extent of the geographical knowledge that existed by the time Wells explored his idea of a utopia, he was no longer able to set it in some not-yetdiscovered place on Earth like his predecessors did—hence the adaptation of "another planet."3 But this setup had nothing to do with the concept of the ecological limit of Earth. Pre-nineteenth-century utopians would be familiar with the contents of the Doughnut's foundation, the inner shell that consists of the social and economic factors such as food, health, education, and housing. However, the outer shell of the Doughnut is very twenty-first century, enclosing the nine planetary boundaries of the Doughnut as a life-support system, such as ozone layer depletion, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, and climate change (44–48).The author points out that we need to get a grip on understanding how we belong in the world. Instead of relying on the power of words as George Orwell's Thought Police, the author takes full advantage of the power of the visual, by drawing the Doughnut as a map for a new economy and society.4 If studying economics is tantamount to "mastering the mother tongue of public policy" (287), Doughnut Economics is a critical introduction to and the foundation of economic, environmental, and social policymaking.Rather than utopias as purely thought exercise by Plato or More, Raworth, like David Hume, presents a model of a utopia that is meant to be achievable.5 The economics of the Doughnut does not depend on any unrealistic assumptions of human nature. The author proposes means to reaching inside the Doughnut without abolishing the market system or private property rights. But a strong emphasis is placed on additional redistributive policies and regulations that are deemed critical toward sustainability. This position is consistent with that of the former chancellor of Germany who reportedly said that she "wanted as much market economics as possible, but as much state intervention as necessary."6 In promoting the open-source circular economy movement, the author wonders if it may seem "unfeasibly utopian" (231). Yet given the pace... (shrink)

This book presents the first full-length explanation in English of Heinsohn and Steiger's groundbreaking theory of money and interest, which emphasizes the role played by private property rights. Ownership economics gives an alternative explanation of money and interest, proposing that operations enabled by property lead to interest and money, rather than exchange of goods. Like any other approach, it has to answer economic theory's core question: what is the loss that has to be compensated by interest? Ownership economics (...) accepts neither a temporary loss of goods, as in neoclassical economics, nor Keynes's temporary loss of already existing, exogenous money as the cause of interest. Rather, money is created as a non-physical title to property in a credit contract secured by a debtor's collateral and the creditor's net worth. This book is an edited English translation of a highly successful German text, and offers the first book-length treatment of a theory which has received much interest since its first appearance in articles in the late 1970s. (shrink)

For loss averse investors, a sequence of risky investments looks less attractive if it is evaluated myopically—an effect called myopic loss aversion (MLA). The consequences of this effect have been confirmed in several experiments and its robustness is largely undisputed. The effect’s causes, however, have not been thoroughly examined with regard to one important aspect. Due to the construction of the lotteries that were used in the experiments, none of the studies is able to distinguish between MLA and (...) an explanation based on (myopic) loss probability aversion (MLPA). This distinction is important, however, in discussion of the practical relevance and the generalizability of the phenomenon. We designed an experiment that is able to disentangle lottery attractiveness and loss probabilities. Our analysis reveals that mere loss probabilities are not as important in this dynamic context as previous findings in other domains suggest. The results favor the MLA over the MLPA explanation. (shrink)

Public parks play important roles in conserving biodiversity, promoting environmental sustainability, fostering community engagement, and enhancing the overall well-being of residents in urban areas. Nevertheless, finance is needed to maintain and expand the greenspaces in the parks. The current study aims to examine how perceptions of biodiversity loss consequences and park visitation frequency influence the residents’ willingness to contribute financially to tree-planting projects in public parks. Employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, (...) we discovered that perceived health loss and knowledge erosion as consequences of biodiversity loss and park visitation frequency are directly positively associated with financial donation willingness. Meanwhile, the perceived economic growth loss was found to be indirectly positively associated with donation willingness through park visitation frequency, whereas the perceived loss of nature-based recreation opportunities exhibits the opposite indirect association. Based on these results, communication strategies focusing on the multifaceted benefits of biodiversity preservation and investments in public parks are recommended to improve urban residents’ financial support to park panting initiatives, accessibility to greenspaces, and connections with nature. These are crucial for promoting an eco-surplus culture that enhances biodiversity conservation and human well-being. (shrink)

