整合与超越:新全球化时代经济学范式探微

世界正发生着从"旧全球化时代"向"新全球化时代"的重大转变.伴随这一时代转折,建立在传统工业文明基础上的经济学正面临着研究范式的挑战,因为它已经不能适应以高科技为先导,以科技成果的商品化、产业化、国际化为特征的新时代所遇到的各种复杂问题.其研究范式急需进行整合与超越,交往实践观为其提供了新的视域和新的理论范式.     

Usury and Just Compensation: Religious and Financial Ethics in Historical Perspective

Usury is a concept often associated more with religiously based financial ethics, whether Christian or Islamic, than with the secular world of contemporary finance. The problem is compounded by a tendency to interpret riba, prohibited within Islam, as both usury and interest, without adequately distinguishing these concepts. This paper argues that in Christian tradition usury has always evoked the notion of money demanded in excess of what is owed on a loan, disrupting a relationship of equality between people, whereas interest was seen as referring to just compensation to the lender. Although it is often claimed that hostility towards ‘usury’ has been in retreat in the West since the protestant Reformation, we would argue that the crucial break came not with Calvin, but with Jeremy Bentham, whose critique of the arguments of Adam Smith, upholding the reasonableness of the laws against usury, led to the abolition of the usury laws in England in 1854. There has to be a role for law, whether Islamic or secular, in regulating financial relationships. We argue that by retrieving the necessary distinction between demanding usury as illegitimate predatory lending and interest as legitimate compensation, we can discover common ground behind the driving principles of financial ethics within both Islamic and Christian tradition that may still be of relevance today. By re-examining past ethical discussions of the distinction between usury and just compensation, we argue that the world’s religious traditions can make significant contributions to contemporary debate. Constant Mews is Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology at Monash University. He holds PhD and Masters degrees in medieval history, and pursues research in medieval religion, thought and ethics. Ibrahim Abraham is a PhD student in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University, with degrees in religion studies as well as law. His research interests include religion and culture, fair trade, and human rights.     

Seasonal mortality for fractional ages in short term life insurance

Abstract

Fernández-Durán, and Gregorio-Domínguez, Seasonal Mortality for Fractional Ages in Life Insurance. Scandinavian Actuarial Journal. A uniform distribution of deaths between integral ages is a widely used assumption for estimating future-lifetimes; however, this assumption does not necessarily reflect the true distribution of deaths throughout the year. We propose the use of a seasonal mortality assumption for estimating the distribution of future-lifetimes between integral ages: this assumption accounts for the number of deaths that occurs in given months of the year, including the excess mortality that is observed in winter months. The impact of this seasonal mortality assumption on short-term life insurance premium calculations is then examined by applying the proposed assumption to Mexican mortality data.     

兰屿游憩活动对异龄潜在游客吸引力特征初探

经由树状分类、权重分析、联集分析与个案访谈．显示兰屿之特殊地形和地质、人文物质及生物景观的观赏与解说活动对各年龄层潜在游客吸引力均高,潜水或游泳活动受年轻者偏好,在各年龄层间吸引力变异最大．较高年龄层者有选择从事与自然或文化景观相关之资源型游憩活动的明显倾向,年轻潜在游客则相对趋于多元．资源之特殊性、活动空间的可替代性、内容深度、偏好多样性、体力负荷、新奇与同乐之考虑是影响不同年龄层间游憩活动吸引力特征异同的主因。     

关于“中世纪”的再认识

传统史学观点认为中世纪是"黑暗年代",但一个暗无天日的年代是不可能孕育出璀璨的现代文明,中世纪并不都是一个沉睡的、可怕的年代,而是一个充满变化的时代,斩断了中世纪与现代的根脉,现代西方文明就成了无本之末、无源之水。     

Beyond the Gompertz law: exploring the late-life mortality deceleration phenomenon

Using a new distribution capable of exhibiting all the possible modes of accelerating and decelerating mortality, we conduct a systematic investigation of late-life mortality in humans. We check the insensitivity of the distribution to age cutoffs in the data relative to the logistic mortality model and propose a method to forecast evolution in the characteristic deceleration ages of the distribution. A number of data sets have been explored, with a particular emphasis on those originating from Scandinavia. Although those from Australia, Canada, and the USA are compatible with Gompertzian mortality, those from the other countries examined are not. We find in particular that the onset of mortality deceleration is being progressively delayed in Western societies but that there is evidence of mortality plateauing at earlier ages.     

Territorial state capacity and elite violence from the 6th to the 19th century

We present new evidence for elite violence using regicide, the killing of kings, and investigate the role of the state in European violence between the 6th and 19th centuries. First, regicide is critically assessed as a proxy for interpersonal elite violence. Second, we propose ‘territorial state capacity’ as a measure of states being able to keep or even expand their territories. We find a negative correlation between the changes in territorial state capacity and the changes in elite violence. This could be interpreted in two ways, either that growing territorial state capacity enabled human society to reduce violence, or that a higher regicide rate resulted in lower territorial state capacity. Another possibility would be a bidirectional mechanism that resulted in a co-evolution of the two variables.     

低龄化高流动的职业群体管理初探--以高速公路收费员职业群体为例

文章主要对低龄化高流动的职业群体管理进行了探讨，并以高速公路收费员职业群体为例，对这一群体的管理进行分析。     

论信息时代图书馆员信息素质的培养

本文论述了信息时代对图书馆员进行信息素质培养的重要性,图书馆员应该具备的素质要求以及对图书馆员进行信息素质培养的途径。     

镍铁渣粉水泥土的固化机理试验研究

为了研究镍铁渣粉水泥土的固化机理,从滨海区域工程实际出发,将镍铁渣粉等量替代水泥质量掺入到水泥中,结合ＸＲＤ试验、ＳＥＭ试验和压汞试验对镍铁渣粉水泥土的固化机理进行分析,从而实现以宏观和微观相结合的方式来考察其在海洋环境下的强度及抗渗性能。结果表明:水泥石中掺与镍铁渣粉,其物相种类不发生改变,主要为Ｃａ（ＯＨ）２、Ｃ３Ｓ、Ｃ２Ｓ、ＣａＣＯ３和ＳｉＯ２这五种物相;镍铁渣粉水泥土的孔径在７ｄ和２８ｄ时走势及大小变化不显著,而６０ｄ龄期以后,总孔隙体积和最可几孔径逐渐减小;随着龄期的增长,镍铁渣粉水泥土中的水泥水化产物增加,其孔隙逐渐消失,镍铁渣粉开始发挥作用并且其微观结构整体性愈发增强。