Suchergebnisse

In a lecture delivered at Illinois Wesleyan University three years ago, Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Prime Minister of Norway and Director-General of the World Health Organization, observed that Americans who maintain that "Washington is the problem," and Europeans who assert that "Brussels is the problem," are essentially making the same argument. Since the global financial crisis of the late 2000's, many discussions of economic policy around the world have centered around the rise of "populist" sentiments. Examples of these developments would include the "Brexit" process in the United Kingdom, the "America First" agenda of the Trump Administration in the United States, and the relative success of "Euroskeptic" parties, at both ends of the ideological spectrum, in last year's elections for the European Parliament. This [paper] explores the economic manifestations of the shift towards populism and nationalism in the United States and parts of Europe, examining their similarities as well as their differences. Drawing upon survey data and statistical results that have been presented in recent journal articles, there will be a consideration of the alternative responses of various Christian bodies, to these developments, on both continents, as well as the possible rationale(s) for these differences. This session will conclude, prior to a question-and-answer session involving the audience, with an argument in favor of the continued relevance of the legacy of "Christian internationalism" to contemporary questions of global political economy.

This paper seeks to explore the potential reasons for the antagonistic sentiments that are held by many Protestant evangelicals, in the United States, towards the European Union. The possible causal factors include the following: 1) The legacy of anti-internationalism among evangelicals, dating back to the debate over American membership in the League of Nations almost 100 years ago; 2) The level of attraction to the current wave of "populist" politics and economics; 3) The aversion of politically conservative American evangelicals to the perception of Europe as a "socialist' continent; 4) The negative portrayal of the European Union, as an instrument of "globalism," in widely held manifestations of American evangelical theology. A major dimension of this paper will be an examination of the points of tangency between the preceding elements, including a consideration of the extent to which they reinforce and support one another. Does the skepticism with which American evangelicals view the European Union – and other multinational institutions – primarily stem from the application of certain theological positions that are reinforced by their political perspectives, or is it the other way around? Is evangelical antipathy towards the EU a manifestation of the recent observation by Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and Director-General of the World Health Organization, that Americans who maintain that "Washington is the problem," and Europeans who assert that "Brussels is the problem," are essentially making the same argument? How accurate is the economic narrative that emerges from this interaction of politics and theology?

This paper seeks to explore the potential reasons for the antagonistic sentiments that are held by many Protestant evangelicals, in the United States, towards the European Union. The possible causal factors include the following: 1) The legacy of anti-internationalism among evangelicals, dating back to the debate over American membership in the League of Nations almost 100 years ago; 2) The level of attraction to the current wave of "populist" politics and economics; 3) The aversion of politically conservative American evangelicals to the perception of Europe as a "socialist' continent; 4) The negative portrayal of the European Union, as an instrument of "globalism," in widely held manifestations of American evangelical theology. A major dimension of this paper will be an examination of the points of tangency between the preceding elements, including a consideration of the extent to which they reinforce and support one another. Does the skepticism with which American evangelicals view the European Union – and other multinational institutions – primarily stem from the application of certain theological positions that are reinforced by their political perspectives, or is it the other way around? Is evangelical antipathy towards the EU a manifestation of the recent observation by Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and Director-General of the World Health Organization, that Americans who maintain that "Washington is the problem," and Europeans who assert that "Brussels is the problem," are essentially making the same argument? How accurate is the economic narrative that emerges from this interaction of politics and theology?

AbstractWe examine whether investor reactions are sensitive to the recent direction or volatility of underlying market movements. We find that dividend change announcements elicit a greater change in stock price when the nature of the news (good or bad) goes against the grain of the recent market direction during volatile times. For example, announcements to lower dividends elicit a significantly greater decrease in stock price when market returns have been up and more volatile. Similarly, announcements to raise dividends tends to elicit a greater increase in stock price when market returns have been normal or down and more volatile, although this latter tendency lacks statistical significance. We suggest an explanation for these results that combines the implications of a dynamic rational expectations equilibrium model with behavioral considerations that link the responsiveness of investors to market direction and volatility.

In this paper we compare expectations derived from 10 different human physiologically based pharmacokinetic models for perchloroethylene with data on absorption via inhalation, and concentrations in alveolar air and venous blood. Our most interesting finding is that essentially all of the models show a time pattern of departures of predictions of air and blood levels relative to experimental data that might be corrected by more sophisticated model structures incorporating either (a) heterogeneity of the fat compartment (with respect to either perfusion or partition coefficients or both) or (b) intertissue diffusion of perchloroethylene between the fat and muscle/VRG groups. Similar types of corrections have recently been proposed to reduce analogous anomalies in the fits of pharmacokinetic models to the data for several volatile anesthetics.(17‐20) A second finding is that models incorporating resting values for alveolar ventilation in the region of 5.4 L/min seemed to be most compatible with the most reliable set of perchloroethylene uptake data.

AbstractDetermining the hedge ratio based on the slope coefficient of a regression on price changes suffers from several critical shortcomings. First, it is difficult to assemble a properly constructed data set. Second, results vary depending on the length of the change interval. Third, the resulting ex post effective prices realized under this approach are wholly uncertain, ex ante. We show that when the hedge ratio is determined with reference to a regression on the respective price levels, rather than price changes, the resulting hedge ratio solution is superior in that none of these shortcomings apply.

In recent years physiologically based pharmacokinetic models have come to play an increasingly important role in risk assessment for carcinogens. The hope is that they can help open the black box between external exposure and carcinogenic effects to experimental observations, and improve both high‐dose to low‐dose and interspecies projections of risk. However, to date, there have been only relatively preliminary efforts to assess the uncertainties in current modeling results. In this paper we compare the physiologically based pharmacokinetic models (and model predictions of risk‐related overall metabolism) that have been produced by seven different sets of authors for perchloroethylene (tetrachloroethylene). The most striking conclusion from the data is that most of the differences in risk‐related model predictions are attributable to the choice of the data sets used for calibrating the metabolic parameters. Second, it is clear that the bottom‐line differences among the model predictions are appreciable. Overall, the ratios of low‐dose human to bioassay rodent metabolism spanned a 30‐fold range for the six available human/rat comparisons, and the seven predicted ratios of low‐dose human to bioassay mouse metabolism spanned a 13‐fold range. (The greater range for the rat/human comparison is attributable to a structural assumption by one author group of competing linear and saturable pathways, and their conclusion that the dangerous saturable pathway constitutes a minor fraction of metabolism in rats.) It is clear that there are a number of opportunities for modelers to make different choices of model structure, interpretive assumptions, and calibrating data in the process of constructing pharmacokinetic models for use in estimating "delivered" or "biologically effective" dose for carcinogenesis risk assessments. We believe that in presenting the results of such modeling studies, it is important for researchers to explore the results of alternative, reasonably likely approaches for interpreting the available data—and either show that any conclusions they make are relatively insensitive to particular interpretive choices, or to acknowledge the differences in conclusions that would result from plausible alternative views of the world.