Can Law and Economics Be Both Practical and Principled?

This article describes important recent developments in normative law and economics, and the difficulties they create for the project of efficiency-based legal reform. After long proceeding without a well articulated moral justification for using economic decision procedures to choose legal rules, scholars have lately begun to devote serious attention to developing a philosophically attractive definition of well-being. At the same time, the empirical side of law and economics is also being enriched with an improved understanding of the complexities of individuals\u27 decision-making behavior. That is where the problems begin. Scholars may have better, more plausible conceptions of well-being in hand, but it is not at all clear how to develop practical techniques for measuring and comparing individuals\u27 gains and losses in well-being, so defined. And at the practical end, behavioral research suggests that the range of individual preferences that economic analysis must accommodate is broader and more complex than was previously assumed. We detail a variety of psychological studies that suggest that individuals often hold law-related preferences: direct preferences about the content and fairness of their legal system. These preferences defy market valuation, yet we argue that they cannot be ignored. Most intriguingly, studies suggest that in some cases people hold a preference that legal decisions should not be made on an economic basis. We describe such anti-utilitarian preferences, collecting evidence of their strength and permanence. In the final part of the article, we offer predictions about the future development of law and economics, in light of its growing theoretical sophistication and the evidence of law-related preferences. The most likely outcomes are: (1) scholars advocating various forms of paternalism, whether by excluding citizens from participation in the legal system or by discounting some types of individual preferences from consideration in choosing policies; or (2) a limited implementation of economic techniques, applying them strongly in some areas of the law but not in others. We discuss the relative strengths and failures of each proposed approach, and offer suggestions for future empirical work. We conclude by giving a tentative answer to the question that titles the article

Yes prime manipulator : a descriptive study of a Chinese translation of British political humour

This is a descriptive study of Chang Nam Fung's Chinese translation of Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay's Yes Prime Minister, a text characterized by British political humour. Adopting a target-oriented approach, it aims primarily to uncover the regularities which mark the relationships between function, process and product of the translated text, thus adding to the limited inventory of case studies in the field. Targeted mainly towards readers in mainland China, the translation was done at a time (1987-1992) when the political scene in the People's Republic went through cycles of repression and relaxation in the face of a democratic movement, while the translation tradition remained one that upheld the primacy of the original -- a poetics that is determined by the ideological concept of loyalty. Working under the constraints of the ideological and poetological norms dominant in China, the translator nevertheless wished to produce a text with artistic value and a potential to function as a political satire in the Chinese context, posing a challenge to those norms. This skopos has determined the use of manipulative strategies in the translation process, The translation product is thus found to have been overdetermined by the interplay of a large number of factors besides the source text: socio-political conditions, literary and translation traditions, and the translator's poetics and ideology. Finally, the findings are brought to bear on a number of translation theories, especially Polysystem theory and other cultural theories of translation in whose frameworks the study has been carried out. An augmented version of the polysystem hypothesis is proposed, the gist of which is that the political and the ideological polysystems, each consisting of competing systems, normally assume central positions in the macro-polysystem of culture, issuing norms that influence norms originating from other polysystems, and that translation activities are governed by norms originating from various polysystems. It is hoped that this tentative 'macro-polysystem hypothesis, after refinement by theorists and test by researchers, can better accommodate investigations into the role of the translator together with other socio-cultural factors involved in translation, especially the power relations

Total algorithms

We define the notion of total algorithms for networks of processes. A total algorithm enforces that a "decision" is taken by a subset of the processes, and that participation of all processes is required to reach this decision. Total algorithms are an important building block in the design of distributed algorithms. For some important network control problems it can be shown that an algorithm solving it is necessarily total, and that any total algorithm can solve the problem. We study some total algorithms for a variety of network topologies. Constructions are shown to derive algorithms for Mutual Exclusion, Election, and Distributed Infirnum Approximation from arbitrary total algorithms. The paper puts many results and paradigms about designing distributed algorithms in a general framework. This report oulines several other works of the author. Total algorithms, their properties, and some additional examples, as well as traversal algorithms and the time complexity of distributed algorithms are studied in [Tel94, Chap.6]. The construction of algorithms for distributed infirnum approximation is treated in [CBT94, Tel86] and [Tel91, Sec. 4.1]

The Strange Case of the Animated Jekyll and the Online Hyde : a documentary study of Korean youth culture and identity

