The news of the engagement by Arnold Bennett, and Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver by Thomas Hardy Essay Example

The news of the engagement by Arnold Bennett, and Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver by Thomas Hardy Paper Hardy was the first major writer to focus on the countryside but when he wrote his stories, times were changing and the Industrial revolution affected the countryside population. Bennetts writing forms a contrast to Hardy; his story is centred in the five towns (the pottery towns) around Stoke on Trent. His story reflects the change of the young man returning home from London and the big city life. Philip Durance is returning home at Christmas time from London. He has come with news of his engagement and he did not want to just write a letter to his mum because he did not know what to write. Philips relationship with his mum was quite close because he writes to her every week telling her of most of his doings. When Philip visited his mum she was more excited than usual. Philip finds it difficult to talk to his mum about Agnes his fiancà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½e and his engagement because his mum tells him first of her engagement. So Philip feels that he does not want to spoil his mothers news, because she is so happy and he does not want to take the spotlight away from her. Tony Kytes says things that are amusing they are; singing a song as if it was a hymn, he sweet talks the girls saying how could he refuse them a lift and saying he never noticed how pretty the girls are. The funniest thing that Tony does is get all the girls to hide in his wagon. It all started by Tony riding around town in his wagon when he is asked by the girls for a lift one at a time, and every time a new girl gets in the wagon the previous girl hides, so at one point he has got 3 girls in the wagon at once. We will write a custom essay sample on The news of the engagement by Arnold Bennett, and Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver by Thomas Hardy specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on The news of the engagement by Arnold Bennett, and Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver by Thomas Hardy specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on The news of the engagement by Arnold Bennett, and Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver by Thomas Hardy specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer All the 3 girls really like Tony and want to marry him, so they always suck up to him, although at the end all the girls went off him because he made them hide and they did this even though he was engaged. One of the girls even hears Tony say he loves another girl but she did nothing for some reason. At the end Unity one of the 3 girls rejects Tony straight after Hannah, probably to not seem desperate but secretly wanting him to ask her later on. So in the end Tony is left with the one girl he decided against. All in all the Arch deceiver is about a man who is split between which woman he wants to marry and just transports them all around town and in the end none of the women want him.

Explanation and Chart of Ser Versus Estar

Explanation and Chart of Ser Versus Estar There are few things more confusing for beginning Spanish students than learning the differences between ser and estar. After all, they both mean to be in English. Differences Between Ser and Estar One way to think of the differences between ser and estar  is to think of ser as the passive verb and estar as the active one. (The terms arent being used in a grammatical sense here.) Ser tells you what something is, the nature of its being, while estar refers more to what something does. You might use soy (the first-person present of ser, meaning I am) to explain who or what you are, but youd use estoy (the first-person present of estar) to tell what you are being or doing. For example, you might say, Estoy enfermo for I am sick. That would indicate that you are sick at the moment. But it doesnt tell anyone what you are. Now if you were to say, Soy enfermo, that would have a different meaning entirely. That would refer to who you are, to the nature of your being. We might translate that as I am a sick person or I am sickly. Note similar differences in these examples: Estoy cansado. (I am tired.) Soy cansado. (I am a tired person. My nature is to be tired)Estoy feliz. (Im happy now.) Soy feliz. (I am happy by nature. I am a happy person.)Est callada. (Shes being quiet.) Es callada. (Shes introverted. Shes naturally a quiet person.)No estoy lista. (Im not ready.) No soy lista. (Im not a quick thinker.) Another Approach to Ser vs. Estar Another way of thinking about the two verbs is to think of ser as being roughly equivalent to equals. Another approach is that estar often refers to a temporary condition, while ser frequently refers to a permanent condition. But there are exceptions. Among the major exceptions to the above way of thinking is that ser is used in expressions of time, such as Son las dos de la tarde for Its 2 p.m. Also, we use estar to indicate someone has died- quite a permanent condition: Est muerto, he is dead. Along that line, estar is used to indicate location. Estoy en casa. (I am at home.) But, soy de Mà ©xico. (I am from Mexico.) Ser, however, is used for the location of events: La boda es en Nuevo Hampshire. (The wedding is in New Hampshire.) There are also a few idiomatic expressions that simply need to be learned: La manzana es verde. (The apple is green.) La manzana est verde. (The apple is unripe.) Est muy bien la comida. (The meal tastes very good). Note that sometimes estar is often modified by an adverb such as bien rather than an adjective: Estoy bien. (Im fine.) Although rare, there are a few situations where you can use either ser or estar. A married man  describing his marital status could say either Soy casado or Estoy casado. He might be more likely to use soy because he considers being married as part of his identity, although he might use estoy to indicate that he had been married recently. Present Conjugation of Ser and Estar Both ser and estar are irregularly conjugated. Heres a chart of the indicative present tense: Pronombre Ser Estar Yo soy estoy Tà º eres ests Él, ella, usted es est Nosotros somos estamos Vosotros sois estis Ellos, ellas, ustedes son estn Sample Sentences Susana es atenta y con buena comunicacià ³n. (Susana is thoughtful with good communication skills. Ser is used with a personal quality.)Susana est atenta a la situacià ³n de su amiga. (Susana is attentive to her friends situation. Estar is being used to characterize behavior.)Roberto es nervioso como mi hermano. (Roberto is as nervous of a person as my brother is. Ser is used here for describing what kind of person someone is.)Roberto est tan nervioso como mi hermano. (Robert is as nervous as my brother is now. Estar is used for an emotional state that is independent of personal qualities.) Quick Takeaways Ser and estar are the two verbs most frequently used as the equivalent of the English to be.Ser typically is used in describing the nature of someone or something.Estar typically is used in referring to a state of being that isnt necessarily innate.

Media Power Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Media Power - Essay Example Persons with power are rather few in number and are associated with even few owners and corporations producing, directing, editing and selecting topics and issues deemed "newsworthy." Given media's extreme power to influence, study of media is most critical to understanding how political behavior is, or can be influenced. News should be logical and objective, applying every possible test to verify the data or information gathered. The journalist should constantly strive to eliminate personal feeling and preference. He or she must resist temptation to seek only the data that support his topic. There is no attempt to persuade or to prove. The journalist should elevate clear thinking and logic as well as suppress feeling and emotion in his analysis. Politics - the struggle over who gets what, when and how - is largely carried out in the mass media. The arenas of political conflict are the various media of mass communication - television, newspaper, magazines and the internet. What we know about politics comes to us largely through these media. Great power derives from the control of information. Who knows what helps to determine who gets what. The media not only provide an arena for politics; they are themselves players in the arena. The media not only report on the struggles for power in society; they are themselves participants in those struggles. The media have long been referred to as America's "fourth branch" of government - and for a good reason. Media power is concentrated in leading television networks, the nation's leading newspapers and broad circulation magazines. The reporters, anchors, editors and producers of these prestige news organizations constitute a relatively small group of people in whose hands rests the power to decide what we will know about people, events and issues. The Myth of the Mirror Media people themselves often deny that they exercise great power. They sometimes claim that they only "mirror" reality. They like to think of themselves as unbiased reporters who simply narrate happenings and transmit videotaped portrayals of people and events as they really are. Occasionally, editors or reporters or anchors will acknowledge that they make important decisions about what stories, people, events, or issues will e covered in the news, how much time or space they will be given, what visuals will be issued and what sources will be quoted. They may also occasionally acknowledge that they provide interpretations of the news and that their personal politics affects these interpretations. But whether or not editors, reporters, producers or anchors acknowledge their own power, it is clear that they do more than passively mirror reality. Government and the media are natural adversaries. Public officials have long been frustrated by the media. But the US Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of a free press anticipates this conflict between government and the media. It prohibits the government from resolving this conflict by silencing its critics. Media professionals are not neutral observers of American politics rather are active participants. They not only report events but also discover events to report, assign them political meaning, and predict their consequences. They seek to challenge government officials, debate political candidates, and define the problems of society. They see their profession as a "sacred trust" and themselves as the true voice of the

Health reform legislation in the US Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Health reform legislation in the US - Case Study Example The legislation seeks to reduce the annual appropriation funds the local authorities give the hospital to help in its running. The fund helps in the facilitating of the payment of workers in the hospital. The fund also helps the hospital acquire new machines and pay for the maintenance of the already bought machines. Over the years, the hospital has being able to set up new facilities that make it serve extra people. The legislation put forward aims to slash the annual fund provided for the hospital by a certain percentage. This means that the hospital will receive less than what it used to get. To this effect, the hospital’s normal operations would be interrupted, as it has to go out of its way to get the extra finance needed to supplement its budget. The hospital will also have to change its budget for it to be in line with the new funding provision. This measure would include having to charge extra fee to patients. Some workers in the hospital would have to lose their jobs to enable the hospital cut the extra costs. This are some of the drastic changes that the hospital would undertake in order to enable it operate on the reduced funding. My role of being requested to offer advice to the council is because I am the President of the Hospital. I participate in the drafting of the hospital’s budget and thus I am better placed to know the effects of the legislation. In addition to that, I head the finance department and the committee in charge of the hospital workers. My reason for choosing to be the one writing to the mayor is that my position makes me know and understand fully the running of the hospital. I have held the position for the past decade making my experience unparalleled. The reduction of the funding will affect women mostly those who are pregnant. The reason for this is that the larger share of the money goes to the women requirements facilities in the hospital.

