Optimal Contracting Model in a Social Environment and Trust-Related Psychological Costs

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suren Basov ◽  
M. Ishaq Bhatti

AbstractMost research in contract theory concentrated on the role of incentives in shaping individual behavior. Recent research suggests that social norms also play an important role. From a point of view of a mechanism designer (a principal, a government, and a bank), responsiveness of an agent to the social norms is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it provides the designer with extra instruments, while on the other it puts restrictions on how these new and the more conventional instruments can be used. The main objective of this paper is to investigate this trade-off and study how it shapes different contracts observed in the real world. We consider a model in which agent’s cost of cheating is triggered by the principal’s show of trust. We call such behavior a norm of honesty and trust and show that it drives incentives to be either low powerful or high powerful, eliminating contracts with medium powerful incentives.

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 374-377
Author(s):  
Tinni Goswami Bhattacharya

The essential theme of this paper is to highlight the condition of health and hygiene in the British Bengal from the perspective of official documents and vernacular writings, with special emphasis on the journals and periodicals. The fatal effects of the epidemics like malaria and cholera, the insanitary condition of the rural Bengal and the cultivated indifference of the British Raj made the lives of the poor natives miserable and ailing. The authorities had a tendency to blame the colonized for their illiteracy and callousness, which became instrumental for the outbreak of the epidemics. On the other, in the late 19 th and the beginning of the 20th, the vernacular literature played the role of a catalyst in awakening health awareness, highlighting the issues related with ill health, insanitation and malnourishment. More importantly, it became an active link between the society and culture on the one hand, and health and people on the other. The present researcher wants to highlight these opposite trajectories of mentalities with a different connotation. The ideologies of the Raj and the native political aspirations often reflected in the colonial writings, where the year 1880 was considered as a landmark in the field of public health policies. On the other, the dichotomy between the masters and the colonized took a prominent shape during 1930s. Within these fifty years; the health of the natives witnessed many upheavals grounded on the social, economic and cultural tensions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Nenad Miscevic ◽  

What is the role of toleration in the present-day crisis, marked by the inflow of refugees and increase in populism? The seriousness of the crises demands efforts of active toleration, acceptance, and integration of refugees and the like. Active toleration brings with itself a series of very demanding duties, divided into immediate ones involving immediate Samaritan aid to people at our doors and the long-term ones involving their acculturation and possibilities of decent life for them. A cosmopolitan attitude can contribute a lot. In the context of a refugee crisis, cosmopolitanism is not disappearing but showing its non-traditional, more Samaritan face turned not to distant strangers, as the classical one, but towards strangers at our doors.We have conjectured that this work of active toleration can diminish the need for the passive one: the well-integrated immigrant is no longer seen as a strange, exotic person with an incomprehensible and unacceptable attitude, but as one of us so that her attitudes become less irritating and provocative. The social-psychological approach that sees integration as involving both the preservation of central aspects of the original identity and the copy-pasting of the new one over it offers an interesting rationale for the conjecture: once integrated, the former newcomer is perceived as one of ‘us’ and her views stop being exotic, incomprehensible and a priori unacceptable. Given the amount of need for toleration, and difficulties and paradoxes connected with its passive variety, the conjecture, if true, might be a piece of good news.Finally, we have briefly touched the question of deeper causes of the crisis. Once one turns to this question, the traditional cosmopolitan issues come back to the forefront: the deep poverty and unjust distribution on the one hand, and conflicts and wars on the other. Cosmopolitans have a duty to face these issues, and this is where active global toleration leads in our times.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Birkner ◽  
Daniel Nölleke

Using the concept of mediatization, in this article, we analyze the relationship between sport and media from a sport-centered perspective. Examining the autobiographies of 14 German and English soccer players, we investigate how athletes use media outlets, what they perceive as the media’s influence and its logic, and—crucially—how this usage and these perceptions affect their own media-related behavior. Our findings demonstrate the important role of the media for the sports systems from the athlete’s point of view and demonstrate the research potential of mediatization as a fruitful concept in studies on sport communication. On the one hand, the sport stars reflect in their autobiographies that their status and income depend on media coverage; and on the other hand, they complain about the omnipresence of the media, especially offside the pitch and feel unfairly treated by the tabloid press, both in England and in Germany.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 927-960 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD WESTERMAN

