Articles

The Risk Society

China released quarterly GDP figures this week. Wen Jiabao emphasized the parts of the release that pointed toward stabilization, and one can certainly find some logic to that view.

MWG introduces the theory of consumer behavior by presenting two distinct approaches to modeling consumer behavior, the preference-based approach (based upon unobservable preferences generating a utility function) and the choice-based approach (based upon observable choice behavior), and attempting to establish connections between the two.

“The aim would not be to unravel a hidden coherent structure of the philosophical, theoretical, political dimensions of his work, but to give a sense of the contingencies that his work was subject to – both in terms of its origins and its receptions. Don’t make up an Arrow that he himself was not aware of.” -Till to me, email conversation on Kenneth Arrow, summer 2012

Last Thursday, the Fed announced its anticipated third round of balance-sheet expansion, at a fixed rate of about $40B per month “until [substantial] improvement [in unemployment] is achieved in a context of price stability”.

In what sense are central banks really independent? From whom are they independent? For whom in society do they deliver?

How must the European institutional structure be modified to fortify the euro zone?

How representation of data can contribute to, or dispel the false certainty of statistical and econometric technique.

“We choose this stochastic structure for computational reasons. This reduces the dimension of the variables. With (such and such) alternative, the computational burden would have dramatically increased.”

Ivan Moscati is one of the most exciting voices in the historiography of decision theory.