8 Culture, Evil, and Horror

A bstract .   This chapter develops a concept of aesthetic and existential horror and suggests its importance for understanding modern and postmodern culture. It makes three distinct claims. First, the experience of horror signifies a breakdown in the symbolic categories and valuations of a culture. Second, this experience has ontological significance because in horror the human is exposed to the naked fact of being. This latter point is derived from Heidegger's comments on anxiety and Emmanuel Levinas's notion of the " il y a " or "there is." A third claim follows from these two, namely, that horror is distinct from evil. Evil is defined within a cultural matrix; horror is the undefined other of a culture. Evil represents the negation of being; horror shows the sickening presence of being as being. The essay concludes with a reflection on the possibility of a postmodern ethics that takes responsibility for the "horrors of being" generated by globalization.     

CLIMATE POLITICS,STRATEGIC BEHAVIOUR,HOLD‐OUTS,FREE RIDERS AND RENT‐SEEKERS

This paper examines recent developments in US climate change policy from a public choice perspective. Policies such as ‘cap and trade’ threaten to impose substantial costs on individuals and businesses, yet their effectiveness at reducing greenhouse gas emissions is questionable. Support for legislation that restricts emissions can partly be explained by the strategic behaviour of various special interests.     

Management Changes,Reputation, and “Big Bath”—Earnings Management

We study the effects of managerial turnover on earnings management activities in a model in which managers care about their external reputation. We develop an overlapping generations model showing that both outgoing and incoming managers bias reported earnings such that typically very low returns are reported in the first period after a manager has been replaced. Outgoing managers shift earnings forward to their last period in office as they will not benefit from earnings realized after that. Incoming managers can have an incentive to shift earnings to the second period in office as reported earnings will, immediately after a management change, only be partly attributed to their own ability. Deferred compensation can reduce incentives for earnings management.