Marie-Joseph Lagrange frente a los teólogos hostiles a los exegetas

El presente artículo quiere mostrar cómo a propósito de la controversia modernista se acentuó el debate sobre la compatibilidad entre la teología y la exégesis. Lagrange, tomista convencido, sostenía que un teólogo debe ser también un exegeta y viceversa. En cambio, afamados teólogos tomistas se declaraban contrarios a la crítica bíblica, comprometiendo a la escolástica. El conflicto entre método teológico y método histórico reportó grandes males a la investigación y enfrentó a autores que militaban en el mismo campo. Frente a la postura conciliadora de Lagrange, expuesta en la Revue biblique, se alzan las voces de Billot, Gayraud, Pègues y Fonck, que descalificaban sistemáticamente al teólogo dominico

Rule Versus Discretion: Regulatory Uncertainty, Firm Investment, and the Ally Principle

Previous studies of the bureaucracy have focused on the internal relationship between politicians (principals) and bureaucrats (agents). External regulated actors, such as firms, have generally been ignored. But firms strategically respond to their regulatory environment and regulatory uncertainty can deter investment. We examine how concerns about firms' strategic behavior affect the optimal internal organization of the bureaucracy. When regulatory uncertainty is about how much firms will be regulated, the ally principle applies: the principal delegates to an agent with similar preferences as hers. When regulatory uncertainty is about whether firms will be regulated, the ally principle fails to hold: the principal prefers an inefficient rule-based regulatory framework or, if possible, to delegate to an agent with preferences distinct from hers to encourage firm investment. We uncover novel endogenous limits to delegation since the principal faces a commitment problem not to replace a biased agent after the firm investment

Mass purges: top-down accountability in autocracy

This paper proposes a novel theoretical framework to study the features of mass purges in authoritarian regimes. We contend that mass purges are an instrument of top-down accountability meant to motivate and screen a multitude of agents (e.g., single-party members, state bureaucrats). We show that the set of purged agents is well delineated in mild purges, whereas no performance indicator is a guarantee of safety in violent purges. The proportion of purged agents is non-monotonic in the intensity of violence. For the autocrat, increasing the intensity of violence always raises performance, but it improves the selection of subordinates only if violence is low to begin with. Hence, even absent de jure checks, the autocrat is de facto constrained by her subordinates' strategic behavior. We use historical (including the Soviet purges and the Cultural Revolution) and recent (the Erdogan purge) events to illustrate our key theoretical findings

Rule versus discretion: regulatory uncertainty, firm investment, and bureaucratic organization

As markets evolve, new regulatory concerns emerge. In response, policy makers institute new requirements for private businesses. Because they impose costs and generate uncertainty, these requirements may deter firm investment. To reduce regulatory uncertainty and favor investment, a principal can choose a rule-based regulatory framework. However, unlike discretion, rules do not adapt to circumstances and are thus inefficient. Using a micro-founded model, we uncover circumstances under which the ex ante certainty provided by a rule dominates the ex post efficiency provided by delegation to an unbiased agent. We also establish when delegating to a biased agent is optimal for a policy maker. Our main results highlight that the anticipated economic responses of firms can indirectly influence the organization of the bureaucracy. As such, any attempt to evaluate firms’ direct influence in the rule-making process—through lobbying or information disclosure—needs to establish the proper counterfactual that accounts for the indirect effects this article identifies

The Lobbyist’s Dilemma: Gatekeeping and the Profit Motive

We consider a model of lobbying in which an interest group can directly solicit a policy favor from a politician, or transmit her request through an external lobbyist on a fee-for-service basis. The lobbyist’s value derives from her ability to investigate and screen clients according to the political merits of their request. However, her ability to extract that value in the form of profits is also dependent on the equilibrium credibility of her messages to the politician. Inspired by recent empirical results, we use the model to examine the effect of connections between the lobbyist and the politician, their ideological alignment, and the informational environment on the profitability of lobbyists, the price of lobbying services, and the welfare politicians

An evidence-based framework for predicting the impact of differing autotroph-heterotroph thermal sensitivities on consumer-prey dynamics

