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Loss aversion and US European security policy, 1989 to 1999Landrum, Jerry January 1900 (has links)
Doctor of Philosophy / Security Studies Interdepartmental Program / Donald J. Mrozek / From 1989 to 1999, the US had an opportunity to end its rivalry with Russia. However, a “loss aversion heuristic” dominated the decision-making processes of George Bush and Bill Clinton resulting in policies that provoked Russian fears of encirclement. This “loss aversion heuristic” manifested in four key security decisions: the reunification of Germany within NATO, NATO expansion to newly independent states, the Balkans interventions, and the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Although initially suspicious of Gorbachev, Bush eventually pursued a policy of supporting his reforms. However, as the administration came to terms with the inevitability of German reunification and increased European integration as outlined in the Single European Act of 1987, worries about the US leadership role in Europe emerged. By the fall of 1989, Bush backed German reunification to bolster pro-NATO political parties in Germany.
As he assumed the presidency in 1993, Clinton wanted to increase financial assistance to Russia. However, when it came to security issues, Clinton’s fear of losing democratic gains in Eastern Europe to an emerging Russian nationalist movement made him less conciliatory to Russia. Despite Yeltsin’s dismay, Clinton pushed for NATO’s enlargement to protect the newly independent states.
The same “loss aversion heuristic” was in play with the NATO interventions in the Balkans in 1995 and 1998. Criticisms of NATO’s ineffectiveness at preventing genocide on the continent called into question the necessity of a European security organization that could not provide security. Even though the interventions cemented a continued rivalry with Russia, the US backed them as a means of protecting the relevance of NATO.
These decisions had implications to the US policy of protecting the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Instead of securing a nuclear security partner, US policy contributed to Russians selling technology to rogue regimes, and they resisted US attempts to create an Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense (ABM) system in Eastern Europe. In this way, US policy success in securing NATO resulted in decreased nuclear security.
In the first three security decisions, the US overestimated the probability of loss making them unable to consider a more cooperative posture vis-à-vis Russian security concerns. The result of this loss aversion was the protection of NATO and the loss of cooperation on the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
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Contribution of Every Nation Mission (ENM) : opportunities for ENM missionaries in AfricaPark, Changsik January 2013 (has links)
The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20) is as relevant to us today, as it was
in the time of the early church. We, too, are sent by Jesus Christ to make
disciples of every nation, and to teach them to obey everything the Lord has
commanded us. ENM has taken this command very seriously, and in the past
decades numerous missionaries were dispatched to nations across the globe.
Twenty years ago ENM workers reached Africa, and have been working in
many communities on the continent – also in South Africa. The time has
come to study and evaluate the work that has been accomplished by the
ENM missionaries in Africa. There is a second reason for undertaking the
above mentioned research. It is a well-established fact that the Korean
churches, in the latter half of the 20th century, have played a major role in
evangelizing to the world. Korea has been hailed as the second largest
mission sending country in the world. But, sadly, in recent times the
missionary enthusiasm, in many churches, has waned (Park 2012: 62).
Churches and para-church organizations - including ENM - are all battling
with the problem in Korea.
However, in Africa the need to hear the Gospel of Jesus and to make disciples
of Him, for the establishing and equipping of young churches, is as urgent as
ever. Korean missionaries have a great obligation to the continent, an
obligation that ENM takes seriously. But in order to function at its best, ENM
has to evaluate the work that has been accomplished to date. In order to
learn from both the opportunities, and mistakes in a number of African
settings over the past twenty years, African Christians and their Korean colleagues need to join hands, in order to face the challenges of the future.
This will not only benefit the African churches, but the Korean churches as
well. Ideally, African and Korean Christians needed to learn from one another. / Dissertation (MA Theol)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Science of Religion and Missiology / Unrestricted
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Increasing Auditor Sensitivity to the Risk of Fraudulent Financial Reporting: Assessing Incentives and Pressures on Top ManagementWengler, Donald 06 April 2016 (has links)
The ability of auditors to detect fraud, including intentional material misstatements in earnings, remains key to the credibility of audit firms and confidence in capital markets. The PCAOB concludes from its most recent inspections of public company audits that auditors often fail to assess and respond to risks of material misreporting by management. In a behavioral experiment, this study concludes that auditors can increase sensitivity to management motivation to misreport by actively seeking to transform identified risk factors focused on the organization, into factors focused on top managers, and to evaluate whether these manager-focused risk factors represent incentives for personal gain or pressures to avoid a personal loss on the managers. Currently, auditing standards use incentive and pressure as interchangeable constructs, but auditors in this study assess pressure on managers to avoid a loss as a greater risk than an incentive to managers to attain a gain. Results also demonstrate that auditors will be made more sensitive to fraudulent financial reporting risk when focusing on pressure on top managers, than they will be by engaging in a traditional process of assessing total fraud risk based on the three fraud triangle elements. This study is the first to propose a theoretical explanation for why prior studies reflect auditor insensitivity to organizational level fraud risk factors. This study is also the first to enhance knowledge about auditor risk assessment and decision-making through the application of prospect theory and through disaggregation of one of the three elements of the fraud triangle model, by differentiating between incentive and pressure for misreporting earnings.