Public Sector Accounting Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Public Sector Accounting - Assignment Example Conversely, the cash flow accounts have been adopted into company accounting in the latest decades, however, it is not called â€Å"adoption of public segment accounting.† Regardless of the significance given to cash inflow accounts, it acts only to â€Å"add-on the data in the balance sheet as well as the statement of income† (Hopwood 2000, p.24). In the debate enclosing present day’s public sector accounting restructuring, the existing philosophy intervenes an absolute changeover from â€Å"company accounting-like† techniques, by which on hand information is re-organized to produce additional financial accounts, to double-entry accounting and other company accounting techniques ‒ that is, the execution of company bookkeeping practices for public segment accounting ‒ and this transformation will necessitate significant reforms to the existing framework (Budding & Tagesson 2010, p.55-73). Bookkeeping has traditionally been split into company accounting as well as non-profit bookkeeping on the grounds of whether the monetary unit works to generate net profits. Comparisons with company bookkeeping, which has, in general, the â€Å"bookkeeping† aspect, should be drawn when debating changes of public segment accounting. One setback mentioned in the present system, nonetheless, is that such assessm ents have included nothing more than cataloging those components available in company bookkeeping but not available in public segment accounting, although the two vary in their aims. As a result, this manuscript will study the nature of public segment bookkeeping as it was and company bookkeeping as it is, and will examine the adoption of company bookkeeping practices in public segment accounting now getting underway (Handbook of national accounting: Public sector accounts 2003, p.44)

