Milpa Agriculture vs. Industrial Agriculture Essay

The Milpa agriculture and Industrial agriculture have many similarities and differences. Milpa agriculture is a form of swidden agriculture that is practiced in Mesoamerica. Traditional Milpa is planted with maize, beans, and corn. Industrial agriculture is a modern faming that produces a life stock, poultry, and crops. The methods that industrial agriculture use to techno scientific, economic, and political. In Milpa agriculture some farmers use a coa stick in order to plan their crops and industrial farming the farmers use different machines. Industrial agriculture makes their job easier and faster by using the machines and technology. In Milpa agriculture is the totally opposite thing they don’t use technology in order to grow their crops it takes them longer to plant their crops by using simple method and one of the methods is the coa stick. Milpa agriculture has more than one plant such as maize, beans, and squash. Industrial agriculture only focuses on one plant. For example if industrial agriculture wants to grow maize they focus only in that specific plant that is being planted. Milpa is traditional in Mesoamerica. What I mean by this is that when milpa is planted in Mesoamerica is passed down in the family generations. Mesoamericans try to keep their tradition of planting milpa. In industrial agriculture is not really traditional to pass it down into their families mostly it is done because of the money. Industrial agriculture uses lots of pesticides in order to keep their crops from danger. By using pesticides they won’t lose lots of their crops. Milpa agriculture doesn’t really rely on the use of pesticides. Milpa agriculture does have the advantage of losing crops because they don’t use pesticides. That’s the reason in milpa agriculture more than one crop is incorporated at the same time they have the other crops to rely on not just on the maize. If industrial agriculture loses all their crops they won’t have anything to rely on because they only focus on growing on type of crops.

Competitive Advantage by Human Resource Management Essay

In today’s climate of global competition, the source of motivation varies–some are driven by money, some by a yearning to build relationships (Hollyforde et al, 2002). Yet, with the development of technology and global competition, new ways of working -these changes have had significant implications for the majority of the full-time workforce within the industrialized world, there are some issues, such as leadership, teamwork, empowerment etc, which are vitally important and need to be managed carefully, each of these concepts merits deeper analysis as we enter the 21st Century. Therefore, it is important to explore how contemporary human resource management (HRM) develops to highly skilled, loyalty employees and affect organisation’s performance, thus resulting in significant competitive advantages. This assignment will discuss and present some arguments regarding this statement from the following two areas: How contemporary HRM affects organisations’ performance based on the cases of Xerox and Microsoft, and recommendations for organisations how to gain competitive advantages through implementation of good HRM for a better 21st Century.

Virtual Learning Environments Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Virtual Learning Environments - Essay Example However, while such facilities provide significant advantages to both learners and teachers, they also bring difficulties. One of the main problems is about the lack of discrimination by the students to the materials available for research in the Internet and so the solution can be provided through the setting up of a walled garden. This protects the learner of an institution from the outside users and allows the teacher to upload chosen materials which are available exclusively for their student. However, while this solves one problem, it creates the potential to limit students’ research capability and need for them to learn to be discerning in assessing the usefulness of learning materials. Key Words: Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), ICT, Electronic, Learning, Walled Garden, Web 2.0. Contents Abstract 2 Contents 2 1.0.Introduction 3 2.0.Basic Information about VLEs 4 E-Learning provides a number of unique features such as collaborative activities, peer commenting, and onl ine assessment of coursework within a VLE. Common online course models include: 8 1)The content and support model – provides a separate tutorial support and standard course content; 8 2)The wrap around model – adopts the resource-based learning by combining the provision of classroom and online learning activities. Thus, giving more autonomy and accountability to the students; and 8 3)The integrated model – does not provide distinction between online tutorial support and course content (Mason, 1998). 8 Regardless of the type of online course model, a college or a university is using; there will always be some teaching and learning benefits, that can be gained by establishing a strong and reliable VLE (Nagi, 2011; Zhu and Bu, 2009; Fisher, Cox and Gray, 2008; Kroski, 2007; Nian-Shing and Yi-Hung, 2005). 8 3.0.Ways on How the Provision of â€Å"Walled Garden† could protect the Online Learners from Outside Forces and How It can impede the Students’ Le arning 12 4.0.Conclusion and Recommendations 15 5.0.References 16 1.0. Introduction VLE is an electronic system that can make online interactions of various kinds available, taking place among learners and tutors, as well as online learning (Comas-Quinn et al., 2012). The use of ICT and other related technologies significantly change the way educational activities are being conducted today. Though the history of VLE style tools can probably be traced back to the earliest days of educational computing, increased availability of technology is quite recent it is critical to state that much of the recent use has been motivated by technological advancement rather than the need for education progress (Becta, 2004). Every year, colleges and universities, are investing in the development of web based classes. Owing to significant development in Internet-based technology, educational organisations have restructured their course curricula to fit the course requirements of a virtual classroom and have started offering online distance learning courses. The control and direction regarding the use of the VLEs has been critical with respect to the learning institution. This is in regard to protecting the students from unwanted sources of information. This has led to the formation of walled gardened VLEs that take into consideration the

Q1 - Using Knowledge & skills to Assess Usage of Web Technologies in Essay

Q1 - Using Knowledge & skills to Assess Usage of Web Technologies in Your organization - Essay Example This practice also assists organizations to trim down their operating expenses and thereby offer best quality products and services to consumers at affordable prices. Therefore, any flaw in the use of web technologies would raise potential challenges to the competitiveness of the organization, and this in turn may cause the firm to lose its market share to competitors. In this situation, it is necessary for every firm to maintain a multidisciplinary team capable of assessing the firm’s use of web technologies. Evidently, combined use of IT and management skills is inevitable to evaluate the use of web technologies in the organization effectively. Undoubtedly, improved IT skills are the most prioritized need when it comes to assessing the efficiency of the firm’s technological base. An organization’s databases and network servers contain a wide range of customer data and information that are sensitive in nature. Hence, it is the duty of this team to ensure that sensitive customer data are secure at the best level and they are not exposed to growing security vulnerabilities. Presence of individuals with great IT skills in the team is vital to add advanced security features to the firm’s internal servers and networks, and this will reduce the threat of hacking and other malware attacks (Lemos, n.d.). In addition, it is also essential to identify security pitfalls in the firm’s databases and networks (if any) and resolve those issues immediately. Similarly, the combined use of IT and management skills is essential to make employees aware of the dreadful consequences of the data loss or theft, and enlighten them about improved data management practices. Reports indicate that inappropriate data management practices by employees is one of the major problems making sensitive customer/management data vulnerable to external security threats (Cisco, n.d.). The team charged with

The Project Risk Profile Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

The Project Risk Profile - Essay Example This essay stresses that the protocol produces meaningful project profiles using a consistent approach and fully quantifying concepts which might be considered non-quantifiable. Importantly, this protocol allows for the assessment of risks and strategic factors which are important for good decision-making. The PRP and SI are somewhat subjective calculations, and the FAP protocol forces management and appraisal teams to consider reasonable values for important, subjective judgments. This paper makes a conclusion that management will reject projects outright if the risks are too great or if the projects do not fit with the company’s overall strategic vision, but using the FAP protocol allows for a full understanding of financial and strategic potentials. Aspects of projects such as deferment, growth or abandonment are important considerations, and the FAP protocol structure allows evaluation teams to include those aspects in the evaluations. Since several sub-models play into the overall structure of the FAP model, evaluators are afforded flexibility. No project is rejected based on a single aspect of consideration, nor are projects accepted which may produce undesirable results because strategy and risk were not accounted for during assessment. The FAP model produces a dynamic and pragmatic approach to capital project evaluations and allows the management and appraisal teams to introduce their judgments into the model in a straightforward and structured w ay.

CSR- Accounting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

CSR- Accounting - Essay Example Numerous multidimensional and global issues are inculcated in its umbrella that has strategic implications for the business and its policy makers. It is concerned not only with what the business does with its profits but also with how it obtains them. Corporate social responsibility, in other words, addresses how the company manages its economic, social and environmental impacts along with its stakeholder’s relationships in all the key spheres of influence (SEEP, 2009). With the modern advent of the concept of corporate social responsibility, it is now expected of the businesses and the companies in general to be transparent and accountable in terms of their social performance. This idea of corporate social responsibility both reflects as well as drives the societies’ changing customs along with the social roles the businesses are expected to play (SEEP, 2009). In other words corporate social responsibility is basically about what the organizations do in order to be socially responsible. It encompasses the way the company’s managers respond to the diverse expectations that its stakeholders have from the company in terms of stakeholder management, issues management, as well as environmental scanning (Black, 2006). In view of the neo-liberal economists the concept of its contribution to the society was thought completely absurd. Despite the formation of a welfare state in the post war years, notable efforts had started initiating for engaging the businesses in society. However, increasing constraints were put on social aspirations of businesses following the expansion of corporate economy throughout 1940’s and 50’s. While, 1970 onwards the general interest of businesses towards corporate responsibility started to rise again which was finally consolidated in the 1980’s (Marinetto, 1999). Corporate social responsibility got developed due to the extension of a few contributing factors, such as the advent of the

Cellular PathologyCritical Review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Cellular PathologyCritical Review - Essay Example Finally, the correlation between CDX-2 and MIB-1 was also not significant with r value of 0.29. Most of these findings were not consistent with the findings from the existing literature. There were some positive points present in this study. The author discussed the results with support of the available information. In the discussion, some points on the limitations of the study were stated very well; limitation due to small sample size and limitation due to interobserver and intra-onbserver errors which could have affected the results from visual analysis which was a subjective issue. Apart from these positive points in the account of the study, it had some weaknesses. The author discussed the role of CDX-2 in the introduction but there was no mention of the MIB-1 role and value. Due to which author, in fact, could not build a rationale for carrying out this study. Although, the study type was described as retrospective but further elaboration on the topic is missing. Who were the cases (with definition) or controls, and how were they selected Even the sample size was not mentioned in the methodology section but only in the discussion.

