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This thesis asks the question, is there economic justification for two CARICOM countries forming a currency union? There is a theoretical component consisting of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model, and an empirical component utilizing vector autoregressions and cointegration analyses. More specifically, the reactions of two, small, open economies, to symmetric and asymmetric shocks, with and without a currency union, are investigated. Secondly, the demand and supply shocks between country pairs are examined to determine whether positive correlations exist. Thirdly, the thesis looks at the issue of economic convergence, especially given the coordinated efforts of CARICOM member states towards an environment conducive for a currency union. The theoretical results support the traditional view that countries with symmetric shocks are better candidates for a currency union, while those with asymmetric shocks are not. The empirical work supports the formation of currency unions for the following country pairs, Grenada-St. Kitts, Grenada-St. Vincent, Trinidad-Grenada, and Trinidad-St. Vincent. / Economics

Ad hoc networking research has received considerable attention in recent years as it represents the next phase of networking evolution. Efficient and reliable routing of data from the source to destination with minimal power consumption remains the crux of the research problem. Fading mechanisms inherent in wireless communications can impact the packet routing mechanisms in these types of networks. In this thesis, we develop a mathematical framework for evaluating several network diversity schemes that take advantage of the random nature of fading to provide/ enhance the network performance. The efficacy of these different network diversity mechanisms are examined in slow-fading, frequency non-selective Rice and Nakagami-m multipath fading channels. Performance metrics such as the end-to-end outage probability and the end-to-end average symbol error rate are studied in the analysis of these types of networks with the proposed network diversity schemes. Numerical results reveal that the proposed schemes can offer significant power efficiency improvement in a variety of operating scenarios of practical interest. / Master of Science

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Ad hoc networking protocols enable the formation of self-organizing networks with automatic selfhealing operation in dynamic environments. There are a number of existing or planned ad hoc implementations and a body of research on protocols and performance. Ad Hoc technologies promise significant impact in future communications architectures. This paper presents a general overview of ad hoc networking and presents specific examples, including a recent implementation of a prototype ad hoc networked sensor system. The protocols used have unique characteristics derived by tailoring particular protocols to the specific application requirements. The potential relevance of ad hoc networking to possible telemetry applications is discussed.

<p>Under min sista termin på lärarprogrammet har fokus bland annat legat på betyg. Vanligtvis är det politikers syn på betyg som framkommer i betygsdebatten. Syftet med min undersökning är att lyfta fram elevperspektivet i betygsdebatten. Detta ledde fram till min huvudfråga om vilken syn gymnasieelever har på betyg. För att få reda på detta ställde jag delfrågor om betygens rättvisa, betygens existens och upplevelsen av betyg. Metoden jag använde för att besvara frågorna var intervjuer med gymnasieelever på Karlbergsgymnasiet i Åmål. Resultatet av intervjuerna sammanställdes genom ad hoc-metoden, vilket innebar att jag försökte finna mönster i elevernas svar.</p><p>Det jag kom fram till i min undersökning är att majoriteten av gymnasieeleverna tycker att betygen inte är rättvisa. Men de anser att betyg behövs eftersom de fungerar som urvalsinstrument till högre studier och jobb och ger information om hur eleven ligger till. Flera elever vill ha fler betygssteg, för att betygen ska bli mer rättvisa. Vissa elever tycker betyg är dåligt för att de jämför sig med andra och får dåligt självförtroende av det. De negativa känslorna som ett dåligt betyg kan frambringa gör att vissa elever ger upp skolarbetet. Men andra elever motiveras av betyg och studerar mer på grund av dem. Detta visar på komplexiteten i fenomenet betyg. Gymnasieeleverna har både en positiv och negativ syn på betyg.</p> / <p>During my last term of teacher training the syllaby content, among other subjects, have been focused on school grades. Commonly the debate concerning school grades reflect the opinions of party politicians. The purpose of my research is to enhance the perspective of pupils´ opinions in this same debate. This very purpose brought on my main issue concerning the idea about grades among upper secondary school pupils. In order to investigate this issue I have formulated questions, put to upper secondary pupils, about the apprehension of fairness or justice in school grades, their opinion about the presence of school grades and their personal experience of them. The research method choosen to answer my questions was interview. Upper secondary pupils in a community of southern Sweden were interviewed.</p><p>The answers were analysed and structured according to the ad-hoc method, indicating that I tried to reveal patterns among the expressions given by the pupils.</p><p>The findings from my study imply that a majority of the students interviewed do consider grades to be unfair. They do think though that grades are needed as a means of selection for higher education as well as employment and that grades do inform about the level of achievement of the pupils. Several pupils in my study advocate an increased number of grade levels to promote more justice in the use of school grades. Some pupils think that grades are bad because they use to compare themselves to other schoolmates, a behaviour that tends to lower their ego. The negative feelings that may be accomplished by low grades tend to make some pupils give up school. Other students find grades motivating and grades make them study more earnestly. These answers do reveal the complexity in the issue of school grades. Upper secondary pupils do hold positive as well as negative attitudes towards school grades.</p>

UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules and their application in practice The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules and the ways they are applied and interpreted by parties of dispute and arbitrators in international commercial arbitration. The thesis is divided into two parts. In the fist part the basic principles and legal framework of international commercial arbitration are described. Differences between institutional arbitration and ad hoc arbitration are discussed and special chapters are dedicated to permanent arbitration courts in the Czech Republic and important international arbitration institutions. Second part begins by discussion of the UNCITRAL Commission history and describes historical development of the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. Analysis of individual articles follows. With some articles there is established common international practice regarding their application or interpretation in international commercial arbitration. In such cases these practices and interpretations are discussed in more detail. Some articles of the revised 2010 version of the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules are significantly different compared to the 1976 version of the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. These differences are analysed comparatively. Legal-analytical, legal-descriptive and legal-...

Travailler dans un contexte ad hoc et dynamique, pour les agents, empêche : 1- l'existence d'une vue globale du système qui reflète une image complète de l'environnement de déploiement ; 2- l'existence de connaissances a priori sur la manière de se coordonner en raison de l'absence d'une structure centralisée et de la disponibilité aléatoire des entités considérés. Nous avons proposé différentes stratégies comportementales pour faciliter la stabilisation dynamique des interactions entre les agents et la convergence vers les meilleurs états de coordination. Notre conception des alliances et des recommandations permet à un agent d'évoluer de manière autonome, d'identifier dynamiquement les agents voisins fiables avec qui coopérer et de former avec son voisinage des partitions Nash-stables selon les exigences de l'environnement de déploiement. Pour répondre à la difficulté de corrélation entre les comportements locaux des agents et les propriétés de l'environnement de déploiement des agents, nous utilisons de manière originale les modèles Markoviens. Nous nous sommes aussi focalisés sur la prise en compte des interdépendances entre les agents pour augmenter leur efficacité dans un souci d'optimisation les coûts imposés aux composants ad-hoc communicants où les agents sont déployés. Cela nous a amené à proposer le modèle S-NRB (Sequentiel Non-return Broadcast) et le modèle P-NRB (Parallel Non-return Broadcast) pour la coordination distribuée qui cherchent à maximiser le bien-être social des agents. Pour mettre en exergue les propriétés intrinsèques de nos méthodes, toutes nos propositions ont été étudiées de manière théorique et expérimentale grâce à notre simulateur / An ad-hoc and stochastic context prevents : 1- the existence of a global view of the system that reflects a complete image of the deployment environment ; 2- the existence of a priori knowledge because of the lack of a centralized structure, the dynamic of the tasks and the random availability of the entities. We proposed different strategies to facilitate the dynamic stabilization of the interactions between the agents and the convergence towards better coordination states. Our conception of alliances and recommendations allows an agent to evolve independently, to dynamically identify reliable neighboring agents with whom to cooperate and to form Nash-stable or Core stable coalitions according to the requirements of the deployment environment. To face with the challenges of the correlation between local behavior of the agents and the properties of their environment, we use in an original way the Markovian models. We also focused on taking into account the interdependencies between the agents to increase their efficiency in order to optimize the imputed costs of the ad-hoc components where the agents are deployed. This led us to propose both mechanisms, the S-NRB (Sequential Non-return Broadcast) and the P-NRB (Parallel Non-return Broadcast) for distributed coordination seeking to maximize the social welfare of the agents. To highlight the intrinsic properties of our methods, our whole proposals have been studied theoretically and experimentally through our simulator