Coincidence of Cycles in Credit and Property Markets

Coincidence of Cycles in Credit and Property Markets Abstract What caused the financial crisis that is sweeping across the world? What is the role of debt and leverage in causing asset market bubbles to form and collapse? What keeps asset prices and lending depressed? What can be done to remedy matters? This paper will present a qualitative review of the role of debt and leverage in causing asset market bubbles to form and collapse in the real estate market under the context of the global financial crisis. Long-run causality appears to go from property prices to bank lending. Literature Review The direction of causality between bank lending and property prices The causality between bank lending and property prices goes in both directions. Property prices may affect bank lending via various wealth effects (Hofmann, 2003). First, due to financial market imperfections, households and firms may be borrowing constrained. As a result, households and firms can only borrow when they offer collateral, so that their borrowing capacity is a function of their collateralisable net worth. Since property is commonly used as collateral, property prices are therefore an important determinant of the private sectors borrowing capacity. Second, a change in property prices may have a significant effect on consumers perceived lifetime wealth, inducing them to change their spending and borrowing plans and thus their credit demand in order to smooth consumption over the life cycle. Finally, property prices affect the value of bank capital, both directly to the extent that banks own assets, and indirectly by affecting the value of loans secured by property. Proper ty prices therefore influence the risk-taking capacity of banks and thus their willingness to extend loans. The literature in the last few decades referred to risk-taking behavior of financial market participants in times of abundant liquidity, banks leverage targeting behavior and a portfolio real balance effect of other financial intermediaries. Financial intermediaries, which must maintain an adequate ratio of capital to assets, can be deterred from lending, or induced to shift the composition of loans away from bank-dependent sectors such as small businesses, by declines in the values of the assets they hold (Bernanke Gertler, 2000). Bank lending, on the other hand, may affect property prices through various liquidity effects. The price of property can be seen as an asset price, which is determined by the discounted future stream of property returns. An increase in the availability of credit may lower interest rates and stimulate current and future expected economic activity. As a result, property prices may rise because of higher expected returns on property and a lower discount factor. Property can also be seen as a durable good in temporarily fixed supply. An increase in the availability of credit may increase the demand for housing if households are borrowing constrained. With supply temporarily fixed because of the time it takes to construct new housing units, this increase in demand will be reflected in higher property prices. This potential two-way causality between bank lending and property prices may give rise to mutually reinforcing cycles in credit and property markets. A rise in property prices, caused by more optimistic expectations about future economic prospects, raises the borrowing capacity of firms and households by increasing the value of collateral. Part of the additional available credit may also be used to purchase property, pushing up property prices even further, so that a self-reinforcing process may evolve. Potential simultaneity problems are controlled for the direction of causality between bank lending and property prices, as studied by Gerlach and Peng (2002). Bank lending, which was transformed into real terms by deflation with the CPI (consumer price index), is defined as total credit to the private non-bank sector. Cross-country comparisons of the development of bank lending are flawed by differences in the definition of total credit across countries. These differences in definition will be reflected in the results of the empirical analysis. Differences exist, for example, with respect to the treatment of non-performing loans (NPLs) in national credit aggregates. A drop in property prices will on the one hand have a negative effect on the extension of new loans. On the other hand, it will give rise to an increase in NPLs. The estimated effect of property prices on bank lending will therefore depend on whether banks are forced to write off NPLs quickly or not. For instance, Japan and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) experienced severe banking crises in the late 1980s or early 1990s, which were preceded by a collapse in property prices. While NPLs were quite quickly cleansed from banks balance sheets in the Nordic countries, this was not the case in Japan. To a broader view, bank lending has contributed significantly to the real estate bubble in Asia prior to the 1997 East Asian crisis. Quarterly residential property price indices were available for all countries except for Japan, Italy and Germany. For Japan and Italy, semi-annual indices were transformed to quarterly frequency by linear interpolation. For Germany, a quarterly series was generated by linear interpolation based on annual observations from the first quarter of each year. In order to obtain a measure of real property prices, nominal property prices were deflated with the CPI. Residential property prices may not fully capture the property price developments, which are relevant for aggregate bank lending. Credit aggregates comprise bank lending to households and enterprises. The appropriate measure of property prices for the empirical analysis would therefore be aggregate property price index, comprising both residential and commercial property prices. For most countries, the available commercial property price data are available only in annual frequency and represent only price developments in the largest urban area of the country. The use of these data in empirical analysis is therefore quite problematic. In the few countries where high quality commercial property price data are available, such as Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, residential and commercial property prices are closely correlated, suggesting that residential property prices may act as a proxy for omitted commercial property prices in the empirical analysis. The short-term real interest rate is measured as the three months interbank money market rate less four quarter CPI inflation. The short-term real money market rate serves as a proxy for real aggregate financing costs. A more accurate measure would be an aggregate lending rate. Representative lending rates are, however, not available for most countries. Empirical evidence suggests that lending rates are tied to money market rates, implying that money market rates are a valid approximation of financing costs. The global financial crisis and debt explosions A chain of events, beginning with unexpected losses in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, was destined to bring the global financial system close to collapse and to drag the world economy into recession. In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis between 2007 and 2009, economists have paid more attention to the role of debt and leverage in causing asset market bubbles to form and collapse. For instance, the asset price inflation and rising leverage for the United States exemplified nearly all the signs of a country on the verge of a financial crisis-indeed, a severe one. Then, we find that asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. Obviously, the transparent global banking system shows that the main cause of debt explosions is not the broadly critically valued costs of bailing out and recapitalizing. In essence, the crucial drivers of debt increases are the inevitable collapse in tax revenues that governments suffer in the wake of deep and prolonged output contractions, as well as often-ambitious countercyclical fiscal policies aimed at mitigating the downturn. Firms private investment and asset market valuation are negatively associated with their top lenders real estate exposure. Global firms have a flexible average and they can get the leverage market, so there is an opportunistic approach about it. The characteristic huge buildups in government debt are driven mainly by sharp falloffs in tax revenue and, in many scenarios, big surges in government spending to fight the recession, declared by Reinhard and Rogoff (2008). The rise in real government debt in the three years follows a banking crisis, tending to explode with a rise at an average of 86% in the major post-World II episodes (Reinhard and Rogoff, 2008). Using the money amount of borrowing from the banks is the amount of credit available to the firm. Lang, Ofek, and Stulz (1996) find that future growth and investment are negatively related to leverage, especially for real estate firms with high debt ratios. In the current economic background, the effects of firms collateral losses may also depend on firm leverage, with highly leveraged firms investing less owning to more binding borrowing constraints. Hofmann (2003) suggests that property price cycles, reflecting changing beliefs about future economic prospects, drive credit cycles, rather than excessive bank lending being the cause of property price bubbles. Most asset classes have derivative markets. Professional investors assume that property derivatives market worked property, and the deleveraged REIT returns are closely linked to underlying market. Real estate invest in real estate debt (in effect deleveraging), use derivative trades for liquidity or use long-short trading to take positions on market views, and need to buy real estate at all. Purchaser gets low cost, diversified returns without alpha. Seller hedges underlying assets or reinvests cashflow. If there are some products that allow them to invest to increase the house price, then the investors can hedge against the increase of the house price and build up my investment. The investors could track the increase of the house prices and reduce the exposure of the house. They can diversify in the portfolio. A