Critical Thinking and Persuasion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 3

Critical Thinking and Persuasion - Essay Example The social components imply a positive atmosphere between the internal environment and the surrounding communities. There needs to be a plan to reposition the company as that which respects the rule of law and operates in an ethical manner. The source of marine life in Sea World could be a center of controversy. The firm faces a reduced number of visitors on grounds that the unscrupulous manner in which sea creatures are sourced in the move could have an ethical impact to the customers. People may tend associate the park business to the illegal nature of the acquiring sea animal are acquired. The deaths that are associated to the killer Whale in the move depict the aquatic business as one, which has on respect to human life. The company is faced by a challenge of maintaining its competitive advantage and at the same time market itself as a firm that consider ethics in its operations23. The firm faces reduced earnings caused by low customer turnout. The major component is marketing. Besides customer satisfaction, a firm needs to operate in an ethical manner. The board of directors needs to release a press briefing distancing itself from any allegation depicted in the documentary. The board of directors needs to acknowledge the core value of the firm and needs to approve strategies that work on ethics and other moral issues. The boards need to approve a budget that would be channeled into marketing. The firm needs to market its policies and its legitimate means of operations. The aim should be to develop a marketing plan that focus on pubic relation and focus on increasing the number of customers 3. A statement to shareholders needs to highlight the core objectives of the firm. The firm also needs to reposition itself as one that respects the rule of law. Following the highly publicized documentary, the board of directors noted a concern the future

Advertising and promotion strategies of three different companies in Essay

Advertising and promotion strategies of three different companies in the cosmetic industry - Essay Example Advertising and promotion strategies of three different companies in the cosmetic industry The major strategy behind the advertising campaigns of the group is to highlight the brand in each and every product. The strategy is that it relates its product line to those individuals who deserves the best and is cautious about the beauty products they use. It advertises its products as premium priced but believes to deliver the best quality cosmetic products. It uses several communication or media channels and highlights is growth over the years to its customers. Apart from the advertising strategies of its newly launched products the company also undertakes promotional strategies through various forms such as using in-store promotions in retail outlets, direct marketing to YouTube and through bloggers, promotions through contests in the form of digital contest in Facebook and Instagram, and even given an opportunity to the customers to customize their products in terms of size and smell so as to associate with the customers easily. The main strategy behind the promotions is to reach out to large consumer market section. The company even incorporates many celebrity endorsements in its product advertisement. The major strength of its advertisement and promotional techniques is that it helps to trigger in the consumer mind the brand name; it helps to create a niche market in the industry and also strengthens its brand. The weakness of the strategies is that it focuses on premium segment of the market and loses behind the vast section of the middle income group of the market.

Understanding the Education System Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Understanding the Education System - Essay Example Additionally, the tuition for technical courses (such as nursing, medicine, and engineering) is extremely higher. Most university students are more likely to incur additional costs on activity fees, accommodation, supplies, and health insurance. As a result, the overall annual cost may increase to $12000. Additionally, the costs are constantly increasing when the university administration adjusts for inflation. The cost education has increased by more than 20 percent from 200 to 2012. The increase comes at a time where the median family income increases by less than 10 percent. Furthermore, the number of charities subsidizing the cost of tuition by providing scholarships to students has decreased. The competition for the limited opportunities is very stiff and results in few students attaining a college education. Moreover, a number of student loans are quite low and may fail to finance all costs. Upon graduation, the students have also to face additional challenges of attaining empl oyment and paying the student loans. The federal government has a responsibility of ensuring all high school students attain post secondary education. The government must implement policies that ensure that students obtain tuition subsidies. Furthermore, the university administrations must ensure that the cost of tuition charged to the students is fair and reasonable. The parents have a responsibility of ensuring that their children have education insurance policies to cover their education (Laura, 2013).

MCDonalds Essay Example for Free

MCDonalds Essay Strategy and Repositioning the Brand McDonald’s in India Sameer, Sharanbir Kaur Abstract- Despite global slowdown, Indian economy is resurgent and offers fresh opportunities as well as challenges to global players. McDonald‘s still treats the Indian market as one of their young markets although what they have achieved in 15 years here, it would usually take them 25 to 30 years in another market. McDonald‘s philosophy of Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value (QSCV) is the guiding force behind its stellar service to the customers. However there is still a huge potential in the Indian food market that remains untapped in terms of family restaurants, quick service restaurants and breakfast eateries. Coming in the wake of these, their rebranding effort requires much more than a mere change of the logo or signage. There is a need to critically evaluate the right marketing mix. The article is focused upon assessing the marketing efforts in India in terms of positioning of McDonald‘s. Index Terms- Rebranding, Repositioning, Demography, Marketing Mix I. FAST FOOD INDUSTRY IN INDIA T he Indian fast food industry has evolved over time and always has been in line with the needs of people of all ages and segments. There are enterprises which scale from one room outlet to a chain having hundreds of outlets like McDonalds in India. As per new research report ? Indian Fast Food Market Analysis? , India is blessed with one of the fastest growing fast food markets in the world. The Indian fast food market is growing at an annual growth rate of 30-35%. Almost all big fast food brands of the world have succeeded in making their presence felt in the country and most of them posting an appreciable growth. Although the market has witnessed robust growth in the past couple of years, it remains largely under penetrated and concentrated in the metropolitan cities. However, there is large room for growth in tier-II cities, tier-III cities which are mostly untapped. Therefore, the future of Indian fast food industry lies in masses that live in tier-II and tier-III cities. In 2013, the global fast food market is forecasted to have a value of $200 billion, an increase of 29. 3% and a volume of 94. 7 billion transactions, an increase of 10. 4% since 2008. The consumer spending on processed food has increased at an average rate of 7. 6 per cent annually from 2008 to 2010 and this is expected to rise at an average of around 8. 6 per cent until 2012, according to a report by Assocham. Almost all big fast food brands of the world have succeeded in making their presence felt in the country and most of them are posting appreciable growth. It is estimated through the Euromonitor International and Credit Suisse Emerging Consumer Survey, that the average Indian spends just $ 11 as compared to his Chinese counterpart who would ideally spend $ 20 on fast food. Yet , if we see the Indian spending on food in totality , they spend 23 % of their earnings on the same while the Chinese spending is 20 %. So, the inference that can be drawn is that owing to the eating pattern of Indians they prefer to eat at home and would spend on cooking ingredients over fast food. However, this does not spell good news for the industry. It is set to witness the entry of new fast food players that plan to hit the Indian market with a vengeance with international giants like Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks being amongst them. II. THE COMPETITION People prefer fast food because its cheap, easy to prepare, and heavily promoted. India is a developing country with 2 percent of organized and 98 percent of unorganized sector. So most of the fast foods that came into Indian market as India has a high growth in every sector. Major players in fast food in India are: McDonald’s KFC Pizza Hut Dominos Cafe Coffee Day Barista More than 75% of McDonalds restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent locals. McDonald‘s product line in India is almost similar to other burger chains with a dominant Indian flavour. Perhaps, it would be correct to say that their only similarity with their foreign outlets is that they have French Fries and still use buns. Examining the immense Indianzation they have attempted in their menu here it wouldn‘t be surprising to see Indian Chapatis in place of buns. Their current offerings reflect the same. www. ijsrp. org International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2012 ISSN 2250-3153 2 Table I : Present Menu for McDonald’s India Menu Ranges Burgers and other Bites Spicy Delights McSpicyPaneer ExtraValue Meals Chicken McNuggets Meal McAloo Tikki Happy Price Menu Breakfast Menu Favourites Sausage McMuffin with egg French Fries McAloo Tikki Happy Meal Meals Source: McDonaldsIndia. com Desserts Big Spicy Paneer Wrap Filet O Fish Meal Maharaja Mac Meal McVeggie /McChicken Meal Chicken McGrill Beverages McSwirl Iced tea/ Cold Coffee Minute Maid Pulpy Orange/ Cappucino/ Tea Soft Serve (Strawberry /Chocolate) Veg Supreme Veg Pizza McPuff Veg McMuffin Sausage McMuffin Pancakes Filet O Fish Chicken Maharaja Mac Chicken McGrill Meal McChicken/ McVeggie McVeggie Meal McFlurry McChicken meal III. BUSINESS MODEL The Business Model of McDonald‘s is a franchise-based model coupled with strong corporate branding. The focus is on the branding of McDonald‘s as a globally accepted service provider with strong customer perception about: www. ijsrp. org International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2012 ISSN 2250-3153 3 Happy Employees means Happy Customers McDonald’s Efforts of repositioning its Brand-Recently, McDonalds management has decided to change itsstrategies. They now want to provide not only a place to sit and eat but also an experience that can be enjoyed by their customers. Figure 1: The Service Marketing Triangle Zeithaml and Bitner (1996 ) McDonald‘s realized very early in their business that in order to achieve happiness amongst customers;the possible route is through happy, motivated and committed employees. In accordance with this they played on the customer first strategy. Even in India, their efforts clearly indicated that they were keen to understand the Indian consumer. Hence they adapted themselves to tickle the taste buds of their Indian customers to become a brand that enjoys a very high brandrecall. Therefore they focused on internal as well as external marketing. The level of importance has changed to be in the following order (the most important people arenow at the top). Corporate Branding The marketers are shifting the branding efforts from their product brands to a more holistic corporate branding . The reason for the shift can be traced to the belief that, it is the corporate image that carries a great impact on the buyers who are more aware and more exposed to media coverage on various issues be it environmental responsibility, being corporate social responsibility or be it responsibility towards health of future generation. McDonald‘s describe a corporate branding framework that is based on three elements: Figure 2: McDonald’s Service Pyramid Figure 3: Corporate Branding Source: Hatch and Schultz (2003)), â€Å"Bringing the Corporation into Corporate Branding†, European Journal of Marketing, The recent McDonald‘s rebranding strategy is a part of this thought and vision. McDonald‘s road to success has not always been rosy. They have been at the receiving end of the media‘s onslaught. There was a huge uproar in US after media exposure against McDonald‘s unhealthy menu that was affecting the nation and leading it to a generation suffering from obesity and heart diseases among many more ailments. There were employment issues internally which showed that they did not treat their workers well. Hence they assessed their strategies again and came up with new objectives that strengthened their previous aims and gave a new direction to them as well. www. ijsrp. org International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2012 ISSN 2250-3153 4 McDonald’s Marketing Efforts Over the Years – Proactive Rebranding – A Proactive strategy includes a new line of business or market that does not conform to the existing brand identity. When McDonald‘s once referred to itself as Mickey D‘s to target kids in a commercial, it had just coined a new way of catering to an audience separate from its traditional family audience. Objectives of McDonalds Repositioning StrategyMcDonalds, the promise of American fast food anywhere in the world, has had to rethink and reposition its brand offerings in different countries. While some basic elements like Ronald were left in place the menu underwent an overhaul. For example, in India, the menu has no beef dishes since it is not considered religiously correct to eat cow‘s meat: there is the very popular McAlooTikki, a potato-based patty in burger buns; the Big Mac is replaced by the Maharaja Mac, the Big Mac in chicken; there is also the paneer (cottage cheese) McVeggie burger. The Italian McDonalds has a special coffee spot. To celebrate its 20th anniversary in China, McDonalds rebranded under the Make Room for Happiness campaign. They had all you want coffee refills; Wi-Fi and a more modern restaurant design were unveiled. This was done exclusively for China, where McDonalds positioned itself as a place to relax away from the high demands of the average Chinese‘s life. Its Im Lovin It slogan made way for Make Room for Happiness, and McDonalds became the place where the stressed young Chinese can spend quality time rejuvenating after working for long hours. The result was an 18% increase in sales, and an increasing legion of fans that is fueling McDonalds growth in China. McDonald’s Changing Markets Changing Strategies Decades after its launch, the Big Mac is changing colours, literally. The worlds largest fast-food chain is letting go of its familiar red-and-yellow colours for more muted tones as it goes for its biggest and costliest revamp in the country, in line with its global strategy of attracting more adults. For the next generation of consumers McDonald‘s plans to cultivate a very different image from its existing one. After revamping 280 stores in various markets last year, McDonalds is now opting for the Tampa model and will spread that design to upwards of 800 locations this year — roughly triple what it did last year. The company is donning a new look when India is on its way of becoming a global hotspot for food retailers, with chains like Starbucks, Burger King planning to enter the country. Some McRemodel highlights include : †¢Redoing roofs The bright red roofs that have topped McDonalds for several decades are getting the heave, replaced with flatter, more conventional roofs. †¢Muting paint The neon yellows and reds common to the interiors and exteriors are becoming history, replaced with much more subtle oranges, reds, yellows and even greens. †¢Updating chairs Those industrial steel chairs are giving way to wooden chairs, colorful stools and, in some cases, vinylcovered chairs that resemble leather. Some stores will have larger lounge chairs similar to the kind you might expect to find in a coffee shop. †¢Doubling drive-through To ease lines inside and outside stores, many locations are adding second drive-through windows to speed up service. †¢Splashing colour McDonalds hasnt junked its familiar red and yellow colors altogether, but it is making them far less obvious. Instead of filling the restaurants with them, its splashing bright yellow and red here and there for effect. †¢Dividing dining areas The sea of tables and chairs is history in the remodelled stores. The new dining rooms are divided into separate eating zones for larger groups, eat-and-run customers and folks who want to stay and lounge. †¢Adding flat-screens TVs Large, flat-screen TVs — some playing contemporary music — are showing up in many locations, though fewer than half of the remodelled stores will display them. The new design makes the customer feel more comfortable and at leisure to enjoy their surroundings. This offers to McDonald‘s two key opportunities- firstly, to shift to another www. ijsrp. org International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2012 ISSN 2250-3153 customer base with high spending power and then to broaden their menu with offerings at a higher price point. Risks Involved When a global organization like McDonalds is going in for rebranding, a lot of financing is involved and the global impact is huge. Though the step taken by the managers of McDonalds is well calculated but speculations are on till the time it doesn‘t fair well in the market and most importantly to the customers. This kind of rebranding in the Indian Food Industry can help change the image of McDonald‘s completely like in the case of Pizza Hut, which has become a part of fine dining segment, which it was not earlier. The Indian consumer is considered to be loyal but still the risks involved are high. 1. A trade-off between what is expected from a company and what a company has to gain from the consumers One can see that one facet raises the scale while the other weighs it down making it a tough task. In order to sustain the balance, it requires big investments which will surely add to the costs incurred in the rebranding. If the rebranding falls flat, it will result in a major profit decline. 2. Store positioning McDonald‘s needs to have the most current information to determine if present outlets are cannibalizing each other‘s business. To achieve this McDonald‘s team willneed comprehensive, demographic data of India along with both theirs and competitors‘ outlets. IV. CONCLUSION The task is mammoth as McDonald‘s tries to keep up in the race for a piece of the great Indian pie . As per Forbes , McDonald‘s India operations contribute 30 % to their sales which is a considerable share. It might become imperative to create a Point of Difference to fight it out in the Indian market as all fast food brands have modelled themselves on local flavours now , the latest being KFC with its ? Streetwise‘ menu. While McDonald‘s does have the edge with its excellent supply chain and distribution network the customer ultimately does become the king with low brand loyalty in this category being the generalisation . The rebranding effort on their part seeks to bring 5 in a new flavour to their brand offering but what remains to be seen is whether they are still able to strike a chord with the customer. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the people who assisted us in this endeavour of ours. First and foremost , we would like to thank Mr. Praveen Gupta, HOD , Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management for his valuable time and support. Also, a special mention to the staff of McDonald‘s Jor Bagh, Delhi who was very patient and helpful during our visits to the outlet for the study. REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Lovelock,Wirtz and Chatterjee ,? Services Marketing ? , in Plastics ,Sixth Edition ,India , Pearson , 2010 , pp. 66-98 , pp. 340-372 Aaker, D. A. (2004b), ? Leveraging the Corporate Brand? , California Management Review, 46 (3), pp. 6-18 Bijoor, H. , ? A Time to Rebuild? , Business India, February 20,2011 pp. 48. Hatch, M. J. and Schultz, ? Bringing the Corporation into Corporate Branding ? , European Journal of Marketing, 2003, 37 (7/8), pp. 1041-1064. Jacquelline, B. and Kline,S ,? From McLibel to McLettuce: Childhood, Spin and Re-branding? ,2007 , Society and Business Review, 2(1)

