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Chapter 1 of the book "Handbook of Econometrics," edited by James J. Heckman and Edward E. Leamer is presented. It deals with the relationship of the econometric evaluation of social programs literature to the literature in statistics on "causal interference." The authors conceptualized a general evaluation framework that focuses on valid economic questions and studies agent choice rules and subjective evaluations of results and the standard objective evaluations of outcomes.

Historiography is composed of scientific-determined and traditionalist-underdetermined parts. The historiography of science records several revolutionary transitions of traditionalist sciences into paradigmatic sciences. Is such a transition from tradition to science possible or even likely in historiography as well? Philosophers have lost interest in the question concerning the possibility and limits of scientific historiography because it was raised originally within the context of two intellectual debates that petered out a generation ago, the epistemic foundations of Marxism and the viability of the positivist unified model of science and knowledge. Popper (1964) and Berlin (1960) attacked the idea of scientific historiography as a proxy for Marxism-Leninism. Some strands of Marxism, especially of the Soviet variety, claimed to be scientific and predict scientifically the downfall of capitalism. Liberal philosophers attempted to pull the epistemic rug from under this claim by proving that scientific historiography is impossible. During the sixties, science lost its prestigious status as the exclusive paradigm of knowledge, at least among left-leaning intellectual elites. Most Western Marxists of the no-no-nonsense variety, following the Frankfurt School, ceased to present themselves as scientists and to take seriously the Bolshevik presentation of dogma as dialectic science. Instead, Western Marxists have criticized “late” capitalism or argued for egalitarianism. Accordingly, anti-Marxist philosophers lost interest in proving that the Marxist vision of a science of society and history is an impossible fantasy, especially after the collapse of late Communism in 1989 and the ensuing ascendancy of right-wing eschatological philosophy of history (Fukuyama, 1992; Huntington, 1996). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION Acts of wrongdoing that cause suffering can elicit two reactions in the victim (or in third parties). First, there may be a desire to impose a corresponding suffering on the wrongdoer: an eye for an eye. Second, there may be a desire for the harm to be undone, at least to some extent or as far as possible. As shown by the institution of “Wergeld,” these two ways of restoring an equilibrium can serve as substitutes for each other. In ancient Teutonic and Old English law, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Wergeld was “the price set upon a man according to his rank, paid by way of compensation or fine in cases of homicide and certain other crimes to free the offender from further obligation or punishment.” Conversely, one might think of punishment as a substitute for compensation if the wrongdoer is unable to pay the Wergeld. Yet in modern legal systems, punishment is not justified by the needs of the victims. Reparation for victims of wrongdoing is uncoupled from punishment of the wrongdoer. The process of compensation may nevertheless be wholly or partly shaped by punitive intentions. In the French Restoration, some émigrés wanted to punish the purchasers of their properties by having them fund the indemnity. Although the preference in post-Communist Czechoslovakia for in-kind restitution over monetary compensation or voucher schemes may have been overdetermined, one motive was to prevent properties from falling into the hands of the former nomenklatura. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION We may have clear ideas about who constitute the wrongdoers in an autocratic regime, at least from a moral point of view. It is not always easy, however, to translate these moral intuitions into legal charges. Moreover, as we get to know more about individual cases, initial moral convictions may unravel. Consider the border guards who killed individuals trying to flee the former GDR. Even if we are disposed to hold them morally responsible for what they did, their legal liability is a different matter, since the reunification treaty between the two Germanys stipulates that individuals can only be accused of wrongdoing if the acts were crimes according to the legal codes of both countries at the time they were committed. Furthermore, reflecting on what it meant to be an East German who had spent his whole life under a ruthless dictatorship, a prosecutor or judge in the former West Germany might well think, “There but for an accident of geography go I.” As noted in Chapter 3, the border guards almost without exception received suspended sentences. In this chapter I attempt to carry out three tasks. In Section II, I discuss the psychological profiles of wrongdoers – their character, motives, and background. In Section III, I discuss justifications for alleged wrongdoing, that is, claims that the acts in question were in fact morally required, rather than morally wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION Transitional justice in the restoration of monarchy has occurred several times in history. In the next chapter, I briefly summarize some salient features of the English Restoration in 1660. In this chapter, I consider in more detail transitional justice after each of the two Restorations of the French monarchy, in 1814 and in 1815, separated by the Hundred Days in which Napoleon returned to power. During the First Restoration, the Bourbons undertook limited measures of reparation, but otherwise did nothing. During the Second, they carried out vast punitive and reparative measures. To explain the dynamics of these events, I begin in Section II by considering the political constraints on transitional justice, which followed from the fact that these were negotiated transitions. In Section III I consider public and private retribution, before turning in Section IV to the issues of restitution and compensation. Section V offers a brief summary. CONSTRAINTS ON TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN THE FRENCH RESTORATIONS Transitional justice in the return of the Bourbons took place twice within a short interval of time. In this section, I explain the constraints on transitional justice that followed from the fact that in both cases, the post-Napoleonic regimes were established under the auspices of the Allied forces with some of Napoleon's leading officials serving as go-betweens. In 1814, Talleyrand, Napoleon's former Foreign Minister and at the time de facto leader of his senate, was the main mediator. In 1815, he was supplemented by Fouché, Napoleon's Chief of Police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coups are the ultimate problem of civil–military relations. From ancient Rome to today's democratizing states, Juvenal's question – “but who is to guard the guardians themselves?” – has been of central political importance. This chapter examines the range of possible explanations for military involvement in domestic politics. No single approach can by itself explain the hundreds of coups that have taken place over the years in a wide variety of countries – that is to ask too much of social science theory. Rather than posit a “golden bullet” theory that explains everything, the goals here are more modest. First, I map the lay of the land in this corner of the academic field. Second, I suggest how these different approaches may complement each other in a two-step model of military behavior. Before we turn to the different ways of explaining the phenomenon of military intervention, however, it is important to be clear what we are talking about. MILITARY INVOLVEMENT IN SOVEREIGN POWER ISSUES The notion of a military coup evokes images of soldiers with machine guns seizing television and radio transmitters and surrounding government buildings with armored vehicles. Our stylized visions of the classic coup tend to obscure the fact that the military can have a decisive influence on determining who rules the state in many different ways. Staying in the barracks sometimes can be as influential as leaving them. When conceived of in this fashion, the notion of a coup is really shorthand for a range of military behaviors, both active and passive, that can lead to a change in the executive leadership of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Imperial period of Russian history, from the accession of Peter the Great to the abdication of Nicholas II, was a time of enormous transformation, including in the sphere of civil–military relations. Peter the Great himself rose to power with the help of military officers, and for a century after his death the involvement of the army in sovereign power issues was a normal occurrence. Only in the nineteenth century did this pattern of behavior reverse itself, and to such an extent that by the end of the Romanov dynasty military intervention was practically unthinkable. This chapter tells the story of this shift from a praetorian to an apolitical officer corps. Two major issues dominate the discussion. The first issue is the development of the Russian state. The second major focus of this chapter is the question of military involvement in sovereign power issues. Four cases are discussed: the palace coups of the eighteenth century, the Decembrist uprising of 1825, the uneventful (and thus highly significant) successions of the second half of the nineteenth century, and the Revolution of 1905–1906. PETER THE GREAT AND THE BUILDING OF THE RUSSIAN STATE Peter the Great transformed Russia from Muscovy, a medieval and “eastern” polity, into the modern and European state of Imperial Russia. The creation of many highly important political and social institutions, including a standing army and navy, usually is traced to Peter. Indeed, the very notion of the “state” as something separate from and even higher than the sovereign can be traced to Peter's reign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Things goeing soe easy soe smooth and soe right in your house, I know you will excuse me that I went into the country to enjoy there an uninterrupted satisfaction and quiet in the contemplation of them. I hope they continue in the same course since my comeing away, and the zeale and forwardnesse of you your selves makes it needlesse for us without dores soe much as to thinke of the publique which is the happyest