Measures and methods: four tenets for rural economic development in the new economy

Rural communities working to find strategies for success in today\u27s economy need to rethink the tools they are using. Brown-Graham is the executive director of the Institute for Emerging Issues and a policy fellow at the Carsey Institute. William Lambe is the associate director at the Community and Economic Development Program at the School of Government, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Newspaper Theft, Self-Preservation and the Dimensions of Censorship

One of the most common yet understudied means of suppressing free expression on college and university campuses is the theft of freely-distributed student publications, particularly newspapers. This study examines news accounts of nearly 300 newspaper theft incidents at colleges and universities between 1995 and 2008 in order to identify the manifestations and consequences of this peculiar form of censorship, and to augment existing research on censorship and tolerance by looking, not at what people say about free expression, but at what they do when they have the power of censorship in their own hands. Among the key findings is that men commit nearly 70% of newspaper thefts, which is inconsistent with much of the existing research on censorship and gender, and that those who censor college newspapers are far more concerned with their own self-preservation than with shaping public dialog on controversial social or political issues

Lunar soil engineering and engineering geology, July 1-31, 1967

Lunar soil and rock program in support of lunar exploratio

Academic Book Week 2017 at LSE Library

23-28 January 2017 is Academic Book Week, celebrating the value, variety and transformations of the academic book. To mark the occasion, Lucy Lambe outlines how LSE Library is celebrating the week and talks to LSE academics about their favourite scholarly works and how they envisage the future of the academic book

Feature: academic book week 2017 at LSE Library

23-28 January 2017 is Academic Book Week, celebrating the value, variety and transformations of the academic book. To mark the occasion, Lucy Lambe outlines how LSE Library is celebrating the week and talks to LSE academics about their favourite scholarly works and how they envisage the future of the academic book

Corporate Governance and Organizational Performance in the Nigerian Banking Industry

The concept of corporate governance emerged in response to the failures and widespread dissatisfaction with the way corporate organizations function. The Banking reforms in Nigeria brought about the consolidation of banks and based on exploratory analysis, it was found that in the presence of several regulations, weak corporate governance was a contributing factor to the poor performance underlying the subprime crisis in the Nigerian baking sector. In Nigeria It is evidential that banks strongly influence economic development and the efficient allocation of funds resulting in a lower cost of capital to firms, a boost in capital formations, and an increase in overall productivity. Consequently, the passing of various acts which deregulated the banking industry heightened the importance of internal regulatory mechanisms of banks such as corporate governance. In particular corporate governance is expected to affect bank’s valuation, cost of capital, performance and risk taking behaviour. Given the importance of the industry, there is a need to safeguard depositors’ funds and shareholders investments through a continuous entrenchment of sound and effective corporate governance regime within the banking sector. Keywords: Corporate governance, Organizational performance, stakeholders, Banking Industry, Nigeria

Northern Ireland Student Teachers’ Changing Attitudes Towards Inclusive Education During Initial Teacher Training

With the passing of the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Act into law alongside the move away from academic selection for post-primary pupils by 2008 and a far reaching review of the curriculum, education in Northern Ireland is about to face its most radical change in fifty years. Issues relating to Inclusive Education are now pressing and in addressing such change, it is recognized that pre-service programmes must be reviewed to ensure that student teachers are equipped to teach effectively in classrooms that may be very different from their own learning experience. This study seeks to discover the factors influencing student teachers changing attitudes towards inclusion during a one year Post-Graduate Diploma in Education. The findings reveal that positive attitudes towards inclusion were tempered by concern about personal competency to teach in an inclusive classroom and by continued attachment to the current system of academic selection with which they were familiar. The effect of a successful teaching practice in the non-selective sector had the most positive influence on perceived competency and on general attitudes towards inclusion. This researc

Corporate Capital Structure and Firm’s Market Value in Nigeria

The financing decision preference of firms is perhaps the most researched topic area in finance in the past decades following the seminal article of Modigliani and Miller (1958) which raised the issue of relationship between a firm’s choice of finance and its value. After the Modigliani-Miller (1958 and 1963) paradigms on firms’ capital structure and their market values, there have been considerable debates, both theoretically and in empirical researches on the nature of relationship that exists between a firm’s choice of capital structure and its market value. Most especially, major debates have centred on whether there is an optimal capital structure for an individual firm or whether the proportion of debt usage is relevant to the individual firm's value.  This study therefore seeks to identify and appraise the impact, capital mix, role of debt capital and the factors that influence a firm’s choice of capital and the overall effect of firm’s market value in Nigeria. In the course of this study; both primary and secondary sources of data were relied upon. The primary data were obtained through the use of a well structured questionnaire, while the secondary data were obtained from the fact book and periodic publications of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, as well as the annual financial statements of the sampled firms. The result indicated that the market value of a firm is positively significantly influenced by its choice of capital structure (financial leverage). Consequently the theory of a firm’s optimal capital structure is justified on the ground that it has an empirical significant positive impact on the firm’s market value. The study recommends that Quoted firms in Nigeria are encouraged to make maximizing of their market values the major focus when deciding their choice of capital structure and firms in Nigeria should strive to optimize their capital structure by an appropriate mix of debt-equity capital; for an optimal capital structure is the debt-equity mix that best maximize firms’ market values. Keywords: Capital structure, Market Value, Financing decision, Quoted firms, Nigerian Stock Exchange Foreign fund, Challeng