沈从文故事中对农人目光的文本化(上)

沈从文笔下的乡下人总是用一种独特标准来观察和批判城市以及城里人。这是异乡情调一种典型形式,即“乡下人”对于城市所形成的印象。沈从文将城市读者的“他者”构成叙事话语,所表现出来的始终是一种社会学意义的距离,同时也是一种民族学意义上的,或者性别和世代上的区分。从这种观察中得到的乡村与城市之间的对立通过反语和讽刺反映出来。作者拒绝叙述者无所不知的权威,叙述者的声音始终是不张扬的,而且他的写作是以语言的克制为特征的。从这样的叙事实践中所得到的结果,正是话语与话语对象之间的一种距离,同样也是作家与他所创造的世界之间的协调一致。     

A Network-Based Measure of the Socio-Economic Roots of the Migration Flows

Social Indicators Research - This paper provides a unified view for defining a measure of the reasons behind migration flows whose nature is of social and economic type. To this aim, worldwide...     

Sensitivity Analysis Using Risk Measures

In a quantitative model with uncertain inputs, the uncertainty of the output can be summarized by a risk measure. We propose a sensitivity analysis method based on derivatives of the output risk measure, in the direction of model inputs. This produces a global sensitivity measure, explicitly linking sensitivity and uncertainty analyses. We focus on the case of distortion risk measures, defined as weighted averages of output percentiles, and prove a representation of the sensitivity measure that can be evaluated on a Monte Carlo sample, as a weighted average of gradients over the input space. When the analytical model is unknown or hard to work with, nonparametric techniques are used for gradient estimation. This process is demonstrated through the example of a nonlinear insurance loss model. Furthermore, the proposed framework is extended in order to measure sensitivity to constant model parameters, uncertain statistical parameters, and random factors driving dependence between model inputs.     

Shift-Share Analysis with Spatial Structure: an Application to Italian Industrial Districts

Shift-share analysis is a well-known and widely used tool for spatial data analysis, though it presents some weaknesses and limitations. In this paper we aim to extend this technique by introducing a spatial structure in the particular case of Italian industrial districts. This extension is possible due to the use of enterprise legal status, together with activity information, available on the Italian Register of Businesses at the Chambers of Commerce. As far as spatial analysis is concerned, in this work we give a more precise territorial meaning to the theoretical concept of neighbourhood.     

Microsimulating the Evolution of Italian Pension Benefits: the Role of Retirement Choices and Lowest Pensions Indexing

A few years after the introduction of the Amato and Dini laws, a renewed debate on reforming the Italian pension system and on modifying its structure and technical parameters is taking place. The present work simulates individual reactions to systemic changes, distinguishing among the different typologies of workers the categories of dependent (private and public) and self‐employed ones. This approach allows us to perform a general micro‐analysis of the effects of past reforms on family pension income distribution and average individual pension benefits. Furthermore, it makes it possible to assess the consequences of legislator's choices such as the indexation of the lowest pensions (‘assegni sociali’ and ‘pensioni integrate al minimo’) to wages or to inflation. Finally, a Monte Carlo analysis projects future inequality and poverty trends with a remarkable accuracy and allows to verify the robustness of our results.     

A unifying view on some problems in probability and statistics

Statistical Methods & Applications - Let $$L$$ be a linear space of real random variables on the measurable space $$(\varOmega ,\mathcal {A})$$ . Conditions for the existence of a probability...     

The role of macroeconomic policies in the global crisis

This paper argues that the lack of timely and decisive policy action to correct domestic and external imbalances contributed crucially to the build-up of financial excesses that led to the financial crisis and the Great Recession. We focus on 2002–2007 and perform a number of counterfactual simulations to investigate two central elements of the story, namely: (a) an over-expansionary US monetary policy and the absence of effective macro-prudential supervision, which permitted a prolonged expansion of debt-financed consumer spending and (b) the choice by China and other emerging countries to pursue an export-led growth strategy supported by pegging their currencies to the US dollar, in conjunction with sluggish domestic demand in major advanced economies characterized by low potential output growth. The results of the simulations lend support to the view that if substantial, globally coordinated demand rebalancing had been undertaken early on, the macroeconomic and financial imbalances would not have accumulated to the extent that they did and the financial turmoil might have had less drastic global consequences.     

Incomplete Preferences Under Uncertainty: Indecisiveness in Beliefs versus Tastes

We investigate the classical Anscombe–Aumann model of decision‐making under uncertainty without the completeness axiom. We distinguish between the dual traits of “indecisiveness in beliefs” and “indecisiveness in tastes.” The former is captured by the Knightian uncertainty model, the latter by the single‐prior expected multi‐utility model. We characterize axiomatically the latter model. Then we show that, under independence and continuity, these two models can be jointly characterized by means of a partial completeness property.