“轴心期”形成的犹太教文化传统对后世之影响——兼对“犹太模式”的历史考察与未来展望

在德国哲学家雅斯贝斯提出的世界历史的"轴心期"的概念里,犹太人所创立的以犹太教为主旨内容的希伯来文明和中华文明、印度文明一样成为东西方文化传统的源头;探讨轴心期产生的犹太教对后世的基督教和伊斯兰教的影响,可以看出三者同属犹太系宗教的范畴;根据汤因比提出的三种文明解体的模式分析当今世界的格局,可以发现美国似乎正在成为罗马帝国的翻版,而道德至上的中华文明的复兴则给世界的美好未来带来了一丝希望之光。同时,由于犹太教、基督教和伊斯兰教同属犹太系宗教,有着很多根本的相同点,所以在人类要共同面对生存危机的条件下也许可以实现和解而和平共处。     

现代教育技术环境下英语教学模式探索

本文着眼于现代教育技术探究小学英语教学的新模式。     

四川少数民族村寨旅游扶贫模式转变研究

In 2012 , State Ethnic Affairs Com-mission of the People’ s Republic of China( hereaf-ter SEAC ) announced an outline concerning the protection and development of‘ethnic minority vil-lages with special characteristics ’ . The develop-ment of such villages is one of the important tasks of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission:this devel-opment aims to foster the conservation of ethnic culture and to accelerate the development of the ethnic areas in which these villages lie. On Sep-tember 23 , 2014 , the State Ethnic Affairs Com-mission announced guanyu minming shoupi zhong-guo shaoshu minzu tese chunzhai de tongzhi ( No-tice on the Naming of the First Group of China ’ s Ethnic Minority Villages with Special Characteris-tics):340 villages in total were inscribed into the list of this so-called ‘First Batch ’ , among which four villages of Sichuan province were included:( i) Jiefang village of Haqu in Leshan, ( ii) Mutuo Village of Maoxian in Aba, ( iii) Shangmo Village of Songfan in Aba, and ( iv) Guza Village of Seda in Ganzi. With the support of the so-called‘Poverty Al-leviation Policy’ , tourism in ethnic minority villa-ges has been booming; however, this has also re-sulted in a new series of related problems that need to be addressed. Tourism development obviously had reduced regional poverty. Since the 1980s, the promotion of economic development through tourism in the ethnic areas ( with a corresponding improvement of people ’ s living conditions ) has been widely accepted by society. Also in the prov-ince of Sichuan the ‘poverty alleviation through tourism’ policy has led to economic growth and has reduced the poverty of the people in the ethnic mi-nority areas. From 2011 to 2014, the SEAC has invested 57. 8 million Yuan in the development of ethnic minority villages in Sichuan province. This has led to the implementation of 73 projects and has benefited around 100,000 people, 7 indige-nous ethnic groups, and 11 prefectures and munic-ipalities in Sichuan. It seems that this‘poverty al-leviation through tourism ’ ( hereafter PATT ) has resulted in good economic and social effects. Ethnic minority villages in Sichuan share sim-ilar challenges: ( i) a low level of production and productivity,economic backwardness, simplistic e-conomic infrastructure, cultural narrow-minded-ness, a low level of education and personal devel-opment, and a fragile condition of local nature and cultural surroundings. Moreover, tourism has since deeply altered previous development models for these regions: this has also brought many new problems, like e. g. how to correctly distribute the newly acquired economic benefits and profits, as well as cultural and environmental protection is-sues. Many of these problems seem to be only tran-sitional;however, these challenges do ask for the necessary tweaks of the PATT policies. This article thus tries to review the model of PATT as imple-mented in the ethnic villages of Sichuan. The arti-cle explores its different stages/aspects:( i) adap-tation of goals, ( ii) the changing role of the gov-ernment, ( iii) an evolving profit model for local people, and ( iv ) evolving local talent discovery and activation. The first aspect of PATT is the change of the development goals. At first, the priority is to get rid of poverty through tourism. To initially boost local tourism, the government must make major in-vestments: enhancement of the basic infrastruc-ture, creation of a touristic brand and initial adver-tising for the ethnic villages. However, when the PATT has been effectively implemented, and reached a mature stage of development, i. e. the village has become relatively popular and annual numbers of tourists have reached a stable good lev-el, the goals must be adapted: economic develop-ment should change to sustainable development. The new goals would be a combination of local tourism and local related industries, such as handi-craft products, catering and other hospitality busi-nesses etc. When all of this takes place, the eth-nic villages and areas seem to be able to arrive at a green and sustainable development path. The second stage is the change of the role of government. As said, in the beginning large in-vestments in infrastructure, tourism marketing and publicity are needed. In this start-up stage, the village needs quite a lot of human and material re-sources. Without the financial and human aid of the government, it’ s very hard to change a local ethnic minority village into a tourist destination. Hence, the government should play a supportive role during the initial stages of tourism develop-ment, while taking the local villagers ’ will and ethnic culture into consideration: the government should consult with the villagers and encourage the villagers’ participation in the whole development process. When indeed the PATT reaches a mature phase, the local people can take over. By then the locals have gained much experience;their attitudes and business skills have sufficiently improved so the government can take a step back, leaving the villagers to further develop the villages by them-selves. The third aspect is an ‘evolving profit model for local people ’ . During the initial stages of PATT, it’ s all about developing basic tourism pro-jects: at this moment, the main profit models for businesses rely on ( a) ethnic culture projects with distinct characteristics, ( b ) establishing high quality modes of the tourists route, and ( c) pro-moting the unique name and fame of the villages. However, when PATT reaches a mature stage, the villagers themselves must further develop and maintain their unique brand and fame. As said, the government takes a step back while local peo-ple are to develop new related sustainable profit models. The fourth issue is the further evolution of‘local talent discovery and activation ’ or‘talent mechanisms’ . Before the initial stages of PATT in Sichuan, the local villagers of the ethnic minorities had been engaged in traditional agriculture for many years;hence it was difficult for them to tran-sition into modern industries such as tourism and hospitality. Moreover, there were very few locals who had any knowledge of this tourism/hospitality industry. E. g. only some elderly people conducted simplistic tour guide practices for tourists: they were unable to provide any in-depth explanations of the traditional ethnic customs and culture due to language barriers. Thus, outsiders ( including gov-ernment staff and tourism professionals ) had to come in and provide advanced concepts, methods, and training. More importantly, a new ‘local tal-ent team’ had to discover and activate local people with tourism talents/abilities. This allowed for a genuine local tourism industry to come into exist-ence and further evolve. However, when PATT reaches a mature stage, the government should re-turn the economic benefits back to the local people and give them the dominant right to further self-de-velopment. A newly developed professional middle class will then allow the local people to further de-cide on the future of the ethnic villages. After the initial ‘local talent discovery and activation ’ , a more mature ‘talent mechanism ’ should be formed. Led by the best local talents, people from all circles should be encouraged to take part in the further development of the local villages and areas:this allows for greater stability and continuity, while new talents can develop more. This article has analyzed the implementation and adaptation of PATT in the province of Si-chuan, including the ( i) adaptation of goals, ( ii) the changing role of the government, ( iii) an evol-ving profit model for local people, and ( iv) evol-ving local talent discovery and activation. Howev-er, the development of ethnic minority villages still seems to face many difficulties and challenges, and need to be studied and discussed more.     

