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In this research, we review the relevant literatures to discuss the predictability of foreign exchange rates. Besides, we collect literatures to examine the development of the fundamental models, market models, technical analysis and trading rules and compare and evaluate the precision of these models. Moreover, we make a case study of a global leading investment bank to discuss how to use these models in practice. The result shows that fundamental models can help to establish the long-term equilibrium but have some shortcomings and thus we could adopt market models to resolve the shortages and the technical analyses and rules to set the exact price levels for trading purposes.

This paper studies the differences in the real estate markets of Los Angeles County and New York County in order to understand what variables contribute most to their growth by using national and local data from the period between 1987 and 2012. I conduct two separate multiple regressions to show that local variables tend to have a bigger impact on real estate growth than national variables. I also find that there is a significant difference between most of the variables depending on location. Overall, it is found that over fifty percent of the observed variables contribute to real estate growth in LA County. However, two thirds of the observed variables lead to real estate market decline in NY County. These findings show that NY County does not see as much growth as LA County.

Determining whether the arts are beneficial to a student’s education is a widely, and hotly debated topic every year in the United States, with many studies published each year demonstrating the impact that the arts have on various educational outcomes, from increased test scores to higher graduation rates. This paper examines previous research on the efficacy of incentives and how students’ participation in extracurricular activities, from sports to the arts, could impact graduation rates. It also develops a model for analyzing the present value of a high school education to a student using a discounted present value analysis and conducts an empirical analysis of 77 high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District over 4 different school years to determine a relationship between the number of art classes offered and graduation rates. The results of the analysis do not support the hypothesis that an increase in the number of art classes offered per student will increase graduation rates, and actually suggests the opposite.

Abstract Urban/Rural Inequalities in Suicide Rates in Georgia, 2008-2013: A county-level analysis By Garrett Mahon December 9, 2016 Abstract: INTRODUCTION: Suicide is a significant public health issue. There have been copious amounts of research completed worldwide attempting to understand the reasons behind suicide, including those revolving around urban and rural disparities. However, research has yet to find a consensus on the issue. The state of Georgia, in particular, has a variety of county-level characteristics that could help understand the dissimilarity between urban/rural populations and direct future research to improve prevention strategies. OBJECTIVE: The present study aims to assess disparities in suicide rates across urban-rural populations, adjusting for rurality, ethnicity, and a county-level dissimilarity index, in the State of Georgia from 2008 to 2013. METHODS: Suicide mortality data by ethnicity, age, and county of residence were obtained from Georgia’s violent death incident report and death certificate database for 2008 to 2013. A series of Poisson Models were used to evaluate the rates of suicides between urban and rural populations. RESULTS: The analysis was conducted on 5833 suicides across the 159 counties of Georgia with Urban and Rural counties classified as both a binary and fourfold modify variable. There was sufficient evidence to suggest that rural counties in Georgia have a significantly high rate of suicide than those of its urban counterpart, (IRR=1.43, IRR=1.37), even after adjusting for ethnicity and a county level dissimilarity index. CONCLUSION: Georgia’s suicide rates are relatively higher among those living in rural counties when compared to urban settings. These results both confirm and conflict with findings from previous research. The diversity in findings denotes that future research should explore the variations across urban/rural classification systems, spatial remoteness of the area, and additional regional level characteristics.

This study is concerned briefly with (1) tracing the evolution of fire insurance and fire insurance rate making; (2) an explanation of the present most prominent rate making systems in the United States; and (3) a detailed analysis of fire insurance rating in Texas.

Laboratory studies conducted at 5, 15, 25, and 35 C measured changes in gilling rates and oxygen consumption of green sunfish in response to exposure to bentonite clay suspensions. The tests indicate that gilling rates are not affected by bentonite clay suspensions below 2125 FTU at 5 C, 1012 FTU at 15 C, and 898 FTU at 25 C. At turbidity levels exceeding 1012 FTU at 15 C and 898 at 25 C, gilling rates increased 50-70%. Tests were inconclusive at 35 C. Oxygen consumption rates were found to be unaffected by turbid suspensions below 3500 FTU at all four temperatures. Evidence suggests that increased gilling rates under highly turbid conditions are a means of compensating for reduced respiratory efficiency and a strategy for maintaining a constant oxygen uptake. Evidence indicates that the cost of increased gilling rates is probably met by a reduction in activity.

