Productivity Competitiveness among Non Cooperating Integrated Economies: A Negative-Sum Game

ABSTRACT: The strategies adopted by European countries during the 1970‘s and 1980‘s have been unsuccessful in their attempt to produce more employment. These strategies have been centred on attempts to improve the international position of a country at the expense of the others through increasing productivity and competitiveness. The negative effects on employment due to higher productivity should have been offset, in the longer run, by an increasing share of exports. But the eventual result has been that relative positions of countries have remained fundamentally unchanged. This is due to the fact that all countries adopted the same strategy. Aggressive strategies do not pay in terms of employment. More effective policies, in a situation characterized by accelerated technical progress, can be more easily implemented in a more co-operative international context. Even if there is no moral solidarity between the nearly related races of Europe, there is an economic solidarity which we cannot disregard. Even now the world markets are one. This is to put the issue on its lowest grounds. There are other arguments, which the most obtuse cannot ignore, against a policy of spreading and encouraging further the economic ruin of great countries (J.M. Keynes) ¹⁸     

Barriers to exercise behavior among older adults: a focus-group study

Longer life expectancy, rapid population growth, and low exercise-participation rates of adults 65 and older justify the need for better understanding of older adults' exercise behavior. The objectives of this focus-group study were to determine barriers to the exercise behavior of older adults. Six focus groups, three with exercisers and three with nonexercisers, were conducted at various sites throughout Rhode Island. The majority (n = 57) of the 66 individuals who participated were women, and all stated that they were 65 and older. Results from the focus-group data identified 13 barriers to exercise behavior. The most significant barriers mentioned by nonexercisers were fear of falling, inertia, and negative affect. Exercisers identified inertia, time constraints, and physical ailments as being the most significant barriers to exercise. Implications from these focus-group data can be useful in the development of exercise interventions for older adults, which could increase exercise participation.     

‘Would you prefer not to?’ Resetting/resistance across literature,culture, and organizations

ABSTRACT

In this paper we put the concepts of reset, aprosdoketon and minor gesture to work in the context of organizational narratives. In particular we engage with two iconic characters of the genre of organizational fiction, Don Draper in the context of Mad Men TV series and the copyist, who is the main character of Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville. Through a series of textual and performative writings we explore the possibility of setting and resetting organizational narratives/genre. Moreover, we explore what happens when fictional characters from a TV series and a novel (Bartleby and Don Draper) meet us – three scholars working in an array of different fields (literary, methodology, education and organization studies) and how this meeting and interaction shapes our understandings of work, culture, and organizations.     

Farming without a recipe: Wisconsin graziers and new directions for agricultural science

From 2005 through 2008, we undertook a participatory research project involving graziers from 8 farms in Southern Wisconsin, all of whom practice management intensive grazing. We used semi-structured interviews and participant observation during research and field days to investigate graziers’ engagement with university research. Grazing farms demonstrate rich variability and individuality as a result of their position within a number of biophysical and social contexts. Graziers emphasized the importance of finding ways to work with the variables of their specific context, rather than trying to control that variability. This effort entails the development and use of local knowledge, as graziers respond to the idiosyncrasies of their farms. It also leads graziers to reject mainstream agricultural research that has produced formulas for agricultural uniformity. The picture of grazing that emerged from our interviews leads us to propose the search for agroecological principles and agroecological tools, embedded in context, as an alternative to conventional research. We argue that this proposal speaks to the greater conundrum of how to relate the general knowledge of science to the place-specific, experience-based knowledge of grass-based farmers.     

Political Organizations,Interest Groups and Citizens Engagement: An Integrated Model of Democracy

The paper starts with a theoretical reinterpretation of some classical topics in the public choice literature, where specific elements of contract theory and the theory of the firm are introduced. By putting into contact these completely different fields of economics, it defines a general theoretical framework for political behaviors whose implications go beyond those determined by the standard self-interest assumption. Political organizations, as suppliers of public policies, are supposed to maximize a residual quantum consisting in the public authority that can actually be exercised after all the electoral commitments, with voters and interests groups, have been fulfilled. This residual right—which can be seen also as a degree of discretion necessary for ruling parties to deal with unforeseen contingencies—is based on the reputational capital (goodwill) accumulated over time by political organizations and represents the intangible asset that secures voters’ loyalty and, consequently, the legitimacy to exercise public authority in the long run. When a deficit of goodwill occurs, a chain of “exit” strategies by voters can lead to undesirable results unless an effective “voice” option for citizens exists.     

Some measures of kurtosis and their inference on large datasets

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - This paper deals with the estimation of kurtosis on large datasets. It aims at overcoming two frequent limitations in applications: first, Pearson's...     

Knots and blanks: The pragmatic foundation of logical principles

Logical principles, in particular the law of noncontradiction and the law of exclusion of middle term, play different roles at different levels of discourse: valid formulae in an axiomatic calculus, methodological requirements (of consistency and completeness) for formalized systems. When postulated as formal laws, —pvp and —(p·—p), they are totally interdefinable and equivalent as well (DeMorgan's transformations are proof of this). If postulated as methodological requirements, the principles are not equivalent, although they could still be said in some sense to be interdefinable (the existence of consistent yet incomplete systems shows that the requirements are not equivalent; still, completeness of a system can be defined in terms of consistency of another system which keeps a definite relationship with the first one).There exists a third level of discourse: scientific praxis. At this level, the principles come even farther apart: they neither have the same logical value nor is one definable in terms of the other. However, they keep a family resemblance which justifies our dealing with them jointly. Let us call the principles at this level pragmatic imperatives. They deal with paradoxes, which are of two types: knots (conflicts) and blanks (gaps in the scientific pattern). The left-hand pragmatic imperative says: Be intolerant with knots, try to remove (dissolve) them. The right-hand pragmatic imperative says: Try to remove (fill) all blanks. The knot-removing and the blank-dissolving imperatives are prior to and more important than the laws of noncontradiction and excluded middle and the requirements of consistency and completeness. Logical principles are not prime categories: pragmatic imperatives are primordial.     

Incomplete probability assessments in decision analysis

Summary In analysing a decision problem, in a situation ofpartial knowledge, a decision maker may be reluctant to assign acomplete probability distribution on the relevant states of nature. In order to face this difficulty, several methods, based onindeterminate probabilities or probabilityintervals, have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, arguing that it is meaningless to judge probabilistic assessments ascorrect orwrong, it is maintained that onlycoherence has anobjective andsignificant role. Then to overcome practical difficulties, an approach based on thesubjective methodology and on the use ofnumerical andqualitative probabilities, is outlined.