This article endeavors to establish the moral force behind the worker’s claim to a compensatory wage in return for the labor burdens she endures. The apparent incompatibility between compensation and voluntary losses suggests that the only reason for providing a compensatory wage is the need to entice a valued service. In response, the article considers and rejects attempts to ground the compensatory wage on duress, mutual trade, and desert. Instead, it argues that the worker is not responsible for her (...) class='Hi'>loss of well-being because she would not have incurred it in the absence of the employer’s promise to compensate. Key Words: compensatory wage • contributory wage • detrimental reliance • desert • labor burdens • promises • responsibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:184 THE ECONOMIC THOUGHT OF DAVID HUME David Hume's views on economics are expressed in his Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, Part II (1752). He was a contemporary of Adam Smith and read Smith's The Wealth of Nations shortly before his death. Some commentators have suggested that Hume exercised some influence over Smith's views on economics; others are not so sure. Hume's commentators over the last 200 years (...) have emphasized his theory of knowledge, doctrine of causality and belief, theory of morals and historical writing. His views on economics have been relatively neglected. The purpose of this essay is to summarize and clarify Hume's views on economics. Commerce and Trade Hume's essay "Of Commerce" is an extension of his view of property rights. Just as government should not impair property rights, it should not impair commerce, which is the freedom to contract between consenting parties. But Hume was not a 'pure' advocate of laissez-faire. He supported the infant industry argument: A tax on German linen encourages home manufacturers, and thereby multiplies our people and industry. A tax on brandy encreases the sale of rum, and supports our southern colonies. The bulk of workers are employed either in argiculture or manufacturing. In the more primitive societies, almost everyone is employed in agriculture (husbandry), and as agricultural techniques are improved, the land becomes able to support more nonagricultural workers, including artisans and providers of luxuries as well as manufacturers. Some of these 185 surplus (i.e., nonagricultural or manufacturing) workers are sometimes appropriated by the sovereign for use in the army or navy (OC 256), which prevents them from producing luxury goods and services, and leads to a different kind of state than would exist if their labor were not so appropriated. Increases in industry, the arts and trade generally increase both the power of the sovereign and the happiness of the people (OC 260). Trade is something that is mutually beneficial -- both parties gain. Hume spends a great deal of time refuting the idea that one nation's gain is another's trade loss. Thus, trade is a win-win rather than a win-lose situation, as some modern-day mercantilists (such as Thurow fThe Zero Sum Gamel and Batra G The Great Crash of 1989l)would have us believe. Hume views everything in the world as purchased by labor, and sees labor as being caused by people's passions (OC 261). In modern language, one could say that wealth is produced either from physical or mental labor, and that it is individual incentive that causes the human action to begin in the first place. Of course, this view overlooks the fact that labor does not exist in a vacuum, but is mixed with land and perhaps capital (which can be seen as the result of accumulated labor). Exchange occurs when producers of a commodity produce more than they can consume. At that point, they trade their surplus for other goods and services (OC 261). In peacetime, the farmers' surplus goes toward the acquisition of manufactures or the cultivation of the liberal arts. In war, the surplus can go toward the support of an army or navy. The state becomes more powerful as it can produce increasingly beyond subsistence, what Hume refers to as employment beyond mere necessities (OC 186 262). But rather than encouraging the increase in state power by force, such increase is best accomplished by allowing individuals to produce as much as they want, which they will do automatically in the absence of coercion, and then appropriate part of the surplus: It is a violent method, and in most cases impracticable, to oblige the labourer to toil, in order to raise from the land more than what subsists himself and family. Furnish him with manufactures and commodities, and he will do it himself. Afterwards you will find it easy to seize some part of his superfluous labour, and employ it in the public service, without giving him his wonted return. Being accustomed to industry, he will think this less grievous, than if, at once, you obliged him to an argumentation of labour without any reward. (OC 262) Countries that engage in... (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has pressed a pause button on global economic development, and induced significant mental health problems. In order to demonstrate the progressed relationship between the pandemic, economic slowdown, and mental health burden, we overviewed the global-level gross domestic product changes and mental problems variation since the outbreak of COVID-19, and reviewed comprehensively the specific sectors influenced by the pandemic, including international trade, worldwide travel, education system, healthcare system, and individual employment. We hope to provide timely evidence (...) to help with the promotion of policymakers’ effective strategies in mitigating economic losses induced by the pandemic; we suggest different governments or policy makers in different countries to share information and experience in dealing with COVID-19-induced economic slowdown and promote COVID-19 vaccine popularization plan to protect every individual worldwide against the coronavirus essentially; and we appeal international information share and collaboration to minimize stigmatization related to adverse mental consequences of COVID-19 and to increase mental health wellbeings of people all over the world. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the consonant relationship between economics and ethics and how, together, they can be applicable to interpret economic trends within the media industry. The theory assumes that ethics may be quantified as either a cost or benefit and by using economic models and principles ethics can be used as a means to prevent potential losses and, therefore, sustain or increase its gains.

