<p dir="ltr">This dissertation considers policy impacts on access for historically excluded students in the United States higher education system. By conducting a content analysis within performance-based funding literature, this research highlights the exclusion of a critical theory and the implications the omission has on policy creation to support historically excluded students. The history of higher education in the United States is heavily detailed to frame the challenges associated with changing policies that have been in place for decades or centuries. To highlight the specific, often negative, impact that policies have on historically excluded students, critical race theory (CRT) is introduced to analyze the systemic and systematic racial undertones within the U.S. higher education system. CRT has not been previously applied to performance funding research, signifying the importance of introducing a critical framework to policies and research that have been in use for many decades. Recommendations for future research are included and support the continuation of challenging traditional theories and frameworks associated with policy research.</p>

Thesis advisor: Rebekah L. Coley / Inequitable distribution of school funds may underlie persistent achievement disparities across class and race in the U.S. Significant reforms in school finance have closed funding disparities between school districts, but inequitable practices within districts, in which funds fail to reach the students in greatest need, may be undermining progress. Unavailability of school-level funding data previously limited assessments of intra-district allocations of funding.The primary aim of this study was to assess intra-district finance equity–exploring funding distribution patterns across multiple dimensions of student need and race–using recently released national school-level expenditures data. Multilevel analyses decomposed variation in total per pupil expenditures within and between districts while adjusting for state differences, and jointly assessed intra- and inter-district finance equity by exploring how school shares of students across poverty status, limited English proficiency, special education identification, and race were associated with per pupil expenditures. Analyses also investigated whether intra-district distribution patterns varied across district-level economic and racial strata. Results revealed significant variation in per pupil expenditures across schools within districts, and found that on average, intra-district funding distributions were progressive toward higher poverty schools as well as schools with more special education students, but not toward schools with more English language learners. School proportions of underrepresented minority students were not associated with differences in per pupil expenditures. Intra-district funding distribution patterns both reflected and counteracted inter-district patterns, depending on the dimension of student need. Exploring variations in intra-district patterns across district characteristics, analyses found that higher district poverty and economic segregation were associated with lower levels of progressivity in intra-district distributions, though not along all dimensions of need. Higher concentrations of underrepresented minority students and racial segregation in districts were not associated with intra-district distribution patterns for race, but were associated with intra-district progressivity across other dimensions of need. Study findings call for a comprehensive approach to assessing and advancing school finance equity, in order to ensure equal opportunity for all students. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

Funding of services to residents in publicly funded long-term care (LTC) facilities has historically rested upon a list of physical needs. However, more than 60% of residents in nursing homes have dementia; a condition in which physical needs are only a part of the overall clinical picture. Since past funding formulas focused primarily on the physical characteristics of residents, the Ontario government has adopted the RUG (Resource Utilization Groups)-III (34 Group) for use in LTC facilities which follows the adoption of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) 2.0 assessment instrument. Some still question whether the newer formula adequately reflects the care needs of residents with dementia despite its validation in many countries. The purpose of this study was to determine the comprehensiveness of the RUG-III (34 Group) in addressing the needs of residents with dementia living in LTC. First, a critical systematic review of the literature was conducted to determine the needs of residents with dementia. Numerous electronic databases were searched for articles published between January 2000 and September 2010, and later cross-referenced. Second, needs identified from the literature were matched to the items of the RUG-III which are selected variables of the MDS 2.0. Third, the priority of the items in the RUG-III was analysed in accordance with the importance of the identified needs. The documented needs were taken from 68 studies and classified into 19 main categories. The needs most supported by the literature were the management of behavioural problems, social needs, the need for daily individualized activities/care and emotional needs/personhood. Among the needs identified, activities of daily living (ADLs), cognitive needs and general overall physical health met the most RUG-III items. These needs were found to be well represented within the system. Other needs of importance such as social needs are not thoroughly considered in the grouping methodology though matched to MDS variables. The fact that these needs are not well addressed in the RUG-III poses concerns. Future research is needed to validate the significance of these needs. Considerations should be made as to the adequacy of the funding system and the allocation of funding.

