Some Middle English Sermon Verse and its Transmission in Manuscript and Print

Special volume: Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Susan Powell, ed. by Martha Driver and Veronica O’MaraSpecial volume: Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Susan Powell, ed. by Martha Driver and Veronica O’MaraSpecial volume: Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Susan Powell, ed. by Martha Driver and Veronica O’Mar

Henry VII\u27s London in the Great Chronicle

This modernized extract from The Great Chronicle of London covers the reign of England’s first Tudor king, Henry VII (1485-1509). It gives an eye-witness account of events in London, and of news from elsewhere, from the viewpoint of a well-to- do citizen who was closely involved in civic administration. It describes many notable public events: riots and uprisings, executions, coronations, royal marriages and funerals, and ceremonial activities involving the mayor and aldermen. Its year by year entries also cover matters like the weather, the cost of living, taxes, and the effects of building work undertaken in the city. Although its compiler worked to a scheme common to other London chronicles from the period, he was ready to express his own views on a number of matters, and wrote with keen observation and occasional wit.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_teamsdp/1007/thumbnail.jp

A Quantile Monte Carlo approach to measuring extreme credit risk

We apply a novel Quantile Monte Carlo (QMC) model to measure extreme risk of various European industrial sectors both prior to and during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The QMC model involves an application of Monte Carlo Simulation and Quantile Regression techniques to the Merton structural credit model. Two research questions are addressed in this study. The first question is whether there is a significant difference in distance to default (DD) between the 50% and 95% quantiles as measured by the QMC model. A substantial difference in DD between the two quantiles was found. The second research question is whether relative industry risk changes between the pre-GFC and GFC periods at the extreme quantile. Changes were found with the worst deterioration experienced by Energy, Utilities, Consumer Discretionary and Financials; and the strongest improvement shown by Telecommunication, IT and Consumer goods. Overall, we find a significant increase in credit risk for all sectors using this model as compared to the traditional Merton approach. These findings could be important to banks and regulators in measuring and providing for credit risk in extreme circumstances.Asset Selection, Factor Model, DEA, Quantile Regression

Using Digital Lectures to Assist Student Learning

This study explores the use and usefulness of digital lectures as a resource to augment conventional face-to-face lectures for students in an undergraduate business course. Twelve digital lectures were provided to students enrolled in a third year finance unit of study. The digital lectures were prepared at the desktop using proprietary software to record on-screen activity (including lecture slides, real-time annotations and demonstrations) and voice-over narration. Each lecture was made available online and on CD concurrently with the face-to-face lecture (attendance at which was voluntary). Twelve principles of multimedia design (Mayer 2009), based on dual-coding theory (Paivio 2006) and a model of the working memory (Baddeley 1992; Baddeley 1999), influenced the design of the digital lectures. A framework was developed to explain the potential learning benefit for students from using digital lectures. It highlighted issues of access, control and learning as being important. A voluntary survey was independently conducted after the semester finished to establish how students used the digital lectures and whether they found this resource aided their learning. Forty students from a class of 52 completed the survey. Students reported using the digital lectures to supplement rather than replace the face-to-face lectures. Of the twelve lectures in the unit, students reported attending nine face-to-face lectures and viewing nine digital lectures, on average. A range of positive statements about the value of digital lectures to aid student learning recorded very high mean levels of agreement. In these student responses, all three characteristics of access, control and learning emerged to explain why students used the digital lectures consistently and regarded them as a valuable resource. The high value placed by students on these digital lectures is subsequently confirmed by anonymous student unit evaluation information collected by the university

Peas in a pod: Canadian and Australian banks before and during a Global Financial Crisis

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the Canadian and Australian banking systems have been singled out by some commentators as having performed better than many other banking systems, particularly those in Europe, America and the United Kingdom. Banks in both Canada and Australia, for instance, have continued to report enviable earnings, sound capital levels, and high credit ratings both before and during the GFC. The G-20 and the European Union have tried to identify the features of the Canadian and Australian financial systems which have underpinned this success in order to use them in shaping a revised international regulatory framework. One area of focus has been the regulations governing “quality of capital”. Despite these apparent successes, there is some evidence that both Canadian and Australian banks experienced considerable deterioration in the market value of their assets during the GFC. In this paper we use the KMV / Merton structural methodology, which incorporates market asset values, to examine default probabilities of 9 listed Canadian banks and 13 Australian listed banks in both a pre-GFC period (2000-2006) and a GFC period (2007-2008). We also modify the model to incorporate conditional probability of default which measures extreme credit risk. This paper finds that bank risk was significantly similar for Australian and Canadian Banks during the GFC period. This includes an assessment of impaired assets, Value at Risk (VaR) and Distance to Default (DD), as well as the extreme measures of Conditional VaR (CVaR), and Conditional Distance to Default (CDD); metrics which confirm the two countries similarities in terms of a significant increase in credit risk between pre-GFC and GFC periods. The extent of this increase was, however, far more pronounced for Australia, which was coming off a lower base. Bank risk for both countries was found to be far lower than for global counterparts due to factors such as sound regulatory control and low levels of involvement in sub-prime lending. This could provide lessons for global banks on risk management. A key conclusion of the paper is that it is important that fluctuating market values, especially the extreme fluctuations which are measured by CVaR and CDD, are a key consideration when determining risk management criteria such as capital adequacy