From Leonese to Castilian scriptae in medieval documents of the monastery San Pedro de Eslonza. Romance writings y, ll and j, i for lat. -Li-, diachrony, lexical diffusion and frequency factors

El presente estudio se ocupa del proceso de castellanización de las scriptae leonesas de la zona del monasterio de San Pedro de Eslonza entre 1241 y 1399, haciendo hincapié en las grafías romances para los sonidos procedentes del nexo latino -li-. Mostramos que el proceso no solo es bastante repentino, sino que demuestra una difusión léxica del fenómeno en función de la frecuencia de palabras en cuestión. Las grafías y, ll son una de las características más destacadas de las scriptae leonesas, así que la sustitución por grafías castellanas del tipo j, i representa una excelente base para el estudio de dicha castellanización. La llegada de una escrituralidad castellana en el antiguo Reino de León significa el primer paso a una lengua escrita castellana común en lo que más tarde será el Reino de España.The present paper studies castilianization processes in Leonese scriptae from the monastery of San Pedro de Eslonza and it’s surroundings between 1241 and 1399 focussing on Romance writings for the respective sounds originating in lat. -li-. We will show, that the process is not only relatively abrupt, but also follows a lexical diffusion depending on the frequency of the lexemes in question. The graphemes are probably the most eyecatching characteristic of Leonese scriptae, their eventual substitution by Castilian graphemes of the type therefore provides the researcher with an excellent basis for the investigation of the mentioned castilianization. The arrival of Castilian writing systems in the –then former– Kingdom of León marks the first step towards a Castilian (later Spanish) written language in what later on will be the Realm of the Kingdom of Spain

Value-at-Risk for e-business Project and Portfolio Appraisal and Risk Management

This paper makes the case for adopting a risk measure from the finance sector for the evaluation of eBusiness projects and portfolios. The proposed value-at-risk method constitutes a well-tested approach in high-risk environments, especially banking, and reports the expected maximum loss (or worst loss) over a target horizon within a given confidence interval. Value-at-risk is computed using either an analytical, parametric approach, or resorting to simulation, either based on historical samples or Monte Carlo methods. In this paper, both the use for evaluating single e-Business projects and also associated portfolios is discussed. Small examples are given and assessed to illustrate both applications. The main advantages of using value-at-risk measures are that they are methodologically consistent with modern IS evaluation approaches like real options, that they offer possibilities for management and assessment of project portfolios, and that the results are easy to interpret

Essays in Empirical Asset Pricing : Liquidity, Idiosyncratic risk, and the Conditional Risk-Return Relation

What kinds of risk do systematically drive stock returns? This question has prompted vast amounts of research and is still one of the main challenges in finance. It has not only been of interest in the finance literature, but it also concerns investors across the globe. In general, investors aim at avoiding risky stocks but are keen on earning high returns. But which stocks are considered to be risky? Does a premium exist for risky stocks? High returns and low risk –do these two goals conflict with each other? The following dissertation addresses these questions empirically. Studying the German and the US stock market, I investigate the risk-return relation and evaluate which kind of stocks yield a significant risk premium. This dissertation provides empirical evidence that illiquidty and idiosyncratic risk significantly drive stock returns and earn a significant risk premium while controlling for other potential risk factors. Surprisingly, idiosyncratic risk is negatively priced contradicting the theoretical results from classical finance theory. The first chapter of this dissertation focuses on the methodology. In contrast to the existent literature, I apply a conditional approach to the Fama-French three-factor model in order to evaluate the risk-return relation. As predicted by theory, my results yield strong support for a positive risk-return relation when risk factor realizations are positive and a negative one when risk factor realizations are negative. As a further contribution to the literature, I derive a test based on the conditional approach to estimate if beta risks are priced. My results show that this test produces very similar results as the standard Fama-MacBeth test. Chapter two examines the impact of illiquidity on equity returns. Since illiquidity has many facets, I cover the whole spectrum of illiquidity measures: trading speed, trading costs, trading quantity, and price impact. Based on these illiquidity measures I construct factor mimicking portfolios that capture the risk of illiquidity. My findings provide evidence that illiquidity drives stock returns and entails a significant risk premium independent of the measure chosen. Additionally, I investigate the link between size and illiquidity and tackle the question if size proxies for illiquidity. The third chapter deals with a widely accepted measure of risk, volatility, the standard deviation of returns per time unit. Volatility is often used to identify how risky an investment is. In classical finance theory it is assumed that investors dislike high volatility. Therefore, they require a compensation for holding volatile stocks. Not only most of the empirical and theoretical asset pricing literature predicts a positive relationship between volatility and expected returns, but also many practitioners believe in the trade-off between volatility and expected returns. They share the view that high volatility must be connived in order to earn higher expected returns. Volatility consists of two components: systematic and idiosyncratic risk. The largest component is idiosyncratic risk, which represents over 80% of the total volatility on average for single stocks. The last chapter of this dissertation investigates whether idiosyncratic volatility is a priced risk. My results reflect that low idiosyncratic volatility stocks outperform high idiosyncratic volatility stocks. Further, my empirical findings do not support the positive relation between total volatility and expected returns, but show that the trade-off is negative