This work focuses on the factors influencing the accessibility of credit lines for the companies in the Czech Republic. Its methodology follows the respected works written in the field of credit markets or in the field of econometrical methods suitable for the estimation of such markets. The main econometrical tool of this work is the Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Dependent variable is always the percentage change of the total volume of corporate loans and the independent variables are the percentage changes of different macroeconomic indicators. This work brings key findings important for the understanding the of the Czech corporate credit market. JEL Classification C32, C51, E40, E41, G10, G20, G21 Keywords Corporate Loans, Credit, Credit Lines, Credit Market, Credit Supply, Czech Banking Sector, Demand for Credit, Loans Author's e-mail pavelhanak@seznam.cz Supervisor's e-mail petr.gapko@seznam.cz

Hillslopes comprise the majority of unglaciated upland landscapes; they are the primary source for the production of sediment from bedrock, and the routing system by which sediment is delivered to the channel network. Yet the nature of hillslope response to changes in tectonic, climatic or base-level boundary conditions is poorly understood in terms of the spatial and temporal distribution of hillslope morphology. Here I exploit a previously published framework for exploring hillslope morphology in high relief landscapes (Roering et al., 2007), to address several critical questions: Does high resolution topography allow understanding of the processes and rates by which sediment is redistributed on hillslopes? If so, can hillslope morphology be used to map the spatial distribution of erosion rates and facilitate interpretation of the timing and magnitude of tectonic forcing, particularly in transient landscapes which are adjusting their erosion rates? And to what extent does variation in lithology influence hillslope evolution and morphology, and the ability to interpret process rates from hillslope form? In this thesis I sought to explain hillslope adjustment to changing boundary conditions through combining the predictions of analytical and numerical models with detailed analysis of real, high resolution topographic datasets (derived from LiDAR), focusing on two landscapes where the influence of tectonic forcing on base-level history is relatively well constrained, the Middle Fork Feather River in the northern Sierra Nevada, and the Dragon’s Back Pressure Ridge, on the Carrizo Plain, both in California. The Sierra Nevada of California is a west-tilted fault block composed primarily of granitoids formed during Mesozoic arc volcanism. The block underwent acceleration in uplift 5 - 3.5 Ma which is hypothesised to be caused be the drop-off of a dense root from the lower crust and replacement by hot asthenosphere, causing crustal buoyancy. A relict landscape has thus been uplifted and dissected by the major drainage routes crossing the range, which have eroded rapidly to form deep canyons. The fluvial network is characterised by breaks in slope (knickpoints) which migrate into the landscape to transmit the signal of increased erosion, setting baselevel conditions for adjacent hillslopes. Theoretical predictions for the morphology of hillslopes governed by a nonlinear sediment transport law, if the hillslopes have attained steady state (i.e. they are eroding in concert with base-level fall in adjacent valleys) reveal that the curvature of hilltops will be linearly proportional to erosion rates or rate of base-level fall. I present innovative techniques to extract hilltop networks and sample their adjacent hillslopes in order to test the utility of hilltop curvature for estimating erosion rates. This work is carried out in granitoid lithologies where the influence of bedrock heterogeneity is assumed no to be a first order control on hillslope morphology. Existing and new cosmogenic radionuclide analyses in the Feather River basin, California, suggest that erosion rates vary by over an order of magnitude from the remnant upland landscape to the incised river canyon. Hilltop curvature increases with erosion rates, allowing calibration of the hillslope sediment transport coefficient, which controls the relationship between hillslope gradient and sediment flux. This in turn allows the estimation of erosion rates throughout the landscape by mapping the spatial distribution of hilltop curvature. Additionally, despite the landscape containing gradient-limited hillslopes, hilltop curvature continues to increase with rising erosion rates, reflecting higher erosion rates than can be predicted by hillslope gradient. The distribution of hillslope morphology conforms well to predictions of a nonlinear sediment transport model, with measured values of hillslope relief varying with the product of hilltop curvature and hillslope length (proxy for erosion rate) in a manner similar to that predicted by Roering et al. (2007). Hilltop curvature can thus be used to estimate erosion rates in landscapes undergoing a transient adjustment to changing boundary conditions provided that the response timescale of hillslopes is short relative to channels. Having focused on a landscape with roughly uniform bedrock geology to isolate drivers of geomorphic change, I sought to evaluate whether these techniques could be extended across lithologic contacts and throughout the landscape. Underlying geology influences the efficacy of soil production and transport on hillslopes, and resistance to erosion by valley-forming processes. Here, quantitative analysis of LiDAR digital terrain models was performed to search for a topographic signature in two distinct lithologies in the Feather River catchment in northern California; granodiorite and deformed volcanics. The two sites, separated by <2 km and spanning similar elevations, are assumed to have similar climatic and denudation histories. Responding to increased erosion rates, transient hillslopes exhibit high gradient but low hilltop curvature in the metavolcanics relative to theoretical predictions for steady state hillslopes. However, hillslopes in the granodiorite have, for the most part, variation in hilltop curvature, hillslope length and hillslope relief similar to model predictions for steady state hillslopes. The curvature of hilltops adjacent to main stem channels implies that the coefficient of sediment transport is two times larger in the granodiorite (c. 8.8 m2 ka-1) than in the metavolcanics (c. 4.8 m2 ka-1). The data suggest that hillslopes get shorter as erosion rates increase due to the increased influence of debris flows in valley incision, suggesting that drainage density increases with erosion rate. The incision wave associated with more rapid erosion in the Feather River has propagated further into a basin developed on the metavolcanics and hence this substrate is less resistant to channel incision. I review an inventory of values for the transport coefficient for hillslope sediment transport but find that no clear patterns emerge with varying lithology. However in unconsolidated substrates, precipitation may play an important role in modulating sediment transport through variation in rain splash impact frequency and the frequency of wetting/drying, freeze/thaw, and expansion/contraction cycles. Finally I apply the same techniques to study hillslope morphology to a landscape where the tectonic history has a documented influence on landscape development. The Dragon’s Back pressure ridge, Carrizo Plain, CA, consists of a series of small catchments adjacent to the San Andreas fault, where previous detailed geologic mapping has allowed the spatial and temporal distribution of uplift to be constrained. This landscape offers a hitherto unique opportunity to study the temporal evolution of hillslope morphology via ergodic substitution. I show that the time evolution of a sensitive indicator of erosion rate, hilltop curvature, can be predicted using a nonlinear sediment flux law. Further to this, the temporal evolution of relief and hilltop curvature experiences hysteresis as the landscape grows and decays. Relative to steady-state predictions, hillslope morphologies exhibit higher than expected values for relief during active uplift or landscape growth, and lower than expected relief during landscape decay. Therefore landscapes growing due to fault activity can be distinguished from those with quiescent faults undergoing topographic decay.