Le financement de l’arbitrage international par les tiers constitue aujourd’hui une solution d’accès à cette justice privée, largement plébiscitée et privilégiée par les opérateurs économiques. Ce mécanisme offre à des acteurs variés la possibilité de transférer les coûts et les risques induits par la procédure dont ils sont partis vers un tiers. En contrepartie, ce tiers perçoit un pourcentage des sommes allouées à son client par la sentence. Cette relation, guidée par une communauté d’intérêts tournée vers le succès de l’arbitrage, se concrétise par le contrat de financement. Ce dernier, d’apparence sui generis, se caractérise par un objet spécifique, le financement d’un arbitrage international et par ses effets singuliers. Il est relatif à un procès mais se trouve, de par son objet, dépourvu d’effet relatif. Ainsi, le contrat emporte des conséquences, à la fois, sur les acteurs du procès arbitral, pour lequel le financeur n’est pas partie, et sur la procédure elle-même, son déroulement et son issue. Cette étude permet d'entrevoir une frontière poreuse séparant traditionnellement les notions de partie et de tiers à un contrat et à un arbitrage, invitant alors à réfléchir sur l’opportunité d’une réglementation de la pratique / Today third-party funding in international arbitration is definitely the number one solution for economic operators to access this private justice. This process allows various players to transfer the costs and the risks incurred by the proceedings to a third party. In return, the latter is granted a percentage of the sums allocated to their client by the arbitral award. This relationship resting on a community of interests and geared towards a successful arbitration takes on a concrete form with the litigation finance agreement. This seemingly sui generis agreement is characterized by a specific object that is the financing of international arbitration, and by its specific effects. It is relative to a lawsuit and yet deprived of privity by its very object. Therefore, the contract carries consequences on both the players of the arbitration proceedings for which the financer is not a party, and on the whole of the procedure and its outcome. The present study examines how the border that traditionally separates the concepts of party and third party becomes porous thus questioning the relevance of a regulation of the practice

La présente thèse analyse l’incidence de la concurrence bancaire sur le coût et la qualité du crédit produit par les établissements de crédit. Plus précisément, les investigations empiriques menées dans le cadre de ce travail visent deux objectifs complémentaires. Tout d’abord, évaluer dans quelle mesure le degré de rivalité entre les banques influence la stratégie de tarification des banques et par conséquent le coût de financement des entreprises. Le second objectif de cette thèse consiste à étudier l’impact de la concurrence bancaire sur la manière dont les banques produisent de l’information privée sur leurs clients. Pour cela, nous procédons en deux étapes. En premier lieu, nous examinons l’influence du degré de rivalité entre les banques sur la nature des informations utilisées par les chargés d’affaires dans l’évaluation de la qualité des emprunteurs. En second lieu, nous vérifions l’implication de la concurrence bancaire dans la rupture des relations de long terme. Nous adoptons pour toutes les analyses conduites dans cette thèse une démarche permettant d’exploiter la complémentarité entre différents indicateurs de concurrence utilisés dans la littérature afin d’appréhender au mieux le niveau de rivalité entre les banques. Plusieurs résultats se dégagent des multiples analyses empiriques menées dans le cadre de ce travail. Premièrement, il ressort de nos investigations empiriques que le pouvoir de marché des institutions financières découle de deux sources distinctes: le poids de la banque dans la structure du marché local du crédit et le degré d’efficience de l’établissement de crédit. Par conséquent, l’incidence de la concurrence bancaire dépend de sa capacité à influencer la structure du marché local du crédit ou bien l’efficience des banques. De plus, nous montrons qu’au sein d’un marché bancaire concentré, l’existence de fortes rivalités entre les banques réduit le coût de financement des entreprises si ces dernières disposent d’une relation bancaire principale. Enfin, nous démontrons que la concurrence bancaire accroît la longévité des relations de clientèle et encourage les chargés d’affaires à produire plus d’informations privées sur les emprunteurs. Toutefois, il serait prudent au niveau des banques de suivre l’évolution des comportements des gestionnaires de relations bancaires en matière de production d’informations afin d’adapter les mesures incitatives à mettre en place pour garantir la pérennité de leurs comportements. / This thesis investigates the effect of banking competition on the cost and the quality of lending to firms by financial institutions. Specifically, the empirical analyzes conducted in this thesis aim to reach two complementary objectives. First, assessing the degree to which the rivalry between banks influences their pricing strategy and therefore the cost of corporate financing. The second objective of this thesis is to study the impacts of bank competition on the way banks generate private information about their customers. To this end we proceed in two steps. First, we investigate whether banking competition affects the type of information used by loan officers to assess borrower’s quality. Then, we check the involvement of bank competition in the termination of bank-firm relationships. We consider for all the analyzes conducted in this thesis an approach where the complementarity between different competition indicators used in the literature is exploited in order to better understand the level of rivalry among banks. Several results emerge from the multiple empirical analyzes conducted in this thesis. First, these show that the market power of financial institutions result from two separate sources: the weight of the bank in the local credit market structure, and the level of efficiency of the credit institution. Therefore, the impact of competition between banks depends on the ability of banking competition to influence the local market structure of credit or the efficiency of bank. Moreover, we show that within a concentrated banking market, the existence of strong rivalries between banks reduced the financing cost of firms that had a house bank. Finally, we demonstrate that banking competition increases the duration of bank-firm relationships and encourages loan officers to produce more private information about borrowers. However, it would be safe for banks to monitor the behavior of loan officers regarding their role on information production, in order to design incentives that ensure a sustained effort on their part.

