Evaluating the Causal Effect of Foreign Acquisition on Domestic Performances: The Case of Slovenian Manufacturing Firms

This paper investigates the impact of foreign acquisition in 1997 on the performances of a sample of Slovenian manufacturing firms. It uses the propensity score-matching estimation technique combined with the difference-in-differences approach to control for the potential bias arising from the non-random selection of acquired firms (endogeneity of foreign ownership). After confirming that foreign investors acquire the most productive firms in Slovenia, it shows that the productivity of such firms subsequently increases as a result of foreign takeover. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that foreign firms transfer their technology to Slovenian affiliates.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40189/3/wp803.pd

The Accident and its Causes: Pseudo-Alexander on Aristotle (Metaphysics E 3)

Pseudo-Alexander\u2019s commentary in Metaphysics \u395 3 is one of the three ancient commentaries which came down to us together with Ascepius\u2019s commentary and Pseudo-Philoponus\u2019s one, in Latin. Pseudo-Alexander\u2019s work, in particular, constitutes the source of interpretation of the Aristotelian text for many modern scholars. In chapter 3 Aristotle shows that there are causes of accidental being, which are generable and destructible without ever being in course of being generated or destroyed. This problem is one of the most difficult and controversial for Aristotle. The thesis is explained by Aristotle with examples concerning past and future events. Pseudo-Alexander considers them as referring to accidental causes. The exegete\u2019s explanation of both cases introduces some elements which are totally extraneous to the Aristotelian text, but nevertheless it could be helpful to cast some light on the understanding of the most controversial passages. In the final passage, Aristotle raises the question of what kind of cause the accident leads to, whether to the material or to the final or to the efficient cause. It is apparently left without an answer. Pseudo-Alexander gives a plausible solution, which is nonetheless probably only partial. The chapter was also examined with reference to the problem of determinism in Aristotle

Conversation with Robert Brandom

In this broad interview Robert Brandom talks about many themes concerning his work and about his career and education. Brandom reconstructs the main debts that he owes to colleagues and teachers, especially Wilfrid Sellars, Richard Rorty, and David Lewis, and talks about the projects he’s currently working on. He also talks about contemporary and classical pragmatism, and of the importance of classical thinkers like Kant and Hegel for contemporary debates. Other themes go deeper into the principal topics of his theoretical work – in particular, his later understanding of expressivism, his take on the debate between representationalists and anti-representationalists in semantics, the main open problems for his wide inferentialist project, and his methodological preference for the normative vocabulary in his account of discursive practice. Finally, Brandom touches on the epistemic role of perception and on his views about the importance of the phenomenological aspects of perceptual experience

Implicit norms

Robert Brandom has developed an account of conceptual content as instituted by social practices. Such practices are understood as being implicitly normative. Brandom proposed the idea of implicit norms in order to meet some requirements imposed by Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following: escaping the regress of rules on the one hand, and avoiding mere regular behavior on the other. Anandi Hattiangadi has criticized this account as failing to meet such requirements. In what follows, I try to show how the correct understanding of sanctions and the expressivist reading of the issue can meet these challenges

Projectively induced rotation invariant K\"ahler metrics

We classify K\"ahler-Einstein manifolds which admit a K\"ahler immersion into a finite dimensional complex projective space endowed with the Fubini-Study metric, whose codimention is not greater than 3 and whose metric is rotation invariant.Comment: 9 page

On the omniscience of Aristotle\u2019s unmoved mover: a note on Metaphysics \u39b 4, 1070 b 34-35

This paper focuses on the final passage of Metaphysics \u39b 4, which contains the first explicit mention of the unmoved mover in book \u39b. The sentence is crucial for the problem of what, if anything, the Aristotelian god knows about the world. The author starts with a general enumeration of the main interpretations of the problem of the omniscience of god, which either admit a divine activity upon the world (Alexander of Aphrodisias, Thomas Aquinas), or that, by thinking himself, god thinks everything (Thomas Aquinas) or that, in knowing himself, he knows beings (Averro\uebs), or, finally, state that god knows only himself (Schwegler, Bonitz, Zeller, Ross and many others). In this section the importance of Metaphysics \u39b 9 has been stressed, which constitutes the only complete text on the topic which has come down to us, and where Aristotle, as it is well known, denies that god has knowledge of the world. \u39b 9 is, therefore, an essential and necessary reference for any other passage which contains a mention of the matter in question. In the following section, the paper analyzes the context in which the final passage of \u39b 4 is inserted. The attempt is to show that the reference to the unmoved movers in \u39b 4 is not introduced abruptly, but rather that it fits perfectly in the discussion of the chapter. The third section contains the analysis of the passage. In particular, the suggestion proposed by R. George is considered, who, after having recalled F. Brentano\u2019s position, asserts that the sentence would imply that the first of all things contains within itself the formal principle of what it brings forth, and that, since the first mover moves all things, it actually is all things. This paper aims to show that the first cause of all things, whose mention follows the enumeration of the four causes \u2013 matter, form and privation as 2 immanent elements, and the moving cause of natural substance as external principle \u2013, is not within the coincidence of formal and moving cause. Therefore the case of the proximate moving cause (for example the builder), which knows its effect (for example the form of the house), appears as different from the case of the first remote moving cause which moves all things, which does not seem to have knowledge of the world. This paper suggests that the coincidence between the formal and the moving cause may only work for natural substances and, therefore, for the moving cause in the weaker sense, while it does not apply to the remote moving cause. In this perspective the fact that the Aristotelian god cannot be a formal cause plays a fundamental role, being an external and separated principle. Consequently, the role of the mention of the unmoved mover in the final passage of \u39b 4 does not appear as a reference which is completely detached from the rest of the text, but it seems to perfectly fit in it and indeed appears to play a central role in the entire chapter