The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires that some institutional organizations (corporations, government entities, NGOs, universities, and so forth) report annually the amount of different greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions generated. The organizations are to select and utilize various EPA equations for calculating various kinds of GHG emissions. That database is then available to plan for climate-change mitigation. The simplistic linear production functions expressed in the equations, along with exemptions, allows for the totals reported by EPA for carbon dioxide, methane, and the other GHG emissions to be significantly understated. Although understated, that database is utilized by various agencies of government in the United States for policy mitigation and in negotiations with other countries. Because meaningful climate-change mitigation policy requires accurate measurement, the purpose here is the analysis and critique of EPA equations for reporting greenhouse-gas emissions and to offer advice about what EPA ought to be doing.

This article explains the need to integrate the concepts of (a) zero greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, (b) the precautionary principle, and (c) environmental impact statements (EISs) to improve climate change mitigation. Across the United States, governments and corporations are adopting positions with the intent to reach zero GHG emissions in some specified year. The first section of this article clarifies how GHG emitting and carbon removing technologies are involved in the concept of net zero GHG emissions. Following that is a discussion of the precautionary principle that needs to be adopted for climate change mitigation. The precautionary principle originated when it became understood that scientific proof of the causes and extent of harmful environmental damage was often not possible until after it was too late to prevent the damage. In turn, analysis should be carried into EISs, which are documents that specify the impact of proposed projects on the environment. EISs are required reports mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 to assess the potential impact of actions affecting the quality of the human environment.

The purpose of this article is to analyze and critique two conceptual bases in the analysis by Nobel Prize economist William Nordhaus about the costs and gains of climate change. Simply put, his modeling indicates that global warming and climate change are not problems that require policies that would significantly slow economic growth. Thus, his work has been used by climate-change deniers, conservative policymakers, and industrial groups as the basis to prevent needed policies to mitigate climate change. Additionally, his work has been adversely criticized by economists who stress the need for such mitigation. Their criticism has mainly dwelt with his numbers, while leaving the basic structure of Nordhaus's analysis intact. The critique here is different, it is about two of his basic concepts that are incorrect. They are the inconsistencies with systems principles and the assertations about linear time in his work.

The religious economics (not economics of religion) concern here is the relationship between the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and Israel, which is known as a geopolitical power in its region and which is also known as an economic success story. Joseph Schumpeter and Karl Polanyi explained how the political economy of medieval Europe was influenced and guided by Christian morality. This paper extends the analysis of religious economics by using the social fabric matrix of original institutional economics to define and structure the integration of the WZO, Israel, and the Diaspora countries. This allows us to observe how to conduct such work and to learn how Israel is guided and influenced by the WZO. It also helps to explain Israel's "risk of tearing itself apart" as noted in a recent article in the New York Times.

The instrumental-ceremonial dichotomy is the analytical concern emphasized in instrumental analysis by original institutional economists for making welfare decisions. Paul Dale Bush and Wolfram Elsner explained that warranted criteria are required in order to conduct instrumental analysis. The concern for criteria led to an examination of multiple criteria decision analysis in health technology assessment in order to improve instrumental analysis. Health technology assessment (HTA) is one of the most active and extensive areas of analysis for policy making because medical technology changes very rapidly, expenditures on it are high and growing, it can harm as well as help, and there is intense personal concern by citizens who want wellness. Although HTA, especially with regard to the analysis of multiple criteria, has made considerable progress, its appraisal has been a disappointment. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to critique aspects of multiple criteria HTA in order to further develop instrumental analysis.

Paleoanthropologists have taught us that, in the earliest Homo-human history, technology, human cognition, and social institutions influenced each other and evolved together. They remain integrated in our complex social institutions today. Robert Owen and Clarence Ayres emphasized the importance of the human-technology relationship. This article moves a step beyond Owen and Ayres by recognizing that humans are technology. Without the recognition of human technology, it is not possible to compare it with and evaluate how it should fit with other technologies. It is also not possible to adequately analyze and judge technological innovations, in general, without the use of social belief criteria. Furthermore, any technological comparisons and evaluations should recognize that decreases in production are needed in order to deal with climate change. Technological assessment has become more important given the vast and profound societal penetration of modern technology such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and genetic editing.