An Analysis Of Agatha Christie

An Analysis Of Agatha Christie Britishs literature is one of the biggest treasures of literary, poetry, play that famous around the world. The place that all the name like William Shakespeare, William Golding , and Philip Larkinà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ come from. Love story, romantic story, fantasy and fairytales are some topics that many author/writer want to write about, usually based on their personal life. Therefore, when people talk about literature, its only a small amount of people interested in mystery and murder stories and one of the reason is because mystery and crime stories as we know them today did not emerge until the mid-nineteenth century when Edgar Allan Poe introduced mystery fictions first fictional detective, Auguste C. Dupin, in his 1841 story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The acknowledged father of the mystery story, Poe continued Dupins exploits in novels such as The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) and The Purloined Letter (1845). (Mystery Time Line Group). Even though appeared really late in litera tures history but it coming popular quickly. And many authors became famous by writing this type of stories like Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy L. Sayers, and according to Hack, a woman spent her entire life writing about mystery and murder Stories Agatha Christie. It truly began in 1841 when Edgar Allan Poe introduced Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin in the short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Two women were brutally murdered in a baffling an grotesque manner, the police appear baffled, Dupin leads his own investigation and succeeds were regular authorities have failed, so getting in stone the basic of countless detective fiction novels to come (R.D Collin). After that, many other stories, novels appeared as mystery fiction and became very famous. According to Mystery Time Line Group, Dickens Charles became popular by Bleak House (1853). The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), a prolific writer, Collins wrote The Woman in White (1860). The Moonstone(1868),and a brilliant Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who we know as Sherlock Holmes. Many people wonder that why crime fiction became popular so quickly. Most writer novel usually write their story, they based on real story and it difference from all other category of writing, it include many difference small stories in one big story in order to find the final answer. While reading, reader feels like they are the main character and wants to find the puzzled as soon as possible, its mysterious mixing with reality because it based on things that surround us. By the 1920s British mysteries had become extremely popular, particularly the cozy, a style of mystery usually featuring a small village setting, a hero with faintly aristocratic family connections, a plethora of red herrings and a tendency to commit homicide with sterling silver letter openers and poisons imported from Paraguay.(Murder Ink) From a regular novel of finding puzzle, it spread out in to other category, involved more violation and sex one of them are I, The Jury which became one of the best selling mystery books back in those days, sold over 6 million copied and most of them are mal reader. Heavy gut and bloody mystery are interested many people too parallel with love mystery. It became more and more successful and that why mystery fiction became so famous in a short period of them. Not stopping there, crime fiction step in television and theater. TV has provided mystery lovers with a seemingly endless stream of colorful characters over the years and into the present. Characters such as Perry Mason and Simon Templar (The Saint) were extremely popular during the early years of TV, followed more recently by the likes of Lieutenant Columbo (Columbo), Jim Rockford (The Rockford Files), and Jessica Fletcher (Murder, She Wrote), among many others. (Mystery Time Line Group). Consequently, mystery keeping it own pos ition of strength and dot not losing any sign of abating. Many new novels had published and it not only convinces British but fan all over the world. And speaking of famous, Christie Agatha is woman that famous by her writing and nonpareil skill. Agatha Christie, full name was Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller. According to Janet Morgan, Agatha came from a middle class family in Torquay. In April 1878, Frederick Miller married to Clara Miller, they had three beautiful daughter together, into this well equipped house hold, Agatha was born on September 15, 1890, she was much-loved after through ; her mother was thirty-six and her father was forty-four and there was a gap of eleven years between Agatha and Madge and ten years between Agatha and Madge( Morgan, 8)which mean Agatha had two older sister and she was the youngest of all. By Morgan, we know that Agatha was educated when she was young and only educated at home (19). Agatha proved that she really intelligent, interesting in book, good at cooking and singer and in her early life, Agatha dreaming of becoming nurse, Agatha said, during her school day that she wanted to be a nurse but Mr. Miller had other ideas. She would deadly have loved her daughter become a concert pianist or a professional singer, perhaps in grand opera.(Hack 24). When Agatha was young, she wrote short stories and composed a collection of poems which were later publishes by Geoffrey Bles in 1925 and called The Road of Dream (Robyns 27). Confo rm to Richard Hack; Agatha worked at a hospital as a nurse in the First World War. This is the point when Agatha came up with an idea to write crime fiction novel while nursing for her patients. August 1914 she met an an aviator name Archibald Christie, its happen to be her future husband, surprised everyone when they got married in a Christmas Eve 1914 in a local church without any preparing , Agatha remembering the memory, wrote no bride could have taken less trouble about her appearance. No white dress, no veil, not even a smart frock. I was an ordinary coat and skirt with a small purple velvet hat.'(Hack 59). A baby girl was born in August 5, 1919 is a result of this married, Agatha gave birth to a baby girl in her own bed room and name it Rosalind (69). According to Richard hack, Archibald Christie only came home to see the baby and Agatha for a couple hours a day and left after that. Agatha felt depressed and sad when her body changed after pregnant and the loneliness while M r. Miller usually away from home, looking at the sad corner in her house, Agatha decided to continue her novel that she started when she was a nurse in World War 1 (70). The book names The mysterious Affair at Styles, it was a bid success, and The New York Times was really impressed with this book: The only fault this story has is that it is almost too ingenious, they wrote: Though this may be the first published book of Miss Agatha Christie, she betrays the cunning of an old hand à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ You must wait for the last-but-one chapter in the book for the last link in the chain of evidence that enabled Mr. Poirot to unravel the whole complicated plot and lay the guilt where it really belonged. And you may safely make a wager with yourself that until you have heard M. Poirots final word on the mysterious affair at Styles; you will be kept guessing at its solution and will most certainly never lay down this most entertaining book. (New York Times) Agatha keeping up with her writing career and thinking that this is what she love to do, she published: The Secret Adversary which appeared in 1922, Murder on the link(1923) the man in the brown suit ( 1924) (Robyns 48). Richard hack informed that Archie asked for a divorce in late 1926, he claims that he was falling in love with another woman and asking Agatha for a quit. Disappointing and painfully, while she still in a pain of the lost of her mother not too long ago (95). In December 1926, Agatha disappeared, the Monday morning paper wrote an article for Agathas manhunt: Missing from home, the Styles, sunning dale, Berkshire, Mrs. Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, age 35; height 5 feet 7inches; hair, red, hinged part grey; complexion, fair, built slight, dressed in grey stockinet skirt, green, jumper, grey and dark cardigan and small velour hat; wearing a platinum ring with on pearl; no wedding ring; black handbag with purse containing perhaps L5 or L 10. Left home by car at 9:45 P.M. Friday leaving note saying that she was going for a drive ( Robyns 66) Fifteen thousand fans join police from four counties looking for Agatha ( Robyns 67), she appeared three week later in Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, she claimed that she has loss her memories and do not remember anything happen before. According to Gwen, the doctor had diagnosed her as suffering from amnesia, typical case of mental reprisal, a person got hurt from someone or some impact event that affected them. In this case, it might be the depressing of losing her mother and the betrayed of her husband that made Agatha decided to disappear for a short period of time. Its difficult for Agatha Christy to recovery after all things happen so she decided to take a long holiday and choose the West Indies( Robyns 91) to distress and find a new source of inspiration for her next book. On this trip, she met Max Mallowan, an archaeologist, who Agatha spent the rest 45 year of her life with. On September 11, 1930, Mrs. Agatha Christie and Professor Max Mallowan were married quietly in Edinburgh to avoid the sensation that it would have caused in London press. The ceremony took place at St. Cuthberts church in the district of St. Giles with her daughter and two secretaries, Charlotte and Mary Fisher, as witness. ( Robyns 94). After married Agatha Christie returned to write book and success after success. Agatha got ideas from things she saw and turned to novels, masterpieces. Christie wrote the first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles , got an idea when she was a nurse in a hospital in World War I, and the plot of the story was base on World War I. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was finish during the death of her mother and a divorce with her ex husband. She translate her sadness in to the story and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd became one of the most selling book in Agatha Christie career, it place Agatha Christie at the top of her professionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ the un disputed Queen of crime(Robyns 53). Agatha love it and know this is what she love and something that she will keep doing till the rest of her life. 12 January 1976 In St. MARYS CHURCHYARD, Cholsey, Berkshire, forty seven miles west of London, lies Lady Mallowan- Dame Agatha Christie- who was known to millions of people throughout the world as the Queen of Crime, as she prefer, the Duchess of Death.(Robyns 3) According to Gwen Robyns, Agatha Christie has the most unique style of writing story, she doesnt base on and literature rule and still turn it into many wonderful novels. A lot of professor study about Agatha Christies writing. Like Professor Behr proved that the way her character say maybe misleading or false but on the other hand, it real and true, really inevitable (189). People wonder if she used that character from real life. Agatha replied: No, I dont. I invent them. They are mine. Theyve got to be my character- doing what I want them to do, being what I want them to be- coming alive for me, having their own ides sometimes, but only because Ive made them become real. (Robyn 190) Like she said she Agatha Christie had no ambition to create a literary style, she uses her own world as her own strength. Her stories use easy language, easy to understand, that helps reader have a way to connect to the character and make it real. She put so much effort in to whats she doing. In order to write a book, she has to work through all winter, and spring to be able to publish in September. Agatha said: you must decide what kind of style you want to work in and then read book that have a same style. (Robyns 197) People think that writing is much easy for me. It isnt. Its murder. (197). Even though Agatha think she cant write but the fans still cannot find a small mistake in her ingenious writing. Mr. Max Mallowan shard with reader about his wifes writing style: My wife always wrote the last chapter first. In this way she was able to gather up all the clues and nearly tie parcel. It was only after she had done this that she went back to the beginning and worked her way through.