This is a historically important paper, by one “J. Philmore,” arguing along with Robert Nozick from a free-market libertarian viewpoint that the self-sale contract and the current employment or self-rental contract are on the same moral footing.
The Market Mechanism of Appropriation
December 12, 2012 by
This is a non-mathematical treatment of the fundamental theorem about the laissez faire mechanism for property appropriation.
Hume Implies Locke: Fundamental Theorem of Property Theory
December 12, 2012 by
The fundamental theorem for the invisible hand mechanism in the property system is that if Hume’s conditions are satisfied, then the invisible judge imputes in accordance with the Lockean responsibility principle. The paper mathematically formulates and proves the theorem using vector flows on graphs.
The Two Institutional Logics
December 12, 2012 by
This paper, published in a Korean English-language journal, argued for the logic of commitment in the design of a firm rather than the logic of exit. The contrasts between these two logics is explored in many fields.
Lessons from East Europe’s Voucher Privatization
December 12, 2012 by
This article examines the “economic” arguments put forward in favor of voucher privatization and it gives an institutional analysis of how the investment funds might be expected to behave in spite of expectations seen through rose-colored glasses. As one of the “great” social experiments of the late 20th century, some lessons for the future are drawn.
Harvard Business School Case: Mondragon
December 12, 2012 by
This is a reprint of Case No. 1-384-270. Harvard Business School 1984. It gives an overall view of the Mondragon cooperative movement of the Basque country in northern Spain as it was in the early 1980s.
Who Pays for ESOP Shares?
December 12, 2012 by
This is an old paper (1980s) analyzing the American Employee Stock Ownership Plan or ESOP. The original proposer of the ESOP idea, Louis Kelso, and his ardent follows have shrouded the ESOP transactions in such a cloud of rhetoric, that one needs to independently perform an analysis to see what is really going on. The paper was never published (except in this website version) since I had no reason to publicly attack ESOPs, only to be clear about them and their true institutional contribution–which is considerable.
Mixing Truth & Power: A Guest Editorial
December 11, 2012 by
After the dissent-motivated departures of Joseph Stiglitz, Ravi Kanbur, and now Bill Easterly, even “the most casual observer” can begin to “connect the dots” and see that the Bank is having a problem handling dissent and criticism coming from internal sources. This editorial in the World Bank Staff Association Newsletter traces the problem to the organizational stance of taking “Official Views” on the complex questions of development–thereby mixing power and truth to the detriment of the latter.
Getting the bugs out of the Knowledge Bank
December 11, 2012 by
This note argues that the World Bank should base the Knowledge Bank on the way human learn, not the way insects learn.
The Logic of Partitions: Introduction to the Dual of the Logic of Subsets
December 11, 2012 by
Partitions on a set are dual to subsets of a set in the sense of the category-theoretic duality of epimorphisms and monomorphisms. Modern categorical logic as well as the Kripke models of intuitionistic logic suggest that the interpretation of classical “propositional” logic should be the logic of subsets of a given universe set. The propositional interpretation is isomorphic to the special case where the truth and falsity of propositions behave like the subsets of a one-element set. If classical “propositional” logic is thus seen as the logic of subsets of a universe set, then the question naturally arises of a dual logic of partitions on a universe set. This paper is an introduction to that logic of partitions dual to classical “propositional” logic.