Digital Commons Network^™

Fighting For Children's Rights: Lessons From The Civil Rights Movement, Lewis Pitts

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Inconsistent Levels Of Generality In The Characterization Of Unenumerated Fundamental Rights, John F. Basiak Jr.

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

A Struggle Of Biblical Proportions: The Campaign To Enact The Workplace Religious Freedom Act Of 2003, Robert A. Caplen

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law: Funding The Free Exercise Clause, David M. Applegate

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Gaps: Cognitive Constraints On Corporate Control & Ethics Education, Michael B. Metzger

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Patient Safety Vignettes: Preliminary Observations On A Novel Use Of An Old Methodology, C. J. Biddle, William Hartland, Michele Fallacaro

Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice

Problems arise when clinicians or educators encounter situations that are error-prone, complex, or distracting. Trigger films (TF) are 2-4 minute vignettes simulating real-life situations that finish abruptly, stimulating participants to analyze situations in a safe environment. We report on a natural evolution of the TF, the patient safety vignette (PSV), a multimedia tool that advantages the human characteristic of vicariousness by inviting stakeholders into an unfolding patient misadventure. PSVs are produced in our high fidelity simulation lab and are based on actual patient events. We have previously demonstrated the validity and reliability of the approach in the healthcare setting, a …

Lawrence Summers' Speech On "Innate" Differences Between Men And Women-A Different Perspective, Thomas C. Fischer

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Weekend Trading Profitability: Evidence From International Mutual Funds, M. Imtiaz Mazumder, Edward M. Miller, Oscar Varela

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

The weekend effect is described as the tendency for Monday security returns to be low (or negative) compared to other days of the week. The weekend effect may not be exploited by trading individual stocks because of transactions costs. However, the institutional characteristics of the US-based international open-end mutual funds may allow investors to exploit the weekend effect because mutual funds lack much of the transactions costs associated with individual stocks. This paper extends the study of Compton and Kunkel (1999), Varela (2002), and Miller, Prather and Mazumder (2003) by examining the weekend predictability and profitable trading opportunities for international …

A Note On The Foreign Exchange Market Efficiency Hypothesis: Does Small Sample Bias Affect Inference?, Haitham Al-Zoubi, Elton Daal

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

This study examines whether small sample bias affects the standard inference about the foreign exchange market efficiency hypothesis. Our findings indicate that the bias is large enough to result in rejection of the efficient market hypothesis even when it is true. We use bootstrapping to adjust for the bias and find that the hypothesis cannot be rejected for the Swiss franc and French franc. We also find that the bias plays a significant role in the inference that expectation error causes inefficiency in the foreign exchange markets. After bias adjustment, the rational expectation hypothesis holds even at one month-horizon.

Basel Capital Requirements And Bank Credit Risk Taking In Developing Countries;, M. Ershad Hussain, M. Kabir Hassan

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

Existing literature has focused attention on the impact of Basle I and similar capital requirement regulations on developed countries where such regulations were found to be effective in increasing capital ratios and reducing portfolio credit risk of commercial banks. In the present study, we study the impact of such capital requirement regulations on commercial banks in 11 developing countries around the world within a cross-section framework with the widely popular simultaneous equations model of Shrieves and Dahl (1992). Surprisingly, we find that such regulations did not increase the capital ratios of banks in the developing countries. This implies that particular …

Determinants Of Convertible Bond Structure;, Sudha Krishnaswami, Devrim Yaman

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

Theoretical research argues that convertible bonds mitigate the contracting costs of moral hazard, adverse selection, and financial distress. Using firm-specific and macroeconomic factors of the contracting costs, we examine the extent to which they impact the likelihood of issuance and the structure of convertible bonds. Our evidence indicates that moral hazard, adverse selection, and expected financial distress costs are all important determinants of the likelihood of issuing convertible bonds over straight bonds. We also analyze the structure of convertible bonds issued by studying whether these bonds are more debt-like or equity-like. The evidence indicates that moral hazard costs do not …

International Diversification With American Depository Receipts (Adrs);, M. Humayun Kabir, Neal Maroney, M. Kabir Hassan

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

It is already well known that U.S. investors can achieve higher gains by investing directly in emerging markets (De Santis, 1997). Given the opportunity to invest directly in the shares of stocks in the developed (DCs) and emerging (EM) markets, it is interesting to know whether the U.S. investors can potentially gain any benefits by investing in ADRs. We test both index models, and SDF-based model.Our findings show that U.S. investors needed to invest in both ADRs and country portfolios in developed in the eighties, and in Latin American countries in early nineties. During the early and late nineties, we …

Increasing Returns And The Design Of Interest Rate Rules;, Wei Xiao

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

We introduce increasing returns to scale into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model with capital, and study the determinacy and E-stability of Taylor-type interest rate rules. With very mild increasing returns supported by empirical research, the conventional wisdom regarding the design of interest rate rules can be overturned. In particular, the "Taylor principle" no longer guarantees either determinacy or E-stability of the rational expectations equilibrium.

