Suchergebnisse

Technologies are being developed for significantly altering the traits
of existing persons (or fetuses or embryos) and of future persons via germ
line modification. The availability of such technologies may affect our
philosophical, legal, and everyday understandings of several important
concepts, including that of personal identity. I consider whether the idea
of personal identity requires reconstruction, revision or abandonment in
the face of such possibilities of technological intervention into the
nature and form of an individual's attributes. This requires an
account of the work done by the concept of personal identity, and an
explanation of what "conceptual impacts of technology" and
"conceptual reconstruction" might mean.Our existing notions of personal identity and related ideas such as
personhood and autonomy may seem unable to comfortably accommodate the
possibilities of technologically directed trait formation and development.
This is a matter of moral and legal importance because the idea of
personal identity embeds major values and reflects value-laden beliefs and
attitudes. The assumed endurance of identity underlies interpersonal
relationships, the assignment of rewards and punishments, and the very
idea of what constitutes an autonomous person. Perhaps radical
restructuring or even abandonment of concepts are sometimes called for
when the world changes drastically, but I suggest that conceptual
modification is not "compelled" for personal identity except
under extreme circumstances—the remote possibility of rapid human
"shape shifting" where physical and mentational attributes can
be transformed quickly and continuously.Efforts to enhance human traits, including merit attributes and other
resource-attractive characteristics (e.g., intellectual and
athletic aptitudes, physical size and appearance), may generate legal
problems wherever the persistence of identity is presupposed. Some advance
speculation is thus warranted on how trait change generally will be
managed within our legal and socioeconomic systems, and more particularly
on rights of access to trait-altering technologies. I mention the possible
distributive effects of enhancing highly-resource attractive traits,
including the strengthening individual powers to acquire still more
increments in such traits in a self-reinforcing cycle. A brief review of
some constitutional issues bearing on trait change completes the
discussion.I conclude that existing and projected technologies do not impel the
abandonment or remodeling of the idea of personal identity. We may,
however, have to reconsider some uses of this concept in different
settings, to rethink our understandings of ideas of merit and desert, and
to deal with the distribution of resources that may enlarge and entrench
the "distances" between social and economic groups.

This article concerns the relationship between motorcycle taxi drivers in Kigali and the legal frameworks that govern their business. While motorcyclists commonly subvert legal processes, or avoid complying with regulations, this should not be understood in terms of their 'resistance' to legal orders. To do so would imply that laws are imposed on their social lives from without; however, I show how illegalities help to structure social life by creating 'mistakes' that are the basis of social relations. I argue that motorcyclists do not confront legal orders in the idiom of resistance, but neither are they determined or shaped directly by legality. Rather, partially formed by breaches of rules, law is integral to their lives, shaping them indirectly or tangentially, according to the relationships and connections 'mistakes' with respect to law enable. Law regulates life not by encoding its rules, but by allowing certain kinds of relationships to form.

The 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent euro area sovereign debt crisis successively forced macroeconomists to reassess this conceptual framework. This thesis is a modest contribution to the huge efforts undertaken by macroeconomists following the crisis to meet this challenge, i.e. to develop some insights about the optimal use of unconventional policy tools. To do so, this thesis is twofold. Each part intends to explore from a theoretical perspective a fundamental macroeconomic situation that called for the use of unconventional policy instruments in the recent years. The first part, "Optimal Unconventional Policy in An Open Economy" analyzes the optimal use of unconventional policy instruments by the central bank in an open economy framework. Assuming that the presence of financial frictions changes the way monetary policy affects the economy, or that the occurence of exogenous shocks breaks the "divine coincidence", this part describes how a central bank should combine an unconventional policy instrument and conventional monetary policy to favor macroeconomic stabilization. The second part, "Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Currency Union", takes the standpoint of the governement of a country located in a currency union (typically the euro area). Such a country being deprived of monetary policy autonomy, this part considers the opportunity of using fiscal policy as a stabilization tool, and describes the optimal use of fiscal devaluations following idiosyncratic exogenous shocks. ; La crise financière mondiale qui a débuté en 2008, et la crise des dettes souveraines en zone euro qui l'a suivie, ont successivement forcé les macroéconomistes à repenser leur cadre conceptuel. Cette thèse est une modeste contribution aux efforts colossaux déployés par les macroéconomistes à travers le monde pour faire face à ce défi: renforcer la compréhension de l'utilisation optimale des outils de politique économique non conventionnels. A cette fin, elle est construite en deux parties. Chaque partie vise à explorer au ...

The 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent euro area sovereign debt crisis successively forced macroeconomists to reassess this conceptual framework. This thesis is a modest contribution to the huge efforts undertaken by macroeconomists following the crisis to meet this challenge, i.e. to develop some insights about the optimal use of unconventional policy tools. To do so, this thesis is twofold. Each part intends to explore from a theoretical perspective a fundamental macroeconomic situation that called for the use of unconventional policy instruments in the recent years. The first part, "Optimal Unconventional Policy in An Open Economy" analyzes the optimal use of unconventional policy instruments by the central bank in an open economy framework. Assuming that the presence of financial frictions changes the way monetary policy affects the economy, or that the occurence of exogenous shocks breaks the "divine coincidence", this part describes how a central bank should combine an unconventional policy instrument and conventional monetary policy to favor macroeconomic stabilization. The second part, "Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Currency Union", takes the standpoint of the governement of a country located in a currency union (typically the euro area). Such a country being deprived of monetary policy autonomy, this part considers the opportunity of using fiscal policy as a stabilization tool, and describes the optimal use of fiscal devaluations following idiosyncratic exogenous shocks. ; La crise financière mondiale qui a débuté en 2008, et la crise des dettes souveraines en zone euro qui l'a suivie, ont successivement forcé les macroéconomistes à repenser leur cadre conceptuel. Cette thèse est une modeste contribution aux efforts colossaux déployés par les macroéconomistes à travers le monde pour faire face à ce défi: renforcer la compréhension de l'utilisation optimale des outils de politique économique non conventionnels. A cette fin, elle est construite en deux parties. Chaque partie vise à explorer au plan théorique un "contexte macroéconomique-type" au sein duquel des outils de politique économique non conventionnels ont été employés ces dernières années. La première partie, intitulée "Politique Non Conventionelle Optimale en Economie Ouverte", analyse l'utilisation optimale d'instruments de politique économique non conventionels par une banque centrale en économie ouverte. En présence de frictions financières qui modifient la manière dont la politique monétaire affecte l'économie, ou en présence de chocs exogènes qui mettent en défaut la "divine coïncidence", cette partie décrit comment un banquier central devrait combiner un instrument de politique monétaire non conventionnelle et la politique monétaire conventionnelle à des fins de stabilisation macroéconomique. La seconde partie, "Politique Budgétaire Optimale en Union Monétaire", adopte le point de vue du gouvernement d'un pays situé en union monétaire (typiquement la zone euro). Un tel pays ne disposant d'une politique monétaire autonome (au plan national), cette partie étudie la possibilité pour un tel pays d'utiliser la politique budgétaire comme un outil de stabilisation, et décrit l'utilisation optimale des dévaluations fiscales en réponse à des chocs exogènes idiosyncratiques.