Π. Καρκατσούλης, "Ρύθμιση, Απορρύθμιση, Μεταρρύθμιση: Μεταλλαγές του Κανόνα Δικαίου στην Εποχή της Παγκοσμιοποίησης"

Το παρόν έργο αποτελεί μια πραγματεία για τη σχέση κράτους και δικαίου μέσα από τη μελέτη δύο διαχρονικών παθολογιών τους: της πολυνομίας και της εκνομίκευσης.

Οι ρυθμιστικές αυτές ανακολουθίες μελετώνται μέσα από την εμπειρική διερεύνησή τους στην Ελλάδα για διάστημα μιας τριακονταετίας και τα συμπεράσματα συγκρίνονται με εκείνα αντίστοιχων ερευνών σε δύο κεντρο-ευρωπαϊκές χώρες: τη Γερμανία και την Αυστρία. Η πολυνομία και η εκνομίκευση ερμηνεύονται μέσα από τη νομική και διοικητική επιστήμη, την κοινωνιολογία του δικαίου, τη νομική πολιτειολογία, την κοινωνική ψυχολογία και την πληροφορική. Επιχειρείται μια συγκριτική αξιολόγηση των απαντήσεών τους και διακρίνονται εκείνες που προσφέρουν το καταλληλότερο, υπό την έποψη της απαιτούμενης περιπλοκότητας, ερμηνευτικό πλαίσιο.

Η κεντρική ιδέα του βιβλίου είναι ότι οι διαφοροποιήσεις των κοινωνικών υποσυστημάτων επιφυλάσσουν μία διαφορετική θέση στον κανόνα δικαίου, ο οποίος αποβάλλει τον παρεμβατικό του χαρακτήρα και μετατρέπεται σε ιδιο-σύστημα, επιτρέποντας την έμμεση ρύθμιση των συστημάτων με τα οποία αλληλεπιδρά.

Thinking Like an Economist—About Superman

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Hat tip: WSJ

Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon Smith on Experimental Economics, Adam Smith, the housing bubble, and his journey towards libertarianism

Interview by Nick Gillespie

Reason.tv
July 20, 2011

Vernon Smith is a pioneer, discovering a whole new way to study economics and winning a Nobel Prize for doing so.

Smith sat down with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie to discuss a variety of topics, including growing up in Kansas during the Great Depression, his ideological journey from socialist to libertarian, how and why some of Adam Smith's most important intellectual contributions are overlooked, and what experimental economics has to say about the collapse of the housing market.

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Toying With Deregulation

Wall Street Journal
Editorial
July 20, 2011

Here's a question for White House regulatory czar Cass Sunstein: Do Presidential executive orders mean anything? Only last week President Obama asked independent agencies to examine existing rules and get rid of the duds, but nobody is listening.

Within days of the executive order, the Consumer Product Safety Commission voted 3-2 that it is "technologically feasible" to impose a lower limit on lead content in children's products, reducing the level to 100 parts per million from 300 parts per million. The new limit, which will go into effect August 14, will mean one more round of hair-pulling for small business owners who will have to change their manufacturing processes and junk existing products that don't meet the new standard. The three votes in favor came from Mr. Obama's chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum and two other Democratic commissioners.

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act passed in 2008 in a frenzy of concern over lead content in toys from China, and it has since tormented anyone who makes or sells bicycles, books, children's jewelry and so much more. Its strictures have imposed costs for testing, recalls and other inconveniences without any reasonable correlation to the risks to children. "No sweetheart, don't eat that bicycle!"

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Μείωση αστυνόμευσης οδηγεί σε περισσότερα τροχαία

Το Βήμα
15 Ιουλίου 2011

Δεκαέξι νομοί της χώρας χαρακτηρίζονται, σύμφωνα με έρευνα του Πολυτεχνείου Κρήτης, ως οι περιοχές που έχουν πρόβλημα ατυχημάτων και η απόδοση της τροχαίας δεν είναι ικανοποιητική βάση των σχετικών στατιστικών στοιχείων της Τροχαίας για το 2010.

Η έρευνα, που παρουσιάζει σήμερα Το Βήμα, με τίτλο «Τροχαία αστυνόμευση και οδική ασφάλεια» πραγματοποιήθηκε από τους Κωνσταντίνο Ζοπουνίδη, καθηγητή του Εργαστηρίου Συστημάτων Χρηματοοικονομικής Διοίκησης, Μιχαήλ Νικολαράκη, Διδάκτορα και Μιχάλη Δούμπο, Επίκουρο Καθηγητή.

