Business Commons^™

Domestic Monopoly, Quotas & Contestable Rents, William Rieber

William Rieber

Nashville's Printing And Publishing Sector: A Historical And Empirical Study And Its Impact Upon The Region, David Carr

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Urban economics, like all other fields of economics, is a science. A region must be identified, then dissected and analyzed, if one is to determine what gives it life. A study of Nashville, for example. reveals that it depends upon far more than country music for its economic survival. Indeed, the city is a complex organism made of components that must complement each other to insure their existence. One of the most important aspects of Nashville's stability is its locale. Its centralized location, much like a heart, is serviced by arteries of railroads, highways, airways, and river routes. Because of …

The Paradox Of Ideology, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a …

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …

Taxing Prometheus: How The Corporate Interest Deduction Discourages Innovation And Risk-Taking, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper uses recent developments in the theory of optimal capital structure to demonstrate how the federal corporate income tax with an interest deduction, but without a corresponding dividend deduction, misallocates capital within the corporate sector by encouraging investment in low-risk, low-growth projects employing tangible assets over high-risk, high-growth projects employing intangible assets.