PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT BASED ON THE MULTIHORIZON SHARPE RATIO - WAVELET ANALYSIS APPROACH

PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT BASED ON THE MULTIHORIZON SHARPE RATIO - WAVELET ANALYSIS APPROACH

Author(s): Anna Zamojska / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Keywords: wavelet analysis; multihorizon Sharpe ratio; investment horizon

The aim of the study is to evaluate and compare the performance of mutual funds. The proposed approach evaluates the effectiveness of the fund's investment strategy in terms of the investment horizon. As a tool wavelet analysis that has been applied to the decomposition of the excess returns of funds for the six scales was used. The Sharpe ratios calculated on the basis of the so-transformed series formed the basis for the arrangement of funds. The results indicate that the variance of rate of return in the analyzed funds decline as the wavelet scale increases.

CONSTRUCTION AND PROPERTIES OF VOLATILITY INDEX FOR WARSAW STOCK EXCHANGE

CONSTRUCTION AND PROPERTIES OF VOLATILITY INDEX FOR WARSAW STOCK EXCHANGE

Author(s): Tomasz Wiśniewski / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Keywords: option; capital market; stock market index; volatility index

Volatility indices became a important factors on capital markets and are considered as fear factors. First volatility index VIX, was defined for Chicago Board of Trade in 1993, and was developed in 2003. In next years we observed growing numbers of volatility indices on main capital market around of the world. There were more than 20 volatility indices on capital markets at the end of 2012. The aim of this study is construction of the volatility index considering to Warsaw Stock Exchange trading rules and market participants. We also test the “fear factor” properties of this index.

WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES PARLIAMENTS

WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES PARLIAMENTS

Author(s): Luiza Ochnio,Grzegorz Koszela / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Keywords: European Union parliaments; the lower house; women MP; human development index

There are large differences in number of women MPs in EU countries parliaments. Some countries try to regulate this by determining quotas of women in the electoral lists, but in some cases the percentage of women elected is high without any regulations. There are also differences in the citizens standards of life depending on the state. The aim of the paper was to compare the women participation in the lower or in the single house of parliament of 28 countries belonging to EU. Beside this calculation, the comparison of Human Development Index (HDI) was compared in correlation to women presence in the government.

IS IT THE LABOUR MARKET THAT UNDERVALUES WOMEN OR WOMEN THEMSELVES? EVIDENCE FROM POLAND

IS IT THE LABOUR MARKET THAT UNDERVALUES WOMEN OR WOMEN THEMSELVES? EVIDENCE FROM POLAND

Author(s): Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Keywords: gender wage gap; reservation wage; decomposition; nonparametric estima-tion; selection; discrimination

This article provides a comparative analysis of gender gaps in observable and reservation wages. The analysis shows that women are able to accept lower wages than men before entering the labour market. Men’s and wom-en’s differences in observable characteristics are not at all sufficient to ex-plain the gaps both in observable and reservation wages. The article thus concludes that the prevalence of gender wage gap may be a result of wom-en’s lower self-valuation and not necessarily labour market discrimination against women.

Lifestyle stratification, narratives and constructed identities

Gyvenimo stiliaus stratifikacija, naratyvai ir sukonstruoti tapatumai

Author(s): Jūratė Černevičiūtė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 1-2/2008

Keywords: lifestyle; stratification; narratives; identity and self-construction; consumption; consumer society

The article analyses the problems of the concept of lifestyle in social sciences and lifestyles in consumer society. With reference to well-known authorities in culture studies and sociology, author discusses the pecularities of identity construction via lifestyles. Lifestyle is considered as one of the instruments for social competition in class-based societies and as an identity construction means in post-industrial affluent societies. Changes in lifestyle narratives, based on social changes in economics and values, are analysed as preliminary conditions for identity fragmentation.

Editorial

Editorial

Author(s): Tomas Kačerauskas / Language(s): English / Issue: 1-2/2008

Keywords: Body; lifestyle

Lifestyle is inseparable from the body: both are formatted under the influence of the mediaindustry. Lifestyle is being thrust on us as consumers of the media. The very lifestyle is to be consumed as well; it is to change like the unfashionable shoes. Therefore, the style is not linked either with the way of inscribing (style in antiquity) nor with hermeneutical wholeness of an epoch (Winckelmann) any more. Today, lifestyle is subordinated to the “fatal strategies” (J. Baudrillard) of consumption. Lifestyle presupposes a life without the dialectics between thought and love, only as realisation of created needs. Culture, instead of caring about existence, corresponds to the creation of consumption needs in the media of TV and IT. Nevertheless, body can be a source of the alternative point of view. The interrelation between the body and its environment presupposes existential creation which changes not only the participant of existence but also his environment. This correspondents to the tension between thought and love as a starting point of philosophising.

