Customer Reviews (1)

Very good book
Nine chapters by multidisciplinary contributors from the US and Oslo, Norway offer insights into the controversies over whether addicts have control over their behavior, the extent to which treatment programs offerhope for recovery, and what causes relapses. The cultural values thatinfuse such issues, the neurobiology of addiction, and recent theories onthe role of choice are major themes. Based on presentations at a RussellSage Foundation conference in June 1997 ... Read more

Book Description
The essays in this volume, all of which have been specially commissioned, examine the philosophical foundations of social choice theory. This field, a modern and sophisticated outgrowth of welfare economics, is best known for a series of impossibility theorems, of which the first and most crucial was proved by Kenneth Arrow in 1950. That has often been taken to show the impossibility of democracy as a procedure for making collective decisions. However, this interpretation is challenged by several of the contributors here. Other central issues discussed in the volume include the possibility of making interpersonal comparisons of utility, the question of whether all preferences are equally to be valued, and the normative individualism underlying the theoretical tradition. Criticisms of social choice theory are advanced and suggestions for alternative approaches are developed. ... Read more

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German language327 PagesPaperback ... Read more

Book Description
The essays in this volume offer the most thorough and up-to-date discussion available of the relationship between addiction and rationality. This is the only book-length treatment of the subject and includes contributions from philosophers, psychiatrists, neurobiologists, sociologists, and economists. The volume offers an up-to-date exposition of the neurophysiology of addiction, a critical examination of the Becker theory of rational addiction, an argument for a "visceral theory of addiction," a discussion of compulsive gambling as a form of addiction, several discussions of George Ainslie's theory of hyperbolic discounting, analyses of social causes and policy implications, and an investigation of the problem of relapse. ... Read more

Book Description
The essays in this provocative new collection survey and assess institutional arrangements that could be alternatives to capitalism as it exists today. The point of departure agreed upon by the contributors is that on the one hand, capitalism produces unemployment, a lack of autonomy in the workplace, and massive income inequalities; while on the other, central socialist planning is characterized by underemployment, inefficiency, and bureaucracy. In Part I of the volume, various alternatives are proposed: profit-sharing systems, capitalism combined with some central planning, worker-owned firms in a market economy; also suggested is the introduction of the elements of market economy into a centrally planned economy, as has occurred recently in Hungary. Part II provides a theoretical analysis and assessment of these systems.

This book is the first to cover such a wide range of subjects as central planning, market socialism, and profit sharing. It will prove indispensable to political and social scientists, and economists. ... Read more