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Adverse health outcomes from exposure to chemical agents are of increasing interest in human and ecological risk assessment and require the development of new analytical methods. Such methods must be able to capture the essence of integrated networks of biochemical pathways in a mathematically feasible fashion. Over the past three decades, Biochemical Systems Theory has been successfully applied to numerous biological systems. It is suggested here that S‐system models derived from BST can provide the means for assessing chemical exposures and their effects at the metabolic level. This article briefly reviews essential concepts of S‐systems and provides generic examples of chemical exposure scenarios. S‐system models can be considered mechanistic, since their components are measurable quantities (e.g., concentrations, fluxes, enzyme activities, and rates). As dynamic models, they can be used to assess immediate and long‐term metabolic responses to environmental stimuli. Direct mathematical analysis for low exposures leads to simple dose‐response relationships, which have the form of power‐law functions. Thus, if the S‐system model yields an appropriate description of chemical exposure and its metabolic effects, the dose‐response relationship for low exposures is linear in logarithmic coordinates. This result includes as a special case the standard linear relationship in Cartesian coordinates with zero intercept.

Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman's version of an expected utility theory of war is one of the most widely cited theories of international conflict. However, the testing of the theory has lagged its theoretical development. To date, the theory has been tested on only 707 dyad-years, all drawn from Europe between 1816 and 1970. We present a broader test of War and Reason's expected utility theory of war using the same methods as Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman. Our tests include the full international system from 1816 to 1984. We find that the theory receives empirical support using the set of politically relevant dyads for testing, but the relationship is less clear among the population of all interstate dyads. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

AbstractThis chapter offers a critical commentary on theory‐based evaluation, stressing its utility as a method of program planning and as an adjunct to experiments but rejecting it as an alternative to experiments.

This study contrasts expected utility theory in the form of modern portfolio theory (MPT) with a descriptive psychological analysis in the form of prospect theory. For local government investment managers, the assumptions underlying MPT are violated in the manner predicted by prospect theory. Findings confirm the notion that local government investment managers are risk‐averse when facing an investment gain and risk‐seeking when facing an investment loss. Although a number of researchers have appealed to prospect theory to explain firm and industry risk patterns, the utility of prospect theory in public sector organizations is questioned. This study finds that irrespective of their personal disposition toward risk, local government chief investment officers defer to a compelling public interest when making investment decisions for their organization.

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in index number and aggregation theory, since the two previously divergent fields have been successfully unified. The underlying aggregator functions which are weakly separable subfunctions of utility and production functions, are the building blocks of economic theory, and the derivation of index numbers based upon their ability to track those building blocks is now called the economic theory of index numbers. William Barnett, the coeditor of this volume, introduced modern economic index number theory into monetary economics. His merger of economic index number theory, with monetary theory was based upon the use of Diewert's approach to producing superlative nonparametric approximations to the theoretically exact aggregator functions.This book comprises a focussed and unified collection of Barnett's most important publications in this area. The papers in the book have been organized into logical sections, with unifying introductions and overviews. The result is a systematic development of the state-of-the-art in monetary and financial aggregation theory. The sections cover the origin of the user cost price of monetary services. Exact aggregation of monetary assets on the demand side for consumers and firms, and on the supply side for financial intermediaries, general equilibrium of all economic agents' demands and supplies, dynamic solution of the exact system, and extension to monetary aggregation under risk. The extension of index number theory to the case of risk is completely general, and can be applied to tracking any exact economic aggregator under risk. In all cases, the criterion used for evaluation is the tracking ability of the approximation to the exact aggregator function of economic theory.Many of the empirical and policy puzzles in monetary economics disappear when simple sum monetary aggregates are replaced by index numbers that are coherent with theory. Simple sum monetary aggregates became incoherent with theory, when monetary assets began paying interest and therefore could no longer be viewed as perfect substitutes. This is a useful tool to those associated with economics departments within universities, business schools, central banks and federal governments, financial institutions including underwriters, bankers and stockbrokers

Three recent studies of Isaiah Berlin's moral and political thought stress the significance of value pluralism for his oeuvre. Whilst this emphasis enables us to dispense with some rather misleading characterizations of Berlin's liberalism, it is less apparent that his political thought can be successfully grounded within moral pluralism. Indeed his liberal beliefs sit rather more awkwardly within this ideological family than is usually assumed. Scholars seeking to revive Berlin's value pluralism in relation to contemporary challenges, such as multiculturalism, have not successfully demonstrated the utility of his thinking in relation to such problems, and have developed their arguments by downplaying the geo-political contexts which shaped his intellectual purposes. Yet his critics have neglected the fertility and range of his thought, aspects of which remain pertinent for those studying political thought in general and liberalism in particular.

Three recent studies of Isaiah Berlin's moral & political thought stress the significance of value pluralism for his oeuvre. While this emphasis enables us to dispense with some rather misleading characterizations of Berlin's liberalism, it is less apparent that his political thought can be successfully grounded within moral pluralism. Indeed his liberal beliefs sit rather more awkwardly within this ideological family than is usually assumed. Scholars seeking to revive Berlin's value pluralism in relation to contemporary challenges, such as multiculturalism, have not successfully demonstrated the utility of his thinking in relation to such problems, & have developed their arguments by downplaying the geopolitical contexts that shaped his intellectual purposes. Yet his critics have neglected the fertility & range of his thought, aspects of which remain pertinent for those studying political thought in general & liberalism in particular. 32 References. Adapted from the source document.

Cover -- BEYOND CAPITAL -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- PART ONE The Shadow of Uncontrollability -- Chapter 1. BREAKING THE SPELL OF 'UNIVERSAL PERMANENT CAPITAL' -- 1.1 Beyond the Hegelian Legacy -- 1.2 The First Global Conception - on the Premiss of 'the End of History' -- 1.3 Hegel's 'Universal Permanent Capital': False Mediation of Self-Seeking Individuality and Abstract Universality -- 1.4 Encircled Revolution at the 'Weakest Link of the Chain' and Its Representative Theorization in History and Class Consciousness -- 1.5 Marx's Unexplored Alternative Perspective: From the 'Little Corner of the World' to the Consummation of Capital's Global Ascendancy -- Chapter 2. CAPITAL'S ORDER OF SOCIAL METABOLIC REPRODUCTION -- 2.1 Structural Defects of Control in the Capital System -- 2.2 Capital's Remedial Imperatives and the State -- 2.3 Mismatch between Capital's Material Reproductive Structures and Its State Formations -- Chapter 3. SOLUTIONS TO THE UNCONTROLLABILITY OF CAPITAL AS SEEN FROM CAPITAL'S STANDPOINT -- 3.1 The Answers of Classical Political Economy -- 3.2 'Marginal Utility' and Neo-Classical Economics -- 3.3 From the 'Managerial Revolution' to Postulating 'Technostructure Convergence' -- Chapter 4. CAUSALITY, TIME, AND FORMS OF MEDIATION -- 4.1 Causality and Time under Capital's Causa Sui -- 4.2 The Vicious Circle of Capital's Second Order Mediations -- 4.3 Eternalization of the Historically Contingent: The Fatal Conceit of Hayek's Capital-Apologetics -- 4.4 Productive Limits of the Capital-Relation -- 4.5 Alienated Articulation of Primary Social Reproductive Mediation and the Positive Alternative -- Chapter 5. THE ACTIVATION OF CAPITAL'S ABSOLUTE LIMITS -- 5.1 Transnational Capital and National States -- 5.2 The Destruction of the Conditions of Social Metabolic Reproduction.