state a country can be in, when those whose businesse it is, take such care of affairs that all others quietly and with resignation acquisce and thinke it superfluous and impertinent to medle or beat their heads about them. Do all human beings (or any human beings) have rational political obligations? Are political commitments, commitments either to sustain holders of political authority or to further socially extended shared human purposes, a necessary component of any rationally conceived human life? Or is it more appropriate to think of the moral acceptance of existing political institutions or the disposition to attempt to create what are presumed to be superior political institutions simply as an ideological condition, a state of belief and sentiment which we might (for example) be sure to have been causally generated but in relation to which no question of truth or falsehood, intrinsic validity or contingent error can coherently arise? These alternatives are certainly not exhaustive; but we may conveniently take them as a crude initial index of the range of disagreement about this issue which obtains at present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimal versus actual investment behavior Were investment requirements really “modest” during the industrial revolution? By the standards of the contemporary Third World and the late nineteenth century, Britain recorded very modest investment shares in national income (Williamson, 1984a). That fact has generated a long and active debate centered around the question: Was the investment share low because investment requirements were modest, or was the investment share low because of a savings constraint? The first argues that investment demand in the private sector was the critical force driving accumulation during Britain's industrial revolution, low rates of technical progress and an absence of a capital-using bias both serving to minimize private-sector investment requirements. The second argues that Britain's growth was savings-constrained. Until very recently, the first view dominated the literature. This dominant view sees early nineteenth-century Britain as so labor-intensive that investment requirements to equip new workers could be easily fulfilled by modest amounts of domestic savings, so easily in fact that domestic savings had to look for outlets overseas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two competing views Did factor markets fail during the British industrial revolution? Did distortions in capital markets serve to starve industrial firms for finance and suppress accumulation there? Did urban-rural wage gaps, inelastic city-labor supplies and lack of integrated labor markets serve to drive up the cost of labor in the cities, thus choking off the rate of industrialization? With regards to labor-market failure, the literature is of two minds. Labor markets did fail An extensive traditional literature takes the view that migrants were reluctant to move, wage gaps were large, and regional labor markets were fragmented. A century ago, Earnst Ravenstein (1885, 1889) published his classic work on internal migration, subsequently augmented by Arthur Redford (1926) and Alex Cairncross (1949, 1953). Ravenstein asked how many migrated, when they migrated, who migrated, where they migrated from, and where they migrated to. The same questions dominate modern migration studies. Thus, for example, the literature has been busy substantiating Ravenstein's and Redford's observation that the majority of migrants went only a short distance, and often by steps. Such observations have encouraged the belief that workers failed to move to the highest wage areas and thus that the perfect labor-market thesis must fail. There is an equally long tradition among British labor historians that there was a multiplicity of labor markets between 1750 and 1850, that regional labor markets were very poorly integrated, and that local autonomy reigned (Pollard, 1978). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irish immigration and the labor-surplus model: Three questions To add to all the other social problems that Britain's cities had to face during the First Industrial Revolution, they also had to absorb the Irish. Rapid growth after the French wars made the absorption easier, but the Irish immigrants still serve to complicate any assessment of Britain's economic performance up to the 1850s. Would the cities have been able to cope with growth far more easily in their absence? Would common labor's living standards in the city have risen much more rapidly? Was rural out-migration strongly suppressed by Irish competition in Britain's cities? Was migration from the agrarian South deflected from northern cities by a glut of Irish labor? Did British industrialization receive a powerful boost by an elastic supply of cheap Irish labor? Did the Irish depress the standard of living of British labor? Qualitative accounts suggest that Irish immigration into Britain did not really become important until after the French wars, the 1820s often being offered as the benchmark decade. It is also true that unskilled labor's real-wage gains lagged far behind during the otherwise impressive secular boom up to the 1850s (Lindert and Williamson, 1983). Inequality was also on the rise (Williamson, 1985a), suggesting that the Irish glut at the