117,425 research outputs found
The moral layer of contemporary economics: A virtue-ethics perspective
No full textThis paper questions whether the contemporary science of economics and its recommendations are built on sound moral foundations as assessed from a virtue-based definition of ethical behaviour. We argue that the model of man underlying economic analyses can correspond to the model of a virtuous person, and that economics, by advocating reasoned choice and careful resource utilization, makes a positive contribution to the moral development of individuals.Economics; Efficiency; Rationality; Tastes; Virtue Ethics
Asset Prices and Assymetries in the Fed's Interest Rate Rule : a Financial Approach
No full textFinancial Newspapers have for long suggested that the Fed tends to provide additional Liquidity when the Stock Market thumbs. We provide a theoretical Explanation for this Behaviour that builds on the Methodology developed by Romaniuk (2008) for a central Banker with two main Goals, Output and Price stability. In this Paper, the Policymaker behaves as a Portfolio Manager who aims at stabilizing Output, Goods Prices, as well as Asset Prices. An optimal, Time-varying Interest Rate Rule is obtained as the Merton's (1971) continuous Time Solution to the Portfolio Manager's Problem. In a second Step, we infer the optimal Interest Rate Rule of a central Bank that can react differently to positive and negative Variations in the Stock Market.Optimal Interest Rate Rule; Portfolio Choice; Fed; Asset Prices; Options Theory
The Ethical Dimension of Economic Choices
No full textIn general, capitalist countries display sustained growth, dynamism and innovation, and a high adaptability in response to external shocks. Yet in the last twenty years discontent over the notorious drawbacks of capitalism – corporate frauds, corruption, abuses of market power – has grown continually. In this paper, we argue that no remedy to these difficulties can be found if ethical dilemmas are not anticipated and addressed at the individual, firm and economy-wide level. While pro-ethical changes in business regulation would help, government action alone may not be effective enough. Given that the social sciences provide the general framework of reference for human action, better integration of the ethical dimension by these disciplines would bring about additional benefits. In particular, economic theory would gain from developing more in-depth reflection on human end-goals and values.Calculativeness; Capitalism; Corporate social responsibility; Economics; Virtue Ethics
Manager Unethical Behavior During The New Economy Bubble
No full textThis paper investigates factors that brought about the surge in manager unethical behavior within the US economy. Key structural causes are the weak internal control, perverse incentives related to managers’ compensation, conflicts of interest in the banking and auditing sectors. Unethical behavior was further enhanced by the large economic noise specific to the IT bubble, which emerged in the late nineties against the background of increased deregulation in the goods and financial markets. The US administration opposed to the proliferation of CEO unethical behavior the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002; we argue why some of its provisions might be taken one step furtherUnethical behavior; CEOs; Financial deregulation; Activism; Sarbanes-Oxely Act
Excessive Liability Dollarization in a Simple Signaling Model
No full textIf a dollar denominated external debt comes with so many risks, why do emerging economies allow for such an imbalance to accumulate ? The explanation provided in this paper builds on a simple signaling model. By assumption, lenders have no direct possibility to infer a firm’s financial stance. Therefore sound firms might want to borrow dollars and bear a high clearance cost, just in order to signal their type. The success of this policy depends on the behavior of bad firms. When dollar borrowing clearance costs are relatively small with respect to the clearance cost of borrowing in the local currency, the whole private sector would opt for liability dollarization. In this case the signaling effect vanishes, while all firms bear high clearance costs.Original sin; Signaling; Developing countries; Liability dollarization; Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium
author-bios-SRD-19-0063.R1 – Supplemental material for The Network Structure of Police Misconduct
No full textSupplemental material, author-bios-SRD-19-0063.R1 for The Network Structure of Police Misconduct by George Wood, Daria Roithmayr and Andrew V. Papachristos in Socius</p
Markov switching multiple-equation tensor regressions
No full textA new flexible tensor model for multiple-equation regressions that accounts for latent regime changes is proposed. The model allows for dynamic coefficients and multi-dimensional covariates that vary across equations. The coefficients are driven by a common hidden Markov process that addresses structural breaks to enhance the model flexibility and preserve parsimony. A new soft PARAFAC hierarchical prior is introduced to achieve dimensionality reduction while preserving the structural information of the covariate tensor. The proposed prior includes a new multi-way shrinking effect to address over-parametrization issues while preserving interpretability and model tractability. Theoretical results are derived to help with the choice of the hyperparameters. An efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm based on random scan Gibbs and back-fitting strategy is designed with priority placed on computational scalability of the posterior sampling. The validity of the MCMC algorithm is demonstrated theoretically, and its computational efficiency is studied using numerical experiments in different parameter settings. The effectiveness of the model framework is illustrated using two original real data analyses. The proposed model exhibits superior performance compared to the current benchmark, Lasso regression
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Living on the Edge: An Unified Approach to Antithetic Sampling
No full textWe identify recurrent ingredients in the antithetic sampling literature leading to a unified sampling framework. We introduce a new class of antithetic schemes that includes the most used antithetic proposals. This perspective enables the derivation of new properties of the sampling schemes: i) optimality in the Kullback--Leibler sense; ii) closed-form multivariate Kendall's and Spearman's ; iii) ranking in concordance order and iv) a central limit theorem that characterizes stochastic behaviour of Monte Carlo estimators when the sample size tends to infinity. The proposed simulation framework inherits the simplicity of the standard antithetic sampling method, requiring the definition of a set of reference points in the sampling space and the generation of uniform numbers on the segments joining the points. We provide applications to Monte Carlo integration and Markov Chain Monte Carlo Bayesian estimation
Variations on the Author
No full text“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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