应客观看待中国因素对油价的影响

【美国《华尔街日报》6月9日】美国前总统布什（Gegrge W．Bush）的一位助手几年前曾说，“我们创造自己的现实”。拿这句话来形容华盛顿和北京目前对大宗商品市场的影响是再恰当不过了。     

Requests for zoo visitors to undertake pro-wildlife behaviour: How many is too many?

Recognising the potential conservation impact, zoos regularly ask their visitors to undertake pro-wildlife behaviour. This paper presents the results of two studies undertaken to address the question: how often during a visit should visitors be asked? Study 1 sought to a) determine individuals' personal thresholds and b) the point where the number of different behaviours requested began affect visitors' experiences. Study 2 sought the same, but focused on requests for the same behaviour. Results suggest that few respondents' personal thresholds were crossed (2.5% in Study 1 and 9% in Study 2). In neither study did many respondents (2.5% in Study 1 and 2.8% in Study 2) feel that the number of requests negatively affect their overall zoo experience. While there are caveats, we conclude that there appears little cause for concern about asking zoo visitors on multiple occasions to act in support of wildlife. Indeed, such requests may improve experiences.     

Permanent and Temporary Components of Stock Prices: Evidence from Assessing Macroeconomic Shocks

This paper outlines a simple macro model with overlapping wage contracts to investigate how the temporary and permanent components of stock price movements may be related to aggregate macro-economic supply and demand disturbances. In the content of the model, we show that aggregate demand shocks have only temporary effects on real stock prices, while supply shocks may affect the level of real stock prices permanently. Moreover, the temporary component in U.S. stock prices, identified by placing appropriate structural restrictions on a vector autoregressive system estimated for the postwar period, is statistically significant. This evidence supports the mean-reversion hypothesis that stock prices are not pure random walks. The finding is robust to the choice of variables used in the vector autoregressive system and periodicity.     

Searle and Collective Intentionality

A BSTRACT . Several key elements go into Searle's construction of social reality, namely, collective intentionality, constitutive rules, and status functions. But by far the most important and arguably contentious of these is collective intentionality. Searle postulates his notion of collective intentionality as a solution to a conflict between two of his own problematic claims: the irreducibility of collective intentions to singular intentions and what he sees as the requirements of methodological individualism. According to Searle, methodological individualism seems to require that we reduce collective intentionality to individual intentionality; however, this contradicts his claim that collective intentionality is irreducible to individual intentionality plus some mutual beliefs. I will show that at least part of what is really at stake here is Searle's internalism or, as he puts it, his "brain in a vat condition." My strategy will be to examine his internalism and show that Searle's account is far more radical than other internalists in that he extends internalism beyond its usual domain of the mental to incorporate social facts. While there are no knockdown arguments in favor of either internalism or externalism as normally construed in the philosophy of mind, I will show that Searle's account of collective intentionality introduces an element of privacy to social facts that denies us the public access to the conditions on the basis of which we normally take collective facts to obtain.     

Dynamic almost ideal demand systems: an empirical analysis of alcohol expenditure in Ireland

This paper presents a dynamic form of the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS). Three versions of the static AIDS model are employed to determine the preferred long-run equilibrium model and represents the short-run dynamics by an error correction mechanism. This estimation procedure is then applied to alcohol expenditure in Ireland. The estimated point elasticities are consistent with previous studies and a priori expectations. Beer and spirits are found to be price inelastic in both the short and long run. While wine is price inelastic in the short run and price elastic in the long run.     

The Political Economy of Addressing the Climate Crisis in the Earth System: Undermining Perverse Resilience

The Earth system is a complex adaptive system, characterised by non-linear change and with significant capacity for surprise. In times of systemic crisis, such as dangerous anthropogenic climate change, perverse resilience (for example the structural power of fossil fuel interests in the global economy) can threaten overall Earth system stability. Critical political economic analysis recognises climate change as a threat with significant political economic characteristics and implications. However, key dimensions of climate change as a globally coherent phenomenon, including the important implications of Earth system dynamism and non-linear change, can remain unrecognised, mischaracterised or underestimated. In contrast, resilience approaches describe social-ecological systems but neglect the significance of norms and power relations in human societies. This article builds theory by linking key concepts – hegemony and resilience – from neo-Gramscian political economic analysis and resilience approaches to social-ecological systems. Our objective is to generate a new conceptual framework to improve understanding of the role of politics in social-ecological systems. We use climate change and its mitigation to demonstrate the new framework's potential.     

The extent to which unbalanced schedules cause distortions in sports league tables

The Australian Football League (AFL) has operated its fixture on the basis of an unbalanced schedule since the league expanded from 12 to 14 teams in 1987. This system contains a number of factors (some random) determining the set of bilateral combinations of teams that play each other on an extra occasion during the course of the season, not least of all maximising attendances. While the status quo may be unavoidable to some extent (it is also a bone of contention to many fans), its implications for within-season measures of competitive balance are nonetheless obvious. This is because of the potential for biases being created in the end-of-season league table as a result of the unbalanced schedule. This paper uses a modified model to correct for this inherent bias over the seasons 1997–2008, and the results are discussed in detail. The model is also generalisable to many unbalanced schedule designs observed in professional sports leagues worldwide.     

Driving Shareholder Value: The Role of Marketing in Reducing Vulnerability and Volatility of Cash Flows

Marketing professionals have historically found it difficultto measure and communicate to other disciplines and to top managementthe value created by marketing activities. All too often, justificationof marketing and communication initiatives is restricted to theirimpact on revenue generation. But, marketers do create valuein other ways. Marketing actions do lead to an acceleration ofthe market's acceptance of new products, to enhanced customerretention/loyalty, to an improvement in the size and qualityof customer bases, to price premiums and other desirable payoffs.Such financial outcomes suggest that marketing activities areoften strategic investments, not tactical, intangible expenses.We suggest that the effectiveness of marketinginitiatives should be evaluated on the basis of their impacton the basic drivers of shareholder value–cash flow acceleration,cash flow enhancement, reduction in volatility and vulnerabilityof cash flows, and growth in the long-term value of business).These shareholder value metrics provide a framework for communicationof the contribution of marketing strategies to value creation.In particular, this paper focuses on the role of marketing inenhancing shareholder value by reducing the vulnerability andvolatility (hence risks) associated with cash flows. This riskreduction (and shareholder value creation) role of marketingactivities is examined within cross-functional processes forcreating customer value such as design of new products and services,supply chain management and management of relationships withcustomers, channels and strategic partners.