Funding of services to residents in publicly funded long-term care (LTC) facilities has historically rested upon a list of physical needs. However, more than 60% of residents in nursing homes have dementia; a condition in which physical needs are only a part of the overall clinical picture. Since past funding formulas focused primarily on the physical characteristics of residents, the Ontario government has adopted the RUG (Resource Utilization Groups)-III (34 Group) for use in LTC facilities which follows the adoption of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) 2.0 assessment instrument. Some still question whether the newer formula adequately reflects the care needs of residents with dementia despite its validation in many countries. The purpose of this study was to determine the comprehensiveness of the RUG-III (34 Group) in addressing the needs of residents with dementia living in LTC. First, a critical systematic review of the literature was conducted to determine the needs of residents with dementia. Numerous electronic databases were searched for articles published between January 2000 and September 2010, and later cross-referenced. Second, needs identified from the literature were matched to the items of the RUG-III which are selected variables of the MDS 2.0. Third, the priority of the items in the RUG-III was analysed in accordance with the importance of the identified needs. The documented needs were taken from 68 studies and classified into 19 main categories. The needs most supported by the literature were the management of behavioural problems, social needs, the need for daily individualized activities/care and emotional needs/personhood. Among the needs identified, activities of daily living (ADLs), cognitive needs and general overall physical health met the most RUG-III items. These needs were found to be well represented within the system. Other needs of importance such as social needs are not thoroughly considered in the grouping methodology though matched to MDS variables. The fact that these needs are not well addressed in the RUG-III poses concerns. Future research is needed to validate the significance of these needs. Considerations should be made as to the adequacy of the funding system and the allocation of funding.

Floating offshore wind power is a relatively new technology that enables wind turbines to float above the sea level, tied by anchors at the seabed. The purpose of this work is to develop an economic model for the technology in order to calculate the total cost of a planned wind farm. Cost data are retrieved from reports and academic journals available online. Based on these data, a model in Microsoft Excel is developed which calculates the Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for floating wind power plants as a function of several input values. As an addition to this model, financing offshore projects are described using literature study and by doing interviews with three major companies, currently investing in offshore wind. As a result, the model allows the user to calculate Capital expenditures, Operating expenditures and LCOE for projects at any given size and at any given site. The current LCOE for a large floating offshore wind farm is indicated to be in the range of 138-147 £/MWh. The outline from interviews was that today there is no shortage of capital for funding wind projects. However, in order to attract capital, the governmental regulatory of that market has to be suitable since it has a crucial impact on price risks of a project.

Funding of services to residents in publicly funded long-term care (LTC) facilities has historically rested upon a list of physical needs. However, more than 60% of residents in nursing homes have dementia; a condition in which physical needs are only a part of the overall clinical picture. Since past funding formulas focused primarily on the physical characteristics of residents, the Ontario government has adopted the RUG (Resource Utilization Groups)-III (34 Group) for use in LTC facilities which follows the adoption of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) 2.0 assessment instrument. Some still question whether the newer formula adequately reflects the care needs of residents with dementia despite its validation in many countries. The purpose of this study was to determine the comprehensiveness of the RUG-III (34 Group) in addressing the needs of residents with dementia living in LTC. First, a critical systematic review of the literature was conducted to determine the needs of residents with dementia. Numerous electronic databases were searched for articles published between January 2000 and September 2010, and later cross-referenced. Second, needs identified from the literature were matched to the items of the RUG-III which are selected variables of the MDS 2.0. Third, the priority of the items in the RUG-III was analysed in accordance with the importance of the identified needs. The documented needs were taken from 68 studies and classified into 19 main categories. The needs most supported by the literature were the management of behavioural problems, social needs, the need for daily individualized activities/care and emotional needs/personhood. Among the needs identified, activities of daily living (ADLs), cognitive needs and general overall physical health met the most RUG-III items. These needs were found to be well represented within the system. Other needs of importance such as social needs are not thoroughly considered in the grouping methodology though matched to MDS variables. The fact that these needs are not well addressed in the RUG-III poses concerns. Future research is needed to validate the significance of these needs. Considerations should be made as to the adequacy of the funding system and the allocation of funding.

