Halakha and Morality: A Few Methodological Considerations

This paper argues that the current discussion on the relationship between morality and halakha tends to confuse philosophical, historical, ideological and jurisprudential issues. It claims that the philosophical question of whether or not morality is dependent on religion should be separated from the historical question of how Jewish thinkers perceived the relationship between divine command and morality and from the question of the actual role played by moral considerations in the history of halakha. Similarly, the jurisprudential question regarding the formalistic nature of the law should be separated from the internal, halakhic question regarding the weight that should be assigned to formalistic, as opposed to substantive, considerations in halakha. The only way to understand the role of moral considerations in halakha as an historical phenomenon is through comprehensive inductive research on the role of moral considerations in halakha together with an investigation into the way experts in halakha viewed this role

The Historical and Cultural Roots of Harsh Punishment

James Q. Whitman, Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide between America and Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. 311. $40. America perceives itself and is perceived by others as part of the liberal West. Yet, at least in the area of punishment, argues James Whitman from the Yale Law School, America no longer belongs in this liberal company. Because of its tough-on-crime ideology and practice in the last twentyfive years, America has edged its way into the embarrassing company of countries like Iran, Nigeria, China, and even Nazi Germany. The comparison with Nazism might sound to the reader as exaggerated, yet, argues Whitman, one cannot ignore the analogy between the Nazi turn towards retributivism and the current direction in America. At least with regard to ordinary criminals (unlike political dissidents, Jews etc.), there was a shade more of a drive toward dignity, and even mildness, in punishment in Nazi Germany, than there is in America today !\u27 I start with this provocative claim to give the readers a sense of the depth of the divide between America and Europe in their attitudes towards punishment. The difference is expressed not only in the American attitude towards capital punishment, an issue with which everybody is familiar, and in the new shame sanctions, penalties which would be unthinkable in Europe. Harshness of legal systems can express itself in various forms and on different levels and, on Whitman\u27s view, America\u27s legal system is harsher than Europe\u27s in all respects: America criminalizes a wider variety of conduct than Europe does (especially in the realm of commerce and sex); it subjects more classes of people to potential criminal liability (especially minors); the punishments it imposes are far less flexible and less individualized; its punishments are far more severe (American convicts serve sentences roughly five to ten times as long as their French counterparts); America is far less sensitive than Europe to the dignitary needs of inmates (e.g. privacy); and finally, the granting of pardons is much less common in America than in Europe

Perinatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Injury Enhances Quisqualic Acid-Stimulated Phosphoinositide Turnover

In an experimental model of perinatal hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, we examined quisqualic acid (Quis)-stimulated phosphoinositide (PPI) turnover in hippocampus and striatum. To produce a unilateral forebrain lesion in 7-day-old rat pups, the right carotid artery was ligated and animals were then exposed to moderate hypoxia (8% oxygen) for 2.5 h. Pups were killed 24 h later and Quis-stimulated PPI turnover was assayed in tissue slices obtained from hippocampus and striatum, target regions for hypoxic-ischemic injury. The glutamate agonist Quis (10 -4 M ) preferentially stimulated PPI hydrolysis in injured brain. In hippocampal slices of tissue derived from the right cerebral hemisphere, the addition of Quis stimulated accumulation of inositol phosphates by more than ninefold (1,053 ± 237% of basal, mean ± SEM, n = 9). In contrast, the addition of Quis stimulated accumulation of inositol phosphates by about fivefold in the contralateral hemisphere (588 ± 134%) and by about sixfold in controls (631 ± 177%, p < 0.005, comparison of ischemic tissue with control). In striatal tissue, the corresponding values were 801 ± 157%, 474 ± 89%, and 506 ± 115% (p < 0.05). In contrast, stimulation of PPI turnover elicited by the cho-linergic agonist carbamoylcholine, (10 -4 or 10 -2 M ) was unaffected by hypoxia-ischemia. The results suggest that prior exposure to hypoxia-ischemia enhances coupling of excitatory amino acid receptors to phospholipase C activity. This activation may contribute to the pathogenesis of irreversible brain injury and/or to mechanisms of recovery.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66017/1/j.1471-4159.1988.tb01046.x.pd

Transient Hypoxia Alters Striatal Catecholamine Metabolism in Immature Brain: An In Vivo Microdialysis Study

