Do Median Grades Vary Across Departments?

[Excerpt] This study will analyze if median course grades systematically vary across departments in Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences. After briefly discussing other factors that might be expected to influence median grades and thus must be included in the analyses, I present my empirical findings. A final section discusses the implications of my findings

The 'Parekh Report' - national identities with nations and nationalism

‘Multiculturalists’ often advocate national identities. Yet few study the ways in which ‘multiculturalists’ do so and in this article I will help to fill this gap. I will show that the Commission for Multi-Ethnic Britain’s report reflects a previously unnoticed way of thinking about the nature and worth of national identities that the Commission’s chair, and prominent political theorist, Bhikhu Parekh, had been developing since the 1970s. This way of thinking will be shown to avoid the questionable ways in which conservative and liberal nationalists discuss the nature and worth of national identities while offering an alternative way to do so. I will thus show that a report that was once criticised for the way it discussed national identities reflects how ‘multiculturalists’ think about national identities in a distinct and valuable way that has gone unrecognised

Indian Takeover Regulation - Under Reformed and Over Modified

The takeover of substantial number of shares, voting rights or control in a listed Indian company attracts the provision of SEBI (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations 1997. The regulations have been amended nearly 20 times since inception, though the amendments have mainly concentrated on areas which needed no amendment. At the same time a vast number of obvious problems have not been rectified in the regulations. The large number of amendments have also created requirement of a compulsory tender offer of such unnecessary complexity as to make it virtually unintelligible to even a well qualified professional. This paper argues that the complexity in the trigger points for disclosure and tender offer introduced over the years lacks a philosophy, and most of the amendments can not only be deleted but a very simple structure can be introduced making compliance of the regulations straight forward and easy to understand by management of listed companies. Certain other areas which need amendments have also been discussed. Chief amongst these are the provisions relating to consolidation of holdings, conditional tender offers, hostility to hostile acquisitions, definitional oddities, payment of control premium in the guise of non compete fees, treatment of differential voting rights, treatment of Global Depository Receipts and disclosure enhancements. This paper does not try to portray a particular combination of numbers as the best possible set of trigger points and compulsory acquisition numbers but advocates that whatever numbers are adopted should not be changed for several decades. Arguments that state that the changing economic condition requires constant changes with these numbers, it is argued is wrong.

Prevention of Insider Trading and Corporate Good Governance

With the discovery of massive frauds in the Indian and International capital markets, regulators and legislatures have increasingly turned towards making corporate governance standards mandatory and have attached penalties to violation of these corporate governance guidelines. This paper questions the necessity for associating corporate governance in the insider trading context with penal provisions in India. It makes suggestions for the removal of these penalties and instead let the markets decide whether to penalise companies which do not have these process oriented safeguards in place. The paper also recommends introduction of certain substantive and procedural regulations/standards for reduction of the incidence of insider trading in companies.

Almost Optimal Classical Approximation Algorithms for a Quantum Generalization of Max-Cut

Approximation algorithms for constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are a central direction of study in theoretical computer science. In this work, we study classical product state approximation algorithms for a physically motivated quantum generalization of Max-Cut, known as the quantum Heisenberg model. This model is notoriously difficult to solve exactly, even on bipartite graphs, in stark contrast to the classical setting of Max-Cut. Here we show, for any interaction graph, how to classically and efficiently obtain approximation ratios 0.649 (anti-feromagnetic XY model) and 0.498 (anti-ferromagnetic Heisenberg XYZ model). These are almost optimal; we show that the best possible ratios achievable by a product state for these models is 2/3 and 1/2, respectively