NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Defining the crime of aggression : cutting the Gordian knot ?

The crime of aggression is one of the four international crimes under the jurisdiction of the ICC. When delegates at the Rome Conference were unable to agree on the content of a definition, the crime was left undefined. As a result, the ICC can only begin prosecuting individuals for the crime of aggression once a definition is adopted by the Assembly of States Parties in 2009, at the earliest. This thesis examines three issues associated with the crime of aggression: the question of individual criminal responsibility, the role of the UN Security Council and the general scope of the definition of the crime of aggression itself Individual criminal liability is reviewed, inter alia, from the perspective of international sources doctrine. Regarding the role of the Security Council in relation to the crime of aggression, the author concludes: if the Security Council is vested with more powers than it already has under Articles 13(b) and 16 of the Rome Statute, each permanent member will have a veto over any situation of aggression that might otherwise be brought before the Court. This would result in a complete politicization of the ICC and render moot any future definition of the crime of aggression. If a definition for the crime of aggression is properly conceived and constructed, it is argued, there is no need to further limit the Court's exercise of jurisdiction. The author proposes general parameters for the scope ofthe definition based on conclusions reached in the analysis of the conceptual components of aggression. At its essence, the act of aggression is the unnecessary, unlawful use of force which constitutes a breach ofthe peace. Unless employed in "self-defence" or under a Chapter VII mandate, the use offorce constitutes prima facie an act of aggression, and if it is sufficiently grave, a crime ofaggression. This thesis concludes with a working definition ofthe crime of aggression to promote dialogue and ultimately a consensus on these core issues. Not only is a definition is within reach, the author believes, we are closer to it than we ever have been before.

Keyphrases: Politicisation, Rationae personae, International law, International Criminal Court, ICC, International criminal law, United Nations Security Council, Aggression, Crime of aggression, Individual criminal responsibility, Jurisdiction, Politicization, Use of force, Self-defence, Anticipatory self-defence
Le développement d'une pensée séculière par la diffusion de la religion : une sociologie des humanistes

By way of a historical perspective, this masters thesis aims to reconsider the weberian “ethical rationalization” theory as an explanatory factor for the modern transformation of the relationship between individuals and religion. Reviewing the changes in Renaissance religious thought—and contrasting it with the Medieval religious context—enables us to uncover a shift from a syncretic and ritualized religion that is filled with magical elements, towards an uncluttered, internalized and rational Christianity. The focus on Erasmus of Rotterdam’s religious humanist thought—considered here as a “historical figure” and carrier of these transformations—brings light on how Christianity was stripped of its mystical aspects and came to be understood as a comprehensive philosophical system. The dissemination of such a Christian “spirit”, as well as the importance granted to a methodical way of life specifically oriented towards salvation, play a key role in the appearance of a “quotidian ritualization” of religious charisma, which is in itself, according to Weber, an essential preliminary to an “ethical rationalization” and thus to the “autonomization” of the religious sphere in the social life.

Keyphrases: Max Weber, Religion, Renaissance, Max Weber, Erasmus, Religion, secularization, Middle-Ages, Humanists
Lettre ouverte à propos de L'Esprit de la liturgie, ouvrage du cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

In the context of the ecumenical debate stirred up by the publication of John Paul II’s encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, Olivier Bauer proposes a critical reading of the work Joseph Ratzinger contributes to The spirit of liturgy. In terms of practical theology, he shows how the President of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith envisions mass and takes apart his pretension to define true Christian worship.

Keyphrases: Ratzinger
Réseau de recherche E-Inclusion, thème 3 : Audiovision interactive et adaptable, projet 3.1, rapport final

The E-Inclusion Research Network aims to create tools to permit all Canadians to experience the richness of audiovisual productions. Theme 3 of the project, entitled Interactive Adaptable Descriptive Video, had a goal of creating guidelines for those who produce described movies and television programmes, and to measure the potential usefulness of producing audio description text of keywords derived from other contexts.

