The aim of this thesis is to create a comprehensive view of financial reporting of lease contracts from lessee's and lessor's point of view in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP). The thesis is divided into four parts. The first part is devoted to basic characteristics of the lease and its reporting according to the currently applicable standards - IAS 17 and ASC 840. Content of the next part is Convergence of Accounting Standards. Second half of the thesis focuses on the Exposure Draft and Comment Letters.

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Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Jason Brody / As effects of social and environmental conflicts perpetuate globally, fewer nations in the world appear to be at settled peace. The on-set of natural disasters and socio-political conflicts continue to force the United States Government to be increasingly called upon to provide resources that secure unstable regions during times of conflict. One method the government uses to securing its international neighbors is through the deployment of US Army reconstruction teams. These teams assist in transforming a negatively impacted foreign nation into a peaceful and functioning sovereignty within itself and its region; however, in order to begin reconstruction and engage in long term stability for the best interest of the host-nation, the Army must scrutinize current decision-making techniques to assure that basic human rights are instilled and local inhabitants have a means to sustain those efforts. This research sets out to define a planning model which supplements Army doctrine concerning post-conflict reconstruction, mainly FM 3-07 Stability Operations. It looks to incorporate academia, professional experience, and government resources with indigenous leadership in order to define a process to reconstruct infrastructure for a foreign nation during a time of need. More importantly, it looks to enforce those measures which endorse the basic human rights of society to instill security in post-conflict regions.

In the southwest United States, the current prolonged warm drought is similar to the predicted future climate change scenarios for the region. This study aimed to determine patterns in vegetation response to the early 21st century drought across multiple biomes. We hypothesized that different biomes (forests, shrublands, and grasslands) would have different relative sensitivities to both climate drivers (precipitation and temperature) and legacy effects (previous-year's productivity). We tested this hypothesis at eight Ameriflux sites in various Southwest biomes using NASA Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from 2001 to 2013. All sites experienced prolonged dry conditions during the study period. The impact of combined precipitation and temperature on Southwest ecosystems at both annual and sub-annual timescales was tested using Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). All biomes studied had critical sub-annual climate periods during which precipitation and temperature influenced production. In forests, annual peak greenness (EVImax) was best predicted by 9-month SPEI calculated in July (i.e., January-July). In shrublands and grasslands, EVImax was best predicted by SPEI in July through September, with little effect of the previous year's EVImax. Daily gross ecosystem production (GEP) derived from flux tower data yielded further insights into the complex interplay between precipitation and temperature. In forests, GEP was driven by cool-season precipitation and constrained by warm-season maximum temperature. GEP in both shrublands and grasslands was driven by summer precipitation and constrained by high daily summer maximum temperatures. In grasslands, there was a negative relationship between temperature and GEP in July, but no relationship in August and September. Consideration of sub-annual climate conditions and the inclusion of the effect of temperature on the water balance allowed us to generalize the functional responses of vegetation to predicted future climate conditions. We conclude that across biomes, drought conditions during critical sub-annual climate periods could have a strong negative impact on vegetation production in the southwestern United States.

This study examines the coalescence of American expatriate communities in Britain between 1815 and 1914. Blending transnational and post-colonial approaches to US history, this dissertation explores the nuanced roles of Americans in Britain as intermediaries in the consolidation of US independence, the formation of American nationalism, and the emergence of American empire. Transatlantic economic and cultural connections converged in American communities in Britain. The American communities of London and Liverpool evolved and dissolved around these rapidly transforming interconnections. These communities are recaptured in this study from scattered archives on both side of the Atlantic. The Antebellum American community acted as a conduit between British capital and American nation-building projects and promoted transatlantic rapprochement as the route to effective US independence. The importation of American innovation and manufactured goods into Britain and the Empire, however, followed late nineteenth-century expatriates. As US power surged, Americans in London created a self-identifying American “colony,” which acted as the interface between US economic and cultural expansion and British imperialism. Throughout the century, Britain’s American communities acted as crucibles in which sectional, national, and racial identifications were contested and reconstructed. Expatriate newspapers, celebrations, and social institutions, provided the venues for Americans in Britain to articulate and reformulate American nationalism. In the context of British power, the contestations and reformulations of these identities were bled through with post- and anti-colonial anxieties. Expatriates therefore acted as avatars for sharpening distinctions between the US and Britain in debates over the form of American national character, culture, and empire – and Britain’s role in all three. This study reframes these themes around the previously overlooked communities of Americans in Britain. From these communities, which stand at the intersection of US and British Imperial history, a new perspective emerges on the reciprocal dynamics of nationhood and empire in nineteenth century Anglo-American relations.