(Robyns 195) Agatha unique writing style is incredible, she thought of some ideas that people would never thought of. Like Murder on the Orient Express, the victim got murder while walking to the gas station and the last seem reader knew before he death that he was looking at a back of the woman wearing kimono ( Christie 38). In Murder with Mirror by Christie, she created many character in order to trick viewer by thinking there would be a multiple choice of murderer. Most of the time the answer will review in the very end of the story and it always surprise fans. Creative, ingenious, incredible still not a word that we can describe Agatha Christies works. People got blow away while reading to her books, follow every step that Mr. Hercule Poirot make who is an imagine character made by Mrs. Christie. According to Janet Morgan, he appeared in 33 of Christies novels and 54 short stories (108) became the most famous character made by the Crime Queen. She named her detective Hercule Poirot for no particular reason. (Hack 64). Even though Agatha Christie is a very famous writer, but she still read and discovered about crime fiction by looking up other famous author. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of the them, Agatha read and learn that if she want her book to be famous and unique, she need to created some one that creative and as smart as the most famous detective of the day, Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. John H. Watson, and that is how Hercule Poirot was born (64) go along with his friend Captain Hasting. Poirot was Agatha biggest child, followed her through her life. According to Hack, in 1975, Agatha released the held Poirot manuscri pt titled Curtain( 229) to make an end for Poirot, it sold more than one hundred twenty thousand copies. Fans of Hercule Poirot were visibly moved by the book which found him now crippled with pain ,and, on the last page of the novel, he said farewell to his friend Captain Hasting.( Hack 229) Another famous character that created by Christie is a woman name Jane Marple. According to Hack she Miss Marple was introduced in the short stories, The Tuesday Night Club establishes 1928; Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, she name Miss Marple after the Maple Hall during visited her sister and this character was dedicated to her only daughter Rosalind (131). Agatha never forgot the graceful decay she saw at this once fine house and name Jane Marple in its honor.The Tuesday Night Club, Murder at the Vicarage gave Agatha a critical success goes along with some book like: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), and Death on the Nile (1937). ( Mystery Time Line group). In Miss Marple, Agatha found a spirit whose observations she enjoy creating. The character herself was a spin-off from Caroline Sheppard, a spinster in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Agatha Christie had fun and interested with this character, Miss Marple gave Agatha many success in short stories category. Like Poirot, Agatha gave Miss Marple an end in the book Sleeping Murder and it was a gift for her love Max, while Rosalind was given Curtain, the final case for Hercule Poirot. (Hack 163) Agatha Christie wrote ninety-four books all told and was translated into 103 languages, 14 more than Shake Speare. She wrote eighty-three detective stories, six straight novels (under the pseudonym of Mary Wesrmacott), one book of reminiscences, two of poems, and her autobiography. Four hundred million copies of her book have already been sold and there is no sign of a decline in sale. (Robyns 3)Agatha is truly a legend of crime fiction, the queen of crime like people use to call her. Murder/crime fiction come a long way and still developing itself. Agatha Christie, a name that well never forget she gave her all and never want much for herself. She left behind so many great novel and wonderful art work and she will always be the most popular mystery writer of all time. Because like she said: I did not have to be polite when saying that I could see no limit to the popularity of my story ( Robyns 200)

Human Rights and the British Class System

Human Rights and the British Class System According to http://woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/class.htm â€Å"Britain was once a class-ridden society.† Class was a staple part of the British way of life. Today, multiculturalism and a changing economy are gradually eroding the British class system, but some features of the system still remain. What is Class? Sociologists define social class as the grouping of people by occupations. Doctors and lawyers and university teachers are given more status than unskilled labourers. The different positions represent different levels of power, influence and money. The British society is often considered to be divided into three main groups of classes: the Upper Class, the Middle Class, and the Lower or Working Classs This is known as the Class system The Different Class Systems There are three main class divisions. The Upper Classes tends to consist of people with inherited wealth, and includes some of the oldest families, with many of them being titled aristocrats. The upper classes are not only defined by their title, but also by their education, and their pastimes which includes the traditional sporting life involving hunting, shooting and fishing, as well as a great deal of horse riding for both leisure and as a competitive pursuit. The Middle Classes are the majority of the population of Britain today. They include industrialists, professionals, businesspeople and shop owners. Working class people are mostly agricultural, mine and factory workers. Status You can tell which class people belong to by the way they speak (accent), their clothes, their interests, the way that they educate their children, or even the type of food they eat.† Homeless People What would it be like to be homeless? Imagine not knowing where you will sleep tonight. On a practical level, how would it feel not to have a bath for weeks and to wear dirty clothes every day? I think most of us would agree with the line from John Payne’s poem Home, Sweet Home: â€Å"Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home†. Yet thousands of people in the UK have no home of their own. We have all seen people asking for money, who seem to have all their possessions in a plastic bag, and nowhere to go. Although these people who are sleeping rough in doorways are the most visible, homelessness also includes those who are placed in hostels, bed and breakfast or other temporary accommodation, or local authority housing. It is difficult to understand how people become homeless and research shows that they are all ages, from all areas and backgrounds. There are charities that support the homeless and Centrepoint is a national organisation that focuses on young people. It provides emergency night shelters and short stay hostels. Their research shows that more than 80% of the young people who turn to Centrepoint for help are homeless due to family breakdown, abuse or eviction. Some young people become homeless following the death of a parent. It seems a double blow to be bereaved and homeless. However, often these vulnerable young people find themselves sleeping rough before seeking help. Many of these 16 to 20 year olds have no qualifications or means of supporting themselves financially. I feel that if our society wants these people to become self-sufficient, it is essential to offer help in the form of housing, and assisting them to either return to school, or to gain qualifications through training programmes to improve their chances of finding worthwhile employment. Tragically, many homeless young people are â€Å"befriended† by drug addicts or encouraged into prostitution. For those who have run away from home as a result of abuse, one wonders how bad their home circumstances must have been if they would prefer to face the risks of addiction and sexually transmitted disease. Of course it is not only young people who become homeless. Older people can face homelessness when they lose their jobs and are evicted from their homes because they cannot pay the rent. Sometimes these people have physical or mental health problems as well. Unfortunately in some circumstances these people either have no family, or their families are unable or unwilling to help them. Single homeless people are not a high priority for housing assistance and are therefore more likely to be sleeping rough, huddled under a bridge, trying to keep warm with newspapers. Other homeless people are ex-offenders. They have paid for their crime and yet they find themselves unable to find a job and therefore without resources. It is sad that many people coming out of prison have nowhere to go and may eventually end up in prison again. Often these people have been exposed to drugs in prison and will resort to dealing as a means of making money. Anyone is capable of turning to crime out of desperation, ending up harming others in an attempt to steal money. If people become homeless as a result of family breakdown or employment problems, should we not as a society make a stronger effort to help these people? Homelessness and having no money creates a climate for crime which is what we want to prevent. One of the ways of preventing it could be to offer more support to people before they find themselves homeless. For example, young people could have anonymous safe places to go to if they are in abusive situations. They should know that there is at least one adult at school who they can talk to, or a number they can phone. Although there are charities offering phone line assistance, it is not sufficient. The people who receive the least sympathy, it seems, are the mothers with small children. Although they may not be sleeping rough, these families are often in very cramped accommodation and they cannot really make it feel like a home. If they are fortunate enough to be given council housing they are often envied or disliked by others and made to feel that they have been given something they do not deserve. However, we do not know their circumstances and they may have been the victims of sexual abuse or domestic violence. It would be far better for them and their children to be in a safe place than to risk further violence. Homelessness is a problem all over the world. Places affected by flooding and earthquakes suddenly have thousands of people whose homes have been demolished and who have no possessions. Places in Africa that experience severe drought conditions force people to try to find food elsewhere. Unfortunately the result is often groups of homeless people who are starving.According to the United Nations, more than 100 million people worldwide have no housing whatsoever. This becomes a serious Human Rights issue and although we might like to think it is mainly a problem in the developing countries, the truth is that in first world countries such as the UK and United States, the number of homeless is growing. Although it is helpful to donate to charities who offer help, or to give people food, more needs to be done. Adequate housing needs to be available and we have to change our attitude towards people who may be in dire circumstances through no fault of their own. Bibliography Capdevila, G HUMAN RIGHTS: More Than 100 Million Homeless Worldwide http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=28086 Payne, J Clari; or, the Maid of Milan: an Opera. London: John Miller, 1823. See http://www.poetry-archive.com/p/home_sweet_home.html Pleace, N and Fitzpatrick, S (2004) Centrepoint Youth Homelessness index http://www.centrepoint.org.uk/documents/Centrepoint_YorkResearch-report.pdf

