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...

Der heutige Vortrag zum Thema Warum scheint die Sonne? Ökonomische Mutmaßungen über Zukunft und Herkunft irdischen Lebens ist der fünfte und letzte einer Reihe von öffentlichen Vorträgen in einer für Nichtfachleute nachvollziehbaren Form im November und Dezember dieses Jahres im Berliner...

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...

...Die Diagnose von Situationen und Systemen richtet sich dabei auf die strukturellen Kontexte und dieInteraktionsweisen von Menschen. Es existieren in der relationalen Weltsicht keine eindeutigenKausalzusammenhänge, keine Schuldigen und klaren Ursachen. Die Therapie oder Veränderungbesteht in...

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...

There has been a remarkable growth in evolutionary economics since the 1980s. But despitethis outward success there has been inner disagreement on fundamental issues including thebuilding blocks of evolutionary theory and the very meaning of ‘evolution’ itself. This essayprovides a...