Κατά την έρευνα από την μελέτη των στοιχείων προκύπτει πως όπου βεβαιώνονται ελάχιστες παραβάσεις του Κώδικα Οδικής Κυκλοφορίας σημειώνονται και πολλά τροχαία ατυχήματα ενώ όπου ο αριθμός των παραβάσεων είναι υψηλός μειώνονται τα ατυχήματα.

Οι νομοί αυτοί, κατά την έρευνα, όπου κατεγράφησαν πολλά τροχαία ατυχήματα και λίγες παραβάσεις είναι οι: Θεσσαλονίκης, Δωδεκανήσου, Έβρου, Εύβοιας, Ζακύνθου, Ημαθίας, Θεσπρωτίας, Καβάλας, Καρδίτσας, Κυκλάδων, Λακωνίας, Μεσσηνίας, Πρέβεζας, Φθιώτιδας, Φωκίδας και Χανίων.

Οι ερευνητές σημειώνουν πως στις περιοχές αυτές η αυξημένη αστυνόμευση δεν έχει φέρει αποτελέσματα και έτσι απαιτούνται άλλες λύσεις όπως βελτίωση του οδικού δικτύου, της κυκλοφοριακής αγωγής κλπ ενώ παράλληλα χρειάζονται ειδική μελέτη από συγκοινωνιολόγους.

Αντίθετα οι νομοί με τα λιγότερα ατυχήματα και τις πολλές βεβαιώσεις παραβάσεων είναι: Κιλκίς, Λασιθίου, Πέλλας, Πιερίας, Ρεθύμνης, Σερρών, Φλώρινας και Χίου. Αυτές είναι οι περιοχές, όπως σημειώνεται στις οποίες η αυξημένη αστυνόμευση φαίνεται πως είχε αποτελέσματα.

Περισσότερα

Barry Eichengreen - Why Economics Needs History

interview by Perry G. Mehrling

Institute for New Economic Thinking
July 11, 2011

What challenges will China have to surmount in order to make its currency a true international currency? To answer this question and others, Barry Eichengreen studies history. In the old days, he says, historians and theorists worked smoothly together and saw one another as serious scholars. But those days are gone, and nowadays the profession largely neglects historical and institutional research. That's why Barry Eichengreen is running the Berkeley Economic History Lab to educate a future generation of scholars -- a generation that is historically literate and does policy-relevant research. These are the seeds of new economic thinking.

Barry Eichengreen is the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987.

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Income = Happiness? A Strangely Tough Sell in Aspen

by Justin Wolfers

New York Times
July 8, 2011

I spent last week at the Aspen Ideas Festival, talking about Betsey’s and my research on the Economics of Happiness. You might think that my message - that income and happiness are tightly linked - would be an easy sell in Aspen, which is the most beautiful and most expensive city I’ve ever visited. But in fact, it’s the millionaires, billionaires and public intellectuals who are often most resistant to data upsetting their beliefs. You see, the (false) belief that economic development won’t increase happiness is comfortingly counter-intuitive to the intelligentsia. And it’s oddly reassuring to the rich, who can fly their private jets into a ski resort feeling (falsely) relieved of any concern that the dollars involved could be better spent elsewhere.

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Do Britain’s Strict Press Laws Actually Encourage Bad Behavior?

by Bradford Plumer
July 8, 2011

And just like that, the News of the World is gone. Never mind that Rupert Murdoch’s racy tabloid was the best-selling and most profitable weekly in Britain, with a circulation of some 2.6 million. After the paper was caught hacking—repeatedly, and flagrantly—into the phones of everyone from the royals to a child murder victim, and once advertisers started fleeing en masse, a death sentence was the only option left.

The NOTW meltdown has led to lots of focus on the bizarre, hyper-aggressive world of Britain’s red-top tabloids—and, for that matter, Britain’s broadsheets, which often aren’t all that better behaved. While NOTW may have been particularly egregious, odds are decent other papers could have scandals lurking. (As Nick Davies, who broke open the phone-hacking story, noted in his 2009 book Flat-Earth News, more than a dozen British papers have hired private investigators to suss out confidential personal info, often through legally dubious means.) But even setting aside potential lawbreaking, many of Britain’s papers were famous for their reckless pursuit of stories at any cost, their thin regard for accuracy, their adventures in outright libel. No wonder American journalists have been feeling awfully smug this week.

So how did the British press get so irresponsible—especially compared to its (relatively) staid and sober cousins across the Atlantic? It’s especially curious when you consider that U.S. newspapers enjoy sweeping First Amendment freedoms, while the British press has to operate under some of the strictest defamation and libel laws on the planet. Is it possible that Britain’s stricter press laws actually encourage bad behavior?