bottom of the distribution may have played an important role. The gross correlation is seductive, lagging living standards and rising inequality coinciding with Irish immigration, but a clear assessment has always been clouded by the difficulty of controlling for everything else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do we care about the urban demographic transition? A reconstruction of the demographic dimensions of the urban transition should help improve our understanding of the First Industrial Revolution. Certainly it is essential in searching for answers to any of the following questions: Did English cities grow more by natural increase than by migration? Did city immigration rates rise as industrialization accelerated? Did rural emigration rates respond vigorously to the employment demands of rapid city growth, or were rural Englishmen more attached to the land than has been true of other industrial revolutions? Was migration selective? If so, what was the impact of the selectivity on the city economy? What role did push and pull forces play in rural and urban labor markets? These questions have always been at center stage in debates about the First Industrial Revolution. The answers will hinge on an assessment of those forces creating and displacing jobs in the two labor markets, as well as on the migration behavior thought to link them, assessments which cannot be made without the prior demographic reconstruction performed in this chapter. Consider, for example, the Third World overurbanization debate which was initiated by Bert Hoselitz in the 1950s. His thesis was that urbanization was outpacing industrialization in the sense that urban populations were large relative to industrial jobs, at least when compared with late nineteenth-century experience (Hoselitz 1955, 1957). The implication was that urban labor was moving into low-wage, residual service underemployment by default. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking backward from the present The past quarter century witnessed unprecedented economic progress in the Third World as gauged by the standards of the First Industrial Revolution. Economic success of that magnitude has always created problems of dislocation and structural adjustment. City growth is one such problem, and given the unprecedented progress in the Third World, their city growth problems seem, at least to those who ignore history, unprecedented as well. By the end of this century, the United Nations forecasts urban population growth rates three times those of rural areas. Two billion people, exceeding 40 percent of the Third World population, will live in cities; some cities will have reached extremely large size – Mexico City at 31.6 million, São Paulo at 26 million, and Cairo, Jakarta, Seoul, and Karachi, each exceeding 15 million. Current rates of Third World city growth border on the spectacular, averaging between 4 and 5 percent per annum. Analysts and policymakers are sharply divided on the city-growth problem. Pessimists stress the Third World's inability to cope with the social overhead requirements of rapid urban growth and high urban densities, citing ugly squatter settlements, pollution, environmental decay, and planning failure as evidence of their inability to cope. Third World city growth is viewed by the pessimists as another example of the “tragedy of the commons,” a classic example of overuse of a collective resource. In contrast, optimists view city growth as a central force raising average living standards. They view urbanization as the natural outcome of economic development, and a requisite for the more rational use of economic resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of their placement in the past, historical occurrences cannot be re-created or manipulated. For this reason hypothetical or contrary-to-fact statements are often regarded as unacceptable in historical works. Thus Joseph Needham says: ‘Whether a given fact would have got itself discovered by some other person than the historical discoverer had he not lived it is certainly profitless and probably meaningless to enquire.’ A contrary-to-fact statement is a statement based on an assumption that is known to be factually false, in other words, that cannot be reconciled with the known facts. Such statements are also called counterfactual statements. They contain the conditional ‘if’ followed by the false statement P. ‘If X had not been the case, Y would not have taken place’ is a counterfactual statement in so far as X actually was the case (irrespective of whether Y occurred or not). X might, for example, be ‘Maxwell formulated the theory of electrodynamics’ and Y might be ‘the radio was invented’. In a certain sense the statement can be said to be a hypothetical statement about the past; but with the difference that the premise of the hypothesis (non-X) is known to be false. Hypotheses are normally statements whose truth value is not known, but which are used heuristically in order to deduce testable statements that will then support or weaken the hypothesis. We cannot know whether the radio would have been discovered had Maxwell never lived; for we cannot remake the historical situation at the time of Maxwell without taking into consideration the fact that Maxwell did actually live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]