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This paper reviews the evidence for the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of policies to reduce alcohol-related harm. Policies focus on price, marketing, availability, information and education, the drinking environment, drink-driving, and brief interventions and treatment. Although there is variability in research design and measured outcomes, evidence supports the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of policies that address affordability and marketing. An adequate reduction in temporal availability, particularly late night on-sale availability, is effective and cost-effective. Individually-directed interventions delivered to at-risk drinkers and enforced legislative measures are also effective. Providing information and education increases awareness, but is not sufficient to produce long-lasting changes in behaviour. At best, interventions enacted in and around the drinking environment lead to small reductions in acute alcohol-related harm. Overall, there is a rich evidence base to support the decisions of policy makers in implementing the most effective and cost-effective policies to reduce alcohol-related harm.

A crisis of the method of economic thinking is taking shape. The question arises, to what extent the style of economic thought which has been predominant for about half a century, at least in the Western World, can do justice to the problems of human action in a rapidly changing world, and, in particular, in a tempestuous epoch. This essay confronts three bodies of methodological literature with one another: the growth of knowledge literature on the methods of the sciences in general, the continental philosophy known as hermeneutics (or the science of interpretation) on the methods of the social sciences, and the methodology that the Austrian school economist Ludwig von Mises called praxeology (or the science of human action) on the methods of economics in particular. The upshot of this confrontation will be that all three bodies of literature argue for what will be called an interpretive approach to scientific explanation. My aim is to introduce to philosophers and economists two specialized methodological literatures that go by such obscure names as hermeneutics and praxeology by using themes from a body of literature with which both philosophers and economists are quite familiar, the growth of knowledge tradition.

Economics and Hermeneutics looks at the ways that hermeneutics might help economists address problems such as entrepreneurship, price theory, rational expectations, monetary theory, welfare economics and economic policy. Contributors: Lawrence A. Berger , University of Pennsylvania; Tyler Cowen , George Mason University; Richard Ebling , Hillsdale College; Arjo Klamer , George Mason University; Randall Kroszner , University of Chicago; Ludwig M. Lachmann , University of Witwaterstrand; G.B. Madison , McMaster University; Uskali Maki , University of Helsinki; Donald N. McCloskey , University of Iowa; Philip Mirowski , Notre Dame University; Tom G. Palmer , Catholic University; Ralph Rector , George Mason University; Jon D. Wisman , The American University

Around a quarter to a third of adults in England have health risk or harm due to heavy drinking. Most of this risk and harm is preventable if drinking is reduced. Two Cochrane reviews reported that digitally and verbally delivered interventions reduced hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption by 2·5 to 3·0 UK units per week. However, few trials have compared digitally and verbally delivered interventions directly. We aimed to inform policy and practice regarding efficient alcohol interventions for hazardous and harmful drinkers. We did a systematic review using standard methods. Literature searches from the two Cochrane reviews were updated and 164 studies included. We combined direct and indirect data in network meta-analyses to compare the effectiveness of digitally versus verbally delivered interventions, in any setting, that aimed to help people screened as having hazardous or harmful alcohol consumption to recognise and reduce their drinking. Outcomes were difference in mean weekly alcohol consumption and number of heavy episodic drinking occasions. We assessed the quality of the studies using the Cochrane risk of bias tool. We developed an economic model to compare the cost-effectiveness of the two types of interventions. This study is registered with Prospero, number CRD42018089609. At 6 months, 49 studies suggested that verbally delivered interventions were more successful in reducing consumption than digitally delivered interventions (–14 g per week, 95% CI –23 to –4). At 12 months, 46 studies suggested weaker evidence of a smaller reduction (–10 g per week, 95% CI –28 to 8). Little evidence was found of a difference in number of heavy episodic drinking occasions. The main sources of bias in the trials were attrition and performance bias. These results will be fed into a decision analytic model, along with treatment pathways and natural progression for five pertinent diseases, to compare the cost-effectiveness of digitally versus verbally delivered alcohol interventions. Verbally delivered interventions reduce alcohol consumption more, on average, than digitally delivered interventions. Further research should explore heterogeneity. National Institute of Health Research School for Public Health

Economics and Hermeneutics looks at the ways that hermeneutics might help economists address problems such as entrepreneurship, price theory, rational expectations, monetary theory, welfare economics, and economic policy

The aim of this paper is to critically reexamine Ludwig Mises’ attempt to separate the psychological aspects of understanding (thymology) from the “science of action” (praxeology). There are, we contend, legitimate distinctions between theory, on the one hand, and, on the other, psychology or history. But, there is no need to dichotomize them from one another in the way Mises sometimes did.

Decisive for the question of the feasibility of various versions of market socialism is the issue of the basic cognitive function markets are expected to provide. Three increasingly comprehensive interpretations of the cognitive function of markets, labeled computation, incentives, and discovery, are described and contrasted. Depending on how the basic cognitive role of markets is interpreted, very different judgments are possible on the feasibility of market socialism. Two types of market socialism are examined in terms of these approaches, and their shortcomings are attributed to their incomplete appreciation of the way knowledge is created, discovered, and conveyed in market processes.