The Geranium and Judgment Day Essay -- Analysis, Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor’s short-story work occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, a time in which race caused significant tensions among Americans. Raised in the south, Flannery grew up in an atmosphere of overt racism and Catholic fervor. Both of these influences affected the way she wrote. Flannery O'Connor conveyed both her moral and religious values in her writing, and she consistently wrote about religion and race within this narrow perspective. â€Å"Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics† (O'Connor Habit 147–8).She showed this narrowness repeatedly by her choice of themes, styles and views, and included them in stories such as â€Å"Everything That Rises Must Converge,† â€Å"The Geranium,† â€Å"The Artificial Nigger,† and â€Å"Judgment Day.† Flannery O'Connor was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia. She was raised by her mother and father, though a hereditary disease, lupus, took her father away from her at the age of fifteen. Her religion came directly from the Bible Belt, and her views on race reflected the issues going on at the time. She witnessed the first black Americans go to the world championships, the KKK tormenting of black Americans, Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight for black American’s rights, and the beginning of the de-segregation of society. At the time, many white Americans in the south rebelled against the tide of racism, and O’Connor was drawn to this moral stance. She wrote her short stories during this time period, a writer clearly enmeshed in the social, juristic and economical events of her time. O'Connor's subject in her fiction, she once said,... ...ople are often classified with more than one ethnicity in America. Does that stop society from making comparisons between races? No, it does not. The United States President, Barack Obama, is known as the first black president. Technically, he is the first black president but there is no need to bring up his race. The color he does not seem to affect the decisions he makes. Society is still just as guilty of trying to make ethnicity an easy thing to understand. We are all blameworthy of making assumptions off of race or religion and refusing to acknowledge the individual truths that lie beyond those things. So, as we continue to teeter along that wall between as racism and acceptance, think of Flannery O'Connor's writing. Holding views for one side while sympathizing with the other is something that has been around for centuries. She, however, made it an art form.

Eminem - AKA Marshall Mathers :: essays research papers fc

Eminem, born as Marshall Mathers, has proven that with a lot of desire, drive and dedication, anybody can accomplish even their greatest of goals. Eminem was raised in the ghettos of East Detroit. He was bullied and victimized by other students in school. He worked to achieve his goal, against the odds. As a result, what he has become is one of America's most popular and successful music artists. Marshall "Eminem" Mathers was born on October 17, 1974, in Detroit, Michigan. After moving to Kansas, he and his family returned to Detroit and settled in a Black neighborhood. Records show that Marshall, while in school, was attacked and beaten by school bullies, on numerous occasions. On two occasions, Marshall was beaten into unconsciousness. Eminem's rap song "Brain Damage" is a true story of when a bully hit Marshall on the head and knocked him unconscious on the school playground. His ear began bleeding and he was hospitalized. It was discovered that he had a brain hemorrhage. He was in and out of consciousness for five days. (Rolling Stone) For Marshall, the road to success was long and hard. Marshall began rapping in 1990 at the "Hip Hop Shop" where he would participate in rap battles. On December 25, 1995 Eminem's girl friend, now wife, Kimberly Scott gave birth to his daughter, Haile. Eminem continued rapping and worked at a family restaurant in Detroit. Eminem, Kim and Haile lived in a crack-infested neighborhood where stray bullets and residential burglaries occurred often. In 1997 Eminem became unemployed, had no high school diploma and couldn't afford to support his family. He was tired of not having a record deal. He considered giving up rap. He decided to record the "Slim Shady EP" as his last hope to make it. His last attempt landed him a deal with Interscope Records and the next year, in 1998, with Dr. Dre's Aftermath label. On February 23, 1999 Eminem's "The Slim Shady LP" was released. The LP went triple platinum. Later he went on to win two Grammies. One for best rap solo performance ("My Name Is"), and another for best rap album ("The Slim Shady LP"). On May 23, 2000 Eminem released his second full-length album, "The Marshall Mathers LP". The second LP sold 1. Eminem - AKA Marshall Mathers :: essays research papers fc Eminem, born as Marshall Mathers, has proven that with a lot of desire, drive and dedication, anybody can accomplish even their greatest of goals. Eminem was raised in the ghettos of East Detroit. He was bullied and victimized by other students in school. He worked to achieve his goal, against the odds. As a result, what he has become is one of America's most popular and successful music artists. Marshall "Eminem" Mathers was born on October 17, 1974, in Detroit, Michigan. After moving to Kansas, he and his family returned to Detroit and settled in a Black neighborhood. Records show that Marshall, while in school, was attacked and beaten by school bullies, on numerous occasions. On two occasions, Marshall was beaten into unconsciousness. Eminem's rap song "Brain Damage" is a true story of when a bully hit Marshall on the head and knocked him unconscious on the school playground. His ear began bleeding and he was hospitalized. It was discovered that he had a brain hemorrhage. He was in and out of consciousness for five days. (Rolling Stone) For Marshall, the road to success was long and hard. Marshall began rapping in 1990 at the "Hip Hop Shop" where he would participate in rap battles. On December 25, 1995 Eminem's girl friend, now wife, Kimberly Scott gave birth to his daughter, Haile. Eminem continued rapping and worked at a family restaurant in Detroit. Eminem, Kim and Haile lived in a crack-infested neighborhood where stray bullets and residential burglaries occurred often. In 1997 Eminem became unemployed, had no high school diploma and couldn't afford to support his family. He was tired of not having a record deal. He considered giving up rap. He decided to record the "Slim Shady EP" as his last hope to make it. His last attempt landed him a deal with Interscope Records and the next year, in 1998, with Dr. Dre's Aftermath label. On February 23, 1999 Eminem's "The Slim Shady LP" was released. The LP went triple platinum. Later he went on to win two Grammies. One for best rap solo performance ("My Name Is"), and another for best rap album ("The Slim Shady LP"). On May 23, 2000 Eminem released his second full-length album, "The Marshall Mathers LP". The second LP sold 1.

Socrates :: essays research papers

As we read in the Apology, Socrates was on trial because he was thought to be a wise man who taught his views to the youth. Being wise was an illegal behavior during his time. He was accused of making weaker arguments the stronger. Knowing none of these accusations to be true, Socrates told the jury what he believed to be true. When found guilty of such accusations Socrates did let it be known he did not fear death. As a philosopher he questioned the purity of everything, and of course the heavens were not overlooked. He wondered if after death there was a great place where all who have passed go and live an even better life than known to us on earth.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  He also wondered if death was a blessing. Not clearly knowing what happens after death, he thought one of two theories would occur. There was either a relocation for the soul in another place with an all new life, or the body was nothing and had no perception of anything once departed. Socrates viewed both situations as good, so a blessing it would be indeed. He then thought if it was like a state of dreamless sleep, death would be an advantage. Thus, think of the best sleep you ever had and did not dream at all. Also think of the mornings you do not want to wake up cause you know the upcoming day entails hard work and minimal pleasures. Socrates thought not many days were as good as this occasional great sleep. If death was as great as this, he thought there was nothing to fear. He also thought that if they were to go on to a different place after death, this as well, would also be great. Given the ability to once again see the people who have passed into this gr eat place.

