The debates on whether or not to regulate micro lending have shifted to finding the appropriate regulatory models. This is because countries are in agreement that being part of the greater financial services sector, micro lending plays an important role in the economic and social development of the citizens as it enables the poor to have access to credit and better their lives. To this end, Botswana has not fallen short of this global trend. Micro lending regulation plays an important role in maintaining the financial safety and soundness of any country’s financial sector. If not properly regulated, the micro lending industry can lead to undesirable incidents like financial crisis and suicide cases as it was the case in the State of Andhra Pradesh of India where borrowers were over-indebted leading them to commit suicide. Since there is not a perfect regulatory model, countries have over the years formulated regulatory frameworks for micro lending. Some of the laws failed and created more problems than they were in fact intended to solve like the 2010 financial crisis in India. In 2008 Parliament of Botswana enacted the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority Act in order to regulate (NBFIs), including micro lenders. The primary purpose of this study is to scrutinize the mechanisms in place for the regulation and supervision of micro lenders in Botswana in light of those set internationally and subsequently deducing their effectiveness or lack thereof. The comparative analysis will focus on South Africa and India’s State of Andhra Pradesh. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The debates on whether or not to regulate micro lending have shifted to finding the appropriate regulatory models. This is because countries are in agreement that being part of the greater financial services sector, micro lending plays an important role in the economic and social development of the citizens as it enables the poor to have access to credit and better their lives. To this end, Botswana has not fallen short of this global trend. Micro lending regulation plays an important role in maintaining the financial safety and soundness of any country’s financial sector. If not properly regulated, the micro lending industry can lead to undesirable incidents like financial crisis and suicide cases as it was the case in the State of Andhra Pradesh of India where borrowers were over-indebted leading them to commit suicide. Since there is not a perfect regulatory model, countries have over the years formulated regulatory frameworks for micro lending. Some of the laws failed and created more problems than they were in fact intended to solve like the 2010 financial crisis in India. In 2008 Parliament of Botswana enacted the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority Act in order to regulate (NBFIs), including micro lenders. The primary purpose of this study is to scrutinize the mechanisms in place for the regulation and supervision of micro lenders in Botswana in light of those set internationally and subsequently deducing their effectiveness or lack thereof. The comparative analysis will focus on South Africa and India’s State of Andhra Pradesh. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

This research reconsiders two ABC programs from the early 1990s, Twin Peaks and My So-Called Life, through the frames of queer-theory based textual analysis, press discourse, and fan reception. I begin by arguing that both programs, which emerged in concert with the solidification of queer studies as an academic field, exist as televisual oddities that provided a temporary space for the exploration of queer subjectivities in primetime; this analysis also invokes the non-normative positioning of showrunners David Lynch and Winnie Holzman based on their previous and subsequent work. Secondly, I posit popular press receptions/retrospectives as undermining the queer centrality of both programs by adhering to heteronormative frameworks such as “quality television.” Lastly, I discuss fan reclamations of both programs through slash fiction and collaborative web forums as illuminating the intrinsic queerness of Twin Peaks and My So-Called Life lost through dominant press narratives. / text

Magister Legum - LLM / The main objective of the study is to analyse the possibility of adopting the Twin Peaks model as a mechanism for ensuring protection to the consumers of financial services in Uganda. Uganda's financial sector has suffered impediments to growth and this can largely be attributed to the regulatory framework but also due to the absence in streamlined financial consumer protection. The Parliament of Uganda has failed to pass into law legislation required to protect consumers generally let alone financial consumers. The gaping hole created by lack of legislation puts consumers of financial services at risk of loss. This research paper shall give insight into the possibility of the financial sector adopting a new regulatory framework with inbuilt mechanisms for consumer protection. This research paper will also be a legal resource for literature pertaining to the correlation between a financial regulatory system and financial consumer protection.

