Part intellectual autobiography and part exposition of complex yet contemporary economic ideas, this lively conversation with renowned scholar and public intellectual Kenneth J. Arrow focuses on economics and politics in light of history, current events, and philosophy as well. Reminding readers that economics is about redistribution and thus about how we treat each other, Arrow shows that the intersection of economics and ethics is of concern not just to economists but for the public more broadly. With a foreword by (...) Amartya Sen, this book highlights the belief that government can be a powerful force for good, and is particularly relevant in the current political climate and to the lay reader as well as the economist. (shrink)

I find three major shortcomings in Mele's account. First, verbal ambiguities suggest that the analysis is irrelevant to self-deception and/or that the traditional conception is subtly reinstated. Second, the data offer no means of establishing the superiority of the present account. Finally, as political rhetoric, Mele's proposal not only operates to disqualify others, but establishes science as their judge.

One of the central questions of economics relates to the coordination of individual units within a large organization to achieve the central objectives of that organization. This book examines the problems involved in allocating resources in an economic system where decision-making is decentralized into the hands of individuals and individual enterprises. The decisions made by these economic agents must be coordinated because the input decisions of some must eventually equal the output decisions of others. Coordination arises naturally out of the (...) mathematical theory of optimization but there is still the question of how it can be achieved in practice with dispersed knowledge. The essays here explore the many facets of this problem. Nine papers are grouped under the title 'Economies with a single maximand'. They include papers on static and dynamic optimization, decentralization within firms, and nonconvexities in optimizing problems. Fourteen papers are concerned with 'Economies with multiple objectives'. Among the topics covered here are stability of competitive equilibrium, stability in oligopology, and dynamic shortages. The final part of the book includes three papers on informational efficiency and informationally decentralized systems. Leonid Hurwitcz is the Nobel Prize Winner 2007 for The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, along with colleagues Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, for his work on the effectiveness of markets. (shrink)

This is to agree with Slife and Reber that the field of psychology has been negatively biased toward theism. However, accusations of bias or prejudice typically presume that with an even assay of available evidence, that such dispositions would be erased. In a world of multiple constructions of reality, morality, and justice, such an assumption is wholly unwarranted. The present article approaches the presence of multiple worlds from a social constructionist perspective. Proposed are a number of arguments to support an (...) approach toward difference that emphasizes transformative dialogue, that is, dialogue among conflicting parties or standpoints that moves toward mutual viability. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Horatius: The Man and the HourKenneth J. ReckfordTrimalchio’s projected monumentum in Petronius’ Satyricon will include, among other ill-assorted designs, a sundial: horologium in medio, ut quisquis horas inspiciet, velit nolit, nomen meum legat (71). Horace too, I argue, connects his name with the passing hours: more subtly and modestly than Trimalchio, but also more significantly, in a recurrent play of sounds and words.That Roman poets and orators exploited puns (...) on names, especially cognomina, is well known; but although scholars have noted scattered name-puns in Horace’s poetry (some of which will be mentioned here), the important play on Horatius/hora has been ignored, and any argument seeking to restore it to general consciousness must rely on probabilities: somewhat subjective ones, to be sure, yet which carry a certain cumulative conviction. I begin by discussing Satires 2.6, where Horace is most clearly involved in the horae, and then proceed through a wide range of hora references, most notably in Odes 4.6. A code on Vergilius/ver will provide a friendly parallel. I hope in all this to suggest that Horace plays on his own redende Name not just for occasional fun, but as a way of asserting, and sometimes exploring, his personal identity beneath the shifting personae of his life and craft.Hora Quota Est? (Satires 2.6.44)The question hora quota est? is given as an example of small talk, safely “entrusted” to Horace’s “leaky ear”:septimus octavo propior iam fugerit annus ex quo Maecenas me coepit habere suorum in numero, dumtaxat ad hoc, quem tollere raeda vellet iter faciens et cui concredere nugas hoc genus, “hora quota est? Thraex est Gallina Syro par? matutina parum cautos iam frigora mordent”: et quae rimosa bene deponuntur in aure. per totum hoc tempus subiectior in diem et horam invidiae noster....