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This article discusses three different conceptions of ethics within contemporary feminist theory and how they depict the connection between ethics and politics. The first position, represented by Wendy Brown, mainly describes ethics as a sort of anti-political moralism and apolitical individualism, and hence as a turn away from politics. The second position, represented by Saba Mahmood, discusses ethics as a precondition for politics, while the third position, represented by Vikki Bell, depicts it as the 'external consciousness' of the political, and as destabilising political discourse by confronting it with singularity and 'radical' difference. Though they represent distinct positions, the article argues, all three suffer from a tendency to reify ethics by failing to give a contextualised account of it. The article then introduces the ethical perspective of Judith Butler, arguing that she – while offering both a transhistorical and a contextualised dimension – tends to psychologise and individualise ethics and politics. The last part of the article introduces Terry Eagleton and what, in a Marxist vein, could be called a 'materialist ethics' or an 'ethics of socialism', and argues that this way of framing the relationship between ethics and politics provides a solution to the trap of reification identified in the three described positions. This part also discusses how Eagleton's theory relates to – but also differs from – arguments made by Butler. One advantage of Eagleton's work, the article argues, is that it does not psychologise and individualise ethics and politics as Butler's work does.

Preface -- Plan of the book -- Publisher's acknowledgements -- The business finance environment -- Introduction -- A framework for financial decision making -- Financial (accounting) statements and their interpretation -- Investment decisions -- Investment appraisal methods -- Practical aspects of investment appraisal -- Risk in investment appraisal -- Portfolio theory and its relevance to real investment decisions -- Financing decisions -- Sources of long-term finance -- The secondary capital market (the stock exchange) and its efficiency -- Cost of capital estimations and the discount rate -- Gearing, the cost of capital and shareholders' wealth -- The dividend decision -- Integrated decisions -- Management of working capital -- Corporate restructuring (including takeovers and divestments) -- International aspects of business finance -- Small businesses -- Appendix 1: Present value table -- Appendix 2: Annuity table -- Appendix 3: Suggested answers to review questions -- Appendix 4: Suggested answers to selected problems -- Glossary -- References -- Index

This concise self-contained book on life contingencies is written for students, teachers, researchers and life insurance practitioners. The stochastic model, introduced by Professor De Vylder more than twenty years ago and now widely adopted, is used throughout the monograph. Beyond the classical material of life insurance mathematics, the emphasis lies on variance evaluations of mathematical reserves, allowing the estimation of long term ruin probabilities in life insurance portfolios with varying volume. Other characteristics of the book are its great generality, the inclusion of an axiomatic theory of compound interests, the development of statistical methods for mortality and other estimations, and the introduction of graphs making a clear visualization of multiple decrement models possible. This approach makes the monograph incomparable to other books in the field

This classic textbook in the field, now completely revised and updated, provides a bridge between theory and practice. Appropriate for the second course in Finance for MBA students and the first course in Finance for doctoral students, the text prepares students for the complex world of modern financial scholarship and practice. It presents a unified treatment of finance combining theory, empirical evidence and applications

AbstractSome recent Marxologists (notably Allen Buchanan, Richard Miller and Allen Wood) have denied that the idea of justice can play any significant role within Marxist thought. This article maintains, on the contrary, that the very logic of historical materialism, notably the concept of the historical development of human needs, necessitates a concept of justice even in the higher phase of communism. Furthermore, the "anti-juridical" interpretation of Marx fails to provide an adequate account of the connection between the communist values of self-realization and community. It therefore obscures the concerns addressed by a notion of justice. The early Marx's concept of species-being (Gattungswesen) expresses the relation between self-realization and community in historical terms. Thus it provides an appropriate context for a Marxist theory of justice.

"Social innovation, as Schumpeter taught, depends on the frequency of acts of individual learning. It thus depends on reinforcement at micro and macro levels offered to those who innovate or accept innovation, as well as on the learning capacity of the society, and, given its routine-prone bureaucracy, on the procedures adopted to make learning more probable (such as social-political thinktanks). Innovation theory requires more research on case studies, adoption curves (as well as public-private sector differences), and the distribution among groups of its benefits and costs, including the cost of not innovating. A generative model of the innovation process would help us to predict the direction and dimensions of future innovativeness and to model probable futures." (author's abstract)

