HABITS AND THE SAVINGS-GROWTH RELATIONSHIP Why US Personal Savings Rates Are At Historic Lows

In this paper we show that the solution to the standard consumer maximisation problem which is augmented by habit-persistence can imply a positive and linear relationship between changes in the level of savings and changes in present income. We show that these savings-income dynamics contrast with the orthodox view that the level of the savings rate is related to the present growth rate of income. The model also implies that if expectations of future changes in income are positive and present income itself is stationary, then the level of consumption tends to converge on income over time and savings fall. In these circumstances the standard model predicts that the level of savings and consumption remain constant. Using personal savings and disposable income time series data, we show that a simple bivariate version of the habits-augmented model which assumes constant expectations of future changes in income and strong habit persistence performs extremely well in terms of explaining the dynamics of post-war United States personal savings rates; in particular their recent decline to historic lows.Savings Consumption Habits Growth

Aporias of Subversion

Based upon case studies from the fields of media production, literature, theatre, film and television, visual arts, and fashion, this volume questions the political meanings of subversive aesthetics today. Through the exemplary analysis of diverse strategies and aporias that surround them, the authors offer proposals for redefining the notion of subversion. This redefinition includes pluralization of the notion of subversion, focusing on its productive rather than disruptive dimension, and self-critical engagement with subversive tropes

Correspondence Between Myth and Knowledge: Ernst Cassirer’s Cultural Philosophy and Its Legacy

The Persistence of Myth as Symbolic Form collects papers from an international conference organised by the Centre for Intercultural Studies at the University of Glasgow (16-18.9.2005). The volume, edited by Paul Bishop and Roger H. Stephenson, explores the potential of Ernst Cassirer’s concept of myth for contemporary issues in cultural theory and investigates the scope of influences essential to his thinking. Drawing from philosophical, historical, anthropological, literary, aesthetic, scientific and political perspectives, the authors home in on the central question: in what ways can knowledge productively address the irrefutable power of myth?&nbsp

Visual Aesthetics of Transgression

The edited volume Maßlose Bilder. Visuelle Ästhetik der Transgression (Immoderate Images. Visual Aesthetics of Transgression) introduces a concept of transgression as a critical device in order to question the aesthetic, ethical, and epistemological predicaments assigned to visual media. The attempt to transgress the confines of the visible and the ostensible is not only a major feature of modern art, but also a decisive constituent of an ethics of perception and a self-reflective image production, which also challenges a presupposition of scientific reliability. The contributors to this volume come from the fields of art theory, philosophy, theory of media, theatre, film, and architecture, as well as from the fields of astrophysics, mathematics, and physiology. The editors Ingeborg Reichle and Steffen Siegel are members of the interdisciplinary group Bildkulturen (Visual Cultures) at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science

A study of conservation laws of dynamical systems by means of the differential variational principles of Jourdain and Gauss

International audienceIn this report we consider the possibility of using the differential variational principles of Jourdain and Gauss as a starting point for the study of conservation laws of holonomic conservative and nonconservative dynamical systems with a finite number of degrees of freedom. We demonstrate that this approach has the same status as the method based on the D'Alembert's differential variational principle developed in a previous paper

Applications of gauss's principle of least constraint to the nonlinear heat-transfer problem

International audienceAn approximate direct method for solving linear and nonlinear heat conduction problems, based on the Gauss's principle of least constraint is presented. In every particular case, the problem is reduced to the algebraic minimization of a quadratic form with respect to some complex of physical parameters. By the help of several concrete examples the efficiency and accuracy of this new method is demonstrated

Dilepton emission in high-energy heavy-ion collisions with viscous hydrodynamics

The invariant mass spectrum and the elliptic flow of lepton pairs produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC are studied with viscous hydrodynamics. The effects of viscous corrections on dilepton observables are explored. The lepton pairs originating from charm quarks evolving in the viscous background are seen to be a good probe of quark energy loss and gain, as quantified by the dilepton spectrum and by the dilepton elliptic flow