Essay 1: Expectation-Driven House Prices, Debt Default and Inflation Dynamics We contribute to the literature on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with housing collateral by including shocks to house price expectations. We also incorporate endogenous mortgage defaults that are rarely included in DSGE models with housing collateral. We use this model to study the effects of variations in house price expectations on macroeconomic dynamics and their implications for monetary policy. Model simulations show that an increase in expected future house prices leads to a decline in mortgage default rate and interest rates on household and business loans, whereas it leads to an increase in house prices, housing demand, household debt, business debt, bank leverage ratio and economic activity. In contrast to previous studies, we find that inflation is low during a house price boom. Finally, we show that monetary policy that takes into account household credit growth reduces the volatility of output and dampens a rise in housing demand, household debt and bank leverage ratio that enhances financial stability. However, a central bank that reacts to household credit growth increases the volatility of inflation. / Essay 2: House Price Expectations, Boom-Bust Cycles and Implications for Monetary Policy This essay examines the role of household expectations about future house prices and their implications for boom-bust cycles and monetary policy. Our findings are as follows. First, waves of optimism and pessimism about future house prices generate boom-bust cycles in house prices, financial activities (household debt, business debt, bank leverage, interest rates on household and business loans) and the real economy (housing demand, consumption, employment, investment and output). Second, we find that inflation declines during a house price boom and increases during a house price burst. Third, we find that monetary policy that reacts to household credit growth reduces the magnitude of boom-bust cycles and improves household welfare. Fourth, we find that the case for taking into account household credit growth becomes stronger in an economy in which the bank capital to asset ratio requirement is low, interest rates on loans and deposits adjust immediately to changes in the policy rate, or the household sector is highly indebted. / Essay 3: Credit Disruptions and the Spillover Effects between the Household and Business Sectors This essay examines the effects of credit supply disruptions in a New Keynesian DSGE model with housing collateral and working capital channels. A tightening of business credit conditions creates negative spillovers from the business sector to the household sector through labor income and housing collateral channels. A tightening of household credit conditions has negative spillover effects on the business sector via the housing collateral channel. We find that spillovers are more sensitive to changes in leverage where the shock occurs. A negative business credit shock creates upward pressure on inflation, whereas a negative household credit shock creates downward pressure on inflation. The working capital channel magnifies the response of inflation to a business credit shock, whereas it dampens the response of inflation to a household credit shock.

This dissertation is devoted to a study of the homo diegetic, extra diegetic narrator (terms derived from Genets). The main premise was to study the child as narrator, to differentiate between the child as narrator and the adult narrator, to peg down specific problems but also to show the advantages of the child narrator over the a adult narrator. With Genette as basis the writer has tried to clear up the widespread confusion in the literary world between the narrator who presents the narrative and the character whose consciousness orients the perspective, the who speaks and who sees of Genette. The first part of the study provides a theoretical background to the second part and is largely based on the typology of Gerard Genette. As the youthful reader is the most likely reader of the three chosen texts (Skrik kom huis toe by Dolf van Niekerk, Woorde is soos wars by Rona Rupert and Boom bomer boomste (Tree-more, tree-most - translated by Eve Merchant, 1983) by Elsabe Steenberg), a chapter in the first part is devoted to an investigation of the enforceability of the criterion used to differentiate between books meant for adults and books meant for children. Concerning these texts the writer’ s contention is that the degree of presence of the narrator as well as die placing of emphasis, either on the narrator or on the character whose perspective orients the narrative (the one who focalizes), determine the specific perspective of the narration. Personal traits of characters are often revealed by their respective objects of focalization. The three short novels previously mentioned are thematically related, but because of the specific handling of the narrator and of focalization in each, a multiplicity of perspectives is opened. In Skrik kom huis toe, the younger, experiencing self is emphasised. Albert's vision , and not that of the narrator, orients the narrative to such an extent that the reader easily identifies with his personal existential crisis. The voice of a narrating instance is barely discernible and has, for all practical purposes, no role in the text. The protagonist focalizes intently upon matters of personal concern and thus reveals an egocentric personality. The thinly populated narrative space as well as the bleakness of this space suggests something of the unhappiness and utter loneliness of the boy, Albert. In Woorde is soos wors, which is thematically related to the previous work , a completely different perspective is revealed because of the accent falling on the narrating instance himself. Uncommon in Afrikaans, the use of het ge- is sustained throughout the text, thereby undeniably creating a distance between the narrator and history. In contrast to the previous text the narrator emphasizes the fact that his experiences be long t o a distant past. Direct identification with an experiencing self is ruled out because of the out spoken diegetic nature of the text. The stress falls on the event rather than on the experience there of. The protagonist seldom focalizes and if he does this text is obviously imbedded in the text of the narrator. His world is nevertheless populated by a variety of people with whom he, without except ion, relates positively. The narrative space shows a much greater variety and is more colourful than that of Skrik kom huis toe . This s is meaningful in the characterization of the protagonist, Josias / MA, PU vir CHO, 1984

