Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-222). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNR11555

Current literature in the fields of political science and communication exhibit confusion over the existence and effect of corporate influence on a newspaper's daily transactions. Does newspaper ownership affect content? Previous research answers this question "yes," "no," and "maybe." I conduct a longitudinal, time series study across 1,366 newspapers and nearly 30 years to answer the question of whether newspaper ownership affects the papers' presidential campaign endorsements in election years. With demographics data and vote returns as well as newspaper ownership and endorsement information, this study looks at newspaper consolidation and the effect of ownership on endorsements. The results shed light on the current confusion. Changing ownership has a partisan effect on endorsements: Ownership change causes a newspaper to endorse the Republican presidential candidate but has no effect on a newspaper's likelihood of endorsing a Democratic candidate.

La pratique onusienne des opérations de consolidation de la paix consiste après les conflits à définir et étayer, entre les Etats comme à l?intérieur de ceux-ci, les structures propres à raffermir la paix et éviter une reprise des hostilités. Elle est favorisée par la fin de la guerre froide qui voit apparaître de nouvelles formes de menaces à la paix et la sécurité internationales au nombre desquelles figure principalement la défaillance de l?Etat périphérique occasionnée par la réduction de l?intensité des conflits armés au seuil de ses rapports internes. Cette défaillance se caractérise par des atteintes graves à l?exercice de leur compétence nationale ainsi que par la déshérence consécutive des matières qui ressortent de leur domaine réservé. Elle est source de menace pour la paix et la sécurité internationales et au-delà remet en cause la souveraineté de l?Etat. En déployant ses mesures dans les domaines de la consolidation sécuritaire, politique, économique et sociale de la paix, la pratique des opérations de consolidation de la paix s?est assimilée à une entreprise de restauration de l?Etat, démontrant l?attachement de l?Organisation des Nations unies et de ses Etats membres au maintien de l?Etat, pierre angulaire de l?édifice du maintien de la paix. De ce point de vue, elle est en conformité avec le droit international et la Charte des Nations unies qui depuis 1945 entend faire de l?Etat un instrument au service d?une conception structurelle de la paix. Dans un objectif d?efficacité, cette pratique s?est orientée vers l?instauration au sein des Etats d?une gouvernance fondée sur l?Etat de droit et le respect des pratiques démocratiques. Cette nouvelle orientation ouvre de nouvelles perspectives à l?Organisation des Nations unies qui entend faire reposer la paix et la sécurité internationales sur une communauté d?Etats démocratiques ; elle pose au-delà la question de sa conformité au texte de la Charte et au droit international. / Unavailable

In the years preceding the Third Wave of democracy, the prevailing belief was that democracy in Africa will not flourish unless it delivers the crucial economic goods its citizens live and die for. In an area of the world where poverty is highlighted, the individual pursuit of improved living conditions is more likely to drive citizen faith in democracy as opposed to the political process itself. By this popular belief, society will support democracy, or not, mainly for its perceived economic benefits. In this study, I revisit the assumptions of the theory of `politics and poverty' espoused over 20 years ago using recent data on individual attitudes and scores of democratic development in Africa. I find citizen support for democracy overwhelmingly a function of political performance factors, as opposed to the expectations of material returns as once believed. This finding runs contrary to conventional wisdom, even among citizens who reside in lesser developed democracies where one would suspect more ambivalence to regime type in the face of pressing economic concerns. If poverty is no more the root source in explaining democratic commitment in Africa, then, what is? I probe further into the specific instances of Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria and find commitment to democracy closely tied to government policy aimed at promoting democratization. The ambitious policies arranged in struggling democracies of today, such as Mali and Nigeria, attempted to emulate policy of the West but failed at cultivating democracy from the ground up, subsequently creating tentative democrats. Policies in successful democratic cases such as Ghana, however, reflected a keen attentiveness to context through the inclusion of citizens in deliberative practices between society and state, creating an empowered, committed populace. Politics and policy, not poverty, best explains democratic commitment, or lack thereof, in Africa. The implications, of course, fall on the significant responsibility of policy makers in crafting bottom-up strategies for further democratization and on politicians in delivering upon their promises when elected.