M.Comm. / The fundamental objective of this paper is to effectively analise and forecast currency option volatility in the South African derivative market. The study of Dollar/Rand volatility is based in the domain of quantitative and international economics. It focuses on the monetary aspect of international finance, where currency volatility is of critical significance in the hedging of open currency option positions used in investment strategies as well as in active currency risk management. Topics covered in this study include firstly a theoretical discussion of option pricing and volatility to provide the necessary financial and statistical background: Advanced volatility issues are secondly addressed to define the volatility matrix and to explain the appearance of volatility smiles and cones as well as the characteristics of the time structure of volatility. The use of volatility as an important risk management tool is also depicted. Various time-series techniques such as the Box Jenkins methodology and decomposition of Dollar/Rand historical and implied volatility are assessed and used to forecast volatility. Univariate and multivariate regression analysis is in addition described and used to find the best estimate for subsequent Dollar/Rand volatility. Finally, the paper is concluded by an analysis of time varying stochastic volatility models such as the models for autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity. The techniques apply a regression on the variance and include a function to allow for the asymmetric nature of movements in Dollar/Rand volatility. Up to date, no formal in-depth academical research on high frequency currency volatility has been conducted in the South African derivative market. It is therefor crucial to research the unique characteristics of Dollar/Rand option volatility. If the study concludes that Dollar/Rand volatility is predictable, it will have important implications for currency option pricing and portfolio management. Investors seeking to avoid risk, may choose to adjust their portfolios by reducing their commitments to assets whose volatilities are predicted to increase, or by using dynamic diversification approaches to hedge predicted volatility increases. This is particularly true of currency derivative markets where the volatility of the underlying asset has a profound effect on the value of the derivative.