Popular Argument Research Articles

Preference measurement in health using experiments

This contribution has three objectives. First, it seeks to justify the use of the economic criterion, “Provision of health care in accordance with the preferences of current and potential patients” for guiding decisions concerning the adoption of costly innovation in health. Next, it proposes the measurement of these preferences in the guise of willingness to pay (WTP) values through Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs). Third, it purports to examine two popular arguments against accepting lay persons´ preferences, viz. that they are unwilling or unable to express preferences with regard to health and health care, and that their preferences are unstable, depending on the current state of health. Both of these arguments are refuted by the findings of four DCEs designed to measure WTP for attributes of health insurance and of the treatment of diabetes, respectively [Zweifel in J Regul Econ 29(3): 319–332, 2006; MacNeil Vrooman and Zweifel in Eur J Health Econ 12(1): 87–95, 2011; Sennhauser and Zweifel in: Jakovlijevic M (ed.), Health Economics and Policy Challenges in Global Emerging Markets. NOVA Publishers, Hauppauge NY, 2016].

The Contradictions of COVID-19 and the Persistence of Western Hegemony

ABSTRACT Crises brought about by COVID-19 have provided us with a key set of observations about global power in an era where international relations scholars are close to coming to a consensus in acknowledging the decline of Western and specifically American hegemony. This paper adopts a decolonial approach to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on international politics. It argues that throughout much of the Western world, COVID-19 has marked one of the first unexpected encounters with death that populations have faced since World War II and the pre-poliomyelitis vaccine era. As a result, global health policies mandated by the WHO have been articulated in favour of the West. Statistical analysis of death tolls brought about by COVID-19, numerous other infectious diseases and viruses along with associated geographic patterns reveal that quarantine and lockdown policies were carried out at the expense and wellbeing of much of the developing world. Contrary to popular contemporary arguments that contend the international liberal order is in decline, the emergence of COVID-19 and subsequent global health policy responses have demonstrated that Western hegemony and soft power are still salient.

Political Union? Some Critical Reflections

This conference brings together an impressive number of eminent politicians, outstanding representatives from business, public administration and academia. Notwithstanding nuances there seems to be a broad consensus that the crisis has demonstrated not only that we need more Europe, but also —having read many contributions— how this «more Europe» should be realized.
 Bearing in mind the atrocities of two World Wars, the separa-tion of Europe by the iron curtain, the challenge stemming from globalisation and a rapidly changing world who would not support the project of a strong and prosperous Europe to guarantee peace in this sphere and to assert, if not enhance its position in the world. However, agreement on the goal does not necessarily imply agreement on the way and the tools by which this end can be achieved.
 While the positions presented at this conference and at many other occasions have been straightforward and firm, my position is much more cautious. I will, in fact, mainly raise a number of questions.
 «If the Euro fails, Europe will fail», is Chancellor Merkel’s dictum. I am critical on this. The Euro, not to mention Europe is not at stake. What is at stake is the euro zone, and by that I mean the composition of the euro zone rather than the euro zone itself.
 A popular argument is that the crisis confronts «Europe» —or rather EMU— with two alternatives. Either political integration is strengthened with the «finalité» of political union or monetary union is doomed to collapse.

On the Decomposition of Abstract Dialectical Frameworks and the Complexity of Naive-based Semantics

Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) are a recently introduced powerful generalization of Dung’s popular abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs). Inspired by similar work for AFs, we introduce a decomposition scheme for ADFs, which proceeds along the ADF’s strongly connected components. We find that, for several semantics, the decompositionbased version coincides with the original semantics, whereas for others, it gives rise to a new semantics. These new semantics allow us to deal with pertinent problems such as odd-length negative cycles in a more general setting, that for instance also encompasses logic programs. We perform an exhaustive analysis of the computational complexity of these new, so-called naive-based semantics. The results are quite interesting, for some of them involve little-known classes of the so-called Boolean hierarchy (another hierarchy in between classes of the polynomial hierarchy). Furthermore, in credulous and sceptical entailment, the complexity can be different depending on whether we check for truth or falsity of a specific statement.

