O objetivo primordial da presente dissertação é estudar o instituto da cessão fiduciária de créditos e de títulos de crédito, previsto no artigo 66-B da Lei nº 4.728, de 14 de julho de 1965, com a redação dada pela Lei nº 10.931, de 02 de agosto de.2004, e popularmente conhecida como trava bancária, com vistas a identificar as posições da doutrina e jurisprudência quanto ao seu tratamento nas hipóteses de recuperação judicial e falência do devedor-fiduciante. Isto porque, o parágrafo 3º do artigo 49 da Lei nº 11.101, de 09 de fevereiro de 2005 (Lei de Recuperação de Empresas LRE) exclui dos efeitos da recuperação judicial os proprietários fiduciários de bens móveis e imóveis. A maior parte da doutrina e da jurisprudência defende que os titulares de créditos cedidos fiduciariamente estão compreendidos na definição de proprietário fiduciário de bem móvel prevista no referido parágrafo 3º do artigo 49 da LRE e, portanto, estão excluídos dos efeitos da recuperação judicial do devedor-fiduciante. Por outro lado, parte minoritária da doutrina e da jurisprudência defende que o parágrafo 3º do artigo 49 da LRE não menciona expressamente os titulares de crédito cedidos fiduciariamente e, sendo o referido parágrafo exceção à regra de que todos os credores estão sujeitos à recuperação judicial do devedor, sua redação deveria ser interpretada restritivamente, razão pela qual os credores titulares de créditos cedidos fiduciariamente estão sujeitos à recuperação judicial do devedor-fiduciante. A divergência da doutrina e da jurisprudência sobre o tema acaba por acarretar insegurança jurídica quanto ao uso da cessão fiduciária como forma de garantia. De um lado, as instituições financeiras têm dúvidas sobre a real segurança de tal garantia, o que pode comprometer uma eficiente avaliação de risco de crédito, assim como a recuperação do crédito na hipótese de insolvência do devedor. Por outro lado, as empresas em crise têm dúvidas sobre a viabilidade de sua efetiva recuperação, principalmente quando seus maiores credores forem bancos. Por todos esses motivos, entendemos ser de suma importância um estudo aprofundado do referido instituto, bem como uma análise crítica da solução adotada pelo legislador em face dos princípios de preservação da empresa em crise trazidos pela LRE. / The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine the fiduciary assignment of rights on movable assets and of credit instruments, as contemplated in article 66-B of Law No. 4,728, of July 14, 1965, as amended by Law No. 10,931, of August 2, 2004 widely known as bank lock (trava bancária) with a view to identifying the standing of legal scholars and court precedents and their approach in the event of debtors judicial restructuring and/or bankruptcy. This is because the 3rd paragraph of article 49 of Law No. 11,101 of February 9, 2005 (Judicial Restructuring Law LRE) determines that the fiduciary owners of movable and immovable assets are no longer subject to the effects of their debtors judicial restructuring. Most legal scholars and court precedents sustain that holders of credits assigned on a fiduciary basis fall under the category of fiduciary owner of movable assets, as established by such 3rd paragraph of article 49 of LRE and, therefore, are not subject to the debtors judicial restructuring. On the other hand, a small number of legal scholars and court precedents sustain that the 3rd paragraph of article 49 of LRE contains no express reference to holders of credits assigned on a fiduciary basis and, given that such paragraph is an exception to the general rule that all creditors are subject to the debtors judicial restructuring, its wording ought to be construed restrictively, for which reason such holders of the credits assigned on a fiduciary basis would be subject to the debtors judicial restructuring. Diverging views among legal scholars and court precedents on the matter bring about legal uncertainty as to the use of the fiduciary assignment of credits as a form of security. Financial institutions, on the one hand, are skeptical about the actual effectiveness of such form of security and that alone might impair the efficient assessment of the credit risk and the recovery of credits in the event of the debtors insolvency. On the other hand, companies undergoing financial crisis question the feasibility of an effective restructuring, particularly if their major creditors are banks. For all those reasons, it is important to look into the fiduciary assignment of credits and critically analyze the solution adopted by the lawmakers vis-à-vis the principles of preserving companies in crises as introduced by the LRE.