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has been portrayed in scholarly literature as a prominent case of postcolonial African ‘growth failure’. Between 1960 and 2000 oil reserves were exploited resulting in revenues of more than $300 billion to the Nigerian government, while real per capita income fell over the same period. This thesis, by focusing on building and construction in Nigeria from 1960 to 2000, explains how and why Nigeria failed to invest its oil revenues to create long-term economic growth. Its findings have important implications for investment analyses of other commodity-rich countries in Africa and across the developing world. It draws on a wide range of primary quantitative and qualitative sources including government surveys, construction-related company financial data and project lists, industry publications, newspapers, and the correspondence files of a major Nigerian architecture firm. These are used to present a picture of historical building activity which includes a 40-year dataset of cement price and consumption, and a construction supply curve for both the oil boom and bust periods. By quantifying for the first time the long-observed ‘ghost construction’ of the oil boom, this thesis finds that annually about two thirds of what scholars and national accounts statistics had estimated was being invested in construction was never actually invested, implying that what was invested offered a greater return than has previously been acknowledged. Although investment in construction was overstated during the oil boom, during the oil bust construction was understated as major government projects were funded off-budget and away from public scrutiny. This thesis demonstrates that the most productive area of public investment has been infrastructure, and further that the private sector construction industry was a valuable asset which greatly enhanced the government’s ability to implement investment programmes, when it had the political will to do so.

Energi är grunden för allt mitt arbete. Utan Energi så finns det inget liv. Vad ska jag göra för att få energi och vad ska jag undvika för att inte förlora den? Ett undersökande i hur jag ska gå till väga för att bli lycklig i mitt liv och med min konst. För mig handlar det om att roligt. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa………….HAHAHAHA!!!

In this thesis, experiments and simulations are performed to study the deployment dynamics of space webs and space booms, focusing on the deployment and stabilization phases of the space web and the behavior of the bi-stable tape spring booms after long-term stowage. The space web, Suaineadh, was launched onboard the sounding rocket REXUS-12 from the Swedish launch base Esrange in Kiruna on 19 March 2012. It served as a technology demonstrator for a space web. A reaction wheel was used to actively control the deployment and stabilization states of the 2×2 m2 space web. After ejection from the rocket, the web was deployed but entanglements occurred since the web did not start to deploy at the specified angular velocity. The deployment dynamics was reconstructed by simulations from the information recorded by inertial measurement units and cameras. Simulations show that if the web would have started to deploy at the specified angular velocity, the web would most likely have been deployed and stabilized in space by the motor, reaction wheel and controller used in the experiment. A modified control method was developed to stabilize the out-of-plane motions before or during deployment. New web arms with tape springs were proposed to avoid entanglements. A deployable booms assembly composed of four 1-m long bi-stable glass fiber tape springs was designed for the electromagnetically clean 3U CubeSat Small Explorer for Advanced Missions (SEAM). The deployment dynamics and reliability of the SEAM boom design after long-term stowage were tested by on-ground experiments. A simple analytical model was developed to predict the deployment dynamics and to assess the effects of the GOLS and the combined effects of friction, viscoelastic strain energy relaxation, and other factors that act to decrease the deployment force. In order to mitigate the viscoelastic effects and thus ensure self-deployment, different tape springs were designed, manufactured and tested. A numerical model was used to assess the long-term stowage effects on the deployment capability of bi-stable tape springs including the friction, nonlinear-elastic and viscoelastic effects. A finite element method was used to model a meter-class fully coiled bi-stable tape spring boom and verified by analytical models. / <p>QC 20170508</p> / SEAM

