Land Consolidation and its Relation to Environmental Protection- Abstract Land consolidation is term used for rearrangement and readjustment of land parcels and their ownership in order to assure their rational use. In its modern form, it became part of Czech legislature when Czech National Council's Act No. 284/1991 Coll. was officially published. Current legal regulations of land consolidation are provided in Act No. 139/2002 Coll., as amended. This Act enumerates main goals land consolidation, carried out in the public interest, should achieve. Primary task of this dissertation is to review how land consolidation can contribute to the environmental protection. Soil fund upgrading as well as improvment of landscape aesthetics and its ecological stability are stated among main goals of the currently effective land consolidation legal regulations. In its initial chapter, this dissertation describes purpose of land consolidation and gives definition of its objects. Following chapter briefly deals with the history of land consolidation on Czech, Moravian and Silesian territory. Reflecting our country's history, real estate ownership evolution was very dynamical in past 160 years. Knowledge of this evolution is crucial for understanding of reason and purpose of land consolidation. Third chapter guides the...

This essay examines the advantages and disadvantages of the merge of municipalities in 1971, in municipality of Värnamo. The government had stipulated that a consolidation of the municipalities was necessary to lower the numbers of municipalities in Sweden, which had to be done till year 1974. By looking in municipal records and newspaper articles this study will try to recognize if the municipalities that consolidated with Värnamo, was favoured or disadvantaged. The method that has been used in this essay is an argumentation analysis. The results show that the municipalities received more advantages then disadvantages.

In the design of tank foundations several design techniques are considered. This study focuses on grade supported tanks constructed under an extensive preload and instrumentation program. Settlement estimation methods were performed and compared to field instrumentation data taken at the project sites. Three project sites were selected for this study. The geotechnical investigations were performed by Eustis Engineering Services, L.L.C. and included both undisturbed soil borings and cone penetrometer tests. Conclusions were made about the accuracy of the calculations and how assumptions affect the settlement computation results.

This thesis is concerned with consolidated financial statements presented under IFRS. I decided to focus on the basic theoretical framework and the procedures applied in the consolidation of financial statements. Part of the thesis deals with specifics of individual statements and practical examples.

Last three decades stock exchanges have been developing and growing rapidly. The first objective of this thesis is to provide a wider public a comprehensive overview on integration and consolidation of transatlantic stock exchanges and their consequences in the form of various types of stock mergers, acquisitions and cooperations. The thesis is primarily devoted to analysis of the impact of both trends and their implications for stock exchanges world and the second objective is to attempt a empirical analysis of the effects of ongoing integration and consolidation of the transatlantic stock markets. The first chapter deals with past and current changes in the transatlantic stock markets and continues to look theoretically at detailed integration and consolidation trends, their definition, assumptions, reasons, importance, benefits, obstacles and risks, approaches and scenarios. I clarified both trends not only in general theoretical level, but also took into account the practical aspects and differences of the continental and Anglo-Saxon stock market trends and contemporary trends in both transatlantic stock market. In the second chapter is devoted attention to manifestations of both current trends in transatlantic markets in the form of models and forms of cooperation stock exchange. After a theoretical introduction to the cooperation and competition, stock markets, I mentioned the origins and history of cooperation stock markets, with particular emphasis on real models and forms of stock markets in Europe and the USA. In the next sub-chapter I try to analyze the realized and unrealized exchange and cooperation projects of the multilateral trading system on the market in the last decade. Finally, the second chapter deals with past, present and future architecture of the integrated and consolidated transatlantic stock market. The third chapter is the key part of all thesis where I tried to come up with a comprehensive empirical analysis of the effects of stock exchange mergers and alliances, and to investigate the effects of two major transatlantic stock markets, NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX through selected market indicators, financial ratios and data from financial statements, as well as exchanges' architectures, analysis of cross-border trading costs and further explore the significance of the interdependence of markets before and after their cooperation which was tested on movement of particular daily returns of indices and traded volumes. The testing is based on the law of one price, which can be interpreted in a way that in an efficient market all identical goods must have only one price. The tested interdependence is examined by using statistical tools: correlation and time series analysis.

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the process of democratic consolidation in Thailand between 1997-2006.  The country’s consolidation of democracy has been hampered by continuous cycle of coup d’états which throughout history have halted the overall process of democratization. The coup of 2006 is one example of those instances where the democratic consolidation process was interrupted.   The method used to examine the years of 1997-2006 was theory consuming by qualitative text analysis where the data used to assess the situation was qualitative. The theory of democratic consolidation was offered by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan. The theory’s prerequisites were applied to examine the case study of Thailand. The theory chosen were hoped to give a plausible explanation for the failure of democratic consolidation in the case of Thailand. It was also hoped that it could assess the overall quality of Thai democracy and possibly give a better insight in why military coups seem to be a reoccurring phenomenon in the case of Thailand.

