Search results

This article identifies the concept of market value as a standardizing concept that coordinates the actions of market participants in relatively inefficient real estate markets. The paper also identifies different levels of discourse that reflect the organizational/institutional complexity of the real estate appraisal profession. The standardizing effect of market value includes a cognitive and fiduciary component. Using this framework, the paper traces the influence of Richard T. Ely’s institutional economics – and its legacy in the form of the research program of Urban Land Economics at the University of Wisconsin – on the formation and development of the standards of appraisal and ethical practice. This complexity is traced historically from the early part of the 19th century to the formation of the professional organizations and the establishment of their standards, and also through a series of reform efforts in the 1960s and 1980s that were articulated in the academic community. The paper illustrates the manner in which Institutional Economics has been influential in the continuing development of the real estate appraisal profession and suggests reasons for its continuing relevance.

The rise of the regulatory state during the Gilded Age was closely associated with the development of institutionalist ideas in American academia. In their analysis of the emergent regulatory environment, institutionalists like John Commons operated with a fundamentally marginalist theory of value and distribution. This engagement is a central explanation for the ultimate ascendancy of neoclassical economics, and the limitations of the regulatory environment that emerged in the Progressive Era. The eventual rise of the Chicago School and its deregulatory ambitions did constitute a rupture, but one achieved without rejecting preceding conceptions of competition and value. The substantial compatibility of the view of markets underlying both the regulatory and deregulatory periods is stressed, casting doubt about the transformative potential of the resurgent regulatory impulse in the New Gilded Age.

This chapter explores the origins of the theme of competitive advantage in 19th and early 20th century economics. This theme, which forms the core of modern Strategic Management, was a battleground for debates about the value of abstract theory versus observations about real-life events. Intellectual genealogies, citations, and other sources show the central roles played by the University of Vienna and Harvard University. These two institutions strongly influenced the theory of monopolistic competition as well as all three modern views of competitive advantage – the industrial as expressed by Porter, the resource-based as expressed by Penrose, and the evolutionary as expressed by Schumpeter.

‘Countrymindedness’ is a resonant but perhaps manufactured term, given wide currency in a 1985 article by political scientist and historian Don Aitkin in the Annual, Australian Cultural History. Political ideology was his focus, as he charted the rise and fall ‐ from the late nineteenth century to around the 1970s ‐ of some ideological preconceptions of the Australian Country Party. These were physiocratic, populist, and decentralist ‐ physiocratic meaning, broadly, the rural way is best. Aitkin claimed the word was used in Country Party circles in the 1920s and 1930s, but gave no examples. Since the word is in no dictionary of Australian usage, or the Oxford Dictionary, coinage may be more recent. No matter. Countrymindedness is a richly evocative word, useful in analysing rural populism during the last Australian century. I suggest it can usefully be extended to analyzing aspects of the inner history of Euro‐settlement in recent centuries.

William Amasa Scott was in his time well-known as a monetary economist as well as a popularizer of economic ideas, whose opinions were widely regarded by the public. A proponent of Austrian economics and defender of classical economic theory, he soon found a home at the School of Economics, Political Science and History (later the School of Economics) at the University of Wisconsin which, while initially a mainstream department, would evolve into the citadel of Institutional Economics. Notwithstanding his status as an authority on monetary economics and his place as a public intellectual, he remained at the University something of an outsider throughout his career and today is largely forgotten.

Audit support staff comprise a new profession in the National Health Service. They have a key role in enhancing the work of audit groups in both primary and secondary care. However, arrangements for their formal training have not yet been established. This study describes how a training needs analysis was undertaken with audit support staff in one health region in England and reports the construction and evaluation of the first course designed explicitly for this group of staff. Well trained audit support staff have an important role in making clinical audit effective. Training should be based on information about their training needs, and opportunities should be provided for their continued professional development.

By “political economy” I mean both the method of thought and the body of knowledge which refer to human economising behaviour. The body of knowledge includes both theory — theorems, laws, empirical generalisations, etc., and “facts” — history, description of institution, statistical data, etc. By “Christian theology” I mean both the method of thought and the body of knowledge which refer to the human religious understanding of Jesus of Nazareth. “Religious” here implies awareness of, or belief in, God. The body of knowledge may include pre‐Christian religion (such as that reported in the Old Testament), and the results of independent inquiry (such as natural theology) in so far as these are interpreted by, or “refracted” through what theologians call the “Christ event”.

As I suggested earlier, Stabile's “lessons” typically take the form of questions. For example, what is the conceptual basis for defining a minimum income sufficient to sustain a labor force (what Stabile dubs the argument from sustainability)? Is there an absolute standard based strictly on basic biological needs, as Rose Friedman argued (p. 53)? Or do the necessities of life also include “whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without,” as Adam Smith declared (quoted in Stabile, p. 17)? Introducing Amartya Sen's notion of capability broadens our scope even further, for now we are concerned about developing the traits, abilities, and opportunities that can make workers more productive, effective, and valuable citizens (a concern that Stabile finds implicitly in numerous authors, including Aristotle, Smith, Marshall, and Richard Ely).