William Butos
Trinity College, Connecticut, Economics, Faculty Member
Many social orders, including markets and science, can be understood as instances of adaptive systems, i.e., networks of active components whose interactions implement a persistent but mutable structure which is adaptable to its... more
Many social orders, including markets and science, can be understood as instances of adaptive systems, i.e., networks of active components whose interactions implement a persistent but mutable structure which is adaptable to its environment. This general model of social structure, being neither exclusively reductionist (in that it encompasses emergent phenomena and adaptive reactions at the system level) nor exclusively holistic (in that it pays due attention to the lower-level interactions which drive the system) can serve as a fertile source of novel ideas for investigating a range of social phenomena.
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We survey the relationship between government and science (concentrating on the situation in the U.S.). We discuss the theoretical rationale for government funding, showing that it is open to serious question – its model of science as... more
We survey the relationship between government and science (concentrating on the situation in the U.S.). We discuss the theoretical rationale for government funding, showing that it is open to serious question – its model of science as market is highly suspect, and its implications for the remedial effects of intervention do not stand up to even casual empirical scrutiny. Calling attention to the nakedness of the standard economic rationale, however, does not touch the very real political rationales, and it is the interaction of these with the understandably strong desire of scientists to be well-funded to which we direct attention. We describe various ways in which government funding can interact with scientists and scientific activity to produce the unanticipated effects that concern us.
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The characterization of science as a “spontaneous order” was forcefully put forward by Michael Polanyi in his principled opposition to schemes for government management of science pressed in the 1930s and 40s. Polanyi insisted that... more
The characterization of science as a “spontaneous order” was forcefully put forward by Michael Polanyi in his principled opposition to schemes for government management of science pressed in the 1930s and 40s. Polanyi insisted that scientific communities were self-governing arrangements based on tacitly held liberal traditions which would be destroyed by the application of central control. At the same time, in response to the trends toward government economic planning, F.A. Hayek was also exploring the idea of spontaneous order, but applied to the economy rather than to science. Hayek argued that the prices emergent from the interactions within the market order could not be duplicated by central planning. While Both Polanyi and Hayek employed the concept of spontaneous order to expose the unintended consequences of government control, neither put forward a fully consistent theory of spontaneous order. Polanyi not only favored prescriptive rules for science but also, in arguing that ...
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Entrepreneurship, Money, and Coordination begins with a single page introduction by the editor, Jurgen Backhaus, a well known economist now at the University of Erfurt, in which we learn that the contribution by Horst Feldmann... more
Entrepreneurship, Money, and Coordination begins with a single page introduction by the editor, Jurgen Backhaus, a well known economist now at the University of Erfurt, in which we learn that the contribution by Horst Feldmann (Hayek's theory of cultural evolution: A critique of the critiques) provided the impetus for the book's remaining six chapters, a melange of papers by Brian J. Loasby,1 Jurgen G. Backhaus, Christian Schubert, Alexander Ebner, Martin T. Bohl and Jens Holscher, and Walter W. Heering. Unfortunately, the papers assembled here do not cohere well and in some instances are not altogether “reader-friendly.” The papers by Bohl and Holscher (a six-page overview and econometric analysis of Hayek's theory of competing currencies) and Heering (on monetary theory) seem rather disconnected from the main theme of the book. Surprisingly, Backhaus’ “Introduction” does not provide a useful integrating overview of the book's subject matter and papers, something readers surely would have appreciated from so eminent a scholar.
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Proefschrift Pennsylvania State University. Bibl.: p.[223]-238.
DESCRIPTION Federal Reserve credit easing polices under Bernanke
ABSTRACT This article has no abstract
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Austrians frequently lament the absence of an Austrian undergraduate money-macro curriculum, especially at the intermediate level, This is ironic in that a large body of work currently exists, both from "the masters" and... more
Austrians frequently lament the absence of an Austrian undergraduate money-macro curriculum, especially at the intermediate level, This is ironic in that a large body of work currently exists, both from "the masters" and more recent researchers, that provides the essential theoretical underpinnings and historical and empirical analysis from which to mount a coherent Austrian macro course suitable for second or
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We agree with Burczak's identification of the crucial issues. We disagree with his interpretation of them. We expand our defense of the claim that Keynes was a rationalist. We introduce the "horizon... more
We agree with Burczak's identification of the crucial issues. We disagree with his interpretation of them. We expand our defense of the claim that Keynes was a rationalist. We introduce the "horizon principle" to critize Keynes' dichotomy between short-term and long-term expectations. We question the statistical simile guiding some Post Keynesian dsiscussions of uncertainty. We point to the role of
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Hayek’s cognitive theory, which seeks to describe the operation of a particular order, in fact provides a paradigmatic account of knowledge-generating orders in general. We claim that this paradigm provides a fertile conceptual framework... more
Hayek’s cognitive theory, which seeks to describe the operation of a particular order, in fact provides a paradigmatic account of knowledge-generating orders in general. We claim that this paradigm provides a fertile conceptual framework for exploring a variety of problems in economics and social theory. In particular, we shall show that Hayek’s conception of the ‘map’ and the ‘model’, which he uses to explain the operation of the complex adaptive classifying system called ‘mind’, are promising analytical devices with applications extending to social structures of various kinds and complexity. We use Hayek’s notion of the map and model to analyze how different social structures – regarded as classifying systems – work in terms of their input, processing, and output capabilities. The adaptive characteristics of such systems, via communicative routines, multi-level classification, and feedback, form central motifs for our discussion of markets, science, and other social structures. We show that by analyzing the knowledge-generating characteristics of such structures we are also able to gain insights about the circumstances affecting their adaptive properties.