HONORING FRIEDRICH J. BONHOEFFER

A Symposium Honoring Professor Friedrich J. Bonhoefferhttps://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/posters/1112/thumbnail.jp

Analysing French Pension Reforms

In 1982, the French socialist government lead by Pierre Mauroy reduced the legal age of retirement for both men and women. In 1993, the Balladur reform modified the pay-as-you-go basic private scheme. In March 1997, the Parliament enacted the Thomas Act that introduced retirement savings plan, but the law was never enforced because of the political change in June 1997, and was formally abrogated in 2002. Amazingly there seems be a 10 years cycle in French pension system reforms since the French parliament started to examine a new pension reform presented by the French Prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin in June 2003. According to his defender, the project is the most comprehensive and the most ambitious since 1945. Our assessment is more critical: in fact, after a four-month round of negotiations with trade-unions and despite its impressive number of articles (81) the final project is milder than it originally was, with a parametric reform of the first pillar as its main component. This article aims at giving the main features of this reform. The first section presents the context of the reform. The second section is devoted to the main features of the reform, while section 3 gives a critical appraisal, underlines the remaining problems, and raises alternative relevant solutions.Retirement;pays-as-you-go;pensions

Spartan Daily, November 22, 2004

Volume 123, Issue 59https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10063/thumbnail.jp

An Examination of Contemporary Christian Music Success Within Mainstream Rock and Country Billboard Charts

Ranging from inspirational songs void of theological language to worship music imbued with overt religious messages, Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) has a long history of being ill-defined. Due to the genre’s flexible nature, many Christian artists over the years have used vague imagery and secular lyrical content to find favor among mainstream outlets. This study examined the most recent ten-year period of CCM to determine its ability to cross over into the mainstream music scene, while also assessing the impact of its lyrical content and genre on the probability of reaching such mainstream success. For the years 2008-2018, Billboard data were collected for every Christian song on the Hot 100, Hot Rock Songs, or Hot Country Songs in order to detect any noticeable trend regarding the rise or fall of CCM; each song then was coded for theological language. No obvious trend emerged regarding the mainstream success of CCM as a whole, but the genre of Rock was found to possess the greatest degree of mainstream success. Rock also, however, was shown to have a very low tolerance for theological language, contrasted with the high tolerance of Country. As such, it is reasonable to question whether Mainstream Christian Rock is even really Christian at all.

A checklist of the ants of Wyoming (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

The history of myrmrecology in Wyoming began when Fore1 described a new species, obscuripes in the genus Formica from Green River in 1886, four years before Wyoming Territory became a state. There was a long hiatus until 1932 when Cole cited ten records for Pogonomyrmex occidentalis. Since then a dozen authors have published one to many records each. During the summers of 1957, 1958, 1961, 1963, 1964,1965 and 1966, while we were still at the University of North Dakota (Grand Forks), we made a dozen field trips into Wyoming to observe and collect ants in 12 of the 23 counties and in Yellowstone National Park. These expeditions yielded a total of 168 records for 45 species (a record is a species in a locality)

Investment behaviors of the key actors in capitalism: when geography matters

The article investigates the geography of finance via an analysis of the investment behavior of large international equity investors. The main argument is based on the importance of financial markets and capital flows and on the central role played in them by institutional investors, the key actors of capitalism. This paper is original because it introduces geographic criteria, and thus institutional and cultural factors, for understanding the behaviour of investors. We present evidence on the diversity of models of capitalism while questioning the convergence of national economies and markets towards a pattern often termed “the Anglo-Saxon model”.institutional investors, geography of finance, models of capitalism, financial markets

Investment behaviors of the key actors in capitalism: when geography matters

The article investigates the geography of finance via an analysis of the investment behavior of large international equity investors. The main argument is based on the importance of financial markets and capital flows and on the central role played in them by institutional investors, the key actors of capitalism. This paper is original because it introduces geographic criteria, and thus institutional and cultural factors, for understanding the behaviour of investors. We present evidence on the diversity of models of capitalism while questioning the convergence of national economies and markets towards a pattern often termed “the Anglo-Saxon model”.institutional investors, geography of finance, models of capitalism, financial markets

Spartan Daily March 23, 2011

Volume 136, Issue 30https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/1137/thumbnail.jp