Microdialysis probes were inserted bilaterally into the striatum of 7-day-old rat pups (n = 30) to examine extracellular fluid levels of dopamine, its metabolites 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) and homovanillic acid (HVA), and the serotonin metabolite 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA). The dialysis samples were assayed by HPLC with electrochemical detection. Baseline levels, measured after a 2-h stabilization period, were as follows: dopamine, not detected; DOPAC, 617 ± 33 fmol/min; HVA, 974 ± 42 fmol/min; and 5-HIAA, 276 ± 15 fmol/min. After a 40-min baseline sampling period, 12 animals were exposed to 8% oxygen for 120 min. Hypoxia produced marked reductions in the striatal extracellular fluid levels of both dopamine metabolites ( p < 0.001 by analysis of variance) and a more gradual and less prominent reduction in 5-HIAA levels ( p < 0.02 by analysis of variance), compared with controls (n = 12) sampled in room air. In the first hour after hypoxia, DOPAC and HVA levels rose quickly, whereas 5-HIAA levels remained suppressed. The magnitude of depolarization-evoked release of dopamine (elicited by infusion of potassium or veratrine through the microdialysis probes for 20 min) was evaluated in control and hypoxic animals. Depolarization-evoked dopamine efflux was considerably higher in hypoxic pups than in controls: hypoxic (n = 7), 257 ± 32 fmol/min; control (n = 12), 75 ± 14 fmol/min ( p < 0.001 by analysis of variance). These data demonstrate that a brief exposure to moderate hypoxia markedly disrupts striatal catecholamine metabolism in the immature rodent brain.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66218/1/j.1471-4159.1990.tb01914.x.pd

Strategies used as spectroscopy of financial markets reveal new stylized facts

We propose a new set of stylized facts quantifying the structure of financial markets. The key idea is to study the combined structure of both investment strategies and prices in order to open a qualitatively new level of understanding of financial and economic markets. We study the detailed order flow on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange of China for the whole year of 2003. This enormous dataset allows us to compare (i) a closed national market (A-shares) with an international market (B-shares), (ii) individuals and institutions and (iii) real investors to random strategies with respect to timing that share otherwise all other characteristics. We find that more trading results in smaller net return due to trading frictions. We unveiled quantitative power laws with non-trivial exponents, that quantify the deterioration of performance with frequency and with holding period of the strategies used by investors. Random strategies are found to perform much better than real ones, both for winners and losers. Surprising large arbitrage opportunities exist, especially when using zero-intelligence strategies. This is a diagnostic of possible inefficiencies of these financial markets.Comment: 13 pages including 5 figures and 1 tabl

Overconfident Investors, Predictable Returns, and Excessive Trading

The last several decades have witnessed a shift away from a fully rational paradigm of financial markets toward one in which investor behavior is influenced by psychological biases. Two principal factors have contributed to this evolution: a body of evidence showing how psychological bias affects the behavior of economic actors; and an accumulation of evidence that is hard to reconcile with fully rational models of security market trading volumes and returns. In particular, asset markets exhibit trading volumes that are high, with individuals and asset managers trading aggressively, even when such trading results in high risk and low net returns. Moreover, asset prices display patterns of predictability that are difficult to reconcile with rational-expectations–based theories of price formation. In this paper, we discuss the role of overconfidence as an explanation for these patterns

Initial Public Offerings and the Firm Location

The firm geographic location matters in IPOs because investors have a strong preference for newly issued local stocks and provide abnormal demand in local offerings. Using equity holdings data for more than 53,000 households, we show the probability to participate to the stock market and the proportion of the equity wealth is abnormally increasing with the volume of the IPOs inside the investor region. Upon nearly the universe of the 167,515 going public and private domestic manufacturing firms, we provide consistent evidence that the isolated private firms have higher probability to go public, larger IPO underpricing cross-sectional average and volatility, and less pronounced long-run under-performance. Similar but opposite evidence holds for the local concentration of the investor wealth. These effects are economically relevant and robust to local delistings, IPO market timing, agglomeration economies, firm location endogeneity, self-selection bias, and information asymmetries, among others. Findings suggest IPO waves have a strong geographic component, highlight that underwriters significantly under-estimate the local demand component thus leaving unexpected money on the table, and support state-contingent but constant investor propensity for risk