For European literati of the early twentieth century, Fyodor Dostoevsky represented a mythically Russian spirituality in contrast to a soulless, rationalized West. One such enthusiast was Georg Lukács, who in 1915 began a never-completed book about Dostoevsky's work, a model of spiritual community that could redeem a fallen world. Though framing his analysis in the language and themes of broader Dostoevsky reception, Lukács used this idiom innovatively to go beyond the reactionary implications this model might connote. Highlighting similarities with Max Weber's account of political ethics, I argue that Lukács developed an ethic derived from his reading of Dostoevsky, which focused on the idea of a hero defined by an ability to resolve the specific ethical dilemma of adherence to duty and moral law on the one hand, and, on the other, the need to restore spontaneous human community at a time when the social institutions embodying such laws had fallen into decay. Crucially, he deployed the same framework after his conversion to Marxism to justify revolutionary terror. However different his position from Dostoevsky's, it was through engagement with these novels that Lukács not only clarified his thought but also came to identify Lenin as a Dostoevskyan hero figure.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 64-87
Author(s):  
Anabela Pereira

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how body-representations offer an opportunity for its visual interpretation from a biographical point of view, enhancing, on the one hand, the image’s own narrative dynamics, and, on the other, the role of the body as a place of incorporation of experiences, as well as, a vehicle mediating the individual interaction with the world. Perspective founded in the works of the artists Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder, who use self-representation as an expression of these incorporated (lived) experiences, constitutes an important discursive construction and structuring of their narrative identity through visual creation, the artists enable the other with moments of sharing knowledge, creativity and subjectivity, contributing also to the construction of the contemporary, cultural and social imagery.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moses Njenga

While vital for the social and economic development of Kenya and Africa as whole, Vocational Education remains hampered by a negative parity of esteem. Individuals and households continue to view vocational education as a second option. This is in contrast with the views held by both pre-colonial and post colonial governments. Each successive government has attempted to provide vocational education and made policies to effect widespread provision. This article reviews the history of these policies and identifies the source of negative views towards vocational education on the one hand to discriminatory approaches by colonial governments and on the other hand to the burdening of technical education with the task of employment creation.


Temida ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic ◽  
Sanja Copic

In the paper, the authors deal with the victim"s position in the criminal procedure, on the one hand side, and the possibilities of implementing restorative justice and its importance for the improvement of victim"s position in Serbia, on the other one. In the first part of the paper, the authors point out victim"s position within the criminal procedure and the noticed gaps, which are particularly reflected in insufficient paying attention to the victim and neglecting of his/her rights and needs. This is opposite to the strengthening of the rights of the accused party that characterizes societies, which are, as our society, on the way of democratization and improvement of human rights. In the second part of the paper, the authors analyze some solutions that introduce elements of restorative justice into our system of criminal response to crime, but from the victim"s point of view. Finally, the authors also point out some further steps that should be undertaken in order to improve the victim"s position, particularly emphasizing the place and role of victim support service, witness service and special facilities in the courts for victims/witnesses, possibilities of using victim-offender mediation before reporting the crime, or staring the prosecution, or as a part of the treatment in the prison etc.


Author(s):  
Alfonso Troisi

Evolving organisms must balance the need to change at an appropriate rate in response to varying environmental conditions against the need to maintain a functioning phenotype. This trade-off between conservatism and adaptability, between stability and exploration, has an interesting analogue at the social and cultural level. On the one hand, humans are characterized by an extreme dependence on culturally transmitted information, and deference to the group norm is the average individual behavior in human societies. On the other hand, innovation and openness to experience are distinctive features of cultural revolutions. This chapter focuses on the biology of conformity and innovation, discussing a variety of related topics, including personality changes with aging, the neural bases of divergent thinking, the positive effects of conservatism on intragroup cohesion, and the link between creativity and psychosis.


2021 ◽  
pp. 342-368
Author(s):  
Anne Storch

This chapter explores the dialectics of walking and resting, and of mobility and waiting, with regards to creativity in language. It thereby focuses on the interruption and unintended break as an opportunity for interactions and encounters across linguistic epistemes, boundaries and norms. Walking as a methodology and epistemic approach has been discussed in anthropology, the social sciences and literary critique, but met very little interest in linguistics. This chapter on the one hand consequently attempts to address walking as a substantial approach to the study of multilingualism and improvisation, but on the other aims at highlighting disruption and stillness as creating the very liminal space and practice through which language creativity can emerge and be realized. It touches upon various practices that are crucial: being stuck, passing time, getting lost. Points of special interests interest include the role of language in the love songs and other genres, especially in the context of the Mediterranean, disruptions associated with migrations and peoples’ movements, the context of tourism, and the linguistic effects of spirit possession.


Administory ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-151
Author(s):  
Christoph Lorke

Abstract The article deals with the role of the registry office and registrars in the legal implementation of binational or intercultural marriages in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, from the turn of the 20th century until the 1930s. As the article shows, these marriage applications posed a manifold challenge for the actors involved; on the one hand, in dealing with “strangeness” and, on the other, in the administrative-bureaucratic synchronization of legal and social norms. Above all, the question of gender relations, demographic fears, and eurocentrist as well as racist ideas were ultimately decisive for the perception and handling of such couple constellations and had a massive influence on the scope of action for both the fiancées and the registrars.


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