This paper begins with an explanation of the "life sequence of value," which is defined by the formula Life->Means of Life->More Life. The analysis then contrasts this general sequence of value to the "money sequence of value," which is shown to have three autonomous forms not before distinguished: Money->Means of Life->More Money ; Money->Means of Life Destruction->More Money ; Money->More Money->More Money. I explain how the first money sequence of value, analyzed by Marx in his classical formula of industrial capital, (...) has mutated so that the standard sequence of assumed by economists has, in fact, been increasingly displaced by sequences and. The argument shows that these sequences of economic "growth" increasingly dismantle environmental and civil life-fabrics, but remain unproblematic to the dominant economic paradigm whose measures of value do not register life-losses in their value accounts. It is concluded that a regrounding of economic understanding in the life sequence of value is required to avoid a cumulative breakdown in the conditions of social and planetary existence. (shrink)

The political, economic and environmental policies of a hegemonic, oligarchic, political-economic international caste are the origin and cause of the ecological and political dystopia that we are living in. An utilitarian, resourcist, anthropocentric perspective guides classical economics and sustainable development models, allowing the enrichment of a tiny part of the world's population, while not impeding but, on the contrary, directly inducing economic losses and environmental destruction for the many. To preserve the integrity of natural systems we must (...) abandon the resourcist anthropocentric ethical fiction that is the current moral foundation underlying our relationship with nature and instead promote the realization of a new developmental landmark for democratic institutions: direct democracy, i.e. democracy truly governed by the people for the people, and ultimately for nature as well. (shrink)

In this book a distinguished group of environmental experts argues that in order to solve global environmental problems, we must view them in a broad interdisciplinary perspective that recognizes the relations—the interconnected circle—among ecology, economics, and ethics. Currently the circle is broken, they say, because environmental policy is decided on short-term estimations of material that take little account of the economic or moral burdens that will be borne by future generations if we deplete our resources now. We must, assert (...) the authors, have a better knowledge of the science underlying our environmental problems, we must understand their causes and consequences in relation to our economic and political systems, and we must recognize that an effective response will require a shift in a technologically oriented society’s ethical attitude toward the natural environment. The authors address a wide range of concerns from global atmospheric degradation and spreading toxification of the environment to loss of forests and massive species extinctions. They offer to general readers, students, and professionals practical assessments and remedies for many of these problems. They suggest, for example, mechanisms that provide economic incentives for conservation; engineering and technical adaptations to use resources more effectively and dispose of waste products; better economic accounting procedures for measuring the real environmental costs of our depletion of natural resources; and a remodeled education system that better prepares us to see each individual’s responsibility to the environment. (shrink)

The SARS-COVID-2 virus that causes the Coronavirus has been having a challenging and devastating impact on finances and jobs worldwide. More specifically, in South Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a crippling effect on jobs. Companies and businesses are struggling to operate and retain workers as revenue streams are drying up. Owners of companies and businesses have been forced to make difficult decisions. An example is the retrenchment of workers by some organizations because of the financial fall-out due to the (...) coronavirus pandemic. Also, before the pandemic, South Africa had unemployment challenges, economic downgrading, and high levels of inequality. These challenges bring to mind what the employment method and strategy will look like during the -COVID-19. In view of these challenges, one question that comes to mind is: given the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that the job losses affected people of all races, should the policies of affirmative action and preferential hiring still be considered in South Africa? Thus, this paper is a philosophical reflection on COVID-19, job losses, affirmative action, and preferential hiring in South Africa. In reflecting on the above, this paper aims to show that affirmative action and preferential hiring should not be considered in South Africa during the -COVID-19. I conclude that in the face of this tragedy, for the sustainability of the economy, everyone needs to work together to re-establish and reconstruct the country and build an inclusive economy. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the essence of economic security in the Internet environment, to identify and analyze statistical data on this issue. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time a comparison with foreign practice is made. As a result, some places that require improvement in this area are identified, the essence and understanding of new terms are revealed, and the principle of neural networks is explained. This work (...) is devoted to the problem of the spread of economic crime associated with the use of new technologies. In view of the development of the innovative sphere, the emergence of new technologies, there are also new threats to economic security. The article examines the history of cybercrime in the economic sphere, the basic principles of economic security from the side of new technologies, and provides current statistics on economic crimes from the point of view of the loss of information security by economic entities. Recommendations for reducing the level of economic crime in the information environment are formulated. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is poised to eliminate millions of jobs, from finance to truck driving. But artisanal products are valued precisely because of their human origins, and thus have some inherent “immunity” from AI job loss. At the same time, artisanal labor, combined with technology, could potentially help to democratize the economy, allowing independent, small-scale businesses to flourish. Could AI, robotics and related automation technologies enhance the economic viability and environmental sustainability of these beloved crafting professions, perhaps even expanding (...) their niche to replace some job loss in other sectors? In this paper, we compare the problems created by the current mass production economy and potential solutions from an artisanal economy. In doing so, the paper details the possibilities of utilizing AI to support hybrid forms of human–machine production at the microscale; localized and sustainable value chains at the mesoscale; and networks of these localized and sustainable producers at the macroscale. In short, a wide range of automation technologies are potentially available for facilitating and empowering an artisanal economy. Ultimately, it is our hope that this paper will facilitate a discussion on a future vision for more “generative” economic forms in which labor value, ecological value and social value can circulate without extraction or alienation. (shrink)

