The UK overseas territories: A decade of progress and prosperity?

This article analyses the relationship between the UK and its Overseas Territories since the publication of the 1999 White Paper Partnership for Progress and Prosperity. The article considers the efforts by the UK government to improve links with the territories via a new partnership based on mutual obligations and responsibilities. It focuses on the two most important aspects of the White Paper - governance and economic growth and sustainability. Much has been achieved, but fundamental structural problems in the relationship remain unattended. The article concludes by recommending how the relationship can be improved over the coming years. © 2011 Taylor & Francis

Accountability and Transparency in Cooperatives: A Comparative Analysis between Portugal and Germany

Este estudio pretende evaluar si la legislación sobre mecanismos de supervisión interna y externa vigente para las cooperativas alemanas permite un nivel de rendición de cuentasy transparencia más adecuados en términos de información financiera en comparación con el modelo adoptado en Portugal. Para ello, y a través de una metodología cualitativa, utilizando la técnica de análisis de contenido y el modelo de estudio de casos múltiples, se construyeron índices de cumplimiento total y parcial por país para evaluarla transparencia y la rendición de cuentasde las cooperativas en la muestra seleccionada. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que las cooperativas analizadas presentan un índice de cumplimiento superior al 50% en todas las categorías seleccionadas. Sin embargo, en todas las categorías, las cooperativas alemanas presentan un porcentaje mayor que las portuguesas, lo cual nos permite concluir que el modelo alemán de supervisión interna y externa proporciona un mayor nivel de rendición de cuentasy transparencia.Palabras clave: Cooperativa; Información financiera; Consejo de Supervisión; Federación de Auditores.his study aims to assess whether the legislation on internal and external supervisory mechanisms in force for German cooperatives allows for a more adequate accountability and transparency in terms of financial reporting compared to the model adopted in Portugal. For this purpose, and through a qualitative methodology, using the content analysis technique and the multiple case study model, total and partial compliance indexes were constructed by country to assess the cooperatives' transparency and accountability in the selected sample. The results show that the analysed cooperatives present a compliance indexhigher than 50% in all the selected categories. However, in all categories, German cooperatives present a higher percentage than Portuguese cooperatives, thus leading to the main conclusion that the German model of internal and external supervision provides a higher level of accountability and transparency.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Rendición de cuentas y transparencia en las cooperativas: Un análisis comparativo entre Portugal y Alemania

Monográfico: Las organizaciones de participación como protagonistas de la recuperación económicaThis study aims to assess whether the legislation on internal and external supervisory mechanisms in force for German cooperatives allows for a more adequate accountability and transparency in terms of financial reporting compared to the model adopted in Portugal. For this purpose, and through a qualitative methodology, using the content analysis technique and the multiple case study model, total and partial compliance indexes were constructed by country to assess the cooperatives' transparency and accountability in the selected sample. The results show that the analysed cooperatives present a compliance index higher than 50% in all the selected categories. However, in all categories, German cooperatives present a higher percentage than Portuguese cooperatives, thus leading to the main conclusion that the German model of internal and external supervision provides a higher level of accountability and transparency.Este estudio pretende evaluar si la legislación sobre mecanismos de supervisión interna y externa vigente para las cooperativas alemanas permite un nivel de rendición de cuentas y transparencia más adecuados en términos de información financiera en comparación con el modelo adoptado en Portugal. Para ello, y a través de una metodología cualitativa, utilizando la técnica de análisis de contenido y el modelo de estudio de casos múltiples, se construyeron índices de cumplimiento total y parcial por país para evaluar la transparencia y la rendición de cuentas de las cooperativas en la muestra seleccionada. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que las cooperativas analizadas presentan un índice de cumplimiento superior al 50% en todas las categorías seleccionadas. Sin embargo, en todas las categorías, las cooperativas alemanas presentan un porcentaje mayor que las portuguesas, lo cual nos permite concluir que el modelo alemán de supervisión interna y externa proporciona un mayor nivel de rendición de cuentas y transparencia.Escuela de Estudios CooperativosFac. de Ciencias Económicas y EmpresarialesTRUEpu

The weakening of branch predictor performance as an inevitable side effect of exploiting control independence