Robert Louis Stevenson s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is the starting point for my practice-led research project. Stevenson's Victorian novella enables me to identify core themes which are pertinent to a discussion of the construction of contemporary identities in Korean youth culture. These identities are exemplified in the creation of avatars the virtual characters of animated online games such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). My animation practice is developed by addressing how Jekyll and Hyde provides useful critical and creative tools, such as gothic imagery and detective thrillers, for looking at the double . This concept is used to investigate the case of a young Korean boy, addicted to online gaming, who committed violent acts. My animated drama-documentary draws on research into the real and virtual Korean worlds and employs a visual ethnographic methodology to test my research question: in what ways can the construction of 'identity' (based on concepts drawn from 'Jekyll and Hyde') be identified in contemporary 'virtual' media (i.e. 'MMORPGs'/the 'animated' documentary), and how does this facilitate an address of the specific case of 'Korea' and 'Korean-ness'? The thesis is structured into five chapters: The Idea of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Theorising Identities in a Korean Context, Theorising Visual Ethnography, Theorising Animated Drama-Documentary, and A Film Practice as Animated Drama-Documentary in Visual Ethnography. Evidence of the research process and findings is located in a series of appendices. Theories about the construction of identity are discussed from three different perspectives: sociology, psychoanalysis and bio-culturalism. In my film practice, I look for the connection between the anxious self and Korean social issues, such as modernisation and the 1997 IMF economic crisis, to account for Korean youth s identity formation through online gaming. My research shows that many South Korean MMORPG users construct identity within contemporary virtual media and that this contributes to a very complex Korean-ness amongst Korean youth. Online gaming has both positive and negative consequences. Immersion in the virtual world can lead to addiction and to the violence which is at the core of my film narrative. It can also result in close online friendships, offering kinship not available in many broken families, or families inhibited in their communication by social roles and expectations, or the effect of economic failure and loss. My practice criticises young Korean people's narrow and limited social environment and proves that they desire liberal expression and decision-making for themselves, which can be experienced through the embodiment of animated avatars in MMORPGs. Hence, the online Hyde , though assumed to be a negative or destructive force, is actually a vehicle for varied and numerous social identities for youth culture preferable to those available in real Korean society. The research mounts a critique of the meaning of the online Hyde , not as a misrepresentative and negative representation of Korean-ness, but as a revelation of its contemporary meaning which can be articulated though animation, a tool which has applications within visual ethnography

Imagining Taiwan : the making and the museological representation of art in Taiwan's quest for identity (1987-2010)

This thesis probes and analyses the critical role of art in the shaping of Taiwan's national identity during the period 1987-2010. With the rise of democratisation and national identity consciousness (bentu yishi), Taiwan's quest for national identity intensified after the lifting of martial law in 1987. The thesis challenges the view that art has played an inconsequential role in this identity discourse by demonstrating that artists, curators and art museums have significantly contributed towards the processes of identity formation, particularly during the peak period of the early-mid 1990s. Focusing on the nature and extent of the contribution of artists, curators and art museums to Taiwan's quest for identity, the thesis explores how national identity narratives were imagined, interpreted, projected and transmitted, nationally and internationally, through the production, selection and exhibition of art from Taiwan. Structurally, the thesis contextualizes each socio-political period, providing the backdrop for a series of case studies. These demonstrate how artists, curators and art museums became active agents in the processes of national identity formation, not only promoting but also critiquing and contesting identity narratives revolving around the concept of a 'Taiwan nation'. Given that national identities are relational and fluid constructs, the thesis reveals how identity discourses in art had diminished in significance by the early twenty-first century when globalisation, the rise of China, and art market forces transformed identity discourses in art from a Taiwan-centred narrative into one embracing not only regional and global perspectives but, most critically, dialogue and exchange with China

The role of zero crossings in speech recognition and processing

Imperial Users onl

Early senescence of rice and Drechslera oryzae in the Wageningen Polder, Surinam

Rice is grown in monoculture in the Wageningen Polder, Surinam, South America, which comprises 10 000 ha of heavy clay soil. Fungal diseases caused appreciable losses of the rice crop in several years. Drechslera oryzae van Breda de Haan was found to be the major pathogen of rice. Its most conspicuous symptoms are leaf spots. Infection by D. oryzae was most severe during the reproductive phase of the rice plant. During that phase, the crop also showed a number of other symptoms such as discoloration of leaves, premature ripening with sterility, root decay, and matted roots. These symptoms together are designated as 'early senescence'. Brown leaf spotting caused by D. oryzae is just one of the group of symptoms constituting the syndrome. Severe infection by D. oryzae indicates poor rice-growing conditions.D. oryzae has the character of a perthophyte. The susceptibility of rice to infection by D. oryzae increases with the age of the plant. The fungus sporulates abundantly only on senescent leaves. Occurrence of epidemics is related to imbalance in development between the vegetative and the generative stages of the rice plant. This imbalance is induced by the incorporation of organic matter in the soil with tillage or the application of large amounts of nitrogen to the crop during the vegetative stage only.Early senescence of rice in the Wageningen Polder can be prevented by good tillage, balanced application of nitrogen, breeding and selection of cultivars specially adapted to marginal growing conditions.Control of D. oryzae with fungicides only takes away one of the causes of crop losses. Application of fungicides has not been economic.<p/