Le mandat ad hoc est le nom donné à une technique ancienne, utilisée à différentes fins, pour conférer une mission particulière à une personne désignée par l'autorité judiciaire. Le terme "ad hoc", une locution latine, signifie "pour cela" et "en remplacement de". Cette expression s'applique : "à toute personne ou à tout organe à qui est assigné une mission précise et momentanée et qui reçoit des pouvoirs limités à cette fin". On retrouve ainsi dans différentes branches du droit des "mandataires" aux noms divers mais qui pourtant entrent dans la définition du mandat ad hoc : mandataire successoral, administrateur ad hoc, etc.... Une distinction entre ces différentes notions et celle de mandataire ad hoc, au sens du Livre 6 du Code de commerce, s'est alors imposée dans la présente étude puisqu'il n'existe pas un statut commun du mandataire ad hoc. Le mandat ad hoc du Livre VI du Code de commerce est issu de la pratique prétorienne du tribunal de commerce de Paris qui avait considéré qu'il entrait dans la mission du président du tribunal de commerce de faciliter la recherche d'une solution lorsqu'une entreprise éprouve des difficultés graves, d'ordre juridique, économique ou financier. Il se rapproche du mandataire ad hoc en matière de copropriété en pré-difficulté dans sa mission de négociation. Il a néanmoins été possible de dégager deux rôles essentiels des mandataires ad hoc, à savoir, un rôle de représentation et un rôle de négociation. Les réformes en cours en matière d'entreprises et de copropriétés en difficulté visent à mettre en place un véritable statut du mandataire ad hoc. Dans toutes les branches du droit, le mandataire ad hoc n'a pas de statut juridique mais simplement un embryon de statut. Cette notion de mandataire ad hoc, son succès mais également ses failles sont à mettre en exergues. La nécessité d'harmoniser les règles existantes afin de créer un statut homogène en vue de renforcer la sécurité juridique s'avère nécessaire. / The ad hoc mandate is the name given to an ancient procedure, used for different purposes, to confer a particular mission to a person designated by the judicial authority. The term "ad hoc" is a Latin expression which means "for this" and "replacement for". This term applies to "any person or a body who/which is assigned a specific and temporary mission and receives limited powers to do so"."Representatives" going by different names can therefore be found in various branches of the Law but nonetheless fall within the definition of ad hoc mandate: personal representative, ad hoc administrator, etc. A distinction between these concepts and the one of the ad hoc representative as defined in Book 6 of the Commercial Code had then to be made in the present study since there is no common status applying to ad hoc representatives. The ad hoc mandate as defined in Book VI of the Commercial Code is the result of the Praetorian practice of the Commercial Court of Paris which considered that facilitating the search for a solution when a company was experiencing serious legal, economic or financial difficulties was a mission of the President of the Commercial Court. It is similar to the role of an ad hoc representative dealing as a negotiator with pre-difficulties in condominium matters. However, it was possible to identify two essential roles of ad hoc representatives, namely the representation role and the negotiation role. Ongoing reforms concerning businesses and condominiums in difficulty aim to establish a real status for the ad hoc representative. In all branches of the Law, the ad hoc representative has no legal status per se but merely an embryo of a status. The notion of ad hoc representative, its success as well as its shortcomings has to be highlighted. It has now become a necessity to harmonize the existing rules in order to create a uniformed status so as to reinforce the judicial security.