Quantificational Attitudes

The literature contains a popular argument in favor of the position that conditional attitudes (especially intentions and desires) are not simple attitudes with conditional contents but, rather, have a more complex structure. In this paper I show that an analogous argument applies to what we might call quantificational attitudes—like an intention to follow every bit of good advice I receive or a desire to get rabies shots for each bite I incur from an infected bat. The conditions under which these attitudes are satisfied and thwarted are not captured by claiming that they are simple attitudes with quantificational contents. So, the argument supports a novel position—that quantificational attitudes have a more complex structure. After sketching the form of this extra structure, I show how similar considerations count in favor of the existence of genuinely quantificational speech acts.

On William Rowe’s Evidential Arguments from Evil

William Rowe has put forward four popular evidential arguments from evil. I argue that there was already a prominent distinction between logical and evidential arguments from evil—the IN-IM-distinction, and that its adoption leads to two important results. First, all three non-Bayesian evidential arguments are actually not evidential but logical, while the Bayesian evidential argument genuinely evidential. Second, and most importantly, Rowe’s Bayesian evidential argument is redundant, in the sense that it has the same difficulties his three non-Bayesian arguments have. His move from the three earlier non-Bayesian arguments to the Bayesian argument is futile.

Japan and the Prosecution of Kaiser Wilhelm : The Popular Argument over War Responsibility of Germany and Trial of Its Monarch

The Versailles Treaty was a watershed in the history of international laws. It on the one hand changed a meaning of war from “indiscriminate killing” to “illegal way of diplomacy”. On the other hand, it also provided a clause for prosecuting a monarch defeated in the war: its Clause 227 that stipulated prosecution of German Emperor (Kaiser) Wilhelm II for his war responsibility for the First World War (hereinafter referred as Kaiser prosecution). This clause was sensational because it established a new rule in the international law to prosecute the head of state for the defeat, which later led to a notion of crimes against peace. Apart from the international context, “Kaiser prosecution” was a domestic issue of Japan, particularly related to the national constitution (国体). The Japan’s national authority concerned seriously that this issue would affect the nation negatively. This paper examines how Japanese intellectuals received, and argued, “Kaiser prosecution”, and how police forces responded to such popular argument over the monarch, thorough such primary documents as newspapers and magazines in the interwar period. As a result of this research, it shows that Japanese intellectuals supported the Clause 227 unexpectedly, even some criticizing Wilhelm II. Such an intellectual trend shows it was the first time for the nation to consider a concept of “war responsibility”. With these findings, this paper also argues that the police authorities did not regard as criminal Japanese intellectual’s disrespectful discourse against Kaiser Wilhelm II, as it hardly resorted to criminal investigation. On the appointment of a Japanese judge for Wilhelm’s case, importantly, Japanese intellectuals recommended a person both with enough knowledges of international laws and with a strong belief in Japan’s constitution. For them, Kaiser’s case would never lead to a denial of the monarch of Japan. Therefore, both Japanese authorities and intellectuals had unlearned an issue of war responsibility of monarch’s until the time Japan lost in 1945.

FSA in an ETF World

This paper models the value of conducting financial statement analysis (FSA) in the presence of an electronically traded fund (ETF) that gives exposure to the firm’s systematic value. FSA is characterized as a costly process that yields a private signal about the idiosyncratic portion of a firm’s future payoffs. The value of this signal depends on how efficiently price transmits information to uninformed traders. A popular argument is that ETFs are attracting noise traders away from the underlying firm, making prices more informative and private information less valuable. While I find that prices are more informative after the introduction of an ETF, I show that this isn’t because of a change in the amount or location of noise trading. Holding noise trading constant, ETFs allow informed investors to hedge out exposure to the portion of firm value that they are uninformed about, which causes them to place larger bets on their private information, and this is what causes firm prices to be more informative. The introduction of an ETF into an economy thus presents two competing forces on the value of conducting FSA. On the one hand, prices are more informative after the arrival of an ETF, making private information less valuable, but on the other hand, informed traders can use the ETF to hedge, making private information more valuable. I characterize how these forces trade off as a function of the exogenous noise in the economy. These results are unavailable in previous theoretical papers about ETFs because they modeled investors as being risk neutral, thus eliminating their desire to hedge out uncertainty.