derivative market will give you pricing information for the pricing symmetry. The U.S. real estate is strongly distorted by derivatives and arbitrage argued by Schiller. The global financial crisis and leverage: worsening the impact of collateral losses and borrowing The factors that determine the leverage level are: financial covenants, property market/cycle, income to repayment ratio, sum of deals, maintain credit rating, dividend policy, competitor debt levels, tax benefits, and other factors. They are weighted from the largest proportion to the smallest proportion respectively. Leverage does hurt growth in the sense that it worsens the impact of collateral losses. Figure 1 explores the impact of a lower steady-state leverage ratio, 25% instead of 50% as in the baseline scenario. The figure shows that a reduction in leverage significantly moderates the cycle. Figure 1. The effects of leverage on responses to an asset-price boom and bust Notes: Comparison of high steady-state leverage (ratio of net worth to capital of 0.5, as in baseline simulations) and low steady-state leverage (net worth-capital ratio of 0.75). Monetary policy is assumed to target expected inflation aggressively. For example, firms or households may use assets they hold as collateral when borrowing, in order to ameliorate information and incentive problems that would otherwise interfere with credit extension. Under such circumstances, a decline in asset values (for example, a fall in home equity values) reduced available collateral, leads to an unplanned increase in leverage on the part of borrowers, and impedes potential borrowers access to credit. Supportive of the bubble-size hypothesis shows that the greater the gain prior to the shock between 1986 and 1989, the greater the fall in the post-shock period. Leverage is significantly positive, probably suggesting that firms that can secure borrowing are better firms and those with better relationships (Gan, 2007). Lamont and Stein (1999) show that house prices into metro areas with high levels of leverage are more sensitive to income shocks than house prices in metro areas with less leverage. At an individual level, Genesove and Mayer (2001) show that leverage has a large impact on seller reservation prices in a downturn, affecting both the probability of sale and the subsequent sales prices. Others have shown that liquidity affects refinancing behavior and mobility. While Case and Shiller (1988) use surveys to show that market conditions affect the reported expectations of recent home buyers, few papers have explored the role of information and psychology on expectations formations and transactions prices. Leverage drives up volatility of returns and bad timing issues, and LTV based lending is highly risky with the characteristics of being both pro-cyclical and vulnerable to downturns. Income/earning based constraints are more robust, and NB debt maturity, downside risk and refinancing risk are both crucially important for the leverage performance. Non-contractibility imposes limits on borrowing: and debt contracts secured on land are the only financial instruments that creditors can rely on (Miller and Stiglitz, 2010). This puts a strict upper limit on the amount of external finance that can be raised: so the rate of expansion of the small businesses is determined not by their inherent earning power but by their ability to acquire collateral. Even without intermediaries, a credit-constrained market economy-where collateral is used to handle repudiation risk-can exhibit liquidity crises and asset price crashes (Geanakoplos, 2003). Highly leveraged borrowers can very easily become insolvent. Giacomini et al. (2015) show highly leveraged REITs produce lower average returns and lower Sharpe ratios over cycle and much greater falls in bear markets. Leverage is producing the worst risk adjusted return. If their net worth were only 5% of assets held as collateral for loans, a correction of asset prices in excess of this would be enough to wipe out their net worth-even before fire-sales begin. As Koo (2011) describes it, the collapse of an economy-wide asset bubble could be the economic equivalent of the collapse of a supernova-with the black hole of insolvency threatening to swallow whole sectors of an over-leveraged economy. The consequences of technical insolvency were seen as so severe, indeed, that a preemptive strategy of concealing the true balance sheet position was apparently in Japan (Koo, 2011). As lending is liberalized and leveraged increased at the same time that prices are inflated (as the result, in p art, of banks capital reserves growth), moral hazard further undermines lenders incentives to price loans efficiently and exacerbate these underlying forces for the provision of excessive credit (Herring and Wachter 1999). The impact of leverage (recall irrelevance proposition-but also costs of financial distress and no tax shield for REITs) is dependent upon market perception of management ability, and CAPM (or factor models) can be used to assess the risk premium. The study covers the short-term and long-term dynamics of the assets, correcting for leverage in the direct real estate indices. Results suggest that long-run REIT market performance is more closely related to the direct real estate market than to general stocks, similar response to shocks in fundamentals. Asset market features that hamper arbitrage processes The inefficiencies in underlying asset market include high round trip transaction costs, illiquidity and time to trade, real management costs, and heterogeneity and alpha (the retail portfolio preference). An obvious reaction to market inefficiency is arbitrage. Arbitrage signifies taking advantage of pricing inefficiencies without any exposure to risk, and creates abnormal profits (no free lunch). When arbitrage speculators enter the market, adding liquidity, it is reasonably assumed that these are mostly short-term investors, as arbitrage investors by their nature tend to buy and sell more rapidly than most other investors. Theoretical analyses suggest expected margin should be zero or close to zero for the underlying asset markets and rational margins (arbitrage portfolio). However, in practice consumers and FI do not arbitrage in the housing market (Farlow, 2004). Arbitrage in the real estate market is risky for several reasons. First, a player has to be sure that there are enough players in the market that are also arbitraging: an insufficient proportion of arbitrageurs might cause the inefficiency to persist. The execution time is more painful for the buyers than the sellers. In any one market, there are more buyers than sellers. Second, another risk is the impossibility to obtain general agreement on the deviation from a certain fundamental value. Third, houses are heterogeneous assets that rarely have close substitutes and hence are traded in segmented markets. In addition, no central exchange exists so information is far from perfect. Furthermore, the relatively high transaction costs and the absence of short-selling opportunities in housing markets make arbitrage even riskier (Hong and Stein, 2003; Farlow, 2004). Money illusion in real estate implies the failure of consumers to evaluate alternatives during a period of inflation due to a difference between nominal and real values. It plays an important role in real estate because it generally deals with long-term projects and frictions, like short-sale constraints, which makes it difficult to arbitrage mispricing away. There are several ways of the improvement of the market: the lack of liquidity, the pricing issue, the inability to arbitrage, the trench to pension funds and so on. Hence, it is better to exploit momentum in this risky market than to try to fight against it in time of excess. When the real estate portfolios lack momentum effects, they would rather have big margins. Professional investors should get rid of their retail portfolios while they are actually selling and trading. Research Methodology An iconic model with high leverage and overvalued collateral assets is used to illustrate the amplification mechanism driving asset prices to overshoot equilibrium when asset bubble bursts-threatening widespread insolvency and what Richard Koo calls a balance sheet recession (Miller Stiglitz, 2010). For the purpose at hand-to study the dangers posed by excessive leverage and how capital restructuring may be needed to avert economic collapse when an asset bubble bursts-we make use of a stripped-down framework of heterogeneous agents with explicit credit constraints but no intermediaries (Miller Stiglitz, 2010). Before considering what happens when an asset bubble collapses globally, consider how things evolve with perfect foresight, starting with small businesses that borrow up to the hilt and happily postpone consumption of traded goods to some later date. Their flow of funds accounts show land holdings, denoted evolving as: or, in symbols,  where is the amount of one-period borrowing to be repaid as (R is one plus the one-period interest rate), is price of land, and measures the productivity of land in this sector. The credit constraint, assumed to bind at all times, is that borrowing gross of interest matches the expected value of land, i.e. As the degree of leverage is keyed to expectations of future prices, there will be more lending when capital gains are in prospect-as was true for sub-prime lending according to Gorton (2008). This will be crucial when an asset bubble is considered. But with perfect foresight of future land values, substitution into (1) yields an accumulation equation for small businesses who use all their net worth to make down payments on land, namely: where the expression in parentheses on the left is the down-payment required to purchase a unit of land and the term on the right measures both the productivity of those resources in this sector and SB net worth. By adding an asset bubble to a canonical model of highly leveraged businesses, Miller and Stigliz (2010) have highlighted the vicious downward spiral that may develop when asset prices begin to fall and have outlined a variety of measures that may be used to check this-with the government stepping in because of the externalities and moral hazard involved. The authorities in both the US and UK have of course undertaken extraordinary