Should the state undertake the task of promoting the good life? Perfectionism is the idea that the state should promote the good life. Many philosophers have answered in the negative to the above question, so they reject perfectionism. This thesis aims to develop a moderate version of perfectionism, and seeks to defend it against several influential anti-perfectionist arguments, in particular the argument from public reason liberalism. I begin by examining public reason liberalism. John Rawls, Gerald Gaus, Martha Nussbaum, and many other political philosophers endorse public reason liberalism. They believe that state coercion should be publicly justified, and that perfectionism cannot meet the requirements of public reason. I argue that public reason is the object of reasonable rejection, so it cannot be realised in actual politics through state intervention in a publicly justified way. In addition, I argue that respect for persons is not a reliable basis for public reason. Thus we have good reason to reject public reason liberalism. Then I develop a moderate version of perfectionism. I contend that the state should promote the good life through supporting a wide variety of perfectionist goods, and that it should do so by using moderate measures and by appealing to perfectionist judgements of a moderate kind. Some anti-perfectionists consider that perfectionism would be unnecessary when a fair distribution of resources is realised. Yet a fair distribution of resources is not foreseeable. I propose several kinds of moderate perfectionist policies that are of great importance for any neo-liberal society where the distribution of resources is far from fair, and these policies are ultimately important for the good life, not only for remedying unfairness. Contrary to the positions of many liberal philosophers including Ronald Dworkin and Jeremy Waldron, I argue that moderate perfectionism should not be rejected on grounds of paternalism and unfairness to different conceptions of the good.

This dissertation is composed of three essays examining the impact of time varying volatility on firm decision making. The first essay examines the effect of oil price volatility on price setting behavior using Producer Price Index micro data. I analyze whether two measures of price flexibility, price change frequency and dispersion, are affected by changes in oil price volatility. Heterogeneity in oil usage across industries is used to construct industry specific measures of oil price volatility. I find that price changes are more dispersed in high oil usage industries during months with high oil price volatility, however frequency of price change does not change. These results imply that aggregate price level flexibility does not fall during periods of high aggregate volatility. The second essay constructs a state-dependent pricing model with time varying oil price volatility to study if changes in aggregate volatility alter the impulse response of output to monetary policy. Firms use oil as an input to production, while oil price and oil price volatility processes are exogenous. Random menu costs enable the model to match the positive empirical relationship between oil price volatility and price change dispersion. A model simulation examines a counterfactual period of high oil price volatility and implies that increases in aggregate volatility do not substantially reduce the ability of monetary policy to stimulate output. The third essay examines the impact of time varying idiosyncratic uncertainty on investment with multiple types of capital. A model with two types of capital, short-lived equipment and long-lived structures, and nonconvex adjustment costs is constructed to examine the role of economies of scope on investment purchases. Evidence from a structural vector autoregression shows that investment in structures falls four quarters after an uncertainty shock, while investment in equipment falls within one quarter. The model with economies of scope in investment purchases is consistent with these results.

Master of Science / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Amber V. Vennum / Values dictate who we are, how we see the world, and how we choose to interact with others. They are imbedded in culture. Therapists and clients are dictated by values that in a large part determine the course of therapy (L’Abate, 1982). Mindful to not impose personal values on their clients, therapists may attempt what is being called a value-neutral approach, inadvertently reinforcing certain dominant cultural values about relationships that may, or may not, be in the best interest of the client’s relationship. Therapists practicing within American culture may unintentionally reinforce instrumental views of relationships in the therapy room if they attempt to remain value-neutral. The present study explored the influence of instrumentalism on therapist’s values and roles they take in therapy with two studies. Study 1 involved the construction and refining of scales that intended to measure (a) attitudes towards commitment (b) instrumentalism in romantic relationships. The attitudes towards commitment scale was created with high reliability and the instrumentalism scale was discarded and new items were created for the second study. Study 2 involved a mixed-methods approach to explore the influence of instrumentalism on therapists’ definitions and use of neutrality, as well as therapists’ roles in couple’s therapy. Participants for study 2 were sent a survey asking about demographics, relationship and commitment values, their definitions of neutrality, and the roles they take in couple’s therapy and whether they advocate more for individuals or relationships. When therapists advocate more for the relationship they are more likely to have more positive attitudes towards commitment, are less likely to endorse soft reasons for relationship dissolution, see themselves as part of a collective, and be religiously active.

