Individual accounts in social security: can they be progressive?

The trend toward individual asset accounts in social security, and the regressivity of these accounts, provide the motivation for this article. The article asks: why not asset building for the poor as well? Research on Individual Development Accounts in the United States finds that the poor can save when they have a structure and incentive to do so. Steps toward universal and progressive asset‐based policy are pointed out in Singapore, the United States and the United Kingdom. Future policy directions and challenges are considered.     

Games With Discontinuous Payoffs: A Strengthening of Reny's Existence Theorem

We provide a pure Nash equilibrium existence theorem for games with discontinuous payoffs whose hypotheses are in a number of ways weaker than those of the theorem of Reny (1999). In comparison with Reny's argument, our proof is brief. Our result subsumes a prior existence result of Reny (1999) that is not covered by his theorem. We use the main result to prove the existence of pure Nash equilibrium in a class of finite games in which agents' pure strategies are subsets of a given set, and in turn use this to prove the existence of stable configurations for games, similar to those used by Schelling (1971, 1972) to study residential segregation, in which agents choose locations.     

Avian Flu and Embodied Global Imagery: A Study of Pandemic Geopolitics in the Media

Avian influenza is caused by viruses adapted to birds. The causative agents can, in rare cases, spread to humans, although no human-to-human transmission has been demonstrated. However, the mere possibility of mutation into a human form allowed for media, states and international organizations to speculate about the meaning of the disease's movement across species and localities. The hypothetical scenarios focused on national preparedness and resilience. Such imageries of elastic and shock absorbing communities offer insights into how diseases are used to contain and border in an age of vanishing boundaries and interconnected global reaches. This study tracks the historical trajectory of public cognitions regarding avian flu as it turned from an ordinary livestock disease into a hyperbolic mutable ‘killer disease’. Excerpts from articles carried in The New York Times and Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish mainstream daily, are used to map how the disease turned into a register of the hostilities inherent in the world. In the American public cognition, the tangible disease threat was triggered when the dangers of mutation were associated with China. For the small peripheral Finland, the pandemic scare instigated public imaginaries of a resilient and efficient Nordic society.

La influenza aviar es causada por virus adaptados a los pájaros. En casos raros, los agentes causativos pueden propagarse a humanos, aunque no se ha demostrado ninguna transmisión entre humanos. Sin embargo, la simple posibilidad de mutación a una forma humana, permitió a los medios, estados y organizaciones internacionales especular sobre el sentido del movimiento de la enfermedad entre las especies y localidades. Los escenarios hipotéticos se enfocaron en la preparación y resistencia nacionales. Tales imágenes de comunidades elásticas y absorbentes de impactos ayudan a comprender mejor cómo se usan las enfermedades para contener y colindar fronteras en una época que están desapareciendo y de extensa interconexión global. Este estudio sigue la trayectoria histórica de conocimiento público respecto a la gripa aviar cuando pasó de una enfermedad ordinaria de ganado a una ‘enfermedad mortal’ hiperbólica mutable. Extractos de artículos publicados en el New York Times y el Helsinki Sanomat, un diario finlandés predominante, se usaron para representar cómo la enfermedad se convirtió en un registro de las hostilidades inherentes en el mundo. En el conocimiento americano, la amenaza tangible de la enfermedad se desencadenó cuando los peligros de la mutación fueron asociados con China. Para la pequeña Finlandia, el susto pandémico instigó la imaginación pública de una resistente y eficiente sociedad nórdica.

禽流感是由鸟类携带的病毒引起的。尽管目前还未发现人到人传播的案例,但在某些罕见的情况下,这些病原体可以传染给人类。尽管如此,仅仅是能变异为人类病毒的可能性就足以让媒体、国家和国际组织思考这种跨物种和地域的病毒传播的后果。这种假想关注国家的准备情况和应变能力。这种关于具有弹性和能吸收震荡的社会的意象让我们能够洞察,在一个边界正在消失、各领域相互联系的时代中,疾病可以如何被用来阻止国家边界的消失并界定国家边界。禽流感已经从一种普通的家畜疾病变为一种夸张的可变异的致命疾病。本文追踪了这一公众认知变化的历史轨迹。通过刊登在《纽约时报》和芬兰主流日报《赫尔辛基新闻》上的文章节选,本文表明了禽流感是如何变为各国固有敌意的记录器的。在美国的公众认知中,禽流感在中国的变异危险导致了这场有形的疾病威胁。对于处于边缘的小国芬兰而言,这种禽流感大流行的恐慌驱使公众想象一个灵活高效的北欧社会。

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Food Landscapes: Cooking,Community Service and Art-Making with Teens

ABSTRACT

In this article, we describe Food Landscapes, an interdisciplinary program involving youth who live in an urban community identified as a food desert. Food Landscapes combined socially engaged art-making, cooking, community engagement, and community service to open dialogue with youth about food justice and equity, the meaning of community, and the formation of meaningful relationships between youth and community members who have disabilities. We describe the program and discuss the theory and model bases for the program and lessons learned during program implementation.     

