Suchergebnisse

"National Security Law is about the law governing the Canadian state's response to serious crises -- that is, events that jeopardize its "national security." The book approaches national security law as a system, and organizes its discussion of law around five themes: structure (the mandate and roles of national security agencies); threats (aggression, terrorism, interference, proliferation, and emergencies); information (domestic and international intelligence collection, sharing, and information secrecy); response (including security screening and assessment, aviation "no fly" listings, passport revocation, immigration detention and removals, peace bonds, preventive detention, threat reduction, defensive and offensive cyber, criminal prosecutions, and use of force); and accountability (national security review). Given the evolution of Canadian law in these areas, this second edition is a comprehensive rewrite of the first edition, first published in 2007."

Purpose
This paper aims to examine whether board-related characteristics matter for cost efficiency in banking sector.


Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a sample of publicly traded US commercial banks and savings institutions to estimate a relationship between cost efficiency measured by stochastic frontier analysis and a set of board-related characteristics for the period 2007-2013.


Findings
An inverted U-shape relation is found between board size and efficiency. Thus, there is a trade-off between costs and benefits of larger boards. Optimal board size is higher for banks with more complex operations. This study also observed an inverted U-shape relation between board independence and cost efficiency. The banks where the Chairman also executes the CEO responsibility show lower efficiency. However, a higher proportion of independent board members in banks with unitary leadership structure may mitigate the conflict of interest and lower efficiency stemming from CEO duality.


Research limitations/implications
This study's evidence supports the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision emphasis on advising a board composition that provides for a sufficient degree of director independence.


Practical Implications
The results are relevant for banks and their external and internal stakeholders. Banks may adjust their current board characteristics to increase the board effectiveness. Externally, potential investors can evaluate the quality of corporate governance of banks before making investment decisions. The empirical findings can also be useful for regulators imposing corporate governance codes in banking.


Originality/value
To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to provide empirical evidence on the impact of board characteristics on bank efficiency for a wide panel of US banks. Additionally, a comprehensive set of board-related variables is used.

In dem Beitrag werden Probleme eines zunehmenden nationalen Identifikationsbedürfnisses diskutiert, indem dieses brisante Thema aus den irrationalen Bezügen bloßer Willens- und Wunschvorstellungen herausgeführt und auf eine objektive Grundlage gestellt wird. Die beiden Erklärungsansätze einer "Nationalcharakter"-Forschung im Rahmen der politischen Kulturforschung werden vorgestellt: der strukturelle Ansatz und der sozialpsychologische Ansatz, die miteinander verknüpft werden. Dann werden drei Grundpositionen zur nationalen Identität skizziert: (1) Nation ist als historische Kategorie eine dialektische Einheit von sozialökonomischen (klassenmäßigen) und ethnischen Faktoren. (2) Nation kann in ihrem Wesen nicht von sozioökonomischen Faktoren her begründet werden. (3) Nation ist eine gesellschaftlich-historische Kategorie, die auch von sozioökonomischen Faktoren bedingt wird. Vor dem Hintergrund einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit diesen Ansätzen wird die Entwicklung der nationalen Identität betrachtet. Dabei wird herausgearbeitet, daß die Wechselwirkung ethnischer mit sozioökonomischen Faktoren für die Nationenbildung und Nationenentwicklung eine wichtige Rolle spielt, daß ein Primat der sozioökonomischen Faktoren für die Bestimmung des Wesens der Nation aber methodisch nicht haltbar ist. (KW)

Shidu women are mothers who have lost their only child and no longer have the chance to have another child. Most of them, born in the 1950s and 1960s, have experienced important historical events and social changes in recent decades of China. Through the case studies of several Shidu women, it is found that their grief process after losing the only child not only displays general characteristics of grief, but also presents specific historical, cultural, and personal characteristics: they suffered individual, family, and historical trauma after experiencing major social events, at the same time gaining post-traumatic growth and resilience. They received more care from relatives after losing their only child. We found qualities of traditional Chinese women that can bear hardships, be hard-working and tolerant, and demonstrate character of self-esteem and self-reliance, feminine characteristics that are good at expressing emotion and seeking help, and the personality characteristic of altruism. We show the historical, cultural, and personal characteristics that have formed the grief psychodynamic of Shidu women.

In this paper I focus on a use of an idea of evolution in transhumanist discussions about technologies, human enhancement, and a concept of posthuman. Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory stands at the origin of transhumanist thought and provides a theoretical foundation for many contemporary transhumanists. However, in the paper I argue that the idea of evolution used by these writers mostly cannot be interpreted as direct continuation of Darwin's notion of evolutionary theory. The text is divided into three sections. The first section deals with Kurzweil's term of evolution of our universe heading to the singularity. In the second section, I point out a metaphor which occurs in some transhumanist texts – the comparison of childhood and adulthood to natural and conscious evolution. The last section focuses on connection between the notions of progress, evolution, and human enhancement.

It is contended that unless everything is necessarily what it is, the essence of an object cannot be a property of the object which the object could not have failed to have. But if everything is necessarily what it is, then no identity statement is contingent.

I raise the following six moral objections to the way God evaluates us. (i) He violates the human right to free thought. (ii) He makes the dubious assumption that it is praiseworthy and blameworthy, respectively, to believe and disbelieve that he exists. (iii) He excessively rewards believers and excessively punishes disbelievers. (iv) He only assigns to his evaluates the two extreme grades: eternal bliss and eternal damnation. (v) He overlooks diverse factors related to the belief of God. (vi) He is silent on the issue of whether to evaluate animals. Therefore, God, who is allegedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, does not exist.

In this paper I begin by explaining what epistemic injustice is and what ordinary language philosophy is. I then go on to ask why we might doubt the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in examining epistemic injustice. In the first place, we might wonder how ordinary language philosophy can be of use, given that many of the key terms used in discussing epistemic injustice, including 'epistemic injustice' itself, are not drawn from our ordinary language. We might also have doubts about the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in this area, given ordinary language philosophers' aversion to theory. Finally, we might have doubts about the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy due to the fact that the study of epistemic injustice is clearly a study of practical matters concerning the way the world is and has been historically. If ordinary language philosophy is just concerned with grammar, what use can it be to practical and social philosophy concerning current issues? In response to these worries, I demonstrate the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in practice by applying the insights of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Alan R. White to a problem that Miranda Fricker raises, but does not answer: about whether there is a confidence condition on knowledge. I also make use of Gilbert Ryles distinction between 'the use of ordinary language' and 'the ordinary use of an expression' to show that the terminology used in examining epistemic injustice is ordinary in some sense.