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1 – 10 of 194The first contribution to this section is by Richard Schmalensee titled “Thoughts on the Chicago school legacy in U.S. antitrust.” It appears the purpose of this essay is to set…
Abstract
The first contribution to this section is by Richard Schmalensee titled “Thoughts on the Chicago school legacy in U.S. antitrust.” It appears the purpose of this essay is to set up a target for the rest of the contributors to shoot at – a target that is emphatically pro-Chicago. In his essay, Schmalensee reviews some of the aspects of U.S. antitrust policy that outraged Chicago school lawyers and economists in the 1970s. He takes a brief look at some of Chicago's subsequent victories that he claims are now generally accepted as positive changes. And finally, he argues that some of Chicago's lost battles also constitute positive aspects of its legacy. His discussion is focused on four broad issues: the objectives of antitrust, the past policy toward “no-fault” concentration, the treatment of productive efficiency, and the evaluation of non-standard business conduct (pp. 11–12).
Shahla Seifi and David Crowther
Sustainability is recognised as an important objective in business planning and is of equal relevance to policy makers. It is equally accepted, almost universally, that the…
Abstract
Sustainability is recognised as an important objective in business planning and is of equal relevance to policy makers. It is equally accepted, almost universally, that the resources of the planet are finite and are being overconsumed on an annual basis. The prognosis therefore is that resources are being depleted and competition for access to remaining resources must ensue, increasing the transaction costs of business activity. Given that there are no further resources available to the world, then attention must be paid to the best way of utilising those resources, implying possibly different ways of organising or collaboration. This involves strategic decisions at both local and global levels, and Game theory is recognised as a key strategic tool by policy makers and by business decision-makers. Surprisingly therefore, although it has been recognised that Game theory has relevance to addressing the problems of manufacturing due to resource depletion, no detailed work has been done in this area.
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The goals of this chapter are three-fold: (1) to outline some broad empirical regularities concerning how drug problems evolve over time, (2) to sketch some plausible mechanisms…
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The goals of this chapter are three-fold: (1) to outline some broad empirical regularities concerning how drug problems evolve over time, (2) to sketch some plausible mechanisms for ways in which aspects of that variation might be endogenous, and (3) to review two classes of dynamic models of drug use that have implications for how policy should vary over a drug epidemic.
Few issues in business ethics are as polarizing as the practice of risk classification and underwriting in the insurance industry. Theorists who approach the issue from a…
Abstract
Few issues in business ethics are as polarizing as the practice of risk classification and underwriting in the insurance industry. Theorists who approach the issue from a background in economics often start from the assumption that policy-holders should be charged a rate that reflects the expected loss that they bring to the insurance scheme. Yet theorists who approach the question from a background in philosophy or civil rights law often begin with a presumption against so-called “actuarially fair” premiums and in favor of “community rating,” in which everyone is charged the same price. This paper begins by examining and rejecting the three primary arguments that have been given to show that actuarially fair premiums are unjust. It then considers the two primary arguments that have been offered by those who wish to defend the practice of risk classification. These arguments overshoot their target, by requiring a “freedom to underwrite” that is much greater than the level of freedom enjoyed in most other commercial transactions. The paper concludes by presenting a defense of a more limited right to underwrite, one that grants the legitimacy of the central principle of risk classification, but permits specific deviations from that ideal when other important social goods are at stake.
Paul Shrivastava and Laszlo Zsolnai
This chapter aims to help redirect Business and Society (BAS) scholarship to embrace the unprecedented challenges of the Anthropocene era including climate collapse and ecological…
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This chapter aims to help redirect Business and Society (BAS) scholarship to embrace the unprecedented challenges of the Anthropocene era including climate collapse and ecological breakdown. The existential risk presented by the new reality of the Anthropocene requires a radical rethinking of the purpose of business and its dominating working models. This chapter discusses the main problems of efficiency and growth and shows that business efficiency often results in aggregate ecological overshot. It is argued with Herman Daly that frugality, that is, substantial reduction of the material throughput, should precede business efficiency for achieving ecological sustainability. This chapter suggests new directions for BAS scholarship by highlighting three major issues, namely the scale of business activities relative to the ecosystem of the planet, short termism that is the discrepancy between the time horizon of business decisions and that of ecological processes, and inequality which is the result of current business models that are all about accumulation of wealth and not paying enough attention to distribution of wealth. The chapter concludes that the Anthropocene era represents a clear disjuncture and discontinuity from the past and business needs to find a new realignment to achieve a sustainable world. That realignment requires a drastic modification of business-nature relations.
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