(40–48) [End Page 583]As if he were giving a public interview, Horace carefully and humorously delimits his relationship with Maecenas. He is an occasional, amusing companion, not a privileged insider. In Satires 1.6 he had distinguished his personal and social acceptance within Maecenas’ circle, where true merit is honored, from those political ambitions from which—in the blind, prejudiced world of Roman politics—a freedman’s son must normally be barred. In Satires 2.6 he goes further. He is not (he alleges) really intimate with Maecenas, certainly not to the point of sharing inside information about, e.g., the Dacian threat or plans to resettle veterans in Southern Italy or Sicily. He is nothing like the confidential friend described by Ennius, “with whom he [the great man] often and gladly shares his table, his conversation, and the giving and taking of advice about his affairs” (rerumque suarum consilium) and “to whom he would speak out confidently” (audacter) about great things or small, good things or bad, all “vomited forth” carelessly, yet “safely deposited” (evomeret... tutoque locaret), and “with whom [he would share] many pleasures.” 1We may suspect that Horace played the role of just such a confidential friend to Maecenas, and played it well. 2 We may also suspect that while he regaled that first audience of insiders with the comic narrative of his daily frustrations in Rome, he was also reassuring Maecenas—to everyone’s amusement, as with the earlier “Journey to Brundisium”—that he did not have, precisely, a leaky ear. One resulting and more than simply dramatic irony is that today’s reader must identify with those importunate street people who were teased, baffled, and insulted by Horace’s silence. I want, however, to argue here for a second irony involving the offhand question hora quota est? which may mean a good deal more to Horace, Maecenas, and ourselves than first appears [End Page 584] on the surface—much as Falstaff’s opening question to the Prince, “Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?” proves fatally relevant to the affairs of Hal and Hotspur, Falstaff and the King, in Henry IV, Part 1. 3“What time is it?” The Romans did not wear watches. Their sense of time, even with sundials, was very inexact by modern standards. Because they had hours (roughly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Only a Wet Dream? Hope and Skepticism in Horace, Satire 1.5Kenneth J. ReckfordLong enjoyed as an entertainment piece, Horace’s “Trip to Brundisium” has continued to baffle its readers by recounting trivialities while ignoring politics. A brief, tactful hint at great affairs is quickly abandoned:huc venturus erat Maecenas optimus atque Cocceius, missi magnis de rebus uterque legati, aversos soliti componere amicos. hic oculis ego nigra meis collyria lippus illinere. interea (...) Maecenas advenit...(S. 1.5.27–31)In his first hic ego (7), Horace missed dinner because of stomach trouble. In the second (30), he misses Maecenas’ arrival—and its meaning—because of eye trouble. Is he unable to see what is going on around him? 1Horace’s persona in Satires 1.5 is well crafted: the naive, good-humored traveling companion, concerned primarily with his own intrusive comforts and discomforts. He likes good food, drink, and sleep, good health and good company, and he especially enjoys his friends: nil ego contulerim iucundo sanus amico (44). He was taken along, it would appear, rather passively from the first (egressum magna me accepit Aricia Roma), on a mission that had something to do with “reconciling [End Page 525] friends” who had fallen out. That is all he knows, and all he needs to know. 2We may well suspect that Horace was keeping a diplomatic silence, that Maecenas confided in him, here and elsewhere, precisely because he did not have a “leaky ear.” 3 He would be teasing, then: teasing prospective readers who would suspect that he was withholding privileged information with intent to annoy, and (rather beyond his intent?) teasing