Despite a central role for morphological knowledge in supporting linguistic generalisation, the neural representations supporting its learning remain largely unexplored. This thesis addressed this gap by exploring the role of memory consolidation in morphological learning and generalisation. In three experiments, adult participants learned an artificial language in which stems (e.g. gleet, shiln) combined with plural affixes (e.g. –aff, -opp; gleetaff, shilnopp) to refer to the occupation of multiple male and female characters. Mimicking properties of morphological systems in natural languages, the plurals varied in their phonological consistency/ambiguity and type/token frequency. Two sets of plurals, distinguished by gender, were trained on two successive days. Experiment 1 revealed that generalisation to novel phonologically ambiguous forms measured on the second day showed a greater influence of token frequency for plurals trained on the previous day, suggesting overnight changes in their underlying representations. Experiment 2 examined this effect further by using fMRI to compare the neural representations underlying plurals learned on the day of scanning or on the previous day. Representational Similarity Analysis revealed increased similarity structure among high type frequency plurals and reduced similarity structure among high token frequency plurals following overnight consolidation in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG). These results are consistent with a Complementary Learning Systems (CLS) model in which overnight consolidation supports the development of overlapping representations among several items sharing the same feature (here, an affix; type frequency) and strengthens item-specific representations for frequently occurring items (token frequency). Additionally, connectivity analyses showed that the functional coupling between the left STG and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was weaker for high type frequency plurals and stronger for high token frequency plurals following overnight consolidation. These results suggest that the engagement of prefrontal control processes in retrieving the newly-learned plurals is subject to overnight consolidation and sensitive to the similarity structure underlying the plurals to be retrieved. However, the overnight changes in similarity structure and functional networks observed in Experiment 2 were not mirrored by changes in generalisation to novel forms as were observed in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 aimed to address the discrepancy in consolidation-related changes in generalisation behaviour between the first two experiments. Type/token frequencies were manipulated to bias learning, consolidation, and generalisation towards high token frequency plurals. Despite this manipulation, no consolidation-related changes in generalisation were observed. Findings from all three experiments are interpreted in the context of the CLS model and a role for overnight consolidation in morphological learning and generalisation is discussed.

The persistence of memory over time is dependent on a variety of events between learning and remembering, one of which is sleep. Additionally, the strength of initial learning influences how well things will be remembered later on, and the way the sleeping brain processes information has been found to rely on some of these encoding factors. Given the extensive literature on the influence of dopamine on learning, we wanted to examine how two memory benefits thought to rely on dopamine – the novelty effect and the curiosity effect – may be impacted by periods of sleep or wakefulness. Three experiments were conducted: one in which novel scenes were viewed and associated information was recalled after wakefulness or sleep, one where subjects learned in the lab or at home, and one in which participants rated their curiosity for learning materials and were tested later after sleep or wakefulness (and in which eye blink rate (EBR) and PSG measures were observed). Our findings failed to replicate the novelty effect in the first two experiments, making our prediction regarding sleep difficult to assess. Though we replicated the curiosity effect in the third study, our predictions about sleep and slow wave sleep were not supported. However, N2 and REM were unexpectedly observed to play a role in this effect, a finding that deserves more assessment. Finally, EBR, an indirect measure of dopamine, was negatively associated with the curiosity effect due to a positive relationship with the retention of low curiosity stimuli. Future research should investigate this sensitive novelty effect in humans further and continue to examine EBR as a predictor of learning.

This diploma thesis deals with consolidated financial statements, their requirements, methods of consolidation and elimination of mutual relations. The consolidation group and consolidated financial statements are established on the basis of theoretical knowledge. The evaluation and suggestions for improvement of financial situation of consolidation group is based on financial analysis of consolidated financial statements.

