Looking for a Guide to Protect the Environment: The Development of the Precautionary Principle

Abstract.  If the precautionary principle is to become the guide of the international community for environmental protection policies, an economic interpretation of the principle is in order. The analysis of case studies and a survey of the recent decision theoretic literature show the lack of a fully satisfactory economic model. More generally various theoretical and empirical results show that the principle cannot be assumed to apply a priori . Though it has been proposed by international treaties as a rule of thumb for situations of scientific uncertainty, the precautionary principle could actually be inefficient.     

计算机网络安全问题浅析

随着计算机网络的发展,计算机已普遍应用到日常工作、生活的每一个领域,但随之而来的是,计算机网络安全也受到前所未有的威胁,计算机病毒无处不在,计算机网络安全成为人们关注的话题。本文分析了计算机网络存在的安全隐患,并提出相应的安全防范措施。     

‘Totally Un‐Australian!’: Discursive and Institutional Interplay in the Melbourne Port Dispute of 1997–98*

ABSTRACT We examine how discourses are mobilized and deployed by actors in an inter‐organizational domain during a critical industrial relations event. We identify the ways that business interests and union interests in the Melbourne Port industrial dispute of 1997–98 related to each other. We weave concepts from domain theory and organizational discourse theory in deriving the concept of the discursively ordered domain. This suggests that the main processes that occur in a domain are actors’‘mapping’ texts onto discourses and discourses onto interpretive schemes which make certain courses of action rational and sensible. Methodologically, we join an institutional‐historical analysis and a text‐based discourse analysis to gain a well‐rounded understanding of the situation. We extract several discursive frameworks which the major actors mobilized to make sense of the situation, and draw linkages to the actions that those positions made possible. The main findings are that actors in the two networks performed complex mapping in different ways, the material and symbolic outcomes of the dispute are products of those mapping processes, and the material and discursive aspects of the domain interweave. We discuss the value of the concept of discursively ordered domain for mutually enriching domain theory and discourse analysis and for understanding critical events such as major industrial disputes in new ways.     

Monetary policy on twitter and asset prices: Evidence from computational text analysis

In this paper, we dissect the Twitter debate about the future course of monetary policy and trace the effects of selected topics of this discourse on U.S. asset prices. We focus on the “taper tantrum” episode in 2013, a period with large revisions in expectations about future Fed policy. Based on a novel data set of 90,000 Twitter messages (“tweets”) covering the debate of Fed tapering on Twitter, we use Latent Dirichlet Allocation, a computational text analysis tool, to quantify the content of the discussion. Several estimated topic frequencies are then included in a VAR model to estimate the effects of topic shocks on asset prices. We find that the discussion about Fed policy on social media contains price-relevant information. Shocks to the discussion about the timing of the tapering, about the broader economic policy context and worrying investors are shown to lead to significant asset price changes. We also show that the effects are mostly due to changes in the term premium of yields consistent with the portfolio balance channel of unconventional monetary policy.     

树立“大安全”理念,实现安全生产标准化

从重点强化安全意识、提升专业素质、强调精准执行、营造和谐氛围等方面塑造大安全管理理念,实现企业管理方式更加集约化,实现安全标准化在企业中起到举足轻重的作用,使各个生产环节能够符合有关安全生产法律法规的要求,促进企业"安全发展、科学发展",这是对电网企业安全工作的纠正和补充,也是与国网公司"大安全"基础安全理念的再次融合。本文对大安全理念,安全生产管理和标准化进行了分析研究。     

A textual analysis of Bank of England growth forecasts

The Bank of England publishes a quarterly Inflation Report that provides numerical forecasts and a text discussion of its assessment of the UK economy. Previous research has evaluated the quantitative forecasts that are included in these reports, but we focus on the qualitative discussion of output growth, by using an in-sample textual analysis procedure to convert these qualitative assessments into a score for each report over the period 2005–2014. We also construct out-of-sample scores for reports before and after this period. We then compare the scores both to real-time output growth data and to the corresponding quantitative projections published by the bank. We find that overall developments in the UK economy were represented accurately in the text of the Inflation Report. Furthermore, efficiency regressions suggest that there is information in the text that could improve the Bank of England’s quantitative nowcasts and one-quarter-ahead forecasts.     

