Résumé: INTRODUCTION Si les cliniciens enseignants détectent aisément les difficultés des apprenants, ils sont souvent peu outillés pour les étapes subséquentes, du diagnostic à la remédiation. Quoique des outils aient été développés pour les guider face aux difficultés de raisonnement clinique de leurs apprenants, ces outils peuvent être moins familiers des cliniciens et moins adaptés à des contextes de supervision ponctuelle et de soins aigus comme l’urgence. Nous avons donc développé une application algorithmique, à partir de la taxonomie d’Audétat et al. (2010), pour guider les cliniciens enseignants juste-à-temps face aux difficultés de raisonnement clinique. MÉTHODOLOGIE Une étude descriptive interprétative a été réalisée afin d’évaluer l’utilité, l’acceptabilité et la faisabilité d’utiliser cette application à l’urgence. Des entrevues semi-dirigées ont été menées auprès d’un échantillon de convenance de douze urgentistes, avant et après une période d’essai de l’outil de trois mois. RÉSULTATS L’application a été perçue comme particulièrement utile pour préciser les difficultés de raisonnement clinique des apprenants. Utiliser l’outil a été considérée acceptable et faisable en contexte d’urgence, en particulier grâce au format mobile. DISCUSSION Ces résultats suggèrent que l’outil peut être considéré utile pour faciliter l’identification des difficultés des apprenants, mais aussi pour offrir un soutien professoral accessible. Le format mobile et algorithmique semble avoir été un facteur facilitant, ce format étant déjà utilisé par les cliniciens pour consulter ponctuellement de l’information lors de la résolution de problèmes cliniques. CONCLUSION L’étude a démontré globalement une bonne utilité, acceptabilité et faisabilité de l’outil dans un contexte de supervision ponctuelle en soins aigus, ce qui soutient son utilisation par les cliniciens enseignants dans ce contexte. L’étude corrobore également l’intérêt d’un format mobile et algorithmique pour favoriser le transfert de connaissances en pédagogie médicale. / Abstract: INTRODUCTION While clinical teachers generally identify problem learners readily, they often find themselves ill-equipped for the following steps, from diagnosis to remediation. Although various tools have been developed to guide them when dealing with problem learners whose difficulties are based in their clinical reasoning, theses tools might be less familiar for clinicians and less well adapted for certain supervision contexts, like the emergency ward, which is characterized by occasional supervision and acute care. Thus we have developed an algorithmic mobile application, based on Audetat et al.’s taxonomy (2010), in order to guide clinicians just-in-time when supervising learners with clinical reasoning difficulties. METHODOLOGY We conducted an interpretive description study with the aim of evaluating the perceived utility, acceptability and feasibility of using this application in the emergency. Semi-structured interviews took place before and after a three-month trial with the tool, with twelve emergency physicians recruited through voluntary sampling. RESULTS The application was considered to be particularly useful to better identify learners’ clinical reasoning difficulties. Consulting this tool in an emergency context was deemed acceptable and feasible by participants, largely due to the mobile format. DISCUSSION These findings suggest that the tool may be considered useful to better identify learners’ difficulties, but also as an accessible reference for clinical teachers. The mobile and algorithmic format seemed instrumental promoting its use, since such formats are already used frequently by clinicians to access information when solving clinical problems. CONCLUSION This study has shown promising results in terms of utility, acceptability and feasibility in a context of occasional supervision and acute care, which support use of the application by clinical teachers in such contexts. This study also suggests that mobile and algorithmic formats may be of value for knowledge transfer in medical education.

新上市股的長期績效優於市場,但相較於五年未發行新股的對照公司則較差,而在市場空頭時期上市的股票績效卻相對較佳.和未發行新股的對照公司相較,股票的年報酬率變化呈現碗狀的趨勢,在上市後的營運績效有下滑的現象,隱含投資人有過度樂觀的情形.新股發行效果存在,即新上市股在上市五年內對預期報酬率都有負的影響.此效果和規模效果,市價淨值效果同時存在而無法取