Due mainly to the evolution of science and technology, ontic systems have continuously become more complex. Thus, original institutional economics has adopted and advanced the concepts of complex systems. This article further develops complexity concepts and relates them to problems of climate change. Systems complexity is combined with concepts from geopolitics in order to introduce geopolitical analysis about boundaries/borders into complex systems. The addition of geopolitical ideas allows for systems to focus on a designated social and ecological context that fits the problem of interest. The social and ecological components of open geopolitical systems lead to processes that are dynamic and complex. Thus, complex-systems modeling needs the assistance of geopolitical concepts and geopolitical models need to be embedded in complex systems. Each section of the article clarifies its meaning with examples of climate change concerns.

The task of the U.S. military will continue to grow due to destruction from climate change across the globe. Climate change has caused the loss of military bases due to the ocean rising, and caused drought, more intense storms, and hunger, all of which has led to ethnic cleansing, mass migration, the destruction of institutions, and war in global perspective. Violence will continue to grow at a rate faster than the military's ability to cope without a change in purposeful planning. Two concerns stressed at the week-long consortium, in which I recently participated at the U.S. Army War College, were (i) the substantial military burden due to climate change and (ii) the need to use the principles of complex systems in planning. Thus, the military needs to reach into areas devastated by climate change in order to reduce the likelihood of violence, and to use the correct understanding of complex systems principles for military planning to prevent war.

During the past 30 years, an elaborate literature has developed to integrate the concepts about social norms with the concepts of law. During that same period, climate change impacts became more pronounced and citizens became aware of and concerned about those impacts. This paper explains how the rules governing corporate accounting need to be revised in order to change the accounting systems of production corporations, so those systems reflect social norms and climate change impacts. The paper uses the social fabric approach to explain why the accounting change is needed and how it should be organized in order to allow public agencies to effectively carry out environmental rules and regulations. The double-entry accounting system currently used by production corporations is not structured to record the contribution of their investment and production activities to climate change. The Federal Reserve and US Treasury, as the world's most powerful monetary authorities, need to be involved in bringing about climate change remediation, but that is not possible without an accounting system that provides relevant indicators. Today regulators and corporations are impeded by an accounting system that does not take into consideration the ecological impacts. This paper explains how new accounts that record ecological impacts can be designed and integrated into traditional accounts (without converting to single-entry accounting) in order to demonstrate the environmental impact of particular corporate activities and to provide monetary authorities with the socio-ecological indicators for effective climate change remediation.

This article is devoted to the evaluation of the institutional matrices theory (IMT), which was designed to illustrate the differences between Russian and Western political economic systems. IMT has no matrix, and it is an ideological declaration rather than a theory. It is a set of assertions and assumptions that are adopted without evidence, and then hypostatized to be Russian and Western socioeconomic systems. IMT literature claims to utilize the reciprocity, redistribution, and exchange model of Karl Polanyi (1944, 1957). However, IMT suffers from a number of assumptive and methodological problems in its application, the first of which consists of the complete exclusion of reciprocity from consideration. The first section of the article is an explanation of problems with IMT, and the second section demonstrates some particulars of the IMT problems with a real-world social fabric matrix from a Western nation.

Institutions are patterns of social activity that design roles for persons as social actors, service and are serviced by other institutions, and operate as systems. The main activity inside institutions that is utilized to complete the service responsibilities - which includes production - is the formulation and enforcement of rules, regulations, and requirements. The concepts of closed systems, endogeneity, and self-organized systems have been offered as being relevant for the analysis of institutional systems. As explained here, those concepts are inconsistent with the processing of real-world institutions. When conducting analysis inside institutions, it is necessary to recognize, observe, and model the rules, regulations, and requirements which are formulated to be consistent with the normative belief, technological, and ecological criteria of institutions. Generally, social scientists have emphasized belief criteria, and ignored technological and ecological criteria.

My purpose here is to strengthen Karl Polanyi's work through critique of and extension to abductive processes. Polanyi presented history woven into a new paradigm for analysis of socioeconomic systems, demonstrated discovery similar to abductive processes, and extended abduction into a holistic context. One of Polanyi's most important contributions to socioeconomic analysis is the explanation of three integrated network models of socioeconomic reciprocity. They are coadjuvancy, redistribution, and market exchange. Polanyi extended abductive reasoning in two ways. First, he extended it beyond the cognitive logic of a person to inferences and societal belief changes of institutions. Second, he showed that, in the real world, beliefs are not only fixed like an abductive process, they are fixed in law. Throughout Polanyi's historical presentation, market beliefs are being revised, thus serving as a demonstration of the abductive process. I make both positive and negative critique of a number of Polanyi's concepts, with special attention to reciprocity, the double movement, and freedom. This critique and abduction extension strengthens Polanyi's paradigm for future socioeconomic analysis with his integrative network models.