The Effect of Liability and Patch Release on Software Security: The Monopoly Case

An abundance of flawed software has been identified as the main cause of the poor security of computer networks because major viruses and worms exploit the vulnerabilities of such software. As an incentive mechanism for software security quality improvement, software liability has been intensely discussed among both academics and practitioners for a long time. An alternative approach to managing software security is patch release, which has been widely adopted in practice. In this paper, we examine these two different ways of mitigating customer risk in the software market: liability and patch release. We study the impact of both mechanisms on a monopolistic software vendor's decision on security quality. We find the conditions under which each mechanism is effective in terms of improving security quality and increasing social surplus. The heterogeneous nature of loss is identified to be a key factor for the effectiveness of the liability mechanism. On the other hand, patch release can be effective and welfare‐enhancing regardless of the nature of loss as long as customers incur low patching cost, and/or the vendor incurs low patch development cost. We also examine the impact of customer misperception of the outcome from vulnerable software on the effectiveness of liability.     

新农村建设中失地农民安置问题——以芜湖市南陵县大浦新农村建设试验区为例

新农村建设中失地农民安置问题意义重大,是解决三农问题的必然要求,也是实现新农村建设目标的必然要求,但在实际工作中,面临着土地补偿、社会保障、农民发展等现实困境。为解决难题,需要构建合理的安置体系,包括失地农民安置政策机制、农民风险抵御能力培养机制、失地农民利益保障机制。在具体安置过程中,要集政府、新农村建设承接企业、失地农民三方力量,变被动安置为主动安置,变一次性安置为持续性安置,共同保证失地农民的合理安置。     

Is Asia adopting flexicurity?

In the face of global competition, many countries are adopting a flexicurity approach to labour regulation, providing employers with greater flexibility to hire and retrench workers while helping workers transition to new jobs. This review of six Asian countries finds that China and the Republic of Korea have enacted such reforms; Singapore and Malaysia provide some ingredients of flexicurity, though no unemployment insurance; India and Sri Lanka have introduced few reforms and continue to rely on an older model of employer-based security. To support informal workers, the Governments of China, India and Sri Lanka use public works, self-employment programmes and skills training.     

《治安管理处罚法》的若干亮点与不足——基于警察自由裁量权有关规定的分析

《治安管理处罚法》有关警察自由裁量权方面的规定有许多亮点：条文趋于细化、具体,压缩了自由裁量的空间;程序条款增多,为警察自由裁量权的行使设定了法治的轨道;引入处罚监督机制,强化了警察自由裁量的法律责任等。但新法仍然存在着警察自由裁量权过大、对公安机关及其人民警察选择不作为的自由裁量权没有制约性的规定、对警察自由裁量权行使的执法监督规定不够明确等不足之处。《治安管理处罚法》还有进一步完善的必要。     

不断完善住房制度,努力构建有中国特色的住房保障体系

我国住房保障体系主要解决老百姓＂住有所居＂的问题,关键要在不同时间段使老百姓的住房条件适应社会发展的要求。要达到这个目标,需要不断完善住房制度改革。总体上,低收入者要有社会保障,中、高收入者要走商品化道路,中等偏下这一块要有政府支持,如发展公共租赁房,在房价上涨较快的地区增加限价商品房供应,通过三个不同的层次来达到老百姓＂住有所居＂的目标,构建有中国特色的住房保障体系。     

基于住宅过滤理论对广州城市廉租房建设模式的思考

受到政府资金供给不足影响,广州廉租房建设出现了政策覆盖面窄、廉租社区配套不足等问题。由住宅过滤理论对城市住房保障问题的启示,笔者认为广州不应再采用规模兴建新住宅的方式,而应该引导、促进市场的住房过滤,将市场过滤出的低质量住宅作为向低收入家庭提供廉租住宅的主要渠道。