This thesis is based on four essays in exchange rates and international finance. The first essay, examined in the second chapter, considers the long-run performance of the flexible-price monetary model as well as the real interest differential monetary model to explain the dollar–yen exchange rate during a period of high international capital mobility. We apply the Johansen methodology to quarterly data over the period 1980:01–2009:04 and show that the inadequacy of the two monetary models is due to the breakdown of their underlying building-blocks, money demand stability and purchasing power parity. In particular, modifying the monetary models by adjusting them for real stock prices to capture the stability of money demands on one hand and also for real economic variables such as productivity differential, relative government spending, and real oil price to explain the persistence in the real exchange rate on the other provide long-run relationships that appear consistent with the monetary models. Our findings of long-run weak exogeneity tests also emphasise the importance of the extended models employed here. The second essay, examined in the third chapter, is on the nature of the linkages between stock market prices and exchange rates in six advanced economies, namely the US, the UK, Canada, Japan, the euro area, and Switzerland, using data on the banking crisis between 2007 and 2010. Bivariate GARCH-BEKK models are estimated to produce evidence of unidirectional Granger causality from stock returns to exchange rate changes in the US and the UK, in the opposite direction in Canada, and of bidirectional causality in the euro area and Switzerland. Furthermore, causality-in-variance from stock returns to exchange rate changes is found in Japan and in the opposite direction in the euro area and Switzerland, whilst there is evidence of bidirectional causality-in-variance in the US and Canada. These findings imply limited opportunities for investors to diversify their assets during this period. The third essay, examined in the fourth chapter, considers the impact of net bond and net equity portfolio flows on exchange rate changes. Two-state Markov-switching models are estimated for the exchange rate of the US vis-a-vis Canada, the euro area, Japan and the UK. Our results suggest that the relationship between net portfolio flows and exchange rate changes is nonlinear for all cases considered, except that of the US dollar against the Canadian dollar. The fourth essay, examined in the fifth chapter, considers the impact of exchange rate uncertainty on different components of net portfolio flows, namely net equity and net bond flows, as well as the dynamic linkages between exchange rate volatility and the variability of these two types of flows. Specifically, a bivariate GARCH-BEKK-in mean model is estimated using bilateral data for the US vis-à-vis Australia, the UK, Japan, Canada, the euro area, and Sweden over the period 1988:01-2011:12. The results indicate that the effect of exchange rate uncertainty on net equity flows is negative in the euro area, the UK and Sweden, and positive in Australia, whilst two countries (Canada and Japan) showed insignificant responses. With regard to the impact of uncertainty on net bond flows, it is shown to be negative in all countries, except Canada (where it is positive). Under the assumption of risk aversion, this suggests that exchange rate uncertainty induces investors, especially those of the counterpart countries to the US, to reduce their financing activities to maximise returns and minimise exposure to uncertainty. This evidence is strong for the UK, the euro area and Sweden as opposed to Canada, Australia and Japan. Furthermore, since exchange rate volatility and the variability of flows are interlinked, exchange rate or credit controls on these flows can be used to pursue economic and financial stability.

This study explores the foundations of US counterinsurgency policy and doctrine in order to better understand the main historical influences on that policy and doctrine and how those influences have informed the current US approach to counterinsurgency. The results of this study indicate the US experience in counterinsurgency during the Greek Civil War and the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines had a significant influence on the development of US counterinsurgency policy and doctrine following World War II through the Kennedy presidency. In addition, despite a major diversion from the lessons of Greece and the Philippines during the Vietnam War, the lessons were re-institutionalized in US counterinsurgency policy and doctrine following the war and continue to have significant influence today, though in a highly sanitized and, therefore, misleading form. As a result, a major disconnect has developed between the “rhetoric and reality” of US counterinsurgency policy. This disconnect has resulted from the fact that many references that provide a more complete and accurate picture of the actual policies and actions taken to successfully defeat the insurgencies have remained out of the reach of non-government researchers and the general public. Accordingly, many subsequent studies of counterinsurgency overlook, or only provide a cursory treatment of, aspects that may have had a critical impact on the success of past US counterinsurgency operations. One such aspect is the role of US direct intervention in the internal affairs of a supported country. Another is the role of covert action operations in support of counterinsurgency operations. As a result, the counterinsurgency policies and doctrines that have been developed over the years are largely based on false assumptions, a flawed understanding of the facts, and a misunderstanding of the contexts concerning the cases because of misleading, or at least seriously incomplete, portrayals of the counterinsurgency operations.

