This thesis examines the philosophical background that culminates in the Austrian School of economics' theories of capital and interest. In chapter two, I describe the character of the school, its history, and the educational, environmental and social background of the main authorities. The school is characterised by an adherence to Carl Menger's doctrines, with Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich...

The burgeoning field of environmental valuation has raised serious doubts about the fundamental axioms of consumer choice theory, the general validity of the Walrasian system and methodological individualism. This paper examines these aspects of consumer choice theory, paying particular attention to the pioneering contributions of Georgescu-Roegen. We argue that evidence from psychology, game t...

The author's style is both pleasantly idiosyncratic and numbingly methodological. He first looks for instances before 1768 in which clinicians described diseases that resemble angina pectoris, and finds only ten clinical reports that could possibly represent angina. This paucity of cases is contrasted with the rapid proliferation of clinical reports after 1768. It is also striking that for the ...

Anthropology is the study of the physical, social, and cultural development of humans. It has been considered part of cognitive science since that enterprise was organized in the 1970s (Gardner, 1985; D’Andrade, 1995), but anthropology is also classed as a social science because of its concern with groups and cultural interactions. Ironically, cognitive anthropology has waned as a practice with...

Research on collective provision of private goods has focused on distributional considerations. This paper studies a class of problems of decision under uncertainty in which an efficiency argument for collective choice emerges from the mathematics of aggregating individual payoffs. Consider decision making when each member of a population has the same objective function, which depends on an unk...

Clastres ‘de-substantializes’ the state, which is not ‘the Elysium, the White House, the Kremlin,’ but ‘an actualization of a relation of power.’ There is no reason, therefore, to believe that, in a Durkheimian mood, he has reified society. Even though he makes no use of the concept, I believe there is already a concept of ‘sociality’ at work in Clastres: hence, the idea of sociality against th...

Abortion rights proponents often defend their position by insisting that women have a “right over what happens to their own bodies.” Such a view generally presupposes that pre-natal offspring are but “extensions” of a woman’s body. Ironically, however, the seventeenth-century philosopher (and physician) John Locke, whose enormously influential defense of individual property (and other democrati...

Focusing on the work of Friedrich von Hayek and Vernon Smith, we discuss some conceptual links between Austrian economics and recent work in behavioral game theory and experimental economics. After a brief survey of the main methodological aspects of Austrian and experimental economics, we suggest that common views on subjectivism, individualism, and the role of qualitative explanations and pre...

The consideration for the improvement of efficiency social economy made researchers look names, views and methods which were not fully appreciated. This includes general organizational science occupies a prominent position by A.A. Bogdanov. There is no doubt that ideas Bogdanov are reflected in systems theory, cybernetics, medicine philosophy technology, aesthetics, linguistics other discipline...

Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier's (2002) meta-analysis suggested problems in the measurement of individualism and collectivism. Studies using Hofstede's individualism scores show little convergent validity with more recent measures of individualism and collectivism. We propose that the lack of convergent validity is due to national differences in response styles. Whereas Hofstede statistically ...