Risk and value in labour and capital markets: The UK corporate economy, 1980-2005.

The paper sets out a theoretical model linking stock market financial risk to labour market conditions, including labour intensity and the risk arising from the specification of labour contracts. A value added analysis is conducted combining national and firm level accounts data to examine the relationship between the share of value and the share of risk, contrasting manufacturing and service industries. In conjunction with a firm level analysis, empirical support for the model is established showing rational trade-offs between the risk and value appropriations of investors and employees and a less rational accumulation of structured debt finance as the UK economy has shifted from manufacturing to services in the last 30 years. The shift to services, flexibility and deregulation has tended to promote labour intensity, inflexibility of cost structures, and, as a consequence greater financial risk

Does Community and Environmental Responsibility Affect Firm Risk? Evidence from UK Panel Data 1994-2006

The question of how an individual firm’s environmental performance impacts its firm risk has not been examined in any empirical UK research. Does a company that strives to attain good environmental performance decreases its market risk or is environmental performance just a disadvantageous cost that increases such risk levels for these firms? Answers to this question have important implications for the management of companies and the investment decisions of individuals and institutions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between corporate environmental performance and firm risk in the British context. Using the largest dataset so far assembled, with Community and Environmental Responsibility (CER) rankings for all rated UK companies between 1994 and 2006, we show that a company’s environmental performance is inversely related to its systematic financial risk. However, an increase of 1.0 in the CER score is associated with only a 0.02 reduction in firm’s risk and cost of capital

The association between accounting and market-based risk measures

The paper derives operating and financial measures of leverage and tests their association with market based measures of equity risk. It is the first such study to use purely accounting-based data to derive the leverage measures. In line with previous literature it conducts a new test on the relative importance of operating and financial leverage. The results suggest that operating costs have a greater impact

Atmospheric correction of CHRIS data: a first step towards suspended sediment quantification

The Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS) sensor was launched on board of PROBA (PROject for on Board Anatomy) on October 22, 2001. The CHRIS sensor will acquire sets of images over an area of 18km by 18km within the Belgian coastal zone near Oostende. This area exhibits a permanent high load of suspended sediments. Values are of the order of 40mg/l off the coast and may increase (especially in the winter) to more than 100 mg/l. This high load of suspended sediment arises from transport and re-suspension of sediment materials through hydrodynamic processes, river discharge and from the nearly continuous dredging activities in the area. Estimating suspended sediment transport and concentration is necessary to assess its environmental impact. This task requires synoptic information at a regular frequency, which is very difficult to obtain from the routine in-situ monitoring. Integrating remote sensing data, in situ measurements and model-results provides a better understanding of the spatial and temporal variability of suspended sediments.The main objective is to use CHRIS images to quantify the concentrations of suspended sediments in the Belgian coastal waters. This is achieved by relating the optical properties of water constituents to their physical characteristics. The high spectral resolution of CHRIS may identify diagnostic optical-properties of water constituents. This will improve the understanding of other phenomena that were not accessible via the current multi spectral sensors.However, the sensor-recorded signal is strongly affected by the presence of the atmosphere. Up to 90% of the measured radiance may originate from atmospheric perturbation, i.e. aerosol and air molecules scattering. Therefore, the accuracy of the retrieved water constituents depends on the applied atmospheric correction algorithms. Within this context an atmospheric correction approach is proposed for the CHRIS data. Since the CHRIS images are not yet available, the proposed approach is illustrated with data from the Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI)

Optimal placement of excitations and sensors by simulated annealing

The optimal placement of discrete actuators and sensors is posed as a combinatorial optimization problem. Two examples for truss structures were used for illustration; the first dealt with the optimal placement of passive dampers along existing truss members, and the second dealt with the optimal placement of a combination of a set of actuators and a set of sensors. Except for the simplest problems, an exact solution by enumeration involves a very large number of function evaluations, and is therefore computationally intractable. By contrast, the simulated annealing heuristic involves far fewer evaluations and is best suited for the class of problems considered. As an optimization tool, the effectiveness of the algorithm is enhanced by introducing a number of rules that incorporate knowledge about the physical behavior of the problem. Some of the suggested rules are necessarily problem dependent

An Investigation of Libyan EFL Teachers’ Conceptions of the Communicative Learner-Centred Approach in Relation to their Implementation of an English Language Curriculum Innovation in Secondary Schools

This phenomenographical investigation explores conceptions of the communicative learner-centred approach (CLCA) held by a sample of Libyan English foreign language teachers (EFL) in relation to their implementation of an English language curriculum innovation in secondary schools. A mixed approach employing quantitative (survey questionnaire) and qualitative (semi-structure interview) research methods was used for data collection during the first phase of this research. Martons’ (1981)phenomenographical approach was employed for analysing the qualitative data and the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) programme was used for analysing the quantitative data. Content analysis was used for analysing qualitative data gathered through an open-ended questionnaire completed by ten English language inspectors during the second phase of this research. Fourteen conceptions and misconceptions of the CLCA have been explored through this investigation. School location and place of graduation did not have significant effect on teachers’ conception of the principles and practices of the CLCA and the teachercentred approach (TCA). However, the less experienced teachers were more positive about those related to the TCA than were the experienced ones. Influential barriers related to individual, contextual and cultural considerations have been identified as responsible for limiting the success of the teachers’ attempts to implement this approach. Nevertheless, the majority of the participants (teachers and inspectors) were positive about the notion of implementing the CLCA for teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in the Libyan context. However, the current conditions and realities in Libya seem to fit a weak version of this approach but not a strong one. i This study is significant because it adds to the literature new insights about EFL teachers’ conceptions and practices of the CLCA as a Western teaching methodology for TEFL in developing countries and challenges the argument of considering this approach inappropriate in these contexts. The findings of this study also have potential implications for school reform, curriculum design, EFL teacher education and training and for developing the role of language inspectors in Libya. These implications may be applied in similar contexts. Moreover, this study provides empirical evidence for the possibility of employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches in phenomenographical investigations

Sediment characterization in the ‘IJzermonding’ using empirical orthogonal functions: application to CASI

The erodability of mudflats is strongly determined by biophysical characteristics of sediments, such as silt, sand, benthic microalgae and water content. Mudflats are often large and inaccessible areas, leading to dangerous and time-consuming in situ measurement campaigns. Furthermore the collected point samples are unrepresentative for the spatial variability of these coastal systems. Airborne hyperspectral remote sensing is identified to be effective for the collection of a synoptic overview of biophysical characteristics of sediments in mudflats. An automated method for the classification of hyperspectral images acquired by the Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI) is proposed. The method is based on a linear transformation of each spectrum in the hyperspectral cube. Comparable classification results are obtained using a standard classification method employed in hyperspectral image processing. The superiority of the proposed method lies in its robustness, computational requirements, repeatability, interpretability and objectiveness