financial interventions, amounting in total to around three quarters of GDP (Miller and Stigliz, 2010). The arbitrage scenario of the asset market bubbles Suppose in addition to the fundamentals (net rents), we define a periodic bubble component b; then any of the following form will also satisfy arbitrage conditions and be rational: , with . Thus, if at time t an asset is overvalued by an amount , a rational investor will still purchase such an asset, if the degree of overvaluation is expected to grow by a rate equal to or greater than the appropriate discount rate. In turn, this implies that a necessary condition for housing bubbles to form is serial correlation in price changes. However, to anticipate results below, in our model housing bubbles will be self-limiting because new supply is being built. Panel unit roots and co-integration tests As a tentative attempt to partly overcome this problem, I exploit the rather large cross-section dimension of my analysis to perform unit root and co-integration tests. Asa first step I perform standard augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root tests (Dickey and Fuller, 1981) to test for the order of integration of the time series under investigation. The ADF test regression is of the form: Allowing for a maximum lag order of four, the lag order was determined by sequential t-tests eliminating all lags up to the first significant at the 5% level. The test regression for the level of each variable contained a constant and a trend; the test regression for the first difference contained only a constant. The ADF test statistic is the t-statistic of . If is significantly smaller than zero, the null hypothesis of a unit root can be rejected. I also report a panel ADF test proposed by lm et al. (2003). They show that the standardized average of the N individual ADF test statistics (6) has a standard normal distribution, where is the average of the individual ADF test statistics and and are respectively the mean and the variance of the distribution of the ADF test statistic. The appropriate mean and variance adjustment values are tabulated in Im et al. (2003). The test is one sided. The 1%, 5%, and 10% critical values are -1.96, -1.64, and -1.28. Large negative values therefore imply a rejection of the null of a unit root. On the whole, the results suggest that the natural logs of real bank lending, real property prices and real GDP are integrated of order one. This conclusion is suggested both by the individual country level tests as well as by the panel tests. The short-term interest rate appears to be a borderline case. The null of non-stationarity is rejected at least at the 10% level in seven countries out of 20 countries. The panel unit root test strongly suggests that the real interest rate is a stationary process. Given the results of the unit root tests we test in the following for the presence of a long-run relationship between real bank lending, leverage and real property prices. The level of the real interest rate is not allowed to enter the long-run relationship. The Johansen approach is based on maximum likelihood estimation of a cointegration VAR model, which can be formulated in vector error correction form: (7) where x is a vector of endogenous variables comprising the log of real bank lending, leverage and real property prices. is a vector of constants and is a vector of white noise error terms. Since I want to allow for deterministic time trends in the levels of data I leave the constant unrestricted. The rank of the matrix indicates the number of long-run relationships between the endogenous variables in the system. The cointegrating rank hypothesis for the Johansen trace test is specified as against the alternative . The lag order of the VECMs was determined based on sequential likelihood-ratio tests, eliminating all lags up to the first lag significant at the 5% level. The 1%, 5% and 10% critical values are respectively 35.65, 29.68, and 26.79 for , 20.04, 15.41, and 13.33 for for and 6.65, 3.76 and 2.69 for I also report the result of a panel cointegration trace test proposed by Larsson et al. (2001). Policy Suggestions Flexible inflation targeting Under the accommodating policy, the bubble stimulates aggregate demand, leading the economy to overheat. In contrast to the accommodative policy, the more aggressive inflation targeting policy greatly moderates the effects of the bubble. As with the case of bubble shocks, the results indicate that the policy that responds aggressively to inflation and does not target stock prices works best. Under inflation targeting monetary policy is committed to achieving a specific level of inflation in the long run, and long-run price stability is designed the overriding or primary long-run goal of policy. Inflation targeting is generally characterized by substantial openness and transparency on the part of monetary policymakers, including for example the issuance of regular reports on the inflation situation and open public discussion of policy options and plans. Regulatory initiatives to control excessive lending in real estate markets Banks have overextended their lending during periods of high asset inflation, exposing themselves to greater portfolio risks during periods of declining asset value. Bank lending to related parties, as bank owners sought to capture the gains from their speculation, has aggravated the adverse impact of speculative lending. In response, regulatory authorities have increasingly restricted lending for real estate and to related parties-as well as lending concentrated on a few borrowers. Restrictions on related lending have been difficult to implement, however, because disclosure rules are generally poor, and in Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand, banks and firms have interlinked ownership, and companies are closely held (Stiglitz and Uy, 1996). Although governments established priorities for lending-and discouraged lending for real estate and consumer goods-they still employed commercial standards. Prudential regulations, particularly capital adequacy requirements and controls on real estate lending, are essential and replicable. The adaptability of government policies-the ability to abandon policies when they fail and to change policies with changing circumstances-is clearly a lesson of general applicability, although it is hard to design institutions that capture that lesson. A monetary policy regime focuses on asset prices rather than on macroeconomic fundamentals may well be actively destabilizing. The problem is that the central bank is targeting the wrong indicator. As an alternative metric for evaluating policy responses to bubbles, Bernanke and Gertler (2000) computed the unconditional variances of output and inflation under the four different policy scenarios (accommodative versus non-accommodative on inflation, responding to stock prices versus not responding). Conclusion Over the last few years, the coincidence of cycles in credit and property markets has been widely documented and discussed in the economic policy oriented literature, In this paper, I analyse the causes of this coincidence. From a theoretical point of view, the relationship between bank lending and property prices is multifaceted. Property prices may affect credit via various wealth effects, while credit may affect property prices via various liquidity effects. Previous empirical studies were not able to disentangle the direction of causality, since the focus was usually on one of these effects bot not on both. Long-run causality appears to go from property prices to bank lending, rather than conversely. This finding suggests that property price cycles, reflecting changing beliefs about future economic prospects, drive credit cycles, rather than excessive bank lending, in the wake of financial liberalization or overly loose monetary policy, being the cause of property price bubbles. However, there is also evidence of short-run causality going in both directions, implying that a mutually reinforcing element in past boom-bust cycles in credit and property markets cannot be ruled out. References Bernanke, B. and Gertler, M., 2000. Monetary policy and asset price volatility (No. w7559). National bureau of economic research. Case, K.E. and Shiller, R.J., 1988. The behavior of home buyers in boom and post-boom markets. Farlow, A., 2004. The UK housing market: bubbles and buyers. Oriel College. Gan, J., 2007. The real effects of asset market bubbles: Loan-and firm-level evidence of a lending channel. Review of Financial Studies, 20(6), pp.1941-1973. Geanakoplos, J., 2001. Liquidity, default and crashes: Endogenous contracts in general equilibrium. Genesove, D. and Mayer, C., 2001. Loss aversion and seller behavior: Evidence from the housing market. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(4), pp.1233-1260. Gerlach, S. and Peng, W., 2005. Bank lending and property prices in Hong Kong. Journal of Banking Finance, 29(2), pp.461-481. Giacomini, E., Ling, D.C. and Naranjo, A., 2015. Leverage and returns: A cross-country analysis of public real estate markets. The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 51(2), pp.125-159. Gorton, G.B., 2008. The panic of 2007 (No. w14358). National Bureau of Economic Research. Herring, R.J. and Wachter, S.M., 1999. Real estate booms and banking busts: an international perspective. Hofmann, B., 2003. Bank lending and property prices: Some international evidence. Hong, H. and Stein, J.C., 2003. Differences of opinion, short-sales constraints, and market crashes. Review of financial studies, 16(2), pp.487-525. Koo, R.C., 2011. The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan? Great Recession. John Wiley Sons. Lamont, O. and Stein, J.C., 1997. Leverage and house-price dynamics in US cities (No. w5961). National bureau of economic research. Lang, L., Ofek, E. and Stulz, R., 1996. Leverage, investment, and firm growth. Journal of financial Economics, 40(1), pp.3-29. Larsson, R., Lyhagen, J. and Là ¶thgren, M., 2001. Likelihoodà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ based cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels. The Econometrics Journal, 4(1), pp.109-142. Im, K.S., Pesaran, M.H. and Shin, Y., 2003. Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels. Journal of econometrics, 115(1), pp.53-74.<

