Formal financial institutions failed to reach the poorer sections of the rural society due to informational asymmetry, moral hazard and enforcement problems. The necessity of having alternative rural credit systems which will solve the problems of rural credit institutions is clearly warranted. Micro finance institutions are seen to have characteristics that help solve the problems moral hazard...

When thinking about ethics, technology is often only mentioned as the source of our problems, not as a potential solution to our moral dilemmas. When thinking about technology, ethics is often only mentioned as a constraint on developments, not as a source and spring of innovation. In this paper, we argue that ethics can be the source of technological development rather than just a constraint a...

This paper provides the framework for a payment plan based on inspection results in the delegation of inspection agencies. The paper deals with two cases—that in which one inspector checks the quality of the inspection object (e.g., a design drawing of building) and that in which two inspectors check it simultaneously. The paper points out the applicability of a penalty only in the framework wi...

The assumption of traditional character educators that children build moral literacy from reading or hearing moral stories is challenged based on research findings. First, research in text comprehension indicates that readers do not understand texts the same way due to differences in reading skill and background knowledge. Second, moral comprehension research indicates that moral arguments are ...

The “spanning condition”describes a situation where the agent’s e¤ort determines the weights placed on two distinct technologies. Su¢ cient conditions are known under which the …rst-order approach (FOA) is valid when the spanning condition holds. In this paper, a complete solution to the problem is provided. Thus, the problem is solved even in cases where the FOA is not valid. The solution has ...

anonymous referee for helpful comments and criticism.

Article history: Received 26 October 2012 Available online 23 October 2015 JEL classification: J41 J24 D21

Preference-aggregation problems arise in various contexts. One such context, little explored by social choice theorists, is metaethical. ‘Idealadvisor’ accounts, which have played a major role in metaethics, propose that moral facts are constituted by the idealized preferences of a community of advisors. Such accounts give rise to a preference-aggregation problem: namely, aggregating the adviso...

The historical debate on the Italian Resistance (1943-1945) continues to be a controversial one, particularly because it is inextricably mixed with the assessment of Fascism. The marked politicisation of the debate has often led the “victors” to raise the partisan struggle to the status of a myth, while the “vanquished” have on various occasions tried to diminish it and gain moral rehabilitatio...