注册体制下商标使用意图要件检视

商标使用意图要件是使用体制国家转向注册体制的关键,对在注册体制下维持和强调发挥商标作用所必需的使用义务以及对相对具体规则进行有效补充等方面具有不可替代性。据此,我国为规制频发的恶意注册和囤积行为,在商标法中增加了使用意图要件的规定,禁止缺乏使用意图的商标注册,并允许就此提出异议和申请无效宣告。然而,本次修改为保证商标法体系的稳定性而过于简略,很容易出现使用意图要件地位不明、意图认定困难、规则适用冲突等问题。对此,有必要在明确商标法注册体制下宣示性与规则性相结合条款与兜底性绝对无效理由条款的法律地位的基础上,吸收国内外实践和立法经验,细化完善意图声明审查、兜底性适用顺位、实际使用豁免无效以及由实际使用衔接注册审查与无效宣告等具体规则,从而增强我国使用意图要件的可操作性并使其发挥应有作用。     

Corporate debt and financial balance sheet adjustment: a comparison of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany

The level of UK corporate debt directly affects financial stability in the United Kingdom because a significant amount of the exposure of the UK financial system is to UK corporates. Our paper provides a comparison of the determinants of corporate debt in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The comparison serves to benchmark our findings about the determinants of UK corporate debt. In addition, the UK financial sector is significantly exposed to the corporate sectors in the United States, Germany and France. The model assesses the contribution of investment, acquisitions, cash flows and market-to-book values to the determination of debt, and also the tendency of debt to revert to its optimum level. Debt was found to be positively related to the financing needs of the firm, and the optimum level of debt to be negatively related to the market-to-book ratio. This casts some light on the procyclicality of debt.     

A novel approach in risk evaluation for ship-to-ship (STS) transfer of cargo using process failure mode and effects analysis (PFMEA)

The ship-to-ship transfer (STS) of oil and oil products plays currently an important role on a worldwide scale. Usually, it refers to the transfer of cargo between seagoing ships positioned alongside each other. Although the procedure of STS transfer has become a day-to-day practice, it remains a difficult operation, which deserves special consideration. To reduce the adverse effect of a potential accident on humans as well as on the environment, a risk assessment is necessary to be done to evaluate the hazards that derive from such a difficult procedure. To this end, the process failure mode and effect analysis (PFMEA), which is under the umbrella of the traditional failure mode and effect analysis, is properly modified and applied to assess the hazards of a typical STS transfer procedure. PFMEA is based on the risk priority number with regard to each risk related to the procedure of interest by multiplying the numerical values of the severity, occurrence and detection indices. Although PFMEA is currently applied mainly to manufacturing processes, the aim of the paper was to implement this methodology to STS transfer of petroleum products. According to the study of PFMEA implementation, the petroleum cargo is the product similar to the product in a manufacturing procedure; hence, the different phases of the STS procedure are similar to the production line of the manufactured product. Moreover, proposals to eliminate the disadvantages of the implementation of PFMEA by a qualitative manner (using linguistic terms) are proposed. The objective target of this effort is to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of implementing the PFMEA in a maritime activity and therefore to address the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach.     

The European flying geese: New FDI patterns for the old continent?

This article attempts to apply the flying geese metaphor to emerging foreign direct investment (FDI) patterns in Europe and the Mediterranean. Such a division of labour is at best at a nascent stage, given the overwhelming share of Western Europe in both inward and outward foreign direct investment flows. Because of these imbalances, special attention is to be paid to Central and Eastern Europe’s (CEE) potential, both in the group joining the European Union (EU) in 2004 and the rest of the subregion. For the former, middle-income countries, risks in investment promotion are related to uncertainty brought about by the transition to European Union’s acquis and an eventually too fast increase in production costs. Policy response to that requires a modernisation of both general and specific investment promotion policies, adjusted to the rules of the Union. For the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, the challenge is to adjust to the enlarged European Union and to improve the business and investment environment, in order to capture the foreign direct investment outflows of other European countries searching for optimum labour costs.     

