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Complementarity Of Politics And Administration: An Empirical Examination, Jothi S. Themozhi

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Studies

This dissertation is designed to examine the impact of the complementarity of politics and administration on local governments' fiscal performance. The study adopts Svara's Politics-Administration Complementarity Model, which explains the mutual interdependence and reciprocal influence of administrative relationships between the elected and appointed officials of local governments towards a General Management City (a traditional mayor-council city that appoints a professional city manager to conduct the city's administration without formally adopting the council-manager form).

By adopting the politics-administration complementarity model to a general management municipal administrative structure, this thesis hypothesizes that cities with general management administrative structures achieve measurable fiscal …

The Transfer Promise: An Investigation Of Impediments To Academic Success And Persistence In A Mid-Sized Urban University, Mary H. Duggan

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Studies

This study adapted and validated, for use with transfer students, an existing freshman survey instrument designed to identify patterns of noncognitive factors related to academic performance and persistence. This study also explored the transfer experience by combining a qualitative interview approach with that of a survey, thus developing a method to ascertain those transfer students who were at risk of attrition.

To identify noncognitive predictors, the researcher examined the percentage of transfer students in academic difficulty for every response to each of the 152 items on a Transfer Student Survey (TSS). Respondents were separated into 4 groups based on their …

Modeling The Biogeochemical Cycle Of Selenium In The San Francisco Bay, Shannon L. Meseck

OES Theses and Dissertations

Due to recent concerns about selenium toxicity in the San Francisco Bay and the roles of refinery and San Joaquin River inputs on the selenium cycle, the model ECoS 3 (distributed from Plymouth Marine Laboratory, United Kingdom) was modified to simulate the biogeochemical cycle of selenium in the Northern Reach. The model is designed to simulate salinity, total suspended material, phytoplankton concentrations, dissolved selenium and its speciation (selenite, selenate, and organic selenide), and particulate selenium and its speciation (selenite + selenate, elemental selenium, and organic selenide). Actual data from 1999 were used to calibrate the model, while data from other …

Law Enforcement Under Incomplete Law: Theory And Evidence From Financial Market Regulation, Chenggang Xu, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

This paper studies the design of law-making and law enforcement institutions based on the premise that law is inherently incomplete. Under incomplete law, law enforcement by courts may suffer from deterrence failure, defined as the social-welfare loss that results from the regime's inability to deter harmful actions. As a potential remedy a regulatory regime is introduced. The major functional difference between courts and regulators is that courts enforce law reactively, that is only once others have initiated law enforcement procedures, while regulators enforce law proactively, i.e. on their own initiative. Proactive law enforcement may be superior in preventing harm. However, …

A Niche At The Nexus: Situating An Nlp Curriculum Interdisciplinarily, Deryle W. Lonsdale

Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the establishment and implementation of a curriculum for teaching NLP. At the core are two classes which involve some theoretical background, extensive hands-on experience with state-ofthe-art technologies, and practical application in the form of an intensive programming project. Issues involving interdisciplinary coordination, curriculum design, and challenges in teaching this discipline are discussed.

Factors For Effective Learning Groups In Face-To-Face And Virtual Environments, Charles R. Graham

Faculty Publications

Group work has been a powerful instructional method used in face-to-face learning environments. To date, group work has not reached the same prominence in distance learning environments where there is a strong emphasis on independent or individualistic learning. This may be due in part to the perceived difficulty of engaging students in working together at a distance, as well as a general lack of knowledge about the factors that contribute to effective virtual group work. This paper reviews the literature related to creating effective learning groups in face-to-face and virtual environments. Research from the following four areas was used: cooperative …

Testing The Capital Asset Pricing Model Efficiently Under Elliptical Symmetry: A Semiparametric Approach, Douglas J. Hodgson, Oliver Linton, Keith Vorkink

Faculty Publications

We develop new tests of the capital asset pricing model that take account of and are valid under the assumption that the distribution generating returns is elliptically symmetric; this assumption is necessary and sufficient for the validity of the CAPM. Our test is based on semiparametric efficient estimation procedures for a seemingly unrelated regression model where the multivariate error density is elliptically symmetric, but otherwise unrestricted. The elliptical symmetry assumption allows us to avoid the curse of dimensionality problem that typically arises in multivariate semiparametric estimation procedures, because the multivariate elliptically symmetric density function can be written as a function …

God Can Make You Whole (Audio), Larry Eddings

ATS Chapel Services

No abstract provided.

A Cross-Firm Analysis Of The Impact Of Corporate Governance On The East Asian Financial Crisis, Todd Mitton

Faculty Publications

In a sample of 398 firms from Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, firm-level differences in variables related to corporate governance had a strong impact on firm performance duringthe East Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998. Significantly better stock price performance is associated with firms that had indicators of higher disclosure quality (ADRs and auditors from Big Six accounting firms), with firms that had higher outside ownership concentration, and with firms that were focused rather than diversified. The results suggest that individual firms have some power to preclude expropriation of minority shareholders if legal protection is inadequate.

Reflections On A Conversation, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Many Unhappy Returns: Estate Tax Returns Of Married Decendents, Richard L. Schmalbeck, Jay A. Soled

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.