Essays on Networks and Corporate Finance

In my dissertation I explore how personal networks affect firms’ financial decisions. In the first essay, I study how social connections among divisional managers affect the capital allocation to divisions in diversified conglomerates. In contrast to the previous studies, I focus on the horizontal connections or connections formed among managers of the same level of corporate hierarchy. I show that connections among divisional managers lead to higher sensitivity of segment capital spending to segment’s growth opportunities, higher firm-level allocation efficiency and higher firm value. Additionally, firms tend to strategically assign better-connected managers to these segments, and connections help to reduce internal information asymmetry. The results are consistent with the idea that connections facilitate interdivisional cooperation and better alignment of divisional and firm’s incentives. In the second essay, I examine capital structure decisions of suppliers with social connections to major customers, which invest in relation-specific assets. Suppliers connected to major customers with relation-specific assets have higher debt ratios. The effect is more pronounced when intensity and duration of business relationship is high, and when information asymmetry between parties is high. In addition, building up debt helps suppliers to reduce underleverage and move faster toward target leverage ratios. Overall, the results are consistent with the view that connections help to strengthen implicit contracts through establishing trust between trading parties. In the third essay, I study the effect of divisional manager-CEO social connections on the scale and success of corporate innovation activities. Divisional managers who previously worked or studied with CEO file a greater number of patents during their tenure at the segment. These patents receive more citations in future and represent a greater scientific and economic value. These findings can imply that socials connections help to mitigate adverse selection problems associated with R&D investments

The techniques of explicit grammar instruction

The article examines the main methods and techniques of explicit grammar instruction. The main goal here is to find a way to make the learners of foreign language be interested in grammar, understand its rules and use in practice. The significance of visual aids, such as PPT, as a part of grammar instruction is particularly explained in this article. Additionally, the paper discusses the effect of authentic materials when it is used while teaching grammar explicitly

Hybrid classical-quantum text search based on hashing

The paper considers the problem of finding a given substring in a text. It is known that the complexity of a classical search query in an unordered database is linear in the length of the text and a given substring. At the same time, Grover's quantum search provides a quadratic speedup in the complexity of the query and gives the correct result with a high probability. We propose a hybrid classical-quantum algorithm (hybrid random-quantum algorithm to be more precise), that implements Grover's search to find a given substring in a text. As expected, the algorithm works a) with a high probability of obtaining the correct result and b) with a quadratic query acceleration compared to the classical one. What's new is that our algorithm uses the uniform hash family functions technique. As a result, our algorithm is much more memory efficient (in terms of the number of qubits used) compared to previously known quantum algorithms

The Associations Among Meaningfulness in Life, Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction, and Internal Motivation in the Scholarly Activities of Doctoral Students

In the conditions of reforming higher education in Russia it is important to follow how those new conditions are influencing the motivation for scholarly activity of doctoral students. In the present study, 112 doctoral students from natural science departments at Kazan University (Russia) identified the level of meaningfulness of life, satisfaction of basic psychological needs and predominance of external versus internal motivation in their academic/scholarly activity. Results showed a direct link between meaningfulness of life and basic psychological need satisfaction for autonomy, competence and relatedness, and an inverse association with internal motivation for academic/scholarly activity. Doctoral students with a lower level of meaningfulness in life showed a higher level of internal motivation for their scholarly activities and significantly lower levels of psychological need satisfaction, whereas those for whom the level was higher, motivation was more external

The correlation of importance and attainability disparity in the personality value system with the meaningfulness of life

© 2015, Canadian Center of Science and Education. All rights reserved. The relevance of the subject is set by the contradiction existing in science concerning the understanding of psychological sense of the disparity between the importance of value and the assessment of its realization in life: in one case it is understood as sense-making, in another—as conflicting or meaning semantic vacuum. This issue was regarded in the empirical research via the identification in what way the difference of values importance and attainability parameters is connected with the level of life meaningfulness on the sample of people aged from 15 to 40 years old. The results suggested that the total difference of these parameters in the personality value system is not associated with the level of life meaningfulness, and thus, the disparity may provide values with additional incentive potential, and conflict sense, and be neutral as well. There have been found few links of life meaningfulness with the disparity of importance and attainability of some values that highlights spheres of age-related or situational tasks for a human to solve. The article proceedings may be useful from their theoretical point of view to specify patterns concerning valuable and meaning regulation of life, from practical point of view they may help to understand the complex role of values importance and attainability disparity in person’s psychological wellbeing