Keyphrases: E-Inclusion Research Network, Audio description, Blind
Bayesian Analysis for a Theory of Random Consumer Demand: The Case of Indivisible Goods

McCausland (2004a) describes a new theory of random consumer demand. Theoretically consistent random demand can be represented by a \"regular\" \"L-utility\" function on the consumption set X. The present paper is about Bayesian inference for regular L-utility functions. We express prior and posterior uncertainty in terms of distributions over the indefinite-dimensional parameter set of a flexible functional form. We propose a class of proper priors on the parameter set. The priors are flexible, in the sense that they put positive probability in the neighborhood of any L-utility function that is regular on a large subset bar(X) of X; and regular, in the sense that they assign zero probability to the set of L-utility functions that are irregular on bar(X). We propose methods of Bayesian inference for an environment with indivisible goods, leaving the more difficult case of indefinitely divisible goods for another paper. We analyse individual choice data from a consumer experiment described in Harbaugh et al. (2001).

Keyphrases: Consumer demand, Bayesian methods, Flexible functional Forms, Shape restrictions
Time Reversibility of Stationary Regular Finite State Markov Chains

We propose an alternate parameterization of stationary regular finite-state Markov chains, and a decomposition of the parameter into time reversible and time irreversible parts. We demonstrate some useful properties of the decomposition, and propose an index for a certain type of time irreversibility. Two empirical examples illustrate the use of the proposed parameter, decomposition and index. One involves observed states; the other, latent states.

Keyphrases: Finite-state Markov chains, Time reversibility, Bayesian inference, Hidden Markov Models
Jumps in the Volatility of Financial Markets

Recent work suggests that the conditional variance of financial returns may exhibit sudden jumps. This paper extends a non-parametric procedure to detect discontinuities in otherwise continuous functions of a random variable developed by Delgado and Hidalgo (1996) to higher conditional moments, in particular the conditional variance. Simulation results show that the procedure provides reasonable estimates of the number and location of jumps. This procedure detects several jumps in the conditional variance of daily returns on the S&P 500 index.

Keyphrases: jumps, conditional variance, one-sided windows
Aggregations and Marginalization of GARCH and Stochastic Volatility Models

The GARCH and Stochastic Volatility paradigms are often brought into conflict as two competitive views of the appropriate conditional variance concept : conditional variance given past values of the same series or conditional variance given a larger past information (including possibly unobservable state variables). The main thesis of this paper is that, since in general the econometrician has no idea about something like a structural level of disaggregation, a well-written volatility model should be specified in such a way that one is always allowed to reduce the information set without invalidating the model. To this respect, the debate between observable past information (in the GARCH spirit) versus unobservable conditioning information (in the state-space spirit) is irrelevant. In this paper, we stress a square-root autoregressive stochastic volatility (SR-SARV) model which remains true to the GARCH paradigm of ARMA dynamics for squared innovations but weakens the GARCH structure in order to obtain required robustness properties with respect to various kinds of aggregation. It is shown that the lack of robustness of the usual GARCH setting is due to two very restrictive assumptions : perfect linear correlation between squared innovations and conditional variance on the one hand and linear relationship between the conditional variance of the future conditional variance and the squared conditional variance on the other hand. By relaxing these assumptions, thanks to a state-space setting, we obtain aggregation results without renouncing to the conditional variance concept (and related leverage effects), as it is the case for the recently suggested weak GARCH model which gets aggregation results by replacing conditional expectations by linear projections on symmetric past innovations. Moreover, unlike the weak GARCH literature, we are able to define multivariate models, including higher order dynamics and risk premiums (in the spirit of GARCH (p,p) and GARCH in mean) and to derive conditional moment restrictions well suited for statistical inference. Finally, we are able to characterize the exact relationships between our SR-SARV models (including higher order dynamics, leverage effect and in-mean effect), usual GARCH models and continuous time stochastic volatility models, so that previous results about aggregation of weak GARCH and continuous time GARCH modeling can be recovered in our framework.

Keyphrases: GARCH, SR-SARV, GARCH, stochastic volatility, SR-SARV, aggregation, asset returns
The Measurement of Diversity

The notion of diversity is an issue that is of relevance in several contexts. For example, the biodiversity of a given ecological environment and the diversity of the options available to a decision maker have attracted some attention in recent research. This paper provides an axiomatic approach to the measurement of diversity. We characterize two nested classes of ordinal measures of diversity and an important member of these classes. We prove that the latter special case is equivalent to a diversity ordering proposed by Weitzman.