Why do we have to be tolerant? Tolerance in the light of modern political philosophy

Why do we have to be tolerant? Tolerance in the light of modern political philosophy

Author(s): Halina Rarot / Language(s): English / Issue: 1-2/2008

Keywords: tolerance; consensus; modern political philosophy

Author explains why empiric and philosophical knowledge is so ineffective in this case, why it does not make us more tolerant when a significant part of people in western civilization are convinced that tolerance in the world of globalization, in the world of moving people and their cultures is a social necessity. She asserts that in modern political philosophy, it is not possible to reach a consensus on the matter of tolerance. This consensus could be helpful in conforming to necessity and in calculating tolerant behaviour. The impossibility to co-ordinate the positions clearly shows that these positions are only partial, almost ethnic truths. Theoretical nihilism leads to practical nihilism. The only way out from that crisis is to try to overcome theoretical nihilism

The body beyond anatomy: G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, J. Baudrillard

Kūnas anapus anatomijos: G. Deleuze’as, F. Guattari, J. Baudrillard’as

Author(s): Jovilė Barevičiūtė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 1-2/2008

Keywords: body without image; body without organs; modern media; postindustrial capitalism; (re)production

The article draws on the relationship between the body and corporeality in the contemporary epoch of postindustrial capitalism and the new media. The traditional notions of body and corporeality are “extended” and assume some metaphorical implications. The author analyses two concepts of thinkers of the contemporary French philosophy – that of the body without organs of G. Deleuze and F. Guattari and that of the body without image of J. Baudrillard. The body is treated as a special body of society or politics and as the place of the processes of the latest capitalism immediately concerned with the modern virtual technologies. Both the body without organs and the body without image become a new model of subjectivity and contemporary life style, which is necessary for philosophical researches and interpretations.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of the body

Gilles’io Deleuze’o ir Felixo Guattari kūno samprata

Author(s): Audronė Žukauskaitė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 1-2/2008

Keywords: desire; machine; production; assemblage; multiplicity; the body without organs; becoming

The article deals with the concept of the body as described by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The main conceptual problem here is that Deleuze and Guattari withdraw from the psychoanalytical notion of the body which interprets it in terms of missing or lost identity and inscribe the body into the flow of economic, technological and political processes. For this reason, Deleuze and Guattari introduce such concepts as desire, machine, production, assemblage, multiplicity, the body without organs, becoming. These concepts enable to interpret the concept of the body not in terms of identity (of organism, signification and subjectification), but in terms of the body without organs (functioning as disarticulation, experimentation, desubjectification). The body without organs functions as a platform for different molecular becomings which traverse molar identities and stratified territories. The article also discusses what political implications follow from this concept of becoming and what questions it raises for postfeminism, multiculturalism and political theory in general.

“Dishonourable philosopher” as contradictio in adiecto

“Dishonourable philosopher” as contradictio in adiecto

Author(s): Marek Olejniczak / Language(s): English / Issue: 1-2/2008

Keywords: philosophy; love; wisdom; contradictio in adiecto; art of life; phenomenology

The basic thesis of the article is that dishonourable philosopher does not really exist and the idea of “dishonourable philosopher” is a nonsense. According to the author, if we deal with the philosopher who acts dishonourably, we can be certain that he was temporarily blinded by something, or probably we deal with a distinguished expert in philosophy, historian of philosophy or writer of philosophical verve but not with a philosopher. In order to prove it, the author refers to the classic Platonic understanding of philosophy as the love of wisdom and to the phenomenology of Max Scheler who perceives a particular moral attitude of a person as a precondition of the ability to look inside the essence of the matter

Life on this and the other side of the screen

Gyvenimas šiapus ir anapus ekrano

Author(s): Tomas Kačerauskas / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 1-2/2008

Keywords: picture; screen; existence; media; life-style

The article deals with TV and IT in the perspective of existential creation. The author asks if the pictures of the media could be the factors of our existential creation. The author opposes the life’s art and the life’s style. The first one is related with the dialectics of thought and existence. The latter one is related with the levelling influence of the media’s scenes. The structure of existence is not only linguistic, but also visual. According to the author, the creative environment is supported by the interconnection of existential pictures which are different in their nature (reminiscences, dreams, aspirations, imaginations). According to the main thesis, our existential project is formed in the fire of pictures’ different planes. This thesis follows from the supposition that both our living world and existence in it are visual. The other theses are as follows: all that we see should be valuated according to their place in the existential picture; the pictures of the screen serve the world-view’s development; the picture on this and the other side of the screen are tested in the environment of existential phenomena.