For the past half a century, there has been progressive development in corporate finance theories, and among these, corporate financial decisions have been attracting the attention of outsiders. As the outsiders¡¦ learning process of the firm¡¦s private information determines the firm¡¦s value, managers who are concerned with outsiders¡¦ perceptions of their firms try to enhance their firms¡¦ short-term reputation through their financial decisions. However, up to this date, few reputation models have been applied to predict these financial decisions. Three corporate finance issues are involved to identify the reputation effects on corporate finance: (1) convertible bond call policies, (2) IPO decisions and activities, and (3) corporate financing policies. As for the first issue, this study constructs a two-period reputation model of a convertible bond call policy. This model concludes that in equilibrium, a firm with bad management quality and a bad reputation chooses to call, while a firm with good management quality or of a good reputation builds up it reputation by not calling the convertible bonds. This is consistent with the signaling theory proposed by Harris and Raviv (1985). However, the reputation model here identifies the call policy as a reputation-building mechanism rather than being only a signaling role, and suggests that the reputation rents resolve the discrepancies of the stock¡¦s post-call price performance. As for the IPO decisions and activities, this study performs another reputation model to analyze a firm¡¦s reputation effects on IPO activities, especially on the decision to go public. The results yield that a firm¡¦s reputation does affect its decision to go public. By listing equities publicly, firms with good management quality and a solid past would anticipate enhancing their reputations, and those with a poor past would anticipate building up good names. Furthermore, good reputation firms with bad management quality would anticipate maintaining their reputations by going public. On the other hand, it is found that good firms over-invest in building up their reputations and bad firms take advantage of their reputations to go public. Both result in firms¡¦ over-going public and IPO mispricing. This constitutes an alternative interpretation on IPOs¡¦ long-run underperformance and the sharp decline of the survival rate. As for the corporate financing policies, the other reputation model is constructed by taking both determinants, the costs of financial distress as well as the firm¡¦s reputation into consideration. The results show that good management quality firms with good reputations enjoy their financial flexibility between debt and equity. Bad management quality firms take advantage of their good names to issue equities, which leads to over investment. Good management firms lose their financial accesses due to bad reputations, which lead to under investment. Reputations would screen the bad management quality firms with bad reputations off the market. This dissertation concludes that reputations indeed affect the three selected corporate financial decisions and suggests further plow on more corporate finance issues.

I considered on initial public offerings in my thesis. The thesis describes signification of initial public offerings including its advantages and disadvantages, informs about its specifications and recommends to investors, what they should focus on, if they think of such type of investment.

Wind farms are costly projects and prior to the construction, comprehensive wind resource assessment processes are carried out in order to predict the future energy yield with a reliable accuracy. These estimations are made to constitute a basis for the financial assessment of the project. However, predicting the future always accommodates some uncertainties and sometimes these assessments might overestimate the production. Many different factors might account for a discrepancy between the pre-construction wind resource assessment and the operational production data. This thesis investigates an underperforming wind farm in order to ascertain the reasons of a discrepancy case. To investigate the case, the relevant data and information along with the actual production data of three years are shared with the author. Prior to the construction, a wind resource assessment was carried out by an independent wind consultancy company and the work overestimated the annual energy production (AEP) by 19.1% based on the average production value of available three years. An extensive literature review is performed to identify the possible contributing causes of the discrepancy. The data provided is investigated and a new wind resource assessment is carried out. The underestimation of the wind farm losses are studied extensively as a potential reason of the underperformance. For the AEP estimations, WAsP in WindPro interface and WindSim are employed. The use of WindSim led to about 2-2.5% less AEP estimations compared to the results of WAsP. In order to evaluate the influence of long term correlations on the AEP estimations, the climatology datasets are created using the two different reanalysis datasets (MERRA and CFSR-E) as long term references. WindSim results based on the climatology data obtained using the MERRA and CFSR-E datasets as long term references overestimated the results by 10.9% and 8.2% respectively.

When companies go public, the shares they sell tend to be underpriced, and thus exhibit a significant price jump on the first day of trading. As a result, IPO investors materialize significant first-day returns. In the long-run, however, relative to some benchmark, investors appear to lose out by continuing to hold the stocks of firms that have recently gone public. These IPO phenomena are subject of the following study. The thesis addresses two main objectives. First, it systematically surveys relevant empirical evidence and theories that have been proposed to explain IPO underpricing and long-run underperformance. In addition, both anomalies are studied form the viewpoints of two competing finance theories: efficient market hypothesis and behavioral finance. Theories of underpricing are grouped within two broad categories: asymmetric information based models and behavioral theories. While asymmetric information based models assume that one of the IPO transaction parties knows more than others, and that these information frictions give rise to underpricing, behavioral explanations, on the other hand, assume the presence of irrational investors who are the prime cause of underpricing. Theories of poor long-term performance are based on behavioral finance perspective only, where "investor sentiment" plays the main role. On the contrary, proponents of market efficiency strongly argue that the notion of systematic IPOs long-run underperformance is spurious. Secondly, the thesis empirically examines the presence of underpricing and the long-performance of IPOs in European NYSE Euronext markets. In general, the results undoubtedly show that IPOs in the sample are moderately underpriced on average. However, the assessment of IPOs long-run performance provides contentious findings and probably requires further research.