Keyphrases: diversity, distance measures
Logique et tests d'hypotheses: reflexions sur les problemes mal poses en econometrie

In this text, we review recent developments in econometrics from the viewpoint of statistical test theory. We first review some basic principles of philosophy of science and statistical theory, emphasizing parsimony and falsifiability as criteria for evaluating models, test theory as a formalization of the falsification principle for probabilistic models, and the logical foundation of basic notions in test theory (such as the level of a test). We then show that some of the most frequently used statistical and econometric methods are fundamentally inappropriate for the problems and models considered, while several hypotheses, for which test procedures are commonly proposed, are not testable at all. Such situations lead to ill-defined statistical problems. We analyze several cases of such problems : (1) building confidence intervals in structural models where identification problems may be present; (2) the construction of tests for nonparametric hypotheses, including procedures robust to heteroskadasticity, non-normality or dynamic specification. We point out that these difficulties often originate from the ambition to weaken regularity conditions typically required by statistical analysis, and from an inappropriate use of asymptotic distributional theory. Finally, we underscore the importance of formulating testable hypotheses and models, and of developing econometric methods with provable finite-sample properties. Keywords: econometrics; statistics; testing; philosophy of science; falsifiability; Popper; parsimony; identification; weak instruments; nonparametric model; time series; autoregressive model; heteroskedasticity; unit root; robust method; non-normality; ill-defined problem

Keyphrases: Popper, identification
Efficiency in Uncertain Cooperative Games

A contingent contract in a transferable utility game under uncertainty specifies an outcome for each possible state. It is assumed that coalitions evaluate these contracts by considering the minimal possible excesses. A main question of the paper concerns the existence and characterization of efficient contracts. It is shown that they exist if and only if the set of possible coalitions contains a balanced subset. Moreover, a characterization of values that result in efficient contracts in the case of minimally balanced collections is provided.

Keyphrases: transferable utility games, uncertainty, balanced collections
Non-Deteriorating Choice

We analyze an alternative to the standard rationalizability requirement for observed choices by considering non-deteriorating selections. A selection function is a generalization of a choice function where selected alternatives may depend on a reference (or status quo) alternative in addition to the set of feasible options. A selection function is non-deteriorating if there exists an ordering over the universal set of alternatives such that the selected alternatives are at least as good as the reference option. We characterize non-deteriorating selection functions in an abstract framework and in an economic environment.

Keyphrases: choice functions, individual rationality, status quo
Vertical R&D Sprillovers, Cooperation, Market Structure, and Innovation

This paper studies vertical R&D spillovers between upstream and downstream firms. The model incorporates two vertically related industries, with horizontal spillovers within each industry and vertical spillovers between the two industries. Four types of R&D cooperation are studied : no cooperation, horizontal cooperation, vertical cooperation, and simultaneous horizontal and vertical cooperation. Vertical spillovers always increase R&D and welfare, while horizontal spillovers may increase or decrease them. The comparison of cooperative settings in terms of R&D shows that no setting uniformly dominates the others. Which type of cooperation yields more R&D depends on horizontal and vertical spillovers, and market structure. The ranking of cooperative structures hinges on the signs and magnitudes of three competitive externalities (vertical, horizontal, and diagonal) which capture the effect of the R&D of a firm on the profits of other firms. One of the basic results of the strategic investment literature is that cooperation between competitors increases (decreases) R&D when horizontal spillovers are high (low); the model shows that this result does not necessarily hold when vertical spillovers and vertical cooperation are taken into account. The paper proposes a theory of innovation and market structure, showing that the relation between innovation and competition depends on horizontal spillovers, vertical spillovers, and cooperative settings. The private incentives for R&D cooperation are addressed. It is found that buyers and sellers have divergent interests regarding the choice of cooperative settings and that spillovers increase the likelihood of the emergence of cooperation in a decentralized equilibrium.

Keyphrases: innovation, vertical R&D spillovers, market structure, innovation, vertical R&D cooperation, R&D policy