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Bargaining Power Effects in Financial Contracting : A Joint Analysis of Contract Type and Placement Mode Choices
The aim of this dissertation is to examine bargaining power effects in financial contracting. In particular power effects on firms' choices of contract type (debt vs. equity) and placement mode (public offering vs. private placement)
Banking for Family Business: A New Challenge for Wealth Management
Hints of globalization have actually been around for several decades, even though they made only a modest impact; however, the availability of global capital and advances in communication technology have emp- sized the process of internationalization and the tools available to connect and integrate business activities to answer to more complex needs of c- ents. Moreover, the financial scandals and the review of mutual fund trade activity in the US by the Attorney General Elliot Spitzer have highlighted the importance to focus all efforts on renewing the confidence of prof- sional investors and their clients who have entrusted their capital to asset managers. Therefore, there is a growing need in the market to reinforce the concept of “Shared Positive Values” among the entire industry and among its stakeholders.
Amartya Sens Capability Approach: Theoretical Insights and Empirical Applications
Kuklys examines how Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen’s approach to welfare measurement can be put in practice for poverty and inequality measurement in affluent societies such as the UK. Sen argues that an individual’s welfare should not be measured in terms of her income, but in terms what she can actually do or be, her capabilities. In Chapters 1 and 2, Kuklys describes the capability approach from a standard welfare economic point of view and provides a comprehensive literature review of the empirical applications in this area of research. In the remaining chapters, novel econometric techniques are employed to operationalise the concepts of functionings and capability to investigate inequality and poverty in terms of capability in the UK. Kuklys finds that capability measurement is always a useful complement to traditional monetary analysis, and particularly so in the case of capability-deprived disabled individuals.
Alternative investments
Alternative Investments is the definitive guide to understanding non-traditional asset classes. Alternatives are a disparate group of investments that are distinguished from long-only, publicly traded investments in stocks, bonds, and cash (often referred to as traditional investments). Alternative investments include real estate, commodities, infrastructure, and other non-traditional investments such as private equity or debt and hedge funds.
Agent-Based Models of Energy Investment Decisions
This book demonstrates how bounded rational decision models can be standardized and parameterized by socio-economic data. Focusing on private energy technology investment decisions, the author shows how different representative agents can be constructed using search rules, analysis tools and decision strategies. Diffusion curves for energy technologies such as solar collectors, boilers and efficiency upgrades for buildings are calculated. Further, the model is extended to study the impact of firms’ competition on technology diffusion. The modeling approach presented in this book may serve as a template for applications in other domain.
Accounting and auditing small and medium-sized practices : Transformative capabilities in a rapidly changing society
Addresses recent trends, developments, and future of accounting and auditing of small and medium-sized practices (AASMPs) in the public and private sectors.the book has three main objectives: firstly, to provide an analysis of how different societal trends, including digitalization, impact AASMPs and what role education and training play in proactive adaptation to those trends; secondly, to outline major scenarios for global AASMP development by 2035; and thirdly, to offer a conceptual framework for better understanding of AASMPs' dynamic and transformative capabilities that are necessary to create sustained competitive advantage in a rapidly changing society. beyond presenting a conceptual framework, this book also offers a discussion of future scenarios for AASMPs' development and their role in the global economic development.
A Successful Transformation? : Restructuring of the Czech Automobile Industry
This book investigates the complex processes of the post-1990 transformation in the Czech automotive industry and its selective integration in the West European automobile manufacturing system. The post-1990 restructuring of the Czech automotive industry is analyzed in the context of its pre-1990 development and in the context of the Central and East European automobile industry as a whole. Specifically, the book examines the development and post-1990 restructuring of the Czech passenger car industry, the components industry and truck manufacturing. Major topics covered include the development of the Czech automotive industry before 1990, the detailed case study of Škoda Auto, the effects of the post-1990 privatization in the Czech automotive industry, the role and effects of foreign direct investment during the post-1990 restructuring, the restructuring of the Czech truck industry, and the rapid development of the automotive components manufacturing.
Animating Unpredictable Effects : Nonlinearity in Hollywood’s R&D Complex
Uncanny computer-generated animations of splashing waves, billowing smoke clouds, and characters’ flowing hair have become a ubiquitous presence on screens of all types since the 1980s. This Open Access book charts the history of these digital moving images and the software tools that make them. Unpredictable Visual Effects uncovers an institutional and industrial history that saw media industries conducting more private R&D as Cold War federal funding began to wane in the late 1980s. In this context studios and media software companies took concepts used for studying and managing unpredictable systems like markets, weather, and fluids and turned them into tools for animation. Unpredictable Visual Effects theorizes how these animations are part of a paradigm of control evident across society, while at the same time exploring what they can teach us about the relationship between making and knowing.
Building with water : Concepts typology design
It presents buildings that explicitly refer to water in their design and form. It establishes a typology of building by the water: residential structures, recreation facilities, industry and infrastructure, buildings for culture and art. The various design parameters are explored in four essays. Subsequently, twenty-two international projects are presented, organized according to their locations by a river, a lake or the sea. The authors’ concern is not to show luxurious buildings in privileged locations but rather presenting projects that seriously grapple with the main criterion of the location—namely, water—in an ecologically sustainable way and respond to it with their design.
City Logistics 3 : Towards sustainable and liveable cities
Presents recent advances in modelling, planning and evaluating city logistics for sustainable and liveable cities based on the application of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems). It highlights modelling the behaviour of stakeholders who are involved in city logistics as well as planning and managing policy measures of city logistics including cooperative freight transport systems in public-private partnerships. Case studies of implementing and evaluating city logistics measures in terms of economic, social and environmental benefits from major cities around the world are also given.
