1,129 research outputs found

    How to Sell a (Bankrupt) Company

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    The restructuring of a bankrupt company often entails the sale of such company. This paper suggests a way to sell the company that maximizes the creditors' proceeds. The key to this proposal is the option left to the creditors to retain a fraction of the shares of the company. Indeed, by retaining the minority stake, creditors reduce to a minimum the rents that the sale of the company leaves in the hands of the buyer.Bankruptcy, control stakes, auction

    Plato's Phaedo: Selected Papers From the Eleventh Symposium Platonicum

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    The paper deals with the "deuteros plous", literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s "Phaedo", the key passage being Phd. 99e4–100a3. The second voyage refers to what Plato’s Socrates calls his “flight into the logoi”. Elaborating on the subject, the author first (I) provides a non-standard interpretation of the passage in question, and then (II) outlines the philosophical problem that it seems to imply, and, finally, (III) tries to apply this philosophical problem to the "ultimate final proof" of immortality and to draw an analogy with the ontological argument for the existence of God, as proposed by Descartes in his 5th "Meditation". The main points are as follows: (a) the “flight into the logoi” can have two different interpretations, a common one and an astonishing one, and (b) there is a structural analogy between Descartes’s ontological argument for the existence of God in his 5th "Meditation" and the "ultimate final proof" for the immortality of the soul in the "Phaedo"

    The pythagoren community : typology and identity

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    Os modelos gregos clássicos de associações são fundamentalmente de dois tipos: o thíasos e a hetairía. Enquanto o primeiro está mais diretamente ligado à prática comum de cultos, à partilha de ritos e saberes mistéricos, a hetairía está mais ligada à idéia de uma associação de philoí, no sentido político de aliados e confrades que se encontram em um clube privado. A comunidade pitagórica é quase que unanimamente considerada pela tradição uma hetairía, e todavia muitas de suas características remeteriam mais claramente para o modelo do thíasos. Ambas as definições não parecem dar conta das singularidades da koinonía, que caracteriza o modo de vida pitagórico. ______________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTClassical Greek models of association can be divided into two major types: the thíasos and the hetairía. While the first is more directly connected with the common practice of religious ritual, with the sharing of rites and knowledge of the mysteries, the hetairía is closely connected with the idea of an association of philoí, in the political sense usually attributed to it, of allies and comrades in a private group. The Pythagorean community is considered to be a hetairía, but many of its characteristics point to the model of a thíasos. However, neither definition seems to fit the singularities of koinonía which characterize the Pythagorean way of living

    The pitagoric origins of the philosophical method : the use of archaí as methodological principles in Philolaus

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    A história do termo arché parece apontar para uma redefinição platônico-aristotélica de um conceito arcaico, ligado inicialmente ao uso jônico do termo para expressar um ponto-de-partida cronológico. Aristóteles, em Metafísica A, transforma o significado das archaí que a passam a significar princípios explicativos do real, e neste sentido, equivalentes ao termo aitíai (causas). Apesar da maioria dos estudiosos atribuir a Aristóteles a descoberta desse uso, um estudo comparativo do termo no Corpus Hipocraticus, nos fragmentos originários do pitagórico Filolau, datados na segunda metade do V século, revela-se que esta literatura antecipa o uso da arché no sentido de princípios metodológicos para a pesquisa filosófica. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTThe history of the term arché, seems to point to a Platonic-Aristotelian redefinition of an archaic concept, initially related to the Ionic use of the term to express a chronological starting point. Aristotle gives a new sense to archaí, which receive the meaning of principles to explain the real, and, in this sense, are equivalent to the term aitiai. This paper intends to demonstrate that, before Aristotle, this aspect can already be observed in the Hippocratic Corpus and the fragments of Philolaus