This study analyses the impact of M&As on acquiring company shareholder wealth and market risk through empirical evidence based on event study methods and cross-sectional regressions. The hypotheses investigated relate to the relevance of target status, method of payment, acquirers‘ bidding experience, and diversification motives. The evidence is based on a comprehensive sample of M&A transactions comprising 46,758 initial bids announced in 180 countries over the period 1977-2012, covering 88 industries. The study also investigates the relevance of deal and firm-specific factors affecting the likelihood of the success or failure of a deal once announced. The results of the event study indicate that acquirers‘ abnormal returns are not influenced by uncertainty about whether the announced deals will succeed or fail, which is consistent with the efficient market hypothesis. The event study evidence also confirms that acquirers‘ gains are most significant in cross-border M&As with acquirers located in developed countries and targets in developing countries. Further evidence from cross-sectional regressions confirms that cross-border and cross-industry diversification yields significant announcement gains for acquirers, although in comparison with domestic and focussed deals, such deals carry a greater risk of failure. Diversification has no significant impact on acquirers‘ market or systematic risk. In addition, the evidence with regard to the impact of target status and method of payment suggests that acquirers‘ gains are most significant in stock payment deals involving private or subsidiary targets, while stock payment deals involving publicly-listed targets yield lower returns. In general, cash payment for acquisitions serves to reduce the negative impact of acquiring public targets, while stock payment enhances the positive impact of acquiring private or subsidiary targets. Correspondingly, acquirers‘ market increases with the acquisition of non-public targets, while using cash payment reduces this risk. The overall findings in this regard are robust across various samples and are generally associated with the existence of information asymmetry between acquirers and targets. Finally, the findings reveal that acquirers‘ prior experience of bidding in M&A deals is associated with significantly lower shareholder returns for acquirers, and this also increases their risk. This finding, however, is specific to serial acquirers and generally supports the hubris motive.

Mergers and Acquisitions can be very exciting events for organizations. The promise of top and bottom line growth through synergy with another company can excite executives. Unfortunately, research has shown, this promise very seldom realizes as acquisitions are complex process that require understanding and commitment from all parties, both from the acquiring firm and the acquired firm. The study will start off reviewing the processes that define, in general terms, implementation of mergers and acquisitions. This will be following by a review of the experience of the SASOL Oil acquisition of EXEL Petroleum. A detail investigation of the actual process adopted by the latter organizations will be investigated through empirical research. And finally, the focus of this review is to identify gaps, a lack of certain process and their implementation and statements and actions of ambiguities and ambiguous situations. The resultant outcome of this investigation will assist the researcher, in establishing whether the acquisition of EXEL Petroleum by SASOL Oil provided synergistic value, and whether the implementation of the integration process was thorough and successful. / Prof. A. Boessenkool

Mergers and acquisitions form the majority of FDI deals in the developed world, but remain relatively scarce as a mode of entry in the developing world. The purpose of this research was to investigate the macroeconomic profile of developing countries which attract greater M&A activity in the developing world. The extant literature served as a guide in assembling a list of predictor variables as proxies for macroeconomic factors identified as being drivers of M&A as an entry mode of choice. In order to isolate the significant macroeconomic factors influencing M&A as a mode of entry, two statistical analyses were employed, namely cluster analysis and principal component analysis. These methodologies enabled first a meaningful separation of the country data in order to overcome the effects of high variance and clustering identified in exploratory scatterplots and second allowed for the identification of regional and country effects in M&A activity. The study distinguished several variables relating to the market potential, institutional, infrastructural and sectoral structure of an economy as being significant in M&A activity at a regional level. At the country level of M&A attraction the significant findings were more specific. The presence of a democracy proxied by the variable voice and accountability, a decreased dependency on mining resources as a percentage of GDP and the sectoral make-up and level of diversification of a country were found to influence the attraction of M&A’s. The complex and broad nature of this paper has the intention of creating a platform from which several more specific studies on M&A attraction in developing economies may be launched. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted