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Some important philosophical issues to do with truth, meaning and translation are raised if we attempt to take the language of business seriously. There may be difficulties associated with trying to make sense of what this would amount to, but a preliminary exploration of the territory provides interesting perspectives on business ethics and on the philosophy of language. When we decide that we know what another speaker is saying, we are simultaneously making decisions about the way the world is, the structure of the speaker's language and the speaker's veracity. Since there is an irreducible ethical dimension to translation, a decision to `translate' business language as ethical, but simply having different truth values, is not going to be `right' or `wrong' except in the context of an ethical stance taken by the translator. In other words, it is no different from a decision to adjust one's ethical position into conformity with the values apparently embedded in business practice.

1. Basic concepts and principles of political economy / Friedrich Benedikt Wilhelm von Hermann -- 2. Price determination through desire or demand / Friedrich Benedikt Wilhelm von Hermann -- 3. Extract from the second letter to Adolphe Quetelet / Karl Heinrich Rau -- 4. The valuation of national wealth (1841) / Karl Heinrich Rau -- 5. Bases of price determination (1841) -- Karl Heinrich Rau -- 6. The valuation of national wealth (1847) / Karl Heinrich Rau -- 7. The national economics of the present and future / Bruno Hildebrand -- 8. The theory of value : for the jubilee of the Imperial University of Dorpat 12-13 December 1852 : commemorative volume of the department of history and philology -- Eberhard Friedlander -- 9. The theory of value in national economics / Karl Knies -- 10. Value / Wilhelm Roscher -- 11. The ethical side of the theory of value in national economics / Albert Eberhard Friedrich Schaffle -- 12. The chapter on value / Otto Michaelis -- 13. On the theory of value / Hermann Roesler.

We investigate the ability of expected utility theory to account for simultaneous gambling and insurance. Contrary to a previous claim that borrowing and lending in perfect capital markets removes the demand for gambles, we show expected utility theory with nonconcave utility functions can explain gambling. When the rates of interest and time preference are equal, agents seek to gamble unless income falls in a finite set of values. When they differ, there is a range of incomes where gambles are desired. Different borrowing and lending rates can account for persistent gambling provided the rates span the rate of time preference.

An expected utility theory of necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for the initiation and escalation of serious international conflicts, including war, is proposed. The theory leads to the seemingly obvious generalization that actors do not initiate wars—or serious disputes—if they do not expect to gain from doing so. Underlying that generalization are a number of counterintuitive deductions. For instance, I show that though a weak nonaligned state cannot rationally attack a stronger nonaligned nation, it might be able to attack a stronger adversary that, in addition to its own strength, expects to derive support from allies. I also show that serious conflict is more likely between very close allies than between enemies. Systematic tests, using data on serious international threats, military interventions, and interstate wars, as well as 17 cases of known attempts at deterrence, show very substantial support for the expected utility propositions deduced from the theory.