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On entering the Rhodes University Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at 6 Prince Alfred Street, visitors are confronted by a glass cabinet in which is displayed the four volumes of the Keiskammahoek Rural Survey (1947-1952); six of the volumes which emanated from the Border Regional Survey (1956-1964) of which three are the Xhosa in Town trilogy, and a modest paperback From Reserve To Region (1997), which records the changes which took place in Keiskammahoek between the birth of apartheid in 1948 and its demise in 1994. Together these may be seen as the charter documents of the ISER - rooted in empirical research in the Eastern Cape, multidisciplinary, substantial works of scholarship and, in the case of The Xhosa in Town trilogy, at least, of international repute.

"The purpose of the study was to collect selected information about the individuals enrolled in two on-going Florida State University Home Economics Education Off-Campus Graduate Programs and to solicit suggestions for program improvement. In relation to this problem, the following questions were explored: 1. Why did the participants decide to enroll in the off-campus program? 2. What do they hope to gain from the off-campus program? 3. What suggestions for improvement can the participants offer? 4. What factors have caused the greatest difficulty to the participants in pursuing an advanced degree? 5. What are the characteristics of the 'typical' participant in the off-campus program?"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1975." / "Submitted to the Department of Home Economics Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Bonnie B. Greenwood, Professor directing paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-48).

The aim of this thesis was to find out the motivations and attitudes of the students to study. Particularly of the students of the Faculty of Economics of the University of South Bohemia. Thesis is focused on finding answers on questions such as why did students choose this faculty for their studies, what factors were important in choosing a school, who contributed to this decision, for instance family or peers, with their opinion or advice. As well as how do students evaluate the course of study, whether there are any problems that should be solved at the faculty etc. Part of the work is qualitative and quantitative research. Data from quantitative research are were provided by the faculty. Qualitative research was done in the form of semi-structured interviews. In conclusion, interesting outcome from the evaluation of both surveys were summarized, whether the outcome of both surveys coincide or contradict what benefits each research has brought. Part of the outcome are also some recommendations for the faculty based on the results of the questionnaire survey and the interviews. Highlighted were also the most positive and negative opinions and perceptions of the students during their studies, so the outcome is useful with its qualitative data.

Corporate Growth is a concept that has been widely treated in a specific way or as part of strategy theories, in definition and in econometric models and has also been studied in many different aspects and approaches. The author describes in depth the main variables affecting corporate growth and the underlying business processes. This empirical research has focused on Sales, Profit-Cash Flow, Risk, Created Shareholder Value, Market Value and Overall Performance econometric models. These panel data models are based on the 500 Companies of the Standard & Poor’s 500. The methodology used has been very strict in identifying exogenous variables, walking through the different alternative econometric models, discussing results, and, in the end, describing the practical implications in today’s business corporate management. We basically assume that the Functions/Departments act independently in the same company, many times with different objectives, and in this situation clear processes are key to clarify the situations, roles and responsibilities. We also assume that growth implies interactions among the different functions in a company and the CEO acts to lead and coach his immediate Directors as a referee of the key conflicts through his Operating Mechanism. The objective of this PhD Dissertation is to clarify the business priorities and identify the most relevant variables in every process leading to the highest efficiency in reaching a sustainable and profitable growth. It covers the lack of academic studies on the nature and specific driving factors of corporate growth and provides a working framework for Entrepreneurs and Management leading to the Company’s success.

Water distribution systems, electrical power transmission systems, and other civil infrastructure systems are essential to the smooth and stable operation of regional economies. Since the functions of such infrastructure systems often are inter-dependent, the systems sometimes suffer unforeseen functional disruptions. For example, the widespread power outage due to the malfunction of an electric power substation, which occurred in the northeastern United States and parts of Canada in August 2003, interrupted the supply of water to several communities, leading to inconvenience and economic losses. The sequence of such failures leading to widespread outages is referred to as a cascading failure. Assessing the vulnerability of communities to natural and man-made hazards should take the possibility of such failures into account. In seismic risk assessment, the risk to a facility or a building is generally specified by one of two basic approaches: through a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) and a stipulated scenario earthquake (SE). A PSHA has been widely accepted as a basis for design and evaluation of individual buildings, bridges and other facilities. However, the vulnerability assessment of distributed infrastructure facilities requires a model of spatial intensity of earthquake ground motion. Since the ground motions from a PSHA represent an aggregation of earthquakes, they cannot model the spatial variation in intensity. On the other hand, when a SE-based analysis is used, the spatial correlation of seismic intensities must be properly evaluated. This study presents a new methodology for evaluating the functionality of an infrastructure system situated in a region of moderate seismicity considering functional interactions among the systems in the network, cascading failure, and spatial correlation of ground motion. The functional interactions among facilities in the systems are modeled by fault trees, and the impact of cascading failures on serviceability of a networked system is computed by a procedure from the field of operations research known as a shortest path algorithm. The upper and lower bound solutions to spatial correlation of seismic intensities over a region are obtained.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / A sizeable body of research has attempted to examine the interaction between government spending and private giving known as the crowd-out effect. Most researchers reported that increases of government spending cause decreases of philanthropic giving to different types of nonprofits. However, few studies have attempted to indicate the interaction between government welfare expenditures and private giving to human service organizations even though human service organizations are the most sensitive to the changes of government spending. Additionally, the estimated crowd-out effects with a simple crowd-out model have been criticized for potential endogeneity bias. This paper investigates the total effect of federal government welfare spending on state government expenditures and philanthropic giving to human service organizations (known as joint crowd-out). I used the 2005 wave of the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (COPPS) to estimate the effect of federal human service grants on state government spending on, and donations to human services. From these reduced-form estimates I infer the levels of simple and joint crowd-out. I found that indicate federal spending on public welfare crowds out private giving to human service organizations while holding control variables constant in the donations equation. However, federal government spending on public welfare crowds in state government spending on public welfare.