中国世俗主义的历史起源及特点

本文运用历史社会学的方法,分析了中国国家精英的正统宗教和民间宗教之间的横向切割关系,与亚伯拉罕传统下的横向联结的关系之间的不同.在中国,天代表着一种超越性的力量和原则,但这种力量、道德权威和理想对中国产生的影响与其在亚伯拉罕传统下引发的效果不尽相同.中华帝国晚期(20世纪初)的民间救度团体一端连接着有关超越性的轴心时代传统,另一端则是致力于“人类繁荣”的民间宗教活动,在宇宙观和社会整合过程中发挥着重要作用.皇权国家试图垄断天的超越性力量,同时把精英和大众的宗教信仰控制在人类繁荣的非超越性领域之内.这种做法成功地招安了精英阶层,但获取和实现超越性的其他途径则被迫转入地下.结果是中国宗教、文化和政治领域的断裂线就表现为国家一精英与大众文化之间的对立,也由此对源自西方的“世俗主义”做出了修订.从现代政治角度来看,中国没有被信仰团体主宰过实属幸运,但这种垂直分割也一直是一个不安的因素.     

Regulation,reputation, and environmental risk

This paper examines how preferences for social reputation affect the design of monetary incentives in an efficient mechanism for environmental risk. Our results are a high reputation firm receives less than optimal transfer; the low reputation firm sacrifices information rent.     

Role of Algorithmic and Co-Location Trading on the Speed of Information Adjustments: Evidence from India

We investigate whether increased Algorithmic Trading (AT) intensity caused by the introduction of Co-location trading (CLT) facilities improve the productive efficiency of the Indian stock indices. We measure the change in the speed of information adjustment and change of persistence before and after the introduction of CLT for Indian Indices. We report an improvement in the overall productive efficiency of the leading Indian Indices, Midcap and Smallcap indices being the prominent beneficiaries. Our work contributes to the empirical literature on the ongoing debate on the benefits of AT and its role in improving market efficiency, especially in the emerging markets context.     

Evaluating Product Plans Using Real Options

Product planning helps a company to strategically plan its current and future product platforms and offer product variants in the marketplace. Product platforming is widely touted as a successful strategy for mass customization. However, due diligence should be exercised before implementing any product platform strategy. The product planning exercise should account for future uncertainties. Traditional financial tools such as the net present value (NPV) are static since they do not compensate for any exogenous and endogenous uncertainties during the course of the project. The crux of the problem lies in the evaluation model that is used for evaluating the product planning projects. While many view uncertainties in a product planning project as problematic, it can also be viewed as a source of new opportunities. We argue that uncertainties should be an integral part of the evaluation model. If the future possibilities (or strategic options) are not considered in the evaluation model, a corporation may face a “myopic syndrome”.

In this article, we consider two important product planning decisions—platform decisions and product variant decisions. The platform decision involves strategic selection of a concept product platform from various possible alternative concept product platforms. The product variant decision involves deciding how long a company should continue to offer its current product variant in the marketplace and whether the existing product variant should be discontinued, scaled down, or scaled up with additional product features. To address the two aforementioned decisions, we developed a real options–based methodology that considers technical, project implementation, and market-related uncertainties. The proposed methodology uses a binomial and quadranomial lattice approach to build a decision tree. Product planning decisions at various decision tree nodes are evaluated using a risk-neutral option valuation methodology. We demonstrate the working of the proposed methodology using an illustrative example.     

可持续性与超验的危机:一种长历史的观点

<正>在各个复杂社会的历史中,人类对超验的渴求:超越苦难,不平等的境况并在人类世界中实现一种未知境况的渴求一直存在。众所周知,这种境况是一切世界宗教的基础。今天,世界需要被拯救,也许比以往更不那么隐喻性地,同时又更物理     

Anomalies in the Foundations of Ridge Regression: Some Clarifications

Several anomalies in the foundations of ridge regression from the perspective of constrained least-square (LS) problems were pointed out in Jensen & Ramirez. Some of these so-called anomalies, attributed to the non-monotonic behaviour of the norm of unconstrained ridge estimators and the consequent lack of sufficiency of Lagrange's principle, are shown to be incorrect. It is noted in this paper that, for a fixed Y , norms of unconstrained ridge estimators corresponding to the given basis are indeed strictly monotone. Furthermore, the conditions for sufficiency of Lagrange's principle are valid for a suitable range of the constraint parameter. The discrepancy arose in the context of one data set due to confusion between estimates of the parameter vector, β , corresponding to different parametrization (choice of bases) and/or constraint norms. In order to avoid such confusion, it is suggested that the parameter β corresponding to each basis be labelled appropriately.     

Two Cheers and a Qualm for Behavioral Environmental Economics

Behavioral economics can gain more in-roads into environmental economics if we better understand why exchange institutions fail, more effectively reduce health risks and environmental conflicts, encourage more coordination and cooperation, design better incentive systems, more accurately estimate economic measures of value, and promote more protection at less cost. Behavioral economics deserves two cheers for advancing ideas of context-dependence and social preferences, which we illustrate with two examples of recent research.