Bøger udgivet af University of Chicago Press

Until the 1940s, social life in Taiwan was generally organized and given meaning through the family - marriages were arranged by parents, for example, and senior males held authority. In the following years, as Taiwan evolved rapidly from an agrarian to an industrialized society, individual decisions became less dependent on the family and more strongly influenced by outside forces. Social Change and the Family in Taiwan provides an in-depth analysis of the complex changes in family relations in a society undergoing revolutionary economic and social transformation. This thorough, interdisciplinary study explores the patterns and causes of change in various aspects of society, including education, work, income transfers, leisure time, marriage, living arrangements, and interactions with extended kin. Theoretical chapters enunciate a theory of family and social change centered on the life course and modes of social organization. Other chapters look at the shift from arranged marriages toward love matches, as well as changes in dating practices, premarital sex, fertility, and divorce. The authors bring together perspectives from sociology, demography, economics, anthropology, and history to provide a thorough and informative study of the many ways social and economic changes affect the family.

In the increasingly global economy, domestic tax policies have taken on a new importance for international economics. This unique volume compares the tax reform experiences of Canada and the United States, two countries with the world's largest bilateral flow of trade and investment. With the signing of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement and the tax reforms of the 1980s, there has been some harmonization of tax systems. But geographic, cultural, and political characteristics shape distinct national social policies that may impede harmonization. As the U.S. and Canadian economies become even more integrated, differences in tax systems will have important effects, in particular on the relative rates of economic growth. Scholars from both countries examine the extent to which conformity between these national programs has taken place, focusing on tax reforms of the 1980s, and assess the effects over the long term. The authors carefully consider the policy environment in which social programs are established and implemented, including such aspects as property rights, incentive structures, the degree and kind of economic freedoms, and the systems of private and public decision making. By comparing these environments, the authors show that certain aspects of the tax systems of Canada and the United States are converging, while in other respects they are diverging. For instance, both countries exhibit similar corporate tax structures and income tax systems, but they have very different approaches to sales taxes and social security taxes. Another interesting conclusion from these investigations is that although tax policies differ, outcomes are often quite similar. For example, they generateroughly the same amounts of revenue, produce similar costs of capital, and produce comparable distributions of income. The methodology and results of this research will have significant implications for the analysis and development of trade policies among other nations, as well as for understanding domestic social policy in a global economy.

In this insightful work, Martin H. Krieger shows what physicists are really doing behind the nearly impenetrable cloud of mathematical models they use as research tools. He argues that the technical details of these complex calculations serve not only as a means to an end, but also reveal key aspects of the physical properties they model. Using two tours de force of modern physics as case studies - proofs that ordinary matter is stable, and solutions to the Ising model of a phase transition (how a liquid freezes to a solid, for instance) - Krieger uncovers the philosophical foundations on which the mathematical models of these phenomena are built. In so doing, he gives the reader a better feel not just for how physicists believe the natural world is structured, but also for how they have arrived at those conclusions. Krieger's lucid discussions will help students of physics and applied mathematics appreciate the larger physical issues behind the mathematical details of modern physics. Historians and philosophers of science will gain deeper insights into how theoretical physicists do science, while technically advanced general readers will get a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of modern physics.

The rapid emergence of East Asia as an important geopolitical-economic entity has been one of the most visible and striking changes in the international economy in recent years. With that emergence has come an increased need for understanding the problems of interdependence. As a step toward meeting this need, the National Bureau of Economic Research joined with the Korea Development Institute to sponsor this volume, which focuses on the complexities of tax reform in a global economy. Experts from Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and Thailand, as well as the United States, Canada, and Israel examine the major tax programs of the 1980s and their domestic and international economic effects. The authors provide overviews, country studies, and analyses of the effect of taxes on specific economic behavior, including saving and economic growth. The overviews include an examination of the link between taxes and domestic capital formation in open economies, and a look at the similarities and differences in the tax structure of eight East Asian countries. Other papers address broad issues related to tax policy and economic performance. Contributors evaluate the effects of changing the marginal tax rate on income from capital; analyze the relation between Korea's tax structure and its rate of economic growth; study the impact of tax reform and the aging Japanese population on savings; compare and contrast the gift and estate tax systems of the United States and Japan; and examine whether the tax systems of Korea and Taiwan, particularly the taxation of foreign capital, distort resource allocation. Studies of the political and economic interactions that underlie tax reform in the UnitedStates, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan reveal that in au of these countries domestic political considerations were far more important than international issues when deciding on tax reforms. Economists, policymakers, and members of the business community will benefit from these studies.

This timely volume addresses important recent trends in the internationalization of equity markets. These trends include increasing securitization as many countries come to rely more than ever before on markets in equities and bonds, extensive market integration through foreign investment and resulting links among stock prices around the world, and the opening of national financial systems of newly industrializing countries to international financial flows and institutions as governments remove capital controls and other barriers. Eight essays examine such issues as the current extent of international market integration, gains to U.S. investors through international diversification, fundamental macroeconomic determinants of securities prices, home-country bias in investing, securities transactions taxes, the role of time and location around the world in stock trading, and the behavior of country funds. Other long-standing questions about equity markets are also addressed, such as market efficiency and the accuracy of models of expected returns, including a particular focus on variances, covariances, and the price of risk, as in the Capital Asset Pricing Model. The Internationalization of Equity Markets will interest academic and business economists concerned with stock market behavior around the world.

Cognitive science, with its guiding metaphor of the mind as a computer, has made substantial progress towards an understanding of how people comprehend and produce discourse. The essays in this book apply these insights to problems in the interpretation of literature. The first two chapters present the outline of a cognitive theory of discourse and use it to shed light on some classic issues in literary theory, including the roles of the author's intention and the reader's brief systems in the meaning of a literary work. The next three chapters are more technical investigations of discourse interpretation, metaphor, and discourse coherence. The framework developed is then used in the examination of two literary works, a sonnet by Milton and the novella Sylvie by Gérard de Nerval.

Poisoned plums, a cryptic scroll picture, passionate love letters, and a hidden murderer with a penchant for torturing and killing women lead Judge Dee to the heart of the Governor's garden maze and the answers to three interwoven mysteries. The Chinese Maze Murders represents Robert van Gulik's first venture into writing suspense novels after the success of Dee Gong An, his translation of an anonymous Chinese detective novel from the sixteenth century.

From this unique collection of documents emerges a fresh, intimate, often striking picture of the life of science in the United States in the era when American investigators became central to scientific advances in many fields. Written in the course of the events described, these letters, memoranda, and other records-for the most part previously unpublished-convey personalities and issues with an immediacy hard to capture in conventional historical narratives.