Words don't come easy: Linguistic analysis of vocabulary in Magic Books

The present study focuses on the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) coursebooks Magic Book 1 and Magic Book 2 that have been designed and developed for third graders in the Greek state primary schools under the PEAP project. It aims to examine the lexical items selected for those coursebooks and set out the criteria that render them a useful tool for teaching EFL to young learners. More specifically, this paper aims to: (a) examine the frequency of the vocabulary included in the two books by using the frequency data of the British National Corpus (BNC), (b) compare the vocabulary of the books with the English Vocabulary Profile (EVP) issued by Cambridge University Press, and (c) examine the thematic areas covered in these books in order to investigate the extent of their continuity with the interests and needs of the target age group

Social Networks and the Informational Role of Financial Advisory Firms Centrality in Mergers and Acquisitions

This paper examines the role of the social network hierarchy of financial advisory firms in a mergers and acquisitions (M&As) framework. Financial advisors are information intermediaries who play an information extraction and information dissemination role. The more central the advisory firm is within the network of advisory firms, the greater their access to information flows. Our findings indicate that more central advisors are associated with higher acquirer announcement abnormal returns, higher abnormal combined returns and higher operating long‐run performance for the new entity. Central advisors also mitigate information asymmetries, resulting in lower premium paid by bidders. In return, more central advisory firms demand higher advisory fees, engage in higher M&A activity and are more likely to advise large acquirers and acquisitions of large and public deals. Our results are robust to endogeneity and self‐selection concerns