A genre analysis of paid obituary announcements in selected Pakistani English newspapers

Newspaper paid obituary announcements are contextualized generic structures with religious and socio-cultural communicative functions. This generic structure reflects differences among people from various social strata to project their social status. The analysis in the Pakistani milieu was conducted due to a lack of studies which explore these announcements to determine local socio-cultural and socio-economic factors which influence their communicative intents. A genre analysis was conducted to determine the communicative purposes, stylistic devices, gender representation, content selection and non-linguistic features of this genre. Data were obtained by describing, investigating and analysing the discourse generic modes. The data comprises 601 printed paid obituaries selected from Pakistani English newspapers; The Dawn and The News International. A total of 30 respondents from various background were interviewed. A methodological framework of Al-Ali in 2005 which was an adapted form of Swales in 1990 moves analysis model, is used as a prototypical. Moves analysis and inductive reasoning lead towards the structural and informational understanding of these announcements. Procedural steps involving trilateral phases: identification, comprehension and validation have been adopted. The findings show a blend of similarities and dissimilarities with the similarly produced genre globally. It was also found that the communicational load of the textual moves of this genre is dependent on the contextualized societal and religious practices, and personalized intentions of the discourse community. The findings of this study could serve as an abstract model of guidance for the professional and unprofessional writers of this genre in Pakistan. It also helps to create awareness towards using appropriate linguistic forms among practitioners of English in Pakistan, and provides a theoretical model for future researches dealing with a similar subject matte

Negotiation and the Clustering of Corporate Loan Spreads

Most corporate loans are priced at rounded spreads, e.g. spreads that are a multiple of 25 basis points. Using a sample of 16,598 loan tranches signed by US borrowers between January 1988 and December 2010, this study explores the determinants of such interest rate clustering in the corporate syndicated loan market. We postulate that lead arrangers round spreads upwards because of the uncertainty about the riskiness of the borrowers. Consistent with this negotiation hypothesis, we find that clustering increases with the degree of uncertainty, e.g. the degree of information asymmetry between the lead arranger and the borrower. In contrast, clustering is less likely when lead arrangers have acquired information about the borrower through prior interactions. Finally, the fear of reputation loss incentivizes the most reputable lead arrangers to price loans at more competitive non-rounded spreads

Financial Distress and Tail Risk

Considering the declining number of bankruptcy filings, and increasing out-of-court negotiations and debt reorganisations, we argue in favour of penalising firms for becoming sufficiently close to bankruptcy that they have questionable going-concern status. Thus, we propose a definition of financial distress contingent upon firms’ earnings, financial expenses, market value and operating cash flow. Subsequently, we investigate the role of tail risk measures (Value-at-risk and Expected Shortfall) in aggravating likelihood of financial distress. Our results show that longer horizon (three- and five-year) tail risk measures contributes positively toward firms’ likelihood of experiencing financial distress

Lead arranger reputation and the structure of loan syndicates

This study explores the effects of information asymmetry and arranger reputations on syndicated loan structures. The moral hazard problem arising from information asymmetries between borrower and syndicate can be overcome only by the most reputable arrangers. Both moral hazard and adverse selection problems appear when arrangers have an information advantage over other syndicate participants. However, the adverse selection problem arises only when low-reputation arrangers lend to opaque borrowers

Clustered pricing in the corporate loan market: Theory and empirical evidence

Existing theories explaining security price clustering as well as clustering in the retail deposit and mortgage markets are incompatible with the clustering in the corporate loan market. We develop a new theoretical model that the attitude of the lender toward the uncertainty about the quality of the borrower leads to the clustering of spreads. Our empirical results support our theoretical model and we find that clustering increases with the degree of uncertainty between the lender and the borrower. In contrast, clustering is less likely when the uncertainty about the quality of the borrower has been reduced through repeated access and through prior interactions of the lender and the borrower

Business and financial cycles in the Eurozone: synchronization or decoupling

This paper proposes a novel approach, based on probit framework, towards measuring business cycle synchronization for 9 eurozone economies. We find strong cross-country synchronization in both business cycles and financial cycles. Moreover, financial synchronization dominates business cycle synchronization in the eurozone, especially after the introduction of the single currency. For some peripheral country pairs, we even find some evidence of "de-coupling" business cycles relative to the core countries but the majority of marginal business cycle effects do not change much over time. The former observation supports the often heard plea for more Europe-wide macro-prudential regulation whereas the latter observation gives ammunition to those economists that always stressed that the euro zone architecture is unfinished business and that the conditions for an optimum currency area are not fulfilled. JEL Classification: C25, E32, F4