Dans un contexte de mondialisation, les entreprises africaines doivent s'adapter en permanence aux diverses contingences économiques, juridiques ou sociales. Conscient de cette réalité, le législateur africain a mis en place dans le cadre de la reforme de l'OHADA, un arsenal juridique afin de leur permettre de s'acclimater en permanence aux tendances et pressions du marché : le droit de la restructuration qui désigne l’ensemble des techniques conçues par le législateur pour réorganiser l’entreprise. Ces techniques ont eu pour source d’inspiration le droit français des restructurations qui a connu des mutations. La confrontation des deux systèmes de droit permet de constater que si dans les principes fondamentaux les deux systèmes répondent aux mêmes objectifs à savoir assurer la pérennisation des entreprises par la promotion de la croissance de l’entreprise et sa survie lorsqu’elle est le seuil de difficultés diverses, il existe toutefois des différences d’ordre pratique et technique consécutives aux dernières réformes intervenues. / In a context of globalization, the african companies have to adapt themselves permanently to economic legal or social contingencies. Conscious of that reality, african legislator set up within the OHADA reform legal measures to allow theme acclimatize to the tendencies and markets pression : the restructuring law which design all the technicals proceedings conceived by the legislator to reorganize the company. Those technicals was inspirated by French law restructuring which has been reorganized. The confrontation of both systems allows to notice that if in the fundamental principles they are the same objectives consisting in substainability of companies for their growth or their survival there are however pratical and technical differences materialized by the recents french reforms.

A recurring theme in the cognitive development literature is the notion that people restructure their task knowledge as they develop increasingly sophisticated strategies. A large body of empirical literature spanning several domains suggests that in some cases, the process of knowledge restructuring is best characterized by a process of sequentially replacing old strategies with newer ones. In other cases, restructuring appears to be better characterized as a process involving changes in the way partial knowledge elements are selectively applied to a task. Critically, the former, but not the latter position, suggests that it may be quite difficult for people to revert to using an old strategy after restructuring has already occurred. The three experiments reported herein suggest that knowledge restructuring observed in experimental settings is aptly characterized by a process of strategy retention. Specifically, people are shown to readily revert to using an old categorization strategy even after demonstrably having restructured their knowledge, suggesting that knowledge is best conceptualized as having a heterogeneous structure. Formal modeling further supports this interpretation of the empirical results, and highlights the important role of selective attention in determining the manifest response strategy. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of an overarching mixture-of-experts framework of knowledge representation.

This thesis examines the impact of neo-liberal economic restructuring on teachers, specifically teachers in technical and further education. Historically, there has been limited research undertaken on teachers as workers, and even less on TAFE teachers. During the period covered by the study, TAFE was buffeted by the massive changes, social, political, cultural and economic, that were occurring on a global scale. As a result, TAFE has been a system in crisis. The consequences are addressed by an empirical study that examines NSW TAFE teachers' experience of the great changes that have occurred to their work since the late 1980s. Forty-one teachers were interviewed in tape recorded sessions lasting around one hour each. The respondents were drawn from twenty-seven teaching sections across all the major industry areas represented in TAFE. Twenty of the teachers were from metropolitan locations, twenty-one were regional. Nine managers were also interviewed, from Head of Studies to senior management levels, covering those with local as well as state-wide responsibilities. The changes to TAFE have been driven by a pervasive neo-liberal ideology adopted by both major parties in Australia. This study documents the experience of TAFE teachers as that ideology led to a corporatised vocational education and training system strongly oriented to the market. It also records their responses to the narrowing of curriculum that resulted from the "industry-driven" vocational education and training policies of governments. The study gives voice to their grief, frustration and anger as their working conditions deteriorated and their commitment to quality education was undermined. The study documents the teachers' resistance to the processes of organisational fragmentation, the increasing incidence of cost-driven, rather than educational, decision-making, and the commodification of curriculum driven by a series of policy decisions taken at both national and state level. The study compares these experiences with those of the TAFE managers, whose response to the crisis, while differing from that of the teachers, supports the teachers' commitment to public education as a social good. The study concludes that the NSW TAFE teachers' resistance has continued to act as a brake on the excesses of neo-liberalism. Some possibilities for an alternative vision of technical and further education thus remain.

