segunda-feira, 12 de outubro de 2009

Teoria das Instituições

Premio Nobel em economia 2009 para Oliver E. Williamson e Elinor Ostrom
veja o artigo de Williamson sobre escolha e contrato
e a entrevista com Ostrom sobre sustentabilidade ecolôgica-social
pp. 246
Mais sobre a pesquisa de Elinor Ostram
Mais sobre a pesquisa de Oliver E. Williamson
veja também a Contribuição mais recente para esta linha de pesquisa
Background artigo sobre Nova sociologia econômica e nova teoria das instituições Richter

sábado, 10 de outubro de 2009

Premio Nobel de Paz 2009

O testamento de Nobel diz que o premio vai receber “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” ...
Obama 2009:

segunda-feira, 5 de outubro de 2009

Peer review

In Econ Journal Watch, David R. Hakes tells a funny or chilling story of a paper he co-wrote with a colleague:


I immersed myself in the literature for a few of months so that I could more precisely fit our contribution into the existing literature. We managed to reduce the equations in the paper to six. At this stage the paper was perfectly clear and was written at a level so that it could reach a broad audience. When we submitted the paper to risk, uncertainty, and insurance journals, the referees responded that the results were self-evident. After some degree of frustration, my coauthor suggested that the problem with the paper might be that we had made the argument too easy to follow, and thus referees and editors were not sufficiently impressed.... The resulting paper had fifteen equations, two propositions and proofs, dozens of additional mathematical expressions, and a mathematical appendix containing nineteen equations and even more mathematical expressions. I personally could no longer understand the paper and I could not possibly present the paper alone. The paper was published in the first journal to which we submitted.

sábado, 3 de outubro de 2009

Progresso científico

John Stuart Mill explica:

"In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognisant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers—knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter—he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

-         JS Mill, On Liberty Ch. 2, Paragraph 7 (http://www. econlib.org/ library/Mill/ mlLbty2.html# Chapter 2)