Corruption and Firm Performance in Africa

This paper uses survey data to investigate empirically the importance of corruption in determining firm performance in Africa. We allow for the possibility of perception bias on the part of the respondents and for corruption being endogenous. We find that corruption is linked to significant adverse effects on firm performance in two ways. At the firm (or “local”) level, companies that pay bribes have 20 percent lower levels of output per worker. At the economy-wide ( or “global”) level, firms in countries with pervasive corruption are some 70 per cent less efficient than firms in countries free of corruption. We thus provide evidence that competitive uncoordinated local corruption has substantial global effects.

Corruption and firm performance in Africa

This paper uses survey data to investigate empirically the importance of corruption in determining firm performance in Africa. We allow for the possibility of perception bias on the part of the respondents and for corruption being endogenous. We find that corruption is linked to significant adverse effects on firm performance in two ways. At the firm (or “local”) level, companies that pay bribes have 20 percent lower levels of output per worker. At the economywide (or “global”) level, firms in countries with pervasive corruption are some 70 per cent less efficient than firms in countries free of corruption. We thus provide evidence that competitive uncoordinated local corruption has substantial global effects.

The geochemistry of phosphorite concretions from the continental shelf off Morocco

Imperial Users onl

Instructional Proxemics: Creating a place for space in instructional communication discourse

Changes in strategies of teaching and learning, changes in students, and changes in technology have necessitated contemporary changes in spaces of learning. Grounded in the general model of instructional communication (McCroskey, Valencic, & Richmond, 2004), this study proposes Instructional Proxemics as a conceptual framework for assessing the instructional environment through a blending of instructional communication and information/user-experience design. In a field-experiment involving five instructors teaching 15 sections of Public Speaking, students (n = 234) were invited to respond to a survey assessing measures of student learning, teacher behaviors, classroom practices, and classroom perceptions. Results of this study indicate that learning spaces influence student perceptions across these measures, and that these perceptions are mitigated by the instructor. Instructor journals are used to provide context for these results. In sum, this dissertation advances the general model of instructional communication by promoting Instructional Proxemics as an impetus for the study of contemporary and innovative spaces of learning

An agent-based implementation of hidden Markov models for gas turbine condition monitoring

This paper considers the use of a multi-agent system (MAS) incorporating hidden Markov models (HMMs) for the condition monitoring of gas turbine (GT) engines. Hidden Markov models utilizing a Gaussian probability distribution are proposed as an anomaly detection tool for gas turbines components. The use of this technique is shown to allow the modeling of the dynamics of GTs despite a lack of high frequency data. This allows the early detection of developing faults and avoids costly outages due to asset failure. These models are implemented as part of a MAS, using a proposed extension of an established power system ontology, for fault detection of gas turbines. The multi-agent system is shown to be applicable through a case study and comparison to an existing system utilizing historic data from a combined-cycle gas turbine plant provided by an industrial partner

Rethinking the Classroom: One Department’s Attempt to Connect Student Learning and National Events

Communication programs have a rich anecdotal history of connecting student learning to real-world experience. Yet, the same programs, including ours, often privilege classroom-based instruction and instructor-led experiential learning over other types of experiences. When community organizers announced a national mega-event for our city, faculty in our communication department knew that we wanted to use it as a learning experience. We brainstormed ideas, most of which were classroom- and semester-based concepts typical of traditional topics courses. But, one of our faculty members suggested that we think outside of the concept of classroom. What resulted was a unique experience unlike any we had offered before: a valuable and compelling learning event that emerged from a successful faculty-staff-student-community partnership