This dissertation deals with the changing conditions for schools and the teaching profession from a teachers’ perspective. The process of the global restructuring of national educational systems that gained momentum in Sweden in the 1990s, involved the introduction of a school voucher system, competition mechanisms and the decentralization of responsibilities to schools and teachers.  The aim of this dissertation is to examine teachers’ professional identities in relation to changes in local and global conditions for schools and the teaching profession.     Empirically, this study is anchored in 15 life history interviews conducted with eight teachers who have been working at the same secondary school in a Swedish mid-sized town. The school opened in 1965 in a residential area and closed down 2007 facing difficulties in attracting students. The teachers’ professional identities are analyzed in terms of identity performances, that is, the socially situated actions embedded in the stories and the interviews, in which they express and negotiate who they are or would like to be as a teacher. Methodologically this study contributes to a new way of investigating the relation between local school contexts and teacher identities by analyzing the institutional memories of a school.     Results show that educational restructuring in this local school context entailed shifts in the meanings of previously known social relationships and phenomena, such as the school’s mixed student base, reputation and forms of cooperation, and that the local press became an important actor when market mechanisms were introduced. The study highlights the complexity and variability when professional identities take shape in the teachers’ stories. Some features of the professional identities focused on in this study appear to be relatively stable, while others appear to be more varying. Self biographical factors, culturally available narratives of the teaching profession, as well as local factors tend to have a stabilizing effect on the identities shaped in the stories. However, diverse professional aims, life events and changing working conditions contribute to changes in the identity constructions. In the analysis of the institutional memories presented in the thesis, it is evident that identity performances are shaped in the teachers’ retellings of those memories. In different teachers’ versions of institutional memories, identity performances that stress e.g. the importance of discipline in school and opposition to women’s subordination are shaped.

Chapter I - Derivative Market Competition: OTC Markets Versus Organized Derivative Exchanges  Recent regulatory initiatives in the United States have again raised the issue of a ''level regulatory and supervisory playing field'' and the degree of competition globally between over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives and organized derivative exchange (ODE) markets. This chapter models some important aspects of how an ODE market interrelates with the OTC markets. It analyzes various ways in which an ODE market can respond to competition from the OTC markets and considers whether ODE markets would actually benefit from a more level playing field. Among other factors, such as different transaction costs, different abilities to mitigate credit risk play a significant role in determining the degree of competition between the two types of markets. This implies that a potentially important service ODE markets can provide OTC market participants is to extend clearing services to them. Such services would allow the OTC markets to focus more on providing less competitive contracts/innovations and instead customize their contracts to specific investors’ risk preferences and needs.  Chapter II – Crisis Resolution and Private Sector Adaptation Efforts at crisis resolution that succeed in reducing potential inefficiencies and instability in the international financial system are in the interest of both the private and the public sector. Unlike in the domestic context, in the international context, in the absence of clearly established rules of the game, the approaches adopted toward crisis resolution, and the extent to which they are interpreted by market participants as setting a precedent, can have profound implications for the nature and structure of international capital flows. The key conclusion of this chapter is that recent experiences with payment suspensions and bond restructurings are limited as guides to determining the future success or failures of these initiatives, as the private sector most likely has adapted in order to minimize any unwanted public sector involvement. Chapter III - European Equity Market Integration: Cyclical or Structural? Reviewing the empirical evidence of equity market integration in the European Union, the chapter finds a significant increase in the importance of global sector factors for a number of industries. Unlike most past studies, which only covered developments during the bull market of the late nineties, the results presented in this chapter suggest that the degree of Euroland equity market integration has declined gradually following the bursting of the TMT bubble. This seems to suggest that the findings of previous studies that Euroland equity markets were nearly fully financially integrated is worth revisiting. There are, however, several good reasons to believe that the structural factors driving European equity market integration have yet to play themselves out fully. Institutional investors both outside the Euroland area and within have substantial untapped capacity to take on Euroland exposures and invest additionally in Euroland equities. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2004

