"... compelling.... This book might have been called ‘No Easy Answers.’ Each of the contributors writes with undisguised urgency.... [W]e should face up to these issues now. By No Extraordinary Means
The lead author's early teaching experience is cited in support of the need for better practices. In this summary of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind legislation, professors of education
What happens when crucial public issues are decided by the people themselves?Canadians answered “Yes” or “No” to prohibiting alcohol, conscripting soldiers, and revamping our constitution. Forcing the
Si alguno de los presentes conoce alguna razon por la que este matrimonio no deba seguir adelante, que calle ahora o…Jerjes Novros no se iba a limitar a protestar por la boda de Rose. Iba a secuestrar
That economics can usefully explain politics is no longer a novel idea, it is a well-established fact brought about by the work of many public choice scholars. This book, which is a sequel to a simila
Since the early 1990s when the nation’s first charter school was opened in Minneapolis, the scope and availability of school-based options to parents has steadily expanded. No longer can public
Honesty in voting, it turns out, is not always the best policy. Indeed, in the early 1970s, Allan Gibbard and Mark Satterthwaite, building on the seminal work of Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, proved that with three or more alternatives there is no reasonable voting system that is non-manipulable; voters will always have an opportunity to benefit by submitting a disingenuous ballot. The ensuing decades produced a number of theorems of striking mathematical naturality that dealt with the manipulability of voting systems. This 2005 book presents many of these results from the last quarter of the twentieth century, especially the contributions of economists and philosophers, from a mathematical point of view, with many new proofs. The presentation is almost completely self-contained, and requires no prerequisites except a willingness to follow rigorous mathematical arguments. Mathematics students, as well as mathematicians, political scientists, economists and philosophers will learn why i
Wulf Gaertner provides a comprehensive account of an important and complex issue within social choice theory: how to establish a social welfare function while restricting the spectrum of individual preferences in a sensible way. Gaertner's starting point is K. J. Arrow's famous 'Impossibility Theorem', which showed that no welfare function could exist if an unrestricted domain of preferences is to be satisfied together with some other appealing conditions. A number of leading economists have tried to provide avenues out of this 'impossibility' by restricting the variety of preferences: here, Gaertner provides a clear and detailed account, using standardized mathematical notation, of well over forty theorems associated with domain conditions. Domain Conditions in Social Choice Theory will be an essential addition to the library of social choice theory for scholars and their advanced graduate students.
Wulf Gaertner provides a comprehensive account of an important and complex issue within social choice theory: how to establish a social welfare function while restricting the spectrum of individual preferences in a sensible way. Gaertner's starting point is K. J. Arrow's famous 'Impossibility Theorem', which showed that no welfare function could exist if an unrestricted domain of preferences is to be satisfied together with some other appealing conditions. A number of leading economists have tried to provide avenues out of this 'impossibility' by restricting the variety of preferences: here, Gaertner provides a clear and detailed account, using standardized mathematical notation, of well over forty theorems associated with domain conditions. Domain Conditions in Social Choice Theory will be an essential addition to the library of social choice theory for scholars and their advanced graduate students.
Honesty in voting, it turns out, is not always the best policy. Indeed, in the early 1970s, Allan Gibbard and Mark Satterthwaite, building on the seminal work of Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, proved that with three or more alternatives there is no reasonable voting system that is non-manipulable; voters will always have an opportunity to benefit by submitting a disingenuous ballot. The ensuing decades produced a number of theorems of striking mathematical naturality that dealt with the manipulability of voting systems. This 2005 book presents many of these results from the last quarter of the twentieth century, especially the contributions of economists and philosophers, from a mathematical point of view, with many new proofs. The presentation is almost completely self-contained, and requires no prerequisites except a willingness to follow rigorous mathematical arguments. Mathematics students, as well as mathematicians, political scientists, economists and philosophers will learn why i
An agent often does not have precise probabilities or utilities to guide resolution of a decision problem. I advance a principle of rationality for making decisions in such cases. To begin, I represent the doxastic and conative state of an agent with a set of pairs of a probability assignment and a utility assignment. Then I support a decision principle that allows any act that maximizes expected utility according to some pair of assignments in the set. Assuming that computation of an option's expected utility uses comprehensive possible outcomes that include the option's risk, no consideration supports a stricter requirement.
As we learn more about diet, cholesterol and heart-health, it is more essential than ever. With its emphasis on a simple, sensible approach to healthy eating, this is a perfect, time-tested choice for
In The Choice, Arnine Cumsky Weiss and Carol Weiss Rubel present the stories of forty-five converts to Judaism. These reflective narratives demonstrate that no two converts’ experiences are alike, yet
Joss Whedon once identified himself as an "angry, hard-line atheist" who is nevertheless "fascinated by the concept of devotion." While organized religion seems to hold no satisfactory answers for Wh
Despite several decades of research on Supreme Court decision-making by specialists in judicial politics, there is no good answer to a key question: if each justice’s behavior on the Court were motiva
