bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction
Authors: Levine Caroline
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to make a case for expanding our usual definition of form in literary studies to include patterns of sociopolitical experience like those of Lowood School. Broadening our definition of form to include social arrangements has immediate methodological consequences. The traditionally troubling gap between the form of the literary text and its content and context dissolves. Formalist analysis turns out to be as valuable to understanding sociopolitical institutions as it is to reading literature. Forms are at work everywhere. Chaotic though it seems, this brief conceptual history does make two things quite clear. First, form has never belonged only to the discourse of aesthetics. Second, all of the historical uses of the term, despite their richness and variety, do share a common definition: “form” always indicates an arrangement of elements—an ordering, patterning, or shaping.
Language, Religion, Nation
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: November 2017

This chapter traces the popular usage of “genius” in the nineteenth century. If genius no longer has the self-evidence that was attributed to it in the eighteenth century, this is due in part to the profligacy with which the word had come to be used. While the term is widely invoked—in fact, ever more widely so—it is rarely the subject of sustained theoretical scrutiny of the type established by aesthetics and philosophy in the previous century. The genius celebrated in this popular usage was, more often than not, a collective phenomenon linking success or supremacy with the individual character of institutional or abstract entities in a way that combined genius as ingenium with genius as the form of superlative excellence.
Balzac’s Louis Lambert
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: November 2017

This chapter studies Balzac's Louis Lambert (1832), in which the character of Lambert is a (possibly) mentally ill genius who retreats into a world to which only his erstwhile fiancée has access. Through his writings Balzac attempts to examine and portray a certain topic on the matter of geniuses: the essential role played by women in their survival. Louis Lambert ends with the destruction of the main character, a male genius who nonetheless exemplifies all Balzac's own ideas about genius, and is also its most complete and elaborate theorist. Once again, fiction's interest in its failure may reveal more about genius than success. And that failure is also accompanied—still with considerable ambiguity—by the female presence that Balzac argued also deserved recognition as the essential helpmeet of genius.
Creativity and Procreation in Zola’s L’Œuvre
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: November 2017

This chapter studies the figure of the genius artist in the painter Claude Lantier, the central figure of Émile Zola's novel, L'Œuvre (The masterpiece, 1886). Genius may be a largely positive term for Zola the art critic who regards disruption as a virtue, but for Zola the novelist these “disruptions” are an ambivalent quantity that allows him to explore it both positively as central to the artistic enterprise and negatively as a sterile or destructive pathology. Like Mme de Staël and Balzac, he does so both from an objective external and from a sympathetically internal perspective. As a painter, Lantier offers less scope for identification on the part of the author than did Corinne or Lambert, but both author and painter are bound together by the issue of artistic creativity that is the novel's central concern.
Exemplarity and Performance in Literature for Children
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: November 2017

This chapter surveys the children's literature detailing genius-level exemplarity and performance. The association between genius and childhood was already implicit in the image of innate genius in the eighteenth century, gearing it essentially to youth. From the start of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, child prodigies and the childhood of genius—though not necessarily the same thing—became the focus of new forms of attention that subjected them to particularly intense scrutiny in three major areas: children's literature, experimental psychology, and, in the middle of the twentieth century, the popular press. The chapter first examines Charles Baudelaire's claim that “genius is simply childhood recovered at will,” before turning to the subject of famous children as well as children's literature.
Cultural Critique and the End of Genius
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: November 2017

This chapter describes the gradual discrediting of the notion of genius. In France in the 1950s, contemporaneously with the Minou Drouet affair, it became the object of a powerful cultural critique under the aegis of literary theory, when Jean-Paul Sartre and Roland Barthes—more or less simultaneously—portrayed it as an anachronistic legacy from the previous century, and denounced it as a one of the myths that lay at the heart of bourgeois ideology. Two of Barthes's texts in Mythologies (1957) specifically target genius—one devoted to Einstein's brain, and the other to Minou Drouet. Much the same goes for Sartre, whose autobiography, Les Mots, begun in 1953 (and finally published in 1964), targets genius and the child prodigy as central components of his farewell to literature.
The Place of Willard Van Orman Quine in Analytic Philosophy
Authors: Soames Scott
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the achievements of W. V. O. Quine and his place in analytic philosophy. It begins with Carnap’s logical empiricism, which set the context for Quine’s first major article in philosophy, “Truth by Convention” (1935). It explains both Quine’s largely effective critique of analyticity and the problems that plagued his combination of holistic verificationism with an underdetermination thesis that paired each consistent empirical theory T with alternative theories logically incompatible with, but empirically equivalent to, T. It discusses the impetus for Quine’s movement from his critique of analyticity to his later doctrines of the Indeterminacy of Translation and the Inscrutability of Reference. The chapter closes with an explication of these radical doctrines, the role played by Quine’s physicalism, and his ineluctable march to a so-called radical and self-undermining semantic eliminativism.
No Class
Authors: Soames Scott
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores Russell’s “no class theory,” originally expressed by his contextual definition of classes in Principia Mathematica. In recent years, some Russell scholars have trumpeted the virtues of the interpretation of Russell’s quantification as substitutional, among which is the sense it makes of the “no-class theory.” Such an interpretation does make some sense of Russell’s philosophical remarks about that theory, about the significance of his logicist reduction, and about the ability of the reduction to serve as a model for similar reductions outside the philosophy of mathematics. However this substitutional interpretation is not sufficient, since it is inconsistent with important aspects of Russell’s philosophical logic and is technically inadequate to support his logicist reduction. In short, if substitutional quantification is the source of the “no class theory,” then the theory is not vindicated, but refuted.
Vagueness and the Law
Authors: Soames Scott
Published: November 2017