Child Behavioral Case Study Essay -- Psychology Learning Children

Child Behavioral Case Study 1) General Information: Student name: Larry Date of Testing: Grade: 1 Date of Birth: Chronological Age: School: 2) Reason for Assessment: is currently having difficulties with learning and behavior. frequently is out of his throughout the day, and answers aloud before being called on to give the answers and struggles to follow directions. also has learning difficulties in reading decoding and reading comprehension. 3) Background Information: lives with is grandparents, parents and one younger sister. Grandparents speak Spanish. Parents and children speak Spanish and English. had been ill frequently during first grade and missed a number of days of school. Parents indicated enjoys school. 4) Prereferral findings: The teacher has been using district reading series, cooperative grouping for reading activities, using card to follow while reading, cueing before asking questions as well as sticker chart for hand raising and working while in his seat, which has helped. 5) Assessment observations: Sensory Abilities: No problem noted Language: Flight of ideas Apprehension: No problem noted Behavior during testing: Impulsive Responses Distractibility: Attention to external stimuli Reaction to wrong Responses: Persist Motor Activity: Fidgets, Squirms General Attitude: Alert, Friendly Motor Ability: Quick motor execution Cooperativeness: Responsive 6) Assessment Rules: 1) Behavior Rating Profile (BRP-2) is test that ha...

Art History: Mask of Agamemnon

ANCIENT ART 200 Was the Mask Of Agamemnon Edited by Schliemann and his Workers? 5/14/2011 Sandra. Baah | Schliemann was a German archeologist who excavated the shaft graves of Mycenae. He found a mask which has been claimed to be the mask of Agamemnon. This has brought up endless debates about the authenticity of the mask. The mask is said to be one of Schliemann's forgeries. Some scholars claim the mask is too new or does not have any qualities that prove that it is Mycenaean. It is difficult to know whether the mask is authentic or fake. William A. Calder and David A.Traill are two archeologists who challenge the authenticity of the mask. They have come up with arguments that try to prove the mask is a forgery. Some scholars claim that their arguments are not valid and lack scholarly reasoning to support their arguments. Some scholars believe that the mask is a mixture of different styles from different places and times. No one can really tell if the mask is authentic or fake. I be lieve that the mask was edited by Schliemann and his men. The mask of Agamemnon is not authentic due to its lack of Mycenaean qualities that would prove its authenticity.The mask of Agamemnon is not authentic; therefore it was edited by Schliemann and his workers. The mask of Agamemnon was found in Shaft Grave V by Schliemann on the Treasury of Atreus it is one of the most famous artworks that have been found. The mask of Agamemnon is a gold funeral mask. It was made using the repousse? method. This technique makes it look like it was hammered. The hair on the mask looks like it was engraved. The mask is crooked. The ears are not in proportion, the moustache looks like it was put on wrong and everything on this mask looks wrong.The beard on the mask is V shaped. Most funerary masks are flat, but this one is not.. The mask is three dimensional and it looks like the ears were cut out rather than made together with the rest of the mask. The hair on the mask is very detailed; one can al most see every strand of his beard. The eyes on the mask appear to be open. The eyelids are made in a way that makes the eyes seem to be both open and closed at the same time. Compared to the mask of Agamemnon, other objects found in the graves look Mycenaean and authentic.One example is image three, which is the inlaid dagger, was found in grave A Mycenae, Greece, 1600-1500 BCE. The dagger is about nine inches long. It is made of different metals such as gold, silver, and niello; niello is a chemical that is rubbed into the needle- like cut to make the texture of the dagger. The daggers were difficult to make, and are very detailed. One depicts a scene of a lion hunt; the lions look heraldic and symbolic, this explains why they were found in graves because only important officials were buried with expensive ornaments.The lions on the dagger are in the flying gallop pose, which is a convention started by the Minoans then adapted by the Mycenaean’s. The figures on the dagger a re wearing shorts but not helmets and carrying a shield. I believe the figures represent the people buried in the graves, because they look heroic and important people were buried in the graves. It is possible that Schliemann made a similar assumption in finding the mask of Agamemnon since he was a Trojan soldier. The two artworks described beforehand are different even though they are claimed to be from the same civilization.Figure three shows more Mycenaean qualities than the mask of Agamemnon. Most of the Mycenaean metal works were not made of pure gold. Like the inlaid dagger, most of them were mixed with metals like silver. They are both inlaid but the dagger has signs of the Mycenaean convention of depicting animal scenes. It is believed that the funerary mask Schliemann found is a forgery. The funerary mask does not look like some of the other Mycenaean gold funerary mask. A local reporter of the Argolis News reported the â€Å"mask had no mustache†.Compared to figure two found in shaft grave A, the facial features on mask of Agamemnon does not match all the others. It is believed the facial hair does not look Mycenaean. According to Harrington Spencer the mouth on figure 2 is short and thick with ill defined lips and no discernible chin, but the mask of Agamemnon has a wider mouth, thin lips and a well define chin. The eyes on the mask of Agamemnon are different from the other masks found in the shaft graves of Mycenae. The eyebrows on figure two are not shown in detail, but the eyebrows on the mask of Agamemnon the look as if they have been engraved on the mask.The eyelids on the mask of Agamemnon seem to be open, while those on figure two are closed. Schliemann edited the mask because it does not have any similarities with other metal work found in Mycenae. The mask looks too perfect compared to the other masks found in the grave; it looks like it was made at a later date. It is not severely faded like the other artworks found in the shaft gra ves of Mycenae. The Mycenaean' did not make their metalwork purely out of gold. Most of their artwork was made with different metals, such as silver and bronze.I believe the mask was edited because the mask of Schliemann found was believed to be made of pure gold and according to Calder â€Å"no ancient object was ever made of pure gold†. Some scholars like David Traill, have questioned the authenticity of the mask of Agamemnon and requested for the object to be tested. Traill has asked for it to be tested to see if the mask is really made of gold but his request has been denied. If the mask is said to be authentic, then why has it not been tested? The answer is not known.If the mask is believed to be an authentic piece, then it should be tested. Testing the mask to know if it is pure gold does not ruin the mask instead testing it will enable scholars to find out the truth about the mask's authenticity. Some Scholars believe Schliemann planted the mask. The dates at which the mask was found bring about questions as to whether the mask is a forgery or not. According to Calder â€Å"the Mycenae excavations took place between August seventh and December third 1876, the mask was discovered November 30. Only three days before the site was closed†.It seems like the mask was planted in the grave to be found. Why would Schliemann close the site right after he found the mask of Agamemnon? It might be that he planted the mask in the grave so he would become famous for finding the mask of Agamemnon. It could have been that Schliemann was looking for a plan to advance his career and in order to do that he planted the mask and got his fame from supposedly finding it. It is claimed the excavations were closed on November 26th and 27th . His absence could have made it possible for him to plant the mask.Some archeologists do not believe that Schliemann planted the mask, instead they claim that â€Å"it is difficult to see how the insertion of the mask could hav e been achieved when Schliemann was working under the constant supervision of Panagiotis Stamatakis the director of Antiquities, who was assisted from November 28 by other archeologists sent from Athens, and by a guard of Greek soldiers on the site†. Under this strict supervision it is highly doubtful that Schliemann planted the mask in the grave so he could find it.Due to the reasons stated beforehand, I believe the mask of Agamemnon was edited because it does not relate to other Mycenaean art. It is different compared to the other artworks found in grave A and B. The mask of Agamemnon does not follow the convention of Mycenaean art. Traill states that â€Å"the mask of Agamemnon does not show any trace of Mycenaean norm or convention†. According to Calder â€Å"the mask of Agamemnon is stylish and innovative. It is far away from the Mycenaean convention and looks fairly new.I believe the mask of Agamemnon was altered by Schliemann. There is not much prove that shows that it was edited, but the mask does not look authentic. William Calder and David Traill try to prove that the mask is a forgery, but they do not have substantial evidence to support their argument. It looks like it was made in a hurry, and ancient artworks were not made purely of gold. I also believe the mask was edited because Schliemann was not an honest man, he admitted that he bought some of the objects he claimed to have found.The mask of Agamemnon should be removed from textbooks because archeologists do not have enough information on it, it is based on observations and on an individual’s perception of it. It should not be added to art history books before it is tested. I believe for something to be studied, one should have background knowledge of the object. Figure 1 Mask of Agamemnon 1550-1500 BCE Figure 2 Funerary Mask from Shaft Grave IV 1550-1500 BCE Found in Grave Circle A by Schliemann and his workers. Figure 3 Inlaid Dagger Blade, 1550-1500 BCEDagger from grav e circle A at Mycenae. Found in the national archeological museum, Athens. BIBLIOGRAPHY Christopulous, George A, and John C Bastias. Prejistory and Protohistory. University park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania state univveristy press, 1974. Dickinson, Oliver. â€Å"The ‘Face of Agamemnon. ‘† Hesperia: The Journal of the   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 3rd ser. , 74 (July-August   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  2005): 299-308. Accessed May 2, 2011. http:///www. jstor. org/stable/   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  25067959.Elliot, Alexander. The Horizon Concise of Greece. New York: American Heritage,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  1972. Harrington, Spencer P. M. â€Å"Behind the Mask of Agamemnon. † Archeology 52, no. 4   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  (July-August 1999). Accessed May 2, 2011. http://web. ebscohost. com/ehost/   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  delivery? sid=1d53bfed-ae35-45c6-8097-2d4bcffa3301%40sessionmgr10;vid=7;hid=18. Hilson, Muriel. â€Å"Studies in Art Education. â₠¬  Neolithic Art and the Art History   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Clas 32, no. 4 (1991): 230-238. Accessed April 27, 2011. http://www. jstor. org/stable.

