Risks in Renaissance Art: Production, Purchase, and Reception
Richard Zeckhauser, the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy; Jonathan K. Nelson, Syracuse University Florence
RISK PLAYS A VITAL ROLE in economic decision making and finance—that is the case today and has been historically. In this slim volume from the Cambridge University Press Elements series, Richard Zeckhauser and Jonathan Nelson examine the role risk played in Renaissance art markets, focusing on Italy from 1400 to 1650. The authors explore what they call “production risks,” which concern issues that happen over the course of creating the art, as well as “reception risks,” which occur when the buyer or patron is unhappy with what is produced. They write, “This volume employs a new methodology, built around concepts from risk analysis and decision theory. Specifically, it identifies the sources of losses suffered by artists, patrons, purchasers, and dealers.”
Risks were abundant when it came to Renaissance art, with much uncertainty about both quality and the timely completion of pieces. Nevertheless, the authors argue, art flourished in this period because people found ways to tame risks, even though they could not control them completely. “On the whole, the risky art business of the Renaissance created significant gains for all classes of participants,” Zeckhauser and Nelson observe. Those gains explain “… why the production and sale of art thrived. As in other aspects of the economy, risk-taking became another cost of doing business. Painters, patrons, and purchasers all recognized one key tenet: nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
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Behind the Curve: Can Manufacturing Still Provide Inclusive Growth?
Robert Lawrence, the Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment
BEHIND THE CURVE takes on the similarities that manufacturing shares with previous drivers of inclusive economic growth—they follow a U-shaped curve, as they start with rapid growth, move toward a climax or plateau, and then a downturn as innovation enhances productivity, and modalities for production in the sector change. These transitions change the economic effects a given industrial practice can have on people and places. Lawrence explains that policy approaches from both the left and right fail to have the desired outcomes for sustainable and inclusive growth, as they are based on inaccurate or outdated ideas. What serves manufacturing best (and how it can foster economic growth) has changed, and policies thus have to change too: industries are having to innovate in light of decarbonization goals, trends in supply chains, and domestic pressures that hasten sector change. Lawrence breaks his analysis and argument into three sections: comprehensive international data analysis; a U.S.-based historical case study in inclusive growth; and a survey of industrial and trade policies that countries have applied to enhance their domestic manufacturing. Given the current pressures on manufacturing, Lawrence argues policies need to focus on particular objectives, embrace the changing nature of trade and our industrial economy, and understand the ways in which historical approaches to inclusive growth through manufacturing are now less effective.
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Empowering Affected Interests: Democratic Inclusion in a Globalized World
Archon Fung, the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government; Sean W.D. Gray, Memorial University
IT’S A BASIC AND INTUITIVE principle: those affected by a collective decision should have a way to participate in making that decision. In political science, it’s known as the all-affected principle (AAP). But what should it mean? What counts as being affected by a decision? And how far should a right to affect a decision reach? Should a person affected by U.S. foreign policy far from the United States expect to vote in an American election or influence the workings of a private company? In this volume, co-edited by Archon Fung, the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, experts examine democratic inclusion “across borders of states, localities, and the private sector, on topics ranging from immigration and climate change to labor markets and philanthropy.”
“The authors of the chapters in this volume bring renewed attention to a principle of democratic governance that has been present since the dawn of democracy, but largely in the background of democratic theory and political philosophy,” Fung and his co-editor Sean W.D. Gray write in their introduction. “Rather than offering a single account or formulation of the AAP that displaces other conceptions or principles of democracy, the collective aim of the authors is more modest. These contributions develop several different variations of the AAP, explore whether the AAP can advance our democratic understandings and commitments across a wide range of social, economic, and political governance challenges, and seek to understand the AAP’s limitations.”
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Justice by Means of Democracy
Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor; Professor of Public Policy, vlog
“WE CHOOSE OUR POLITICAL ECONOMY not as an end in itself but to secure the foundation on which human beings can live their best lives,” writes Danielle Allen in her book Justice by Means of Democracy. In other words, if human flourishing is the answer, what are the questions we should ask about how we organize our polity to allow for that flourishing? The many political and economic upheavals over the past two decades—from the Great Recession and striking economic inequality to the rise of populism that paved the way for Brexit and Trump’s election—are a sure sign, Allen argues, that we’ve been asking the wrong questions.
“The purpose of this book is to propose some fresh questions—in particular, questions about political equality. The road to proposing fresh questions for economists lies through a reconsideration of the basic foundations of justice. I will propose in this book that the surest path to justice is the protection of political equality; that justice is therefore best, and perhaps only, achieved by means of egalitarian participatory constitutional democracy; and that the social ideals and organizational design principles that flow from a recognition of the fundamental importance to human well-being of political equality and democracy provide an alternative framework within which economists might do their work.” The “power-sharing liberalism” that Allen ultimately advocates for aims to put political and social equality at the core of our political economy.
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People, Power, Change
Marshall Ganz, the Rita T. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society
SENIOR LECTURER MARSHALL GANZ relies on decades of teaching, research, and practice—rooted in his own extensive experiences on the front lines of democratic organizing—to produce a book that is both comprehensive and practical. Ganz, a leading authority on democratic organizing whose learning began in the mid-1960s supporting the work of Black organizers in Mississippi with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and unionizing California farmworkers with Cesar Chavez, begins by stressing the importance of underlying values in organizing. “Social movements based on hope can expand democratic access, even as social movements based on fear can constrain democratic access,” he writes. “It took movements of the latter to put us into this mess, and it will take movements of the former to get beyond it.”
Ganz argues that the civic infrastructure that helped citizens come together to collectively solve problems has undergone a radical erosion since the 1970s and has been replaced by market-based solutions that advantage wealthy interests over ordinary citizens. Democratic organizing that develops the leadership to engage others in building new structures for civic participation, he writes, is the best way to reverse that trend. The book then presents a roadmap for understanding, adapting, and practicing organizing by building relationships; valuing the role of narrative in fueling organizing campaigns; utilizing the power of well-crafted strategy and resources; acting in real, measurable, and effective ways; and building structure for coordination, accountability, and learning. Democracy, Ganz writes, is not something you have. It’s something you do.
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