Disco Music

Matt Crane 8-19-06 Music Back in the late 1960s, disco originated as a combination of many instruments played together. It was in 1969 when Jerry Butler released his latest song ‘Only the Strong Survive’ that we got our very first disco song. This was the birth of disco but then it was a form of music which hadn’t been named. Four years and many songs later on the 13th of September 1973, Vince Aletti wrote an article in the Rolling Stone Magazine which gave this music form its name â€Å"DISCO†.This soulful music is based on a number of instruments blended together to get what is known as the disco sound. The vocals are played on a steady four on the floor beat or what is known as a quaver (eighth note) or a semi- quaver (sixteenth note). Many electronic musical gadgets are used to create the background score. This form of music has more of electric bass line and the guitar is seldom used as a lead instrument. Films like Saturday Night Fever and Thank God I ts Friday made disco theque more popular than ever before.It was the Bee Gees who came to represent real Disco theque. The group till then was famous for their ballads and pop songs challenging the supremacy of The Beatles. Their success numbers were released again on the Saturday Night Fever movie soundtrack. Disco was born much earlier in the late 60’s when Jerry Butleras haunting melody was the first case of a combination of music with dance. This particular song brought about the marriage between Philly and New York soul both being evolutions of Motown Sound. The Philly sound is lavish percussion. 972 Soul Makasso is said to be one of the first disco songs. Disco spread to Europe through the jivings of Abba from the mid 70’s. Boney-M was another group of four West Indian singers and dancers who guided by West German record producer Frank Farian, soon became a great hit in Canada and Japan. The latter half of the 70’s saw clubs reverberating with Disco music. The culture centered on discotheques, nightclubs, and private parties where DJ’s played disco hits through power sound systems. Long single records kept people dancing throughout the night.Even some of the most prestigious clubs matched their lighting arrangements to swish to the beat of Disco theque. Dancing schools sprung up in some cities and candidates were taught how to touch dance hustle and cha-cha. Disco fashions then hit the market with Halston dresses for women, shiny Qiana shirts for men pointed collars and open at the chest worn with double knit jacket suits. Disco culture soon became a shelter for those on the fringes of society they found a way to express themselves. Disco managed to fulfill one of the objectives of the Civil Rights movement.It brought the races closer together for the first time where Blacks & Whites â€Å"co-mingled† freely. Although â€Å"disco's† did in fact lead to the downfall of the â€Å"inner city Funk House† a nd while a few of them practiced â€Å"racist door policies†. For the most part you could get in, dance and socialize across racial barriers. Disco was in fact one of the first forms of â€Å"voluntary integration† that American’s have seen. The music was the same & every ones attitude was the same. Different instruments and disco sounds made their way into the hearts of people in a big way.Discos became a place where there would be loud disco music, a dance floor with disco lights and of course you disco lovers dressed in the latest disco outfits having a blast of a life time. Discos have a culture of their own. The music is loud enough to make you and your heart beat a little faster. The lights keep changing colors and also help in changing you moods and shedding any inhibition you have. The clothes too are tight fitting to show off your more of the body. Shirts with slightly long and pointy collars, the Qiana shirts for the gents and the Halston dresses f or women were in fashion.Discos brought in many other cultures too. One of the main addictions that disco brought in was drugs. Cocaine and Quaalude became the main drugs for all disco lovers. While cocaine gave them a high spirit, it helped many to enjoy the loud music better. Quaalude made them feel light like jelly and helped them to move to the groove. The dance lovers enjoyed the discotheques, as there was music, dance, alcohol and fun. Discos became very popular and some of them became as popular as tourist sites too. Manhattans Studio 54 is one such place.You couldn’t miss this hangout, as you would see many celebrities and people who are both rich and famous there. In the 1970s and 80s disco and dance came together and were the craze of the time. Groups like The Jackson Five, ABBA and The BEE GEES are still bands which are famous for their great disco music. Disco, which was performed only by a few bands in the beginning spread like a forest fire. Soon disco became ma instream and all kinds of bands were performing disco numbers. Disco was the in thing and a lot of movies were made on the disco theme too.Saturday night fever starring John Travolta and Thank God It’s Friday were two big hits with disco as its mainstream idea. ABBA was a group, which took Disco beyond the borders of America and right into Europe and Asia. The songs were such big chart busters that all over the world they created many new records. Boney M a group of four West Indian singers were another group, which broke the barriers of caste, color and creed to give pure and outstanding disco music. Dalida released their hit number â€Å"J’attendrai† which topped the charts in Japan, middle and south Asia and Canada These groups made disco very popular in the 70’s.The growing craze for disco angered the fans of rock music. While some just threw out all disco records, a few took drastic steps. DJs of rock music held events like the Disco Demolition night . Many groups came together to stage anti-disco demonstrations. Slowly but steadily in the 1980s disco began to die down. Though disco kind of became obsolete but it was still very much a part of the night life in Europe. With newer forms of music and even newer groups emerging Disco was given a back seat. In 1990s and 2000 once again disco began gaining popularity again.With major singers like Madonna, Kate Ryan and Suzanne Palmer performing Disco. Disco sound is mainly based on strings and horns accompanied by reverberating vocals mixing with electric pianos and chicken-scratch guitars. Dramatic minor and major seventh chords dominate disco music. The other instruments in used are bass guitar, piano, string synth with electrocoustic keyboards. There are drum kits and electronic drums together with harp, violin, viola, trumpet, saxophone, trombone, clarinet, flugelhorn, French horn, tuba, English horn, oboe, flute and piccolo.The songs usually have a steady four-on-the floor beat. It has affinity with Dominican meringue, rumba, samba and cha-cha-cha rhythms. A synthesizer is sometimes used to replace the bass guitar. Disco branched off into regional styles during the mid70’s by many formal musicians. Keeping the same broad traits of disco the new types came to get an individual stamp of the singer and the orchestra. Notable among them were The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic. Disco thus came to be arranged and composed by experienced arrangers and orchestrators. It required large number of instruments and a eam, which included the conductor, copyists, record producers and mixing engineer. Disco songs used as many as 64 tracks of vocals and instrumentals. Mixing engineers thus had a very important role. They created a distinctive sounding known as disco-mix. DJ’s were important for popularizing disco and consequently its sales. I would say that disco music expresses itself by its fast beats that you dance to. Its music g ets people to be all about partying, loosing yourself to the songs, and feeling good. It lets people â€Å"groove† or â€Å"Boogie down†, just dance the night away.It’s the art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. To me disco music means, music that consists of several different instruments that make all sorts of rhythms and melodies. It’s a type of music that has a fast beat and just makes you want to dance. With disco music all you want to do is get down on a dance floor with a lot of people and just feeling good. Disco music is a good style of music that puts different sounds in one through the melody and rhythm of the song.

As You Like It Essay

‘As You Like It’ Essay Belonging is the inclusion of both acceptance and alienation. Belonging is security, connection and camaraderie where as not belonging is estrangement, ostracism and seclusion. To belong to people, communities or places can create positive as well as negative outcomes. People’s perceptions of belonging are constantly changing due to personal, historical, cultural and social contexts. In Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ incorporates both aspects of belonging; acceptance and alienation. Different types are presented throughout the play by showing connections to place, to people and to ideas. Each connection that is presented details the characters emotions, actions and morals and values. Connections to certain places is expressed throughout the play but is not restricted to a single environment. Various characters including Orlando, Rosalind and Duke Senior all achieved a sense of belonging through their banishment/withdrawal from the court environment to the Forest of Arden. The Court, once a place where these characters rightfully belonged and had created affinities with, now had became a hostile and foreign environment forming negative outcomes. Not long after, they created connections to the Forest of Arden by the forest providing them with a place of protection and a place to heal their wounded emotions. The forest and the Court are juxtaposed because both environments are necessary to create balance and unity between the characters so they can live happy and fulfilled lives. Rosalind and Orlando had to be banished from the Court, to then thrive and find themselves in the Forest of Arden enabling them to then return to the Court to live their lives where they rightfully belong displaying the importance of these environments. Connections to people are what forms their morals and values and defines their actions. Celia is a perfect example of a connection to a person. She demonstrated the power of love and one’s connection to a person through her loyalty and devotion to Rosalind by showing that she would abandon everything; the Court life and her father, to follow Rosalind into the forest. She had displayed that there is no home at the court, no sense of belonging, without her Rosalind. This connection that Celia had with Rosalind created positive effects to herself and conveyed how belonging to a person was necessary for a positive outcome. Connections to certain ideas define who people are but they also can be poignant and thought provoking toward the audience. Through the play the quote ‘All the world’s a stage’ pessimistically tells us that we all are one in this life. The play affirms that everyone belongs to the same human race and they all have the same ending. This idea is expressed in the dance at the end. It represents a social ritual where everyone belongs and they celebrate love, marriage and common humanity. Ideas can also shape ones perceptions of the world and how they act toward them. Belonging can not just create positive or negative outcomes but it can either enrich or diminish a person’s life; their actions, decisions, morals and values and emotions. In Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ everyone experiences positive outcomes because it is one of his comedies. Belonging throughout the play established its importance to the characters and also detailed the connections they had with each other, their environment and themselves. It also showed how belonging is continually modifying to one’s circumstances but also by their personal, historical, cultural and social contexts.

Film Theory and Criticism Essay

Maya Deren is known as one of those in Hollywood who represented everything that was not Hollywood. A film theorist and film maker, among other things, Maya Deren was born as Eleanora Derenkowsky in Kiev, Ukraine. She was born into the film making industry, named after an Italian actress. After moving to Syracuse, New York, it was here where she began her interest in the socialist movement. It was also this move which influenced much of her life and her direction in movies. Maya Deren began her formal education at Syracuse University where she was an active member of the Trotskyist Young People’s Socialist League. She eventually went on to work with Katherine Dunham where she got her chance to work in Hollywood. Using the inheritance she got from her father, Maya Deren purchased a second hand 16mm Bolex camera with which she made what is perhaps considered as one of best films, Meshes of the Afternoon. This was recognized as one of the first seminal American avant-garde films during the time. It was originally a silent film that featured no dialogue, however, in 1957 a soundtrack was added by Teiji Ito. By 1943, she changed her name to Maya Deren. This was because of her beliefs at that time and reflected her political ideologies as well. By this time, she had already expanded her social circle within Hollywood to include such others like Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Anais Nin. A year later, she started her second film, At Land, and other films such as A Study in Choreography for the Camera in 1945 and Ritual in Transfigured Time, which was made in 1946, which explored the fear of rejection and the freedom of expression in abandoning ritual. Her efforts did not go unrecognized as in 1946 she was awarded with the Guggenheim Fellowship for â€Å"Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures. † While not the greatest of her awards, she was also given the Grand Prix Internationale for her experimental film Meshes of the Afternoon at the Cannes Film Festival. Her other great works include Meditation on Violence, which was made in 1948. This film portrayed the distinction between violence and beauty and is performed in by Chao Li Chi. Aside from her career in the film industry, Deren also distributed her films and gave promotional tours all over the world. During her career, she not only featured screenings in the United States, Canada and Cuba but she also lectured extensively on film theory and vodoun. This, however, did not stop her from building up her film career and she went on to write, direct and even star in most of her films. This was manifested during her time creating â€Å"New American Cinema† which paid homage to the experimental underground film of the United States. The legacy that Maya Deren left was more than just through the works that she made for the silver screen. In 1986, the American Film Institute honored her achievements by creating the Maya Deren Award for independent film making. There have also been numerous accounts of homage being paid to her achievements such as the tour by the Horse and Bamboo Theatre of the United Kingdom which created the Dance of White Darkness which is the story of Deren’s visits to Haiti. The most recent movies created in her honor include the film by Martina Kudlacek entitled In the Mirror of Maya Deren which featured the music of John Zorn. There was also a memorial that was written by Robert Stone to celebrate the achievements that Maya Deren had on not only the music industry but also to the arts. While the influence of Maya Deren will surely be remembered in her works, there is no other clear testament to her influence on the industry as is shown by the homage that she is continually given to this day. Bibliography: Deren, M(Orig. published 1963) Cinema: The Creative Use of Actuality in Mast, G and Cohen. M eds. (1985) Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings Oxford University Press, Oxford. Pray, M(2007) Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions Wallflower, London. Sitney, A(1979) Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde 1943-78 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Fair Value or Cost Mode Drivers of Choice for Ias 40