Target status and bidders’ gains

The vast majority of the world's M&A activities are represented by takeovers ofprivately held targets. Yet, this sector of the market for corporate control has received very little attention from academic researchers. This thesis thus sets out to provide a comparative analysis, both theoretically and empirically, of gains to bidders of private targets in relation to gains to bidders of public targets. When targets are privately held as opposed to publicly held or listed, there are reasons to believe that bidders gamer material gains even with full competition. By recognising the possibility that the decision of the owners of a private target to agree to a takeover (i) represents the exit strategy or (ii) is reflective of the passage of the firm through its life cycle, this thesis provides a new perspective on the wealth consequences of private-firm takeovers on bidder shareholders. The empirical analyses in this thesis reveal that not only bidder gains, but also bidder characteristics, distinctly differ between private-firm takeovers and takeovers of public targets or divested subsidiaries. This thesis also provides evidence on the largely unexplored determinants of the choice of payment methods in private-firm takeovers. In several important aspects, the findings contribute to the extant evidence on determinants of payment methods in takeovers of public targets. Considering the costs known to be associated with the decision to go public facing the owners of a privately held company, acquisition by a listed bidder is potentially a costeffective means by which the firm owners can exit or the firm can gain access to funds necessary for financing the unexploited investment opportunities. The common knowledge of the cost savings arising from choosing the takeover route implies that a portion of these savings is also available to be garnered by bidders of private targets. On the other hand, these savings are either trivial or absent when targets already have access to the capital market (i.e., public targets and divested subsidiaries). Given that the bidder is willing to pay the acquisition price that fully reflects its valuation of its target, there is hence no guarantee that the bidder earns positive gains when acquiring a public target whereas the exit costs savings provide a source of ex ante gains to the bidder if it opts for a private target. Around the bid announcement, bidders of private targets are found to earn positive gains. In contrast, when taking into account the event windows leading up to the announcement date, evidence emerges that public-firm bidders experience losses and bidders of divested subsidiaries overall fare no better than breaking-even around the bid announcement. Also at variance with the experience of public-firm takeovers, this thesis documents that announcement-period gains to bidders of private targets are positive irrespective of the payment method and that equity financing in private-firm takeovers leads to larger bidder gains. This positive announcement-period effect of equity financing appears attributable to the positive information about the bidder's prospects rather than the expected performance monitoring by the target owners. Given the considerably small size and closely held ownership of private targets, which are in contrast with public targets and divested subsidiaries, bidders of private targets are unlikely to be motivated by the empire-building objectives. Instead, the characteristics of private targets imply that their bidders maximise the realisation of expected synergies rather than personal utility for the bidder managers. The closely held ownership and small size of private targets also imply that they are much easier to integratethan public targets or divested subsidiaries. The analysis of long-term bidder abnormalreturn reveals that while private-firm bidders breakeven during the post-acquisition period,11 there is evidence that public-finn bidders, and particularly bidders of divested subsidiaries, experience losses. The difference in ownership structure between private targets and public targets also leads to the difference in the change in ownership concentration in the bidders. While equity financing leads to a ceteris paribus increase in ownership concentration in privatefirm bidders, the opposite follows for public-firm bidders. The owners of a private target in an equity offer, as rational large shareholders, have economic incentives to monitor the performance of the bidder managers whereas atomistic shareholders of public targets in an equity offer do not. During the post-acquisition period, equity financing overall leads to a normal rate of return for private-firm bidders. This finding is consistent with the notion of rational pricing that the amount of compensation for the monitoring services by the target owners in equity offers reflects the incremental benefits of the services accruing to other bidder shareholders. In contrast, equity financing results in long-term losses for publicfirm bidders. Considering the differences in the wealth effects on bidder shareholders between private-firm takeovers and public-firm takeovers, this thesis also empirically explores two additional largely neglected issues. First, why do some bidders choose private targets and some others choose public targets or divested subsidiaries? Secondly, why equity financing rather than cash financing is used in some takeovers of private targets and not others (and vice versa)? In the main, the results of investigating the potential factors influencing bidders' target choice decision reveal the importance of managerial ism in the bidder and the pressure to improve growth prospects facing the bidder. However, hubris arising from past performance does not appear to affect bidders' target choice decision. Lll The analysis of the potential determinants of payment methods in private-firm takeovers shows that the level of informational asymmetry in private-firm takeovers is likely to be trivial. The analysis also provides evidence that the choice of payment methods in privatefirm takeovers is ceteris paribus endogenous to the investment objective(s) of the target owners and that agency conflicts in the bidder can deter the target owners who have the objective to hold equity stakes in the combined firm