Increasing Returns, Learning, And Beneficial Tax Competition;, Seppo Honkapohja, Arja Turunen-Red

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

We analyze the welfare impact of entrepreneur mobility in a two-country model. Increasing returns in production yield multiple equilibria that are stable under adaptive learning. Governments compete for the mobile resource by setting income taxes. We show that large welfare gains can arise from noncooperative taxation. If expectational barriers prevent the realization of high output equilibria, tax competition can sufficiently perturb expectations so that high steady states become attainable. Once in a high production regime, governments may institute cooperative tax increases or reductions so as to bring the economy to the global joint optimum without disturbing the regime.

Managerial Career Concerns And Risk Management, Jouahn Nam, Jun Wang, Ge Zhang

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

We present a dynamic model of corporate risk management and managerial career concerns. We show that managers with high (low) career concerns are more likely to speculate (hedge) early in their careers. In the later stage of their careers when managers have less career concerns, there is no speculative motive for self interested managers. On the other hand, managers with minimal career concerns engage in neither hedging nor speculation early in their careers, but they may choose to hedge after poor early performance.

Contracting Costs And The Window Of Opportunity For Straight Debt Issues;, Sudha Krishnaswami, Devrim Yaman

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

We analyze whether fluctuation in economy-wide factors cause time-series variation in the contracting costs of moral hazard, adverse selection, and financial distress, and so create windows of opportunity for firms to issue debt. Using the announcement period abnormal returns as one measure of the overall contracting costs of debt issues, we specifically study whether economy-wide factors affect the impact of firm-specific measures of contracting costs on the abnormal returns. We find that debt issues are more costly in periods of higher interest rates and in industry downturns. When we partition the impact of each issue- and firm-specific measure of contracting …

Trade, Urban Systems, And Labor Markets, Hesham M. Abdel-Rahman

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

This paper investigates the impacts of free trade on the structure of urban systems, skill distribution, and income disparities. The paper proposes a model that integrates international trade theory and the theory of urban system. This is done in a two sector, spatial general equilibrium model of a North-South trade. Each country is populated with a continuum of unskilled workers with heterogeneous potential ability. Through differential training costs, workers with different potential ability can achieve the same productivity. Workers can acquire a skill by investing in training. Thus, skill distribution in both countries is determined endogenously in the model through …

Asset Restructuring And The Cost Of Capital, Ranjan D'Mello, Sudha Krishnaswami, Patrick J. Larkin

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

We empirically examine whether the elimination of negative synergies, the reduction of internal capital market inefficiencies, and the mitigation of information problems following spinoffs lower cost of equity. The results indicate that there is no decrease in the cost of equity in the full sample, which suggests that the gains around spinoffs are primarily a consequence of improvements in cash flow and operating performance rather than a decline in systematic risk or the cost of equity. However, we find a positive relation between the spinoff gains and a decrease in the cost of equity for the subsample of firms with …

How Norwegian Managers View Dividend Policy, H. Kent Baker, Tarun K. Mukherjee, Ohannes George Pakelian

Department of Economics and Finance Working Papers, 1991-2006

We report the results of a 2004 survey from managers of dividend-paying Norwegian firms listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange about their views on dividend policy. Specifically, we identify the most important factors in making dividend policy decisions and managers' views about various dividend-related issues. The most important determinants of a firm's dividend policy are the level of current and expected future earnings, stability of earnings, current degree of financial leverage, and liquidity constraints. No significant correlation exists between the overall rankings of factors influencing dividend policy between Norwegian and U.S. managers. Norwegian managers express mixed views about whether a …

Key Grazing Levels (Foo Targets) For Pasture And Sheep Management, Department Of Agriculture, Western Australia

Animal production and livestock published reports

Food On Offer (FOO) is the amount of pasture in front of an animal, and is measured in kilograms Dry Matter per hectare. Managing pastures to key grazing levels - or FOO targets - can result in improved production of grazing systems in Mediterranean environments which are characterized by slow winter growth, peak spring growth and dry summers. These targets vary according to what production response is required.

This information sheet illustrates key target FOO for sheep grazing annual pastures during autumn and spring.

Cl 551 The Mission Of The Free Methodist Church, Donald E. Demaray

Syllabi

REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS: McKenna, David L., A Future with A History. Indianapolis: Light and Life Communications, 1997. Marston, Leslie R., From Age to Age A Living Witness. Winona Lake, IN: Light and Life Communications, 1997 reprint. Roberts, B. T., The Daily Roberts: Readings for Every Day in The Year from the Writings of B. T. Roberts. Donald E. Demaray, editor. Indianapolis: Light and Life Press, 1996. The Book of Discipline 2003. Indianapolis: Light and Life Communications, 2004.