European Accounting Review Vol. 19, No. 3, 461– 493, 2010 Fair Value or Cost Model? Drivers of Choice for IAS 40 in the Real Estate Industry A. QUAGLI? and F. AVALLONE ? Department of Accounting and Business Studies (DITEA), University of Genova, Genova, Italy and ? ? Department of Computer and Management Science (DISA), University of Trento, Trento, Italy (Received September 2008; accepted February 2010) ABSTRACT The IFRS mandatory adoption in European countries is an excellent context from which to assess the validity of accounting choice theory, which postulates that information asymmetry, contractual ef? iency (agency costs) and managerial opportunism reasons could drive the choice. With this aim, we test the impact of these factors to explain the adoption of fair value for investment properties (IAS 40) in the real estate industry, taking into account the ‘revaluation’ option offered by IFRS1 and using historical cost without revaluations as a baseline catego ry for comparison purposes. We select a sample of European real estate companies from Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden, all ? rst-time adopters of the IFRS. Using a multinomial logistic model, we show that information asymmetry, contractual ef? iency and managerial opportunism could account for the fair value choice. Particularly, the most signi? cant ? ndings are that size as a proxy of political costs reduces the likelihood of using fair value while market-to-book ratio is negatively associated with the fair value choice. On the other hand, leverage, another typical proxy of contracting costs, seems not to in? uence the choice. This evidence con? rms the current validity of traditional accounting choice theory even if it reveals, in such a context, the irrelevance of the usual relations between accounting choice and leverage. . Introduction We analyse if the choice between cost or fair value for investment property under IAS 40 aims at (i) reducing agency costs (contractual ef? ciency Correspondence Address: A. Quagli, Department of Accounting and Business Studies (DITEA), University of Genova, Via Vivaldi 2, 16126 Genova (GE), Italy. E-mail: [email  protected] unige. it 0963-8180 Print/1468-4497 Online/10/030461–33 # 2010 European Accounting Association DOI: 10. 1080/09638180. 2010. 496547 Published by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd on behalf of the EAA. 462 A. Quagli and F. Avallone easons), (ii) mitigating information asymmetries, as standard setters claim, or (iii) allowing managerial opportunism, typical motives de? ned by accounting choice theory (Holthausen, 1990; Fields et al. , 2001). Using a multinomial logistic regression, we test these hypotheses using 73 observations from real estate companies located in European countries (Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden) which do not allow the fair value method in the pre-IFRS mandatory period in order to eliminate the in? uence of pre-exist ing fair value adoption. All these ? rms are ? sttime IFRS adopters, enabling us to compare the same accounting choice in a similar situation (? rst-time adoption). The mandatory adoption of IAS 40 (Investment properties) by European listed companies offers a unique opportunity to verify managers’ behaviour in a composite context of accounting choice. In fact, IAS 40 allows two alternative methods for appraisal of investment property assets: the cost method or the fair value method with recognition of fair value changes through pro? t and loss. Additionally, taking into account the IFRS1 ‘fair value as deemed cost’ option, the cost choice could be split into two lternatives: (i) historical cost without revaluation, (ii) historical cost with the IFRS1 option to revaluate investment property. This second option could represent a partial substitute for the fair value method, showing its effects only in equity without in? uencing pro? t and loss. 1 Thus, our model as sumes the choice of applying historical cost without revaluating it as the referent outcome category to compare (Y ? 0), and forms logits comparing the choice of using historical cost with IFRS1 revaluations of investment property (Y ? 1) and fair value choice (Y ? 2) to it. Our ? dings suggest that all the rationales described by accounting choice theory (information asymmetry, contractual ef? ciency and managerial opportunism) drive the decision to adopt fair value. Indeed, regarding contractual ef? ciency reasons in particular, we ? nd that the larger the size (proxy of political costs), the less likely fair value is to be chosen, while leverage and consequent lenders’ protection seems to be insigni? cant for the choice. Furthermore, our results show that market-to-book ratio (MTBV) (proxy of information asymmetry) is negatively related to the fair value choice. This ? nding, that con? cts with existing literature, could be accounted for in the real estate industry due to the fact that high levels of MTBV in this context reveal growth opportunities associated with a fair estimation of investment properties and therefore with a low information asymmetry. Managerial opportunism behaviour, measured by a dummy variable for earnings smoothing, seems to have an in? uence on fair value choice. While all these variables seem to have an in? uence on the fair value choice, the same variables do not explain the choice of historical cost with the IFRS1 revaluation option in preference to the cost maintenance approach.This paper offers various contributions to current literature. Firstly, to the best of our knowledge, it is one of the ? rst papers speci? cally focused on the choice Fair Value or Cost Model? 463 between cost and fair value in the IFRS context. We perform the analysis using a sample of ? rst-time IFRS adopters from several European countries adopting only the cost method in the pre-IFRS phase in order to both not limit the research to the tradition al comparison between German and UK ? rms and eliminate the risk of in? uence from past experience.Secondly, this paper introduces to the accounting choice literature a research designed to analyse the in? uence of multiple motivations (contractual ef? ciency, information asymmetry and managerial opportunism) for a multiple-choice environment (cost, cost with IFRS1 revaluation or fair value through pro? t and loss), testing through a multinomial logistic regression all the possible causes. Previous research, on the contrary, usually overlooks a comparison of multiple motivations (Fields et al. , 2001, pp. 290 – 291).In other words, compared to existing studies we conduct an analysis using an innovative multiple motivations – multiple choices approach that better captures the complexity of accounting choices in management decisions. Finally, we contribute to the current debate on fair value showing which ? rm characteristics drive the choice of this method. While inform ation asymmetries are the most discussed motives for fair value, we demonstrate the in? uence of contractual ef? ciency motivation as well as managerial opportunism, and the actual choices by ? ms demonstrate only a ‘partial enthusiasm’ towards fair value, even in a sector where liquid markets exist. The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 concerns the literature related to our analysis. Section 3 goes on to describe the main features of IAS 40 and the preIFRS domestic GAAP of the countries sampled. Section 4 illustrates the development of our hypotheses, while Section 5 provides details on the empirical model design, variable de? nition, sample selection and data. Finally, Section 6 describes descriptive statistics, the main ? ndings and the robustness of the results. . Theory and Relation to Existing Research The choice between fair value and cost is a central topic in the current debate on accounting. Fair value is generally preferred due to the fact that ?nancial s tatements reveal a higher level of information (CFA Institute Centre, 2008),2 even if its adoption requires speci? c conditions: liquid markets, large database of available prices (Barth and Landsman, 1995; Ball, 2006), as well as new competencies in developing measurement models in the absence of liquid markets, making it possible to enhance estimate reliability (Schipper, 2005).On the other hand, the reliability of fair value estimates is the most critical point (Martin et al. , 2006; Watts, 2006; Whittington, 2008), with the potential damage brought to the stewardship function of ? nancial statements. More generally, the demand for fair value has to be evaluated in its speci? c country context. The demand for fair value and the related preference for a higher level of information vs. reliability of ? nancial statements in Common law countries is quite different from the same demand in Code law countries (see Ball et al. 2000). 464 A. Quagli and F. Avallone Alternatively, a cost m odel seems more ef? cient in a contractual perspective because it reduces agency costs generated by creditors’ protection, political visibility, taxation and litigation (Watts, 2003; Qiang, 2007). Recent studies, however, seem to ignore the importance that the analysis of the adoption of IFRS evaluation alternatives could have in providing some more explanations for managers’ accounting choices and, consequently, for the progress of accounting choice theory.Therefore, the choice between cost and fair value is a central topic in this sense. Following the framework of Francis et al. (2004), fair value and cost affect the properties of accounting numbers in a very different way. Fair value is more value relevant,3 and provides more predictable and timely earnings ? gures because it is more oriented towards future cash ? ows (derivable by the current value of some assets); on the contrary, the cost method approach supports conservatism, smoothness and the accrual quality, due to the recognition of value changes only if realized.While it is dif? cult to suppose the impact on earnings persistence, depending on the size of fair value changes, the aforementioned aspects will give rise to different accounting behaviours. The information about future cash ? ows derived by fair value will be more appreciated in ? nancial markets (analysts and equity investors), because it will contribute to mitigate information asymmetries. On the other hand, the cost method is less costly and has more utility for income smoothing and contractual ef? ciency for which conservatism is a precious support.In other words, each of these methods has, at a theoretical level, pros and cons and the actual choice will likely depend on ? rm-speci? c circumstances. The different impact of these two methods strongly implies the need of the accounting choice theory to investigate the topic. A powerful starting point for accounting choice investigation is offered by Holthausen (1990; see a lso Watts and Zimmerman, 1978; Fields et al. , 2001) who classi? ed in: (i) contractual ef? ciency (agency costs), (ii) information asymmetry and (iii) managerial opportunism, the reasons for accounting choices. i) Expectations derived from the accounting choice theory concerning the impact of fair value on contractual ef? ciency could lead to a supposed negative relationship: the choice of fair value could increase agency costs for several reasons. The greater income ? uctuations induced by fair value compared to the cost model could enhance the perceived risk by investors (European Central Bank, 2004) and, consequently, the cost of capital, as the high level of reported pro? ts could increase political costs due to higher company visibility (Hagerman and Zmijewski, 1979). Additionally, the doubtful veri? bility of fair value compared to cost measures, in some contexts (illiquid markets) could increase litigation and its related costs (Watts, 2003), as well as the fact that fair va lue through pro? t and loss could anticipate taxation costs. Furthermore, we can infer from the contractual ef? ciency reasons regarding lenders’ protection contrasting hypotheses on fair value preference. On the one hand (Watts, 2003; Qiang, 2007), lenders prefer Fair Value or Cost Model? 