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Foreign Rights: Forthcoming: EconomicsThe Cult of Statistical Significance by Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey In Defense of Monopoly by Richard McKenzie and Dwight Lee Integrity and Agreement by Lanse Minkler The Street Porter and the Philosopher by Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and LivesStephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey Rights: World "Statistical significance," a technique that dominates medicine, economics, psychology, and many other scientific fields, has been a dreadful mistake. The outcome is a case study in bad science—how it originates and how it grows. One would expect complex statistical methods to pass a test of basic common sense. "This pain relief pill is not lethal." Or "this tax policy improves the economy." Ziliak and McCloskey show that the most important statistical method used in many of the sciences—but not in the most progressive—doesn't. Progress in medicine and economics and other sciences has been brought to a halt by the test of "statistical" significance. These sciences, from agronomy to zoology, Ziliak and McCloskey have found, engage in ceremonies of "testing" that don't test and "estimating" that don't estimate. Heedless of magnitude and of a genuine engagement with alternative hypotheses, they "testimate." "Null hypothesis significance testing" is in other words a scientific train-wreck, about which a small group of statisticians have been warning for a century. The Cult of Statistical Significance shows field by field how the wreck happened, reports on the fatalities, and offers a quantitative way forward. Stephen Ziliak is Professor of Economics at Roosevelt University and working on a scientific biography of William Sealy Gosset (aka “Student”), the hero of this book. Deirdre McCloskey is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. January 2008 In Defense of Monopoly: How Market Power Fosters Creative ProductionRichard McKenzie and Dwight Lee Rights: World A provocative defense of dominant corporate force, In Defense of Monopoly offers an unconventional but empirically-grounded argument in favor of market monopolies. Authors McKenzie and Lee claim that conventional, static models exaggerate the harm done by real-world monopolies, and show why some degree of monopoly presence is necessary to maximize the improvement of human welfare over time. Inspired by Joseph Schumpeter's suggestion that market imperfections can drive an economy's long-term progress, In Defense of Monopoly defies conventional assumptions to show readers why an economic system's failure to efficiently allocate its resources is actually a necessary precondition for maximizing the system's long-term performance: the perfectly fluid, competitive economy idealized by most economists is decidedly inferior to one characterized by market entry and exit restrictions or costs An economy is not a board game in which players compete for a limited number of properties; nor is it much like the kind of blackboard games that economists use to develop their monopoly models. As McKenzie and Lee demonstrate, the creation of goods and services in the real world requires not only competition, but the prospect of gains beyond a normal competitive rate of return. Richard McKenzie is the Walter B. Gerken Professor of Enterprise and Society in the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. Dwight Lee is the Bernard B. and Eugenia A. Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Georgia, Athens. December 2007 Integrity and Agreement: Economics When Principles Also MatterLanse Minkler Rights: World Integrity and Agreement develops the notion of two different kinds of integrity. One focuses on identity-conferring commitments to principles (commitment-integrity), the other on preferences for principles (preference-integrity). But while they differ in their particulars, most fundamentally, both refer to honest behavior. The possibility of integrity and honest behavior is important any time there are economic agreements. That covers a lot of economics. Integrity and Agreement covers informal interactions that characterize social dilemmas, formal legal agreements between buyers and sellers, political agreements, employment agreements, religious agreements, and the social contract. In each of these cases, the possibility of integrity changes the answers given by neoclassical economics and instrumental rationality (rational decision-making in one's own self-interest) because to make an agreement that one has no intention of honoring is to lie. This simple but powerful fact seems to have eluded most economic analyses. Lanse Minkler is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Connecticut. August 2008 The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical EgalitarianismSandra J. Peart and David M. Levy Rights: World Economics is a notoriously fractious field. An entirely new field—almost a discipline unto itself—has arisen out of the debate between mainstream scholars and their heterodox colleagues. The Street Porter and the Philosopher gathers an assortment of essays and transcripts from George Mason University's well-regarded Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economic Thought (of which Peart is director and Levy assistant director), written by a diverse and accomplished list of scholars on the subject of "analytical egalitarianism." The editors define analytical egalitarianism as "a theoretical system that abstracts from any inherent difference among persons." The book posits the idea as a component of philosophies from opposite ends of the economics spectrum—poles which they embody in the persons of liberal philosopher John Rawls and the Nobel-laureate free market advocate James Buchanan—and explores the ways in which these shared ideas might provide the basis for a common conceptual language. Sandra J. Peart is Dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond, Virginia. David M. Levy is Professor of Economics at George Mason University (GMU) and Research Associate at the Center for Study of Public Choice at GMU. They are Co-Directors of George Mason University's Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economics. Fall 2008 |
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