1 It is commonly acknowledged that what is now known as the trust in the US was inspired by England’s adoption of the Statute of Uses in 1535. 2 Once the trust is created, the settlor ceases to have any property rights or control in his/her capacity as a settlor. However, prior to creating the trust, it is the settlor’s right to specify precisely what property enters the trust. It is the settlor’s right to specify the details of precisely how the property held in trust will be divided, as well as to make certain situational details.

The Federal Reserve System and the U. S. Treasury are two powerful planning agencies with regard to monetary policy and the economy. Yet, their monetary policies do not consider climate-change remediation. Their policy emphasis is mainly focused on investment and production, while climate change from investment and production is creating devastating ecological and social disruption. The double-entry accounting system utilized by banks and production corporations is not designed to record the consequences of their finance, investment, and production activities on climate change. Restructuring Federal Reserve and Treasury policy regarding climate change is not possible without change in the accounting system to provide relevant indicators because banks, corporations, and monetary authorities are captives of a double-entry accounting system that does not consider ecological challenges. In order to record and integrate ecological impacts, a conversion to single-entry accounting is not necessary. Accounts for ecological impacts can be added to traditional double-entry accounts in order to demonstrate the environmental impact of particular corporate activities. Then, monetary authorities could require banks to consider such ecological accounts when making loans and, in turn, consider that database in their relationships with the banks.

The interlocking board directorships among corporations. as well as between corporations and social organizations, is important for defining the modern political economy. This article finds the networks of those interlocks for Koch Industries Inc. and TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation. Moreover, the article extends the networks to describe and analyze the accompanying political network of contributions to Nebraska political campaigns. For corporate and social networks, we utilize conventional theoretical structures to find the new database of those networks for Koch Industries and TD Ameritrade. The new theoretical structure and database concern the campaign contributions of the board of directors in the corporate and social networks, as we trace them to campaigns for federal offices. The new political campaign finance structure we uncover here includes thousands of interconnected campaign finance conduits, through which money flows to political campaigns.

This article integrates Scott Fullwiller's two social fabric matrices for Federal Reserve and Treasury operations to help establish a number of results. First, the resulting network demonstrates that the components are involved in an intense, extensive, and complex network of interconnections. Second, given the numerous pathways in the network, it becomes clear that one needs to identify specific pathways when undertaking a discussion. Third, the article identifies variant criteria that guide the rules, regulations, and requirements of real-world monetary operations, and clarifies that the conflict between normative belief criteria and variant criteria is crucial for understanding the formulation of alternative monetary policies. Fourth, the article establishes that, beyond social criteria, technological criteria also deliver rules, regulations, and requirements to the institutions. Fifth, it further refines the social fabric matrix itself. Finally, the integrated matrix provides a base to which components may be added with a view to pursuing future research interests.

This article reviews and assesses Elinor Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and Paul A. Sabatier's Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to determine their usefulness to institutional economics with regard to the theory of normative criteria and policymaking. The conclusions are that (1) Ostrom's IAD is not of assistance to institutional economics, (2) Sabatier's ACF and institutional economics have four important ideas in common, (3) the different levels of normative beliefs found from ACF studies have not been integrated into institutional economics, and (4) the technological and ecological criteria found in institutional economics have not been integrated into ACF.

The purpose here is to elaborate on the social fabric matrix approach (SFM-A), and to assess the possibility of integrating it with the social structure of accumulation and the social accounting matrix.The SFM-A to analysis and policy evaluation allows for cultural values, social beliefs, institutions, attitudes, technology, and the ecological system to be modeled into a system. The guiding goal is to work toward a more complete model of the provisioning process.

Knowledge about the power and misbehavior of defense contractors is substantial; yet their power continues to grow in full view of a record of waste, fraud, corrupt activity, and the failure to perform contracts. The knowledge base about defense contractors has not been sufficient to effectively oppose their extensive power. Knowledge is needed about how the boards of directors of the defense corporations are interlocked. That work is initiated in this article by ranking the top defense contractors in terms of the number of power blocs to which the corporations belong in the defense contractors' power-bloc network.