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Modelling Fixed Odds Betting for Future Event PredictionChen, Weiyun, Li, Xin, Zeng, Daniel 06 1900 (has links)
Prediction markets provide a promising approach for future event prediction. Most existing prediction market approaches are based on auction mechanisms. Despite their theoretical appeal and success in various application settings, these mechanisms suffer from several major drawbacks. First, opinions from experts and amateurs are treated equally. Second, continuous attention from participants is assumed. Third, such mechanisms are subject to various forms of market manipulation. To alleviate these limitations, we propose to employ the classic fixed odds betting as an alternative prediction market mechanism. We build a structural model based on a belief-decision framework as the event probability estimator. This belief-decision framework models bettors' beliefs with mixed beta distributions and bettors' decisions with prospect theory. A maximum likelihood approach is applied to estimate the model parameters. We conducted experiments on three real-world betting datasets to evaluate our proposed approach. Experimental results show that fixed odds betting based prediction outperforms the reduced form models based on odds and betting results, and achieves a comparable performance with auction-based prediction markets. The results suggest the possibility of employing fixed odds betting as a prediction market in a variety of application contexts where the assumptions made by auction-based approaches do not hold.
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Risk, Insurance and Technology Adoption in Rural Development - Evidence from Southern MexicoFreudenreich, Hanna 11 May 2017 (has links)
No description available.
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The lithogeochemical characterization of the Hondekloof nickel mineralization, Kliprand area, Garies Terrane, Namaqualand, South AfricaBokana, Reddy Ngili January 2015 (has links)
>Magister Scientiae - MSc / A magmatic Ni-Cu (±Co-Zn) sulphide deposit, named the Hondekloof prospect, is present in the Kliprand area at the border between the Northern Cape and Western Cape Provinces of South Africa. The deposit occurs in the central part of the polyphase deformed and highly metamorphosed Garies Terrane, in the Namaqua Sector, along the south-western margin of the Mesoproterozoic Namaqua-Natal Metamorphic Province. Given the sub-economic concentrations yielded from evaluation of three of its known massive-sulphide lenses evaluated, the Hondekloof prospect has received relatively little consideration in terms of ongoing scientific research. Consequently, many aspects related to the genesis, classification and tectonic evolution of the deposit, to date, remain relatively unclear and unknown. The present contribution has therefore been geared to addressing some of those issues in view of the new data obtained on the country rocks and host rocks to the mineralization.Six exploration boreholes were logged, sampled and examined at the deposit site in Kliprand. A total of seven host rocks, namely meta-gabbronorite, biotite gneiss, feldspathic-biotite-garnet gneiss, pink gneiss, meta-syenite as well as enderbite along with a garnetiferous quartzofeldspathic rock occur in association with the sulphide mineralization. The origin, protoliths and tectonic settings of the host lithological units were determined and discussed in terms of modern plate tectonic principles. The meta-gabbronorite (the actual ore host), which had a magmatic protolith and forms part of the pre- to syn-tectonic Oorkraal Suite, displays the chemical characteristics of a depleted mantle origin (source of MORB-like melt), generated within a continental tectonic rift environment. Country rocks with sedimentary protoliths have chemical characteristics indicating a psammitic, felsic to intermediate provenance deposited within a regional subduction-related tectonic setting. A number of geochemical indices, of which the combination of element-ratios (such as Fe2O3/Al2O3 vs. TiO2/Al2O3, as well as Cr vs. Ni, amongst others) created as exploration vectors towards mineralisation, have shown potential for pointing towards the direction of the mineralization. Based on classification schemes of magmatic Ni sulphide deposits, it is has been suggested that the Hondekloof prospect could be classified as a low MgO, conduit-type, disseminated magmatic nickel sulphide deposit.