City Logistics 2 : Modeling and Planning Initiatives
Presents recent advances in modelling, planning and evaluating city logistics for sustainable and liveable cities based on the application of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems). It highlights modelling the behaviour of stakeholders who are involved in city logistics as well as planning and managing policy measures of city logistics including cooperative freight transport systems in public-private partnerships. Case studies of implementing and evaluating city logistics measures in terms of economic, social and environmental benefits from major cities around the world are also given.
City Logistics 1 : New opportunities and challenges
Presents recent advances in modelling, planning and evaluating city logistics for sustainable and liveable cities based on the application of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems). It highlights modelling the behaviour of stakeholders who are involved in city logistics as well as planning and managing policy measures of city logistics including cooperative freight transport systems in public-private partnerships. Case studies of implementing and evaluating city logistics measures in terms of economic, social and environmental benefits from major cities around the world are also given.
Cities After Crisis : Reinventing Neighborhood Design from the Ground-Up
The book details how these crises have led to a new urban vision—from avantgarde modern design to an artisan aesthetic that calls for simplicity and the everyday, from the sustainable development paradigm to a resilient vision that defends de-growth and the re-wilding of cities, from a homogenizing globalism to a new localism that values what is distinctive and nearby, from the privatization of the public realm to the commoning and self-governance of urban resources, and from top-down to bottom-up processes based on the engagement and empowerment of communities.
Managing Critical Infrastructure Risks
At the beginning of each year, there is a deluge of top-10 lists on just about every subject you can imagine. A top-10 list of biggest news stories, best-selling books, most popular music and movies, richest companies, and best places to visit or live. It seems everyone has his or her own top-10 list, reflecting, perhaps, differences in regional, national, and cultural values. Companies and governments most often tend to focus their top-10 lists on economic priorities, or priorities related to national defense, security, public health, and new infrastructure. This year, 2007, was no exception. Yet, increasingly, we see governments, private organizations, and companies advocating a new type of prioritization. This framework needs to reach beyond the realms of economics, world trade, and corporate management to include the environment, stakeholders, public preferences, and social goals. Moreover, corporations and individuals are not only interested in generic 10-best lists; they want lists tailored to their values, goals, and current economic and social state. For example, the U. S.
Learning About Particles - 50 Privileged Years
Embedded in an autobiographic framework, this book retraces vividly and in some depth the golden years of particle physics as witnessed by one of the scientists who made seminal contributions to the understanding of what is now known as the Standard Model of particle physics. Well beyond a survey of interest to historians of sciences and researchers in the field, this book is a must for all students and young researchers who have learned about the theoretical and experimental facts that make up the standard model through modern textbooks only. It will provide the interested reader with a first hand account and deeper understanding of the multilayered and sinuous development that finally led to the present architecture of this theory.
Kristian Birkeland : The First Space Scientist
PREFACEThisscientific biography of Kristian Birkeland (1867–1917) was written to bring the story ofa Norwegian national hero to the attention ofthe English-speaking world. Birkeland’sheroic stature was established not on a field of military battle,but in the bitter cold of the Artic wilderness ashe sought to answer basic questions abouthow the Sun controlled northern lights andmag-netic storms. He was also afather of Norsk Hydro one ofNorway’s largest industries. Birkel and died before reaching the age of 50.Because Birkel and never kept adiary, documented information about his family and private life is sparse. Before he died, Olaf Devik, the last of Birke-ffland’s close friends, gave along interview and graciously transferred his personal archive to A.E. Birkeland’s 82 scientific papers and three book-length publications map the progress of his investigations. addressed this book questions that had vexed European scientists for centuries. Why do the northern lights appear overhead when the Earth’s magnetic field is disturbed? How are magnetic storms connected to disturbances on the Sun? To answer these questions Birkeland interpreted his advance laboratory simulations and daring campaigns in the Arctic wilderness in the light of Maxwell’s newly discovered laws of electricity and magnetism. Birkeland’s ideas were dismissed for decades, only to be vindicated when satellites could fly above the Earth’s atmosphere.
Knowledge and Civil Society
Focuses on the role of civil society in the creation, dissemination, and interpretation of knowledge in geographical contexts. It offers original, interdisciplinary and counterintuitive perspectives on civil society. The book includes reflections on civil and uncivil society, the role of civil society as a change agent, and on civil society perspectives of undone science. Conceptual approaches go beyond the tripartite division of public, private and civic sectors to propose new frameworks of civic networks and philanthropic fields, which take an inclusive view of the connectivity of civic agency across sectors.
Kernel Based Algorithms for Mining Huge Data Sets : Supervised, Semi-supervised, and Unsupervised Learning
"Kernel Based Algorithms for Mining Huge Data Sets" is the first book treating the fields of supervised, semi-supervised and unsupervised machine learning collectively. The book presents both the theory and the algorithms for mining huge data sets by using support vector machines (SVMs) in an iterative way. It demonstrates how kernel based SVMs can be used for dimensionality reduction (feature elimination) and shows the similarities and differences between the two most popular unsupervised techniques, the principal component analysis (PCA) and the independent component analysis (ICA).
Complex decision making : Theory and practice
The increasingly complex environment of today's world, characterized by technological innovation and global communication, generates myriads of possible and actual interactions while limited physical and intellectual resources severely impinge on decision makers, be it in the public or private domains. At the core of the decision-making process is the need for quality information that allows the decision maker to better assess the impact of decisions in terms of outcomes, nonlinear feedback processes and time delays on the performance of the complex system invoked.
Civilian Lunatic asylums during the First World War : A study of Austerity on London's Fringe
This book explores the history of asylums and their civilian patients during the First World War, focusing on the effects of wartime austerity and deprivation on the provision of care.