This chapter combines recent work on vagueness in the philosophy of language with recent work in the philosophy of law on the value of vagueness in certain legal situations. The question at issue is whether leading philosophical theories of what vagueness is can account for the positive utility of certain kinds of legal vagueness. The two theories put to the test are (i) epistemicism, according to which vagueness is a matter of irremediable ignorance of the sharp borderlines separating cases in which (totally defined) vague predicates apply from those in which their negations do; and (ii) the theory according to which vague predicates are (a) only partially defined, leaving a range of borderline cases in which there is no fact of the matter regarding the application or nonapplication of the predicates, and (b) context sensitive, which results in constantly shifting lines separating the defined from the undefined cases.
Beyond the Beat
Authors: Cornfield Daniel B.
Published: November 2017

At a time when the bulwarks of the music industry are collapsing, what does it mean to be a successful musician and artist? How might contemporary musicians sustain their artistic communities? Based on interviews with over seventy-five popular-music professionals in Nashville, this book looks at artist activists—those visionaries who create inclusive artist communities in today's individualistic and entrepreneurial art world. Using Nashville as a model, the book develops a theory of artist activism—the ways that artist peers strengthen and build diverse artist communities. The book discusses how genre-diversifying artist activists have arisen throughout the late twentieth-century musician migration to Nashville, a city that boasts the highest concentration of music jobs in the United States. Music City is now home to diverse recording artists—including Jack White, El Movimiento, the Black Keys, and Paramore. The book identifies three types of artist activists: the artist-producer who produces and distributes his or her own and others' work while mentoring early-career artists, the social entrepreneur who maintains social spaces for artist networking, and arts trade union reformers who are revamping collective bargaining and union functions. Throughout, the book examines enterprising musicians both known and less recognized. It links individual and collective actions taken by artist activists to their orientations toward success, audience, and risk and to their original inspirations for embarking on music careers. The book offers a new model of artistic success based on innovating creative institutions to benefit the society at large.
Self-contained, Self-expression
Authors: Cornfield Daniel B.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the subjective orientations and pathways of an earlier generation of Nashville artists who helped shape the community of Nashville's increasingly entrepreneurial, popular-music musicians. As an artistrtist activist engaged primarily in individual action, the enterprising artist thrives on self-expression, continuous self-instruction in a widening skill portfolio of artistic and support functions, self-promotion, and on maintaining mutually beneficial relations with colleagues. Enterprising artists sustain their ongoing relations with colleagues, as the profiles in this chapter show, by maintaining trusting and equitable, collegial relations, relations that may succumb to interpersonal animosity, rivalry, jealousy, and betrayal. Sociologically, this chapter depicts the subjective orientations toward success, audience, and risk and the career pathways taken by four individual representatives of what is here referred to as the “transformative generation of enterprising artists” of the changing Nashville music scene.
Community, Agency, and Artistic Expression
Authors: Cornfield Daniel B.
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents a new, post-bureaucratic research agenda in the new sociology of work derived from the sociological theory of artist activism. The agenda consists of three themes for future research. First is the generalizability of the Nashville model of artist activism across cities that differ in terms of their mix of art-production and -consumption activity and their levels and history of arts trade unionism. The second theme pertains to the influence of biographical pathways, risk orientations, and occupational socialization through intergenerational peer mentoring on the formation of the next generation of artist activists. The third theme is an assessment of the effectiveness of the several prevailing models of guild-like labor organizations for freelancers and artists on advancing individual and occupational professional and economic interests. The chapter concludes with policy implications for building and strengthening inclusive and expressive, urban occupational communities in an era of risk individualization and identity politics.
Bayesian Rationality and Social Epistemology
Authors: Gintis Herbert
Published: November 2017