A hipótese da neutralidade da moeda tem como marco teórico a Teoria Quantitativa da Moeda (TQM), que é fundamentada a partir da equação de trocas de Fisher, supondo que a velocidade-renda da moeda é constante, sendo o produto real determinado exogenamente por variáveis não-monetárias, tais como a tecnologia, o estoque de capital e a oferta de trabalho. Mas, o produto real é realmente exógeno no Brasil? Ou, em outras palavras, é válida a hipótese de neutralidade da moeda? Esse tema tem sido objeto de muitos estudos empíricos. Ademais, o efeito Tobin e as teorias de crescimento endógeno sugerem que pode haver um efeito real da moeda no longo prazo. Este trabalho investigou as possíveis relações de longo prazo entre a oferta nominal de moeda, o nível de preços e o Produto Interno Bruto (PIB) real para o Brasil de 1946 a 2008, utilizando dados de baixa frequência (anuais). Para a parte empírica foi utilizado o teste de cointegração de Johansen e integração das variáveis, com destaque para o estudo de estacionaridade da velocidade de circulação da moeda, que se mostrou ser constante apenas na presença de quebras estruturais. Principalmente, foram utilizados testes de exogeneidade, com o objetivo de permitir ao pesquisador trabalhar com um conjunto de informações o mais amplo possível, vale dizer, que englobasse as informações que proviessem da teoria econômica e do processo gerador de dados. Quanto aos testes de raiz unitária, encontrou-se que as variáveis em estudo (y, m e p) são I(1), ou seja, são estacionárias apenas em primeira diferença. Os resultados encontrados vão no sentido de validar a exogeneidade do produto real, apesar de os resultados provenientes do teste de causalidade Granger não ter sido conclusivo. Dessa forma, este trabalho cria evidências a favor da hipótese da neutralidade da moeda. / The hypothesis of neutrality of money is the theoretical framework of the Quantity Theory of Money (QTM), which is based from the Fishers equation of exchange, assuming that the income-velocity of money is constant, the real output is exogenously determined by nonmonetary variables, such as technology, capital stock and labor supply. But the real output is truly exogenous in Brazil? Or, in other words, it is valid the hypothesis of neutrality of money? This theme has been the subject of many studies. In addition, the Tobin effect and the endogenous growth theories suggest that there may be a real effect of money in the long run. This study investigated the possible long-run relationships between the nominal money supply, the price level and real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Brazil from 1946 to 2008, using low frequency (annual) data . For the empirical test was used the Johansen cointegration and integration of the variables, especially the study of the stationarity of the velocity of money circulation, which provided to be constant only in the presence of structural breaks. Mainly, we used exogeneity tests in order to allow the researcher to work with a set of information as broad as possible, ie, encompassing the information come from the economic theory and data generator process. For the unit root tests, it was found that the study variables (y, m e p) are I (1), ie, are stationary only in first difference. The results are in line to validate the exogeneity of real output, although the results from the Granger causality test was not conclusive. Thus, this work creates evidence for the hypothesis of neutrality of money.

Abstract In industry there is a high demand for algorithms that can efficiently solve search problems. Evolutionary Computing (EC) belonging to a class of heuristics are proven to be well suited to solve search problems, especially optimization tasks. They arrived at that location because of their flexibility, scalability and robustness. However, despite their advantages and increasing popularity, there are numerous opened questions in this research area, many of them related to the design and tuning of the algorithms. A neutral technique called Pseudo Redundancy and related concepts such as Updated Objective Grid (UOG) is proposed to tackle the mentioned problem making an evolutionary approach more suitable for ''real world'' applications while increasing its robustness and efficiency. The proposed UOG technique achieves neutral search by objective function transformation(s) resulting several advantageous features. (a) Simplifies the design of an evolutionary solver by giving population sizing principles and directions to choose the right selection operator. (b) The technique of updated objective grid is adaptive without introducing additional parameters, therefore no parameter tuning required for UOG to adjust it for different environments, introducing robustness. (c) The algorithm of UOG is simple and computationally cheap. (d) It boosts the performance of an evolutionary algorithm on high dimensional (constrained and unconstrained) problems. The theoretical and experimental results from artificial test problems included in this thesis clearly show the potential of the proposed technique. In order to demonstrate the power of the introduced methods under "real" circumstances, the author additionally designed EAs and performed experiments on two industrial optimization tasks. Although, only one project is detailed in this thesis while the other is referred. As the main outcome of this thesis, the author provided an evolutionary method to compute (optimal) daily water pump schedules for the water distribution network of Sopron, Hungary. The algorithm is currently working in industry.

This thesis focuses on the contest that can be defined as an epoch in Irish political discourse, the Treaty of Lisbon referendum 2008. It approaches the subject from an alternative angle to current research, which predominately focuses on the outcome of the referendum rather than the causes of the outcome. Principally, this research offers a critical discourse analysis of the preliminary debate covering the sessions of Dáil Éireann from the begin of the debate on 3rd April 2008 to the final statements on the 23rd April 2008 which debated the controversial government backed Treaty of Lisbon. This thesis wishes to trace the ways in which opposition actors attempted to resonate their arguments with chronicled master frameworks of Irish foreign policy a tactic which has emerged as a key ideological resource, and to the extent they utilised neutrality as a persuasive tool in influencing the outcome of the debate.

To achieve the goals set by Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement, a societal transformation towards climate neutrality is required. However, the idea of ‘transformation’ is conceptually vague and deeply political. It is thus important to get a better understanding of this concept. This thesis explores what participants at COP26 perceive to be the most effective drivers for societal transformations towards climate neutrality, and what variations in their perceptions are visible. This was done using surveys taken at COP26, which have been analysed using Excel and the chi-square test in SPSS. Out of the thirteen driver themes that were identified in the coding scheme, it was found that Economic Sphere and Sectors, Civil Society and Public Opinion, Knowledge and Technology, and Governmental Sphere and Institutions were perceived to be the most effective driver themes. These results corroborate important drivers proposed in existing literature. Comparing the dataset to a variety of global indexes, it was found that participants from countries that are ranked relatively low on these global indexes generally perceive Economic Sphere and Sectors as an effective driver theme, while participants from higher-ranked countries generally focused more on the driver themes Governmental Sphere and Institutions, Behavioural and Cultural Change, and Incentives. An attempt has been made to explain these results, but much more research and additional data is needed to better understand the findings.

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