Do Oil Industry Merger Waves Reveal Any Trends?

The dynamics of the stock prices of oil industry acquirer companies are studied during in-wave and out-wave years between 1998 and 2013. The research question is do oil industry merger waves reveal any trends? This quantitative study focuses on stock returns of acquirer companies over a four-year horizon for each merger transaction. Portfolios created from these transactions provide a comparison between in-wave and out-wave years. Three benchmarks are incorporated to provide various economic adjustment factors. Six cases are presented whose outcome largely follow other similar studies. The main contribution of the study is the identification of a dynamic during oil industry in-wave years which sees a substantial increase in the Brent oil market price, of at least 29% for these in-wave years. This dynamic is not identified previously in the literature. Keywords: Oil Industry Mergers, Waves, Crude Oil Price, 1998-2013 JEL Classifications: G15, G34, P1

Are Oil Industry Mergers Becoming Less Profitable?

Are oil industry mergers becoming less profitable? This study evaluates oil industry consolidations that occur during the sixteen-year time frame between 1998 and 2013 to find out. This quantitative study focuses on the stock price total return performance of acquirer companies over a four year horizon for each merger transaction. The portfolios created from these transactions provide for an analysis of the economics of the mergers after full integration of target companies. Four benchmarks are incorporated to provide various economic adjustment factors. There are seven cases presented that show that oil industry mergers are becoming less profitable. Implications are that companies may chase mergers as an easy way to increase returns, but this may not occur. As ever larger companies chase the remaining players and bid up their selling prices, increased returns may not always be the outcome. Keywords: Oil Industry Mergers, 1998-2013, Brent Crude Oil JEL Classifications: G15, G34, P1

Dream time and anti-imperialism in the writings of Olive Schreiner

This article explores how Olive Schreiner utilizes politicized modernist aesthetics, specifically the manipulation of time through allegory and dream, to resist structures of empire. The claim that Schreiner’s work should be received and analysed as modernist builds on recent work in global modernist studies that views modernisms as multiple, and occurring across various temporalities and geographies, whilst responding to the drive in postcolonial studies to reshape modernism with an awareness of empire. Analysis of the repetitive dream cycles within and across Schreiner’s texts reveals how she disrupts the conventional chronologies and associated ideologies introduced by colonizers in South Africa in ways that can be interpreted as modernist. Beginning with close readings of the opening scenes in the novels Undine: A Queer Little Child (written 1870s) and The Story of an African Farm (1883), the article then considers the role of alternative temporalities associated with dreams in the short allegory “Three Dreams in a Desert” (1887), to suggest that Schreiner’s “dream time” offers a form of postcolonial resistance to the imposed “imperial clock time” of life under colonial rule

Report.

Editors: 1888, 1890/91, 1893-1902, Isabel C. Barrows.--1889, S.J. Barrows.--1892, Martha D. Adams.No conferences held 1917-1928, inclusive.Mode of access: Internet.The 1st-2d, 4th published by the Indian Rights Association, Philadelphia.Issued under earlier names of the conference as follows: 1883-1884, Lake Mohonk Conference in Behalf of the Civilization and Legal Protection of the Indians of the United States; 1885-1903, Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian; 1904-1913, Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples; 1914-16, Lake Mohonk Conference on the Indian and other Dependent Peoples.Reports for 1883-1901 are reprinted, with some of the matter occasionally omitted, in the Annual reports of the U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners, no. 15-33

Verbal and nonverbal indices of learning during problem-based learning (PBL) among first year medical students and the threshold for tutor intervention

Background: During problem-based learning (PBL), students brainstorm on a problem, generate hypotheses and formulate learning objectives. Certain verbal and non-verbal expressions are used by students in response to specific learning issues. Aims: This study examines the use of these expressions as indices of the learning taking place and the tutors’ threshold to intervene. Methods: Common verbal expressions used by students during PBL were identified and scored on a Likert scale to indicate the learning taking place. These expressions were categorised into the following groups of learning interactions: exploratory questioning, cumulative reasoning and handling conflicts relating to learning. The tutor's threshold for intervention was also scored on a Likert scale. Means for each learning interaction and observed non-verbal expressions were used to construct bar charts for comparison. Results: When the learning interactions involve exploratory questioning or cumulative reasoning, students tend to score high on learning and tutors have high threshold for intervention. When the learning interactions involve handling conflicts relating to knowledge, students score high on learning, but teachers have a low threshold for intervention. Conclusion: Verbal and non-verbal expressions from students during PBL are useful indices of learning and can be used to help tutors decide when and when not to intervene