WHAT DOES REPUTATION REALLY ASSURE? THE RELATIONSHIP OF TRADEMARKS TO EXPECTATIONS AND LEGAL REMEDIES

Theoretical and empirical considerations suggest that trademarks guarantee more than just quality: they assure specific performance, that is, fulfillment of the specific terms of the contract. The specific performance hypothesis implies that a firm's investment in trademark capital varies directly with the damages that its customers expect to bear from a breach and the legal difficulties of obtaining compensation. The hypothesis also helps to explain why competitors of firms whose products are recalled lose wealth, why some damages allowed by law intentionally provide less than full compensation, and why firms who sell only to other firms also invest in trademarks.     

THE INFORMATIZATION OF THE WORLDVIEW

The development of information and communication technology in the second half of the twentieth century in crucial respects resembles the development of mechanics in the sixteenth and seventeenth century as it has been described by Dijksterhuis in his study The Mechanization of the World Picture (first published in 1950). In both cases specific technological developments not only lead to important changes in the natural and human sciences, but also profoundly affect culture as a whole and eventually result in a fundamental change in worldview. In this article the author attempts to elucidate the present informatization of the worldview in a twofold way. First, against the background of Dijksterhuis' analysis of the concept of mechane, a clarification is given of the concept of information, which has become central to many sciences in the last decades. It is argued that much of the confusion and misuse that surrounds the application of this concept can be reduced by making a careful distinction between the pragmatic, semantic and syntactic dimensions of information. Second, on basis of this clarification, the author discusses the transformation from a mechanistic to an informationistic worldview. While the mechanistic worldview is characterized by the postulates of analysability, lawfulness and controllability, the informationistic worldview is characterized by the postulates of synthetizability, programmability and manipulability. It is argued that although the informationistic worldview in some respects (for instance in its mathematical orientation) is clearly a continuation of the mechanistic worldview, in other respects it fundamentally alters human experience and the evaluation of, and association with, reality.     

Make Schools,Not War? Donors' Rewriting of the Social Contract in the DRC

The school being one of the most important ‘faces’ of the state at the local level in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, investment in education can play an important role in reconstructing the social contract between the population and the state after violent conflict. However, this is particularly difficult since the state has largely retreated from the education sector since the 1980s, and education is now organised through public‐private partnerships with religious networks. Moreover, schools have been turned into tax units, in response to the retreat of the state and the declining wages of school administrators. This has had a clear effect on donor interventions, which, instead of changing the current system, have become part of existing configurations and led to an expansion of the current system.     

Predictive control of posterior robustness for sample size choice in a Bernoulli model

In this article we consider the sample size determination problem in the context of robust Bayesian parameter estimation of the Bernoulli model. Following a robust approach, we consider classes of conjugate Beta prior distributions for the unknown parameter. We assume that inference is robust if posterior quantities of interest (such as point estimates and limits of credible intervals) do not change too much as the prior varies in the selected classes of priors. For the sample size problem, we consider criteria based on predictive distributions of lower bound, upper bound and range of the posterior quantity of interest. The sample size is selected so that, before observing the data, one is confident to observe a small value for the posterior range and, depending on design goals, a large (small) value of the lower (upper) bound of the quantity of interest. We also discuss relationships with and comparison to non robust and non informative Bayesian methods.     

A simple approximation relation between the symmetric generalized logistic and the students t distributions

In this paper, we obtain a new approximation of the Student's t distribution by using the symmetric generalized logistic (SGL) distribution function. The error of this approximation is shown to be 0(1/n² )where nis the degrees of freedom of thetdistribution. In comparison to similar approximations by George and Ojo and George et al. (1986), this new approximation is much simpler and more accurate. It is also shown that under some conditions, the tdistribution is a good approximation of the SGL distribution. Therefore, the complicated expressions for the cumulants and moments of the SGL can be approximated by those of the t, distribution. Finally, numerical results are given.     

新世纪的课题：党的领导方式的创新与建构

面对新世纪党的执政环境和执政使命 ,传统的党的领导方式面临挑战。创新和建构民主法治型的领导方式 ,是发展市场经济、推进民主政治和依法治国、巩固党的执政地位、深化政治体制改革的必然要求     

对我国公有制理论的实践与发展问题的思考

十一届三中全会以前,我国在社会主义建设过程中,对公有制理论进行了初步探索,但是这种探索是很不成功的.十一届三中全会以后,我国对公有制实现形式进行了多方面的再探索并取得了重大成就.党的十五大在总结历史经验的基础上,实现了公有制理论的重大突破,从而找到了一套与我国基本国情相适合的公有制理论.     

Double-sampling control charts for attributes

In this article, we propose a double-sampling (DS) np control chart. We assume that the time interval between samples is fixed. The choice of the design parameters of the proposed chart and also comparisons between charts are based on statistical properties, such as the average number of samples until a signal. The optimal design parameters of the proposed control chart are obtained. During the optimization procedure, constraints are imposed on the in-control average sample size and on the in-control average run length. In this way, required statistical properties can be assured. Varying some input parameters, the proposed DS np chart is compared with the single-sampling np chart, variable sample size np chart, CUSUM np and EWMA np charts. The comparisons are carried out considering the optimal design for each chart. For the ranges of parameters considered, the DS scheme is the fastest one for the detection of increases of 100% or more in the fraction non-conforming and, moreover, the DS np chart is easy to operate.     

Crossing probabilities for a square root boundary by a bessel process

Probabilities for Wiener and Bessel processes to cross a square root boundary are calculated and the Mellin transform of the distribution of the associated stopping time is given.The transform is inverted and a table of critical values for the crossing probability as a function of the observation time is included. Also an analytic expression for the crossing probability is computed for the case of constant drift.     

Green Care Farms Promote Activity Among Elderly People With Dementia

In the Netherlands, an increasing number of green care farms are providing day care to community-dwelling elderly people with dementia. Currently, it is unknown whether activities, activity participation, and facility use of elderly people with dementia at green care farms differ from those at regular day care facilities. The authors performed group and individual observations at 11 green care farms and 12 regular day care facilities. Activities of elderly people at green care farms were more frequent, occurred outdoors more often, were of a higher physical intensity, and more often were aimed at individuals than activities at regular day care facilities. Therefore, the green care farms’ environment may be more beneficial for elderly people with dementia than the regular day care facility environment.