稳定土地承包关系视域下土地承包经营权继承的法理阐释与规范路径

土地承包经营权的身份性特征使得其继承与否无论在理论上、立法上还是实践上均未达成共识。土地三权分置改革在立法上的落实,使得土地承包经营权继承与否的问题转变成了土地承包权继承、土地经营权继承还是土地承包经营权继承的新分歧。土地承包经营权继承与否、如何继承,应当从法理基础、规范进路综合分析,平衡政策与法律之间的张力。土地承包经营权与土地承包权在法律属性上的同一性,决定了土地承包经营权继承等同于土地承包权继承。在继承规则构造上,坚持集体成员为权利主体,兼顾土地承包经营权的身份性,限定其继承主体为本集体成员。在继承方式上以法定继承为主,赋予尚未取得土地承包经营权的户内集体成员以优先性,遗产分割区分"分户"与"未分户"的情形,并予以变更登记。     

跨国银行并表监管与金融隐私权的冲突及制衡

在金融全球化、金融一体化、金融自由化和金融集团化的趋势下,包括发达国家和发展中国家在内的很多实力雄厚的大银行纷纷走出国门,进行全球扩张和跨国并购,成为国际金融市场上的跨国银行.这种跨国银行的产生和经营给普通的银行监管带来挑战,为了避免对跨国银行监管漏洞的存在从而危及整个国际金融体系的稳健,巴塞尔委员会提出了跨国银行并表监管的核心监管原则.但是在母国具体实施跨国银行并表监管过程中,会遇到东道国保护金融隐私权的法律障碍.因此,由于金融信息披露和金融信息交流所引发的并表监管和金融隐私权保护之间的冲突是不可避免的,为了整个国际金融体系的稳定就必须对两者的冲突进行价值和机制制衡.     

我国农村剩余劳动力转移途径及对策选择

我国农村剩余劳动力转移是解决三农问题的重中之重.现行土地制度、户籍管理制度、城市化进程以及农村剩余劳动力素质是制约农村剩余劳动力转移的主要因素.农村剩余劳动力在第一产业内部的转移和劳动力向二、三产业的转移,是我国农村劳动力转移的基本途径.坚持走农业产业化道路、推进乡镇企业二次创业、完善农村金融体系、推进城市化进程、建立和完善社会保障体系等,是推动农村劳动力转移的必然选择.     

股票市场投资者结构国际比较研究

本文梳理了A股市场与相关国家(地区)股市投资者结构的现状,探讨这些市场投资者结构的演变路径、以及促成这种演变的主要因素。基于境外主要市场投资者结构演变及政策措施的经验教训,本文提出改进A股市场相关制度的六点政策建议:第一,从更宏观的政策层面入手,改进上市公司结构,增厚上市公司利润,以增进A股市场的长期投资价值;第二,着力培育和鼓励大体量资金机构进入股市;第三,有必要继续扩大海外合格机构投资者资金规模;第四,完善金融产品供应,适当放宽交易规则约束,使机构投资者有更多工具和交易方式参与市场交易;第五,在个人投资者方面,监管部门需要适度转变监管理念,进而改进相关交易规则,鼓励个人投资者以合理方式理性参与股市;第六,创新税收激励机制,合理引导个人投资者。     

Storm surge disaster risk management: the Xynthia case study in France

In recent years, a series of catastrophic storm surges have occurred in Europe. The large number of fatalities and high material damage are mainly due to an increase in vulnerability and exposure to coastal flooding of hit regions. It is, therefore, necessary to intensify research activities in order to better understand this kind of disasters, to reduce their impacts and to reinforce risk management. This study describes the consequences of Xynthia windstorm that hit France in 2010: strong wind gusts, associated to high-coefficient tides and very low pressure, caused a phenomenon of storm surge in the Atlantic coastal area of France. Sea walls, lacking maintenance and originally built to defend agricultural land, were not able to protect houses. Fourty-seven people were killed, most of them from drowning, and direct losses amounted to more than 2.5?billion Euros. Around 10,000 people were forced to evacuate after the inundation of their properties. Uncontrolled urbanization was involved in the increase of stakes, as demonstrated by the fact that all the 29 victims in the city of la Faute-sur-Mer were living in houses built after 1980. The paper describes the event considering the aspect of increased vulnerability in the affected area, the lack of preparedness that exacerbated the final damage, the emergency response phases and the adaptation strategies adopted by the French Government after the disaster. We conclude that an attentive governance should include a balanced approach to risk protection, to reduce vulnerability and exposure.     