    Parmenides' path : on psilosophy and Katábasis in the prologue of the poem

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    À margem das apressadas generalizações aristotélicas, este artigo se propõe remastigar o prólogo do poema Sobre a Natureza de Parmênides, em busca de uma compreensão profunda da relação entre a filosofia que nasce e as práticas de katábasis, de descida ao mundo dos mortos. Ocasião para redescobrir a beleza de um diálogo, antigo entre a reflexão filosófica e o vasto mundo da sabedoria em suas formas mais arcaicas. Possibilidade de repensar as categorias fundamentais de nossa historiografia filosófica. _______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTPutting Aristotle's hurried generalizations to one side, we re-examine the prologue of Parmenides' Poem On Nature with the aim of reaching a deeper understanding of the relationship between this newly created Philosophy and the practices of katábasis, or of descent to the world of the dead. This enables us to rediscover the beauty of an ancient dialogue between philosophical reflection and the vast world of knowledge in its most archaic forms, and thus to rethink the fundamental categories of our philosophical historiography

    Monitoring Managers: Does it Matter?

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    We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly Communist countries coupled with detailed ‘hard’ information about the board’s performance expectations and ‘soft’ information about board and CEO actions and the board’s beliefs about CEO competence in 473 mostly private-sector companies backed by private equity funds between 1993 and 2008. We find that CEOs are fired when the company underperforms relative to the board’s expectations, suggesting that boards use performance to update their beliefs. CEOs are especially likely to be fired when evidence has mounted that they are incompetent and when board power has increased following corporate governance reforms. In contrast, CEOs are not fired when performance deteriorates due to factors deemed explicitly to be beyond their control, nor are they fired for making ‘honest mistakes.’ Following forced CEO turnover, companies see performance improvements and their investors are considerably more likely to eventually sell them at a profit.Corporate Governance, Large Shareholders, Boards of Directors, CEO Turnover, Legal Reforms, Transition Economies, Private Equity

    No tempo de Asclépio : a suposta engenharia genética de Platão

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    A descrição do papel da medicina no Livro III da República pode facilmente deixar o leitor constrangido. O trecho defende que a medicina deveria se espelhar nas práticas do tempo de Asclépio. Neste tempo, a medicina tinha um papel político de não prolongar a vida dos cidadãos tomados pela doença, nem deixá-los procriar. Frente a estas declarações, surgiram várias interpretações que vão desde o totalitarismo de Popper até a ironia de Strauss. Para uma melhor compreensão do texto, seria necessária a interlocução com a medicina hipocrática e com as práticas médicas do tempo dos séculos V e IV aEN. Contudo, a passagem em questão não se reduz ao contexto histórico, mas apresenta uma crítica válida ainda na atualidade. _______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTThe description of the role of medicine in Book III of the Republic could easily embarrassed the reader. The section argues that the medicine should be reflected in the Asclepius time practices. At this time, the medicine had a political role not to prolong the lives of citizens taken by the disease and not let them breed. Faced with these statements, there have been various interpretations ranging from the totalitarianism of Popper to Strauss’ irony. For a better understanding of the text, it would be necessary to dialogue with the Hippocratic medicine and medical practices of the time of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. However, the passage in question is not confined to the historical context, but it has a valid criticism even today

    Philosophy and the challenges of the twenty-first century in debate

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    A UNESCO no Brasil e a Cátedra UNESCO Archai da Universidade de Brasília (UnB) organizaram no dia 19 de novembro de 2015 um Hangout UNESCO, programa de bate-papo online da UNESCO no Brasil, em celebração ao Dia Mundial da Filosofia 2015. O evento teve como tema os desafios da filosofia para o século XXI. A gravação video do hangout está disponível no endereço . O hangout foi produzido pelo Prof. Gabriele Cornelli, Coordenador da Cátedra UNESCO Archai da UnB, com o auxílio de Renato Brandão, Pós-Doutorando na mesma Cátedra. Participaram do hangout os professores Vinicius Berlendis Figueiredo (Universidade Federal do Paraná), Alexandre Sá (Universidade de Coimbra), Maria Cecília de Miranda Coelho (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) e Fernando Santoro (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro). A mediação foi de Ana Lúcia Guimarães, Coordenadora da Unidade de Comunicação da UNESCO Brasil.A UNESCO no Brasil e a Cátedra UNESCO Archai da Universidade de Brasília (UnB) organizaram no dia 19 de novembro de 2015 um Hangout UNESCO, programa de bate-papo online da UNESCO no Brasil, em celebração ao Dia Mundial da Filosofia 2015. O evento teve como tema os desafios da filosofia para o século XXI

