Divine Intervention? The Influence of Religious Value Communication on U.S. Intervention Policy

Abstract We study a real small open economy with two key ingredients (1) partial segmentation of home and foreign bond markets and (2) a pecuniary externality that makes the real exchange rate excessively volatile in response to capital flows. Partial segmentation implies that, by intervening in the bond markets, the central bank can affect the exchange rate and the spread between home- and foreign-bond yields. Such interventions allow the central bank to address the pecuniary externality, but they are also costly, as foreigners make carry trade profits. We analytically characterize the optimal intervention policy that solves this trade-off: (1) the optimal policy leans against the wind, stabilizing the exchange rate; (2) it involves smooth spreads but allows exchange rates to jump; (3) it partly relies on “forward guidance,” with non-zero interventions even after the shock has subsided; (4) it requires credibility, in that central banks do not intervene without commitment. Finally, we shed light on the global consequences of widespread interventions, using a multi-country extension of our model. We find that, left to themselves, countries over-accumulate reserves, reducing welfare and leading to inefficiently low world interest rates.

Download Full-text

Optimal, near-optimal, and robust epidemic control

Communications Physics ◽

10.1038/s42005-021-00570-y ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Dylan H. Morris ◽

Fernando W. Rossine ◽

Joshua B. Plotkin ◽

Simon A. Levin

Keyword(s):

Robust Control ◽

Disease Control ◽

Epidemic Model ◽

Optimal Strategy ◽

Policy Design ◽

Optimal Strategies ◽

Economic Costs ◽

Short Period ◽

Intervention Policy ◽

Pharmaceutical Interventions

AbstractIn the absence of drugs and vaccines, policymakers use non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing to decrease rates of disease-causing contact, with the aim of reducing or delaying the epidemic peak. These measures carry social and economic costs, so societies may be unable to maintain them for more than a short period of time. Intervention policy design often relies on numerical simulations of epidemic models, but comparing policies and assessing their robustness demands clear principles that apply across strategies. Here we derive the theoretically optimal strategy for using a time-limited intervention to reduce the peak prevalence of a novel disease in the classic Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered epidemic model. We show that broad classes of easier-to-implement strategies can perform nearly as well as the theoretically optimal strategy. But neither the optimal strategy nor any of these near-optimal strategies is robust to implementation error: small errors in timing the intervention produce large increases in peak prevalence. Our results reveal fundamental principles of non-pharmaceutical disease control and expose their potential fragility. For robust control, an intervention must be strong, early, and ideally sustained.

Download Full-text

On James Sterba’s Refutation of Theistic Arguments to Justify Suffering

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel12010064 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 64

Author(s):

Bruce R. Reichenbach

Keyword(s):

Moral Judgments ◽

Recent Book ◽

Middle Ground ◽

Moral Decision Making ◽

Existence Of God ◽

Moral Principles ◽

Divine Intervention ◽

Horrendous Evils ◽

Consistent Application ◽

Moral Requirements

In his recent book Is a Good God Logically Possible? and article by the same name, James Sterba argued that the existence of significant and horrendous evils, both moral and natural, is incompatible with the existence of God. He advances the discussion by invoking three moral requirements and by creating an analogy with how the just state would address such evils, while protecting significant freedoms and rights to which all are entitled. I respond that his argument has important ambiguities and that consistent application of his moral principles will require that God remove all moral and natural evils. This would deleteriously restrict not only human moral decision making, but also the knowledge necessary to make moral judgments. He replies to this critique by appealing to the possibility of limited divine intervention, to which I rejoin with reasons why his middle ground is not viable.

Download Full-text

God and the Playpen: On the Feasibility of Morally Better Worlds

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel12040266 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 266

Author(s):

Cheryl K. Chen

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Actual World ◽

David Lewis ◽

Moral Good ◽

Moral Goodness ◽

Divine Intervention ◽

Horrendous Evil ◽

Good And Evil ◽

Free Will Defense ◽

Better Than

According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom required for moral goodness, while intervening to ensure that all evil-doing is victimless? More recently, James Sterba has revived the playpen problem by arguing that an omnipotent and benevolent God would have intervened to prevent significant and especially horrendous evil. I argue that it is possible, at least, that such divine intervention would have backfired, and that any attempt to create a world that is morally better than this one would have resulted in a world that is morally worse. I conclude that the atheologian should instead attack the free will defense at its roots: either by denying that the predetermination of our actions is incompatible with our freely per-forming them, or by denying that the actual world—a world with both moral good and evil—is more valuable than a world without any freedom at all.