The Wild West of executive coaching

Annual spending on executive coaching in the United States is estimated at 1 billion dollars. Yet information about coaching's effectiveness is scarce and unreliable. No one has yet demonstrated conclusively what qualifies an executive coach or what makes one approach to executive coaching better than another. Barriers to entry are nonexistent--many executive coaches know little about business, and some know little about coaching. The coaching certifications offered by various self-appointed bodies are difficult to assess, and methods of measuring return on investment are questionable. But strategic coaching can provide critical help both to individuals and to organizations. In this article, Stratford Sherman, a senior vice president of Executive Coaching Network, and Alyssa Freas, the founder and CEO, explore the popularity of executive coaching and investigate ways to make the most of the experience. They argue that coaching is inevitably a triangular relationship between the client, the "coachee," and the coach. Its purpose is to produce behavioral change and growth in the coachee for the economic benefit of the client. The best way to maximize the likelihood of good results is to qualify all the people involved. Even so, many triangular relationships continue to generate conflict among all three parties. At the most basic level, coaches serve as suppliers of candor, providing leaders with the objective feedback they need to nourish their growth. Coaching gets executives to slow down, gain awareness, and notice the effects of their words and actions. On a larger scale, the best coaching fosters cultural change for the benefit of the entire organization. It provides a disciplined way for businesses to deepen relationships with their most valued employees while also increasing their effectiveness.     

金融支持三江平原农业产业化经营模式创新的路径探析

三江平原是我国重要的商品粮基地,在确保国家粮食安全等方面发挥着重要的作用。2012年7月20日,全国现代农业建设现场交流会在三江平原腹地佳木斯市召开,国务院副总理回良玉、农业部部长韩长斌出席会议并作了重要讲话。随着近年来传统农业向现代农业转变的大趋势,使得现代农业发展越来越受到各方面的重视。现代化农业的发展离不开农业产业化的支持,农业产业化可以从整体上推进传统农业向现代农业的转变,是加速农业现代化的有效途径。本文以地处三江平原腹地的佳木斯市为例,对农业产业化经营模式以及发展中存在的问题进行探讨,并对金融如何支持农业产业化经营进行分析,以更好地促进三江平原农业产业化的发展。     

The passive-aggressive organization

Passive-aggressive organizations are friendly places to work: People are congenial, conflict is rare, and consensus is easy to reach. But, at the end of the day, even the best proposals fail to gain traction, and a company can go nowhere so imperturbably that it's easy to pretend everything is fine. Such companies are not necessarily saddled with mulishly passive-aggressive employees. Rather, they are filled with mostly well-intentioned people who are the victirms of flawed processes and policies. Commonly, a growing company's halfhearted or poorly thought-out attempts to decentralize give rise to multiple layers of managers, whose authority for making decisions becomes increasingly unclear. Some managers, as a result, hang back, while others won't own up to the calls they've made, inviting colleagues to second-guess or overturn the decisions. In such organizations, information does not circulate freely, and that makes it difficult for workers to understand the impact of their actions on company performance and for managers to correctly appraise employees' value to the organization. A failure to accurately match incentives to performance stifles initiative, and people do just enough to get by. Breaking free from this pattern is hard; a long history of seeing corporate initiatives ignored and then fade away tends to make people cynical. Often it's best to bring in an outsider to signal that this time things will be different. He or she will need to address every obstacle all at once: clarify decision rights; see to it that decisions stick; and reward people for sharing information and adding value, not for successfully negotiating corporate politics. If those steps are not taken, it's only a matter of time before the diseased elements of a passive-aggressive organization overwhelm the remaining healthy ones and drive the company into financial distress.     

