This note investigates the extension of Roberts' price-independent welfare prescriptions toalternatives in which population size and composition can vary. We show that ethicallyunsatisfactory orderings result. Suppose that a single person is to be added to a populationthat is unaected in utility...

This paper develops data on the history of wages and prices in Beijing, Canton, Suzhou/Shanghai in China from the eighteenth century to the twentieth and compare them with leading cities in Europe, Japan and India in terms of nominal wages, the cost of living, and the standard of living. In the...

This article mobilizes and integrates both existing and new time series data on real wages, physical heights and age-heaping to examine the long-term trend of living standards and human capital for China during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Our findings confirm the existence of a...

Sir Francis Bacon explored as a medical question the issue of how human life spans might be returned to the near-thousand years enjoyed by Adam and the Patriarchs. Extended old age seemed feasible: reports told of people living well into their centenary. Meanwhile, New World natives were said to...

Economic research on structural change in agriculture has repeatedly induced controversies aboutbasic theoretical concepts, such as rational behaviour and equilibrium, and their analytical andpolitical implications. To contribute to the epistemological dimension of this debate, the article...

In the past few decades, so-called model organisms have become a cornerstone of research in the biomedical sciences. For the scientists, the model organism is both a practice ground for developing laboratory techniques, and a source of insights into common or even universal biological...

When the German translation of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in 1860, it intensified a conflict that German theologians had been fighting since the early 19th century. Arguments against the secular relativising or even thorough dismissal of the scientific, philosophical and...

Im Februar dieses Jahres ist dem Bundesministerium der Justiz der deutsche Corporate Governance-Kodex (DCGK) übergeben worden. Er ist in der Zwischenzeit amtlich bekannt gemachtund mit einer gesetzlichen „Comply-or-Explain“-Regelung versehen. Damit sind nichtnur neue Anforderungen, sondern...

Accounting is frequently described and recognized as the language of business because theexternal financial reporting function is extensively used as a principal means of communicatingresults of corporate economic activity to interested external parties. However, deficiencies withrespect to the...