    Questões de gênero em Platão e Eurípedes: corpos antigos e gender performativity

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    O presente artigo propõe uma análise de dois textos clássicos da Antiguidade grega, As Bacantes de Eurípedes e a República de Platão, à luz da teoria contemporânea de gender performativity de Judith Butler. O conceito de gender performativity será apropriado para ilustrar analogamente, mesmo que de forma anacrônica, o quanto que o imaginário grego, apesar de temporalmente distante, pode nos apresentar – seja a partir do discurso filosófico, seja a partir do discurso literário da tragédia grega – bons exemplos para uma das teorias mais sofisticadas, diríamos, no campo dos estudos de gênero hoje. A proposta é a de mostrar de que modo o conteúdo desses dois textos nos permite compreender o debate contemporâneo da teoria crítica das identidades de gênero. Trata-se de identidades fixadas em atos performativos que conformam o gênero ao sexo anatômico, limitando-o a duas possibilidades: masculino ou feminino. Considerando o contexto histórico e as questões que são próprias do mundo grego antigo, a análise aqui proposta nos permitirá jogar luz, especialmente, nas estratégias que Platão e Eurípedes empreenderam no sentido de deslocar as normas de gênero constituídas na pólis. O exame dos textos permitiu-nos identificar que na antiguidade, mas também na contemporaneidade, mesmo que de forma diferente, as discussões das relações de gênero estão ajustadas, principalmente, pelo discurso político a respeito dessas relações.The current article draws on Judith Butler’s gender performativity theory to analyse two classical text of Greek Antiquity – the Bacchae by Euripides and The Republic by Plato. The concept of gender performativity will be used to illustrate analogously even anachronically, how much the Greek imaginary, in spite of being temporally distant, can fruitfully contribute to, what we would identify as one of the most sophisticated contemporary theories in contemporary gender studies, both as this imaginary emerges from the literary discourse of the tragedy or the discourse of philosophy. This will allow us to show how the two above mentioned texts can contribute to the contemporary debate on the critical theory of gender identity, as these are fixed in performative acts that make gender conform to anatomic sex, limiting gender to the two possibilities of masculine or feminine. Considering the historical context and the question that are specific to the world of Ancient Greece, our analysis will permit us to cast light, in particular, on the strategies that Plato and Euripides drew on to disrupt the gender norms of the polis. Examining the texts allows us to argue that in antiquity, as well as in the contemporary world, albeit in different ways, discussions of gender relations are fitted primarily by the political discourse regarding these relations

    Large Shareholders, Private Benefits of Control and Optimal Schemes for Privatization

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    We analyze optimal schemes for privatization in a transitional economy. In many cases, established Western firms are good candidates for large shareholders of a local firm, since the sale of the shares can generate large amount of revenues and furthermore, in the future, the home country can free-ride on the efficiency improvement of the firm. However, not all Western firms are good owners. Some of them are more interested in the private benefit of control than the potential of efficiency improvement. Such Western firms are bad owners in the long run, although they may well be willing to pay a high price to obtain the control right. Assuming that the government cares about a convex combination of sales revenue and the future value of the firm, we show that the optimal scheme is dependent upon the magnitude of the control benefit. Moreover, we show that the number of shares sold is a crucial instrument to attract the most efficient company.Center for Research on Economic and Social Theory, Department of Economics, University of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100862/1/ECON316.pd
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