What Went Wrong? Lessons in Leadership from Solomon, the Bible’s Wisest and Worst Ruler

This paper attempts to demonstrate the many insights about successful and unsuccessful leadership that may be derived from the life of King Solomon, who, according to Scripture, was the wisest man who ever lived. Solomon may have been very wise but made some very serious blunders as a leader that led to the breakup of his empire after his son took over. This paper answers the obvious question as to which mistake/character flaw transformed Solomon from a great leader to an unsuccessful leader. This paper will also examine the Book of Proverbs attributed to Solomon and see what leadership lessons can be gleaned from it. One question that the paper will attempt to answer is whether or not Solomon followed the path of wisdom discussed in Proverbs

An autoregressive approach to house price modeling

A statistical model for predicting individual house prices and constructing a house price index is proposed utilizing information regarding sale price, time of sale and location (ZIP code). This model is composed of a fixed time effect and a random ZIP (postal) code effect combined with an autoregressive component. The former two components are applied to all home sales, while the latter is applied only to homes sold repeatedly. The time effect can be converted into a house price index. To evaluate the proposed model and the resulting index, single-family home sales for twenty US metropolitan areas from July 1985 through September 2004 are analyzed. The model is shown to have better predictive abilities than the benchmark S&P/Case--Shiller model, which is a repeat sales model, and a conventional mixed effects model. Finally, Los Angeles, CA, is used to illustrate a historical housing market downturn.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOAS380 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Tax and Policy Implications of Changes to Reporting Requirements for Construction Services

[Excerpt] New York and other states could increase revenue and improve their tax systems by requiring information reporting for all payments by businesses for construction services, utilizing a form similar to the Federal form 1099. The state could also advance other important policy goals including an increase in the fairness of the tax system and a reduction of the misclassification of workers as independent contractors

Speech Acts Used by the Husband and Wife in the Reconciliation Processes in “Not Easily Broken”

The writer researches the language use of husband and wife in their reconciliation processes and its connection to the reconciliation processes. She uses a film, entitled “Not Easily Broken” (2009) as the representative of reconciliation of husband and wife. She researches the Speech Act of Dave and Clarice during their reconciliation processes. The writer uses the Speech Act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969; Yule, 1996) and the reconciliation process (Huyse, 2003). Inthe findings of the research, the highest illocution is ‘Representative' and automatically, the highest perlocution is from ‘Representative'. In the first and second stages, most of the perlocution does not match but in the last stage, all perlocutions match to the illocution and the reconciliation is accomplished.The conclusion is a couple should accept the fact and truth to each other to accomplish reconciliation process

The influence of non-neuronal cells on catecholamine and acetylcholine synthesis and accumulation in cultures of dissociated sympathetic neurons

The effects of several non-neuronal cell types on neurotransmitter synthesis in cultures of dissociated sympathetic neurons from the new-born rat were studied. Acetylcholine synthesis from radioactive choline was increased 100- to 1000-fold in the presence of non-neuronal cells from sympathetic ganglia. This increase was roughly dependent on the number of ganglionic non-neuronal cells present. The effect did not appear to be due to an increased plating efficiency of neurons, since the non-neuronal cells were capable of increasing acetylcholine synthesis after only 48-hr contact with neurons that had been previously grown without non-neuronal cells for 2 weeks. C6 rat glioma cells were also able to stimulate acetylcholine synthesis, but 3T3 mouse fibroblast cells had little or no effect. None of the non-neuronal cell types synthesized detectable acetylcholine in the absence of the neurons. The ganglionic non-neuronal cells had no significant effect on catecholamine synthesis (which occurs in the absence of non-neuronal cells)

The financing behavior of Dutch firms

This paper investigates the financing behaviour of Dutch firms by testing whether a firm’s financing decisions are determined by certain factors identified in various theories. Since a firm’s financing decision is reflected in the changes of its leverage, our research focuses on the relationship between a firm’s debt ratio change and the changes in certain factors. The approach used in the paper is the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The model identifies various important factors that are related to Dutch firms’ financing decisions. The empirical results provide moderate support for the static trade-off theory, the pecking-order hypothesis, as well as the dynamic capital structure model. However, our data set is insuffi- cient to confirm the static trade-off theory, and our results provide little evidence to back the asymmetric information argument behind the pecking-order hypothesis.