Adding links,adding persons,and adding structures: Using Sen's frameworks

Abstract

This essay is a comment on “Sen on Freedom and Gender Justice,” by Mozaffar Qizilbash, which appeared in Feminist Economics Volume 11, Number 3, November 2005.

Building on the 2003 double special issue of Feminist Economics entitled “Amartya Sen's Work and Ideas,” this paper responds to the review essay by Mozaffar Qizilbash. It identifies and illustrates various possible evaluations of a theoretical system, including that it has acknowledged strengths, unrecognized strengths, remediable gaps or failings, or structural faults. The paper then looks at Sen's system as a theoretical basis for “human development”– in particular in relation to personhood, emotions, and psychological interdependence – and argues that it points in directions required for economic and social analysis, including towards theories of care, but is not itself a sufficient treatment. The paper suggests deepening Sen's system by connecting to other important languages of analysis concerning the structuring of attitudes, emotions, felt well-being, public reasoning, and politics.     

人类福利:概念和概念化

经济学对收入的测算忽视了人类福利的很多内容。虽然这种扭曲正被逐渐关注，但是“人均GNP仍然被作为衡量一国生活水平的最重要的指标”(Partha Dasgupta)。从直觉上，福利被认为是一个概念是合理的，但实际上，令人困惑的是，我们遇到了对福利概念和方法的不同定义，部分反映了不同的背景、目的和注意点。那么，有没有反映福利的复杂性和多样性的统一框架呢?本文表述了一个相对的和综合的框架，建立在Sen等的贡献上，虽然可能并不完美。由于福利概念实际上反映了人的个性和科学的面貌，比较复杂，因此我们会循序渐进地讨论这个框架。为防止个人观点对这个框架的影响，通过回顾大量的相关经验和观点，对其内在的理解逐渐增强了。论文接着使用这个框架考察人类福利的概念化，经由Dasgupta，Sen，Nussbaum，Doyal和Gough以及Alkire的研究。     

Comparison websites: evidence from the service sector

Comparison websites, also known as aggregators, have become a prominent aspect of e-business. They enable users to specify their requirements and then select from a range of sellers usually ranked according to price. Comparison websites also appeal to sellers as they refine users who are then more likely to buy. This paper analyses comparison websites using Amit and Zott's value creation in e-business model, with a specific focus on the service sector, drawing on secondary material and case studies from the UK. The paper also outlines the limitations of the value creation model, implications for practitioners and outlines areas for future research.     

A Stakeholder Perspective for Analyzing Marketing Relationships

This paper proposes a framework that enables the application of stakeholder theory to the analysis of marketing relationships. By distinguishing between different types of stakeholder relationships, stretching from the positive to the negative side of relationships (i.e. the ladder of stakeholder loyalty), and describing the various relational factors (i.e. relationship orientation, trust, communication, learning, power, reciprocity and commitment) that shape a specific relationship, the proposed framework enables marketers to analyze their firm's diverse relationships. The paper provides a meaningful starting point for developing strategies to change the type of relationship with a specific stakeholder.     

Future Directions for the Teaching and Learning of Statistics at the Tertiary Level

Significant advances in, and the resultant impact of, Information Technology (IT) during the last fifteen years has resulted in a much more data based society, a trend that can be expected to continue into the foreseeable future. This phenomenon has had a real impact on the Statistics discipline and will continue to result in changes in both content and course delivery. Major research directions have also evolved during the last ten years directly as a result of advances in IT. The impact of these advances has started to flow into course content, at least for advanced courses. One question which arises relates to what impact will this have on the future training of statisticians, both with respect to course content and mode of delivery. At the tertiary level the last 40 years has seen significant advances in theoretical aspects of the Statistics discipline. Universities have been outstanding at producing scholars with a strong theoretical background but questions have been asked as to whether this has, to some degree, been at the expense of appropriate training of the users of statistics (the 'tradespersons').
Future directions in the teaching and learning of Statistics must take into account the impact of IT together with the competing need to produce scholars as well as competent users of statistics to meet the future needs of the market place. For Statistics to survive as a recognizable discipline the need to be able to train statisticians with an ability to communicate is also seen as an areà of crucial importance.
Satisfying the needs of society as well as meeting the needs of the profession are considered as the basic determinants which will derive the future teaching and training of statisticians at the tertiary level and will form the basis of this presentation.     

Swan-upmanship

The financial meltdown that started last autumn could have been avoided. That's the view of Nassim Nicholas Taleb , author of the book, The Black Swan. Des Dearlove traces the evolution of Taleb's thinking and shows that the success of his book was quite probably no accident.