Should You Have More China in Your Portfolio? Putting Common Arguments for Increased China Exposure to the Test

Currently, China onshore and offshore equities represent benchmark weights of roughly 0.4% and 4%, respectively, in global portfolios. These small weights are largely a result of complex index inclusion rules focused on access, regulation, governance, and liquidity considerations; index providers do not specifically consider the investment thesis for including Chinese stocks in global benchmarks. In this article, we critically examine the most popular investment arguments in favor of a greater allocation to China onshore and offshore equities, as well as skeptical counterarguments to these claims. China is large in terms of GDP and market capitalization—so what? China’s GDP growth is projected to be 5% higher than developed markets—but there is no empirical relationship between GDP growth and equity market returns. Chinese equities have lower correlation with global markets—but they also have much higher volatility, calling into question the diversification benefits investors seek. The Chinese stock market is filled with non-professional retail investors—but does that lead to greater alpha, and can investors capture that through long exposure to a market with questionable accounting and large differences in regulatory practices? We settle these debates through hard data and straightforward empirical tests. <b>TOPICS:</b>Emerging, private equity, portfolio theory, portfolio construction, equity portfolio management, mutual fund performance <b>Key Findings</b> • A number of popular arguments for including more Chinese equities in investors’ equity portfolios are based on the size of China’s GDP, the size of China’s equity market capitalization, or the growth in China’s GDP. These considerations do not appear to be correlated with portfolio returns or risks. • However, other arguments based on low correlation, faster corporate earnings growth, and high potential for alpha can be empirically verified and do provide meaningful return-risk improvement to investor portfolios. • China is one of the very few economies in the EM basket that has delivered high earnings growth and high equity return against the backdrop of strong GDP growth. This is generally not observed in other EM economies. • China onshore equities have a surprisingly low correlation with its own offshore listed equities and with global equities. The onshore equities historically also have provided faster earnings growth and higher returns than the offshores shares. The heterogeneity between onshore and offshore shares makes the current 90%/10% split between offshore/onshore shares dictated by mainstream indexes suboptimal.

‘Generation Z’ and ‘second generation’: an agenda for learning from cross-cultural negotiations of the climate crisis in the lives of second generation immigrants

ABSTRACT Cross-cultural negotiations of environmental knowledge in children and young people’s lives have received minimal attention in children’s geographies and wider childhood scholarship, despite interests in child and youth environmental concerns and learning that predate the school strikes for climate. This viewpoint articulates an agenda for advancing research in this area in light of youth-led articulations of ‘climate crisis’, beginning with exploration of how second generation immigrants encounter, interpret and negotiate the climate crisis in everyday life. The viewpoint situates this agenda in academic and popular arguments to diversify and decolonise environmentalism amid increasingly polyvocal responses to the climate crisis.

Democratization and Violent Conflict: Is There A Scandinavian Exception?

The notion that the paths to democracy in Scandinavia were exceptionally peaceful remains a popular argument, but an equally large number of studies opposes this view. This research note provides the first systematic attempt to compare records of violence during democratization in Scandinavia with other regions and countries. By using Varieties of Democracy data, I construct novel measures of democratization and violent conflict that align with extant propositions on Scandinavian exceptionalism and conflict‐democratization research while appreciating multiple dimensions of democratization for a global sample of countries from 1789 to 2018. The results show stable support for a substantial Scandinavian exception of peaceful democratization, but only evidently so for moves toward greater executive constraints and civil and political liberties. The exception is less clear for democratization considering competitive elections and suffrage. On this basis, I propose that we may improve the understanding of the causes of Scandinavian democratic exceptionalism and democratic sustainability more generally by studying the origins of peaceful democratization in Scandinavia compared with Western Europe in the ‘age of liberalization’ from approx. the mid‐eighteenth to the mid‐nineteenth century.

Beyond Incivility: Understanding Patterns of Uncivil and Intolerant Discourse in Online Political Talk

This article takes up the popular argument that much online discussion is toxic and hence harmful to democracy, and argues that the pervasiveness of incivility is not incompatible with democratically relevant political talk. Instead of focusing on the tone of political talk, scholars interested in understanding the extent to which digital platforms threaten democratic values should focus on expressions of intolerance. I demonstrate the validity of this conceptual model by investigating the discursive and contextual features associated with incivility and intolerance online in the context of public comments in two different platforms—news websites and Facebook. Results show that incivility and intolerance occur in meaningfully different discussion settings. Whereas incivility is associated with features that reveal meaningful discursive engagement, such as justified opinion expression and engagement with disagreement, intolerance is likely to occur in homogeneous discussions about minorities and civil society—exactly when it can hurt democracy the most.

