The Informational Value of Corporate Credit Ratings

This thesis examines the quality of credit ratings issued by the three major credit rating agencies - Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s and Fitch. If credit ratings are informative, then prices of underlying credit instruments such as fixed-income securities and credit default insurance should change to reflect the new credit risk information. Using data on 246 different major fixed income securities issuers and spanning January 2000 to December 2011, we find that credit default swaps (CDS) spreads do not react to changes in credit ratings. Hence credit ratings for all three agencies are not price informative. CDS prices are mostly determined by historical CDS prices while ratings are mostly determined by historical ratings. We find that credit ratings are marginally more sensitive to CDS than CDS are sensitive to ratings.

Undergraduate Student Anxiety-Management in Academia: Appraising the Value of Services and Strategies

This study explored strategies that Brock University undergraduate students value the most for managing anxiety in academia. Although previous literature indicates services and techniques such as academic advising, physical activity, and educator engagement help students, few if any have ranked students’ perceived value of anxiety-management strategies. The researcher recruited 54 undergraduate student participants (primarily from the Department of Community Health Sciences) through online invitation. Participants completed an online survey to rate their previous experience with anxiety-management strategies discussed in the literature. Survey findings identified the 4 most valuable resources students used to manage anxiety in academia: (a) educators who post academic material posted online (e.g., on Sakai) early in the term, (b) physical activity, (c) socialization, and (d) breaking large assignments into smaller portions. Conversely, student participants found disability services, counseling, and medication to be the least valuable resources. Results suggest higher-education facilities should ensure that the most valuable services are readily available to students seeking them. The study contributes to the field by identifying a broad set of strategies that students find highly valuable in their management of academic related anxiety.

This document is very badly burned, it includes: a schedule of construction, May 28, 1855 and value of work used for constructing the bridge crossing at Chippawa Creek, Oct. 1857

This document is very badly burned, it includes: a schedule of construction, May 28, 1855 and value of work used for constructing the bridge crossing at Chippawa Creek, Oct. 1857. It is signed by S.D. Woodruff (3 pages, handwritten). Almost all text is illegible, 1857

Population Ethics and the Value of Life

Public policies often involve choices of alternatives in which the size and the composition of the population may vary. Examples are the allocation of resources to prenatal care and the design of aid packages to developing countries. In order to assess the corresponding feasible choices on normative grounds, criteria for social evaluation that are capable of performing variable-population comparisons are required. We review several important axioms for welfarist population principles and discuss the link between individual well-being and the desirability of adding a new person to a given society.

Fair Allocation of Production Externalities: Recent Results

We survey recent axiomatic results in the theory of cost-sharing. In this litterature, a method computes the individual cost shares assigned to the users of a facility for any profile of demands and any monotonic cost function. We discuss two theories taking radically different views of the asymmetries of the cost function. In the full responsibility theory, each agent is accountable for the part of the costs that can be unambiguously separated and attributed to her own demand. In the partial responsibility theory, the asymmetries of the cost function have no bearing on individual cost shares, only the differences in demand levels matter. We describe several invariance and monotonicity properties that reflect both normative and strategic concerns. We uncover a number of logical trade-offs between our axioms, and derive axiomatic characterizations of a handful of intuitive methods: in the full responsibility approach, the Shapley-Shubik, Aumann-Shapley, and subsidyfree serial methods, and in the partial responsibility approach, the cross-subsidizing serial method and the family of quasi-proportional methods.

On the Profitability of Production Constraints in a Dynamic Natural Resource Oligopoly

Static oligopoly analysis predicts that if a single firm in Cournot equilibrium were to be constrained to contract its production marginally, its profits would fall. on the other hand, if all the firms were simultaneously constrained to reduce their productino, thus moving the industry towards monopoly output, each firm's profit would rise. We show that these very intuitive results may not hold in a dynamic oligopoly.

Rationality, External Norms and the Epistemic Value of Menus

Ever since Sen’s (1993; 1997) criticism on the notion of internal consistency or menu independence of choice, there exists a widespread perception that the standard revealed preference approach to the theory of rational choice has difficulties in coping with the existence of external norms, or the information a menu of choice might convey to a decision-maker, viz., the epistemic value of a menu. This paper provides a brief survey of possible responses to these criticisms of traditional rational choice theory. It is shown that a novel concept of norm-conditional rationalizability can neatly accommodate external norms within the standard framework of rationalizability theory. Furthermore, we illustrate that there are several ways of incorporating considerations regarding the epistemic value of opportunity sets into a generalized model of rational choice theory.