Many algorithms are inherently sequential and hard to explicitly parallelize. Cores designed to aggressively handle these problems exhibit deeper pipelines and wider fetch widths to exploit instruction-level parallelism via out-of-order execution. As these parameters increase, so does the amount of instructions fetched along an incorrect path when a branch is mispredicted. Many of the instructions squashed after a branch are control independent, meaning they will be fetched regardless of whether the candidate branch is taken or not. There has been much research in retaining these control independent instructions on misprediction of the candidate branch. This research shows that there is potential for exploiting control independence since under favorable circumstances many benchmarks can exhibit 30% or more speedup. Though these control independent processors are meant to lessen the damage of misprediction, an inherent side-effect of fetching out of order, branch weakening, keeps realized speedup from reaching its potential. This thesis introduces, formally defines, and identifies the types of branch weakening. Useful information is provided to develop techniques that may reduce weakening. A classification is provided that measures each type of weakening to help better determine potential speedup of control independence processors. Experimentation shows that certain applications suffer greatly from weakening. Total branch mispredictions increase by 30% in several cases. Analysis has revealed two broad causes of weakening: changes in branch predictor update times and changes in the outcome history used by branch predictors. Each of these broad causes are classified into more specific causes, one of which is due to the loss of nearby correlation data and cannot be avoided. The classification technique presented in this study measures that 45% of the weakening in the selected SPEC CPU 2000 benchmarks are of this type while 40% involve other changes in outcome history. The remaining 15% is caused by changes in predictor update times. In applying fundamental techniques that reduce weakening, the Control Independence Aware Branch Predictor is developed. This predictor reduces weakening for the majority of chosen benchmarks. In doing so, a control independence processor, snipper, to attain significantly higher speedup for 10 out of 15 studied benchmarks

The Evolution of Corporate Governance in Japan: The Continuing Relevance of Berle and Means

Accepted for publication on 9/9/2013 in December 2013 issue, yet to be publishe

The Evolution of Corporate Governance in Japan: The Continuing Relevance of Berle and Means

The evolution of corporate governance in Japan towards international standards continues, though at a gradual pace that often concerns outsiders. The substance of Japanese corporate governance is often questioned due to a lack of understanding of the unique elements of the Japanese institutional system. Japanese companies are under a sustained assault from overseas investors to introduce a greater number of independent directors on boards, improve accountability, and enhance transparency. The majority of Japanese companies have taken what they regard as significant steps in this direction of accountability. In Japan, however, there is a different conception of the role of the board, the function of corporate governance, and the purpose of the corporation. This Article argues that significant change in these enduring Japanese corporate values and practices can only be accomplished if a more convincing theory and model of the corporation is proposed

The Evolution of Corporate Governance in Japan: The Continuing Relevance of Berle and Means

The evolution of corporate governance in Japan towards international standards continues, though at a gradual pace that often concerns outsiders. The substance of Japanese corporate governance is often questioned due to a lack of understanding of the unique elements of the Japanese institutional system. Japanese companies are under a sustained assault from overseas investors to introduce a greater number of independent directors on boards, improve accountability, and enhance transparency. The majority of Japanese companies have taken what they regard as significant steps in this direction of accountability. In Japan, however, there is a different conception of the role of the board, the function of corporate governance, and the purpose of the corporation. This Article argues that significant change in these enduring Japanese corporate values and practices can only be accomplished if a more convincing theory and model of the corporation is proposed

A fully objective Bayesian approach for the Behrens-Fisher problem using historical studies

For in vivo research experiments with small sample sizes and available historical data, we propose a sequential Bayesian method for the Behrens-Fisher problem. We consider it as a model choice question with two models in competition: one for which the two expectations are equal and one for which they are different. The choice between the two models is performed through a Bayesian analysis, based on a robust choice of combined objective and subjective priors, set on the parameters space and on the models space. Three steps are necessary to evaluate the posterior probability of each model using two historical datasets similar to the one of interest. Starting from the Jeffreys prior, a posterior using a first historical dataset is deduced and allows to calibrate the Normal-Gamma informative priors for the second historical dataset analysis, in addition to a uniform prior on the model space. From this second step, a new posterior on the parameter space and the models space can be used as the objective informative prior for the last Bayesian analysis. Bayesian and frequentist methods have been compared on simulated and real data. In accordance with FDA recommendations, control of type I and type II error rates has been evaluated. The proposed method controls them even if the historical experiments are not completely similar to the one of interest

Trading out of Poverty: WTO Agreements and the West African Agriculture. A Report of the Food Security II Cooperative Agreement

This report is a brief survey of WTO agreements and their implications for the West African economies (including Chad). The study reviews the positions of West African countries on various WTO issues and compares these positions with positions expressed by major trade partners, particularly the Cairns Group, the European Union, Japan, Sub-Sahara Africa, and the United States.food security, food policy, world trade organization, poverty, West Africa, international trade, market access, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade, Downloads July 2008-July 2009: 29, F0,