The 1920s land boom in Florida produced a wide variety of characters. Among the most important, but lesser known, of those was David Paul Davis. Davis was born in November 1885 in Green Cove Springs, Florida. His family moved to Tampa in 1895, where he attended school and held a number of different jobs. He left Tampa in 1908 and reappeared in Jacksonville in 1915. That same year, in Jacksonville, he married Marjorie H. Merritt. The young couple moved to Miami in 1920, where Davis began to sell real estate. He became quite adept, developing a number of subdivisions in the Buena Vista section of the city. He made a considerable fortune in Miami, but lost his wife, who died while giving birth to their second child. Davis moved back to Tampa in 1924 and began work on the largest development on Florida's west coast. That development, Davis Islands, made him wildly rich and nationally famous. He followed up Davis Islands with Davis Shores, a subdivision in St. Augustine that Davis envisioned as being twice the size of Davis Islands. The Florida land boom collapsed before Davis could complete Davis Shores. In an attempt to keep the St. Augustine project afloat, Davis sold his Tampa development in August 1926. The effort was in vain and Davis slipped further into debt. He died under mysterious circumstances while en route to Europe aboard a luxury liner on October 12, 1926.

Le solution du stockage des déchets nucléaires en formations géologique profondes est de plus en plus envisagée. Au cours des travaux d'excavation la barrière naturelle est soumise à des sollicitations de déconfinement qui peuvent induire un endommagement important, et mener localement le matériau à la rupture. Les conditions d'écoulement des fluides et la perméabilité du massif peuvent se trouver fortement modifiées du fait de cet endommagement, mettant ainsi en jeu la sûreté du site. Notre travail de recherche a consisté en la caractérisation expérimentale du comportement hydromécanique de deux roches argileuses : l'argile de Boom (site de Mol, Belgique) et l'argile à Opalinus (site du Mont Terri, Suisse). Des essais triaxiaux axisymétriques en condition saturée ont été réalisés afin d'étudier l'évolution de la perméabilité de ces deux roches en fonction de la contrainte isotrope et du déviateur des contraintes. Les roches argileuses sont des géomatériaux aux comportements complexes liés à de nombreux processus couplés. L'existence d'interactions physico-chimiques fortes entre le fluide et les particules solides et la très faible perméabilité de ces matériaux ont nécessité l'adaptation du dispositif expérimental. Enfin des procédures spéciales de mesures de la perméabilité et de détection de la localisation de la déformation en bandes de cisaillement ont été développées. Nous montrons que la rupture par localisation de la déformation ne modifie pas significativement la perméabilité de l'argile de Boom. En revanche, pour l'argile à Opalinus une forte augmentation de la perméabilité est mise en évidence dans le cas d'une importante fracturation sous faible confinement.