Increased temperature accelerates vital rates, influencing microbial population and wider ecosystem dynamics, for example, the predicted increases in cyanobacterial blooms associated with global warming. However, heterotrophic and mixotrophic protists, which are dominant grazers of microalgae, may be more thermally sensitive than autotrophs, and thus prey could be suppressed as temperature rises. Theoretical and meta-analyses have begun to address this issue, but an appropriate framework linking experimental data with theory is lacking. Using ecophysiological data to develop a novel model structure, we provide the first validation of this thermal sensitivity hypothesis: increased temperature improves the consumer’s ability to control the autotrophic prey. Specifically, the model accounts for temperature effects on auto- and mixotrophs and ingestion, growth and mortality rates, using an ecologically and economically important system (cyanobacteria grazed by a mixotrophic flagellate). Once established, we show the model to be a good predictor of temperature impacts on consumer–prey dynamics by comparing simulations with microcosm observations. Then, through simulations, we indicate our conclusions remain valid, even with large changes in bottom-up factors (prey growth and carrying capacity). In conclusion, we show that rising temperature could, counterintuitively, reduce the propensity for microalgal blooms to occur and, critically, provide a novel model framework for needed, continued assessment

High Genetic Diversity and Fine-Scale Spatial Structure in the Marine Flagellate Oxyrrhis marina (Dinophyceae) Uncovered by Microsatellite Loci

Free-living marine protists are often assumed to be broadly distributed and genetically homogeneous on large spatial scales. However, an increasing application of highly polymorphic genetic markers (e.g., microsatellites) has provided evidence for high genetic diversity and population structuring on small spatial scales in many free-living protists. Here we characterise a panel of new microsatellite markers for the common marine flagellate Oxyrrhis marina. Nine microsatellite loci were used to assess genotypic diversity at two spatial scales by genotyping 200 isolates of O. marina from 6 broad geographic regions around Great Britain and Ireland; in one region, a single 2 km shore line was sampled intensively to assess fine-scale genetic diversity. Microsatellite loci resolved between 1–6 and 7–23 distinct alleles per region in the least and most variable loci respectively, with corresponding variation in expected heterozygosities (He) of 0.00–0.30 and 0.81–0.93. Across the dataset, genotypic diversity was high with 183 genotypes detected from 200 isolates. Bayesian analysis of population structure supported two model populations. One population was distributed across all sampled regions; the other was confined to the intensively sampled shore, and thus two distinct populations co-occurred at this site. Whilst model-based analysis inferred a single UK-wide population, pairwise regional FST values indicated weak to moderate population sub-division (0.01–0.12), but no clear correlation between spatial and genetic distance was evident. Data presented in this study highlight extensive genetic diversity for O. marina; however, it remains a substantial challenge to uncover the mechanisms that drive genetic diversity in free-living microorganisms

Multitrophic Interactions in the Sea: Assessing the Effect of Infochemical-Mediated Foraging in a 1-d Spatial Model

The release of chemicals following herbivore grazing on primary producers may provide feeding cues to carnivorous predators, thereby promoting multitrophic interactions. In particular, chemicals released following grazing on phytoplankton by microzooplankton herbivores have been shown to elicit a behavioural foraging response in carnivorous copepods, which may use this chemical information as a mechanism to locate and remain within biologically productive patches of the ocean. In this paper, we use a 1D spatial reaction-diffusion model to simulate a tri-trophic planktonic system in the water column, where predation at the top trophic level (copepods) is affected by infochemicals released by the primary producers forming the bottom trophic level. The effect of the infochemical-mediated predation is investigated by comparing the case where copepods forage randomly to the case where copepods adjust their vertical position to follow the distribution of grazing-induced chemicals. Results indicate that utilization of infochemicals for foraging provides fitness benefits to copepods and stabilizes the system at high nutrient load, whilst also forming a possible mechanism for phytoplankton bloom formation. We also investigate how the copepod efficiency to respond to infochemicals affects the results, and show that small increases (2%) in the ability of copepods to sense infochemicals can promote their persistence in the system. Finally we argue that effectively employing infochemicals for foraging can be an evolutionarily stable strategy for copepods