With the surge of Internet-based corporate communication, organization, andinformation management, financial markets have undergone radical transformation. Inthe interconnected economy of today, market participants are forced to acceptcyberattacks, data breaches, system failures, or security flaws as any other (varying)cost of doing business. While cyberspace encompasses practically any firm indeveloped economies and a large portion in developing ones, combatting such risks isdeemed a question of firm-specific responsibility: the situation resembles an ‘every manfor himself’ scenario. Consulting standard financial theory, rational utility-maximizinginvestors assume firm-specific (idiosyncratic) risk under expectations of additionalcompensation for shouldering such risk – they are economically incentivized. The omnipresence of cyberattacks challenges fundamental assumptions of the CapitalAsset Pricing Model, Optimal Portfolio Theory, and the concept of diversifiability. Thethesis problematizes underlying rationality notions by investigating the effect of acyberattack on stock volatility. Explicitly, the use of stock volatility as a proxy for riskallows for linking increased volatility to higher risk premiums and increased cost ofcapital. In essence, we investigate the following research question: What is the effect ofa disclosed cyberattack on stock volatility for firms listed in the USA?. Using event study methodology, we compile a cyberattack database for events between2010 and 2015 involving 115 firms listed on US stock exchanges. The specified timeperiod cover prevailing research gaps; due to literature paucity the focus on volatilityfits well. For a finalized sample of 189 events, stock return data is matched to S&P500index return data within a pre-event estimation window and a post-event window tocalculate abnormal returns using the market model. The outputs are used to estimateabnormal return volatility before and after each event; testing pre and post volatilityagainst each other in significance tests then approximates the event-induced volatility.Identical procedures are performed for all subsamples based on time horizon, industrybelonging, attack type, firm size, and perpetrator motivation. The principal hypothesis, that stock volatility is significantly higher after a cyberattack,is found to hold within both event windows. Evidence on firm-specific characteristics ismore inconclusive. In the long run, inaccessibility and attacks on smaller firms seem torender significantly larger increases in volatility compared to intrusion and attacks onlarger firms; supporting preexisting literature. Contrastingly, perpetrator motive appearsirrelevant. Generally, stocks are more volatile immediately after an attack, attributableto information asymmetry. For most subsamples volatility seem to diminish with time,following the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Summing up, disparate results raisequestions of the relative importance of contingency factors, and also about futuredevelopments within and outside academic research.

Thesis (MDram (Drama))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / The general aim of this study was to establish why students at Stellenbosch University embarked on a course in Drama. The initial hypothesis was that students were attracted to the expressive, therapeutic features inherent to this field of study. A questionnaire was designed to test this hypothesis. However, in the early stages of the project, feedback from the Drama students of 2005 and, at a later stage, that of the first-year Drama students of 2006 and 2007 proved the hypothesis to be incorrect. The specific questionnaire that was handed out to students also included questions that would enhance the interest value of the survey, such as: “What question was the most frequently asked by your friends and relatives enquiring about your Drama studies?” Responses to the latter question, amongst others, triggered two other pilot studies. The aforementioned studies were conducted among 110 students from different disciplines on the US (University of Stellenbosch) campus, as well as among 65 respondents in the Stellenbosch area, and focused on perceptions around Drama students and the drama profession as such. The final study contained the following three problem statements: 1. Are there any stereotypical prejudices towards Drama students? If so, who and what is the Drama student in terms of personality type and character traits? 2. Are there any stereotypical prejudices towards this field of study and the professional field? If so, what do the field of study and the professional field constitute within the South African context? 3. Why Drama? or rather, what is the purpose of Drama, and what motivates students at Stellenbosch University (SU) to choose this particular profession, given the current perceptions? The supporting theories and the data, though not wholly significant, indicated that a marked degree of stereotyping existed with regard to Drama students and the profession. These perceptions about the students and the related professions have also been validated by the limited number of existing studies that could be found on this topic. Moreover, feedback from 253 Drama students revealed that they had decided to study Drama for a variety of reasons, and not only because a successful career in this field will inevitably lead to stardom and fame, which is contrary to what people generally tend to believe.

The 2002 National Security Strategy of the US (NSS 2002) appeared to have presented a momentous approach to self-defense. To many, the doctrine of preemptive selfdefense seemed to challenge the legal and political foundations of the post-World War II international order. Some saw in the US stated reliance on preemption a direct threat to the international system embodied in the UN Charter. The prima facie case that the US position was novel and even dangerous appeared persuasive. This thesis attempts to assess the exceptionality of NSS 2002 in its formulation and implications. This question of exceptionality is broadly divided into two sections. The first section deals with internal exceptionality, in terms of means (the deliberation and drafting processes) and ends (the US defense posture). The second section deals with external exceptionality in the broader terms of possible consequences outside the US. Section One begins by establishing the grounds for looking into the formulation of NSS 2002, and provides the background for that Strategy's mandated precursors. After exploring how National Security Strategy documents are conceived and framed, Section One discusses the Strategy as it was published, and examines a sampling of contemporaneous reactions to its publication. Section Two concentrates on the second part of the research question, and utilizes a thematic approach - in terms of the use of force, the international security environment, and international law. Possible consequences of the proposed US response to contemporary security challenges are considered in these three key areas.