Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

This thesis contains four essays, which studies the macroeconomic effects of fiscal and monetary policy quantitatively. The first essay investigates whether Swedish postwar business cycles have been generated by domestic or foreign shocks and finds that they are about equally important. In the second essay, the effects of government budget deficits on interest rates in Sweden are studied in a small open economy framework. The empirical results, which have high power due to very large swings in deficits and interest rates, provide support that larger deficits produce higher interest rates and thus give support against the ricardian view. The third essay seeks to identify optimal social insurance and redistribution levels in Sweden and the U.S. with respect to temporary and permanent idiosyncratic productivity risks. The results indicate that Sweden should reduce the social security level while the U.S. should approximately maintain the current level. In the last essay, the small sample properties of a well-known statistical test for the Lucas critique - the super exogeneity test - is studied in a general equilibrium environment. The results indicate that the super exogeneity test do not have sufficient power in small samples. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

<p>South Africa&rsquo / s Language-in-Education Policy is one of additive multilingualism, but in reality this policy is not adhered to, in that most black children are being educated through the medium of English from Grade 4. This type of instruction affects the development of academic language proficiency in their primary language, as these children are not engaging in cognitively demanding tasks in their primary or first language. The Woodcock Mu&ntilde / oz Language Survey (WMLS) is a test to assess academic language proficiency in Additive Bilingual Education, and is extensively used in the United States of America (USA) for this purpose. It is important to note that the proposed study is a sub-study of a larger study, in which the original WMLS (American-English version) was adapted into English and Xhosa, to be used in South Africa to assess additive bilingual programmes. For this sub-study, the researcher was interested in examining the overall equivalence of the adapted English version of the WMLS. Owing to insufficient tests evaluating academic language proficiency in the South African context, the significance, as well as the overall aim, of the study is to ensure that the issues of group difference and item bias have been assessed to ensure that the adapted English version of the WMLS is suitable to be used across English first-language and Xhosa first-language speakers. Because this is a sub-study, the researcher (of the sub-study) has conducted an exploratory quantitative study with the use of Secondary Data. The researcher has used the framework of equivalence as a theoretical framework in order to examine the research question. Given the use of existing data, the procedures of the collection of the data by the researcher of the larger study have been outlined in the Methodology section of the present study. The sample consisted of 198 English and 197 Xhosa first-language speakers...</p>

This dissertation has three goals : to establish an inventory of translation strategies applicable to the translation of metaphor, to investigate how the application of these strategies affects the balance in metaphorical quality between source text and target text, and, finally, to determine whether this balance is a useful indicator of the direction of the translation as a whole, towards either adequacy or acceptability. To carry out this research the author has established a corpus comprising 250 metaphors from the novel La goutte d’or by Michel Tournier and its Swedish translation, Gulddroppen by C.G. Bjurström. Based on the criteria thematical and contextual connection 158 metaphors from this corpus have been selected for analysis.The strategy used in the translation of each metaphor has been established. The degree of balance in metaphorical quality between the two texts has then been determined and its significance as an indicator of the direction of the translation as a whole has been discussed. The underlying theory and methodology of the study are those of Gideon Toury as outlined in his book Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. The study is thus essentially descriptive in nature. The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part gives a survey of well known research within the fields of metaphor theory and translation theory. Various theories concerning the requested equality between a text and its translation are presented, as well as inventories of translation strategies established by a number of researchers. The second part contains the analysis of the selected metaphors and establishes a set of strategies for this purpose.

This dissertation analyses seven modern Bible translations in French with respect to their renderings of Koine Greek participles. The sample consists of the Passion Story from the four Gospels (Matt 26-28, Mark 14-16, Luke 22-24 and John 18-21), and is comprised of 603 Hellenistic participles in all. The participle forms are studied in six categories according to their syntactic function. The comparison focuses on differences in translation strategy, i.e. formal equivalence, omission and different kinds of transpositions, with special attention given to the choice of verb form. There is a discussion of the adequacy of contemporary, explicative theories of systemic differences between the passé simple/passé composé and the imparfait. A large number of examples are analysed in detail. The results of the survey show that the most prominent differences in translation strategies concern the predicative participle. Furthermore, this was the category that occurred most frequently in the sample. The Catholic scientific and literary translation La Bible de Jérusalem (1998) is the most literal of the seven versions. A high level of formal equivalence is also registered in the other scientific translation, La Traduction Œcuménique de la Bible (1988), even though application of this strategy outweighs the use of finite verbs, that is to say, the most common transposition. La Bible en français courant (1996) is the least literal: generally, it transposes the participle of the source text with a finite verb. This transposition is also very frequent in the literary La Bible de la Pléiade (1971). Most of the omissions are recorded in the recent literary La Bible, Nouvelle traduction (2001), which is shown to be the most divergent translation. Omissions are also frequent in the pastoral La Bible des moines de Maredsous (1968) and the liturgical La Traduction liturgique de la Bible (1977). When translated in conjunction with an element comprising a verb in one of the non-indicative moods (infinitive, imperative, participle and subjunctive), both the present and the aorist predicative participles are, to a large extent, rendered by a simple form, expressing non-accomplishment. However, the Bible de Jérusalem stands out with its greater use of compound present participles than any other version. When the predicative participle of the source text is transposed with a verb in the indicative mood, the passé simple is generally used to render the aorist; for the present participle, the imparfait is more frequent than the passé simple. Nevertheless, here too the passé simple accounts for a significant portion of the equivalents, especially in the two translations where transpositions formed by finite verbs are particularly important. There exist a few cases where some translators chose to use the passé simple/passé compose, while others chose the imparfait. The various details, tables and linguistic analyses in this dissertation provide a solid basis for accurately characterizing the various modern attempts made at reproduce this ancient text – a text so often translated, paraphrased, interpreted and deeply integrated in our cultural heritage.

An understanding of cryptographic protocols requires that we examine the knowledge of protocol participants and adversaries: When a participant receives a message, does she know who sent it? Does she know that the message is fresh, and not merely a replay of some old message? Does a network spy know who is talking to whom? This thesis studies logics of knowledge and cryptography. Specifically, the thesis addresses the problem of how to make the concept of knowledge reflect feasible computability within a Kripke-style semantics. The main contributions are as follows. 1. A generalized Kripke semantics for first-order epistemic logic and cryptography, where the later is modeled using private constants and arbitrary cryptographic operations, as in the Applied Pi-calculus. 2. An axiomatization of first-order epistemic logic which is sound and complete relative to an underlying theory of cryptographic terms, and to an omega-rule for quantifiers. Besides standard axioms and rules from first-order epistemic logic, the axiomatization includes some novel axioms for the interaction between knowledge and cryptography. 3. Epistemic characterizations of static equivalence and Dolev-Yao message deduction. 4. A generalization of Kripke semantics for propositional epistemic logic and symmetric cryptography. 5. Decidability, soundness and completeness for propositional BAN-like logics with respect to message passing systems. Completeness and decidability are generalised to logics induced from an arbitrary base of protocol specific assumptions. 6. An epistemic definition of message deduction. The definition lies between weaker and stronger versions of Dolev-Yao deduction, and coincides with weaker Dolev-Yao regarding all atomic messages. For composite messages, the definition withstands a well-known counterexample to Dolev-Yao deduction. 7. Protocol examples using mixes, a Crowds style protocol, and electronic payments. / QC 20100524

This dissertation focuses on the municipality (the local authority) as a participant in Swedish educational policy. The reform of school governance in the 1990s, gave municipality wider authority in the educational field and a greater responsibility for education. Discussions about the equivalence of education were a key aspect in decentralising school governance and responsibility for education, and questions were raised about how equivalence would be affected by increased local influence on education. Since the meaning of equivalence had become contested in educational policy, the answer differed. In the dissertation, political discussions about the municipality and about equivalent education are merged, and together form a base for the main question: In what different ways are the municipality constructed as a participant in educational policy? The analysis is undertaken within a curriculum theory tradition and from a discourse theory perspective that focuses school and education as situated in a field of tension determined by social and political struggle. The research interest is directed to the world as constructed in language and communication. The empirical material studied in the dissertation consists of national political texts, texts from the National Agency for Education and interviews with local politicians (local authority committee members). From the analysis, three discourses about the municipality as a participant in educational policy are identified. These are: The municipality as responsible for performance, which centres the construction of the municipality on a responsibility for educational performance. All actions undertaken by the municipality are in the discourse defined within a framework of goal achievement and results. The municipality as a non-participant, where the municipality has no place in educational policy or realisation of the educational system. Education is considered as a matter between the state, the professionals and the families. The municipality as a political-ideological actor, where the municipality is constructed as a participant with scope to organise school on the basis of certain political and ideological principles. The ideological stance adopted by the political majority guides the municipality’s actions in the educational field. The discourses have tangible consequences for the shape which school education assumes on a day-to-day basis in municipalities. Depending on which discourse that dominates a municipality’s understanding of its own role, the actions undertaken by that municipality will be more or less directed towards education performance, and more or less ideologically based. / Avhandlingen fokuserar kommunen som en part i Svensk utbildningspolitik. När styrningen av skolan reformerades i 1990-talets början fick kommunerna ett ökat ansvar för skolan, och större möjligheter och befogenheter att fatta beslut om hur den egna skolan ska organiseras. Diskussioner om utbildningens likvärdighet utgjorde en nyckelaspekt för den decentraliserade styrningen av och ansvaret för skolan, och frågan restes om hur likvärdigheten skulle påver-kas av ett ökat lokalt inflytande över utbildningsområdet. Eftersom betydelsen av likvärdighet hade blivit omstridd i den utbildningspolitiska debatten, fick frågan olika svar beroende på vilken innebörd som gavs begreppet likvärdighet. I avhandlingen förs de politiska diskussio-nerna om kommunens ansvar för skolan och om likvärdig utbildning samman, och dessa te-man utgör en helhet som ligger till grund för avhandlingens huvudfråga: På vilka olika sätt framträder kommunen som en part i utbildningspolitiken? Avhandlingens ansluter sig till en läroplansteoretisk tradition, och till ett diskursteoretiskt perspektiv där utbildningen och dess innehåll betraktas befinna sig i ett spänningsfält ytterst bestämt av sociala och politiska krafter i kamp. Forskningsintresset riktas mot världen som konstruerad i språk och kommunikation. Avhandlingens empiriska material består av natio-nella politiska texter, Skolverkstexter, kommunalpolitiska texter och intervjuer med kommu-nala skolpolitiker. Utifrån analysen kan tre diskurser om kommunen som en part i utbildningspolitiken identifie-ras. Dessa är: Kommunen som resultatansvarig, där konstruktionen av kommunen centreras kring ett ansvar för utbildningens resultat. Alla kommunens handlingar definieras i diskursen inom detta ram-verk av måluppnående och utbildningsresultat. Kommunen som icke-part, där kommunen inte ses ha någon uppgift i utbildningspolitiken eller skolans genomförande. Utbildning betraktas i diskursen som en angelägenhet mellan staten, skolans professionella och familjerna. Kommunen som politisk-ideologiskt handlande, där kommunen konstrueras som en part med utrymme att organisera skolan utifrån specifika politiska och ideologiska principer. De ideo-logiska ställningstaganden som görs av kommunens politiska majoritet är kraftigt vägledande för kommunens handlingar på utbildningsområdet och påverkar hur utbildning organiseras i kommunen. De olika diskurserna får påtagliga konsekvenser för hur den konkreta skolverksamheten tar form i en kommun. Beroende på vilken av diskurserna som dominerar en kommuns uppfatt-ning om sin egen roll, så kommer kommunens handlingar att vara mer eller mindre inriktade mot utbildningsresultat, och mer eller mindre politiskt-ideologiskt präglade.

This study is grounded in an interest in the Swedish Upper Secondary Schools’ role as an educator of democratic citizens, with a specific interest in the moral and cognitive development of Upper Secondary School students. Development in these two areas is treated as results of citizenship education. The purpose of the study is to examine moral and cognitive development of students in Upper Secondary School to see if there are any structural differences to be found between the Upper Secondary School programs that are vocationally oriented and the programs that are preparing for further studies on higher levels – since these differences have been both theoretically and empirically implied. The study is based on an enhanced version of Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development (with teachers’ evaluations of students’ capacity as a reference point of the students’ actual level of moral development) as well as on Kieran Egan’s theory of development through the use of cognitive tools (as seen in five different “shapes of understanding”). There is also a specific interest in how the teachers’ evaluations of the students’ development in the two areas mentioned coincide. The study has been carried out in the shape of an electronic questionnaire sent to Upper Secondary School teachers in Stockholm. The results showed that there were great differences between the evaluations made by teachers working in vocationally oriented programs and by teachers working in programs preparing for further studies on higher levels. Generally, teachers working in programs preparing for further studies on higher levels estimated that their students had a capacity greater than average, whileteachers working in vocationally oriented programs estimated that their students had a capacity below average. Teachers working in “theoretical” programs to a larger extent estimated that their students had a use of cognitive tools which was to be expected from their age, while teachers working in vocationally oriented programs to a larger extent estimated that their students had a use of cognitive tools which could be expected from students not yet fully capable of reading and writing. The results also showed that the groups of students who were said to use cognitive toolsexpected from their age at the same time were estimated to have a relatively low level of capacity.

<p>The diversity embodying South Africa has emphasized the importance and influence of language in education and thus the additive bilingual programme is being implemented in the Eastern Cape by the ABLE project in order to realize the South African Language in education policy (LEiP). In accordance with this, the Woodcock Munoz Language Survey (which specializes in measuring cognitive academic language proficiency) was chosen as one of the instruments to evaluate the language outcomes of the programme and was adapted into South African English and isiXhosa. The current study was a subset of the ABLE project, and was located within the bigger project dealing with the translation of the WMLS into isiXhosa and the successive research on the equivalence of the two language versions. This study evaluated the structural equivalence of the English and isiXhosa versions of the WMLS on matched sample groups (n= 150 in each language group). Thus secondary data analysis (SDA) was conducted by analyzing the data in SPSS as well as CEFA (Comprehensive Exploratory Factor Analysis). The original data set was purposively sampled according to set selection criteria and consists of English and isiXhosa first language learners. The study sought to confirm previous research by cross-validating the results of structural equivalence on two subscales, namely the Verbal Analogies (VA) and Letter-Word Identification (LWI) subscale. The research design reflects psychometric test theory and is therefore located in a bias and equivalence theoretical framework. The results of the exploratory factor analysis found that one can only accept structural equivalence in the first factor identified in the VA subscale, while structural equivalence was found in the factor for the LWI subscale. The use of scatter-plots to validate the results of the exploratory factor analysis indicated that one can tentatively accept these results. The study thus contributed to the literature on the translation of the WMLS, and the adaptation of language tests into the indigenous languages of South Africa,as well as additive bilingual programmes.</p>

The theme of this dissertation is Ricardian equivalence, and its objective is to examine the effects of government debt on private consumption expenditures (Essay One), on interest rates (Essay Two), on the current account balance (Essay Three), and on individual intertemporal decision-making (Essay Four). The effects of government debt are important if debt is neutral (e.g., if “Ricardian equivalence” holds), then a stabilization program that is based on demand management policy to curtail fiscal deficits will not be operative. On the other hand, if debt is not neutral (or if Ricardian equivalence does not hold), then deficit finance may induce private consumption, boost interest rates, crowd out investment, and retard economic growth. Essay One contributes to the existing literature by taking into account the nature of liquidity constraints in a developing economy in an aggregate consumption function. Previous empirical tests on Ricardian equivalence have not considered the role of a dominant resource aspect of a country. Essay Two and Essay Three incorporate a dominant resource aspect in Indonesia by estimating the oil-macroeconomic relationship. Furthermore, Essay Three takes into account the role of capital inflows by including debt securities. Essay Four uses experimental economics methods to examine the role of distortionary taxes on Ricardian equivalence. There have been only a few studies that use an experimental approach to examine the effect of deficit spending on consumption expenditures, but these existing experimental studies ignore the role of distortionary taxes in affecting subjects’ consumption-saving decisions and focus on the presence of liquidity constraints, myopia, and uncertainty on future income. Essay Four contributes to the Ricardian equivalence literature by taking into account distortionary taxes in a Ricardian institution by levying taxes on savings in an intertemporal individual consumption-savings decision in laboratory experiments. By utilizing the aggregate consumption function and the Euler equation consumption function, Essay One shows that Indonesian consumers tend to behave in a non-Ricardian way. Public debt most likely will lead to crowding out of investment, and will retard capital accumulation and economic growth. The extent to which individuals perceive government expenditures as complements for their consumption is substantial. An increase in government expenditures will increase the marginal utility of private consumption and has an expansionary effect on aggregate demand. The complementarity between private consumption and government expenditures may be partly due to the allocation of government subsidies to basic goods and services such as electricity, fuel, fertilizer, health centers, and education. Liquidity constraints may cause consumption to have an excess sensitivity to income. The short-run and long-run aggregate consumption function estimates show that income affects consumption, indicating that consumers follow a “rule of thumb” of consuming their current income. A high ratio of public debt to gross domestic product (GDP) in Indonesia may also be the culprit of the excess sensitivity of private consumption to income. Due to low salaries in the formal sector, employees have been engaged in moonlighting activities, mostly in the form of self-employment (e.g., opening retail stores or services). This phenomenon may help to explain why private credit−which amounts to 29 percent of GDP−fails to explain consumption behavior. Most loans are made for investment rather than for consumption. Consumers’ behavior is insensitive to taxation, which perhaps is due to the fact that tax enactment is not explicitly revealed in Indonesia (e.g., price tags in the supermarket include the sales tax, and employees are only informed about their after-tax net wage instead of their gross wage). The share of tax collections to GDP averages only about 15 percent. There is still a large portion of the population who do not pay taxes or who pay far below what they should pay. The fiscal authority needs to focus more attention on alternative financing, i.e. taxation, whose system is essential to be enhanced. Essay Two shows that by excluding oil prices, deficits and debt significantly increase the real interest rate, thereby invalidating Ricardian equivalence. The evidence shows some preference for debt and deficit over government expenditures as determinants of interest rates. Inclusion of the oil price weakens the Neoclassical results, providing more support for the Ricardian paradigm. Deficits no longer increase interest rates, yet debt still significantly increases interest rates. This result reflects a loss of momentum for the Indonesian government two decades ago to decrease its dependency on debt. The government could have used the windfall oil revenue to pay off foreign debt; instead, the windfall was spent on import-intensive infrastructure development projects, in order to build domestic industry and to subsidize rice and petroleum products. The importance of oil prices in the interest rate estimation suggests that in modeling the Indonesian macroeconomy, the oil sector should be incorporated. The non-stationary nature of the stock of debt implies the failure of intertemporal budget balance to hold, indicating that the debt-financed deficit is unsustainable. Essay Three shows that around 80 percent of the estimation results provide support for the Neoclassical view, a result that is consistent with the twin deficits hypothesis. The long-run estimates indicate an almost one-to-one relationship between the government budget and the trade balance, while the short-run estimates show a smaller magnitude. When capital inflows are included, the twin deficits phenomenon is less pronounced in the short-run and disappears in the long-run. An increase in the oil price statistically and significantly improves the trade balance in the short-run and in the long-run. Essay Four shows that subjects fully anticipate an increase in future taxation by increasing the amount bequeathed in one-to-one correspondence to the increase in debt. Even under a Ricardian institution, the distorting nature of taxes on savings alters subjects’ consumption-savings decisions. The equality of the change in bequests and the change in deficit spending is not attained under the savings taxes treatment, invalidating Ricardian equivalence. In line with the results of Essays One, Two, and Three, which suggest the vital need to enhance the taxation system, the results of Essay Four entail the importance of taxes on interest income in Indonesia.