Fruit de la globalisation économique et financière, la rencontre entre l’arbitrage international et la finance était inéluctable. Plusieurs facteurs expliquent ce phénomène : l’accroissement des échanges commerciaux et des investissements transnationaux, le choix des opérateurs du commerce international pour l’arbitrage lorsqu’il s’agit de régler leurs différends malgré le coût élevé des procédures d’arbitrage, enfin les nouvelles approches adoptées par les entreprises transnationales en matière de gouvernance et de gestion du risque. Le financement de procès par un tiers dans l’arbitrage international est protéiforme. Il implique différents acteurs comme les avocats, les assureurs mais ce sont les tiers-financeurs avec le concept du « Third-Party Funding », qui cristallisent notre attention pour cette étude. Le Third-Party Funding offre plusieurs options avec un schéma classique : le financement d’un procès mais aujourd’hui, nous assistons à un schéma beaucoup plus élaboré avec le financement de portefeuilles d’arbitrages « Portfolio Funding » qui a la préférence des tiers-financeurs. Aussi, dans un premier temps, il semblait essentiel d’analyser le financement de procès par un tiers dont le Third-Party Funding pour en comprendre les fondements, les mécanismes. Si le financement Third-Party Funding présente des atouts indéniables pour comme l’accès à la justice, il soulève aussi des problématiques en raison de la spécificité de l’arbitrage. Le tiers-financeur n’étant pas partie à l’arbitrage, sa participation a un réel impact sur la procédure et soulève des questions dont les principales touchent à la constitution du tribunal arbitral et au déroulement de la procédure arbitrale. Dès lors, il s’agit de savoir comment maîtriser cet impact sur la procédure d’arbitrage, comment la sécuriser, la pratique du Third-Party Funding n’étant pas réglementée. Les règles étatiques apportant des réponses laconiques, les règles informelles plus flexibles, sont plus à même à offrir un encadrement adapté à une activité résolument transnationale et globale. Certes, il existe bien une autorégulation des tiers-financeurs avec des codes de conduite mais insuffisante pour répondre aux spécificités de l’arbitrage. Les acteurs de l’arbitrage ont donc un rôle à jouer dans la proposition d’une réglementation tout comme les arbitres qui ont ainsi favorisé le développement d’une jurisprudence arbitrale principalement CIRDI. Les institutions arbitrales devraient s’inspirer des principes de base comme l’éthique et la transparence pour mettre en place de nouvelles règles intégrant le financement Third-Party Funding dans leurs Règlements d’arbitrage (comme l’ont fait le SIAC à Singapour, le Centre d’arbitrage et de médiation de la Chambre de commerce Brésil-Canada (CAM-CCB). Enfin, les règles de compliance viendraient compléter cette réglementation appropriée avec les Autorités de régulation financière. La réglementation est de toute évidence l’enjeu majeur dans les années à venir pour voir un financement Third-Party Funding éthique, transparent, efficient et concourant pleinement à l’efficacité de l’arbitrage international. / Being the result of economic and financial globalization, the meeting between international arbitration and finance was inevitable. Several factors explain this phenomenon: the increase of transnational trade and investment, the choice of international trade operators in favor of arbitration, despite the high cost of arbitration procedures, when they must solve disputes and new approaches adopted by transnational corporations in governance and risk management. Third-party funding in international arbitration proceedings is multifaceted. It involves different stakeholders such as lawyers, insurers but it is the third-party funders, with the concept of “Third-Party Funding”, which will be the focus of our attention for this study. It offers several options with a classic scheme, which is the financing of a trial but nowadays we witness a much more elaborate scheme with the financing of portfolios of arbitration i.e. “Portfolio funding”, which is favored by funders. Therefore, it seemed essential to analyze the funding of trials including the Third-Party Funding to understand the foundations, the mechanisms. While Third-Party Funding has undeniable strengths such as access to justice, it also raises problems because of the specificity of arbitration. Since the third party is not a party to the arbitration, its participation has a real impact on the procedure and raises questions, the main ones being the constitution of the arbitral tribunal and the conduct of the arbitration proceedings.It is therefore a question of knowing how to control this impact on the arbitration proceedings, how to secure it, since the Third-Party Funding practice is not regulated. State rules providing laconic answers, so more flexible informal rules are better able to offer a framework adapted to a resolutely transnational and global activity. There is, of course, a self-regulation of third-party funders with codes of conduct but insufficient to meet the specificities of arbitration. The actors of the arbitral community therefore have a role to play in the proposal of a regulation just like the arbitrators, who have thus favored the development of an arbitration jurisprudence mainly ICSID. Arbitral institutions should use basic principles such as ethics and transparency to implement new rules integrating Third-Party Funding into their Arbitration Rules (as did the SIAC in Singapore, the Center for Arbitration and Mediation of the Chamber of Commerce Brazil-Canada, CAM/CCBC. Finally, the compliance rules would complement this appropriate regulation with the financial regulatory authorities. Regulation is clearly the major issue in the coming years to see ethical, transparent, efficient Third-Party Funding that fully contributes to the effectiveness of international arbitration.

Department of Curriculum Studies and Education Management / DEd (Curriculum Studies) / Also availabe in print