光启之国:第54届“威尼斯国际艺术双年展”中各国的身影

第54届威尼斯国际艺术双年展,可谓当代艺术的百年之约(1895年设立至今),今次又以美丽的河湾沟汊为无声的见证,在2011年6月4日和11月27日之间向广大观众敞开怀抱。今年的展事由《镶木地》艺术杂志(Parkett)的编辑、苏黎世市立美术馆(Kunsthaus)的策展人比奇·库里格(Bice Curiger)担纲,首先在命名上就擦出了火花:光启之国,ILLUMInations。这是一个仿佛在朝你眨眼的文字游戏,一方面集中于光的概念(词根为拉丁语lux光明),比喻全球化时代对创新的追求;     

Information brokers and the use of budgetary and financial information by politicians: the case of Portugal

This paper analyses the intermediary role of the technical bodies that support the use of budgetary and financial information by central government politicians in Portugal. The main findings show that information brokers are playing a central role in preparing this information in a credible, simple and understandable way. However, even if not intentionally, the information they present can be biased. Politicians need to be aware that the information brokers they rely on may not be giving them ‘neutral’ information.     

A Model Capturing Ethics and Executive Compensation

This article develops and applies a knowledge-based framework for understanding and interpreting executive compensation under the rubric of ethical consideration. This framework classifies six major ethical considerations that reflect issues in compensation design. We emphasize that these six ethical considerations are influenced by liberty and equality concepts. This framework helps to highlight areas where executive compensation has not been well spelled out.     

Firm innovativeness and work-life balance

Assessing firms’ innovativeness is not an easy task. The literature recognises a number of innovativeness indicators. Most of them are technology-based indicators which perform well in high-tech industries but might be ineffective in other industries where patenting is not usual or in which R&D budgets are low or not formalised. In this paper, we critically review previous innovativeness indicators and we propose a new approach to assess firm innovativeness that is based not on the role of technology but on that of people. This new approach focuses on the existence of work-life balance benefits that are connected with motivation, engagement and creativity in the workplace. We argue that this could be an effective complementary means to assess the innovativeness of firms. It could be combined with previously used indicators and might have considerable advantages such as their suitability for application in any kind of firm regardless of its technological profile.     

A cointegration analysis of seafood import demand in Caribbean countries

This article re-examines the relationship between growth in per capita income and environmental degradation using econometric techniques appropriate for smooth transition regressions with panel data. This is a more intuitive and flexible methodology than the polynomial models widely used in the literature, and it can reconcile some of the mixed results found previously. The methodology is applied to carbon dioxide emissions from nonOECD countries over the period 1971 to 1997. Although there is no evidence of environmental Kuznets curve, we find two regimes, namely a low-income regime where emissions accelerate with economic growth and a middle to high-income regime associated with a deceleration in environmental degradation.     

Insuring Against Losses from Transgenic Contamination: The Case of Pharmaceutical Maize

Concerns about the risk of food supply contamination have limited the development and commercialization of certain pharmaceutical plants. This article develops an insurance pricing model that helps translate these concerns into a cost-benefit analysis. The model first estimates the physical dispersal of maize pollen subject to a number of weather parameters. This distribution is then validated with the limited amount of currently available field trial data. The physical distribution is then used to calculate the premium for a fair-valued insurance policy that would fund the destruction of possibly contaminated fields. The flexible framework can be readily adapted to other crops, management practices, and regions.     

Public Preferences for Hydrogen Buses: Comparing Interval Data, OLS and Quantile Regression Approaches

We use a quantile regression (QR) approach to analyse contingent valuation estimates of public willingness to pay (WTP) for the air and noise pollution reductions associated with the introduction of hydrogen buses in London. QR results show that variables that were not significant in interval regression or ordinary least squares regression become significant at certain quantiles along the WTP distribution. In addition, the determinants of WTP at the lower tail of the distribution differ from those at the higher end of the distribution. Our findings illustrate the usefulness of quantile regression methods for analysing contingent valuation data, enhancing our understanding of the determinants of willingness to pay.     

Consumer and retailer perceptions of hypermarkets and traditional retail stores in Portugal

Since its appearance in the mid 1980s, the hypermarket is a symbol of the modernisation of Portugal. It has dramatically changed not only the retailing structure in this country but also Portuguese buying behaviour. To better understand these changes, personal interviews were conducted with 500 Braga consumers. In addition, a mailed survey was administered in the same market to 204 traditional retailers. The results show that, for consumers, the hypermarket is the preferred type of retail store for frequently purchased packaged goods, due to its low prices and convenient one-stop shopping. The perception of traditional retailers is that the hypermarkets affected them negatively. The comparative analysis suggests that, although consumers do not have a negative opinion about traditional retail, they do not share the same favourable opinion that traditional retailers have about themselves.     

Victims' and observers' perceptions of sexual harassment: implications for employers' legal risk in North America

The way in which victims and observers perceive potentially harassing behaviours and employers' responses to sexual harassment complaints significantly affect organizations' liability risk under sexual harassment law in North America. This article examines studies in the sexual harassment literature that focus on the perceptions of sexual harassment victims and observers, and identifies legal and extra-legal factors that influence their harassment judgments. The implications of research findings for employer liability and future research are discussed.     

Coordination of capital taxation among asymmetric countries

This paper studies international fiscal coordination in a world of integrated markets and sovereign national governments. Mobile capital and immobile labor are taxed in order to finance a fixed budget. This generates productive inefficiency. Two fiscal reforms are considered: a minimum capital tax level and a tax range, i.e., a minimum plus a maximum capital tax level. It is shown that the introduction of a lower bound to the capital tax level is never preferred to fiscal competition by all countries while there always exists a combination of both a lower and an upper bound (i.e., a tax range) which is unanimously accepted.