The aim of this study is to investigate the outcomes of the Land Consolidation Programme (LCP) in household food productivity. The implementation of the 2004 Rwandan National Land Policy (which incorporates LCP) has been one of the Rwandan government strategic attempts to improve the livelihood of the Rwandans. In this study we look at some of the social-economic factorsbenefited by household farmers through the LCP since its implementation in 2007. In Sub-Saharan Africa many people depend on land for their livelihood and consequently, one of the obvious negative impacts has been the fragmentation of land. Historically the customary land management, in which inheritance is the major mode of land acquisition, has been the main way of allocating land in African societies. This communal tenure is viewed as unstable and leads to detrimental implications, in the form of mismanagement and overexploitation of the available land. The demographic pressure has also aggravated the issue of land scarcity and land fragmentation. The latter has consequences on agricultural productivity since it makes harder the efficient use of land. In this study the researcher explores the outcomes of the LCP in Rwanda as a type of land reform that aims at preventing fragmentation of land and enhancing the livelihood of household farmers. For achieving this objective, the study used a case study of household farmers from Gisenyi village of Bugesera district (in Rwanda) who are involved in the LCP since its implementation. Empirical data was obtained through in-depth interviews with 20 household farmers and 8 key informants. The emphasis in the study was put on investigating the state of household food productivity in Gisenyi. The study was guided by the property right theory and its basic conceptual assumption of enhancing the income through credit access. The findings of the study demonstrate that household farmers in Gisenyi village have benefited from the LCP. Household farmers confirmed that agricultural productivity has increased due to the new farming techniques brought by the programme. The study concludes that once the programme is properly and fully implemented, the LCP will highly enhance food self-sufficiency situation in Rwanda, improving also the livelihood of rural areas through other benefits such as infrastructure development.

In essay 1 (Investment bank role in acquisition of private targets), using a sample of private targets from January 1992 to December 2010, I find that special information asymmetry when bidders prusue private targets alters the factors used by bidders and targets to decide whether to hire an investment bank.... It appears that the investment bank has a significant impact on the outcome of the acquisition of a private target. In essay 2 (Investment bank role in asset sell-off transactions), I also find that special information asymmetry when a buyer pursues divested assets alters the factors used by the buyer and seller to decide whether to hire an investment bank. ...I find that when the seller empoloys an investment bank, the increase in unsystematic and total risk of the buyer is greater than in cases when the seller does not use an investment bank. / by Kien Cao. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

The purpose of the current manuscript was to examine acquirer and market behavior surrounding a sample of international mergers and acquisitions. The first essay examined the existence of a private company discount and its connections to liquidity. It found that unlisted targets sell for less than their public counterparts, confirming earlier findings. The examination of a connection between the discount and liquidity mostly contradicted earlier studies (Officer 2007), depending on which subsample was selected. The second essay examined the existence of a target price runup preceding acquisitions announcements, existence of a substitution effect between runup and premium, and whether investor protection influenced the two. It confirmed the earlier findings of a significant runup preceding acquisition announcements, with the runup being more pronounced in those targets from weaker investor protection countries. Contrary to Schwert (1996), the study found a significant substitution effect between runup and premium, with the effect stronger if the acquirers are from countries with weak investor protection. The third essay examined acquirer stock price reaction to the three different components of the offer price: target's stand-alone valuation, pre-announcement runup and the offer premium. Each component was found to have an overall insignificant effect on the acquirer stock price in the overall sample. When the targets were from the countries with the weakest investor protection, the study found that the reaction to both the runup and stand-alone target valuation depend on both target and acquirer country investor protection. The study also found that when the targets were from the countries with the weakest investor protection, and only from those countries, acquirer stock price reacted negatively to any individual component of the offer price being higher. / Overall, the three studies confirm that behavior of both acquirer management and their stock markets i affected by the variance in investor protection among countries. / by Jurica Susnjara. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This essay focuses on firms that have publicly issued announcements that they were seeking a buyer. Managers of the firms in this unique sample display an idiosyncratic behavior by expressing a willingness to relinquish private benefits of control. The essay investigates the possible factors that may lead managers of these firms to issue such announcements, the effects of issuing "seeking buyer" announcements on shareholders' wealth, and the probability that such firms are later acquired. Results indicate that firms in poor financial condition, as well as larger and more homogeneous firms are more likely to issue a "seeking buyer" announcement. The interpretation of such results is that firms resort to issuing the announcement when a sale seems to be the means for survival, and when the sale is less likely without such an aggressive sale strategy. The announcements have a positive impact on shareholders' wealth, though they do not increase the probability of an acquisition. Essay 2: Shifts in risk as the result of corporate divestitures. The second essay investigates the effect of corporate divestitures on risk, while previous research focused exclusively on changes in shareholders' wealth. Specifically, this study explores changes in systematic, total and idiosyncratic risk as the result of spin-offs, carve-outs and asset sales. Additionally, I study factors that may explain the variation in risk changes as the result of the three types of divestitures. I document an increase in total and idiosyncratic risk for all types of divestitures, an increase in one of the measures of systematic risk for spin-offs and carve-outs and a reduction in systematic risk for asset sales. Change in risk is negatively correlated with the degree of focusing as the result of divestitures, and positively correlated with change in financial leverage. / by Marya Murdock. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.