This chapter uses epistemic game theory to expand on the notion of social norms as choreographer of a correlated equilibrium, and to elucidate the socio-psychological prerequisites for the notion that social norms implement correlated equilibria. The correlated equilibrium is a much more natural equilibrium criterion than the Nash equilibrium, because of a famous theorem of Aumann (1987), who showed that Bayesian rational agents in an epistemic game G with a common subjective prior play a correlated equilibrium of G. Thus, while rationality and common priors do not imply Nash equilibrium, these assumptions do imply correlated equilibrium and social norms act not only as choreographer, but also supply the epistemic conditions for common priors.
Common Knowledge and Nash Equilibrium
Authors: Gintis Herbert
Published: November 2017

This chapter applies the modal logic of knowledge developed in earlier chapters to explore sufficient conditions for a Nash equilibrium in two-player games. It expands the modal logic of knowledge to multiple agents and proves a theorem that asserts that an event that is self-evident for each member of a group is common knowledge. This theorem is surprising because it appears to prove that individuals know the content of the minds of others with no explicit epistemological assumptions. This theorem is the result of implicit epistemological assumptions involved in construction of the standard semantic model of common knowledge, and when more plausible assumptions are employed, the theorem is no longer true. The chapter shows that the Aumann and Brandenburger (1995) theorem, which supplies sufficient conditions for rational agents to play a Nash equilibriumin multiplayer games, is essentially an agreement theorem. Because there is no principle of Bayesian rationality that gives us the commonality of beliefs on which agreement depends, the analysis entails the demise of methodological individualism.
The Unification of the Behavioral Sciences
Authors: Gintis Herbert
Published: November 2017

The behavioral sciences include economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and political science, as well as biology insofar as it deals with animal and human behavior. These disciplines have distinct research foci, but they include four conflicting models of decision making and strategic interaction, as determined by what is taught in the graduate curriculum and what is accepted in journal articles without reviewer objection. The four are the psychological, the sociological, the biological, and the economic. These four models are not only different, but are also incompatible. That is, each makes assertions concerning choice behavior that are denied by the others. This means, of course, that at least three of the four are certainly incorrect. This chapter argues that in fact all four are flawed but can be modified to produce a unified framework for modeling choice and strategic interaction for all of the behavioral sciences. The framework for unification includes five conceptual units: (a) gene-culture coevolution; (b) the sociopsychological theory of norms; (c) game theory, (d) the rational actor model; and (e) complexity theory.
The 1940s
Authors: Stedman Jones Daniel
Published: November 2017

This chapter illustrates how Friedrich Hayek began to develop an intellectual and organizational strategy to protect and maintain “the free society” as World War II drew to an end. His strategy looked to the influence of the early twentieth-century American progressives and British Fabian socialists and argued that defenders of liberty would have to develop a similar organizational and intellectual strategy. The result of Hayek's efforts was that a sympathetic group of intellectuals from Paris, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Manchester, the LSE, and Chicago came together under his leadership to form a kind of neoliberal international. The group called itself the Mont Pelerin Society after the venue of its first meeting, which was held in Vevey, Switzerland.
The Rising Tide
Authors: Stedman Jones Daniel
Published: November 2017

This chapter talks about how a distinct neoliberal worldview was built on the foundations of the critique of New Deal liberalism and social democracy synthesized in the writings of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Karl Popper. The adrenaline generated by the neoliberal movement and its ideas in the Conservative and Republican parties radically changed the political and economic life of both the United States and Great Britain. The chapter also shows how neoliberal ideas developed a sharper focus and an icy coherence. Neither Milton Friedman's intelligent loquaciousness nor Ronald Reagan's warm sentiments could disguise a philosophy that was built on a cold and abstract individualism, yet the vision was still very much a utopian one, centered on a fantasy of the perfect free market.
Wandering Greeks
Authors: Garland Robert
Published: November 2017

Most classical authors and modern historians depict the ancient Greek world as essentially stable and even static, once the so-called colonization movement came to an end. But this book argues that the Greeks were highly mobile, that their movement was essential to the survival, success, and sheer sustainability of their society, and that this wandering became a defining characteristic of their culture. Addressing a neglected but essential subject, this book focuses on the diaspora of tens of thousands of people between about 700 and 325 BCE, demonstrating the degree to which Greeks were liable to be forced to leave their homes due to political upheaval, oppression, poverty, warfare, or simply a desire to better themselves. Attempting to enter into the mind-set of these wanderers, the book provides an insightful and sympathetic account of what it meant for ancient Greeks to part from everyone and everything they held dear, to start a new life elsewhere—or even to become homeless, living on the open road or on the high seas with no end to their journey in sight. Each chapter identifies a specific kind of “wanderer,” including the overseas settler, the deportee, the evacuee, the asylum-seeker, the fugitive, the economic migrant, and the itinerant, and the book also addresses repatriation and the idea of the “portable polis.” The result is a vivid and unique portrait of ancient Greece as a culture of displaced persons.
Prolegomena
Authors: Garland Robert
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter discusses ancient and modern responses to migration. Though the plight of migrants and refugees in the Greek-speaking world would have been similar to their plight today, absent the halting efforts of humanitarian agencies and the distracted gaze of the international community, there are some striking differences. Many people are at least somewhat sensitized to the predicament faced by displaced persons today, whereas the best minds of Greek antiquity show virtually no concern for their welfare. Another striking difference is that migration in the Greek-speaking world, whatever its cause, often represented a far more radical upheaval in people's lives than it does today.
The Settler
Authors: Garland Robert
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at settlements. The Ionian migration, which was in the nature of a mass exodus, led principally to the settlement of the Aegean islands and the (now Turkish) Western Anatolian coastline in the region between Smyrna and Miletus. Some time later Aeolian Greeks living in Thessaly settled in the region north of Smyrna, while Dorians from the Peloponnese settled to the south of Miletus. A second wave of settlement occurred in the archaic period and lasted from around the middle of the eighth century to the end of the sixth. The chapter assesses why so many Greeks came to settle permanently abroad. One theory is that many settlements were founded in response to overpopulation and land hunger. Another explanation is resource fluctuations. However, though overpopulation and land hunger may have been prominent factors, each community had its own specific mix of reasons for sending pioneers abroad.
The Itinerant
Authors: Garland Robert
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the itinerants in Archaic Greece. Itinerants are differentiated from the economic migrants investigated in the previous chapter by virtue of the fact that they regularly moved from one place to another, some making only a brief stop, others staying a month or more. Some might have a home to which they periodically returned, others presumably did not. Even so, their lifestyle had points in common with that of the migrant, which is why it deserves inclusion in this study. The ubiquity of itinerants in the Greek world is a reflection of the relative scarcity of the human resource in the Mediterranean world.
Turning a DSGE Model into a Bayesian Model
Authors: Herbst Edward P. , Schorfheide Frank
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the turning of DSGE models into Bayesian versions by specifying a probability distribution for the innovations of the exogenous shock processes. There exists a wide variety of numerical techniques to solve DSGE models, but the chapter elaborates on a technique that involves the log-linearization of the equilibrium conditions and the solution of the resulting linear rational expectations difference equations. The approximate solution takes the form of a vector autoregressive process for the model variables, which is driven by the innovations to the exogenous shock processes, and is used as a set of state-transition equations in the state–space representation of the DSGE model. Under the assumption that these innovations are normally distributed, the log-linearized DSGE model takes the form of a linear Gaussian state–space model.
The North Atlantic Business Triangle and the Constellation of 1900–1901
Authors: Berghahn Volker R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins the story of the American–British–German business and political relationship in the year 1900. It assesses the prevailing attitudes toward this transitional period in terms of press commentary, before considering political and economic relations in the age of late-nineteenth-century imperialism. While positive visions of the future tended to predominate, the papers also contained evidence of the conflicts that were smoldering within the societies of Britain, Germany, and the United States. From here, the chapter turns to a rich archival source for the extent of the European–American constellation in the form of accounts made by financial expert Frank Vanderflip as well as by journalist William Stead.
From the Outbreak of War in July 1914 to the Genoa Conference, 1922
Authors: Berghahn Volker R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the state of American and European economies during the outbreak of World War I until the Genoa Conference was convened in 1922. It first considers the military–political origins of the war before analyzing the role the international business community played at the time of the war's outbreak. Hereafter the chapter focuses on the American perspectives, as it studies the ambiguities of American neutrality, the state of the American economy and its eventual entry into the war, and the beginnings of a strain on the Anglo-American relationship at the Paris Peace Conference. The chapter then returns the focus to the international stage as postwar reconstruction begins, highlighting the attempts at European recovery and the role of American businesses in these endeavors.
British and German Business and Politics under the Pax Americana, 1941–1957
Authors: Berghahn Volker R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the third round in the German–American–British business relationship from 1941 to 1957. It begins with an account of Hitler's activities in Eastern Europe, before turning to the magazine article published by American businessman Henry Luce, entitled, “The American Century.” This article postulated that, if the twentieth century had not been an American one in its first half, the United States should at least make every effort to realize this idea in its second half, and shape a peace for the rest of the twentieth century that was based on American principles of sociopolitical and economic organization. From here, the chapter discusses the role of American big business in postwar and Cold War periods, the question of cartels, economic reconstruction, and others.
Introduction
Authors: Lampe Kurt
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter talks about the Cyrenaic philosophical hedonists and highlights two aspects of their beliefs. First, many of the Cyrenaics' fundamental beliefs and arguments revolve around pleasure and pain. In particular, they all agree that either bodily or mental pleasure is the greatest and most certain intrinsic good. This could be indicated as formal hedonism. Second, they actually indulge in all sorts of everyday pleasures such as food and sex. In other words, notwithstanding disagreements among members of the movement, in general it is not by sober parsimony or self-restraint that they attempt to live pleasantly. In this they differ (at least in degree) from many formal hedonists, including their competitors and eventual successors, the Epicureans. This is called everyday hedonism.
Theodorus’s Innovations
Authors: Lampe Kurt
Published: November 2017

This chapter turns to the other provocateur from the final generations of the Cyrenaic movement, Theodorus “the Godless.” Previous scholars have noted the profound break Theodorus makes from Cyrenaic tradition, since he declares bodily pain and pleasure “intermediate” between goodness and badness. In order to understand Theodorus, the chapter suggests paying attention to two points: first, the intermediate status of pain and pleasure is closely related to Theodorus' attested attitude of “indifference,” which should be interpreted as an evolution from Hegesias' indifference; second, this evolution necessitates a new basis for the joy which Theodorus makes his ethical end. This illuminates the new prominence Theodorus assigns to the virtues, which the chapter suggests are the primary source of his joy.
Citizenship between Empire and Nation
Authors: Cooper Frederick
Published: November 2017

As the French public debates its present diversity and its colonial past, few remember that between 1946 and 1960 the inhabitants of French colonies possessed the rights of French citizens. Moreover, they did not have to conform to the French civil code that regulated marriage and inheritance. One could, in principle, be a citizen and different too. This book examines momentous changes in notions of citizenship, sovereignty, nation, state, and empire in a time of acute uncertainty about the future of a world that had earlier been divided into colonial empires. This book explains how African political leaders at the end of World War II strove to abolish the entrenched distinction between colonial “subject” and “citizen.” They then used their new status to claim social, economic, and political equality with other French citizens, in the face of resistance from defenders of a colonial order. Africans balanced their quest for equality with a desire to express an African political personality. They hoped to combine a degree of autonomy with participation in a larger, Franco-African ensemble. French leaders, trying to hold on to a large French polity, debated how much autonomy and how much equality they could concede. Both sides looked to versions of federalism as alternatives to empire and the nation-state. The French government had to confront the high costs of an empire of citizens, while Africans could not agree with French leaders or among themselves on how to balance their contradictory imperatives. The book shows how both France and its former colonies backed into more “national” conceptions of the state than either had sought.
A Constitution for an Empire of Citizens
Authors: Cooper Frederick
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the constitutional debates that went on from December 1945 to September 1946. This legislative drama concerning the new constitution took place in three stages: in the Commission de la France d'Outre-mer (Committee on Overseas France), the Ministère de la France d'Outre-mer (Overseas Ministry), and the Commission Constitutionnelle (Constitutional Committee). The assembly—the Assemblée Nationale Constituante (ANC)—as a whole debated and voted on each article as well as on the whole text. Wording of articles was sometimes bounced back and forth among these three bodies, and behind these fora was both the “government”—that is the ministers and their cabinets, responsible to the Assembly as a whole—and networks among the deputies, including an important grouping of overseas deputies.
Reframing France
Authors: Cooper Frederick
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the loi-cadre of 1956, which was widely recognized as a turning point in the history of French Africa. The loi-cadre was an attempt to reconfigure the place of Africa in the French Union, not an attempt to reconfigure the Union. It was a law, not a constitutional revision as had been demanded by most African political leaders. A “loi-cadre” was a particular type of law, sketching only the outlines of reforms, allowing the government to fill in the details via decrees. The government could then implement the principles of the law in its own way and on its own schedule, not subject to the typically glacial pace of legislative action. Ultimately, the loi-cadre made elected assemblies in each territory responsible for the budget and for its own civil service, and it thus broke with the centralizing tendencies of French rule.
Becoming National
Authors: Cooper Frederick
Published: November 2017

This chapter expresses that with the independence of Senegal and the other former French territories in Africa, the question arose of how to allocate the people living in or linked to each territory to the nationalities that had been created. As former territories became independent, France was shedding a significant portion of its nationals, some of whom had claims to being French dating to the seventeenth century, others of whom had acquired French nationality with the conquests of the late nineteenth century, and most of whom had had the rights of French citizens since 1946. The French government was not eager to get rid of its overseas citizens, even if it wanted to rid itself of the burdens of colonies. As such, Michel Debré announced in the Assemblée Nationale the government's intention to let the citizens of France from all over the French Community “reclaim without other formality” the citizenship that they might be losing or had already lost.
High-Frequency Financial Econometrics
Authors: Aït-Sahalia Yacine , Jacod Jean
Published: November 2017

High-frequency trading is an algorithm-based computerized trading practice that allows firms to trade stocks in milliseconds. Over the last fifteen years, the use of statistical and econometric methods for analyzing high-frequency financial data has grown exponentially. This growth has been driven by the increasing availability of such data, the technological advancements that make high-frequency trading strategies possible, and the need of practitioners to analyze these data. This comprehensive book introduces readers to these emerging methods and tools of analysis. The book covers the mathematical foundations of stochastic processes, describes the primary characteristics of high-frequency financial data, and presents the asymptotic concepts that their analysis relies on. It also deals with estimation of the volatility portion of the model, including methods that are robust to market microstructure noise, and address estimation and testing questions involving the jump part of the model. As the book demonstrates, the practical importance and relevance of jumps in financial data are universally recognized, but only recently have econometric methods become available to rigorously analyze jump processes. The book approaches high-frequency econometrics with a distinct focus on the financial side of matters while maintaining technical rigor, which makes this book invaluable to researchers and practitioners alike.
From Diffusions to Semimartingales
Authors: Aïıt-Sahalia Yacine , Jacod Jean
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents a quick review of the theory of semimartingales, which are processes for which statistical methods are considered in this book. Topics covered include diffusions, Lévy processes, Itô semimartingales, and processes with conditionally independent increments.
Data Considerations
Authors: Aïıt-Sahalia Yacine , Jacod Jean
Published: November 2017

Semimartingales of the type described in the previous chapter are used as modeling tools in a number of applications including the study of Internet packet flow, turbulence and other meteorological studies, genome analysis, physiology and other biological studies, particle modeling and finance. This chapter focuses on the specific characteristics of high-frequency financial data that distinguish them from other, more standard, time series data. Topics covered include mechanisms for price determination, high-frequency data distinctive characteristics, models for market microstructure noise, and strategies to mitigate the impact of noise.
Finer Analysis of Jumps: The Degree of Jump Activity
Authors: Aïıt-Sahalia Yacine , Jacod Jean
Published: November 2017

