This study examines China’s influence in the Asia–Pacific stock markets by focusing on spillover effects and market integration and employs how the financial crises and financial liberalization affect the relationship among these markets. Based on the series of studies of Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012, 2015), this study employs the generalized vector autoregressive framework to examine the spillover effects among the main Asia–Pacific stock markets. The multifactor R-squared measure proposed by Pukthuanthong and Roll (2009) is employed to examine the market integration of Chinese stock market. The results indicate that spillover effects and market integration tend to increase, indicating that China stock market is playing a more important role in the Asia–Pacific stock markets. This study provides more evidence that financial crises and financial liberalization can strengthen spillover effects and market integration.

Within psychology the study of perception has traditionally been concerned with the ways in which the individual learns to know the environment through data from the sense organs. The early psychophysicists of the 19th century began a search for direct systematic relations between the physical energy of external stimuli (for example of light, heat and sound) and subjective responses, in different sensory modalities. The aims of such pure perception research are to establish law-like relations between characteristics of a stimulus input and an internal mental (that is cognitive) representation of that input. However, the most distinctive feature of an individual’s cognitive system is its enormous capacity for storing the residue of past perceptions and for bringing these residues to bear on the processing of fresh input. Much contemporary work in psychology therefore operates with a model of mind that is not a passive ‘convertor’ of sensations but an active, seeking, ‘constructor’ of an internal representation of the environment. An important part of this constructive process involves the generation of understanding; that is, of endowing sensation with meaning. This process involves the assimilation of current input in the terms set up by past experiences (consider the difficulties of understanding a language that has not been previously learned), and in turn the extension and modification of stored experiences, or knowledge structures, upon receipt of novel stimuli.

In social science rival theories seeking to answer the same questions rarely confront one another. Indeed, a variety of perspectives has been employed in research on public perception of risk, but alternative formulations remain largely untested. Missing most of all is a focused comparison of rival hypotheses. One could hardly find many subjects that are better known or considered more important to more people nowadays than the controversies over harm to the natural environment and the human body attributed to modern technology, whether this be from chem ical carcinogens or nuclear power or noxious products introduced by industry into the land, sea, or air, or into water or food supplies. Thus we ask: Why are products and practices once thought to be safe (or

We use the case of the now-dead Shorthorn Nuclear Power Station to pose some questions, and a few answers, about organizational failure. The analysis centers on the symbolism of organizational plans, specifically how organizations use plans to justify increasingly complex systems to themselves and to others. That such plans are based on sparse or nonexistent experience, and that they are often wildly unrealistic, suggests some reasons why high-technology, high-risk systems do not foster organizational learning.

The grid-group cultural theory of Mary Douglas is used to produce a basic categorization of polar approaches to control over public administration and management and to illuminate the self-disequilibrating dynamics of public administration control systems. The four polar types are based on contrived randomness, competition, mutuality and review. The self-disequilibrating processes work through a combination of mutual repulsion among the polar types and the inherent limitations of each type, which will tend to produce more serious side-effects and reverse effects the more emphasis is placed on any one type. Six hybrid types of control are discussed as simple pairwise combinations of the four polar types, but such hybrids are also likely to be unstable. The approach used here appears at least as good on three criteria as any other current available classification of controls over public administration and it offers a distinctive agenda for examining control design and outcomes.

In this paper, we aim at establishing some clear guidelines on which configuration of the interbank net can be most effective in limiting the banks’ default contagion risk. More specifically, based on real banks’ balance sheet data, we analyzed how the exposure concentration on specific counterparts can limit or enhance contagion, and which characteristics (variables) of the counterparts induce these differences. The analysis performed here is based on interbank exposures data, which only represent one of the contagion channels, but the same perspective can be generalized when considering, instead of the direct interbank exposures, the asymmetrical effects of a systemic crisis on the considered bank soundness (similar to what happens for the effect of interbank credit losses on a specific bank), or of the considered bank crisis to the whole system’s soundness (similar to the case of interbank default of the considered bank). Moreover, the simulation model as it is can be applied to both listed and nonlisted banks, since it is based purely on balance sheet data. Results suggest that, if we consider the whole interbank market, a high concentration of exposures can enhance contagion, and that, with reference to specific bank-to-bank exposures, the case in which small banks lend to larger and riskier banks is the most threatening for the system’s stability. These results can help regulators and supervisors keep the banking and financial system safe.