认真对待各种自由--肯定性自由概念和否定性自由概念

自由的各种变体我们试图像奥古斯丁谈论时间那样谈论自由:“假如没有人问我,我还知道。当我试图对它进行说明的时候,我反倒一无所知了。”我们也许可以根据几种独特的方式认为自己是自由的。从某种意义上说,如果不存在任何外部限制,那么,我们就是自由的。霍布斯和边沁都曾经把自由当做外部限制的缺席来说明。这是关于自由的否定性观念(negativeconception)。还有一种自由观念,认为自由就是人们按照自己的愿望进行活动的能力。自由是与选择的范围(以及我们满足自己欲望的能力)相对称的:我们所拥有的选择越多,我们也就越自由。就财富、声誉和…     

Hypotheses Tests of Strain-specific Vaccine Efficacy Adjusted for Covariate Effects

In the evaluation of efficacy of a vaccine to protect against disease caused by finitely many diverse infectious pathogens, it is often important to assess if vaccine protection depends on variations of the exposing pathogen. This problem can be formulated under a competing risks model where the endpoint event is the infection and the cause of failure is the infecting strain type determined after the infection is diagnosed. The strain-specific vaccine efficacy is defined as one minus the cause-specific hazard ratio (vaccine/placebo). This paper develops some simple procedures for testing if the vaccine affords protection against various strains and if and how the strain-specific vaccine efficacy depends on the type of exposing strain, adjusting for covariate effects. The Cox proportional hazards model is used to relate the cause-specific outcomes to explanatory variables. The finite sample properties of proposed tests are studied through simulations and are shown to have good performances. The tests developed are applied to the data collected from an oral cholera vaccine trial.     

A Bayesian approach to assessing population bioequivalence in a 2 ×2 crossover design

A Bayesian testing procedure is proposed for assessment of the bioequivalence in both mean and variance, which ensures population bioequivalence under the normality assumption. We derive the joint posterior distribution of the means and variances in a standard 2 ×2 crossover experimental design and propose a Bayesian testing procedure for bioequivalence based on a Markov chain Monte Carlo method. The proposed method is applied to a real data set.     

A Simple Method for Constructing Multidimensional Distributions of Correlated Categorical Data

We suggest a method for constructing a multidimensional distribution of correlated categorical data with fixed marginal distributions and specified degrees of association based on the log-linear models. A convex combination approach by Lee (1997 Lee , A. J. ( 1997 ). Some simple methods for generating correlated categorical variates . Computational Statistics & Data Analysis 26 : 133 – 148 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is applied to get a joint distribution with fixed Pearson chi-square coefficient. By using the suggested method, we can generate three-dimensional distributions which have a fixed association among three variables. Therefore, the suggested method could be extended to higher dimensions.     

Pricing Policy in a Supply Chain: Negotiation or Posted Pricing

This article examines the choice of pricing policy (posted pricing or negotiation) toward end customers in a supply chain. Many retailers actively decide whether or not to encourage negotiation on the shop floor. Of course, the retailer's pricing policy influences not only the retailer's profit, but also the profits of the manufacturers who sell through the retailer. However, little is known about the forces that shape the pricing policy when two self‐interested parties interact in a supply chain. We consider two alternative models depending on who has the power to decide the pricing policy: the manufacturer or the retailer. We find that an increase in the wholesale price weakens the retailer's ability to price discriminate through negotiation. Therefore, the retailer prefers negotiation at lower wholesale prices and posted pricing at higher wholesale prices. We also find that whenever the retailer prefers negotiation, the manufacturer does too. Therefore, the retailer's discretion over the pricing policy causes friction only when the retailer wants to use posted pricing, while the manufacturer wishes the retailer to use negotiation. We show that such friction arises only when product availability or the cost of negotiation is moderate. In this case, we show that the manufacturer may offer a substantial discount to persuade the retailer to negotiate. Surprisingly, in this region of friction, a decrease in the supply chain's capacity or an increase in negotiation costs (both of which are typically considered as worsening the retailer's business environment) translates into higher profit for the retailer.     

Psychological empowerment and organizational commitment: the moderating effect of organizational learning culture

This paper examines the influence of psychological empowerment on organizational commitment and the moderating effect of organizational learning culture on the relationship. The results suggest that psychological empowerment, organizational learning culture, and demographic variables had a significant impact on organizational commitment for employees in the public sector of Korea. Employees showed higher organizational commitment when they perceived high psychological empowerment and a high organizational learning culture. In addition, the moderating effect of organizational learning culture on the relationship between psychological empowerment and organizational commitment was found to be significant. Among the demographic variables, only educational level turned out to be significant. Finally, implications, limitations and research recommendations are discussed.     

Conduct Problems in Adopted and Non-Adopted Adolescents and Adoption Satisfaction as a Protective Factor

The present study compared the level of conduct problems at age 17 in a large nonclinical sample of adopted participants placed in infancy and children in non-adoptive families matched to the adoptive families on demographic characteristics. Higher levels of adolescent and parent adoption satisfaction were associated with lower levels of conduct problems. Gender by adoption status interactions were not significant. However, female adopted participants had higher levels of conduct problems than female non-adopted participants, whereas male adopted and non-adopted participants had similar levels of conduct problems. In the overall sample, differences between adopted and matched control participants on all conduct problem measures were nonsignificant.     

Diversity and Rigor Trends in Retailing Research: Assessment and Guidelines

This study presents an evaluation of research diversity and rigor levels in the retail marketing literature in order to glean valuable insights for researchers. Retailing is a significant sub‐field within marketing, and occupies a large portion of the extant marketing literature. The study consists of a content analysis of 600 quantitative empirical articles in the top six marketing journals (i.e. Journal of Retailing, Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing Research) over a 12‐year period. Over this period, the diversity and rigor of research design and data analytical methods were assessed across ten research sub‐communities of retail marketing research. The authors develop a measure for evaluating the rigor of research design and analytic techniques most commonly used in business research. The data reveal trends and areas for improvement in research design and reporting scholarly research.