Types of personal values in the continuum of unrealisability–realisability of their meaning

© 2015 Ashgate Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. The transformation of the meaning of values depending on the subjective evaluation of their attainability is a relevant problem due to the important role of feedback in the individual regulation of one’s life. The goal of this article is to describe the laws of human comprehension in regard to the level of realisation of desirable values, which was indicated through the comparison of the importance of values and the subjective assessment of their attainability. The leading method of research in this sphere is the analysis of correlative structures of specific parameters, such as importance, attainability, and the discrepancy between them. The material is comprised of data from 80 male and 90 female subjects aged 22 to 40. Polar tendencies of alignment and misalignment of the studied parameters were identified, which together constitute the continuum of unrealisability-realisability of values. In accordance with their location in this continuum, we identified and described meaning types of values, and their dependence on age and gender were discovered. Materials from the article may be used in studies of the regulation of human life and psychological counselling

Problems of national opera genre formation in 1930's (on the example of Tatar musical culture)

© Medwell Journals, 2015. The study discusses the problems of opera genre formation in national republics of the Soviet Union in the 1930's. The issues discussed are the use of the first national opera folklore and its harmonization, peculiarities of orchestration, libretto issues and other problems. The activity of the Tatar opera studio of the Moscow State Conservatory is shown where composers, focused on creation of operatic repertoire were trained. Difficulties faced by young composers of Tatarstan during the development of a new genre of European culture are described. Many of the issues raised in the study reveal the ideological features of functioning of national cultures of the USSR in a totalitarian state

The Value-Meaning Correlatives Of Coping Behavior: Comparative Research Of Master's Students

The topic of this article is important in view of increasing academic mobility which requires the understanding of both general and culture specific resources of stress-coping for engaging in a master's degree program. The main goal of the article is to identify and compare value-meaning correlatives between master's students from Kazakhstan and Tatarstan (Russia). With the use of the experimental method the parameters of the personal value-meaning sphere were identified (meaningfulness of life, hierarchy of values, acting on one's values) along with the coping strategies of master's students. The findings show that the meaningfulness of life directly relates to task-orientated coping and inversely relates to emotion-orientated in both student groups however in case with students from Kazakhstan it directly relates to the strategy of social diversion. For all master's students avoidance-orientated coping was most related to values

Correlation of meaningfulness of life to psychological time in personality

© 2014 Canadian Center of Science and Education. The article considers the issue of correlation between the meaning of life and psychological time of a personality, while the temporal distribution of the meaningful constituents in the human life is a very important aspect of the meaning of life. The specific issue concerning the ratio of the meaning of life's quantitative aspect manifested by means of its meaningfulness' level to some peculiar characteristics of the personality's psychological time was raised within the frames of the denoted problem. The aim of the present empirical research was to reveal the above mentioned correlation. The level of the meaningfulness of life was determined applying the Life-Purpose Orientations Questionnaire (LPO) that consists of five factors: goals in life, emotional intensity of life, self-actualization satisfaction, life locus of control, Ego locus of control. The parameters of the psychological time were estimated using the Estimation of Five-Year Intervals Method (EFI) that reveals the life way by means of its perceived efficiency's temporal dynamics. The current research surveyed the postgraduate students of the Kazan Federal University (n=140). The obtained findings reported that the level of the meaningfulness of life and such a parameter of the personality's psychological time, as a developmental age, demonstrate no interconnections: the surveyed, who are psychologically either younger, or older than their chronological age is, equally estimate their life as meaningful. At that, quantitative data on the meaningfulness of life are closely interconnected to other characteristics estimated by means of the EFI method to both the actualization and emotional intensity of life. The peculiarities of interconnections between the criteria of the meaningfulness of life and parameters of actualization and general emotional intensity of life for men and women were also detected. The men better evaluate the emotional intensity of both the past and future of their life at higher level of the meaningfulness of life. The women with the higher level of the meaningfulness of life better estimate its eventual intensity in the future, while they evaluate their past as poorer for events