Download Full-text

Completely Thrombosed Giant Intracranial Aneurysm with Spontaneous Thrombosis of the Parent Artery: Is It Nature's Divine Intervention and a Self-Cure?

World Neurosurgery ◽

10.1016/j.wneu.2018.07.072 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 118 ◽

pp. 132-138 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Kuntal Kanti Das ◽

Gagandeep Singh ◽

Satyadeo Pandey ◽

Kamlesh Singh Bhaisora ◽

Awadhesh Jaiswal ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Intracranial Aneurysm ◽

Parent Artery ◽

Spontaneous Thrombosis ◽

Divine Intervention ◽

Giant Intracranial Aneurysm

Download Full-text

Value communication: low-cost marketing initiatives for “Guru Ki Bani 58282”

Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies ◽

10.1108/eemcs-04-2013-0025 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Neeraj Pandey ◽

Gaganpreet Singh

Keyword(s):

Interactive Voice Response ◽

Low Cost ◽

Value Added ◽

Subject Area ◽

Marketing Management ◽

Digital Marketing ◽

Content Type ◽

Mba Students ◽

Marketing Team ◽

Value Communication

Subject area Pricing, digital marketing, marketing management and strategic marketing. Study level/applicability The case can be used for pricing or digital marketing courses as well as marketing management courses to MBA students and/or for management development programmes. Case overview Goldfinch Mobile Solutions, a Hong-Kong based value added services (VAS) and gaming platform provider, had an exclusive tie up with Bharti Airtel in India for providing value added voice applications on an interactive voice response system (IVRS) platform. The Goldfinch flagship service is “Guru Ki Bani” which may be subscribed to by dialing the short code 58282. This “58282” service has a repository of all Sikh religion daily prayers, religious songs, teachings, stories from Guru's life and similar information that is derived from the Sikh Holy book Guru Granth Sahib Ji. As per mutual agreement between Goldfinch Mobile Solutions and Bharti Airtel, the telecom operator had the responsibility to promote Goldfinch's Guru Ki Bani service amongst its subscriber base through its below the line (BTL) promotional channels such as short messaging service (SMS), outbound calls, cell information, notification SMS after call and above the line (ATL) activities such as posters, leaflets, print, promoters, regional TV, outdoors, etc. The revenue sharing arrangement between Airtel and Golfinch was in the ratio of 75 percent and 25 percent. However, with recent changes in the policies of Telephone Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), promotional marketing used by telecom operators has been constrained. Declining customer share, decreasing profits (after Bharti Airtel halted promotions) and increasing organization cost per customer have made MD and CEO Mr Newton Bubber think of various options including low-cost marketing initiatives besides digital marketing to promote Guru Ki Bani services. Value communication to its huge potential customer base, i.e. 184.19 million Bharti Airtel subscribers was another challenge facing Mr Newton and his marketing team at Goldfinch. Expected learning outcomes The case enables students to learn the concepts and application of value creation, effective value communication, price waterfall analysis, importance of costing parameters in pricing decisions, low-cost marketing strategies and digital marketing. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes.

Download Full-text

Povești despre strigoi

Anuarul Muzeului Etnograif al Transilvaniei ◽

10.47802/amet.2020.34.10 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 34 ◽

pp. 187-197

Author(s):

Andrei Flavius Petruț

Keyword(s):

The Elderly ◽

Divine Intervention ◽

Collective Mentality ◽

Community People ◽

To Come ◽

Dead Man ◽

The Village ◽

The Devil ◽

Present Text

"Stories about ghosts/undeads The present text brings into discussion the supernatural beings that still haunt the collective mentality of the inhabitants of the land of Zarand. Ghosts, because it’s them we are talking about, are still part of the stories of the elderly who remember their encounters with them. Unwanted in the village world and blaming them for the various misfortunes facing the community, people have developed practices to help them identify these beings, but also to remove them. Thus, since the birth of certain children who have a malformation of the spine, it is believed that they are undead. Sometimes, during life, because of curses or pacts with the devil, people lose their souls, so that, after death, they do not find their peace and continue to come to haunt those who are alive. People told us about these meetings, presenting the practices by which undeads are removed: through witchcraft, with the help of priests or through divine intervention. People do not want these returns of dead people, even if they are their beloved ones. Once dead, man loses his human status, these returns disturbing the peace of the village, and can cause strong imbalances: disease, famine, death of people and animals. Only after these beings are defeated, the life of the villagers’ returns to normal, keeping only the memory of the events that disturbed the peace. Keywords: Undeads, supernatural beings, dead alive, witchcraft, pact with the devil "

Download Full-text