The special issue of Marketing Theory (2013) on consumer culture theory (CCT) updates and restates the main aims and controversies in CCT as well as offers a number of novel interpretations on the history and possible future direction of the movement. Whilst the anchor paper from Thompson et al. (2013) is notable for the invocation of Bakhtin's concept of Heteroglossia, its main significance is as a reply to ongoing critiques of the CCT project. In this commentary article, we highlight the common tendency among critics to emphasize the paradigmatic and institutional basis for CCT as residing in the context of academic discourse. These accounts utilize what Coskiner-Balli (2013) discusses as the mobilization of cultural myths. One consequence of this process of retelling the CCT creation narrative is that it diverts and obscures other ideological readings of CCT. We highlight what we understand as the underlying neo-liberal sentiment at the centre of the CCT project. A neo-liberal perspective repositions some of the main criticisms of CCT, especially those regarding the overemphasis on consumer subjectivities.

"Sports Diplomacy: History, Theory, and Practice" published on by Oxford University Press.

This paper illustrates the use of probability models to study properties of voting rules. In particular, a simple occupancy distribution and its limiting Dlrichlet form are introduced, corresponding to simplifying assumptions about voters' preferences. We use as illustrations the occurrence probability of the Condorcet Paradox, a vintage problem in social choice theory, along with the related concept of Condorcet efficiency, a measure of goodness for voting rules. Further examples include properties of a lottery rule and the vulnerability of certain voting rules to strategic manipulation. Prospects for future work are indicated.

This paper examines the various ways in which nonideal theory responds to noncompliance with ideal principles of justice. Taking Rawls' definition of nonideal theory as my point of departure, I propose an understanding of this concept as comprising two subparts: Complementary nonideal theory responds to deliberate and avoidable noncompliance and consists mainly of theories of civil disobedience, rebellion, and retribution. Substitutive nonideal theory responds to nondeliberate and unavoidable noncompliance and consists mainly of theories of transition and caretaking. I further argue that a special case of substitutive nonideal theory may arise when noncompliance is a result of a lack of motivation among citizens. This situation, I suggest, calls for nonideal theorizing (1) when our aim is to evaluate the political actions undertaken by specific members of a society (in particular the ruling elite) whose set of feasible options is constrained as a result of others' lack of motivation and (2) when a situation of mutually reinforcing distrust and noncooperation—sometimes called a "social trap"—constrains the feasible option set of the entire population. The main advantage of the twofold conceptualization of nonideal theory is that it bridges the theoretical gap between actor-oriented and situation-based accounts of justice: It allows us to preserve the term ideal justice for justice under minimal feasibility constraints, while recognizing that a situation where all agents comply with their duties must in some sense be characterized as just.

Compiled from a series of blog posts which can be found at "The Next Recession." Modern monetary theory (MMT) has become flavor of the time among many leftist economic views in recent years. MMT has some traction in the left as it appears to offer theoretical support for policies of fiscal spending funded by central bank money and running up budget deficits and public debt without fear of crises – and thus backing policies of government spending on infrastructure projects, job creation and industry in direct contrast to neoliberal mainstream policies of austerity and minimal government intervention. Here I will offer my view on the worth of MMT and its policy implications for the labor movement. First, I'll try and give broad outline to bring out the similarities and difference with Marx's monetary theory.

The notion of optimum population has attracted the attention of economists ever since economics was made a science. Roots can be traced back to ancient Greece. The topic has recently found rising interest among population economists and demographers. The economic concept of optimum population seeks to define the population size, which maximizes a welfare criterion of the society. The purpose of this book is to outline this concept from a micro and macro perspective and to link it with issues of technical progress, social security, limited resources and migration. It treats fertility endogenously and studies its welfare and policy implications. The emphasis is on a rigorous theoretical treatment of the subject using the modern growth and welfare theory as well as the new classical micro model of the family

Building on the foundational concepts of transformative learning theory, I argue that horror fiction strongly encourages perspective transformation by challenging student assumptions about both genre writing and educational experience. I informally describe a specific creative writing class period focusing on the motif of the scream in diverse horror texts, and I illustrate how students learn to transform what they already bring to the classroom by employing a variety of particular in-class writing exercises and literary discussions. Among these, transformative writing exercises—such as the revision of an existing text by Stephen King—are highlighted as instructional techniques. As cautionary literature, horror especially dramatizes strategies of fight versus flight. I reveal how students can learn by transforming their knowledge through disorientation that is particular to reading and writing in the horror genre.