Supply response and Cost of production of natural rubber- an econometric study

The study deals with the short and long term supply response of the natural rubber in India and to analyse the macro economic environment of NR industry and causative factors of the rubber price crash. It determines the minimum cost of production of natural rubber and to forecast the potential production of NR in India. There is positive response of short run and long run supply to prices. Since correlation analysis show close association between international and domestic price level, international price changes will have its domestic echo. Production and consumption will sustain its rising trend. This makes plans for increasing production estimates show that a mid way level i.e. the range between Rs.32-Rs.38 will give a fair enough profit to the grower in the present situation and provide for the viable sustenance of rubber cultivation. Identification of the SWOT of rubber cultivation would help in supporting rubber cultivation if remedial measures are undertaken with the true spirit. This would help Indian rubber to attain global competitiveness. Then the inflow of valuable foreign exchange will overcome the other economic drawbacks of rubber cultivation

Hyperspectral field measurements to determine dry matter yield and nutritive value of legume-grass swards

Summary: Productivity, botanical composition and forage quality of legume-grass swards are important factors for successful arable farming in both organic and conventional farming systems. As these attributes can vary considerably within a field, a non-destructive method of detection while doing other tasks would facilitate a more targeted management of crops, forage and nutrients in the soil-plant-animal system. This study was undertaken to explore the potential of field spectral measurements for a non destructive prediction of dry matter (DM) yield, legume proportion in the sward, metabolizable energy (ME), ash content, crude protein (CP) and acid detergent fiber (ADF) of legume-grass mixtures. Two experiments were conducted in a greenhouse under controlled conditions which allowed collecting spectral measurements which were free from interferences such as wind, passing clouds and changing angles of solar irradiation. In a second step this initial investigation was evaluated in the field by a two year experiment with the same legume-grass swards. Several techniques for analysis of the hyperspectral data set were examined in this study: four vegetation indices (VIs): simple ratio (SR), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), enhanced vegetation index (EVI) and red edge position (REP), two-waveband reflectance ratios, modified partial least squares (MPLS) regression and stepwise multiple linear regression (SMLR). The results showed the potential of field spectroscopy and proved its usefulness for the prediction of DM yield, ash content and CP across a wide range of legume proportion and growth stage. In all investigations prediction accuracy of DM yield, ash content and CP could be improved by legume-specific calibrations which included mixtures and pure swards of perennial ryegrass and of the respective legume species. The comparison between the greenhouse and the field experiments showed that the interaction between spectral reflectance and weather conditions as well as incidence angle of light interfered with an accurate determination of DM yield. Further research is hence needed to improve the validity of spectral measurements in the field. Furthermore, the developed models should be tested on varying sites and vegetation periods to enhance the robustness and portability of the models to other environmental conditions.

Diagnostic value of the Dominic Interactive Assessment with children exposed to intimate partner violence

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Bullying and cyberbullying : Overlapping and predictive value of the co-occurrence

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

The value of using short-format podcasts to enhance learning and teaching

This paper presents the findings of a podcasting trial held in 2007-2008 within the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Sydney, Australia. The trial investigates the value of using short-format podcasts to support assessment for postgraduate and undergraduate students. A multi-method approach is taken in investigating perceptions of the benefits of podcasting, incorporating surveys, focus groups and interviews. The results show that a majority of students believe they gained learning benefits from the podcasts and appreciated the flexibility of the medium to support their learning, and the lecturers felt the innovation helped diversify their pedagogical approach and support a diverse student population. Three primary conclusions are presented: (1) most students reject the mobile potential of podcasting in favour of their traditional study space at home; (2) what students and lecturers value about this podcasting design overlap; (3) the assessment-focussed, short-format podcast design may be considered a successful podcasting model. The paper finishes by identifying areas for future research on the effective use of podcasting in learning and teaching.

User-Centred Methods for Measuring the Value of Open Data

A project to identify metrics for assessing the quality of open data based on the needs of small voluntary sector organisations in the UK and India. For this project we assumed the purpose of open data metrics is to determine the value of a group of open datasets to a defined community of users. We adopted a much more user-centred approach than most open data research using small structured workshops to identify users’ key problems and then working from those problems to understand how open data can help address them and the key attributes of the data if it is to be successful. We then piloted different metrics that might be used to measure the presence of those attributes. The result was six metrics that we assessed for validity, reliability, discrimination, transferability and comparability. This user-centred approach to open data research highlighted some fundamental issues with expanding the use of open data from its enthusiast base.