In Sweden, firms that file for bankruptcy are all auctioned off either piecemeal or as going concerns. Upon filing, managers lose control of the firm. In contrast, in the U.S. managers retain control by selecting to renegotiate the financial claims on the firm under court-supervision (Chapter 11). This thesis addresses the ongoing debate as to whether a Chapter 11-style renegotiation option is valuable to the firm’s securityholders. The optimal bankruptcy system depends on how well the auction system itself functions as well as on the extent to which managers misuse the renegotiation option to their own benefit (the agency problem). While there is substantial evidence on Chapter 11 cases, the thesis provides some first evidence on the workings of a pure auction system using Swedish data. The first essay examines direct costs, creditor recovery rates and auction premiums in Sweden, and compares the results to extant evidence on U.S. Chapter 11 cases. Overall, the results suggest that mandatory auctions provide a relatively cost-efficient bankruptcy procedure, producing recovery rates that are similar to those reported for much larger firms in Chapter 11. Moreover, auction premiums are significant and tend to increase with industry distress, which contradicts arguments that financially distressed firms sell assets below their true value. The second essay provides some first evidence on managerial compensation, turnover and corporate performance following Swedish bankruptcy auctions. The evidence indicates that mandatory auctions act as a substantial managerial disciplinary force: CEOs typically incur significant compensation losses and a majority of CEOs lose their job through the auction. Nevertheless, the operating profitability of the auctioned firms is typically at par with industry norms. Thus, although CEO wealth effects and turnover rates are dramatic, there is little support for the argument that managers in an auction bankruptcy system tend to delay filing at the detriment of the firm's going concern value. Essays three and four take a broader perspective on corporate restructurings. The third essay examines alternative econometric explanations for the lack of stock market gains to bidder firms reported in the literature. The analysis, which uses a large sample of Canadian targets, provides new evidence consistent with the proposition that the measured gains to relatively large, frequent acquirors reflect an attenuation bias produced by event-study econometrics. Moreover, the results suggest that mergers between relatively equal-sized firms, and which have not generated anticipation of future acquisition activity, tend to produce significantly positive bidder gains. This supports the use of mergers also as an alternative to bankruptcy. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 1998</p>

This thesis study focuses on transmission expansion planning (TEP) problem for restructured power systems and addresses challenges specifically in countries where electricity market is in developing phase after liberalization of power industry for establishing a competitive market, like Turkey. A novel multi-year TEP approach is developed which considers generation investment cost and transmission congestion level in the planning horizon. The model assesses the impact of generation investments on TEP problem. Benders decomposition methodology is utilized successfully to decompose the complex mixed-integer programming TEP problem into a master problem and two subproblems. Security subproblem assesses single-contingency criteria. Transmission congestion cost is considered within operational subproblem given that congestion level is a proper criterion for measuring competitiveness level of an electricity market. The proposed approach is applied to the Turkish power system. The proposed approach could be utilized to provide indicative plans, which might be quite necessary particularly during development of a competitive market. However, there is no guarantee that independent power producers (IPPs) will follow those plans which concern the maximization of social-welfare. Given the necessity of coordinating monopoly transmission and decentralized generator investment decisions, the proposed approach is improved further to include promoting decentralized generator investments through incentive payments. Such incentives might be necessary to trigger IPPs earlier than their projections, as illustrated by numerical examples including IEEE 30-bus system.

This thesis aims to analyze the inner dynamics as well as the outcomes of the health sector restructuring process in Turkey, by focusing on Neo-Liberal transformation, New Public Management practices and European Integration process. The thesis argues that health reform process along with other public sector reforms have been initiated by Neo-Liberalism as the new face of institutional and structural arrangements during 1980s. Within that process, it is underlined that New Public Management approach with its commitment to private sector methodology and techniques reflected the underlying philosophy and basic premises of Neo-Liberalism which dominated the health sector restructuring process in Turkey, as well as in Eastern Europe since 1990s. Often characterized with the notion of &ldquo / efficiency&rdquo / , the New Public Management techniques and methodologies claimed to bring a more efficiently working health system. In order to refute this claim, the health sector reforms that have been exercised in the past two decades in Turkey as well as in Eastern Europe are analyzed within a historical context. It is also argued that while the Neo-Liberal policies and policy initiatives proposed by International Monetary Fund and World Bank had a direct effect on health sector restructuring process, the role of the European Union has been indirect with regard to organization and service provision. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to analyze the outcomes of the health reforms carried out in Turkey in a multidisciplinary manner in order to reveal its political, economic,social and administrative implications in terms of service providers and service takers.

Aspect-oriented middleware is a promising technology for the realisation of dynamic reconfiguration in heterogeneous distributed systems. However, like other dynamic reconfiguration approaches, AO-middleware-based reconfiguration requires that the consistency of the system is maintained across reconfigurations. AO-middleware-based reconfiguration is an ongoing research topic and several consistency approaches have been proposed. However, most of these approaches tend to be targeted at specific contexts, whereas for distributed systems it is crucial to cover a wide range of operating conditions. In this paper we propose an approach that offers distributed, dynamic reconfiguration in a consistent manner, and features a flexible framework-based consistency management approach to cover a wide range of operating conditions. We evaluate our approach by investigating the configurability and transparency of our approach and also quantify the performance overheads of the associated consistency mechanisms.