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.     

云南民族地区中学开设少数民族体育课的探讨

云南民族传统体育内容丰富,群众基础深厚,是民族文化的重要组成部分。在对云南省民族地区中学开设少数民族传统体育课的意义、可行性进行探讨的基础上,提出了实施建议,以期促进少数民族传统体育项目得到更好的保护和推广,同时为体育教学改革提供一些参考。     

混合动力系统在船舶上的应用研究

文中介绍了四种混合动力技术,并针对船舶动力系统的特点,分别研究了这四种混合动力技术在船舶上的应用方式。     

PH值对水库中藻类生长影响研究

本文主要探讨了在水库水藻类"水华"现象中pH值的变化,发现水体pH值于藻类数量之间存在较好的相关性,并在pH值与藻种群密度D之间尝试性建立数学模型.同时发现△pH与藻类的生命活性之间也存在较好的相关性,在藻类的对数生长期内△pH达到最大值.可以通过△ApH的观测了解藻类的生长态势,并作出相应预测.     

新形势下水利工程施工与施工安全几点建议

经过多年的施工实践,无数事例告诉我们:没有安全就没有效益,没有安全就没有大家和小家的安定,没有安全就没有社会信誉.采取合理的安全预防措施提高安全管理水平,能较好的降低安全事故的发生,保证水利工程建设的正常进行.