Protecting Interest Of The Minority Shareholders

In Asian countries including Bangladesh, the controlling ownership of public listed companies are dominated by some families. The problem of minority exploitation may arise when the ownership is highly concentrated in any specific group, especially family ownership. One of the consequences of this is the expropriation of minority shareholder rights. Apart from family control another limitation of principles of corporate law is the principle of majority rule, sometimes called the â€Å"supremacy of majority† rule.Those who invested more in the company bear a greater risk in the event of a business failure, but simultaneously they have a greater degree of control over the company. There is certainly a risk that the majority will take advantage of the minority and that a company will be run at the expense of the minority shareholders. Any decision of Annual general meeting (AGM) adapted by majority vote and directors are appointed and may be removed from the office at any time by a simple majority at the general meeting.Thus, the directors are motivated to act in the best interests of the majority who appointed them and who may remove them. Minority shareholder rights expropriation occurred when family ownership directed cash to their own benefit, inefficient projects and connected lending to relatives and friends rather than return it in dividends to minority shareholders. Other expropriation can take the form of profit reallocation, assets misuse, transfer pricing, sell below the market price departments or parts of the firm to other firms that major shareholders own, or acquisition of other firms that major shareholders own at a premium.The majority shareholders treats the company as his own, and acts accordingly, to the detriment of the other shareholders, or where there is a breakdown in the relationship of the shareholders or any of their number, which gives rise to questions about the future ownership and control of the Company. On the other hand, wh ere a single or small number of shareholders hold a substantial block of shares in the company, say, in excess of 25% of the voting rights, securing managerial accountability to the shareholders or at least to the controlling shareholders through the traditional governance mechanisms of company law can dominate the company.In some situation, the ‘non-controlling’ shareholders may collectively hold more voting shares than the ‘controlling’ shareholders. However, if the non-controlling shares are widely dispersed, effective control of the company will lie in the hands of the block-holder, even if that block consists of less than 50% of the voting shares. The shareholder providing the majority of the capital may sometimes not control the company.In such a case the majority shareholder is effectively in a minority position with regard to the exercising of controlling rights. The emergence of such a situations are the principal/agent problem between the controll ing shareholders and the non-controlling ‘minority’ shareholders. The corporate management law and policy must have protection of interest of the minority shareholders. The general purpose of minority protection instruments is to prevent the abuse of power by the major shareholders.There is not an easy solution, to the problem, since the principle of majority rule, in company law and other rules of regulators. It is a long established principle of corporate law that the regulators and courts should not intervene in business decisions due to the nonintervention policy or internal management principle. There is no statutory law of anywhere contains a definition of the minority or majority shareholder. The distinguishing factor between the two is the degree of control over the corporation.The number of shares owned is not  decisive, even a shareholder owning a majority of shares may be a minority shareholder, if other shareholders are well organized and, thus, control th e company. The company must follow the principles ‘partnership’ and consultation aims at balancing the interest between major and minor shareholders, and usually do not infringe minorities rights through guaranteeing at least the following minority rights such as respect of opinion of major shareholders toward minorities, the right of minorities to be heard on regard of business matters and exit rights.The limited Liability Companies, which are, in practical terms, run, as if they were a partnership, between the persons who are shareholders of same, might be regarded by the law, as â€Å"quasi partnership†. The OECD principles on Corporate Governance (2004) provide that: Shareholders, including institutional shareholders, should be allowed to consult with each other on issues concerning their basic shareholder rights as defined in the Principles, subject to exceptions to prevent abuse.The protection comes from better legal protection, stronger structure of the in ternal control mechanisms and more efficient capital markets and market for corporate control. One of the methods to ensure the minority rights is to follow good Corporate Governance principles because there exists a relation between the level of protection of minority shareholders and incorporation of good practices of Corporate Governance. The separation of ownership and control in corporations with dispersed ownership structure highlights the agency issue due to conflict between agents (directors) and principals (shareholders).Due to a different agency problem that arises on account of the conflict between dominant and minority shareholders. The minority shareholders can be empowered by ensuring control over the management and board of directors. The board of directors are accountable to the shareholders as a class is to make it easy for the shareholders to convene meetings to consider the removal of directors, evaluate the board’s performance and remove directors of whom they disapprove.The minority shareholders are afforded the remedies if the majority shareholders, violate a personal right of a minority shareholder, then he can file a personal action against the wrongdoers to rectify such a violation of the articles of association of the Company or of the terms of any shareholder agreement etc. With increasing instances of corporate fraud around the world, another remedy is provisions for class action suits. Class action is a law suit brought by one or more individuals on behalf of a large group of people who have the same complaint.In certain circumstances, minority shareholders may bring a common law derivative action, on behalf of the company, against the wrongdoers, who committed a wrong to the company. Wrongdoers can be shareholders and directors of the company, as well as third parties. In order to be able to proceed with a derivative action at common law, the minority shareholders must have legal options to persuade the courts, that the com pany’s decisions by majority shareholders are not to pursue a remedy for the wrong done to the company which amounts to a â€Å"fraud on the minority† .Another Statutory remedy is of petition to winding up of the company on a just and equitable ground. There is hearsay that few sponsors / families are responsible for share scams causing huge loss of small investors. Security exchange commission (SEC) has such views with perceived experiences of two share market debacles and issued a notification on November 22, 2011 imposing conditions that all sponsors / promoters and directors of a listed company shall jointly hold minimum 30% share of paid up capital of the company. Moreover, each director shall hold minimum 2% of the paid up capital.In case of vacancy of anyone holding 5% share shall be entitled to be directors. The publicly listed companies have usually 15 directors and they will hold 75% of the share and voting rights of the company. This means the companies will gradually go under control of few limited persons who have capacity of investment of sufficient amount. SEC has in mind that, mandatory provision of higher shares will prevent such future stock market debacle. But as per investigation report of Mr Khondaker Ibrahim Khaled, accepted by all, there are many organizations including SEC are jointly responsible for disaster in stock market.The public companies are controlled by few families and the directors are ‘elected’ from same family by rotation and under full control of families. They retire due to compulsion of retirements as per law. Small shareholders are awarded a gift pack and nominal dividends in AGM and have no say against the decision of these controlling families. Companies go for public share to generate fund for investments but shall fail to generate fund with higher investments of sponsors and directors.The over investment of sponsors / directors will not bring sufficient share in the market and the market will remain at the present status of low investment. India has totally different legal framework to safeguard interest of small investors. Indian Companies Act 2013 under section -151. A listed company may have one director elected by such small shareholders in such manner and with such terms and conditions as may be prescribed. For the purposes of this section â€Å"small shareholders† means a shareholder holding shares of nominal value of not more than twenty thousand rupees or such other sum as may be prescribed.There is no policy of a designated directorship of choice of minority shareholder nor there do any provision to control, appoint or remove any director. The global law and policy is to protect the rights of minority shareholders but in contrary Bangladesh SEC make legal provision of make the minority shareholder marginalized and have no option to exercise their rights due to majority rule and lose their voice. The decision of higher investment of directors is not g ood for stock market and should be amended to find way out to safeguard interest of minor shareholders from the proven experience of other markets. Protecting interest of the minority Shareholders In Asian countries including Bangladesh, the controlling ownership of public listed companies are dominated by some families. The problem of minority exploitation may arise when the ownership is highly concentrated in any specific group, especially family ownership. One of the consequences of this is the expropriation of minority shareholder rights.Apart from family control another limitation of principles of corporate law is the principle of majority rule, sometimes called the â€Å"supremacy of majority† rule. Those who invested more in the company bear a greater risk in the event of a business failure, but simultaneously they have a greater degree of control over the company. There is certainly a risk that the majority will take advantage of the minority and that a company will be run at the expense of the minority shareholders.Any decision of Annual general meeting (AGM) adapted by majority vote and directors are appointed and may be removed from the office at any time by a simple majority at the general meeting. Thus, the directors are motivated to act in the best interests of the majority who appointed them and who may remove them.Minority shareholder rights expropriation occurred when family ownership directed cash to their own benefit, inefficient projects and connected lending to relatives and friends rather than return it in dividends to minority shareholders. Other expropriation can take the form of profit  reallocation, assets misuse, transfer pricing, sell below the market price departments or parts of the firm to other firms that major shareholders own, or acquisition of other firms that major shareholders own at a premium. The majority shareholders treats the company as his own, and acts accordingly, to the detriment of the other shareholders, or where there is a breakdown in the relationship of the shareholders or any of their number, which gives rise to questions about the future ownership and control of the Company.On the other hand, where a single or small number of shareholders hold a substantial block of shares in the company, say, in excess of 25% of the voting rights, securing managerial accountability to the shareholders or at least to the controlling shareholders through the traditional governance mechanisms of company law can dominate the company. In some situation, the ‘non-controlling’ shareholders may collectively hold more voting shares than the ‘controlling’ shareholders. However, if the non-controlling shares are widely dispersed, effective control of the company will lie in the hands of the block-holder, even if that block consists of less than 50% of the voting shares.The shareholder providing the majority of the capital may sometimes not control the company. In such a case the majority shareholder is effectively in a minority position with regard to the exercising of controlling rights. The emergence of such a situations are the principal/agent problem between the contr olling shareholders and the non-controlling ‘minority’ shareholders.The corporate management law and policy must have protection of interest of the minority shareholders. The general purpose of minority protection instruments is to prevent the abuse of power by the major shareholders. There is not an easy solution, to the problem, since the principle of majority rule, in company law and other rules of regulators. It is a long established principle of corporate law that the regulators and courts should not intervene in business decisions due to the nonintervention policy or internal management principle.There is no statutory law of anywhere contains a definition of the minority or majority shareholder. The distinguishing factor between the two is the degree of control over the corporation. The number of shares owned is not  decisive, even a shareholder owning a majority of shares may be a minority shareholder, if other shareholders are well organized and, thus, control the company.The company must follow the principles ‘partnership’ and consultation aims at balancing the interest between major and minor shareholders, and usually do not infringe minorities rights through guaranteeing at least the following minority rights such as respect of opinion of major shareholders toward minorities, the right of minorities to be heard on regard of business matters and exit rights. The limited Liability Companies, which are, in practical terms, run, as if they were a partnership, between the persons who are shareholders of same, might be regarded by the law, as â€Å"quasi partnership†.The OECD principles on Corporate Governance (2004) provide that: Shareholders, including institutional shareholders, should be allowed to consult with each other on issues concerning their basic shareholder rights as defined in the Principles, subject to exceptions to prevent abuse.The protection comes from better legal protection, stronger structure of the internal control mechanisms and more efficient capital markets and market for corporate control. One of the methods to ensure the minority rights is to follow good Corporate Governance principles because there exists a relation between the level of protection of minority shareholders and incorporation of good practices of Corporate Governance.The separation of ownership and control in corporations with dispersed ownership structure highlights the agency issue due to conflict between agents (directors) and principals (shareholders). Due to a different agency problem that arises on account of the conflict between dominant and minority shareholders. The minority shareholders can be empowered by ensuring control over the management and board of directors. The board of directors are accountable to the shareholders as a class is to make it easy for the shareholders to convene meetings to consider the removal of directors, evaluate the board’s performance and remove directors of who m they  disapprove.The minority shareholders are afforded the remedies if the majority shareholders, violate a personal right of a minority shareholder, then he can file a personal action against the wrongdoers to rectify such a violation of the articles of association of the Company or of the terms of any shareholder agreement etc. With increasing instances of corporate fraud around the world, another remedy is provisions for class action suits. Class action is a law suit brought by one or more individuals on behalf of a large group of people who have the same complaint. In certain circumstances, minority shareholders may bring a common law derivative action, on behalf of the company, against the wrongdoers, who committed a wrong to the company.Wrongdoers can be shareholders and directors of the company, as well as third parties. In order to be able to proceed with a derivative action at common law, the minority shareholders must have legal options to persuade the courts, that th e company’s decisions by majority shareholders are not to pursue a remedy for the wrong done to the company which amounts to a â€Å"fraud on the minority† . Another Statutory remedy is of petition to winding up of the company on a just and equitable ground. There is hearsay that few sponsors / families are responsible for share scams causing huge loss of small investors.Security exchange commission (SEC) has such views with perceived experiences of two share market debacles and issued a notification on November 22, 2011 imposing conditions that all sponsors / promoters and directors of a listed company shall jointly hold minimum 30% share of paid up capital of the company. Moreover, each director shall hold minimum 2% of the paid up capital. In case of vacancy of anyone holding 5% share shall be entitled to be directors. The publicly listed companies have usually 15 directors and they will hold 75% of the share and voting rights of the company.This means the companies will gradually go under control of few limited persons who have capacity of investment of sufficient amount. SEC has in mind that, mandatory provision of higher shares will prevent such future stock market debacle. But as per investigation report of Mr Khondaker Ibrahim Khaled, accepted by all, there are many organizations including SEC are jointly responsible for disaster in stock market.The public companies are controlled by few families and the directors are ‘elected’ from same family by rotation and under full control of families. They retire due to compulsion of retirements as per law. Small shareholders are awarded a gift pack and nominal dividends in AGM and have no say against the decision of these controlling families. Companies go for public share to generate fund for investments but shall fail to generate fund with higher investments of sponsors and directors. The over investment of sponsors / directors will not bring sufficient share in the market and the m arket will remain at the present status of low investment.India has totally different legal framework to safeguard interest of small investors. Indian Companies Act 2013 under section -151. A listed company may have one director elected by such small shareholders in such manner and with such terms and conditions as may be prescribed. For the purposes of this section â€Å"small shareholders† means a shareholder holding shares of nominal value of not more than twenty thousand rupees or such other sum as may be prescribed.There is no policy of a designated directorship of choice of minority shareholder nor there do any provision to control, appoint or remove any director. The global law and policy is to protect the rights of minority shareholders but in contrary Bangladesh SEC make legal provision of make the minority shareholder marginalized and have no option to exercise their rights due to majority rule and lose their voice.The decision of higher investment of directors is n ot good for stock market and should be amended to find way out to safeguard interest of minor shareholders from the proven experience of other markets.

