Public controversies - such as those about the distribution of goods between rich and poor, trade and population policies, allocation of medical resources, and the tradeoff between environment al protection and economic efficiency - often hinge on fundamental views about how we ought to make decisions tImt affect each other, that is, what principles we ought to follow. Efforts to find an acceptable public philosophy, a set of such principles on which people might agree, have foundered because of dis agreement among philosophers and others who are concerned with such issues. One view, which I...

The Twelfth International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods in Sciences and Engineering (MaxEnt 92) was held in Paris, France, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), July 19-24, 1992. It is important to note that, since its creation in 1980 by some of the researchers of the physics department at the Wyoming University in Laramie, this was the second time that it took place in Europe, the first time was in 1988 in Cambridge. The two specificities of MaxEnt workshops are their spontaneous and informal charac- ters which give the participants the possibility...

Economies are open systems embedded in an ecosystem with which they exchange matter and energy. Interactions among these systems are vital for each system's performance and are constrained by the laws of physics. This volume pays tribute to economy--environment interactions simultaneously from an economic, ecological and physical perspective.
Integrating Economics, Ecology and Thermodynamics provides a first step in identifying and combining the principles of economics, ecology and thermodynamics on a fundamental level. Part I lays out the general context for the approach...

I don't know who Gigerenzer is, but he wrote something very clever that I saw quoted in a popular glossy magazine: "Evolution has tuned the way we think to frequencies of co-occurances, as with the hunter who remembers the area where he has had the most success killing game." This sanguine thought explains my obsession with the division algebras. Every effort I have ever made to connect them to physics - to the design of reality - has succeeded, with my expectations often surpassed. Doubtless this strong statement is colored by a selective memory, but the kind of game I sought, and still...

Models and Experiments in Risk and Rationality presents original contributions to the areas of individual choice, experimental economics, operations and analysis, multiple criteria decision making, market uncertainty, game theory and social choice. The papers, which were presented at the FUR VI conference, are arranged to appear in order of increasing complexity of the decision environment or social context in which they situate themselves.
The first section Psychological Aspects of Risk-Bearing', considers choice at the purely individual level and for the most part, free of...

1. Preliminaries, Notation, and Terminology n n 1.1. Sets and functions in lR. Throughout the book, lR. stands for the n-dimensional arithmetic space of points x = (X}, X2, '," xn)j Ixl is the length of n n a vector x E lR. and (x, y) is the scalar product of vectors x and y in lR., i.e., for x = (Xl, X2, ., xn) and y = (y}, Y2, ..., Yn), Ixl = Jx + x + ... + x, (x, y) = XIYl + X2Y2 + ... + XnYn. n Given arbitrary points a and b in lR., we denote by a, b] the segment that joins n them, i.e. the collection of points x E lR. of the form x = >.a + I'b, where>. + I' = 1 and >. 0, I' O. n We...

Algebraic K-theory is a modern branch of algebra which has many important applications in fundamental areas of mathematics connected with algebra, topology, algebraic geometry, functional analysis and algebraic number theory. Methods of algebraic K-theory are actively used in algebra and related fields, achieving interesting results.
This book presents the elements of algebraic K-theory, based essentially on the fundamental works of Milnor, Swan, Bass, Quillen, Karoubi, Gersten, Loday and Waldhausen. It includes all principal algebraic K-theories,...

Many, perhaps most textbooks of quantum mechanics present a Copenhagen, single system angle; fewer present the subject matter as an instrument for treating ensembles, but the two methods have been silently coexisting since the mid-Thirties. This lingering dichotomy of purpose for a major physical discipline has much shrouded further insights into the foundations of quantum theory.
Quantum Reprogramming resolves this long-standing dichotomy by examining the mutual relation between single systems and ensembles, assigning each its own tools for treating the subject at hand: i.e.,...

Since the onset of modernisation the world population has doubled several times and will soon reach 6 billion of people. The annual rate of increase in the world population is approximately 90 million people. This is the largest absolute level of population growth ever recorded. According to the most recent population projections of the United Nations, the world population will probably double again before stabilising at a stationary level. Ninety percent of the present and future population growth is accounted for by developing countries.
The fast increase in the size of the population...

Technological Infrastructure Policy provides a systematic treatment of technological infrastructure (TI) and Technological Infrastructure Policy (TIP) which are emerging fields of interest both for academic economists and for policy makers in both advanced and developing economies. The specific topics covered include: the role of TI in economic growth and development; the nature and definition of TI; TI-components; the relationships between TI and markets; salient features of TIP.
Technological Infrastructure Policy reflects the distinction made between basic and...