Seit den 70er Jahren erscheint die Welteinkommensverteilung zwischen den Nationen polarisiert in arm und reich. Dieses Phänomen kann theoretisch mithilfe des Solow Wachstumsmodells erklärt werden. Der Nachweis wurde auf drei Arten geführt. Als erstes wurde graphisch gezeigt, dass Änderungen der Annahmen bezüglich der Sparquote, des Bevölkerungswachstums sowie der Sparquote des Humankapital im erweiterten Solow Wachstumsmodell zu Bipolarität führen können. Die zweite Vorgehensweise war analytisch: eine endogene Sparquote wurde in das Solow Wachstumsmodell eingefügt, für welches dann die Gleichgewichte bestimmt wurden. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass es zur Polarisierung kommt. Schließlich wurde ein empirisch determiniertes Solow Wachstumsmodell formuliert. Die Sparquote sowie die Bevölkerungswachstumsrate wurden mithilfe von Regressionen geschätzt und in das Modell integriert. Hieraus wurden anschließend die Gleichgewichte bestimmt.

Seit den 70er Jahren erscheint die Welteinkommensverteilung zwischen den Nationen polarisiert in arm und reich. Dieses Phänomen kann theoretisch mithilfe des Solow Wachstumsmodells erklärt werden. Der Nachweis wurde auf drei Arten geführt. Als erstes wurde graphisch gezeigt, dass Änderungen der Annahmen bezüglich der Sparquote, des Bevölkerungswachstums sowie der Sparquote des Humankapital im erweiterten Solow Wachstumsmodell zu Bipolarität führen können. Die zweite Vorgehensweise war analytisch: eine endogene Sparquote wurde in das Solow Wachstumsmodell eingefügt, für welches dann die Gleichgewichte bestimmt wurden. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass es zur Polarisierung kommt. Schließlich wurde ein empirisch determiniertes Solow Wachstumsmodell formuliert. Die Sparquote sowie die Bevölkerungswachstumsrate wurden mithilfe von Regressionen geschätzt und in das Modell integriert. Hieraus wurden anschließend die Gleichgewichte bestimmt.

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Requirements engineering (RE) involves human-centric activities that require interaction among different stakeholders. Traditionally, RE has been considered as a centralized, collocated, and phase-specific process. However, in open source software (OSS) development environments, the core RE activities are iterative and dynamic and follow a rather decentralized software engineering paradigm. This crosscutting characteristic of open source RE can be conceptualized using the “Twin Peaks” model that weaves RE together with software architecture. Although many weaving mechanisms have been proposed in recent years, the lack of theoretical underpinning limits a mechanism’s applicability and usefulness in different scenarios. In this research, we hypothesize stakeholders’ social interaction as an ecologically valid weaving mechanism of the “Twin Peaks” in open source RE. In this work, we use the phrase “stakeholders’ social interaction” to indicate interaction among stakeholders regarding the software system that takes place through some communication means, such as posting comments and artifacts over the issue tracking system. We investigate the influence of stakeholders’ social interaction in different RE activities, in particular, requirements identification, creativity in RE, and requirements implementation of OSS systems. This research enables us to gain valuable insights to generate guidelines for enhancing software engineering practice in relevant areas.

