The sociology of late secularization: social divisions and religiosity

At the start of the twentieth century the religious differed from the religiously indifferent largely in being religious. Now they differ in a number of other social and demographic characteristics that reduce interaction between the two populations further than simple numbers would require. That some of the main carriers of religion are immigrants or adherents of recently imported faiths reinforces the sense that religion is what other people do. In the context of the stock of religious knowledge being depleted and religion‐taken‐too‐seriously being unpopular, the narrow demographic base of the religious makes conversion unlikely and thus makes the reversal of secularization unlikely.     

Time‐change models for asymmetric processes

Many records in environmental sciences exhibit asymmetric trajectories. The physical mechanisms behind these records may lead for example to sample paths with different characteristics at high and low levels (up–down asymmetries) or in the ascending and descending phases leading to time irreversibility (front–back asymmetries). Such features are important for many applications, and there is a need for simple and tractable models that can reproduce them. In this paper, we explore original time‐change models where the clock is a stochastic process that depends on the observed trajectory. The ergodicity of the proposed model is established under general conditions, and this result is used to develop nonparametric estimation procedures based on the joint distribution of the process and its derivative. The methodology is illustrated on meteorological and oceanographic data sets. We show that, combined with a marginal transformation, the proposed methodology is able to reproduce important characteristics of the data set such as marginal distributions, up‐crossing intensity, and up–down and front–back asymmetries.     

现代性与文学思潮

文学思潮不是前苏联文学理论中所谓“创作方法”的应用,创作方法不是一个科学的文学理论概念。文学思潮是文学的历史运动,是对现代性的反应。在不同的历史时期,对现代性的不同立场和态度,产生了不同的文学思潮。现代性发生以前,没有形成文学思潮。现代性开启了时间性,也开启了文学的历史,形成了文学思潮,并推动了文学思潮的变迁。     

International Business Cycle Asymmetry and Time Irreversible Nonlinearities

Using tests of time reversibility, this paper provides further statistical evidence on the long-standing conjecture in economics concerning the potentially asymmetric behaviour of output over the expansionary and contractionary phases of the business cycle. A particular advantage of this approach is that it provides a discriminating test that is instructive as to whether any asymmetries detected are due to asymmetric shocks to a linear model, or an underlying non-linear model with symmetric shocks, and in the latter case is informative as to the potential form of that nonlinear model. Using a long span of international per capita output growth data, the asymmetry detected is overwhelmingly consistent with the long standing perception that the output business cycle is characterized by steeper recessions and longer more gentle expansions, but the evidence for this form of business cycle asymmetry is weaker in the data adjusted for the influence of outliers associated with wars and other extreme events. Statistically significant time irreversibility is reported for the output growth rates of almost all of the countries considered in the full sample data, and there is evidence that this time irreversibility is of a form implying an underlying nonlinear model with symmetrically distributed innovations for 15 of the 22 countries considered. However, the time irreversibility test results for the outlier-trimmed full sample data reveal significant time irreversibility in output growth for around one half of the countries considered, predominantly in Northern Europe and North America, and of a form implying a nonlinear underlying model in only a further half of those cases.     

宽容失败的合理性分析

宽容失败的根据在于系统的一般特性、人类知识的可错性和人类行动的不可逆性。因为系统具有复杂性、不透明性和内在动态性，所以人们对系统可能是无知的，或者只能做出一些错误的假定；与此相应，人们对系统的知识是可错的，所以任何人都不可能拥有绝对真理；人们的行动具有不可逆的特性，所以没有他人对行动后果的宽容，行动者就不可能继续开始创新的行动。因此，我们需要宽容失败。     

社会角色转型与生育水平变动

基于文献研究和走访调研,运用对比分析方法,考察了社会角色现代转型对人口生育水平变动的影响,认为:社会由静态封闭的传统乡村转向开放流动快速变革的现代城镇,这一变迁带来中国人社会角色整体性的根本转型:由群体转向独立,由"家人"转为"社会人",由"熟人"社会转换为"陌生人"社会,社会活动由个体素质主导取代了血缘和宗族的规模依恃;女性则由依附从属性角色走向独立自主。上述各种因素相互作用,共同促成了低生育水平社会的自生成机制,因而中国的低生育水平将难以逆转。     

Decision,irreversibility and flexibility: The irreversibility effect re-examined

In a seminal article C. Henry (1974) presented the irreversibility effect, which pointed out that under uncertainty, the optimal sequence of decisions depends on not only the payoffs, but also the flexibility, in terms of availability of future options, associated with each decision. But the irreversibility effect pertained to certain particular conditions and definitions. In this paper, a more general model is developed to re-examine the notion of an irreversible decision, its relation with flexibility and the irreversibility effect. It is shown through two propositions that the irreversibility effect need not hold always and the notion of irreversibiity can be used only under certain circumstances to derive the optimal sequence of decisions ex-ante.     

Sample Path Asymmetries in Non‐Gaussian Random Processes

We tackle an important although rarely addressed question of accounting for a variety of asymmetries frequently observed in stochastic temporal/spatial records. First, we review some measures intending to capture such asymmetries that have been introduced on various occasions in the past and then propose a family of measures that is motivated by Rice's formula for crossing level distributions of the slope. We utilize those asymmetry measures to demonstrate how a class of second‐order models built on the skewed Laplace distributions can account for sample path asymmetries. It is shown that these models are capable of mimicking not only distributional skewness but also more complex geometrical asymmetries in the sample path such as tilting, front‐back slope asymmetry and time irreversibility. Simple moment‐based estimation techniques are briefly discussed to allow direct application to modelling and fitting actual records.     

不可逆过程的两个基本特征——自组织和随机性

不可逆是复杂世界的本质属性,因而具有普遍性。通过对复杂性科学领域的理论分析和不同学科的案例考察,阐述了自组织和随机性是不可逆过程的两个特征性质,三者之间有机地联系在一起并具有不同的特征表现。随机性效应和自组织理论有其重要的认识意义和应用价值。     

企业投资行为不确定性与实物期权的实证分析

以实物期权定价投资分析思路,实证分析了当投资为不可逆性时不确定性因素是如何对企 业投资决策行为形成影响的机制. 运用四川省、重庆市227 家工业企业1998 —1999 年的面版数据 (panel data set) ,检验了不确定性条件下不可逆投资模型的预测性. 基于企业投资决策者关于未来 企业产出需求主观概率分布的抽样调查信息,构造了企业产出需求的期望方差,作为不确定性因素 的测度. 实证分析结果表明,对于命题不确定性程度越高投资临界水平值就越大,样本企业的数据 信息给予了支持,但对于命题仅当企业资本边际收益产出达到投资临界水平值时企业方才投资,样 本企业的数据信息却缺乏充分证据予以支持,对此现象论文给出了若干解释.