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Rational Response (rational + response)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	83%

Selected Abstracts

Liberalized capital markets, state autonomy, and European monetary union

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2003
Erik Jones
The conventional wisdom is that capital market integration and now monetary union have limited the options available to macroeconomic policy makers in Europe. The question considered here, therefore, is why many prominent Europeans insist that monetary union is a rational response to capital market integration. Monetary union eliminates exchange rate volatility , but only at a cost in terms of tightening the constraints on macroeconomic policy. Using a combination of macroeconomic theory and (descriptive) statistical analysis of European performance, I find that: capital market integration has increased macroeconomic flexibility through a mitigation of the current account constraint; European states have combined macroeconomic policies in a manner that has taken advantage of greater flexibility on the current account; the cost of such flexibility in terms of the impact of financial volatility on the real economy manifests differently in different countries; and monetary union both enhances flexibility on the current account and mitigates financial volatility. [source]

Is there a downside to customizing care?

JOURNAL OF EVALUATION IN CLINICAL PRACTICE, Issue 6 2009
Implications of general, patient-specific treatment strategies
Abstract Rationale, aims and objectives, The use of general clinical guidelines versus customization of patient care presents a dilemma for clinicians managing chronic illness. The objective of this project is to investigate the claim that the performance of customized strategies for the management of chronic illness depends on accurate patient categorization, and inaccurate categorization can lead to worse performance than that achievable using a general clinical guideline. Methods, This paper is based on an analysis of a basic utility model that differentiates between the use of general management strategies and customized strategies. Results, The analysis identifies necessary conditions for preferring general strategies to customized strategies as a trade-off between strategy performance and the probability of correct patient categorization. The analysis shows that customized treatment strategies developed under optimal conditions are not necessarily preferred. Conclusions, Results of the analysis have four implications regarding the design and use of clinical guidelines and customization of care: (i) the balance between the applications of more general strategies versus customization depends on the specificity and accuracy of the strategies; (ii) adoption of clinical guidelines may be stifled as the complexity of guidelines increases to account for growing evidence; (iii) clinical inertia (i.e. the failure to intensify an indicated treatment) can be a rational response to strategy specificity and the probability of misapplication; and, (iv) current clinical guidelines and other decision-support tools may be improved if they accommodate the need for customization of strategies for some patients while providing support for proper categorization of patients. [source]

The Emergence of Lowest-Low Fertility in Europe During the 1990s

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2002
Hans-Peter Kohler
Lowest-low fertility, defined as a period total fertility rate at or below 1.3, has rapidly spread in Europe during the 1990s. This article traces the emergence of this new phenomenon to the interaction of five factors. First, tempo and compositional distortions reduce the total fertility rate below the associated level of cohort fertility. Second, socioeconomic changes,including increased returns to human capital and high economic uncertainty in early adulthood,have made late childbearing a rational response for individuals and couples. Third, social interaction effects reinforce this behavioral adjustment and contribute to large and persistent postponement in the mean age at birth. Fourth, institutional settings favor an overall low quantum of fertility. Fifth, postponement,quantum interactions amplify the consequences of this institutional setting when combined with ongoing delays of child-bearing. The article concludes with speculations about future trends in current and prospective lowest-low-fertility countries. [source]

Is ,Normal Grief' a Mental Disorder?

THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 200 2000
Stephen Wilkinson
I argue that grief (including ,normal grief') is a mental disorder. I discuss the main concepts involved briefly, and state the prima facie case in favour of the view that grief is a disorder. I consider objections that grief is not a disorder because (a) it is a normal response; (b) it is more healthy than failing to grieve; (c) it involves cognitive good; (d) it is a rational response; (e) it ought not to be medicalized or treated; (f ) it has a ,distinct sustaining cause'. Each objection is flawed, and I conclude that there is a strong case for regarding even ,normal' grief as a disorder. Alternatively, the arguments in this paper may be taken as attacking ,orthodoxrsquo; definitions of mental health (e.g., in DSM 4th edn) by providing an extended discussion of one particular counter-example. [source]

II,Reflections on the Reasonable and the Rational in Conflict Resolution

ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME, Issue 1 2009
Ruth Chang
Most familiar approaches to social conflict moot reasonable ways of dealing with conflict, ways that aim to serve values such as legitimacy, justice, morality, fairness, fidelity to individual preferences, and so on. In this paper, I explore an alternative approach to social conflict that contrasts with the leading approaches of Rawlsians, perfectionists, and social choice theorists. The proposed approach takes intrinsic features of the conflict,what I call a conflict's evaluative ,structure',as grounds for a rational way of responding to that conflict. Like conflict within a single person, social conflict can have a distinctive evaluative structure that supports certain rational responses over others. I suggest that one common structure in both intra- and interpersonal cases of conflict supports the rational response of ,self-governance'. Self-governance in the case of social conflict involves a society's deliberating over the question, ,What kind of society should we be?' In liberal democracies, this rational response is also a reasonable one. [source]