Differences in Characteristics of the ERP System Selection Process Between Small or Medium and Large Organizatons

In this paper we detail the results from an empirical study concerning differences in characteristics of the ERP system selection process between small or medium and large sized organizations. In particular we address the fields of software packages considered and chosen, the weights assigned to different selection criteria, the persons involved in this process, the methods employed and implementation characteristics such as costs and duration

Foundations for actively secure card-based cryptography

Card-based cryptography, as first proposed by den Boer [den Boer, 1989], enables secure multiparty computation using only a deck of playing cards. Many protocols as of yet come with an “honest-but-curious” disclaimer. However, modern cryptography aims to provide security also in the presence of active attackers that deviate from the protocol description. In the few places where authors argue for the active security of their protocols, this is done ad-hoc and restricted to the concrete operations needed, often using additional physical tools, such as envelopes or sliding cover boxes. This paper provides the first systematic approach to active security in card-based protocols. The main technical contribution concerns shuffling operations. A shuffle randomly permutes the cards according to a well-defined distribution but hides the chosen permutation from the players. We show how the large and natural class of uniform closed shuffles, which are shuffles that select a permutation uniformly at random from a permutation group, can be implemented using only a linear number of helping cards. This ensures that any protocol in the model of Mizuki and Shizuya [Mizuki and Shizuya, 2014] can be realized in an actively secure fashion, as long as it is secure in this abstract model and restricted to uniform closed shuffles. Uniform closed shuffles are already sufficient for securely computing any circuit [Mizuki and Sone, 2009]. In the process, we develop a more concrete model for card-based cryptographic protocols with two players, which we believe to be of independent interest

An Intramolecular Iodine-Catalyzed C(sp3^{3})−H Oxidation as a Versatile Tool for the Synthesis of Tetrahydrofurans

The first iodine-catalyzed cyclization reaction of aliphatic primary and secondary alcohols gives access to tetrahydrofurans through an intramolecular C(sp$^{3}$)−H activation. The reaction proceeds under mild reactions using either a floodlight lamp or daylight. The formation of ubiquitous occurring tetrahydrofuran patterns has been extensively investigated in the 1960s as it was one of the first examples of a non-directed remote C−H activation. These approaches suffer from the use of toxic transition metals in overstoichiometric amounts. An attractive metal-free solution for transforming carbon-hydrogen bonds into carbon-oxygen bonds lies in applying economically and ecologically favorable iodine reagents. The presented method involves an intertwined catalytic cycle of a radical chain reaction and an iodine(I/III) redox couple by selectively activating a remote C(sp$^{3}$)−H bond under visible-light irradiation. The reaction proceeds under mild reaction conditions, is operationally simple and tolerates many functional groups giving fast and easy access to different substituted tetrahydrofurans

Offshoring to and from Turkey as an Emerging Economy: IT and other sectors

The aim of this paper is to determine the reasons and strategic drivers of offshoring activities of multinational companies (MNCs) in Turkey and compare those reasons with the ones found in other emerging countries. The primary data source is a series of in-depth interviews with professionals from several industries in Turkey. It was found that similar to other offshoring destinations, the reasons and strategic drivers for offshoring are market penetration and cost minimization. However three main points came up across all industries on why especially Turkey had been chosen as a offshore destination even though India and China are much more competitive in cost and market size: An ability to produce quality output in western norms; existence of motivated, flexible and highly educated work force which also has a passion for winning and an entrepreneurship spirit; and stable legal and technical infrastructure, serving as an international safe hub for MNCs to enter emerging markets in east and south. It was also found that mid to small size local firms tend to offshore out of Turkey because of competitive incentives and tax regulations in the neighboring countries