The notions of Blumenthal–Getoor (BG) indices BG indices can be extended to Itô (or even, general) semimartingale, and successive BG indices also make sense for semimartingales. This chapter is concerned with estimating those quantities, together with the related intensities. For general Itô semimartingales the problem seems utterly intractable, so we need some assumptions on the process, which may be considered as restrictive from a theoretical point of view. However, in practice all models used by practitioners fulfill these assumptions. Our objective in doing so is to provide specification tools for financial models, where the presence or at least the possibility of large jumps is generally accepted. There is much less consensus in the literature regarding the nature or even the need for small jumps, and this is where knowing the BG index might prove very useful for modeling.
Stochastic Modeling and Analysis
Authors: Murray Richard M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores stochastic behavior in biomolecular systems. It does so by first building on the preliminary discussion of stochastic modeling laid out in Chapter 2. The chapter reviews methods for modeling stochastic processes, including the chemical master equation (CME), the chemical Langevin equation (CLE), and the Fokker–Planck equation (FPE). Given a stochastic description, the chapter then analyzes the behavior of the system using a collection of stochastic simulation and analysis tools. This chapter makes use of a variety of topics in stochastic processes; readers should have a good working knowledge of basic probability and some exposure to simple stochastic processes.
Conditional Behaviors and Inclusive Fitness
Authors: Marshall James A.R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines social behaviors that are expressed conditional on the phenotype of others. David Queller argued that inclusive fitness analyses need to be done on a per-behavior basis, citing as an example the decision over whether to reproduce directly, and whether to aid a reproductive. Queller showed that inclusive fitness predictions are only sensible when one analyzes what an individual should do, given it finds itself in a particular behavioral role. The chapter first provides an overview of implicit and explicit conditionality and presents two classic examples: William D. Hamilton's greenbeard traits and Robert Trivers's theory of reciprocal cooperation. It also introduces an extension of Hamilton's rule to deal with explicitly conditional behaviors; this extension features a measure of phenotypic assortment that appears not to be the classic genetic relatedness of Hamilton's rule.
Variants of Hamilton’s Rule and Evolutionary Explanations
Authors: Marshall James A.R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines four variants of Hamilton's rule and how they give different evolutionary explanations for certain social behaviors such as greenbeard traits. These variants are: HR1, which extends Hamilton's rule with a synergistic coefficient capturing the deviation from additivity of fitness interactions; HR2, which deals with the conditional expression of phenotype; HR3, which is concerned with fitness as partial regression; and HR4, the geometric view of relatedness. These variants differ in how they treat the three key parameters of the original: “relatedness,” “cost,” and “benefit.” The chapter also considers how the nongenetic explanation of the evolution of altruism can actually be recast in a version with genetic relatedness, and how geometric relatedness underlies phenotypic assortment. Finally, it discusses different viewpoints on conditional behaviors.
The Russo-Japanese War and the German Wars for Hegemony, 1890–1939
Authors: Copeland Dale C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores the origins of three of the four most important wars of the first half of the twentieth century: the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, World War I, and World War II in Europe. These three wars had more than just a chronological connection to one another. The Russo-Japanese War helped solidify the diplomatic and economic alignments of the great powers in the decade before 1914, while the disaster of the First World War clearly set the stage for the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of yet another global war a generation later. This chapter focuses on providing a fairly comprehensive account of the causes of the Russo-Japanese War, confining the discussion of the world wars to the economic determinants of those conflicts.
The Prelude to Pearl Harbor: Japanese Security and the Northern Question, 1905–40
Authors: Copeland Dale C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter demonstrates that Japan's foreign policy from 1931 to 1941 was rooted in a logic going back many decades. It starts by briefly discussing US–Japanese relations from the end of the Russo-Japanese War up to 1921. The chapter then turns to an exploration of Japanese behavior during the period of Shidehara diplomacy and late Taisho democracy. It shows that Japanese leaders of all stripes, including Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijuro, were hardheaded realists who sought to maintain Japan's economic position in Manchuria and northern China even as they acted to reduce the risk of economic or military conflict with the great powers. The rest of the chapter takes up a more detailed analysis of the tragic decade from 1931 to 1940.
Reading Disclosures
Authors: Ben-Shahar Omri , Schneider Carl E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter explains how literacy problems complicate the process involved in making informed decisions. Many people are unable to read many disclosures because they are not literate or numerate enough to decipher them with reasonable effort. This is both because levels of literacy and numeracy are surprisingly low and because the reading levels of disclosures are surprisingly high. The chapter argues that sector literacy—understanding a decision's context and an industry's practices as only proficients do—poses a major problem in terms of trying to understand mandated disclosures. It emphasizes the need for sector literacy and reviews evidence from the areas of health literacy and financial literacy. It concludes by asking whether the illiteracy, innumeracy, and sector illiteracy problem can be solved.
The Quantity Question
Authors: Ben-Shahar Omri , Schneider Carl E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter defends decision aversion by showing how mandated disclosures are made yet more forbidding by the so-called quantity question and its two aspects: the overload problem and the accumulation problem. It first discusses the accumulation problem, which arises because disclosees are bombarded with many disclosures in many different areas. It then tells the story of a consumer—who read all the disclosures, fine print, notices, and warnings he met—and gives two other examples to illustrate how the accumulation problem is exacerbated by the need (on disclosurite principles) to examine various disclosures more than once. The chapter proceeds by explaining the meaning of overload and what causes the overload problem. It argues that overload is built into the goal of full disclosure of information about unfamiliar and complex decisions.
The Politics of Disclosure
Authors: Ben-Shahar Omri , Schneider Carl E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that even if simplification worked better, it would often be defeated by the political dynamics of regulation. First, mandates expand, exacerbating the overload problem. Second, new mandates proliferate, exacerbating the accumulation problem. Mandated disclosure is some sort of a regulatory hydra: cut of one of its heads, and two grow back. The politics of lawmaking helps explain why faites simple fails. The chapter explains why lawmakers routinely impose and extend mandates despite their unreliability. It considers a number of factors that affect the creation and perpetuation of disclosure mandates, including the plausibility of disclosure and the idea—however illusory—that mandated disclosure is all benefit and no cost. It suggests that disclosure is politically attractive in part because lawmakers rarely assess its benefits or burdens.
At Worst, Harmless?
Authors: Ben-Shahar Omri , Schneider Carl E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that mandated disclosure not only can be costly but also can inflict unintended and unnoticed harms. Mandates impose various direct costs on both disclosers and disclosees. For example, disclosers expend resources in collecting elusive information. Some disclosers must mail disclosures to thousands of disclosees annually or even more often. In addition, many transactions are nontrivially prolonged by disclosure rituals. The chapter considers the ways that mandated disclosure can undermine other regulation and ease pressure on lawmakers to enact better but more controversial regulation, such as the courts' ability to protect injured consumers, regulatory protection in consumer law, rules against unconscionable contracts, and people's ability to protect themselves. It also examines how disclosures make decisions worse, harm lenders and markets, and exacerbate inequality. Finally, it shows how mandated disclosure can impede efforts to ease suffering, cure illness, improve welfare, and prevent deaths.
The Disciplines of Reason and Lyric Poetry
Authors: Zim Rivkah
Published: November 2017