In praise of hierarchy

Hierarchy has not had its day. After 3,000 years as the preferred structure for large organizations, managerial hierarchy is still the most natural and effective organizational form that a big company can employ. Now, as in the past, the key to organizational success is individual accountability, and hierarchy preserves unambiguous accountability for getting work done. Unfortunately, hierarchy is widely misunderstood and abused. Pay grades are confused with real layers of responsibility, for example, and incompetent bosses abound. As a result, many experts now urge us to adopt group-oriented or "flat" structures. But groups are never held accountable as groups for what they do or fail to do, and groups don't have careers. The proper use of hierarchy derives from the nature of work. As organizational tasks range from simple to very complex, there are sharp jumps in the level of difficulty and responsibility. Surprisingly, people in hundreds of companies in dozens of countries agree on where these jumps take place. They are tied to an objective measure-the time span of the longest task or program assigned to each managerial role-and they occur at 3 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years. As the time span increases, so does the level of experience, knowledge, and mental stamina required to do the work. This increasing level of mental capacity lets companies put people in jobs they can do, it allows managers to add value to the work of their subordinates, it creates hierarchical layers acceptable to everyone in the organization, and it allows employees to be evaluated by people they accept as organizational superiors. Best of all, understanding hierarchy allows organizations to set up hierarchies with no more than seven layers-often fewer-and to know what the structure is good for and how it ought to perform.     

Investment dynamics of fund managers under evolutionary games

We investigate the investment behavior of fund managers in financial markets according to evolutionary dynamics. We consider both the absolute and relative portfolio returns in the payoff gradient, to which the fund managers respond, and find the equilibrium proportion of risky investment. Compared to the case where only relative performance affects the payoff gradient, we find that, as the absolute performance affects the managers’ belief, the equilibrium of long and short positions increases. If short sales are not allowed, negative excess returns will force the managers to stay out of the market until the excess return becomes positive. Furthermore, we use a quadratic function to depict the relative performance. The quadratic setting captures the exaggerated sentiments of winners and losers arising from certain behavioral biases, and leads to a lower speed of convergence, which implies that herding decelerates and the managers are likely to adhere longer to their own strategies.     

ACCOUNTING PRACTICE AND BUSINESS FINANCE: SOME CASE STUDIES FROM THE IRON AND COAL INDUSTRY 1865—1914

The use of secret reserves by British companies, both to manipulate the content of published reports and to influence investor perceptions of corporate progress during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, has been an important focus of historical enquiry. By way of contrast, relatively little attention has been devoted to the possible exploitation of fixed asset accounting practices to achieve similar financial reporting objectives. It is the aim of the present paper to help to redress this imbalance. The principal basis for the study is the archival records of four major iron and coal companies. Identified features of prudent financial policy include: a determination to restrict distributions and the level of activity to what the company could comfortably afford; and a reluctance to use loan finance. The selection of accounting practices was subordinated to the pursuit of these, and related, policy objectives. The identified use of prudent financial policies may be contrasted with Briefs (1976, p. 184) conclusion that nineteenth century companies consistently over-estimated profitability, with a consequential stimulation of business investment and economic growth.     

Drivers of flood and climate change risk perceptions and intention to adapt: an explorative survey in coastal and delta Vietnam