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Το Θεσμικό Έλλειμμα

του Αριστείδη Χατζή

Φύλλα Ελευθερίας
Forum για την Ελλάδα
Ιούνιος 2011

Η Ελλάδα βρίσκεται στο μέσο της χειρότερης πολιτικής, οικονομικής και θεσμικής κρίσης μετά την μεταπολίτευση. Η κρίση είναι κυρίως οικονομική αλλά είναι και πολιτική, καθώς προφανώς θα οδηγήσει μεσοπρόθεσμα στο ριζικό μετασχηματισμό του κομματικού συστήματος που διαχειρίστηκε την Ελληνική δημοκρατία τα τελευταία 35 χρόνια. Η οικονομική και η πολιτική κρίση όμως αποτελούν τα συμπτώματα της πολύ σοβαρότερης θεσμικής κρίσης.

Μια επιδερμική προσέγγιση της θεσμικής κρίσης θα την απέδιδε στην απίσχναση της πολιτικής νομιμοποίησης, στην απαξίωση θεσμών όπως το κοινοβούλιο, η κυβέρνηση, η παιδεία, ακόμα και η δικαιοσύνη. Πρόκειται όμως και πάλι για τα εμφανή συμπτώματα μιας βαθύτερης θεσμικής κρίσης που συνοδεύει την ελληνική πολιτεία από την ίδρυσή της. Η κρίση αυτή οφείλεται στην θεσμική ανωριμότητα της ελληνικής κοινωνίας. Η θεσμική ανωριμότητα, για τους σκοπούς αυτού του σύντομου κειμένου, ορίζεται απλά ως υπανάπτυξη των θεσμών.

Θα βρείτε εδώ την συνέχεια του κειμένου

Pursuit of Happiness Gets More Difficult

Wall Street Journal
July 2, 2011

29%: Share of Americans who say they’re “very happy”.

The Declaration of Independence enshrined the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right. Lately, that pursuit appears to have gotten more difficult.

The General Social Survey, out of the University of Chicago, polls U.S. residents on everything from how often they attend church to how much they trust one another. In the latest poll, the number of people who said they were “very happy” fell to 29% last year. That is down from 32% in 2006, the year before the recession started, and the lowest level the survey has registered in its 39-year history.

Before the recession, the survey’s measure of happiness saw little reaction to the ups and downs of the U.S. economy. The record low speaks to the downturn’s severity. But that it took such a deep recession to move the happiness needle also points to the difficulty of measuring well-being with surveys.

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The Measure of Human Happiness

by Clive Crook

The Atlantic
July 1, 2011

A theme at many sessions at this year's AIF has been happiness--what it is, how you advance it, how you measure it. Fascinating. Justin Wolfers and Robert Frank had an interesting exchange on this earlier in the week, and I'm continuing to turn their arguments over in my mind.

Wolfers tore into the "Easterlin Paradox", which is the claim that happiness does not rise with income beyond a certain point. That finding (see Richard Easterlin: Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?) gave rise to the popular view that, for rich countries at least, economic growth is a treadmill. People are struggling to improve their status, and feel happier if they succeed, but the race for status goods is zero-sum. Growth in absolute income cannot raise everybody's relative position. It allows higher consumption but expands desires at about the same rate. The gain in happiness, if any, is small. For a rich country, the obsession with growth in GDP is an error.

Wolfers walked through his impressive array of data--derived from a remarkable project of international comparisons undertaken by Gallup--and argued that the Easterlin claim is simply and unambiguously false. Higher incomes make people happier. It takes ever larger increases in absolute income to yield a given improvement in happiness (happiness rises with the log of income), but there is no point of saturation. Within countries, richer people are happier than poor people. Globally, rich countries are happier than poor countries. He examined some of the statistical evidence which is said to point the other way, and showed it was wrong. Economic growth does what it is supposed to.

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Bruce Caldwell - Why Economics Needs the History of Thought

interview by Perry G. Mehrling

Institute for New Economic Thinking
June 30, 2011

Who is going to teach fields like economic methodology and the history of economic thought if these fields aren't taught to current graduate students? Bruce Caldwell is filling this hole in the graduate curriculum. The Hayek scholar is ramping-up the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University to educate a generation of future professors – a generation that is well-versed in the history of economic thought, and that communicates with other social sciences and the humanities. These are the seeds of new economic thinking.

Bruce Caldwell is a Research Professor of Economics and the Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University. He is the author of Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the 20th Century. For the past two decades his research has focused on the multi-faceted writings of the Nobel prize-winning economist and social theorist Friedrich A. Hayek. Since 2002 he has been the General Editor of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, a collection of Hayek's writings.

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