Numerical experiments on the aerodynamics of waveriders

Because of a high level of activity in manned space missions and hypersonic transport the ideas on waveriders are currently of great interest. Waveriders have been regarded as the best shapes for space planes. This derives from their high lift capability which will enable the vehicle to slow down at high altitude thus helping it alleviate the kinetic heating problem. The present study reports on the advantages of waveriders for their application to space plane shapes. The advantages of selecting waveriders as lifting shapes is attributed to their flow simplicity by using shapes defined inversely from a two dimensional flow as a basis of their construction. For these deceptively simple shapes initial estimates of the aerodynamic properties can be made through inviscid flow calculations. A historical preview of waveriders suggests that viscous effects are very important for accurate prediction of flowfield around these shapes. However, these effects were not included in the course of development of these shapes. In this study along with the classical theory of waveriders viscosity effects on the waverider design are highlighted. Also emphasised are the important relevant factors in hypersonic flow and the advantages of applying computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for simulation of the flowfield as compared to analytic and experimentation method. In the past, work has been reported on the inclusion of viscous effects by using the boundary layer for the viscous correction. The present study shows that, in the presence of strong viscous-inviscid interaction, viscous effects from these applications can only be reliably predicted using solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. Based on this strategy numerical solutions of the Navier-Stokes Equations were applied to different waverider shapes to highlight the importance of viscous effects. Since the flow on typical waverider shapes is near conical, then a locally conical approximation was used for two reasons: it simplifies the problem from a 3-D to a 2-D one without compromising significantly accuracy ; it reduces the requirement of computing resources in terms of processor time and storage. Application of the Navier Stokes equations in locally conical form (LCNS) to simulate the flow around idealised waverider shapes revealed interesting off-design flow behaviour for on-design flow conditions. Sensitive effects on performance due to off-design behaviour are observed for caret wings. Results are obtained for 4 cases of caret wings optimised for free stream Mach numbers of 1.44, 1.74, 2.51 and 4.93 and 3 cases of a cone-wing configuration at Mach 10 with angles of attack of 5°, 10° and 15°. For caret wings results show how viscous effects have significant influence even at low Mach numbers. Flow simulation of these cases illustrates the advantage of using CFD on these shapes and shows how incorporating the NS equations provides a powerful tool to explore in detail waverider aerodynamics in on-design and off-design operation. Results also show how suitably it can deal with shock-shock, shock-boundary layer and shock vortex interactions, simultaneously. Also predicted was the effect on heat transfer due to the change in angle of attack of the shape. As caret wing and wing-cone combinations are thought to have limited applicability for practical aircraft shape the studies were extended to more general shapes. This study is the first to deal simultaneously with general shapes derived from both conical and wedge flowfields. General conical-derived shapes were constructed through a numerical approach based on flow around a cone using the Taylor Maccoll theory. For a general wedge-derived shape the base flow was the flow behind wedge induced oblique shock waves. Comparisons were made to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each type of configuration generated. Results were discussed in the light of numerical prediction and experimental results published in the literature. It was recognized that if volume constraints are relaxed, then, there are some considerable advantages in using wedge flow as a basis, instead of conical flow. Also it was shown that a change in only the leading edge shape can considerably improve the performance characteristics of waveriders. Furthermore a wedge-derived waverider provides a higher lift than an equivalent cone-derived one and also at off-design conditions a wedge-derived shape shows less sensitivity than its conical counterpart

Theory and Evidence on the Finance-Growth Relationship: The Virtuous and Unvirtuous Cycles

Since the 1980s, financial crises have tended to reoccur with increasing frequency and growing intensity. They are endogenously generated by the established OTD (Originate-To-Distribute) model within the new finance-growth paradigm. Good finance fosters the correct allocation of financial resources, the fair redistribution of wealth and positive economic growth (the virtuous cycle), whereas bad finance captures part of the created wealth and, thanks to a highly technologically advanced financial system with the ability to create money ex nihilo, over time it drags the economy down to recession or negative growth, destroying wealth and consequentially social welfare (the unvirtuous cycle). Therefore, structural factors are at the foundation of the persistence of instability and thus of what we define as the unvirtuous cycle, which can generate what we label the wealth trap. A VUC index has been developed by us to capture the status quo of the finance-growth relationship. A cross country analysis for the US, UK and Euro area economies has been made in order to verify the validity of the index. A core variable is identified: the degree of financial innovation. This is an endogenous variable within the endogenous money/credit creation process; its identification is of crucial importance, as it is the key to full understanding of the finance-growth relationship and is the element of originality in this field of studies. The VUC index for all countries shows clearly the exponential effect of the degree of financial innovation over time. It is important for scholars and policymakers to understand the mechanism underpinning the finance-growth relationship and that it is their responsibility to return the economic system to what we will call the virtuous cycle

ROLE OF QUALITY EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGS)

At this critical time, the best thing that the government can do to stimulate progress is to provide the nation with the best minds to help the nation tackle future challenges. Now that the race towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is on, it is pertinent to set the key performance indicators for assessing progress in line with the overall vision of the development agenda. In this paper, the role of quality education for sustainable development goals (SDGs) is explored. Quality education is called SDG-4 because it is a 4th goal of the SDGs. The introduction and background of the quality education and sustainable development goals is defined in first section. In section 2, some relevant theories about the role of education in development are presented. Literature review of some selected studies is given in section 3 of the study. In section 4 of the study, the comparison is made among SDG-4, MDG-2 (Goal-2 of Millennium Development Goals) and EFA (Education for All) and reasons are given that how SDG-4 is differ from MDG-2 and EFA. In next section, it is defined that how we can achieve equitable and good quality of education and some priority targets will be set to achieve the goal. The challenges for higher education and the steps involved in translating global commitments are given in subsequent section. At the end, the conclusion of the study is given

“Risky” monetary aggregates for the UK and US

We extend the scope of monetary aggregation beyond capital certain assets that make up central bank data sets and identify groups of assets that form monetary aggregates composed of both capital certain and risky, capital uncertain, assets. We construct monetary aggregates for the US and UK using a superlative index and relax a key assumption of the Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM), a one year planning horizon, by using forecasted returns on risky assets. Our new risky monetary aggregates perform well in VAR tests. We recommended exploring risky assets as providers of liquidity services in future research on this topic