Subculturalization of society and the problem of development of alternative citizenship

Visuomenės subkultūralizacija ir alternatyvaus pilietiškumo raida

Author(s): Gintautas Mažeikis / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 1-2/2008

Keywords: subcultures; communities; transgressive subject; resistance; style; taste; game; individuation

The article is devoted to the problem of alternative citizenship in the sphere of policy on the basis of subcultural and community analysis. People without feeling of strong essence haven’t motivation for missionary actions and prefer creative construction of their identities and symbolical worlds. However, they also need to resist unification, routine, total ideologies and permanent national identities. They change their identities and need intercultural communication skills and attitudes, advocate public interests, debate them, compete with other subcultures. Modern Lithuanian philosophers as well as world philosophical movement prepare conditions for social, cultural legitimizing of the Other. First of all it is the ethnic, gender and subcultural Other. Legitimation of subcultural public interests and their needs could be interpreted not only in the horizon of cultural diversity, but also as a plurality of citizenship and policy. Different ideologies, parties, political and local communities, types of interests, NGO, imagined communities, subcultures develop various public demands, identity needs, a diversity of world feelings and interpretations. This means that modern society contributes to alternative civic activities, and modern public intellectuals prepare discourses on it. The Other’s civic expressions destroy the routine, the mainstream discourses. The Other today is the representative of the subculture alternative and independent community or just a transgressive subject. Unfortunately, many of representatives of state government, local municipalities, traditional parties try to neglect or forbid the activities to increase Otherness. However, the modern economic, cultural process of subculturalization presupposes development or even production of Otherness. It is the reason to call the citizenship of the Other as an alternative citizenship.

Resemblance of bodies. Which is prolongation of which?

Kūnų panašumas. Kuris kurį pratęsiame?

Author(s): Donatas Večerskis / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 1-2/2008

Keywords: body; corporeality; resemblance of bodies; phenomenology

The article deals with the problem of the phenomenological concept of corporeality in the context of some texts of E. Husserl and M. Merleau-Ponty. The role of corporeality is shown when we try to understand our ability to conceive the Otherness in our solipsistic experience. The article reveals that the phenomenological description of the body has a central position when we try to understand such concepts as intersubjectivity, empathy, relation between man and the World, ethical responsibility, etc. The author analyses how the phenomenological conception of the body differs from the traditional conception of the body as a simple object. The study opens new perspectives for phenomenological investigations of intercorporeality, the resemblance of bodies, the prolongation of the body. Finally, in the context of the latest book of M. Merleau-Ponty, author asks if corporeality is a primordial givenness of our consciousness, or maybe the body itself is the expression of the Being. Such perspective gives us the possibility to understand the way how we are interwoven into each other through the body, and also the way how we are interwoven into our World.

A METHOD OF MEASURING INTEGRATIVE COMPLEXITY CONCEPTUAL SPEECH MANAGEMENT

O METODĂ DE MĂSURARE A COMPLEXITĂłII CONCEPTUALINTEGRATIVE ÎN DISCURSUL MANAGERIAL

Author(s): Ioana Eyb,Lucia Hotico / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 1/2004

The conceptual/integrative complexity construct was defined in terms of differentiation and integration shown in thought and behavior in a particular situation and context. The evolution of the theoretical concept was followed by the development of the measuring methods. The system developed by Baker-Brown, Ballard, Bluck, de Vries, Suedfeld & Tetlock (1992) consists of a seven-point scale with precise indicators for measuring different levels in cognitive differentiation and integration. The objective of this study is to illustrate the application of the system on a verbal material obtained from unstructured interviews. In a larger study form which this one is only a part, a number of 193 Romanian managers participated to semistructured interviews about managerial success and failure experience. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The resulted verbal material was coded according to the prescriptions of the conceptual /integrative complexity system, including those concerning the achievement of the required coding competence. The interscorer corelation was .860.

METHODOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE NEUROPSYCHOLGICAL ASSESSMENT OF ATYPICAL DEVELOPMENT. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF AUTISM

METHODOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE NEUROPSYCHOLGICAL ASSESSMENT OF ATYPICAL DEVELOPMENT. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF AUTISM

Author(s): Oana Benga,Laura Petra / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2004

Keywords: developmental neuropsychology; methodology; validity and utility.

The first part of the paper will explore the problematic aspects in the methodology of developmental neuropsychological research as it is employed in the clinical, ecological-rehabilitative and theoretical domains, with an emphasis on the problems related to the investigation of atypical developmental trajectories. Issues related to the validity and utility of such an assessment, despite the inherent difficulties, as well as methodological strategies ensuring more viable inferences will circumscribe the discussion regarding the methodological controversies in developmental neuropsychology. The second part will embody the general aspects presented so far in the search for cognitive-behavioral correlates of the particular developmental trajectory pursued by autistic individuals.