This paper examines the economic impact of implementing Corporate Social Responsibility in the supply chain operations of multinational corporations. Because they have global supply chains in emerging markets, MNCs face certain operational challenges. For example, unethical operations often result in a huge loss to MNCs in the long run, even though their initial cost seems to be low. In this paper, we extend the Bullwhip Effect theory in supply chain management to the ethical operations context, and define and (...) evaluate a special Bullwhip Effect due to Unethical Operations. Using economic data from various sources including Ford, Toyota, and GM in the auto industry, we first estimate the indices of BEUO for the three companies and demonstrate the economic necessity for MNCs to incorporate CSR with supply chain operations. We then propose a coherent approach, blending what we term the bottom-up and proactive methods, to achieve such an outcome. The bottom-up approach requires MNCs to switch their focus on stakeholders, shifting from shareholders to consumers and workers, and on decision levels from public relationships to supply chain operations. The proactive approach recommends initializing specific CSR operations to mitigate the negative impact of BEUO. Both theoretical analysis and case studies are conducted to evaluate our developed propositions that MNCs adopting the proposed CSR operations will in the long run achieve better economic performance. Recommended actions for implementation, based on best practices, are also presented. (shrink)

In many scientific, economic and policy-related problems, pieces of information from different sources have to be aggregated. Typically, the sources are not equally competent. This raises the question of how the relative weights and competences should be related to arrive at an optimal final verdict. Our paper addresses this question under a more realistic perspective of measuring the practical loss implied by an inaccurate verdict.

In __Unearthed: The Economic Roots of Our Environmental Crisis_, _Kenneth M. Sayre argues that the only way to resolve our current environmental crisis is to reduce our energy consumption to a level where the entropy produced by that consumption no longer exceeds the biosphere’s ability to dispose of it. Tangible illustrations of this entropy buildup include global warming, ozone depletion, loss of species diversity, and unmanageable amounts of nonbiodegradable waste._ Degradation of the biosphere is tied directly to human (...) energy use, which has been increasing exponentially since the Industrial Revolution. Energy use, in turn, is directly correlated with economic production. Sayre shows how these three factors are invariably bound together. The unavoidable conclusion is that the only way to resolve our environmental crisis is to reverse the present pattern of growth in the world economy. Economic growth is motivated by social values. Key among them are the desire for wealth and consumer values including gratification, convenience, and acquisition of goods. Sayre maintains that economic growth can be reversed only by eliminating these social values in favor of others more conducive to environmental health. Eliminating these values will involve major changes in lifestyle within industrial societies generally. Only with such changes in lifestyle, he argues, does human society as we know it have a chance of survival. Clearly written and thoroughly documented, this book provides a comprehensive overview of our complex environmental predicament. "With unerring logic and science, Kenneth Sayre dissects the origins of the ecological crisis and points to the necessary recalibration of industrial societies with the laws of thermodynamics and ecology. It is a radical book in that he gets to the heart of what ails us, and it charts a course toward a future grounded in authentic hope." — David W. Orr, Oberlin College__ “Sayre’s assessment forces all seeking a sustainable future to reexamine the preeminence accorded to clean energy. _ Unearthed __uniquely combines thermodynamics and ethics to challenge and broaden readers’ understandings of the systemic issues we face. Assembled and presented with piercing clarity, __Unearthed __constructs a brilliant framework for making sense of our quiet, but growing crises.” —_Felipe Witchger, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates__ “Kenneth M. Sayre’s _ Unearthed: The Economic Roots of Our Environmental Crisis__ constitutes a major and significant contribution to our understanding of the grave ecological crisis facing humanity. It covers the complete picture, from the basic physical causes of the destruction of our environment to the sociological or anthropological forces that condition our self-destructive actions. The work not only is a brilliant and mind-sweeping piece of diagnosis and prognosis, but it goes all the way to point towards possible solutions.” —_Fernando del Río Haza, Laboratorio de Termodinámica, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa, Mexico_. (shrink)

