This study seeks to explore the impact that admissions viewbooks have on students’ expectancies of an institution as well as their academic and social engagement. Because few studies exist on admissions viewbooks, the literature review seeks to establish a base for the importance of viewbooks in students’ college choice and their development of expectancies of their chosen institution, as well as the subsequent impacts of violated expectations on engagement and retention. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this study examines (1) the promises made by institutions in their viewbooks as found via textual analysis and (2) the impact of violated expectancies on academic and social engagement. Specifically, this study seeks information about the expectancies students have developed of the University of Kentucky, the degree to which those expectancies have been violated, and the impact of those violations on students’ academic and social engagement on UK’s campus. Findings suggest that UK is positively violating students’ expectancies, which in turn impacts engagement as related to several themes (i.e., faculty-to-student ratio, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities). Implications for instructors, the University of Kentucky, and marketing professionals are included, such as UK should continue its dedication toward developing an excellent and engaging first-year experience.

In this dissertation, I examine the within-country and between-country effects of state-based human rights violations on annual counts of total, fatal and attributed attacks. I use the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) for my outcome variables and Political Terror Scale (PTS) to measure state-based human rights violations. Scholars argue that repressive governments that silence dissidents and close all avenues of political expression increase the likelihood of terrorism and other acts of violence against the state (Gurr, 1970; Crenshaw, 1981; DeNardo, 1985; Piazza, 2017). In such circumstances, terrorism and acts of violence against the state may serve as a defense mechanism against repressive governments (Gurr, 1970). Others argue that state-based violations of human rights can damage public approval and perceptions of legitimacy towards the government (Piazza, 2017). This, in turn, fosters anti-state and anti-status quo grievances. Such polarized environments become vulnerable to extremist movements in regard to the gathering of support, recruitment of new members, and distribution of effective propaganda, all of which may result in increased terrorist attacks at the country-level (Walsh and Piazza, 2010). I use the fixed effects negative binomial regression model to test the effects of within-country changes in state-based human rights violations on annual changes in terrorism. I use generalized hierarchical linear modeling to test the effects of between-country changes in state-based human rights violations on annual changes in terrorism. Using country-level data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), Political Terror Scale (PTS), Polity IV, Freedom House and the World Bank, I examine the relationship between state-based human rights violations and terrorism for 175 countries between 1980 and 2014. The results indicate that state-based human rights violations is significantly and positively correlated with annual terrorism. The results regarding human rights violations are consistent for both within-country and between-country differences. Increases in human rights violations within a country results in increase in the number of terrorist attacks. Similarly, countries which have higher human rights violations also have high frequency of annual terrorist attacks.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--RAND Graduate School, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Recent studies document that covenant violations intensify the conflicts of interest between lenders and borrowers, and lead to greater restrictions on borrowing firms’ financing and investment activities (Chava and Roberts, 2008; Roberts and Sufi, 2009b). Motivated by this literature, I investigate whether accounting conservatism, specifically conditional conservatism, mitigates the adverse consequences of debt covenant violations. I argue that conservative reporting can potentially ameliorate the conflicts of interest between lenders and borrowers. Therefore, I predict that accounting conservatism reduces the adverse impact of covenant violations on borrowers’ financing and investing activities and exhibits a positive association with operating and stock market performance after covenant violations. I obtain a sample of 312 violating and 5,327 non-violating firm-quarters observations from U.S. non-financial public firms during the period of 1998 – 2007 to test my hypotheses. Using three measures of conditional conservatism and a composite measure of the three individual measures, I find that the degree of increase in borrowing firms’ conservative reporting between loan initiation and covenant violation is associated with smaller reductions in firms’ financing and investing activities in the post-violation period. Furthermore, my analyses provide some evidence that firms that increase conservative reporting exhibit better stock market performance, implying that conservative reporting is beneficial for shareholders after covenant violations. I find no evidence that increased accounting conservatism affects operating performance after covenant violations. My results continue to hold after controlling for pre-contracting unconditional and conditional conservatism. Overall, my dissertation provides evidence that conservative accounting practices followed by borrowing firms ease the adverse consequences of debt covenant violations. My dissertation contributes to the emerging literature on the effects of accounting quality on re-contracting outcomes after covenant violations.

No description available.

The objective of this study was to examine the educational intervention that restaurant employees received to see if it reduced the number of food violations in Orange County, California, U.S.. The class, which began in 2007, is known as the Food Employee Education and Sanitation Training (FEEST). This study revealed that the post-test results from FEEST demonstrated a significant improvement in food safety knowledge, and almost all of the participants showed a significant improvement in food safety knowledge. A comparison of inspection reports immediately before and after participation in FEEST showed that food establishments greatly reduced the number of major violations, but the reduction in minor violations was minimal. Further results showed that overall, post-class inspections were not helpful in reducing the number of violations. Moreover, results showed that out of the participating restaurants, those that received a fee and formal letter requiring correction of the violations, known as a Notice of Violation (NOV) or Notice of Decision (NOD), do well on inspection reports in reducing major violations than those who did not receive one, but both types of restaurants were not able to significantly reduce the number of minor violations. These results might be associated with the knowledge and commitment of the restaurant employees. Restaurant employees are not using the food safety knowledge they gained during the educational intervention. Therefore, further training is required to educate restaurant employees, and more should be done to encourage the practice of safe food handling and sanitation.

