Unequivocal majority and Maskin-monotonicity

The unequivocal majority of a social choice rule is a number of agents such that whenever at least this many agents agree on the top alternative, then this alternative (and only this) is chosen. The smaller the unequivocal majority is, the closer it is to the standard (and accepted) majority concept. The question is how small can the unequivocal majority be and still permit the Nash-implementability of the social choice rule; i.e., its Maskin-monotonicity. We show that the smallest unequivocal majority compatible with Maskin-monotonicity is n- ë \fracn-1m û{n-\left\lfloor \frac{n-1}{m} \right\rfloor} , where n ≥ 3 is the number of agents and m ≥ 3 is the number of alternatives. This value is equal to the minimal number required for a majority to ensure the non-existence of cycles in pairwise comparisons. Our result has a twofold implication: (1) there is no Condorcet consistent social choice rule satisfying Maskin-monotonicity and (2) a social choice rule satisfies k-Condorcet consistency and Maskin-monotonicity if and only if k 3 n- ë \fracn-1m û{k\geq n-\left\lfloor \frac{n-1}{m}\right\rfloor}.     

Symbolic Economies: Money,Neoliberal Law and National Politics in Argentina

In this article, I examine Argentina's neoliberal reforms throughout the 1990s from a Marxist theoretical perspective, analysing how money, monetary policy and law constitute a fundamental mode of ideological regulation in neoliberal capitalism. Situating this analysis in the context of the capitalist crisis of the mid-1970s, the article discusses the politics of effacement that in Argentina's case paved the way for the use of monetary policy as a form of social control intended to embed the nation-state into global capitalism. Examining economic legislation, macro-economic policies, political ideologies, consumer discourses and pension privatization, I analyse how the neoliberal monetary regime ideologically underpinned a whole state imaginary based on exchange rate parity with the US dollar. Further, I investigate the ideological function of money in symbolically reordering the relationships of workers and citizens to the state, capital and culture. The article concludes with an exploration of the political significance of the monetary collapse of the Argentine neoliberal reform in 2001–2002, comparing Argentina's crisis of hegemony with that of other states within global capitalism.     

Alibaba’s discourse for the digital Silk Road: the electronic World Trade Platform and ‘inclusive globalization’

The digital Silk Road, which involves the internationalization of Chinese internet firms across countries that are party to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has remained underexplored in the literature. This paper employs a poststructuralist discourse theory to analyze one of the most important Chinese internet firms, Alibaba, and its initiative for global trade: the electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP). The article argues that the eWTP is a counter-hegemonic discourse that, based on the economic and technological power of Alibaba and its support of the BRI, attempts to globalize a China-centered and privately led global digital trade order to challenge the previous wave of US-led globalization. However, the eWTP has at least five contradictions. First, despite its criticisms of globalization, the initiative remains essentially neoliberal. Secondly, it sidelines inherent tensions with the Chinese state-centric internet governance model. Thirdly, it excludes some social identities and makes utopian promises. Fourthly, it is unclear to what extent it really will be inclusive. Finally, unless carefully hedged, it might entrap partner countries in new types of problematic digital dependence.     

Improvements to the Escalation with Overdose Control design and a comparison with the restricted Continual Reassessment Method

The Escalation with Overdose Control (EWOC) design for cancer dose finding clinical trials is a variation of the Continual Reassessment Method (CRM) that was proposed to overcome the limitation of the original CRM of exposing patients to high toxic doses. The properties of EWOC have been studied to some extent, but some aspects of the design are not well studied, and its performance is not fully understood. Comparisons of the EWOC design to the most commonly used modified CRM designs have not yet been performed, and the advantages of EWOC over the modified CRM designs are unclear. In this paper, we assess the properties of the EWOC design and of the restricted CRM and some variations of these designs. We show that EWOC has several weaknesses that CRM does not have that make it impractical to use in its original formulation. We propose modified EWOC designs that address some of the weaknesses and that have some desirable statistical properties compared with the original EWOC design, the restricted CRM design, and the 3 + 3 design. However, their statistical properties are sensitive to correct specification of the prior distribution of their parameters and hence nevertheless will need to be used with some caution. The restricted CRM design is shown to have more stable performance across a wider family of dose‐toxicity curves than EWOC and therefore may be a preferable general choice in cancer clinical research.     

Networks of international public relations production: The case of Latin American organizations’ connections to U.S. agents

Traditionally, international public relations studies have assumed that a foreign organization, namely a foreign government, is the primary influence on how its home country is portrayed to audiences abroad. This study challenges such assumption of independence by revealing how foreign organizations are connected in ways previous works have not considered. Using Foreign Agents Registration Act data, we reveal the direct and indirect connections that form when foreign organizations hire U.S. agencies to produce their international public relations work. Our network analysis of foreign organizations from Latin American and their U.S. agents documents the network structures that emerge for each country and identifies the types of organizations that are positioned advantageously in the networks. We use these findings to theorize how foreign organizations’ connections and their key positions in networks may influence the production of international public relations efforts for their home country. We at a macro-level, public relations effects depend on the structure of the networks, the overlapping sites where communication content is produced, and who is positioned as key players in the production networks.     