modern scholars who cannot even take the satire’s date for granted, let alone follow the diplomatic maneuvers of Octavian and Antony in 38-37 B.C. 4 If we follow Horace’s lead, all those amusing particulars that render the political picture so opaque convey us insistently into the “little world” of poetry, friendship, and simple human satisfactions. It is tempting to confine our attention to this “little world,” accepting Horace at face value as an amiable entertainer, with brief excursions, perhaps, into comparing the esthetics of his narrative with the reconstructed narrative of the casually autobiographical Lucilius—an attempt that, from insufficient evidence, must also end in frustration. But there is more. I propose here that the poem is both more public and more private than it seems. Reading between the lines, though without abusing allegory, we find Horace deeply implicated in issues of war and peace. Through the distorting lens of the satiric and comic imagination he portrays how a sensitive and thoughtful person might waver between hope for a peaceful, even “friendly” resolution of conflict and skepti-cal awareness of the gap between personal wish-fulfillment (the “wet [End Page 526] dream” of my title) and political reality. Yet this same wavering, and Horace’s consequent, very human vacillation between emotional involvement with Rome and Epicurean disengagement, are the stuff of which genuine poetry—and, consistently over time and through different genres, Horatian poetry—is made.My argument focuses on three aspects of Satire 1.5: the theme of amicitia, private and public; the agon, or insult-match between Sarmentus the scurra and Messius Cicirrus; and the “wet dream” and “failed miracle” sequences toward the end. But first, because Horace’s satires are in part exploratory, like all good poetry, and because meanings notoriously shift as a work progresses in time and is made available to different audiences or circles of readers, I begin with a hypothetical framework consisting of (1) the occasion and first plan, (2) the sketching-out and refining of the satire, (3) its first reading(s) to friends, and (4) its first publication in book form. Further questions of reader reception and the organization of the libellus are deferred until the close of the essay.Hypothetical Stages Of Composition And Reception(1) The poem is conceived. We begin with the happy conjunction of two opportunities (kairoi), Roman and Horatian. The larger kairos involves the diplomatic mission of 37, a renewed attempt to prevent (or postpone) conflict between Octavian and Antony, to settle their differences, and to provide... (shrink)

Maurice Meisner was an important scholar of twentieth-century Chinese history, whose work focused on the ideological and bureaucratic dimensions of the People’s Republic and its origins in the upheavals of the first half of the century. This review considers aFestschriftincluding contributions from eight former students of Meisner, with articles on a wide array of topics across the period from the 1920s to the early twenty-first century. Strengths and limitations of Meisner’s work and his legacy are presented in conjunction with reflections (...) on the underlying issues of the nature of contemporary China and its role in the world, and some related recent scholarly debates on the Left. (shrink)

This study examines cheating behaviors among 742 marketing and management majors at three public AACSB-accredited business schools. Specifically, we studied the simultaneous influence of demographic and attitudinal characteristics on: (1) reported prior cheating behavior; (2) the tendency to neutralize cheating behaviors; and, (3) likelihood of future cheating. We additionally examined the impact of in-class deterrents on neutralization of cheating behaviors and the likelihood of future cheating. We also directly tested potential mediating effects of neutralization on cheating behavior.We conducted independent assessments (...) of the validity of the Smith et al. (2002) model of cheating behavior and its antecedents using structural equations modeling procedures. Results supported the differentiation of the theoretical constructs within the specified process model. Furthermore, tests of the aforementioned theoretical model indicated that the primary influences on future cheating were prior cheating, and the degree to which one neutralized prior cheating behaviors. Equally noteworthy, in contrast to previous research we found in-class deterrents to have no significant influence in either neutralizing behavior or future cheating proclivities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Time and the Erotic in Horace’s Odes, and: Horace: Behind the Public PoetryKenneth ReckfordRonnie Ancona. Time and the Erotic in Horace’s Odes. Durham, N.C. and London: Duke University Press, 1994. xii + 186Cloth, $39.95.R. O. A. M. Lyne. Horace: Behind the Public Poetry. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. viii + 230 pp. Cloth, $30.Horace’s love poetry has generally been undervalued, if not actively disliked. In (...) the bad old days, as Ancona reminds us, he was simply charged with not being Catullus or Propertius; and although the New Critics appreciated his refined irony and playfulness, they still treated him as somewhat of a kinsman of the fairy queen in Iolanthe, who proclaims,On fire that glows with heat intense I turn the hose of common sense.Ancona doubly disturbs the stereotype. Drawing on feminist and gender theory, she traces the recurrent Horatian figure of the (male) poet-lover whose drive for autonomy and control leads him to resist any form of desire that enforces immersion in temporality; and she argues, too, that (mostly male) scholars have privileged that attitude by identifying with it and taking it for granted. The thesis is challenging, it is well argued, and it serves Horace well.Throughout her careful, often elegant analysis of fourteen odes, Ancona traces the poet-lover’s “desperate refusal to situate his own identity in any real relation to the uncontrollable temporality of the beloved” (13). I summarize, baldly, a few results. (1) His desire as he ages is a private sorrow, or even a bid for power (Odes 4.1); hers is a public embarrassment and disgrace (Odes 1.25). (2) He tries vainly to defeat time through imaginings of permanence in nature, or self-identification with youthful eroticism (Odes 1.4) or fantasies of erotic domination (Odes 1.9, 2.9). Or (3): the beloved woman or boy must not be seen as quite real, if the poet-lover’s integrity is to be maintained (Odes 1.22, 2.5). Only in Odes 1.13 and, more compellingly, in the duet of Odes 3.9 does Horace envisage the (to be sure, very distant) possibility of a genuinely evolving love, with both lovers submitting equally to the challenges of time and change.If her results are challenging—and I shall not read Integer Vitae, or Cum tu Lydia, Telephi, or Donec gratus eram tibi so complacently ever again—Ancona’s argument is built from the ground up in ways that reassure the philologist. Her readings are precise and accurate. She is sensitive to Horace’s poetic strategies, his indirections of technique. Ancona acknowledges her debt to earlier critics. Her analyses of Odes 1.23, 1.25, 2.8, 2.9, 3.7, and 4.13 should be required reading for the next generation.Two minor caveats. Ancona’s reading of Odes 1.13 hinges on the interpretation of irrupta... copula as, not “an unbroken bond,” but “an interrupted bond” that yet holds over time and change: a philologically and humanly daring oxymoron. At Odes 3.9.10 I see a strong sexual challenge inscribed in dulcis [End Page 657] docta modos et citharae sciens. Sex and music go together, and Chloe plays well. All the more reason for Lydia, in the next stanza, to turn up the heat.More generally, I wonder whether behind such controlling Horatian personas as the erotodidaskalos of Odes 3.23—a more sensitive, Roman Anacreon—we may not sense the person of a Horace who is remarkably open to the same mysteries of time and change from which his “Horace” so often, and so vainly, struggles to escape? This Horace of mine (let me, this once, be controlling) recognizes Venus as an irreducible power in life and responds to “time and the erotic” with more self-awareness, more passion, and more poetic excitement than has ordinarily been heard in the Odes. To have revived that sense, which I think we share, of ongoing excitement and challenge in the odes on love—though the aesthetic can itself (as in Odes 2.5) be a refuge from life’s changes—is Ancona’s last, best... (shrink)

