Understanding financial derivatives usage by directors and its impact on corporate governance policies in Vietnam

Purpose: Directing and controlling a company to achieve its strategic and tactical goals requires a complex network of relationships with stakeholders which means boards need to have directors with adequate competencies and skills. Do directors of boards have the required level of knowledge and does such knowledge have potential impacts on corporate governance policy? This thesis examines these questions in the context of financial derivatives in the emerging economy of Vietnam to add to the literature on individual directors’ understanding of the use of such controversial instruments. Methodology: This thesis used a mixed methods approach, with a survey of 119 directors followed by qualitative interviews with 19 directors of public corporations in Vietnam using insights from the theory of planned behaviour combined with the model of board roles and attributes, and stakeholder theory. Findings: Directors’ knowledge of financial derivatives is relatively low and strongly affected by their education and working experience. In addition, directors’ knowledge is associated with critical factors that impact their intention to use financial derivatives, which is the direct predictor of their future behaviour in deciding to use the instruments. Such an interaction among knowledge, intention and behaviour is a concern to the directors who were experienced in financial issues; directors worry about threats to corporations when directors lack knowledge while having positive attitudes and high levels of intention. Financially experienced directors suggested appropriate corporate risk management policy and director training as two key solutions to these threats. The interviews also uncovered emerging themes about business culture, the government’s role and the market for financial derivatives which have impacted directors’ knowledge and corporate policies. Research Limitations and Implications: Key limitations include the use of single country and cross-sectional data combined with a relatively small sample size and potential self-reporting bias. The main implications include the need for enhanced collaboration and cooperation among key stakeholders including the government, boards, individual directors and relevant training organisations. The government should lead by setting up a legal and regulatory framework for financial derivatives. Boards should clarify their corporate risk management policy, choose members to ensure the necessary competencies are available and accept continuous training. Individual directors should be aware of and take part in self-learning and training to be suitable for their position. Finally, training organisations should customise their courses for directors to suit directors’ time constraints and their strategic level leadership. Originality: This thesis was the first to investigate individual board director behaviour in Vietnam and to analyse directors’ understanding of financial derivatives and their related decision making in an emerging economy. Keywords: Theory of Planned Behaviour, Stakeholder Theory, Board Directors, Financial Derivatives, Corporate Governance, Risk Management, Vietnam, Mixed Method

The Effects of Arterial Tortuosity on Aneurysm Progression

From the Washington University Office of Undergraduate Research Digest (WUURD), Vol. 12, 05-01-2017. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research. Joy Zalis Kiefer, Director of Undergraduate Research and Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences; Lindsey Paunovich, Editor; Helen Human, Programs Manager and Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. Mentor: Jessica Wagensei

Motives for investment in human capital of children: evidence from Indonesian Family Life Survey Data

Two alternative models of parental investments in children's human capital are considered and tested empirically using the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS). The pure loan model and the reciprocity with two-sided altruism model yield different predictions about the effect of children's education level and number of children on intergenerational transfers. Using these predictions, a specification test is carried out to differentiate these two models with the data. The evidence favors the second model of reciprocity with two-sided altruism.Human capital, pure loan, altruism, Indonesian Family Life Survey Data

Idiom Teaching and Learning in Vietnam: Challenges and Activities

The demands for learning English as a foreign language have been increasing over the last fifteen years in Vietnam. It is commonly believed that idiomatic expressions are not important in learning English as a foreign language. Strutz (1996), however, maintained that "no one can be said to be really proficient in a language until he or she possesses an idiomatic command of it" (vii). Drawing from relevant research and studies in the field of figurative language acquisition, this paper aims to present current issues of teaching and learning idiomatic language in Vietnam followed by some recommended teaching activities. Keywords: idiom, idiomatic language, idiomatic competence DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/67-04 Publication date: April 30th 202