Abstract

This article contributes to current research about determinants of climate change and flood risk perception, and intentions to take adaptive measures. We propose a research model that distinguishes between vulnerability and severity components of perceived risks, and adds perceived adaptive capacity as a third factor to predict the intention to take adaptive measures. We used this combined model as a conceptual lens for an explorative survey among 1086 residents of coastal and delta communities in Vietnam. Pairwise analyses revealed a significant association of flood and climate change risk perceptions with individual’s flood experience, climate change knowledge, frequency of community participation and socio-demographic factors. However, in multivariate analysis, the influence of most socio-demographic factors became weak or patchy. Flood experience was the most influential driver of flood-related risk perceptions but weak for climate change-related risk perceptions and behavioural intentions. Knowledge strongly increased the intention to adapt to flood and climate risks and the perceived vulnerability to and severity of climate change risks, but reduced the perceived capacity to adapt to climate risks. Frequency of community participation increased the perceived vulnerability and severity of climate change risks, the intention to adapt to both climate and flood risks and the perceived capacity to adapt to flood risks, but reduced the perceived capacity to adapt to climate risks. Our research confirms earlier findings that individuals’ knowledge, place-specific experience and social-cultural influences are key predictors of both flood and climate change risk perceptions and intentions to take adaptive measures. These factors should therefore receive ample attention in climate risk communication.     

Application of a vision in the Lake District of Salzburg

Understanding the complexity of landscapes is an essential prerequisite to propose strategies for landscape development in the mid future, to predict long-term effects of landscape change, and assess future demands on landscape resources. In order to be able to direct today's landscapes to a possible future state (German: Leitbild), landscape planning must include socio-cultural, economic and political considerations in addition to ecological aspects of the landscape. In response to this challenge, this paper unifies the Leitbild concept with a spatial explicit planning procedure and introduces a case study application for describing and classifying landscape visions based on a transdisciplinary, holistic concept.The general assessment system of planning a vision is adapted to the natural, cultural, political and economic conditions of the given case study area in the Federal States Upper Austria and Salzburg (Austria). The assessment system includes exercises that identify the assets of the planning procedure and encourage stakeholders, scientist and local people to collaborate in planning and implementation processes. This paper provides an overview of planning procedures from the Leitbild perspective, outlines problems encountered in the case study, and compares them to the findings of other scholars.     

对当前和今后一个时期我国注册会计师事业发展的若干思考——国办56号文件发布一周年有感

本文认为,在当前和今后一个时期,全面贯彻国办56号文件精神要牢牢把握重点扶持大型会计师事务所加快发展、积极促进中型会计师事务所健康发展、科学引导小型会计师事务所规范发展这三条主线,认真抓好法规完善、做大做强、推进转制、行政审批、分类监管、业务拓展、系统建设、国际合作、战略研究、经验交流等十方面的重点工作,同时进一步夯实五大支柱,即人才为本、法制为基、准则为要、理论为先、信息化为支撑。     

基于FSI的中国金融安全实证分析

随着我国加入WTO后金融自由化进程不断加快,建立金融安全预警机制,及时掌握金融安全动态,对防止金融危机的爆发至关重要.本文首先在相关文献研究的基础上,依据"三性原则"筛选出能够反映我国金融安全运行状况的20个指标,其次参照国际标准和中国具体实际确定了临界值或区间值,最后经计算得出反映我国金融安全程度的指数--FSI(Financial Security Index),并运用FSI对我国1992～2005年间的金融安全状况进行了评判.通过研究得出结论认为:1992～2005年我国的金融安全总体趋势是逐渐变好,加入WTO虽然并未使我国的金融安全状况变差,但是在目前金融业逐渐开放的条件下仍然需要高度关注金融风险.     

经济结构调整与县支行信贷结构转型——以线缆行业和工行无为支行为例

中国经济增长方式的深层转变引致电信电缆行业从高速增长转向"质变"的调整阶段。无为的线缆行业作为当地的支柱产业曾为工商银行无为支行的发展做出巨大贡献,但目前该行业的过高集中度及其发展放缓趋势已经给无为支行带来较大的挑战。无为支行应采取渐进、有序的分步调整策略,实现由公司信贷向公司金融、高资本占用型业务向低资本占用型业务的转变,同时加快转变收入结构。从总行层面来看,则需要进一步重视信贷结构转型的县域基础,加大对县支行的研究帮扶力度,加大总省行和县支行的双向交流,并合理把握信贷结构调整的有利时机。