This thesis investigates the impact of finance on technological innovation. In the first essay we study the causal relation between informativeness of stock prices and innovative efficiency. Using mutual fund flow-driven price pressure as an exogenous shock, we show that impairment of stock price efficiency diminishes innovative efficiency. In the year following the price-pressure shock, patents per R&D dollar drop by 4.7%, while citations are 26.2% lower. Consistent with market feedback, stock mispricing has a greater effect on innovative efficiency when there is less information available from other sources, such as insider information or peers' stock prices. We do not find evidence supporting alternative explanations such as the endogeneity of mutual fund trading, financing effect, managerial incentive, or shareholder short-termism. Overall, our findings show that stock markets improve real efficiency by providing useful market feedback. The second essay examines the implication of intellectual property protection (IP) to equity financing. Firms can protect IP by either keeping their inventions secret or seeking patent protection and disclosing the inventions. We expect the relative protection conferred by the methods to affect the choice between secrecy and patenting. Further, we expect the manner of IP protection to affect the information released by firms and, hence, their stock liquidity and cost of equity capital. For our empirical analysis, we rely on the exogenous passage of state-level statutes that strengthened trade secret protection. We show that stronger trade-secret protection increased opaqueness and reduced stock liquidity. Firms that raised equity capital after the enactment of trade secret statutes experienced more negative stock market reactions. By contrast, the implementation of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), that strengthened patent protection, improved the transparency and stock liquidity of patenting firms. After TRIPS the stock market reaction to equity offering by these firms was also less negative. Our findings suggest that stronger patent protection encourages more information disclosure and reduces financing frictions, while stronger secrecy protection induces opaqueness and makes equity financing more difficult. In the third essay, we show that corporate investment in R&D declines sharply following a financial-covenant violation, wherein creditors can use the threat of accelerating the loan to press for changes in firm policies. The reduction in R&D is more severe in firms with low R&D efficiency i.e., when firm R&D is less productive in terms of ROA and delivers fewer patents and citations. It is striking that, despite decrease in R&D, covenant-violating firms do not suffer a drop in innovative output (patents and citations-to-patents). These results highlight that lenders are judicious in exercising their control rights after covenant violations and suggest that bank financing can be a viable source of financing for innovative firms.

Recent studies document that covenant violations intensify the conflicts of interest between lenders and borrowers, and lead to greater restrictions on borrowing firms’ financing and investment activities (Chava and Roberts, 2008; Roberts and Sufi, 2009b). Motivated by this literature, I investigate whether accounting conservatism, specifically conditional conservatism, mitigates the adverse consequences of debt covenant violations. I argue that conservative reporting can potentially ameliorate the conflicts of interest between lenders and borrowers. Therefore, I predict that accounting conservatism reduces the adverse impact of covenant violations on borrowers’ financing and investing activities and exhibits a positive association with operating and stock market performance after covenant violations. I obtain a sample of 312 violating and 5,327 non-violating firm-quarters observations from U.S. non-financial public firms during the period of 1998 – 2007 to test my hypotheses. Using three measures of conditional conservatism and a composite measure of the three individual measures, I find that the degree of increase in borrowing firms’ conservative reporting between loan initiation and covenant violation is associated with smaller reductions in firms’ financing and investing activities in the post-violation period. Furthermore, my analyses provide some evidence that firms that increase conservative reporting exhibit better stock market performance, implying that conservative reporting is beneficial for shareholders after covenant violations. I find no evidence that increased accounting conservatism affects operating performance after covenant violations. My results continue to hold after controlling for pre-contracting unconditional and conditional conservatism. Overall, my dissertation provides evidence that conservative accounting practices followed by borrowing firms ease the adverse consequences of debt covenant violations. My dissertation contributes to the emerging literature on the effects of accounting quality on re-contracting outcomes after covenant violations.

Doctor Legum - LLD / Uganda and her citizens have endured a troubled, violent, conflict-prone history since independence from the British on 9th October 1962. Conflict in Uganda, just like in many an African country, has its primary root causes in the colonial legacy which sowed a fertile ground for several other secondary causes of present day subsisting conflicts. During Uganda's various military conflicts millions have had their human rights and civil liberties violated with impunity. At the end of each conflict and / or crisis, Uganda has had to grapple with the challenge of finding a lasting solution amidst the significant losses made by the country, many ethnic groups and her citizens. No long term viable and efficient solution or mechanism has been introduced or instituted to forestall future conflicts. What appears to have been introduced or instituted are stopgap measures. Since President Yoweri Museveni took over power on 26 January 1986, a military conflict has been raging in northern Uganda and the surrounding areas spanning eastern Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (hereafter: 'DRC'), the Sudan and the Central African Republic (hereafter: 'CAR'). In this decades-old conflict, the war has primarily pitted the Lord's Resistance Army (hereafter: 'LRA') against the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (hereafter: 'UPDF'). Like many conflicts, the more than twenty-year-old contestation has resulted in the gross violations of human rights of millions of people situated across five African states. The human rights violations, which have resulted in the commission of international crimes have been perpetrated and perpetuated with impunity by both warring parties (LRA and UPDF). Although initially an internal conflict, the conflict in northern Uganda has catapulted itself into an international conflict based on the parties involved, the interest generated, the crimes committed and the areas and people affected by it.

Magister Legum - LLM