NEURAL CORRELATES OF OBJECT CATEGORIZATION

NEURAL CORRELATES OF OBJECT CATEGORIZATION

Author(s): Thea Ionescu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2004

After briefly defining the process of categorization, the present article tries to review the neural correlates of this process. The main areas involved are the temporal lobe and the prefrontal cortex, but the findings also speak about distributed neural networks that include other regions as well. Being still in a middle of an unsolved puzzle when talking about the brain, the article ends with some unanswered questions in hope of future advancement of research.

UNIVERSALS OF LANGUAGE REVISITED

UNIVERSALS OF LANGUAGE REVISITED

Author(s): Alina Preda / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2004

Linguistic universals belong to the category of human universals. Still, some linguists argue that there are no linguistic universals, since exceptions to any rule may always be found. However, as different from science, where a law is automatically ruled out if an exception is proven to exist, linguistics functions according to rules subject to exceptions. Though the nearly five thousand languages spoken in the world today seem to be quite different, many of them show similar principles. Given this high number of languages, and since many languages have not even been the subject of extensive research yet, it would be hard not to find any exceptions. Therefore, not all universals can be found in all languages.

THE SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF MENTAL DEFICIENCIES. HOW TO CHANGE THEM?

THE SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF MENTAL DEFICIENCIES. HOW TO CHANGE THEM?

Author(s): Laura E. Runceanu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2004

Les réprésentations sociales de la déficience mentale. Comment les changer? Cette étude présent une brève synthèse du concept de la déficience mentale, et des recherches qui ont abordés les deficiences, en général, et la déficience mentale en particulière, dans la paradigme des réprésentations sociales. Finalement, nous irons identifier quelques modalités pour les influencer.

“SAPPHO IS WISE” OR THE PHILOSOPHY OF FEMALE INITIATION

«МУДРАЯ» САПФО ИЛИ ФИЛОСОФИЯ ДРЕВНЕГРЕЧЕСКОЙ ИНИЦИАЦИИ

Author(s): Timothey Myakin / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 2/2014

Keywords: Sapphic’s religious community, the initiation of girls, religion of the archaic Lesbos, cult of the goddess Cybele in the archaic Sicily, cult of the “Aeolean goddess” in archaic Lesbos, a Brothers poem of Sappho.

The article exposes new arguments that support the views of Cl. Calame on the female circle of Sappho as a religious community confirmed historically. This community had been associated with the cult of the goddesses Artemis, Cybele and Aphrodite, who were responsible for soil fertility and reproductive health of women in ancient Lesbos. In one of her songs (Fr. Sapph. 96, 5 Campbell) Sappho identifies the main occupation of the girls of her community as “song and dance” (μόλπα). Epigraphic evidence and the literary tradition allows us to associate this “song and dance” with the ritual singing and dancing of youth choirs, the associations of young men and women, and also – with the rituals of initiation. Thanks to Cretan parallels, the relationship that united Sappho and her girls can be seen as a relic of female initiation. These ceremonies are similar to those that characterized the rela-tionship between men and boys in the Cretan “hetairia” (cf. IC III(II), №2, 2–3; Hom. Od. VI, 101–106; Hymn. Hom. in Merc. 451–452; Strab. X, 4, 20–21). A law of Cyrene (the 4th c. B.C.) also ordered that the bride entered the bridal chamber of Artemis before the wedding. And a Sapphic new song, which was discovered by D. Obbink, is a part of a longer composition, also written as a choral dialogue. This song says that girls of her community are ἀρτέμεας (“healthy, thanks to Artemis“, cf. Plat. Crat., p. 406 b Steph.). The Sapphic choir ridicules brother of Sappho, and exposes this homosexual love of Sappho’s girls (because this love is protected by Artemis) against the indiscriminate love of Charaxos. Consequently, Plato wrote, that Sappho is wise, for the reason that the poet defended these traditional rituals on a conservative manner.

BOETHIUS AND RYLE ON EPISTEMIC FATALISM

БОЭЦИЙ И РАЙЛ ОБ ЭПИСТЕМИЧЕСКОМ ФАТАЛИЗМЕ

Author(s): Evgeny Borisov / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 2/2014

Keywords: predestination, providence, eternity, temporality, truth, proposition.

Two ways of stating and solving the problem of epistemic fatalism elaborated by Boethius and G. Ryle are compared. It is argued that Boethius and Ryle state the problem in similar ways but the premises they use in solving it substantially differ. It is shown that the doctrine of eternity of God’s knowledge plays a crucial role in the Boethian solution, while the Rylean solution, purified of theological premises, is based on the semantic idea that no proposition about a future object (an object that will exist in the future but does not exist presently) is possible.