转型抑或收缩：山西票号对辛亥革命的因应

山西票号不完全是辛亥革命的"承受体",对革命的因应是透视其兴衰轨迹的关键。作为革命策源地,汉口票帮在武昌起义前已面临严重的市场风险和经营考验。市场环境方面,汉口的金融恐慌仍在延续,而票号的业务重心已从汇兑转向存放款,这意味着稍有不慎,卷入了钱庄业务链条的票号即面临放款无法收回的窘境。经营状况方面,受外部环境影响,票号数量总体上呈动态减少的趋势,经营业绩更是直线下降。武昌起义爆发后,汉口深陷动荡,在汉票号通过与山西总号的互动,着力解决票据账簿的保存、业务的收缩和调整以及债权债务的清理等问题。然而,由于革命的突发性强,外加长程通信导致的信息滞后,总号始终难以拿出有效的应对方案,分号实际拥有了自主处理本埠号务的权限。在这一过程中,票商面对严重的社会失范,更倾向于维护既有的经济社会秩序。这种诉求根源于其因应政治革命时的不利地位,即分号被迫收撤或迁址,金融运转被强行中断,造成大量坏账、呆账,尤其是当票商欲通过各方力量防止挤兑风潮和倒账危机的举措收效甚微时,其与新政府之间的信任隔阂也随之扩大。票商的因应机制充分证明,辛亥革命没有导致票号的根本衰亡,由政权鼎革所加剧的自身经营压力和动荡政局重塑了票号此后的发展路径,集中体现在民国初年票商拒绝金融转型的态度以及"缩小主义"的经营策略。在转型与收缩之间,票商理性而审慎地选择了后者,所谓错过合组银行的"历史机遇"不过是后来者对历史发展情境的理想预设。     

Grandmothers Who Are Caregivers: An Overlooked Population

This paper examines the concerns of 22 African American grandmothers who are primary caregivers of their grandchildren. In-depth interviews were conducted and revealed that these grandmothers incurred economic hardships, marital difficulties, lifestyle changes, and stressors associated with multiple roles. Overall, however, these grandmothers reported that they enjoyed taking care of their grandchildren because it put meaning back into their lives. Implications for further research and the development of social service programs for African-American grandmothers who are caregivers and have multiple roles are discussed.     

Multimodal hub location and hub network design

Through observations from real life hub networks, we introduce the multimodal hub location and hub network design problem. We approach the hub location problem from a network design perspective. In addition to the location and allocation decisions, we also study the decision on how the hub networks with different possible transportation modes must be designed. In this multimodal hub location and hub network design problem, we jointly consider transportation costs and travel times, which are studied separately in most hub location problems presented in the literature. We allow different transportation modes between hubs and different types of service time promises between origin–destination pairs while designing the hub network in the multimodal problem. We first propose a linear mixed integer programming model for this problem and then derive variants of the problem that might arise in certain applications. The models are enhanced via a set of effective valid inequalities and an efficient heuristic is developed. Computational analyses are presented on the various instances from the Turkish network and CAB data set.     

Chinese Singaporean attitudes towards poverty and inequality: A comparative analysis

Ng IYH, Koh G. Chinese Singaporean attitudes towards poverty and inequality: a comparative analysis Based on a survey of 191 Chinese respondents, this article discusses the attitudes of Singaporean Chinese towards poverty, inequality and government intervention. Using the Z‐test for two proportions and cluster analysis, findings were compared with similar studies in the USA and the UK. Chinese Singaporeans were found to be very aware of the growing inequality, but they adopted a narrower definition of poverty than British respondents. This might be the reason why they were more sympathetic towards the poor and supportive of more government anti‐poverty efforts than were American respondents. From the cluster analysis, the Singaporean sample produced a third group who were ‘satisfied but concerned’, on top of the two polar groups, ‘sceptics’ and ‘liberals’, present in the British study. A majority of respondents also supported the view that more should be done to help the poor and were willing to pay more taxes for that purpose.     

试谈歌词结尾反复的艺术程式

反复是歌词创作中高频率运用的一种修辞手段，歌词结尾反复的艺术程式有：无阶式和有阶式及其升、降格式，分析了反复对歌词结尾程式的艺术处理的修辞作用。     

我国新公司法与公司的社会责任

对公司社会责任进行法律规制是促使公司切实践行社会责任的制度保障。我国新公司法的出台无疑在一定程度上有利于公司社会责任的履行，并有助于确立起公司法上的社会责任机制。     

A distance-based diagnostic for trans-dimensional Markov chains

Over the last decade the use of trans-dimensional sampling algorithms has become endemic in the statistical literature. In spite of their application however, there are few reliable methods to assess whether the underlying Markov chains have reached their stationary distribution. In this article we present a distance-based method for the comparison of trans-dimensional Markov chain sample output for a broad class of models. This diagnostic will simultaneously assess deviations between and within chains. Illustration of the analysis of Markov chain sample-paths is presented in simulated examples and in two common modelling situations: a finite mixture analysis and a change-point problem.     

Extreme Risk Analysis of Interdependent Economic and Infrastructure Sectors

Willful attacks or natural disasters pose extreme risks to sectors of the economy. An extreme-event analysis extension is proposed for the Inoperability Input-Output Model (IIM) and the Dynamic IIM (DIIM), which are analytical methodologies for assessing the propagated consequences of initial disruptions to a set of sectors. The article discusses two major risk categories that the economy typically experiences following extreme events: (i) significant changes in consumption patterns due to lingering public fear and (ii) adjustments to the production outputs of the interdependent economic sectors that are necessary to match prevailing consumption levels during the recovery period. Probability distributions associated with changes in the consumption of directly affected sectors are generated based on trends, forecasts, and expert evidence to assess the expected losses of the economy. Analytical formulations are derived to quantify the extreme risks associated with a set of initially affected sectors. In addition, Monte Carlo simulation is used to handle the more complex calculations required for a larger set of sectors and general types of probability distributions. A two-sector example is provided at the end of the article to illustrate the proposed extreme risk model formulations.     

CHILD CARE AND POVERTY IN SOUTH AFRICA

This article draws on ethnographic research with children and their caregivers to explore the interaction between poverty and the nature and quality of child care in a resource-poor urban community in South Africa. The authors attend to issues such as mobility and “family fragmentation,” the role of the extended family and other networks, and children's contributions to their own and others’ care, all matters that provoke particular concern in the context of HIV/AIDS. The research challenges some of the more conventional interpretations on these matters by pointing to the continuities children experience in what can appear a disrupted care setting as well as the positive aspects of children's involvement in care. It also supports the case for a closer look at men's participation in various child-care roles in a climate where they are often dismissed as absent or unemployed and therefore non-contributory. Future research and policy on child care would benefit from the conceptual approach adopted across this work, which employs a relational lens and encompasses the dynamic contexts in which care is experienced and performed.