The fund market has grown substantially during the past decades and the majority of Swedish citizens are invested in funds directly or through pension savings. There is mixed evidence on the performance of Swedish equity funds depending on the method employed and the time period studied. In this study, we set out to estimate abnormal performance using acknowledged methods during a time-period that is both longer and more recent than previous studies. Our sample is survivorship-free and consists of 150 mutual equity funds during January 1993 to December 2011. We use a four-factor model to estimate abnormal performance compared to an index and additional risk factors. We find that the average performance is neutral net of costs and that funds outperform with 1.7 percent before costs, the difference is approximately the average management fee. Over time, we find that the average abnormal performance and the share of funds that have significant outperformance have decreased while the share of significant underperformance has increased. Since the study of fund performance started in the 1960's the twin questions has been; does funds outperform the market and is this a result of pure chance or are managers skilled? Since we observe funds with significant positive and negative abnormal performance, we want to know if the results can attributed to luck or skill. We employ the latest technique, a bootstrap simulation, to test for skill or luck. This is the first study to employ the bootstrap to distinguish skill from luck in sample of Swedish funds. By ranking funds on performance after costs, we find that the performance of the majority of funds can be attributed to skill or "bad skill". The evidence is strongest in the top 95th percentile and above, and from the bottom 50th percentile and below.

Thesis (M. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / Learners’ academic achievement occupies a very important place in education as well as in the learning process. This study was therefore conducted to investigate factors causing the underperformance of grade 12 learners in secondary schools in Ermelo, Msukaligwa 1 circuit in Gert Sibande district Mpumalanga Province. The qualitative approach was used. Qualitative data generation techniques (semi- structured face to face, observations and document analysis) were used to solicit the understanding of parents, grade 12 learners, grade 12 teachers and heads of department with regard to the phenomenon being studied. The sample size of 22 participants (6 parents, 6 learners, 4 heads of departments and 6 grade 12 teachers) were selected through purposive sampling technique. Data generated through interviews was analysed by using thematic analysis approach. Findings revealed that there are possible factors that cause poor academic performance in Grade 12. Factors include home related factors, school related factors, teacher related factors, parent related factors and learner related factors. Identified home related factors were the size of the family, unpredictable environment at home as well as low financial income. School related factors included overcrowded classrooms, shortage of textbooks, planned and unplanned programmes. Teacher related factors included non-attendance of classes, inadequate content coverage, non-implementation of subject improvement strategies and excessive code switching. Learner related factors included late coming and attitude towards learning. Parent related factors include poor parental support and inadequate level of education. Based on the findings, the study recommends that appointed heads of department should be responsible for the management of subjects they are qualified to manage. Again, the department of education revisits the implementation of the policy of progression so that only learners deserving to be promoted to the next grade are promoted.

Public organisations account for their performance by making annual reports available to the public. While such increased emphasis on performance leads to a greater awareness of annual reports, it also raises the question of whether performance information is relevant and effective for accountability purposes. This qualitative study uses the Critical Realism approach to assess the contribution of performance reports in making municipalities more responsible; and their managers accountable for achieved and failed service delivery targets. Content and thematic analyses are applied to the collected data following case studies on the metropolitan cities of Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, and Tshwane in Gauteng, South Africa. The findings are that despite poor quality issues in reports, there is no link between performance and accountability. In other words, while performance reports have the capacity to correctly provide actual performance data, they are not used to hold public managers to account. Generally, politicians from underdeveloped countries are elected based on popularity rather than ability, hence they are reluctant to utilise performance reports, instead they tend to keep those public managers who look after their interest despite failures. Therefore, lack of consequences, complex governance systems, and passive citizenry, create a safe zone for both councillors and public managers to remain unaccountable. Further studies are recommended on empowering communities and accountability of councillors to citizens. / Business Management / M. Phil (Accounting Sciences)

This study focused on the teaching of Mathematics to Grade 3 learners and learner underperformance in Mathematics in South Africa and worldwide. A theoretical framework examined the value of social constructivism, behaviourism and connectivism to Mathematics teaching. A comparison was made with Mathematics teaching in primary schools in South Africa, Bangladesh and Mozambique according to the literature. Against this background a qualitative inquiry was conducted in three selected primary schools with a purposeful, convenient sample of five Grade 3 Mathematics teachers in Danielskuil town, North West Province, South Africa Data were gathered by semi-structured individual interviews, non-participatory classroom observation and document analysis to explore theoretical knowledge and teaching approaches of participants, establish strategies to enhance teacher proficiency, identify successes and challenges in teaching Grade 3 Mathematics and factors that impede Mathematics teaching in the selected primary schools. Findings indicated challenges created by lack of physical classroom resources such as stationery, textbooks and learning aids, poor school infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, discipline problems, teachers' inability to meet the needs of learners with barriers to learning , language barriers , learners' social problems, teachers' lack of Pedagogical Content Knowledge , lack of developmental teacher training and limited stakeholder support from the Department and parents. Successes related to Mathematics intervention programmes, study groups after school and math's clubs. Based on the literature and empirical inquiry, recommendations were made for implementation by Department of Basic Education, schools and teachers improve the learner performance outcomes in Grade 3 Mathematics in primary schools in South Africa. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / M. Ed. (Curriculum and Instructional Studies)