Dealing with Autism

Dealing with Autism Free Online Research Papers Of all of the childhood psychological disorders, Autism is perhaps the most overwhelming. Its sufferers are both the children afflicted with social impairment and the parents who struggle everyday to support them. Autism deprives its sufferers of the capability of having significant relationships and communication with other individuals, it causes them to become withdrawn and cancel any human contact. Perhaps the most overlooked part of this disease is the pain and guilt that it causes parents who often find it hard to love a child with no emotions, with little human traits. While the past 30 years have brought some progress towards the diagnosis of Autism, it seems that this disorder is so complex and volatile that it is very difficult to treat. Autism is a disorder with a clear genetic origin. Studies have revealed that both single gene mutations and multi gene interactions are responsible for the condition. Twin studies from the early seventies illustrated that if one identical twin has Autism, the other sibling is 90% likely to also have it as well (Gray, 970). This offers immense backing for the genetic hypothesis. However there has also been evidence that non genetic reasons can be to blame for Autism. Prenatal viral infections including Rubella have been confirmed to be harmful to the fetus brain and at times responsible for Autism (Gray, 970). Women who are exposed to pesticides during pregnancy are eight times more likely to have a child with Autism (Gray, 972). No matter what the cause is Autism is a disorder that weakens the growth of a child’s brain and causes noticeable social problem. Indicators of Autism start very early with 80 percent of autistic children displaying abnormalities before the age of 18 months. The occurrence in America is 6 per 1000 births and it affects boys four times as often as girls. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics there are several red flags for Autism. These include no babbling or gesturing by 12 months of age, no single words by 16 months, and no two word phrases by the age of 24 months (Gray, 972). As children get older, and even grow into adulthood other more established symptoms become noticeable. Perhaps the universal trait of Autism is a fixation with repetitive, patterned things (Gray, 973). Autistic toddlers can be observed doing the same thing for hours in complete silence (Gray, 973). Young Autistic children are much less likely to respond to stimuli including their names (Gray, 974). They rarely show eye contact and are more likely to play with another person’s hand (Gray, 975). Around the age o f five, children are less likely to come up to others and play with peers, and show a complete indifference to social norms. As they reach adolescence autistic children are very likely to have few friendships, become depressed from loneliness and suffer from occasional but profound temper tantrums (Gray, 975). Autism is a complex disorder with an incredible range of different manifestations. Around 30 percent of autistic individuals are mentally retarded with an IQ below 50. These obviously have the poorest outcomes as adults. Mentally retarded autistics may never develop language or even the concept of social connection. They are inclined to live in institutions and some cannot even feed themselves or use the bathroom without assistance. On the other hand, Autistics with IQ’s ranging from 70 to 90 have a 60 percent chance of living independently and can work on simple jobs. An interesting finding is that autistics with higher IQ’s can often posses above average language skills and be mistaken by others to be highly intelligent. Yet they lack the ability to understand the feelings and intentions of other people, making them socially awkward and incapable of forming lasting relationships. On the extremes of the spectrum are the highly intelligent autistics, which clearly show the complexities of the human brain. Also known as Asperger Syndrome, this form of the disease makes up for social inadequacy by often giving people highly superior perception and memory. Highly intelligent autistics often can be incredible painters, musicians, and mathematicians, while lacking the most basic social skills. The most extreme version of this is savant syndrome, where autistic individuals possess super human abilities. Kim Peek, a savant made famous by the movie Rainman, has the ability to remember a 900 page book word for word, while being incapable of carrying the most simplest of conversations. It is almost impossible to create a universal treatment for Autism because its effects are so different in every individual. Intensive treatments and behavior therapies are often applied from an early age, in attempt to lessen the profoundness of the disorder. These treatments try to teach social skills and promote communication in autistic children. Early intervention has shown to have some positive results, but even supporters have admitted that great improvement is highly unlikely. Observation has shown that autism can worsen or improve with age completely on its own. More than half of autistic children are prescribed psychoactive drugs including anti-depressants and stimulants to help control their symptoms. Either than this, little else can be done to help autistic individuals. Because autism is a problem in the way the brain innately works, rather than being a problem of neurotransmitters like other disorders, treatment options are so limited. It is unfortunate that wil l all of our advances in modern medicine, we still have so little options against the curse of Autism. A few strengths of the article are that it gives a great deal of information of what Autism is as well as how Autism has been viewed. It also gives a look into how having a child with Autism can affect the parents as well as the child. The author gives insight into the Autism spectrum. Interacting with individuals with Autism can be stressful for anyone is not only an adjustment for the community and the parents but the individual also. I did not really find any weaknesses in the article to critique. In the amount of time I have been working my internship with the population of developmentally disabled individuals, I have found that a vast majority have Autism Spectrum Disorders. I sit in amazement as I watch how they interact with each other and the staff. It is truly an adjustment for the families leaving their loved ones in the hands of strangers per se, but it is also an adjustment for many of individuals with Autism being away from their families and familiar surroundings. 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The motives underlying of merger and acquisitions Essay

The motives underlying of merger and acquisitions - Essay Example There are various factors that motivate mergers and acquisitions in different countries. There are also different outcomes of mergers and acquisitions as a result of the methodologies that are used to undertake the process. As such, this paper has been designed to analyse the major factors that motivate mergers and acquisitions drawing examples from institutions from the UK that have mergers and acquisitions. The paper will start by defining the meaning of the two key terms namely merger and acquisition in order to gain a full understanding of the whole concept. According to Jackson & Schuler (2000) a merger is a company that is formed after two companies have been joined or merged to form one entity and these companies have proportional ownership shares in a merger. On the other hand, in an acquisition, the other company takes full control of the other organization which is bought out through an acquisition. There are various factors that motivate companies to merge or to acquire other organizations. For instance, the need to increase market share, increase their geographic reach as well as responding to new deregulation as a result of globalisation are some of the forces that motivate mergers and acquisitions. Companies involved in mergers and acquisitions ought to reach a mutual agreement in order to obtain the envisaged benefits from the deal. The agreement between the two companies involved in a merger or acquisition has a bearing on the success or failure of the initiative. There are also quite a number of factors that motivate mergers and acquisitions in different nations. The realisation that markets are global as a result of globalisation has significantly contributed to an increase in the activities involving mergers and acquisitions especially of multinational companies (MNCs). According to a paper entitled ‘Factors that motivate mergers and acquisition’ (ND), deregulation of the global markets has significantly contributed to an increase in

Marketing Strategy for DHL Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Marketing Strategy for DHL - Case Study Example DHL is a global company involved in postal services finance and express. In DHL, a fundamental innovation represents a break with the past and fulfills a need that was not previously met. Air conditioners and television sets are examples of fundamental innovations -- both meet previously unfulfilled needs. Their introduction requires considerable change in consumer purchase-and-use habits. A functional innovation requires some change in consumer habits but meets a need previously fulfilled. However, it meets the need in a superior manner. Automatic washers and dryers are examples. It is the least complex of all changes in the innovation spectrum. Minor product changes, color style, and package alterations fall into this category. To become an innovation, an invention or new idea must gain consumer acceptance. Innovation is inextricably intertwined with, and governed by, buyer behavior. Innovation focuses on such behavioral problems as acceptance of new products, brands, services, and processes, the diffusion of marketing information, resistance to change, informal leadership, and acceptance of risk. As a business strategy, innovation greatly affects corporate growth, survival, and profitability. It reflects the changing market wants and needs of customers. Innovation is stimulated by competition. Whenever new products or services are launched, business becomes concerned as to whether customers will accept them, and if they do, how long it will take for innovations to be profitable. Innovation as the M