Tobacco is a significant product providing considerable economic benefits to countries worldwide, while its increased consumption causes health and socio-economic losses for smokers and non-smokers. This paper constructs a decomposition system of tobacco taxation: the population aging factor is included in the influencing factors of personal tax, and personal tax revenue is regarded as the product of tax structure, macro tax burden, regional economy, reciprocal aging, and the elderly population. This article conducts an empirical study on the relationship (...) between taxation and economic growth. The estimated coefficients of business tax and corporate income tax are significant at the significance level of 0.1, with a consumption tax and time-variable coefficients reporting a 0.02 level of significance. The T statistic value and the explanatory degree of the variables involved in the model to the explained variables are also very high, reaching more than 95%. We find that increasing the macro tax burden negatively impacts economic growth. Therefore, the study suggests that for fostering the industry’s economic growth, the country needs to ensure the optimal macro tax burden of 17.5%, with different types of taxes influencing economic growth. Personal tax reform should pay attention to the phenomenon of aging, adjust the tax structure to increase personal tax income, provide policy support and guarantee for the elderly labor force, and encourage the re-employment of silver-haired people to alleviate the adverse impact of aging on taxation. (shrink)

We extend the deceptive advertising model of Piccolo et al. :611–624, 2015) to a framework in which consumers may be loss averse. There are two sellers, competing on prices and offering experience goods with some differences in quality. Prospective customers may be harmed by deceptive advertising: a marketing practice that can induce them to make bad purchases. We show that although deceptive advertising occurs depending on the degree of consumers’ loss aversion, this behavioral bias does not reflect on (...) firms’ prices. Nevertheless, the presence of loss-averse consumers crucially changes the optimal deterrence rule that a Public Authority should adopt against false claims and misleading advertising. Unlike Piccolo et al., in this more general model, strong enforcements may improve the buyer welfare according to the degree of loss aversion. (shrink)

Standard models of portfolio investment rely on various statistical measures of dispersion. Such measures favor returns smoothed over all states of the world and penalize abnormally low as well as abnormally high returns. A model of portfolio investment based on the tradeoff between expected return and expected loss considers only abnormally low returns as undesirable. Such a model has a comparative advantage over other existing models in that a first-order stochastically dominant portfolio always has a higher expected return and (...) a lower expected loss. Expected return—expected loss model of portfolio investment can rationalize the equity premium puzzle. Two random variables are not comoving if there is at least one state of the world in which one random variable yields a positive return and the other—a negative return. Such random variables provide hedging benefits from diversification in portfolio investment according to the expected return—expected loss model. A special case of this model, when an investor linearly trade-offs expected returns and expected losses, is also a special case of the prospect theory when a decision-maker has a piece-wise linear value function without any probability weighting. (shrink)

This paper considers the revolutionary developments occurring in the field of genetic mapping and the genetic identification of disease propensities. These breakthroughs are discussed relative to the ethical and economic implications for the insurance industry. Individual's privacy rights and rights to employment must be weighed against the insurers desire for better estimates of future loss costs associated with health, life and other insurances. These are in turn related to the fundamental conception of insurance as a financial intermediary versus (...) insurance as a vehicle for social policy. (shrink)

Values have a profound influence on the behaviour of all people, scientists included. Biodiversity is studied by ecologists, like myself, most of whom align with the “mission-driven” field of conservation biology. The mission involves the protection of biodiversity, and a set of contextual values including the beliefs that biological diversity and ecological complexity are good and have intrinsic value. This raises concerns that the scientific process might be influenced by biases toward outcomes that are aligned with these values. Retrospectively, I (...) have identified such biases in my own work, resulting from an implicit assumption that organisms that are not dependent on natural habitats effectively do not count in biodiversity surveys. Finding that anthropogenic forest disturbance reduces the diversity of plant species dependent on shady forests can thus be falsely equated with more general biodiversity loss. Disturbance might actually increase overall plant diversity. In this paper I ask whether ecologists share values that are unrepresentative of broader society, I discuss examples of potential value-driven biases in biodiversity science, and I present some hypotheses from behavioral economics on possible psychological underpinnings of shared values and preferences among ecologists. (shrink)