Sf 503 The Life Of Prayer, Reginald Johnson

Syllabi

- Dimensions of Prayer, Douglas Steere - The God Who Hears, Bingham Hunter - Prayer, The Heart's True Home, Richard Foster - Churches that Pray, Peter Wagner - Windows of the Soul, Ken Gire

Ch 501 Church History I, J. Steven O'Malley

Syllabi

1. To understand and appreciate the Christian tradition so the student recognizes that our generation lives on the growing edge of a vast Christian heritage. 2. To acquire basic factual knowledge of the persons, places, dates, events, and movements that shaped the history of the Christian Church. 3. To comprehend the issues that motivated the Church to develop its beliefs, practices, and structures and to grasp why, from time to time, the Church modified them. 4. To understand the evolution of Christian doctrine and to learn to discern between form and content. 5. To appreciate the importance of primary sources …

Cl 612 Christian Leadership Development, Richard Gray

Syllabi

REQUIRED READING: Blackaby, Henry and Richard, Spiritual Leadership: Moving People On To God’s Agenda. Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001. Clinton, J. Robert, The Making of a Leader. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1988. Engstrom, Ted W., The Making of a Christian Leader. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976. Stanley, Andy., Visioneering. Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 1999. Thrall, Bill, McNicol , Bruce and Ken McElrath., The Ascent of a Leader. San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers, 1999. RECOMMENDED READING: Saunders, Oswald J., Spiritual Leadership. Chicago: Moody Press, 1994. Nouwen, Henri J.M., In the Name of Jesus. New York: Crossroads Publishing, 2000. Sims, Bennett J., …

Sonar Signal Enhancement Using Fractional Fourier Transform, Madalina Barbu, Edit J. Kaminsky, Russell E. Trahan

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper we present an approach for signal enhancement of sonar signals. Work reported is based on sonar data collected by the Volume Search Sonar (VSS), as well as VSS synthetic data. The Volume Search Sonar is a beamformed multibeam sonar system with 27 fore and 27 aft beams, covering almost the entire water volume (from above horizontal, through vertical, back to above horizontal). The processing of a data set of measurement in shallow water is performed using the Fractional Fourier Transform algorithm. The proposed technique will allow efficient determination of seafloor bottom characteristics and bottom type using the …

Chirp Slope Keying For Underwater Communications, Edit J. Kaminsky, Lastri Simanjuntak

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents a novel broadband modulation method for digital underwater communications: Chirp Slope Keying (CSK). In its simplest form, the binary information modulates the slope of a linear chirp, with up-chirps representing ones and down-chirps representing zeros. Performance evaluation in the form of probability of error vs. SNR show that the system performs as expected for AWGN environments and very well for more realistic models for underwater acoustical communications, such as the Raylegih channel with Doppler, delays, phase offset, and multipath.

Blind Phase Recovery In Cross Qam Communication Systems With The Reduced Constellation Eigth-Order Estimator (Rceoe), Kenneth V. Cartwright, Edit J. Kaminsky

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

The eighth-order (EOE) phase estimator [4] is modified to work for an eight-symbol symmetrical constellation, so that the large signal-to-noise (SNR) performance is not limited by self-noise. By using only the eight highest energy points of cross- QAM constellations, a reduced constellation eighth-order estimator (RCEOE) is proposed. Computer simulations for 128-QAM show that this new method performs substantially better than the recently introduced APP phase estimator of Wang et al. [8]. However, simulations with 32-QAM show little performance advantage of the RCEOE over the APP estimator, for SNR values normally of interest, whereas for low SNR, the improvement is significant. …

An Optimum Hardware Detector For Constant Envelope Quadrature-Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (Ceq2osk), Kenneth V. Cartwright, Edit J. Kaminsky

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

A hardware detector for constant envelope quadrature- quadrature phase-shift keying (CEQ2PSK) is proposed. It uses appropriate hard decisions; yet, it achieves optimum probability of bit error performance, unlike the suboptimum detector of Saha and Birdsall. This optimum performance is verified through Monte Carlo computer simulations. Additionally, a more correct expression is given for the probability of bit error performance for CEQ2PSK, which gives the gain over nonconstant Q2PSK as 1.44 dB, rather than the previously published value of 1.76 dB.

Asymptotic Performance Of The Pth Power-Law Phase Estimator, Kenneth V. Cartwright, Edit J. Kaminsky

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

An expression for the true variance of the Pth powerlaw phase estimator, as the number of samples approaches infinity, is given. This expression is an extension to the linear approximation of Moeneclaey and de Jonghe [1] which is known to be inadequate in some practical systems. Our new expression covers general 2π/P-rotationally symmetric constellations that include those of PAM, QAM, PSK, Star M-QAM, MR-DPSK, and others. This expression also generalizes the known expressions for QAM and PSK. Additionally, our expression reduces to the Cramer-Rao bound given by Steendam and Moeneclaey [9], as SNR goes to zero. Monte Carlo simulations provide …

Bs 502 Introduction To Biblical Studies, Joseph R. Dongell

Syllabi

Course Texts The Bible (NRSV) Bauer, David R. An Annotated Guide To Biblical Resources for Ministry. de Silva, David A. An Introduction to the New Testament: Contents, Methods & Ministry Formation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.