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This chapter documents an exchange between Leonard Savage, founder of the subjective probability approach to decision-making, and Karl Popper, advocate of the so-called propensity approach to probability, of which there is no knowledge in the literature on probability theory. Early in 1958, just after being informally tested by Daniel Ellsberg with a test of consistency in decision-making processes that originated the so-called Ellsberg Paradox, Savage was made aware that a similar argument had been put forward by Popper. Popper found it paradoxical that two apparently similar events should be attributed the same subjective probability even though evidence supporting judgment in one case was different than in the other case. On this ground, Popper rejected the subjective probability approach. Inspection of the Savage Papers archived at Yale University Library makes it possible to document Savage’s reaction to Popper, of which there is no evidence in his published writings. Savage wrote to Popper denying that his criticism had paradoxical content and a brief exchange followed. The chapter shows that while Savage was unconvinced by Popper’s argument he was not hostile to an axiomatically founded generalization of his theory.

The person of the teacher is an essential element in what constitutes professional teaching and therefore needs careful conceptualisation. In this chapter the author argues for this central thesis, presenting a wrap up of his theoretical and empirical work on the issue over the past decade. These studies have been inspired – both conceptually and methodologically – by teacher thinking-research as well as the narrative-biographical approach to teaching and teacher development. The result is an empirically grounded conceptual framework on teacher development and teacher professionalism. Central concepts are ‘professional self-understanding’ and ‘subjective educational theory’ as components of the personal interpretative framework every individual teacher develops throughout his/her career. This personal framework results from the reflective and meaningful interactions between the individual teacher and the social, cultural and structural working conditions constituting his/her job context(s). As such the framework is the dynamic outcome of an ongoing process of professional learning (development). Furthermore, it is argued that the particular professionalism or scholarship of teachers is fundamentally characterised by personal commitment and vulnerability, which eventually have consequences for the kind of reflective attitudes and skills professional teachers should master.

Experimental economics has been treated with skepticism by some Austrian economists. We argue that experimental methods are consistent with strong versions of praxeology, and are therefore not methodologically problematic for Austrians. We further argue that experimental research methods have illustrated many uniquely Austrian themes and provide a fruitful method for future Austrian-inspired research.

In an effort to explain the growth stagnation that hampered the United States in the period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, mainstream economists unwittingly and incompletely reinvented the concept of unproductive labor that is rooted in classical and Marxian economics. The price to pay for having ignored this concept had been unexplained economic events, inappropriate policy, and relative national economic decline. The mainstream economists' attempt to adopt this concept came at a cost to their theoretical core. The abandonment of the concept came at a cost to the real economy represented by the financial crisis of 2008.

The Austrian economist Ludwig Lachmann claimed that Keynes was a lifelong subjectivist. To evaluate this, we start by distinguishing Keynes’ writings on probability theory from his writings on economics. In the General Theory (1936), Keynes’ treatment of expectations provides the basis for Lachmann’s view that Keynes was a subjectivist at heart. In his Treatise on Probability (1921), Keynes refers explicitly to the subjectivism–objectivism divide in probability theory and pins his colors to the objectivist mast. In this essay, we present the objectivist slant in Keynes’ earlier writings on probability theory. Thereafter, we evaluate the criteria Lachmann employed to cast Keynes as a subjectivist.

Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of behavior toward those choices might not be the ones we were all taught, and still teach, and that subjective risk perceptions might not accord with expert assessments of probabilities. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the need to jettison naive notions of revealed preferences, according to which every choice by a subject expresses her objective function, as behavioral evidence forces us to confront pervasive inconsistencies and noise in a typical individual’s choice data. A principled account of errant choice must be built into models used for identification and estimation. These challenges demand close attention to the methodological claims often used to justify policy interventions. They also require, we argue, closer attention by economists to relevant contributions from cognitive science. We propose that a quantitative application of the “intentional stance” of Dennett provides a coherent, attractive and general approach to behavioral welfare economics.

Purpose – This study tests three theories of determinants of workers' subjective response to work situations – structural factors (measured by individual, organization, and job characteristics), general disposition, or informal work arrangements as constructed by Laubach's (2005) “consent deal.”Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained from the Indiana Quality of Employment Survey, a survey of workers covering general working conditions. We constructed 10 models regressing worker perceptions and attitudes (e.g., satisfaction, relations with supervisors, meaningfulness) on structural determinants. We then used structural equation modeling to identify an underlying factor representing a general worker response from elements of the attitudes and perceptions. Finally, we regressed a scalar version of the general response factor on the structural determinants using the previous models.Findings – We identified a single second-order latent factor underlying the 10 attitudes and perceptions which represented the “general subjective response” of workers. This supported the concept of a dispositional effect. We then found that structural factors had a minimal effect on the subjective response, but that informal arrangements had a very strong effect. This undermined the first two theories and supported the third.Implications – Worker attitudes and perceptions are very resilient to different formal work arrangements but are highly influenced by the informal arrangements negotiated between workers and frontline management. Organizations can have the strongest effect on developing worker support by empowering frontline managers to make informal deals on workplace rules.Originality/value – This study offers a means to probe the relationship between formal and structural and the informal and subjective worlds of the workplace.