New Properties of the Kumaraswamy Distribution

The Kumaraswamy distribution is very similar to the Beta distribution but has the key advantage of a closed-form cumulative distribution function. This makes it much better suited than the Beta distribution for computation-intensive activities like simulation modeling and the estimation of models by simulation-based methods. However, in spite of the fact that the Kumaraswamy distribution was introduced in 1980, further theoretical research on the distribution was not developed until very recently (Garg, 2008 Garg , M. ( 2008 ). On distribution of order statistics from Kumaraswamy distribution . Kyunpook Mathemat. J. 48 : 411 – 417 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Jones, 2009 Jones , M. C. ( 2009 ). Kumaraswamy's distribution: A beta-type distribution with some tractability advantages . Statist. Methodol. 6 ( 1 ): 70 – 81 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Mitnik, 2009 Mitnik , P. ( 2009 ). The Kumaraswamy distribution: a median-dispersion re-parameterization for regression modeling and simulation-based estimation. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1231587 . [Google Scholar]; Nadarajah, 2008 Nadarajah , S. ( 2008 ). On the distribution of Kumaraswamy . J. Hydrol. 348 : 568 – 569 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). This article contributes to this recent research and: (a) shows that Kumaraswamy variables exhibit closeness under exponentiation and under linear transformation; (b) derives an expression for the moments of the general form of the distribution; (c) specifies some of the distribution's limiting distributions; and (d) introduces an analytical expression for the mean absolute deviation around the median as a function of the parameters of the distribution, and establishes some bounds for this dispersion measure and for the variance.     

The relationship between Civil Unions and fertility in France: Preliminary evidence

This paper explores the relationship between fertility and the introduction of new laws regulating cohabitation, in a context of low fertility and high out of wedlock childbearing. We show that in France, while fertility and marriage rates moved closely together before 1999, since the introduction (in 1999) of the “Pacte Civil de Solidarité” (PACS)—a cohabitation contract less binding than marriage—this relationship is much weaker. Surprisingly, legal unions (defined as marriage plus PACS) and fertility continue to move together after this date. We provide evidence of the relationship between the introduction of PACS and fertility, utilizing the regional variation in the number of PACS per woman (PACS intensity) and the differences in fertility before and after 1999. We show that French Departments with high PACS intensity did not show a different trend in fertility before 1999 than those with low PACS intensity (excluding Metropolitan Paris). However, they did experience an increase in their fertility levels after the introduction of PACS. This suggests the need to collect better and more detailed data, in order to assess whether the recent increases in French fertility can be partially explained by the availability of PACS.     

The Dangers of Assessing the Financial Vulnerability of Nonprofits Using Traditional Measures

This article analyzes the financial vulnerability of 228 British nongovernmental development organizations (NGDOs) during the period 2008–2012. To do this, we use the Financial Vulnerability Index developed by Trussel et al. (2002). This index is commonly used in the literature on nonprofit organizations. However, we observe a very poor adaptation of the index to the reality of this industry, at least in predictive terms. The article goes deeply into each of the variables that are used to calculate this index, and we offer explanations of their inadequacy to this subsector of nonprofits.     

Sweet death: indigenous labour exploitation in the San Martín de Tabacal Sugar Mill,Salta, Argentina

During the national consolidation process in Argentina, throughout the nineteenth century, a new map of local power was designed based on appropriated territories and the consolidation of ‘internal frontiers’ denominated ‘desert’ by hegemonic discourses. The indigenous presence was denied discursively, yet military crusades of extermination, and a very massive process of labour incorporation of these groups was forced in order to develop the incipient agribusiness activity in certain areas of the country. This article explores life conditions and resistance strategies developed by the indigenous kolla communities, victims of the exploitation performed by the owners of the San Martín de Tabacal Sugar Mill, located in Salta, northwestern Argentina, throughout the twentieth century.     

论卢梭的人类学原则

与将卢梭作为一位折中的思想家的印象相反,这篇论文试图重建他的人类学体系的核心。首先,讨论方法论的起点问题。第二,展开论述使自然得以在社会背景下作为一种理想运作所需的结构框架。最后,根据这种框架阐释卢梭的起源论述。这个过程使我解决了两个阐释难题,关于坏的起源的困境和人的自然孤独的问题。引入一个逻辑学上的双重概念来整合历史的和结构的要求,这个概念与卢梭思想中的自由和必然性相重叠。用这种照镜子的方式来组织我的论证,我把这项工作称作一篇随笔,因为它是在尽力思考卢梭为了写他所写的东西一定会想过什么。