Joint Causation Research Articles

Analyzing the Determinants of Trade Agreements: A Cross Country Socio-Economic-Political Analysis

ABSTRACT This article examines the determinants of trade agreements. Apart from the standard economic variables like market size, factor endowment difference, and distance, we incorporate socio-cultural and political factors like common language, colonial heritage, political regime, and bilateral relationships. We perform a qualitative comparative analysis, which gives joint causation. The panel probit regression for 163 countries during 2000 to 2014 reveals that countries joined trade agreements not merely for economic reasons but for political and socio-cultural reasons. Only colonial heritage acts as an opposing force. Detailed knowledge of the determinants of trade agreements can help to form successful bilateral trade relations.

Mental causation as joint causation

This paper explores and defends the idea that mental properties and their physical bases jointly cause their physical effects. The paper evaluates the view as an emergentist response to the exclusion problem, comparing it with a competing nonreductive physicalist solution, the compatibilist solution, and argues that the joint causation view is more defensible than commonly supposed. Specifically, the paper distinguishes two theses of closure, Strong Closure and Weak Closure, two causal exclusion problems, the overdetermination problem and the supervenience problem, and argues that emergentists can avoid the overdetermination problem by denying Strong Closure and respond to the supervenience problem by accepting the joint causation view.

CLASSIFICATION OF EXPERTISES ON THE BASIC SATISFACTION OBJECT OF RESEARCH AND OTHER GROUNDS

The article deals with the new classification of antitort and other expertises on the basis object of the research and other grounds. The classes of criminalistic, medical and narcological expertises and the class of human psychic expertises are distinguished. The essence of the class of criminalistic expertises for the research of any trasessubstances (tracks: imprints, diagnostic and situational displays; substances: objects, devices, mechanisms, substances), relationships or phenomena of importance for overcoming criminal and/or other offenses except, excluding the psyche and metabolic processes of a person, his body, parts or secretions, as well as clothing, footwear and other traction substations in the event of joint causation of bodily harm to a person or other trace formation with his body and/or parts and/or excreta. The list of genuses of criminalistic expertises is given: firearms, ammunition and traces of illicit treatment of them; mechanical weapons, ammunition and traces of illicit handling of them; explosive weapons, explosive devices and substances, means of blasting and traces of the illicit treatment of them; substances, materials and products from them; restoration of destroyed texts and marking symbols; trassological; phonoscopic; commission odorological; handwriting author-identification; portrait; technical; technological, commodity research; accounting; financial-economical, biological, engineering-ecological, art criticism, military, etc., as well as kinds of expertises of some of these genuses. The list of the genuses of medical expertises: genoscopic, immunological, biological, cytological, trassological, toxicological, trace ssubstances, corpses of a person, etc., as well as expertises of the human psyche: a psychological one that should investigate various peculiarities of the human psyche; and psychiatric, who investigates various deviations and diseases of the human psyche, including establishes the fact of the presence and recognition of the need for treatment of various manifestations of psychosociality. The essence of the class of narcological expertises is determined, which must establish the fact of the presence and necessity of treatment of various manifestations of psycho-metabolic dependence on alcoholism, drug addiction, toxicomania, etc. The variants of classification of antitortious and other expert investigations on the sequence of conducting, on the volume of research, on the composition and nature of the special knowledge, on the place of conducting and on the type of procedural proceedings. According to the results of the research, it is suggested to use the above mentioned innovations to develop a solution for this problem, exhaustive in terms of the genuses and types of expertises, in the process of discussion. Keywords: the classification of expert investigations criminalistic, medical and narcological expertises; human psychic expertises.

On the forces of policy change and joint causation: insights from the banker’s bonus case

One of the few robust findings in the public policy literature is that policy dynamics are both a function of stability and volatility. And although most theories of public policy making posit the occurrence of policy junctures as necessary conditions for significant change, studies that set out to unravel the underlying mechanisms of such policy junctures remain relatively rare. This article further develops the idea of policy junctures, commonly hypothesized to initiate significant change, as essentially entailing joint causation. We illustrate the joint and reinforcing nature of forces of change with a case study of bonus regulation. Based on document analysis and a political claim analysis, this article shows that most changes in bonus regulation were of a marginal nature. We argue that the intrinsically attractive nature of performance rewards that a bonus practice entails combined with a sheer lack of alternatives supported by a strong coalition on how to curb risk appetite in financial markets seem to count for the resilience of bonus practices. Theoretically, the case study contributes to theory development on joint causation that causes major policy change. Empirically, it unravels a key mechanism employed by the financial sector to resist reforms: offering an alternative no one can refuse. Points for practitioners There is a broad consensus in the policy literature that policy change usually results from multiple forces. We identify this crucial jointly causal nature of policy change and suggest that among the forces of change a strong policy alternative capable of uniting a broad coalition of stakeholders is a necessary condition for policy change. Financial reforms, in particular the practice of bonus payment, are thus not likely to result from tight regulation, but rather from real alternatives on how to reward professional excellence and curb risk appetite.

