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This paper is an initial attempt to discuss the American institutionalist movement as it changed and developed after 1945. Institutionalism in the inter-war period was a relatively coherent movement held together by a set of general methodological, theoretical, and ideological commitments (Rutherford, 2011). Although institutionalism always had its critics, it came under increased attack in the 1940s, and faced challenges from Keynesian economics, a revived neoclassicism, econometrics, and from new methodological approaches derived from various versions of positivism. The institutionalist response to these criticisms, and particularly the criticism that institutionalism “lacked theory,” is to be found in a variety of attempts to redefine institutionalism in new theoretical or methodological terms. Perhaps the most important of these is to be found in Clarence Ayres’ The Theory of Economic Progress (1944), although there were many others. These developments were accompanied by a significant amount of debate, disagreement, and uncertainty over future directions. Some of this is reflected in the early history of The Association for Evolutionary Economics.

Purpose: At a conference inspired by Hans Christian Andersen, this chapter makes the case for his shadowy American contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe.

Methodology: Employing a comparative literary analysis, it contends that consumer culture theory (CCT) can learn more from Poe’s quothful raven than Andersen’s ugly duckling.

Findings: Principally that Poe’s Ps of Perversity, Pugnacity, and Poetry are particularly pertinent to an adolescent, self-harm-prone subdiscipline that’s struggling to find itself and make its way in the world.

Originality: Poe and Andersen’s names rarely appear in the same sentence. They do now.

We describe the development and various implementations of a reading comprehension instruction program called Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI). CORI was designed to enhance students’ reading motivation and reading comprehension, and has been implemented at both elementary and middle school, with a particular focus on science information text reading.

We overview Guthrie and Wigfield’s (2000) reading engagement model, which provides CORI’s theoretical framework. Then we present the major implementation of CORI at elementary school and middle school.

CORI teachers in elementary school focused on five teaching practices to foster motivation: (1) providing thematic content goals; (2) optimizing choice; (3) hands-on activities connected to reading; (4) providing interesting texts; and (5) fostering collaboration. Teachers also taught six reading strategies recommended by the National Reading Panel. Results of several studies showed that CORI students had higher reading motivation and better reading comprehension than students receiving only strategy instruction or traditional reading instruction. We next describe three implementations of CORI at middle school. The motivational instructional practices at this level included (1) thematic contact goals; (2) emphasizing the importance of reading; (3) showing how reading is relevant to student lives; (4) fostering collaboration; (5) optimizing choice; and (6) enabling success. Results of several studies again documented CORI’s success at boosting students’ motivation and comprehension.

The studies carried out show the success of CORI and the paper closes with suggestions about the next steps for the program.

The Internet, the Web and social media have radically transformed a number of core pillars of our social fabric. The way billions of citizens work, interact and socialise is underpinned by our global network infrastructure. Unfortunately, we have also seen a number of negative effects from this transformation. As has been widely publicised, undesirable impacts include the spread of disinformation and fake news; attacks on democratic elections and the ‘weaponisation’ of personal data. This article describes some of the technological approaches that are being taken to address some of the above issues. At the core of these technologies are notions around decentralisation. With blockchains it is possible that citizens can create their own ‘self-sovereign’ identity – the digital equivalent of writing one's name onto a piece of paper – and acquiring verification through blockchain-based techniques. An approach to alleviating the ‘weaponisation’ of personal and sensitive data is to give citizens their own data store. Initiatives such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee's Solid allow users to store, manage and control their own data according to any personal preferences or constraints. We believe that a combination of personal data stores and blockchains will lead to a new type of resilient communication and collaboration mechanism, whereby personal rights and empowerment are enhanced and transparency at the community level is integral.

We examine the relationship that exists among bond ratings, bond yields, and various estimates of a firm's contingent environmental remediation liability using a sample of new bond issues. Our results indicate that the largest external EPA-based estimates of the firm's environmental obligations are significantly associated with a firm's bond rating, providing relevant incremental information beyond that supplied by the environmental accruals presented in the financial statements. Furthermore, while the accrued environmental liability is shown to have a direct association with the bond yield, the external EPA-based estimates provide an indirect relationship with the bond yield through their influence on the bond rating. These results contribute to the extant literature by empirically clarifying the role of various environmental liability estimates in establishing a firm's bond rating and further indicating their connection with the pricing of corporate debt.