This chapter demonstrates how Boethius' text established many of the themes and forms that spoke to and for later writers in prison. These include: consolation from the expressive power of ordered lyric meters set against the disorder of injustice and suffering in the real world; the importance of a well-stocked mind and imagination in maintaining resistance to oppression; and the expressive potential of paradox in reconciling apparent contraries and celebrating the creativity that may arise under situations of adversity. The text also promoted the subtle simplicity of dialectic and patterns of opposing binaries used to resolve impossible tensions in apparently progressive forms of logical argument and related forms of dialogic exchange between different points of view represented in argument, correspondence, and intertextual allusiveness. Finally, it demonstrated the urgent need often experienced in the condemned cell to set the record straight (to name names) or to construct a memorial image of the authorial self and, more objectively, to testify for humankind by offering insights derived from the prisoner's experience.
With Hindsight and Beyond Resistance
Authors: Zim Rivkah
Published: November 2017

This chapter analyzes the work of Primo Levi. Levi's revisions of his experiences in Auschwitz stand alone. He wrote with hindsight because during his thirteen months in Auschwitz he was unable to write: normal life was brutally suspended, and he poured all his physical energies and intellect into the struggle to survive. Traumatic memories are especially persistent and his various forms of memoir, and reaction to his experiences have come to represent the most developed and searing Holocaust testimony that since the later 1940s has evolved in many different forms. Levi's writing epitomizes the ethical incentives of prison writing as testimony for mankind that not only engages new readers but also challenges them, going well beyond testimony as an end in itself.
The Arms in the Sky
Authors: Barchiesi Alessandro
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers some of the narrative strategies and their relative effects of sense in the Aeneid. What matters here is grasping the specific way the complexity of cultural presuppositions (and their interactions) acts in reading as a source of complex meanings—that is, tightening the link between the density of literary signification and the multitude of implied models. This chapter marks out the elusive pathway that unites two discursive manifestations in Vergil's epic poetry which are quite distinct from one another: an ideological contradiction and a narrative “polyphony.” It then concludes with the form and workmanship of a “pluri-isotopic” narrative text.
Introduction
Authors: Quint David
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). Paradise Lost tells the story of two falls. There is the unending fall of Satan and his followers, and there is the Fall—and spiritual regeneration—of Adam and Eve. Satan's story is the old epic dispensation, the search for temporal power as a zero-sum game driven by envy and the desire for glory above one's peers. It can only culminate in kingship, war, and destruction—and in alienation from God in a literal or mental hell. The fall of Adam and Eve tells the story of the new dispensation of Milton's epic: of how love between human beings, here exemplified in marital love, enables the love of God; of the experience of spiritual goods that exceed finite temporal ones; of hope for an existence beyond the finitude of death.
Jane Austen, Game Theorist
Authors: Chwe Michael Suk-Young
Published: November 2017

Game theory—the study of how people make choices while interacting with others—is one of the most popular technical approaches in social science today. But as this book reveals, Jane Austen explored game theory's core ideas in her six novels roughly 200 years ago—over a century before its mathematical development during the Cold War. The book shows how this beloved writer theorized choice and preferences, prized strategic thinking, and analyzed why superiors are often strategically clueless about inferiors. Exploring a diverse range of literature and folktales, this book illustrates the wide relevance of game theory and how, fundamentally, we are all strategic thinkers.
Game Theory in Context
Authors: Chwe Michael Suk-Young
Published: November 2017

This chapter explains game theory from the ground up. It first considers the concepts of choice and preferences before discussing strategic thinking as a combination of several skills. Game theory is built upon rational choice theory, and the chapter uses an example from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park to illustrate first rational choice theory and then game theory. To demonstrate the usefulness of game theory, it uses a simple game-theoretic model to show how Beatrice and Benedick in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Richard and Harrison in Richard Wright's Black Boy, and people revolting against an oppressive regime all face the same situation. Finally, it reviews previous work trying to bring game theory, as well as related concepts such as “theory of mind,” together with the study of literature.