Global Responsible Intergenerational Leadership

A conceptual framework and implementation guidance for intergenerational fairness

Julia M. Puaschunder, The New School

August 2017 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-178-7
Availability: In stock
154pp. ¦ $65 £54 €61

Today's grand policy dilemmas, from climate change, to over-indebtedness, to demographic shifts, have momentous long-term implications. Future generations will be constrained by our present decisions to an extent that is without precedent in advanced capitalist democracies. This book is an extensively researched and reasoned appeal in favor of intergenerational fairness - the ability to provide to future generations an at least as favorable standard of living as that enjoyed today. Intergenerational equity is an essential consideration in finding lasting solutions to the multifaceted crises of our time. As an implicit contract and transfer between living and future generations, intergenerational equity avoids discriminating against future generations. The book aims to theoretically define intergenerational equity and to frame it as a natural behavioral law, capturing human ethicality bounds. It follows a long and distinguished tradition of scholarly discourse in turning to natural law for solutions to major social predicaments. Outlining some of the causes of the current intergenerational imbalances regarding climate change and over-indebtedness it sets the basis for understanding their drivers and implications. A central proposition is that the natural human drive towards intergenerational fairness can be the basis for the necessary behavioral responses: the human-imbued moral compass of natural law can be a useful complement, if not alternative, to public policy. This book fills an important gap. Despite a resurgence of literature, the economic and social dimensions of intergenerational equity remain underexplored. Existing literature misses a holistic ethical framework of decision-making failures that addresses intergenerational concerns. Whilst evolutionary grounded, intergenerational fairness has not been recognized as a natural behavioral law – a human-imbued drive being bound by human fallibility. Practical implications and recommendations in advancing an agenda for the advancement of intergenerational equity are provided. Attention is drawn to the problem of providing the required leadership to promote the idea of intergenerational equity as a guiding principle in corporate, social and policy action. This book contributes both theoretical and practical insights and will be of interest to economists, sociologists, public policy makers and corporate executives tasked with tackling the most pressing contemporary challenges of mankind.

Stock-Flow-Consistent Models and Institutional Variety

Romar Correa, St Andrew’s College, India and Amelia Correa, St Andrew’s College, India

June 2017 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-181-7
Availability: In stock
126pp. ¦ $55 £45 €52

Orthodox macroeconomics is founded on microeconomics. Heterodox economists either reject micro foundations or experiment with behavioural relationships without paying attention to the principles that generate them. The book takes off from Michal Kalecki’s aphorism about economics being a science that confused stocks and flows. Kalecki was famous for presiding over a marriage between Marx and Keynes and all three figure prominently in the volume. However, the first part of the title is a homage to Wynne Godley who pioneered stock-flow-consistent modeling in our times. The authors exploit lagged values of variables emerging from the definitions. Lags also emerge in so-called stock-flow norms connecting the aggregates. Some moving and shaking of identities and a difference or differential equation emerges. The requirements for stability of the dynamic systems are illuminating and the reader can stop at structure and history with the first half of the book. The conversation with orthodoxy begins with the second part. The equivalent equation systems of the first part throw up different pairs of characters whose happiness must be maximised over time. The price to pay through the solution process is the confrontation with many ugly expressions but the explicit calculations are undertaken repeatedly only to reassure students through drillwork that tedium is not the same as difficulty. The payoffs are that variable transitions in capitalism (the second part of the title) are captured from a small clutch of identities. The movements from backward agriculture to capitalism, from ‘golden age’ capitalism to ‘financialization’, are modeled. A separate chapter is devoted to Europe. The policy prescriptions of heterodox economics do not compare with the richness of critique and positive analysis. ‘Positive’ and ‘normative’ are one in this work, the combination of stock-flow norms along with ‘forgotten’ policy variables like the tax rate promising order and stability to economies.

Agricultural Sector Issues in the European Periphery

Productivity, Export and Development Challenges

Edited by Persefoni Polychronidou, Central Macedonia Institute of Technology, Greece and Anastasios Karasavvoglou, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Institute of Technology, Greece

April 2017 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-272-2
Availability: In stock
132pp. ¦ $40 £35 €38

Over the course of the past two decades peripheral European economies in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe have experienced significant structural changes and have adapted to the global economic environment. Agriculture and the processing, using and trading of agricultural products play an important role in their economies. This volume covers several issues facing the contemporary agricultural sector in these countries, such as the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union, the identification of an opinion leader portrait in agriculture, the characteristics of using Information and Communication Technologies as tools in the partnerships and internal processes of enterprises throughout the whole agro-food supply chain, the increased need of small-scale artisanal food businesses to seek new markets abroad, the perceptions of Greek olive oil importers in the UK, the barriers that Greek yogurt entrepreneurs face during their export activities, the reasons for the differences in economic performance and the role of tangible and less tangible factors influencing development outcomes. It will be of interest to researchers studying economic development, agricultural economists, businesses active in the primary sector and students of applied economic analysis.

Cognitive Science: Recent Advances and Recurring Problems

Edited by Joao Eduardo Kogler Jr., University of Sao Paulo, Brazil et al.

May 2017 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-100-8
Availability: In stock
324pp. ¦ $75 £60 €69

This book consists of an edited collection of original essays of the highest academic quality by seasoned experts in their fields of cognitive science. The essays are interdisciplinary, drawing from many of the fields known collectively as “the cognitive sciences.” Topics discussed represent a significant cross-section of the most current and interesting issues in cognitive science. Specific topics include matters regarding machine learning and cognitive architecture, the nature of cognitive content, the relationship of information to cognition, the role of language and communication in cognition, the nature of embodied cognition, selective topics in visual cognition, brain connectivity, computation and simulation, social and technological issues within the cognitive sciences, and significant issues in the history of neuroscience. This book will be of interest to both professional researchers and newer students and graduate students in the fields of cognitive science—including computer science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. The essays are in English and are designed to be as free as possible of technical jargon and therefore accessible to young scholars and to scholars who are new to the cognitive neurosciences. In addition to several entries by single authors, the book contains several interesting roundtables where researchers contribute answers to a central question presented to those in the focus group on one of the core areas listed above. This exciting approach provides a variety of perspectives from across disciplines on topics of current concern in the cognitive sciences.

Poetic Inquiry

Enchantment of Place

Edited by Pauline Sameshima, Lakehead University, Canada et al.

October 2017 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-123-7
Availability: In stock
382pp. ¦ $67 £55 €63

In the tradition of a decade of bi-annual gatherings of the International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, this volume serves as the fifth refereed symposium anthology. Enchantment of Place celebrates poetry and poetic voices—theorizing and exploring poetic inquiry as an approach, methodology, and/or method for use in contemporary research practices. Poetic inquiry has increased in prominence as a legitimate means by which to collect, assimilate, analyze, and share the results of research across many disciplines. With this collection, we hope to continue to lay the groundwork internationally, for researchers, scholars, graduate students, and the larger community to take up poetic inquiry as a way to approach knowledge generation, learning, and sharing. This volume specifically works to draw attention to the ancient connection between poetry and the natural world with attention to broadening the ecological scope and impact of the work of poetic inquirers.