The language of social entrepreneurs

This paper questions the application of the entrepreneurship discourse to social entrepreneurship in the UK and looks at how people ‘doing’ social enterprise appropriate or re-write the discourse to articulate their own realities. Drawing on phenomenological enquiry and discourse analysis, the study analyses the micro discourses of social entrepreneurs, as opposed to the meta rhetorics of (social) entrepreneurship. Analysis using both corpus linguistics software and Critical Discourse Analysis showed a preoccupation among interviewees with local issues, collective action, geographical community and local power struggles. Echoes of the enterprise discourse are evident but couched in linguistic devices that suggest a modified social construction of entrepreneurship, in which interviewees draw their legitimacy from a local or social morality. These findings are at odds ideologically with the discursive shifts of UK social enterprise policy over the last decade, in which a managerially defined rhetoric of enterprise is used to promote efficiency, business discipline and financial independence. The paper raises critical awareness of the tension in meanings appropriated to the enterprise discourse by social enterprise policy and practice and illustrates the value of discourse analysis for entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship research.     

Massenentlassungen – Rechtsvergleichende Analyse der Bedingungen in Europa und den USA

International corporations do mass layoffs preferably in countries with rather low employment protection regulations. This paper analyses and compares the different employment protection regulation regimes in the US, Germany, France, and UK with regard to their regulations of mass layoffs. Our study concludes that there is a larger degree of freedom of contract in the US, however, our analyses does not confirm the usual assumption that employees in the US are legally less protected from mass layoffs than in Europe.     

Text Analysis for Knowledge Graphs

The concept of knowledge graphs is introduced as a method to represent the state of the art in a specific scientific discipline. Next the text analysis part in the construction of such graphs is considered. Here the ‘translation’ from text to graph takes place. The method that is used here is compared to methods used in other approaches in which texts are analysed.     

THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE: A HIGH‐RISK PRINCIPLE1

The precautionary principle ‐ recently added to the French constitution and part of the draft Constitution of the European Union ‐ aims to protect the public from the risks associated with scientific and technological advance by allowing governments to ban any activity deemed to involve risks, even if those risks are unproven. In reality, the precautionary principle itself poses enormous risks of losing the advantages of projects that are banned, of preventing the development of the means by which risk may be ameliorated and of threatening the private property rights that provide the most effective environmental safeguard.     

外贸英语函电写作原则与国际贸易磋商环节信函写作要点分析

随着国际贸易的不断发展，外贸英语函电作为一种重要的沟通方式显得越来越重要。信函写得好坏直接影响到交易的成功。文章从外贸英语函电写作原则入手，详细阐述国际贸易磋商一般环节信函的写作要点。     

Public Choice Issues in Social Regulation

The regulatory activity of government is now pervasive, acting like a tax and pushing up costs. Public choice analysis shows that producer and other groups try to capture regulatory control to minimise its impact. Deregulatory trends in the US have been accompanied by the growth of environmental and health and safety regulation both in the US and in the UK and Europe.     

Life‐Cycle Consumption and Children: Evidence from a Structural Estimation

I estimate by maximum likelihood a dynamic model of optimal intertemporal allocation of consumption in the presence of children using high‐quality Danish longitudinal data. The number and age of all children can affect the marginal utility of consumption while income uncertainty, credit constraints and postretirement motives also influence household behaviour. While I estimate that children have a surprisingly small effect on the marginal utility of non‐durable consumption, data simulated from the estimated model replicates similar correlations between log consumption growth and changing household composition as found in the Danish data and typically found in UK and US data. To reconcile the results with existing studies, I illustrate how ignoring precautionary motives increases the estimated importance of children. The results indicate that precautionary motives might play a larger role than children in explaining the observed consumption age profile.     

聚合釜安全生产与设备管理之关系

文章从生产设备的认证选型以及对相关操作、维护、管理人员的培训对设备安全生产的影响进行分析,提出了相应的安全生产预防措施。只要通过深入贯彻落实科学发展观,有针对性的加强建筑施工现场薄弱环节的安全监督控制,建立健全安全生产责任制,完善各项规章制度,正确地处理管理技术,就一定可以有效地控制。要做到既保障施工人员的安全问题,又能保证企业的长期有效发展。     

The Composition of the Human Capital Stock and the Factor Content of Trade: Evidence from West(ern) Germany