Le stockage des déchets radioactifs dans les formations géologiques profondes peu perméables comme les argilites et les argiles plastiques est envisagée comme une solution possible et fait l'objet de nombreuses études depuis une trentaine d'années. Dans le cadre du projet européen TIMODAZ, l'accent a été mis sur l'étude des effets d'une augmentation de la température engendrée par les déchets exothermiques sur la zone endommagée autour d'une galerie souterraine de stockage. Dans le cadre de ce projet, une étude expérimentale sur le comportement thermique de l'argile de Boom et de l'argile à Opaline a été réalisée. Afin de surmonter les difficultés reliées à l'étude expérimentale des matériaux peu perméables en laboratoire, une nouvelle cellule triaxiale à court chemin de drainage a été mise en œuvre. Les essais ainsi qu'une modélisation numérique montrent que la re-saturation des échantillons désaturés par le processus d'excavation, transport, stockage et préparation peut être réalisée beaucoup plus rapidement par ce dispositif. Les essais de chargement mécanique et thermique en condition drainée (c'est-à-dire avec une surpression interstitielle engendrée négligeable) peuvent être réalisés également dans cette cellule avec des vitesses de chargement plus élevée comparée aux cellules triaxiales classiques. La possibilité de réactivation d'une bande de cisaillement par pressurisation thermique du fluide interstitiel dans un échantillon de l'argile de Boom est mise en évidence. On observe qu'un plan de rupture préexistant dans l'échantillon agit comme un plan de faiblesse pouvant être réactivé de façon préférentielle au moment de la rupture. La résistance au cisaillement obtenue sur le plan de rupture est inférieure à celle de matériau intact pour l'argile de Boom. Le comportement thermique de l'argile à Opaline a été étudié à partir d'essais de chauffage en condition drainée et non drainée sur des échantillons saturés. L'essai de chauffage drainé montre un comportement thermo-elasto-plastique avec limite expansion/contraction à 65°C. Ce comportement est similaire au comportement des argiles faiblement surconsolidées. L'analyse des résultats de l'essai de chauffage non drainé met en évidence que l'eau interstitielle dans l'argile à Opaline a un coefficient de dilation thermique plus important comparé à celui de l'eau libre. Dans la gamme de températures étudiées (25°C-80°C), les mesures de perméabilité sur les échantillons endommagés par un chargement déviatorique ne montrent aucun effet de l'endommagement sur la perméabilité, ce qui prouve la bonne capacité de scellement de l'argile de Boom et l'argile à Opaline saturées

El presente trabajo desarrolla un estudio de paralelo entre tres momentos de la narrativa hispanoamericana (Pre Boom, Boom y Post Boom) mediante el análisis de técnica narrativa de tres obras pertenecientes a dichos momentos, a saber: Alienación de Julio Ramón Ribeyro, El Hablador de Mario Vargas Llosa y Un mundo para Julius de Alfredo Bryce Echenique. Estas obras, por ser de autores tan reconocidos, son representantes dignas cada una de su etapa en la narrativa hispanoamericana. Para realizar este estudio situamos en el tiempo los tres momentos de la narrativa a analizar, es decir, hemos considerado el contexto histórico y social que envolvió a cada uno de los escritores analizados y a las obras en cuestión. Además, hacemos referencia a las características de la literatura hispanoamericana y peruana del siglo XX de manera general. Resulta imprescindible, por ser motivo de esta tesis, realizar el análisis de técnica narrativa de cada una de las obras mencionadas para luego establecer el paralelo entre ellas. Cada obra es una pieza representativa de uno de los momentos y su análisis da pie a una generalización.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 89 pages. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: The 1920s land boom in Florida produced a wide variety of characters. Among the most important, but lesser known, of those was David Paul Davis. Davis was born in November 1885 in Green Cove Springs, Florida. His family moved to Tampa in 1895, where he attended school and held a number of different jobs. He left Tampa in 1908 and reappeared in Jacksonville in 1915. That same year, in Jacksonville, he married Marjorie H. Merritt. The young couple moved to Miami in 1920, where Davis began to sell real estate. He became quite adept, developing a number of subdivisions in the Buena Vista section of the city. He made a considerable fortune in Miami, but lost his wife, who died while giving birth to their second child. Davis moved back to Tampa in 1924 and began work on the largest development on Florida's west coast. That development, Davis Islands, made him wildly rich and nationally famous. / ABSTRACT: He followed up Davis Islands with Davis Shores, a subdivision in St. Augustine that Davis envisioned as being twice the size of Davis Islands. The Florida land boom collapsed before Davis could complete Davis Shores. In an attempt to keep the St. Augustine project afloat, Davis sold his Tampa development in August 1926. The effort was in vain and Davis slipped further into debt. He died under mysterious circumstances while en route to Europe aboard a luxury liner on October 12, 1926. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.