Legal Obligations to the Dead

It is generally accepted that legal obligations that are owed to the estate of someone who has died cannot be justified on the basis of the post-mortem interests of the deceased, as the deceased has no such interests. This paper examines the arguments that can be made for such obligations being owed in order to protect the ante-mortem interests of the deceased. I argue that the most popular such argument - what I call the 'Argument from Sacrifice' - is much more limited than is commonly supposed, if we correctly understand what is involved in someone's making a sacrifice. I go on to argue that no argument can be made in favour of people's owing the estate of someone who has died an obligation not to unjustly defame the deceased.

Electoral fortunes of social democratic parties: do second dimension positions matter?

ABSTRACTThe dramatic decline in vote shares on the mainstream left in many recent elections has led to a renewed discussion about a crisis of Social Democracy. One popular argument is that Social Democratic decline is the result of these parties' liberal cultural positions and pro-EU stance, with both topics increasingly salient for their traditional voters, particularly among the working class. However, we lack comparative evidence testing this argument. In this paper, we combine CHES data on party positions with ESS survey data to analyze the electoral effects of Social Democratic parties' second dimension and EU positions. In addition, we focus on whether support from different socio-economic groups is sensitive to these positions. In contrast to much public debate, we find that more authoritarian/nationalist and more anti-EU positions are if anything associated with lower rather than greater electoral support for social democratic parties.

Analyzing the Need to Reinstate the NGT Ban with Respect to Meghalaya’s Rat-Hole Mines

On 13th December 2018, 15 miners were trapped in a rat-hole mine in the East Jaintia Hills District of Meghalaya. This incident happened despite the ban imposed and the detailed guidelines laid down by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2014, in response to the South Garo Hills incident. As of date, no concrete legislative measures have been implemented by the State Government of Meghalaya, nor by the respective autonomous District Councils to regulate coal-mining. Clothed with the protection conferred by the Sixth Schedule, the State harbors rampant scientific mining practices, and its administration argues that it is a necessity for the economic development of the State. As a result, agriculture has been brought to a standstill and the coal mafia plaguing the State has received an added impetus. Rehabilitation of citizens remains a distant dream and the Sixth Schedule protection afforded to the State, facilitates exploitation instead of protecting the masses. This article will argue strongly for the continuation of the NGT Ban and analyze and counter popular arguments that have been presented for the legalization of coal mining in Meghalaya.

ВРОЖДЕННЫЕ КОГНИТИВНЫЕ СПОСОБНОСТИ: АРГУМЕНТ ОТ БЕДНОСТИ СТИМУЛА ПРОТИВ АРГУМЕНТА КАРРИ

The article is dedicated to the popular argument among nativists, who use it against the empiricist approach. We analyze the strongest objection against the poverty of the stimulus argument which is the curry argument. As a result of the critical consideration of the poverty of the stimulus discussion, we conclude that the curry argument is quite sound.

О некоторых аргументах в пользу жесткого и продолжительного карантина как средства против (COVID-19 Notes on a Few Arguments for Lasting Quarantine as a Means of Protection from the COVID-19)

Russian Abstract: Ссылки на исторический опыт Испанки в пользу жестких мер не поддерживаются фактами. Утверждения о том, что жесткий карантин - главное средство борьбы с вирусом охотно принимаются бюрократами и политиками. При этом фактических оснований за такими утверждениями пока явно недостаточно для обоснования реакций властей большинства стран на эпидемию. Популярный этический аргумент о приоритете защиты жизни по сравнению с доходами также несостоятелен. Резкое и массовое снижение доходов равносильно ощутимому росту заболеваемости и смертности. Популярная история о том, как правительство Италии своей нерасторопностью с введением принудительного карантина (в режиме домашнего ареста) повинно в высокой смертности также грубо противоречит фактам. Италия первой ввела такой карантин, а в Ломбардии - области с наивысшей смертностью карантинные меры начали вводиться за две недели до общенационального карантина (с 23 февраля). Политические интересы и стимулы бюрократов объясняют реакции властей намного надежнее сомнительных, в данном случае, резонов общественного блага. Тем правым политикам, которые под давлением слева выбрали этатистскую стратегию реагирования на эпидемию придется, вероятно, заплатить высокую цену на выборах если они быстро не скорректируют курс и не компенсируют избыточное вмешательство государства сегодня глубоким дерегулированием и фиксаций ограничений полномочий государства вмешиваться в частную жизнь. До выборов число пострадавших от безработицы или потерявших из-за карантина бизнес во много раз превысит число семей потерявших близких во время эпидемии. English Abstract: Here is collected short review of few popular arguments for strict quarantine during COVID-19 pandemic. Spanish Flu in the US experience is sometimes mentioned among the evidences of efficiency of lockdowns. The fact is, nothing comparable to nowadays lockdowns was applied during Spanish Flu. References on NYC provide actually clear evidences of the opposite – open businesses, schools and cultural facilities, extensive educational measures defended the most vulnerable to contagious diseases city in the country (main gates of the US to fighting Europe) from the most severe consequences (NYC lost 30 thousand lives – less than 5% of total national losses while in the current pandemic NYC have lost already almost 7 thousand lives – more than 30% of national losses). Italian Government is generally blamed for delayed moves in protection of population by strict quarantine. In fact authorities in Italy failed to protect population from the contacts with Chinese workers just returned from mainland China after Chinese New Year celebration (to avoid ‘racist’ approach) but rushed to impose quarantine among the first in the Europe. Experts, promoting strict quarantine, are totally ignoring broadly known and well established fact of mutual dependency between the level of incomes and risks of morbidity and mortality.

