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Lively Debate (lively + debate)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	30%

Selected Abstracts

Can Trade Help Poor People?

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 3 2007
Market Access in Tanzania, The Role of Trade, Trade Policy
Many development economists prescribe trade as a poverty-reducing formula. But how is this elixir supposed to work? This article contributes to the lively debate on this topic with household evidence from Tanzania , a poor country even within sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region. About 81% of the poor work in agriculture, which accounts for 88% of the export bundle. The article describes existing poverty and then evaluates the poverty-reduction potential of trade, trade policy and market access. The article extends the analysis by simulating tariff changes and four switching scenarios that swap some poor households into trade-related sectors, such as cash cropping or tourism, to project national poverty reductions of up to 5.6% and household income increases of up to 21.5%. [source]

Payment For Risk: Constant Beta Vs.

FINANCIAL REVIEW, Issue 2 2002
Dual-Beta Models
Fama and French's (1992) assertion that investors receive premium payments for risk associated with the book value to market price (BE/ME) and size and not for holding beta risk has sparked a lively debate concerning risk factors that are priced in the market. Howton and Peterson (1998) use a dual-beta model to test the Fama and French conclusions. They conclude that the significant relationship between beta and returns depends on the use of the dual-beta model. This work, however, ignores the results reported by Pettengill, Sundaram, and Mathur (PSM, 1995). PSM find a significant relation between a constant risk beta and returns when data are segmented between up and down markets, but do not consider the impact of size and BE/ME. In this paper we show that the PSM (1995) market segmentation procedure alone provides a sufficient condition to identify a significant relation between beta and returns in the presence of size and BE/ME. Dual market betas may be relevant in explaining risk and return. However, the market segmentation procedure of PSM (1995) is the critical condition for finding a significant relationship between returns and betas. [source]

Current and Future Problems of Capital Accumulation in the Chinese Pension System

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 4 2000
Zhang Jinchang
The decree establishing a uniform system of basic pensions for employees in municipal and private enterprises, published by the State Council on 16 July 1997, reflects the Chinese Government's ultimate choice in favour of a partly private funded scheme to cover future pension needs. This article examines the reasons which led to this choice and asks how easy or otherwise it will be to find the capital to finance it. The authors believe that the partly private scheme is more advantageous than other methods and is right for China. Many issues, however, remain the focus of lively debate. In particular, a realistic coordination of individual and group accumulation is needed in order to avoid shortfalls in capital formation and the dangers of inadequate benefit provision. To safeguard the subsistence needs of former workers in state-owned enterprises, a system of equalization at national level is needed, and problems continue over how future pension insurance funds should best be managed. [source]

Human security,national perspectives and global agendas: insights from national human development reports,

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2007
Richard Jolly
Abstract Since its introduction in UNDP's Human Development Report 1994, ,human security' has been a topic of lively debate. The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically how human security has been treated in National Human Development Reports (NHDRs), produced in 13 countries since 1997 with different definitions and points of focus. We use an inductive approach to examine how these stand up to the criticisms levelled in the literature against broader concepts of human security. The NHDRs of Afghanistan, Latvia, Macedonia and Bangladesh are of particular interest, both because of their rich analysis and because of the originality of the methodology they use. The paper concludes that broader definitions of human security are operational for both analysis and policy making. Limits to define a core of high-priority concerns with human security can be set after exploring the concerns of people in specific situations rather than before. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Social Capital and the Internet: Evidence from Swiss Panel Data

KYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 3 2003
Axel Franzen
Summary A lively debate has recently emerged about the consequences of the diffusion of the Internet. While many social scientists emphasize the beneficial economic consequences of the Internet some suspect that it has also disadvantages for users' social capital. So far the existing empirical evidence concerning the effect on social capital is mainly based on cross-sectional data and is still contradictory. This study is based on a longitudinal survey conducted in 1998 and 2001 among a random sample of Swiss citizens. It analyzes the determinants of the adoption of the Internet and the consequences for respondents' personal networks as well as the time they spent socializing with their network. The results show that the Internet was adopted sooner by individuals with high financial, human and social capital. Furthermore, the results suggest that Internet use is not associated with a reduction in respondents' networks or with the time they spent socializing with friends. Instead the findings suggest that the time users devote to the Internet is taken away from the time they spend on watching television. [source]

Five years of Homo floresiensis

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2010
Leslie C. Aiello
Abstract Since Homo floresiensis was first described in October 2004 there has been a lively debate over its status. Is it a late surviving species of early Homo or merely a modern individual afflicted with disordered growth and one of the many syndromes resulting in microchephaly? Recently the discovery team has published a series of articles providing detailed descriptions of the hominin material, its geomorphological context, and the associated archaeology and faunal material (Morwood and Jungers: J Hum Evol 57 (2009) 437-648). In addition, other researchers have put forward new hypotheses for possible pathologies including Laron's Syndrome and Myxoedematous Endemic (ME) Cretinism. Here I review this new information and conclude that the evidence supports the hypothesis that Homo floresiensis is a late-surviving species of early Homo with its closest morphological affinities to early African pre- erectus/ergaster hominins. Although this hypothesis requires fundamental paradigm changes in our understanding of human evolution, it provides a more economical explanation for H. floresiensis than do the alternatives. None of the current explanations for microcephaly and disordered growth account for the range of features observed in H. floresiensis. Neither do they provide explanations for why a pathological condition in modern humans would mimic so closely the morphology observed in earlier hominins. This conclusion is based on the current evidence for H. floresiensis and on the particular pathological explanations that have appeared in the literature. There is no doubt that controversy over H. floresiensis will continue until new and conclusive evidence is available to settle the debate one way or another. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Copula sensitivity in collateralized debt obligations and basket default swaps

