Public intellectuals,political satire and the birth of activist public relations: The case of Attic Comedy

The purpose of this article is to explore the origins of dissent public relations and to establish its emergence in the context of the ancient Greek comedy represented by Aristophanes. Indeed, Attic Comedy (also known as Old Comedy) was the first great example of today’s mass communication, in which political satire was used to dissent and protest against political and social circumstances in fifth-century BC Athens. This situation was conditioned by the Peloponnesian War and its political, economic and social consequences. From this perspective, this article also constitutes an investigation into the intellectual history of public relations, of which Aristophanes can be considered to be one of the first practitioners.     

Statistical methods for the analysis of high-throughput data based on functional profiles derived from the Gene Ontology

The increasing availability of high-throughput data, that is, massive quantities of molecular biology data arising from different types of experiments such as gene expression or protein microarrays, leads to the necessity of methods for summarizing the available information. As annotation quality improves it is becoming common to rely on biological annotation databases, such as the Gene Ontology (GO), to build functional profiles which characterize a set of genes or proteins using the distribution of their annotations in the database. In this work we describe a statistical model for such profiles, provide methods to compare profiles and develop inferential procedures to assess this comparison. An R-package implementing the methods will be available at publication time.     

Three dimensions of effective mission implementation

Mission statements are generally considered an important tool for strategy implementation. However, several authors have shown that there is a ‘hole’ in the mission theory, which in practice explains the inconsistency in mission statements in many companies because of the lack of motivation related to the mission. This article aims to bridge this gap by analysing the relationship between the mission of a company and its members' motivation. It entails an extension of the mission theory, in which three dimensions of mission development are analysed: formal, dynamic and motivational. On the basis of this framework, three forms of mission consistency are considered to explain the effectiveness of mission implementation: authenticity, coherence and integrity.     

Clan information market games

We introduce a TU-game that describes a market where information is distributed among several agents and all these pieces of information are necessary to produce a good. This situation will be called clan information market. The class of the corresponding TU-games, the clan information market games (CIGs), is a subset of the class of clan games. We provide some well-known point solutions for CIGs in terms of the market data.     

A POLITICAL ECONOMY THEORY OF PARTIAL DECENTRALIZATION

We revisit the classic problem of tax competition in the context of federal nations, and derive a positive theory of partial decentralization. A capital poor median voter chooses to use redistributive capital taxes to provide public goods. The expectation of high capital taxes, however, results in a small capital stock which lowers returns to redistribution. The median voter therefore wants to commit to a lower level of capital taxes. She does so by setting a partial degree of decentralization in the Constitution. The equilibrium degree of decentralization balances the positive effect of tax competition on capital taxes with the loss in redistribution that results. We show that the degree of decentralization is nonmonotonic in inequality, increasing in the redistributive efficiency of public good provision, and decreasing in capital productivity. When public goods are heterogeneous in their capacity to transfer funds, all voters agree that goods with high redistributive capacity should be decentralized.     

The right to education of children and youngsters from refugee families in Europe#

Abstract

The right to education of children and youth from asylum seeker and refugee families is currently being threatened in Europe. Two factors explain this: the sudden and disorganised arrival of large numbers of asylum seeker families, and the inconsistent integration of those seeking refugee status and those who have gained such status. The actual implementation of the right to education for asylum seekers and refugees is a result of a complex combination of factors related to the asylum seeking process: demographic, psychological, economic, legal and sociological. Asylum seeker and refugee education are impacted significantly by these factors. This paper tries to explore whether EU Member States are coping successfully with such dimensions. We provide information on the current situation in Europe, as well as a summary of the latest policy recommendations aimed at improving the present situation.     

Entropy measures associated with j-divergences

This paper shows the different entropy measures which originate from the distance, in the sense of the J-divergences, between one distribution and the reference distribution.

Here are studied several conditions for the concavity and non-negativity of the proposed measure, and the reference distribution is characterized by the Dalton–Pielou condition.

At last, an interpretation of the and ψ-entropies is gotten, from the distance between one distribution and the equilibrium distribution.     

Understanding Investment Irreversibility in General Equilibrium

In general equilibrium, irreversibility affects both the wealth of consumers and the return on assets. As long as the inter-temporal elasticity of substitution is realistically low, irreversibility not only prevents capital destruction, but it also induces capital creation. Furthermore, under certain conditions, irreversibility raises the risk premium by increasing the variability of consumption and market portfolio. These issues are dealt in a simple model of investment irreversibility with multiple types of capital. Its tractability allows for analytical results which explain the contrast between the consequences of irreversibility for individual markets and the consequences of irreversibility for the whole economy.     

民族主义与联邦主义

作为一种社会政治思想的民族主义论述的是民族与国家应当一体的理由,而作为一种社会政治运动的民族主义却难以实现民族与国家的一体。由此,民族主义理论与实践的矛盾,困扰了人类社会数百年,并引起各种民族冲突。本文作者从分析文化民族、政治民族与法律民族的关系入手,试图为民族主义建立一种框架,并认为基于政治民族和法律民族的国家民族主义终将取代基于文化民族之分的联邦主义。