DISTORTION-BASED HEURISTIC METHOD FOR SENSITIVE ASSOCIATION RULE HIDING

In the past few years, privacy issues in data mining have received considerable attention in the data mining literature. However, the problem of data security cannot simply be solved by restricting data collection or against unauthorized access, it should be dealt with by providing solutions that  not only protect sensitive information, but also not affect to the accuracy of the results in data mining and not violate the sensitive knowledge related with individual privacy or competitive advantage in businesses. Sensitive association rule hiding is an important issue in privacy preserving data mining. The aim of association rule hiding is to minimize the side effects on the sanitized database, which means to reduce the number of missing non-sensitive rules and the number of generated ghost rules. Current methods for hiding sensitive rules cause side effects and data loss. In this paper, we introduce a new distortion-based method to hide sensitive rules. This method proposes the determination of critical transactions based on the number of non-sensitive maximal frequent itemsets that contain at least one item to the consequent of the sensitive rule, they can be directly affected by the modified transactions. Using this set, the number of non-sensitive itemsets that need to be considered is reduced dramatically. We compute the smallest number of transactions for modification in advance to minimize the damage to the database. Comparative experimental results on real datasets showed that the proposed method can achieve better results than other methods with fewer side effects and data loss

Manufacturing on Autopilot: Ohio Automation on Manufacturing Wages and Employment

In 2017, automation was forecasted to see a 47% increase in the next two decades (Bughin et al. 2017). With the usage of algorithms, automation can now be used for more than routine tasks and has the ability to replace labor in cognitive tasks, greatly expanding the range of roles in the labor market it could take on (Frey et al. 2017). With this, there will be the subsequent impacts on Ohio’s economy and productivity levels in manufacturing and productivity. Ohio is a main state in manufacturing, and 7.6% of Ohio jobs have a high level of exposure to automation (Exposure to Automation in Ohio 2021). We use data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to create initial data visualizations on Ohio’s manufacturing employment. Through this initial research, we hypothesize a negative correlation between robotic expenditures and manufacturing employment and wages. However, in the future, we hope to run regressions with variables such as robotic expenditures and robot count using data from national manufacturing surveys

Crack identification in multiple cracked beams made of functionally graded material by using stationary wavelet transform of mode shapes

This paper presents crack identification in multiple cracked beams made of functionally graded material (FGM) by using stationary wavelet transform (SWT) of mode shapes and taking into account influence of Gaussian noise. Mode shapes are obtained from multiple cracked FGM beam element and spring model of cracks. The theoretical development was illustrated and validated by numerical examples. The investigated results show that crack identification method by using SWT of mode shapes is efficient and realizable

On using a viscoelastic material model for saline ice

In the current thesis, we attempt to understand the linear viscoelastic behaviour of S2 sea ice by studying its compliance function. Descriptions of the Power Law and the Generalised Kelvin models are provided. Starting with these analytic models, the compliance function was approximated with certain numerical techniques; truncated singular value decomposition (SVD), Tikhonov regularisation, and nonnegative least squares method were examined amongst all in this work. The approximate forms of the compliance function contain parameters that were determined by investigating strain response of ice to some given loading cases. Once the parameters were established, the numerical techniques that produced them were evaluated based on how well a resulting compliance function predicts experimental strain response. It was found that the truncated SVD gives the most reliable results. The test data for this project was extracted from creep tests and loading/unloading creep cycles at various stress rates and frequencies. Generally, the numerical methods were shown to determine the parameters of the approximate forms of compliance function rather well

Static diagnosis of multiple cracked beam

Non

MULTIPLE XYLITOL DEHYDROGENASE SYSTEM OF ASPERGILLUS ORYZAE

Aspergillus oryzae P5 has some xylanolytic enzymes such as xylanase of 8.8 U/mg, a-L arabinofuranosidase of 1.2 U/mg, b- xylosidase of 1.9 U/mg and xylose reductase activities were 11.3 U/mg and 13.4 U/mg by using NADH and NADPH. However, xylitol dehydrogenase activities were 5.5 U/mg and 1.8 U/mg using NAD+ and NADP+ as cofactor, respectively. In genome of A. oryzae, there are 4 fragments, which are homologous with DNA xylitol dehydrogenase genes of other strains. Based on DNA sequences of these fragments, 2 genes were cloned. One of them (xdhA) gene encodes for NAD+-dependent xylitol dehydrogenase activity. The gene was knock out in A. oryzae P5, however the mutant still showed NAD+-dependent xylitol dehydrogenase activity. Therefore, A. oryzae P5 has multiple xylitol dehydrogenases