What Causally Insensitive Events Tell us About Overdetermination

Some philosophers dismiss putative cases of causal overdetermination as joint causation underdescribed. In this paper I identify a special kind of causal overdetermination that cannot be reduced to joint causation, and use it to shed light on other kinds of redundant causation. Some effects are insensitive to the additive force of multiple causes. They are to be contrasted with sensitive effects, which physically and counterfactually vary according to the number and sorts of causes they have. I argue that sensitive effects are symptoms of joint causation; insensitive effects are symptoms of overdetermination. Insensitive effects resulting from multiple causes cannot be classified as “joint causation underdescribed,” but only as overdetermination. Finally, I suggest that cases of “trumping preemption” should be understood as cases of overdetermination with insensitive effects, and that Lewis’ “influence” account of causation cannot handle these cases.

Physical integration: a causal account for consciousness.

The issue of integration in neural networks is intimately connected with that of consciousness. In this paper, integration as an effective level of physical organization is contrasted with a methodological integrative approach. Understanding how consciousness arises out of neural processes requires a model of integration in just causal physical terms. Based on a set of feasible criteria (physical grounding, causal efficacy, no circularity and scaling), a causal account of physical integration for consciousness centered on joint causation is outlined.

Factor endowment, human capital, and inequality in developing countries

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to extend a theoretical model due to Ljungqvist and data from a sample of 19 developing economies to empirically test it.Design/methodology/approachData for all variables are from the 2005 Human Development Report and the 2006 World Development Report. The author applies the least‐squares estimation technique in a multivariate linear regression.FindingsBased on data from the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, the paper uses a sample of 19 developing economies and finds that cross‐country variations in income/consumption inequality may be explained by inequality of investment in human capital as measured by inequalities in child health as well as inequality in education and by inequality in the distribution of land as measured by the land Gini index.Practical implicationsAssuming a population consisting of skilled laborers, unskilled laborers, educators/health care personnel, and farmers, the paper shows that starting from an initial distribution of assets and in the absence of a perfect capital market along with human capital exhibiting increasing returns it is possible to have persistent inequality in the distribution of income or consumption. Regression results also are consistent with the theoretical implication of the model as the extent of inequality in land distribution and in access to education as well as inequalities in child health do linearly influence income or consumption inequality as measured by the ratio of the share of income or consumption accounted for by the richest quintile to that of the poorest quintile. As a result, if governments in developing countries aim to reduce inequality, they need to implement programs designed to reduce inequalities in child health by allowing children from the poorest of the poor to get fully immunized, which in turn would lead to a reduction in infant and child mortality and in education by providing low‐income families with means so that their children have better access to education. Government land policies, on the other hand, that succeed in reducing inequality in land distribution in developing countries, may be beneficial in terms of lessening income/expenditure inequality. Finally, while the present model does not test for the impact that improving capital markets would have, it stands to reason that improving capital markets could also have an impact on decreasing inequality.Originality/valueIn this paper the author uses a model due to Ljungqvist to show that individuals are relatively wealthy because they either own a fixed input such as land or they are able to invest in human capital, which in turn allow them to earn sufficient rent or labor income to remain wealthy. On the other hand, poor people either do not own land or are not capable of investing in human capital, and, as a result, earn low incomes and remain poor. This joint causation of factor endowment or human capital investment and income helps explain income distribution. Using data from the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank for a sample of 19 developing economies, it is found that cross‐country variations in income/consumption inequality may be explained by inequality of investment in human capital as measured by inequalities in child health as well as well as inequality in education and by inequality in the distribution of land as measured by the land Gini index. These results will help governments in developing countries identify areas that need to be improved upon in order to reduce income/consumption inequality.

Additive and Non-Additive Risk Factors in Multiple Causation

The law and economics literature on multiple causation generally distinguishes between causal uncertainty and joint causation. For cases of causal uncertainty it has been shown that proportional liability, a fractional share rule, may lead to socially optimal incentives for the level of care. However, for cases of joint causation fractional share rules tend to be inefficient. This paper argues that the crucial distinction is not so much between the uncertainty or jointness of the causal elements, but rather between the additivity or non-additivity of risk factors. We develop an approach that integrates causal uncertainty and joint causation. We show that an apportionment rule that assigns liability in proportion to the probability of causation always yields efficient incentives when the risk factors are additive. In non-additive cases the proportional rule has an efficient equilibrium outcome (and this equilibrium is unique for almost all parameter settings) when tortfeasors act independently and simultaneously. But it is not always efficient when tortfeasors act in concert or act sequentially. We apply our approach to four recent cases from English jurisprudence. These cases illustrate that both causal uncertainty and joint causation may involve additive as well as non-additive risks.

Inequality and Corruption: Evidence from US States

High-quality data on state-level inequality and incomes, panel data on corruption convictions, and careful attention to the consequences of including or excluding fixed effects in the panel specification allow us to estimate the impact of income considerations on the decision to undertake corrupt acts. Following efficiency wage arguments, for a given institutional environment the corruptible employee's or official's decision to engage in corruption is affected by relative wages and expected tenure in the public sector, the probability of detection, the cost of fines and jail terms, and the degree of inequality, which indicate diminished prospects facing those convicted of corruption. In US states over 25 years we show that inequality and higher government relative wages significantly and robustly produce less corruption. This reverses other findings of a positive association between inequality and corruption, which we show arises from long-run joint causation by unobserved factors.

Joint Causation, Torts, and Regulatory Law in Workplace Health Protections

Joint Causation, Torts, and Regulatory Law in Workplace Health Protections

Measuring Joint Causation

Measuring Joint Causation

Measuring Joint Causation

Measuring Joint Causation