Cognitive abilities,self-efficacy,and financial behavior

This paper investigates the effect of cognitive abilities on financial behavior among older adults. Using the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, I find that cognitive abilities significantly affect financial behavior through two channels: ability and self-efficacy. People with higher cognition scores achieve better financial outcomes. This positive association is especially strong in tasks having high demand of cognitive abilities, which confirms the ability channel of the cognitive ability effect. In addition, there is evidence for the self-efficacy channel as a secondary source of cognitive influence. Lower cognitive abilities decrease people’s sense of self-efficacy, which, in turn, significantly decreases financial management efficiency. The findings have important policy implications, specifically that more effort is needed to assist the growing older population through the cognitive aging process and that noncognitive skills, as a secondary source of influence, also warrant attention.     

Changing Frameworks in Attitudes Toward Abortion

For more than two decades, legal abortion has been the subject of heated political debate and adversarial social movement activity; however, national polls have shown little change in aggregate levels of support for abortion. This analysis examines how the determinants of abortion attitudes have changed between 1977 and 1996, using data from the General Social Surveys. While in early time periods, whites were more approving of abortion than blacks, that pattern had reversed by the late 1980s. After controlling for other factors, older people are more accepting of abortion throughout the two decades, while gender is generally unrelated to abortion views. Catholic religion weakens slightly as a predictor of abortion attitudes, while religious fundamentalism and political liberalism increase in explanatory power. The associations between attitudinal correlates and abortion approval also change over this time period. Religiosity becomes a less powerful predictor of abortion attitudes, while respondents' attitude toward sexual freedom and belief in the sanctity of human life increase in their predictive power. Support for gender inequality remains a weak but stable predictor of abortion attitudes. This pattern of results suggests that the public is influenced more by the pro-life framework of viewing abortion than by the pro-choice perspective.     

Stigma, HIV/AIDS and prevention of mother-to-child transmission in Zambia

This report evaluates the extent of perceived and enacted HIV/AIDS-related stigma in a rural setting in Zambia. Stigmatisation is abundant, ranging from subtle actions to the most extreme degradation, rejection and abandonment. Women with HIV and pregnant women assumed to be HIV positive are repeatedly subjected to extensive forms of stigma, particularly once they become sick or if their child dies. Despite increasing access to prevention of mother to child transmission initiatives, including anti-retroviral drugs, the perceived disincentives of HIV testing, particularly for women, largely outweigh the potential gains from available treatments. HIV/AIDS related stigma drives the epidemic underground and is one of the main reasons that people do not wish to know their HIV status. Unless efforts to reduce stigma are, as one peer educator put it, “written in large letters in any HIV/AIDS campaign rather than small”, stigma will remain a major barrier to curbing the HIV/AIDS pandemic.     

德国行政赔偿制度的特色与成因

德国行政赔偿制度有着不同于大陆法系国家和普通法系国家行政赔偿制度的特色,这种特色突出体现在行政赔偿基础的赔偿请求权和对行政赔偿案件进行救济的赔偿审理制度两个方面。德国行政赔偿制度的特色是由在漫长的历史过程中所形成的思想因素、制度因素和文化因素造就而成。     

试论权利的演变及其成本——基于政府实现公共利益能力的视角

无论从任何角度考察，权利都以政府的巨大财政成本作为后盾，否则权利便无从实现。当现代政府的公共利益责任与权利成本发生矛盾时，如何协调二者之间的关系，将权利成本最小化、公共利益最大化，就成为理论界与实务界必须承担的责任。     

知识产权·人权·发展

现有的知识产权制度正在朝着保护经济利益的方向发展,也因此引发了世界范围内关于知识产权与人权问题上的争论。知识产权的提出与制度化发展是人类社会发展的必然结果,具有哲学、经济学上的合理性。从本质上看,知识产权属于私权。但同时知识产权也属于发展权的一个重要组成部分。只有对知识产权的发展权本质进行深入的探讨和研究,才能把握知识产权发展思想的真谛和实现知识产权制度的价值目标。     

《史记》“互见法”再论

<史记>叙事首创"互见法",取得了很高的艺术成就.然而,今人在嘉许<史记>"互见法"首创价值的时候,对部分互见文字的真伪要谨慎,还应看到<史记>"互见法"体系并不完备,<史记>"互见法"的运用还不很自觉,特别是"互见法"对于今人还原<史记>"一家之言"的哲学真相有很大的干扰.     

Unmanaging public relations: Reclaiming complex practice in pursuit of global consent

Globalisation raises numerous problems for contemporary public relations theory. In a world where the geographic reach of organisations routinely spans cultures and nation states and where issues of culture, economics and politics are inseparably intertwined, the discipline of public relations has established a distance from the immediacy of the marketplace, failed to fully engage with discussions of culture. By taking a relentlessly managerialist approach, theorists have also failed to recognise the true complexity of public relations practice and this has marginalised aspects of practice that, though nebulous and intangible, are none the less real. This paper argues that attention needs to shift towards the complexities of practice, in order to recapture and theorise a distinctive occupational field with the aim of better understanding the relationship between universal humanising principles, on the one hand, and the purposive demands of capital, on the other; the attempt to theorise how public relations makes profitable sense in society. The paper was prompted by the author's reflections on auto-ethnographic research into the public relations field, part of an ongoing research project.     

近代新式中国史撰述的开端——论清末中国历史教科书的形式与特点

清末中国历史教科书的编纂与中国通史的撰述,因为编撰性质不同而不应将两者完全等同一致。关注中国历史教科书的编纂与中国通史的撰述之特点及其相互关系,更可得见当时新旧史学转换的种种特征在历史撰述中的具体表现。清末中国历史教科书的编纂通常被认为是开始使用了章节体,其实仍以使用纪事本末体为主,编纂形式新意无多,而其划分历史阶段的分期观念,以及受此影响而在历史叙事方式等方面的改变,其学术意义则不可忽视。清末出现的多种中国历史教科书实际上成为近代新式中国史撰述的开端。