Declining inter-industry wage dispersion in the US

Industrial effects have long been significant factors in wage inequality. Previous research indicates that wage differentials across industries were increasing through the mid 1980s. Using more recent data, however, we find that the level of inter-industry wage dispersion declined by 36% from 1986 to 2002 despite the continued trend towards increasing inequality in the labor force. This decline in inter-industry wage dispersion is evident across gender and educational groups. Using multilevel growth curve models, our multivariate results indicate that the decline is only weakly related to industrial changes in education, occupation or even productivity despite the fact that the latter variable had been a critical factor in the prior period. Indicators of globalization and downsizing also do not appear to explain this decline. For the more recent period, the most important factors associated with the narrowing of inter-industry wage dispersion are reduced unionization rates and the higher proportion of casual workers. We interpret these results as suggesting that firms may now be less economically obliged to pass on a portion of their rents to broad groups of workers and may instead be engaged in more idiosyncratic processes of negotiation with individual workers based on micro-level sources of bargaining power.     

A flexible semiparametric transformation model for survival data

I suggest an extension of the semiparametric transformation model that specifies a time-varying regression structure for the transformation, and thus allows time-varying structure in the data. Special cases include a stratified version of the usual semiparametric transformation model. The model can be thought of as specifying a first order Taylor expansion of a completely flexible baseline. Large sample properties are derived and estimators of the asymptotic variances of the regression coefficients are given. The method is illustrated by a worked example and a small simulation study. A goodness of fit procedure for testing if the regression effects lead to a satisfactory fit is also suggested.     

Understanding and Using Mediators and Moderators

Mediation and moderation are two theories for refining and understanding a causal relationship. Empirical investigation of mediators and moderators requires an integrated research design rather than the data analyses driven approach often seen in the literature. This paper described the conceptual foundation, research design, data analysis, as well as inferences involved in a mediation and/or moderation investigation in both experimental and non-experimental (i.e., correlational) contexts. The essential distinctions between the investigation of mediators and moderators were summarized and juxtaposed in an example of a causal relationship between test difficulty and test anxiety. In addition, the more elaborate models, moderated mediation and mediated moderation, the use of structural equation models, and the problems with model misspecification were discussed conceptually.

Does parents’ valuation of children’s health mimic their valuation of own health?

A single latent variable model of health status and therapeutic health care utilization is estimated for parents and own children of 6,557 US households. The equation system that identifies latent health status simultaneously determines a number of indicators of general health, including presence of morbidity symptoms, mobility limitations, medication needs, and utilization of therapeutic health care services. The main goal of the paper was to obtain an unbiased estimate of parents’ marginal substitution rate between own and child health. Results indicate that parents’ valuation of their children’s health exceeds their valuation of own health by almost twofold on average.

The importance of being mature: the effect of demographic maturation on global per capita GDP

Given that savings behaviour and worker productivity have strong life-cycle components and given that demographic profiles vary across countries, population age structure should be linked to differences in levels of economic development. In this paper, we measure the economic importance of age structure variation for the global economy. We find that demographic maturation has been associated with nearly half of the evolution of global per capita GDP since 1960. We also find that age structure differences can account for just over half of the variation in worldwide per capita GDP (i.e. the lack of sigma convergence) observed since 1960.

“倒按揭”养老模式的精算模型构建与应用

为了推进“倒按揭”养老模式在我国的发展,本文通过对“倒按揭”进行概念解析,构建了个体“倒按揭”精算模型和家庭“倒按揭”精算模型;利用两个模型,测算了固定房产值时的给付标准和固定给付标准时对房产值的要求,研究发现,实行“倒按揭”养老的警戒线为房产净价值136576元;当拥有房产价值227627元时,给付标准可达到城镇居民人均可支配收入水平。