THE JOURNAL OF FUTURES MARKETS, Issue 1 2004
Davide Meneguzzo
This article empirically faces the lively debate over the choice of an appropriate copula function to be used to price and risk monitor some credit derivatives products. We consider the explicit pricing of collateralized debt obligations and basket default swaps, and empirically examine these credit derivatives within the copula framework. The results support in particular the choice of the T-copula because of its greater flexibility in capturing the tail dependence. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 24:37,70, 2004 [source]

Front and Back Covers, Volume 25, Number 2.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 2 2009
April 200
Front cover caption, volume 25 issue 2 Front cover Ethnicity, Race and the Limits of Human Identity The front and back covers show artist Sean Weisgerber's interpretation of the theme of this issue, the problem of classifying human identity in a world of fusion and change. Articles address biometric security, the use of the concept of ,tribe' in US army counter-insurgency programmes, and human identity as constituted in and through debate among Afghani refugees recently returned from northern Pakistan to Afghanistan. The difficulty of fitting human diversity into strictly defined categories is most acutely evident in questions asked on census forms. In this issue, Peter Aspinall considers the broad range of terms proposed and debated for the ,mixed race' population. Many have complex histories and have been used to subsume individuals of varied and sometimes disparate ethnic and racial origins. Dissatisfaction with the widely used term ,mixed race', contested by anthropologists and sociologists among others on the grounds that it references the now discredited concept of ,race', has led to the search for an alternative. In 1994 the Royal Anthropological Institute advanced ,mixed origins', although such advocacy has gained little momentum. ,Mixed race' now competes with terms such as ,mixed heritage', ,dual heritage' and ,mixed parentage' amongst data users, and UK government usage also reflects this diversity in terminology. However, research indicates that the term of choice of most respondents in general and student samples of this population is ,mixed race'. Terms invoking just two groups , such as ,mixed parentage', ,dual heritage', and ,biracial', are preferred by few. While ,mixed origins' is likely to have a continuing niche role in professional practice, such as legal usage and assessment of health risks, it is premature to argue that the umbrella term ,mixed race' should be replaced by candidates that are not self-descriptors. Bruno Latour's editorial places such questions in a broader context as he draws attention to a lively debate on the biggest question of all, the essence of nature itself. In the context of an emergent multi-naturalism, has anthropological theory itself been ,decolonizing enough'? [source]

PERSONIFICATIONS AND THE ANCIENT VIEWER: THE CASE OF THE HADRIANEUM ,NATIONS'

ART HISTORY, Issue 1 2009
JESSICA HUGHES
This article represents an initial exploration of how allegorical figures were made and viewed in classical antiquity. It focuses on a well-known series of personifications which decorated a second-century ce temple complex in the heart of Rome. Previous studies of these sculpted reliefs have engaged in lively debate about which nations are represented, without ever reflecting on the processes by which the group has been designed and made. Here the individual personifications are replaced within the context of the group, and the fact that even the most cosmopolitan ancient viewer would have found the interpretation of these images problematic is demonstrated. This reading is shown to have wider implications, both for how the Roman world was conceptualized in and through these images, and for the construction of social hierarchies within the city of Rome itself. [source]

Die Fotografie , ein neues Bildmedium im Wissenschaftspanorama des 19.

BERICHTE ZUR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE, Issue 2 2005
Jahrhunderts.
Abstract Photography , a novel medium of scientific representation in the XIXth century array of arts and sciences. To delve into various nineteenth century academic disciplines under the heading ,photography in the arts and sciences' as did last year's annual conference of the History of Science Society , the interest in such a topic only partly stems from the ,iconic turn' that has generally enlarged the scope of the social sciences in recent years. A more poignant feature in any such present day study will probably be a basic scepticism facing the fact that in public use photographs have been manipulated in many respects. Yet, while shying away from any simple success story, a historically minded approach to changing ,visual paradigms' (Historische Bildwissenschaft) has begun to emerge. In this context, it has proved of considerable heuristic value to reconsider the role of early photography in an array of science, arts and technology: Since the reliance on the traditional ways of sketching reality persisted, in many an instance where photography was introduced, the thoughts the pioneer photographers had about their new, seemingly automated business, call for close attention. Thus scholarship sets up a parallel ,discussion room'; the lively debate on the benefit of academic drawings as opposed to photographic portraits is a case in point. Some fairly specialised reports on photographically based analyses, such as electron microscopy, point to a borderline where the very idea of representation as a correspondence of reality and imagination gets blurred. Even though any ,visual culture' will have to shoulder the ,burden of representation', it is equally likely that it will offer a deeper sensibility for the intricacies entailed in the variegated ways of illustrating or mapping chosen subjects of scientific interest. Scholarship may thus somewhat control the disillusionment that by now has become the epitome of writing on photographic history. Provided with a renewed methodological awareness for the perception process and its photographic transition, historians may strike a better balance between the ever present tendencies of a realistic and an aesthetic way of picturing the world we live in. [source]