A golden key can open any door? Public funding and interest groups’ access

Are government funds an opportunity or a threat to interest groups’ participation in policy-making? In answering this question, previous research has raised the question of the interrelatedness between access to policymakers and funding of interest groups’ activities. A popular argument represents funding opportunities as inhibitors of interest group access to policy-making because of the funds’ negative effect on an organization’s autonomy. In opposition to this view, many authors have argued that public funds open access opportunities and contribute to an active involvement of funded organizations in the policy process. This article provides a novel explanation for these contrasting findings. The effect of public funds on access critically depends on the type of contacts organizations have with policymakers. Funding might positively affect access initiated by policymakers (high threshold), but might not affect access initiated by interest groups (low threshold). Using survey data collected from more than 2000 organizations active in four European countries and at the EU level, the article shows that public funds are associated to an organization’s participation in policy-making but this correlation is indeed highly dependent on the type of contacts groups have with policymakers.

Do fiscal rules reduce political polarization?

In recent years, several countries have enacted numerical fiscal rules, which set limits for government expenditure, revenue, deficits and debt. According to both proponents and critics of these rules, they are a tool to depoliticize fiscal policy and perhaps the political system more broadly, by forcing political parties to adopt increasingly similar political positions. However, little empirical research has been done on whether the introduction of fiscal rules actually affects countries’ internal political life. This article explores whether fiscal rules do, in fact, cause legislative parties to adopt similar political positions, by testing the effects of fiscal rules on the level of political polarization. Using party manifestos data from 185 elections in 32 OECD countries, this article finds little robust evidence that fiscal rules independently reduce the level of political polarization within national legislatures. Contrary to popular arguments about fiscal rules and depoliticization, there is little evidence for an independent effect of fiscal rules on the variance of political parties’ positions.

Compulsory coding in education: liberal-humanism, Baudrillard and the \u2018problem\u2019 of abstraction

Internationally, coding is increasingly introduced into primary and junior high schools (children generally aged between 5 and 15) on a compulsory basis, though not all stakeholders support this ‘initiative’. In response to the public reception, discussion highlights popular argument around compulsory coding in school education. This is an argument between those supportive (hereafter referred to as the Yes case) and those unsupportive of compulsory coding (hereafter referred to as the No case). But more than simply produce a list of arguments, this discussion contributes to our understanding of this reception by identifying the ‘discourses’ deployed by both cases (namely, digital ubiquity, disadvantage, and habits of mind discourses) and by providing theoretical framings through which these discourses and their potential implications might be differently understood. Using critical discourse analysis to unpack these discourses shows that while both cases hold to key tenets of liberal-humanism, a commitment to the individual subject, liberty and full participation in the social, it is the Yes case with its stronger commitment to children engaging in abstraction that seems to challenge these. Discussion of this difference is framed by the work of Baudrillard around abstraction, not to ‘prove’ the validity of Baudrillard’s thesis concerning the consequences of humanity’s deepening engagement with abstraction, but to provide a broader understanding of this debate, in relation to a trajectory of engagement with abstraction that seems set to intensify.