This study reports the results of a factor content analysis of the sources of West Germany's comparative advantage in 1976, 1980 and 1984, using highly disaggregated skill variables. The county is found to be most abundant in certain skilled manual occupations and a very limited number of professional and technical occupations. The results differ markedly from those reported in similar studies for the UK and the US. The importance of intercounty productivity diferences and the implications of using only a subset of the economy, i.e. manufacturing, in the calculations are assessed. While using only a subset of the economy might have been appropriate in the past when services trade was relatively unimportant, this is no longer the case, especially for Germany with its diferent performance in goods and services trade. It is argued that the explanatory power of comparative advantage as a basis for trade among similarly developed countries is much higher than is commonly perceived when human capital is disaggregated into detailed skill categories that allow the recognition of different skill mixes between countries. The use of a disaggregated ‘labour-based’ neoclassical trade theory is advocated.     

Market reactions to trade friction between China and the United States: Evidence from the soybean futures market

In March 2018, the US used an immense trade deficit as an excuse to provoke trade friction with China. This study uses the EGARCH model and event study methods to study the impact of the major risk event of Sino-US trade friction on soybean futures markets in China and the United States. Results indicate that the Sino-US trade friction weakened the return spillover effect between the soybean futures markets in China and the US, and significantly increased market volatilities. As the scale of additional tariffs increased, the volatility of the Chinese soybean futures market declined; however, the volatility of the US soybean futures market did not weaken. In addition, expanding the sources of soybean imports helped ease the impact of tariffs on China’s soybean futures market, while the decline in US soybean exports to China intensified the volatility of the US soybean futures market. In addition, while the release of multiple tariff increases has had a short-term impact on the returns of soybean futures markets, the impact of trade friction has gradually decreased.     

Do services hold the key to an improved UK trade performance?

The UK has established a central role in the global market for trade in services, ranking second to the US in terms of its share of global exports. Our modelling finds that the key factor behind the UK's success is that its exports are focused on the markets where demand has been growing quickest. This represents a notable contrast with research on UK goods exports, which has found that the geographical focus of goods exports has been the main reason for the UK's persistent underperformance. The global financial crisis caused significant damage to the UK's export performance, particularly to the key financial sector which accounts for a quarter of UK services exports and almost two‐fifths of the UK's surplus on services trade. However, the UK's export performance is on the mend and we expect it to retain its position as a key global player in the market for services over the coming five years.     

Privatisation of the Royal Mail: Third Time Lucky?

The Conservatives privatised most of the UK's state‐owned industries during the 1980s and 1990s, but the Royal Mail remained under public ownership. It was privatised through a public flotation in early October 2013 when around 70 per cent of the company's shares were sold by the government. This paper looks at the reasons why the enterprise was not sold earlier. It especially focuses on the failed attempt to privatise it in 1993/4, although other occasions when privatisation was contemplated are mentioned. The discussion draws on government papers that are closed to the public under the 30‐year rule but to which the author had access as the UK government's Official Historian of Privatisation. The study demonstrates that in the past a combination of lukewarm support for privatisation at the prime ministerial level, concerns about the political consequences (including a possible revolt in Parliament), and trade union opposition proved decisive in preventing privatisation of the Royal Mail.     

环境影响评价工程分析中污染物源强的核算

对于环境影响以污染因素为主的建设项目,污染物源强核算在环境影响评价的工程分析中占有重要地位。文中介绍了物料衡算法、类比法、资料复用法三种核算方法的原理及在环境评价中的应用。     

CORPORATE CULTURE AND MORALITY: DURKHEIM-INSPIRED REFLECTIONS ON THE LIMITS OF CORPORATE CULTURE

In the May 1986 issue of Journal of Management Studies, Ray argued that Corporate Culture protagonists have stumbled upon the central ideas of the classical sociologist Durkheim, especially those concerning morality. However, this article demonstrates important differences between corporate culture discourse and the Durkheimian concept of morality. Durkheim's views on moral autonomy, his diagnosis of the problematic nature of modern utilitarian values and his insistence on society as the source and the goal of morality are applied as a frame of reference that allows an identification, analysis and discussion of problematic assumptions about man, organization and society in corporate culture discourses. On this basis, the article discusses the relatively limited fulfilment of the promises issued by corporate culture protagonists, which can be observed by reflecting on the past decade, as well as some alternative ideas for organizational culture practitioners and researchers.