Connecting National Safety Nets: The Dialectics of the Basel II Contracting Process

Basel II consists of supervisory guidelines negotiated by representatives of central banks and national regulatory commissions that were members of the Basel committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). The BCBS is itself a regulatory response to globalization, which is connecting national safety nets in market-driven ways. A country’s financial safety net is a social contract established by short-lived agents for principals in long-lived economic sectors. Restraints placed on the authority of the BCBS members to contract for their principals by domestic politics explains: why Basel II authorizes individual countries to implement the agreement in markedly different ways; why US implementation of Basel II ran into so much doubt, controversy, and delay; and how the implementation debate set small and large banks and the Federal Reserve and other federal regulators against one another.

Consumer specialization and the Romantic transformation of the British Grand Tour of Europe

This paper posits that significant changes in 19th century British recreational travel patterns resulted from a change in the manner in which tourists used entertaining stimuli in order to attain pleasure. Consumers no longer merely viewed arousing stimuli, but attempted to use them to produce emotional states of being which they could partially modify to intensify pleasurable feelings (Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain, William Heinemann, 2003). The impetus for this modification stemmed from an increasing awareness that emotional responses could be to some degree self-cultivated, as embodied in the Romantic ethos that become popular at the time via the emergence of the paperback novel and magazine industry (Campbell, The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern consumerism, Blackwell, 1987). By learning how to manipulate and modify mental images in a way that may not necessarily correspond with objective reality, Romantic tourists learned to elicit pleasure through engaging of their imagination. Such a change in the mode of pleasure seeking had important long run economic consequences for tourist regions throughout the European continent.     

Under what conditions may social contracts arise? Evidence from the Hanseatic League

Social contractarians commonly take social contracts to be solely hypothetical and refrain from elaborating on the factors that influence the feasibility of the formation of social contracts. In contrast, this paper aims at providing a discussion of the conditions affecting the feasibility of social contracts. I argue that the more aligned the preferences of group members for public goods are, the more the individuals share similar social norms, and the smaller the group is the more feasible a genuine social contract becomes. I provide evidence in support of my contention from the medieval Hanseatic League. At the Hanseatic Kontor in Novgorod, one of the four major trading posts of the Hanseatic League in cities outside of Germany, German merchants agreed to live under the rule of a constitution that gave rise to a political authority for the Kontor society.     

大学生模拟创业平台体系的构建研究——以福州大学为例

本文总结了福州大学的学生模拟创业平台体系,即学生首先通过创业教育,培养创业意识,学习基本的公司管理知识,培养团队管理能力,之后利用社团互助平台,获取人力资源,组建团队,随之在赛事训练平台开展虚拟和实体的创业实践训练,在此基础上,形成成熟创业计划的团队,可申请孵化,进入创业孵化平台。该平台体系系统上具有有序性,运作上又具有系统性,可供有关同行参考。     

小型水利工程质量管理现状及建议

分析小型水利工程质量现状,提出应对措施.给水利工作者们一点启发.     

水库除险加固中水闸设计分析

水库除险加固设计中,水闸的加固设计应用很广,也是非常重要的,水闸的重点部位例如底板、闸墩等混凝土的控制分析也就变为尤为重要了.本文仅以底板部位易出现的问题入手,对如何进一步控制混凝土质量进行分析探讨.     

完善二氧化氯与臭氧在水处理中的化验分析

大庆油田化工集团组建于2003年12月25日,2004年6月工商注册为大太油田化工有限公司,下辖甲醇分公司,醋酸分公司,轻烃分馏分公司等生产单位,醋酸产品大部分销往大庆油田外部市场,近些年,公司领导重视生产管理,重视产品质量,对化验环节要求严格,从采点、采样、化验要求精细,为生产出如产品把好质量关,该文就此进行论述.