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Entwurf und Realisierung eines Informationssystems zur Prozeßdatenverwaltung und -verarbeitung im durchgängigenHalbleitertechnologieprozeß: Entwurf und Realisierung eines Informationssystems zur Prozeßdatenverwaltung und -verarbeitung im durchgängigen HalbleitertechnologieprozeßGratz, Achim, Schulz, Patrick, Spallek, Rainer G. 14 November 2012 (has links)
:1 Motivation 1
1.1 Heterogenität der Datenverarbeitung 1
1.2 Die Rolle des Fab-Ingenieurs 2
1.3 Dokumentation als Wissensbasis 3
2 Anforderungen 3
3 Konzept 4
3.1 Der integrative Modellierungsansatz 4
3.2 Modellierung 5
3.3 Basiskomponenten 6
3.4 Leistungsumfang 7
3.4.1 Das abstrakte ProSpecT-Objekt 7
3.4.2 Verwaltung der ProSpecT-Objekte (Objektverwaltung) 8
3.4.3 Versionsverwaltung 9
3.4.4 Freispeicherverwaltung 10
3.4.5 Modellierung - Erweiterbarkeit 11
3.5 Schnittstellen 12
3.5.1 Server 13
3.5.2 Client 14
4 Implementation 15
4.1 Plattform- und Systemunabhängigkeit 16
4.2 TPV - der ProSpecT-Server 18
4.2.1 Clientbehandlung 20
4.2.2 Das abstrakte TPV-Objekt 23
4.2.3 Das verteilte, persistente Objektspeichersystem DiPOS 26
4.2.4 Erweiterbarkeit durch externe Bundle-Objekte 30
4.2.5 Objektnachrichtensystem 31
4.3 Client 33
4.4 Ergebnisse und Probleme 34
5 Zusammenfassung 35
6 Literaturverzeichnis 35
Index 37
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Överblickbarhetens inverkan på lärandemiljöer / The interior prospects impact on a teaching environmentOlsén, Annie, Ingemarsson, Ellen January 2020 (has links)
Purpose: There are many factors that affects the interior prospect in a teaching environment and the difficulty is to find a balance between seclusion and openness. The aim of the study is to examine the interior prospects impact on a teaching environment and which opportunities and limitations the lines of sight gives depending on how the have been designed. Method: This is a qualitative study and the used method is a case study of a F-6 school. A literature study and interviews were used as the data collecting technic. The interview with the principal of the school, the architect in charge and a co-architect for the same schools were performed. Findings: The results of the literature study and the interviews gave that the factors that affects the interior prospect were flexibility, relationship between the different functions, extent and visual environment. In the result different parameters emerged that were conducive reasons to the factors. One of the parameters for flexibility were form, for the relationship between functions one was placement, for extent one was size and one parameter for visual environment were the share of transparent surfaces. The result showed that the stance on the interior prospect between architects and teachers accords with each other. Implications: The conclusion of the study is that there are distinct parameters that cooperates with each other to create an interior prospect, but there are no obvious solutions since there are no general solutions to the problem. Limitations: The case study is only implied on one school. This choice was made to get a deep understanding of the reality and to get at overview of the parameters that has an impact on the interior prospect. For the result to be more generalized more schools had to be studied to see if more parameters were to be find.
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Why large homes are restricting : Framing personal space: vulnerability and volatilityNiklasson, Elias January 2022 (has links)
Personal space is a spatial privacy layer that regulates access to the self, without it our ability to function properly is impaired. An attack on the personal space is an attack on the person itself. Thus, personal space can be seen as a part of the self. The environment can be a part of personal space and therefore also seen as part of the self. Personal space, as the direct space surrounding the body, is framing the conscious experience of self. Due to its abstract nature, it is more appropriate to impact that experience by framing personal space through the environment. How to bridge something that fleeting with something so concreate is not obvious. This thesis tries to find a useful methodology for this through available research, own experiments, and discussion. Theories about stimulation, affordance theory, and prospect refuge theory, seems to together capture the whole quite well into something more tangible. The experience of personal space is concluded to be too ambiguous to properly design around and letting the user regulate it themselves by moving through a dynamic environment seems more fruitful. Ambient factors impact the need of personal space but the thresholds between spaces are where dynamics of the larger environment is concentrated. Therefore, they are more decisive in framing personal space and the architect’s attention should arguably be directed towards these.
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Kryptovalutor Kontra Traditionella Valutor som Likvida Medel / Cryptocurrency Versus Traditional Currency as a Means of PaymentFlodin, Malin, Hullberg, Jasper January 2021 (has links)
Bitcoin was established as an independent digital currency. Today, Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency and the currency has had an exponential growth in development and usage. Today’s standing point regarding this revolutionary currency in society is therefore interesting to investigate in relation to the traditional fiat currency. To determine whether Bitcoin is a comparable means of payment in relation to already established fiat currencies, it is important to look at different factors. The factors considered in the study are relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, observability and the perceived risk. The study shows that relative advantage, observability and the perceived risk are factors that statistically influenced the attitude to adopt Bitcoin as a means of payment. Relative advantage and observability proved to have a positive effect on Bitcoin. The perceived risk gave rise to individuals not being willing to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment. The qualitative data has given the study reasons to believe that all factors can influence the attitude to adopting Bitcoin as a means of payment.
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