This thesis contributes to two completely unrelated debates in the economic literature, similar only in the relatively high degree of controversy characterizing each one. The first part is methodological and macroeconomic in nature, addressing the question of whether the distribution of income across countries is converging (i.e. are the poor catching up to the rich?) or diverging (i.e. are we witnessing the formation of two exclusive clubs, one for poor countries and another one for rich countries?). Applications of the simple Markov model to this question have generated evidence in favor of the divergence hypothesis. In the first chapter, I critically review these results. I use statistical inference to show that the divergence results are not statistically robust, and I explain that this instability of the results comes from the application of a model for discrete data to data that is actually continuous. In the second chapter, I reposition the whole convergence-divergence debate by placing it in the context of Silverman’s classic survey of non-parametric density estimation techniques. This allows me to use the basic notions of fuzzy logic to adapt the simple Markov chain model to continuous data. When I apply the newly adapted Markov chain model to the cross-country distribution question, I find evidence against the divergence hypothesis, and this evidence is statistically robust. The second part of the thesis is empirical and microeconomic in nature. I question whether observed differences between husbands’ and wives’ participation in labor markets are due to different preferences or to different constraints. My identification strategy is based on the idea that the more power an individual has relative to his/her partner, the more his/her actions will reflect his/her preferences. I use 2001 PSID data on cohabiting couples to estimate a simultaneous equations model of the spousal time allocation decision. My results confirm the stylized fact that specialization and trade does not explain time allocation for couples in which the wife is the primary breadwinner, and suggest that power could provide a more general explanation of the observations. My results show that wives with relatively more power choose to work more on the labor market and less at home, whereas husbands with more power choose to do the opposite. Since women start out from a lower level of labor market participation than men do, it would seem that spouses’ agree that the ideal mix of market work and housework lies somewhere between the husbands’ and the wives’ current positions.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:15:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Leticia Xavier de Lemos Capanema.pdf: 15292531 bytes, checksum: a9c7565d1fb55a5c78dcdbd7ae88287a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-11 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research investigates the television narratology starting from the fact that the fictional production in television has become more complex in recent decades. Considering that the phenomenon of fiction complexity manifests in a distinct sort of supports (oral, scenic, book, cinematic, televisual or hypermedia), what are the features that allow certain works to be classified as complex narratives? There would be an underlying logic that guide and connect them? This thesis holds the hypothesis that there is a fundamental logic of complex narrative permeating all its concrete manifestations: the self-referentiality, namely, the movement of turning back on itself, generating a metareflective reception by the public. Therefore, the specific objective is to investigate the relationship between the complex narrative and the selfreferentiality, as well as its mechanisms and effects in television studies. The main objective of this thesis is to achieve a precise concept of narrative complexity in fiction television that contributes to the solidification of its narratology. The theoretical object of this study is the notion of complex narrative and the empirical object are the manifestations of the narrative complexity in literary fiction, filmic fiction and especially the televisual fiction. The corpus is the american TV series Twin Peaks. In order to clarify some specific concepts, other television programs are briefly examined. Our methodological procedure relies both on Paul Ricoeur's mimetic circle model and on the narratology of Genette, adapted by André Gaudreault and Francois Jost for audiovisual application. Our theoretical argument about the relationship between the complex narrative and the self-reference is based on Alfonso Romano de Sant'Anna and several other authors who also analyzed self-reference in literature, film and television. The principle of self-referentiality, its types, modes and performance levels are explored based on the approaches of Werner Wolf and Winfried Nöth. The results achieved in this study allow us to conclude that the complex narrative is a phenomenon resulting from self-referential strategies present in instances of content, structure and the narrative act / Esta pesquisa trata do tema da narratologia da televisão e parte do constatação de que a produção ficcional televisual tem se complexificado nas últimas décadas. Considerando que o fenômeno da complexidade comparece em ficções de naturezas distintas (orais, cênicas, escriturais, fílmicas, televisuais ou hipermidiáticas), quais seriam as características que permitem que certas obras sejam classificadas como narrativas complexas? Haveria uma lógica subjacente que as orienta, interligando-as? Esta tese sustenta a existência de uma lógica fundamental da narrativa complexa que perpassa todas as suas manifestações concretas: a autorreferencialidade, isto é, o movimento de voltar-se sobre si, gerando, em consequência, a recepção metarreflexiva por parte do público. Por esse caminho investigamos, como objetivos específicos, a relação entre a narrativa complexa e o fenômeno da autorreferencialidade, bem assim, seus mecanismos e efeitos no campo da televisão. O objetivo principal desta tese é alcançar um conceito preciso de complexificação narrativa na ficção televisual que contribua para a solidificação de uma narratologia da televisão. Este estudo tem como objeto teórico a noção de narrativa complexa e como objeto empírico as manifestações de complexidade narrativa na ficção literária, fílmica e, principalmente, a ficção televisual. Elegemos como corpus a série estadunidense Twin Peaks. Com o intuito de esclarecer conceitos específicos, outras obras televisuais são brevemente examinadas. Nossa ferramenta metodológica apoia-se no modelo do círculo mimético de Paul Ricoeur e na narratologia de Gérard Genette, essa última adaptada por André Gaudreault e François Jost para aplicação ao campo audiovisual. Nossa argumentação teórica sobre a relação entre narrativa complexa e autorreferência se inspira nos estudos de Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna e de diversos outros autores que também tematizam a autorreferência nos campos da literatura, do cinema e da televisão. O princípio da autorreferencialidade, seus tipos, modos e níveis de atuação são por nós explorados com base nas abordagens de Werner Wolf e de Winfried Nöth. Os resultados alcançados nesta pesquisa permitem-nos concluir que a narrativa complexa é um fenômeno decorrente de estratégias autorreferenciais presentes nas instâncias do conteúdo, da estrutura e do ato narrativo