This book is written for the non-philosophy major taking 'Contemporary Moral Issues' or 'Intro to Ethics' courses. It provides a method to research any complex moral issue in hundreds of print, periodical, and Internet research sources, and gives a model of the method applied to the question of capital punishment.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Brief Mention: Shameless Interests: The Decent Scholarship of Indecency*Kenneth J. ReckfordGood intentions go astray. I had meant simply to celebrate the ease and naturalness with which classical scholars treat obscene subject-matter nowadays, but there were difficulties, which may prove instructive.I had felt oddly grateful, after reading and reviewing Dover’s 1993 Frogs, for how he explained (and of course, printed) the old scatological jokes that Merry (1905) had omitted, (...) and which Adam Parry copied onto the blackboard for our fascinated Greek 106a class in fall, 1951. How strange they seem now, all those expurgated editions, those unhelpful commentaries, those mystery-keeping professors. Like Byron, we all had comic encounters with the “grosser parts”:They only add them all in an appendix,Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index...Perhaps we worked harder than Byron. I remember, early on, struggling with Cat. 56 (which even Housman misinterpreted in his notorious 1931 “Praefanda,” for Catullus does not look on, masturbating, but plunges in, making a threesome); and I struggled with Martial. I may even, at sixteen, have been the last of the Victorians, learning about sexual by-paths from Latin poetic grammar and syntax. (Loebs were forbidden under pain of death: but had I consulted Ker’s Martial, I would have found the offending passages translated into Italian, not English: “On the theory,” Rolfe Humphries once said, “that God doesn’t understand Italian.”) We laughed; it was good fun. Yet our half-prurient inquisitiveness was mixed with genuine philological research; we resented roadblocks to learning; and years later, when Fordyce’s Catullus appeared with twenty-two “dirty poems” left out, we felt absolutely betrayed.So I give thanks for unexpurgated texts and helpful commentaries (such as Dover’s Clouds and Frogs, and Henderson’s Lysistrata, and Ferguson’s Juvenal); for good translations, too, like Charles Martin’s The Poems of Catullus (Johns Hopkins, 1990), which combines plain speaking with a certain subtle elegance. I honor the pioneers: Arrowsmith and Parker, and Sullivan; Henderson’s Maculate Muse (1975) and Dover’s Greek Homosexuality (1978; earlier writings too); Adams’ Latin Sexual [End Page 311] Vocabulary (1982) and Richlin’s Garden of Priapus (1983).* Here were basic materials for further study and interpretation. Definitions and distinctions came first: between primary obscenities and euphemisms; between different generic conventions and expected attitudes (as in oratory, comedy, epigram). In art, too, the blacking-out of erect penises on Greek vases has been removed; wall-paintings from Pompeian brothels have been made accessible, even without a bribe; budding scholars of both sexes discourse learnedly on such subjects as “Male Discharge Imagery on Greek Vase-Painting” (at a 1995 colloquium); and now Martin Kilmer’s Greek Erotica (1994) has brought new precision to the study of, e.g., intercrural intercourse between “courting” men and youths, and heterosexual intercourse a tergo (where an oil flask may suggest anal penetration, as against vaginal). The details, the illustrations and descriptions, are increasingly accurate. Gradually, too, old-time scholarly taboos have been breached, so we can handle “dirty” words and pictures without fear of degradation. We are most grateful that obscenities are no longer kept in quarantine, or treated as the exclusive hunting preserve of a “gentleman’s club” (writing in Latin, of course), so that, taking our cue from Catullus and Martial, whose “poems are dirty but our lives were pure,” we may pursue the decent scholarship of indecency.Let me, though, introduce two caveats for philologists. First, that the poetic indecencies of Aristophanes, Catullus, Martial, and Juvenal remain “untranslatable”: not from embarrassment now, but from linguistic impotence. Take Catullus’ mentula, that ugly, dangling noun, so much more evocative than “prick” or “cock”; or take irrumabo and irrumator, those powerful, almost onomatopoeic four-syllable words. “Fuck in the [End Page 312] mouth” (early Richlin) explains but loses the tone. Martin does better with Cat. 16:I’ll fuck the pair of you as you prefer it,oral Aurelius, anal Furius...a touch of wit, accessible to non-Latinists. (Will Shackleton Bailey’s new Loeb of Martial send American students scurrying to their dictionaries to look up “sodomized”?)My second caveat is more nostalgic. In our innocent (or... (shrink)

The Trouble with America critiques the theory and practice of American government—government too weak to solve our public problems, restrained more in its ability to do good than in its ability to do harm, and grossly unfair to the poor and middle classes. As a result, we Americans find ourselves with poor leadership, inadequate representation, failing policies, and a pathological culture.