465 conservatism (thus the cost method) because it reduces the risk of distributing ? rm value through dividends.On the other hand, fair value represents the current value of assets and it could be more ef? cient in negotiating for debt covenants. In this sense Christensen and Nikolaev (2008), basing their research on a sample of French and German multi-industry companies, ? nd that the fair value method is preferred by companies with high leverage and they account for this through information asymmetry: the current value of ? xed assets gives more thorough information about the ? rm’s solvency capability. In this sense, IFRS1 revaluation option could be a ‘partial’ subs titute of IAS 40 fair value, that is, ? ms could use the conservative cost approach to guarantee lenders’ protection but they could opportunistically revaluate investment assets through IFRS1 to beat covenants or to give a signal about their solvency capability. In other words, while IAS 40 fair value is a ‘long-term strategy’ whose effects are uncertain (fair value could give rise to future revaluations or impairments), the IFRS1 option could be seen as a ‘short-term strategy’, the accounting consequences of which could be made available before its adoption (the revaluations ex IFRS1 option must exist at the transition date, that is, one year before the ? st exercise IFRS compliant). In this sense, this option would encourage opportunistic (and aggressive) accounting behaviour. All these propositions, however, could fail to be applied if we take into account that covenants use, on average, to exclude revaluation reserves in ? nancial ratios. (ii) Lo oking at asymmetries for market participants, measured by market-tobook ratio (MTBV), fair value could be preferred to cost method because of its higher and updated level of information divulgated to ? nancial statement users.This is the main argument supporting the fair value primacy from a current standard setters’ viewpoint (Barlev and Haddad, 2003; Ball, 2006; Danbolt and Rees, 2008; Whittington, 2008). For this hypothesis, IFRS1 option could be a partial substitute for IAS 40 fair value, because of its in? uence on equity and, consequently, on MTBV. (iii) When a ? rm is choosing between cost and fair value, the managerial opportunistic accounting behaviour, previously demonstrated by income smoothing practices (Barth et al. , 1999; He? in et al. 2002; Graham et al. , 2005) is less likely with fair value through pro? t and loss, which obliges large earnings impact due to the volatility of market prices. However, the choice of the IFRS1 option in this sense should be irrel evant (thus not competing with fair value through pro? t and loss method), because this accounting option in? uences only equity and has no impact on pro? t and loss. Our objective is to test empirically how these multiple, and in part controversial, reasons (managerial opportunism, contractual ef? iency and information asymmetries) account for the choice of either fair value or the cost model due to the recent mandatory adoption of IFRS. In the typical discussion about IFRS, in 466 A. Quagli and F. Avallone fact, the power of fair value is recognized speci? cally regarding its potential to reduce information asymmetries (Whittington, 2008). Our analysis is based on the assumption that recognition is more value relevant than simple disclosure. Since IAS 40 requires footnote disclosure of fair value investment properties for ? ms adopting cost (see Section 3), it could be assumed that the choice between cost and fair value is not relevant, because the information about fair value is available for ? nancial statement users whatever the accounting policy chosen for investment properties. Nonetheless, our paper poses disclosure not equivalent to recognition according to the prevailing literature4 (for a review see Schipper, 2007). In all probability, the reasons can be found in a different reliability of data included in the footnotes relating to the balance sheet measures (Schipper, 2007). As af? med by Cotter and Zimmer (2003), speci? cally for revaluations of ? xed assets, ‘the value relevance of recognized revaluations is not due to recognition per se, but rather to the fact that the assets being revalued are more reliably measured’ (p. 1). 3. Main Features of IAS 40 and Differences with the Domestic GAAP of Countries Sampled IAS 40 is concerned with investment property that is property (land or a building) held to earn rentals or for capital appreciation or both, rather than for use as a site in which to run a manufacturing business or as a good to sell in the ordinary course of business.The most relevant feature for our interests in IAS 40 is the evaluation method. IAS 40 permits evaluation of investment properties choosing alternatively: . fair value model, by which an investment property is measured, after an initial measurement, at fair value with changes in fair value recognized in the income statement and with no depreciation; . cost model, with the same rule as in IAS 16 (the property is to be measured after initial recognition at depreciated cost less any accumulated impairment losses).This feature makes IAS 40 unique within the IFRS because it represents the only case where the two main evaluation criteria, fair value and cost, are alternatively admitted in their ‘pure’ form; the IAS 40 fair value re? ects its changes from one period to another in the income statement and not directly in an equity reserve as established by IAS 16 or IAS 38. As a consequence, managers are conscious that the choice betwe en these accounting methods implies substantial variations in accounting results. As reported in the Basis for Conclusions, in the 2003 IAS 40 revision (par.BC 12), the IASB discussed whether to eliminate the choice between the fair value model and cost model, thus implicitly enforcing the former as the only evaluation Fair Value or Cost Model? 467 method allowed. However, it was decided to leave the choice between the two approaches for two main reasons: the ? rst was to give preparers and users time to acquire experience before using a fair value model. Obviously, with regard to the practice of fair value assessment the second was to allow time for countries with less-developed property markets and valuation professions to mature.The IASB planned to reconsider the option of using the cost model at a later date, in the light of ‘fair value supremacy’ pervading the International Accounting Standards. Nonetheless, the fair value primacy is notable for its disclosure clau se, requesting the fair value of the investment property for the entities that choose the cost model, this means that an entity is obliged to assess fair value in all cases, which is a logical premise to permitting an easier transition to the fair value method at a later date.Additionally, the entity has to declare in notes whether it applies the fair value model or the cost model and the methods and signi? cant assumptions applied in determining the fair value, including a statement whether the determination of fair value was supported by market evidence or was more heavily based on other factors (which the entity should disclose) relating to the nature of the property and the lack of comparable market data. The fair value method benchmarked by IAS 40 is a novelty for several European countries.Our sample looks at domestic accounting rules; it is made up of companies from countries which allow only the cost method for investment property: Germany (Deloitte & Touche, 2001), Finland (KPMG, 2003a), France (KPMG, 2003b), Greece (Tsalavoutas and Evans, 2009), Italy (PWC, 2005), Spain (Perramon and Amat, 2007), Sweden (KPMG, 2005). More speci? cally, in Spain and Italy an asset revaluation credited to equity is permitted only if a special law allows it. In France a revaluation to equity is permitted only if it embraces all ? ed assets and the long-term ? nancial assets. In Greece, it is possible to revaluate ? xed assets to equity every four years following a revaluation index established by the Government. In Germany no revaluations are allowed. Finnish and Swedish GAAP permit a revaluation of properties credited to equity if their fair value exceeds cost in a permanent, signi? cant and reliable way. The choice of countries using only the cost model in the pre-IFRS mandatory phase allows us to eliminate the in? uence of any pre-existing in? ence of fair value adoption. 4. Hypothesis Development Following Section 2, we develop our hypotheses concerning: (i) ef? cie ncy reasons, in terms of both the reduction of political costs and the lenders’ protection, (ii) information asymmetry and (iii) managerial opportunism. 468 A. Quagli and F. Avallone (1) Contractual Ef? ciency Following the hypothesis that conservatism accounting should reduce agency costs through a greater lenders’ protection (Watts, 2003; Qiang, 2007), we suppose a negative correlation between leverage and fair value method.We do not conjecture the opposite assumption (Holthausen and Leftwich, 1983) that in order to beat covenants, higher leverage could induce earnings increasing policies (like, in our speci? c context, the choice of fair value through pro? t and loss) because covenants usually do not take into account fair value revaluations (Citron, 1992; Christensen and Nikolaev, 2008). Thus, H1: The probability of choosing fair value decreases if company has a high leverage ratio level before IFRS adoption.We do not posit any assumption on the relationship betwee n leverage and the choice of historical cost with the IFRS1 option for the aforementioned exclusion of revaluation reserves in ? nancial ratios used by covenants. As already described in the part of Section 2 that looks at political costs, we can suppose from the literature that conservative accounting reduces political costs because the high level of reported pro? ts could affect them due to higher company visibility (Hagerman and Zmijewski, 1979; Watts, 2003). In order to verify the impact of political cost on fair value choice, we adopt the ? m size as an independent variable. The size per se has been mentioned speci? cally as a criterion for actions against corporations since several studies document that the magnitude of political costs is highly dependent on the size of corporation (Watts and Zimmerman, 1978). Thus, we conjecture that the political costs increase according to the company size; the larger it is the higher are the political costs and the lower is the probability that is advantageous to choose a fair value approach. Accordingly, our research proposition is: H2: The probability of choosing fair value decreases with the size of the ? m. Even in this case, we do not suppose any relationship between political costs and the choice of historical cost with the IFRS1 option, because this option has no impact on pro? t and loss. (2) Information Asymmetry If information asymmetry exists in the speci? c context investigated, managers could choose fair value in order to clearly inform the market about the ‘true’ value of the ? rm. So, under the assumption that disclosure is not equivalent to recognition (Schipper, 2007), a positive association between the choice of the fair value method and information asymmetry is assumed.Fair Value or Cost Model? 469 Many studies (Smith and Watts, 1992; Amir and Lev, 1996) use market-tobook ratio (MTBV) as a proxy for information asymmetry, starting from the intuition that while market value captures the present value of growth opportunities, the book value approximates the value of assets in place. As a result, we posit that MTBV is positively related to information asymmetry and, consequently, positively related to fair value choice. Therefore, we assume: H3a: The probability of choosing fair value increases the more marked is the difference between market value and the book value of equity.We could also develop a concurrent hypothesis to H3a, on the basis that, in this case, the choice of historical cost with IFRS1 option, in? uencing equity, could be a ‘partial’ substitute of fair value through pro? t and loss. Thus, we expect a positive association between the choice of historical cost with IFRS1 option and information asymmetry, as measured by MTBV ratio. H3b: The probability of choosing historical cost with IFRS1 option increases the more marked is the difference between market value and book value of equity. (3) Managerial OpportunismFrom the theory we derive t hat managerial opportunistic accounting behaviour is demonstrated by income smoothing practices (Barth et al. , 1999; He? in et al. , 2002; Graham et al. , 2005) and we thus suppose that fair value through pro? t and loss with its volatile changes contrasts smoothing policies. So, a negative association between fair value choice and pre-IFRS earnings smoothing is expected. Hence: H4: The probability of choosing fair value decreases if managers reduce the variability of reported earnings using accruals.We do not suppose any relationship between managerial opportunism estimated by earnings smoothing and the choice of historical cost with IFRS1 revaluation, because this option has no impact on pro? t and loss. 5. Research Design Empirical Model and Variable De? nitions Two statistical procedures are used in our analysis: (i) the non-parametric Mann – Whitney two-sample rank-sum test is used to analyse the difference in explanatory variables between the group of ? rms that have a dopted the fair value model or cost model with the IFRS1 revaluation and the group that have chosen the cost 470A. Quagli and F. Avallone model (the cost group has been taken as a referent category). Additionally, (ii) we use a multinomial logistic regression model (MNL) to test the relationship between the ? rm accounting choice for investment properties and the hypothesized explanatory variables. Under the multinomial logistic model with three outcome categories (0, 1 and 2), p covariates and a constant term (b) denoted by the vector x, two logit functions are described as follows (Hosmer and Lemeshow, 2000): g1 (x) = ln[P(Y = 1| x)/P(Y = 0| x)] = b10 + b11 X1 + b12 X2 + . . . + b1p Xp (1) and 2 (x) = ln[P(Y = 2| x)/P(Y = 0| x)] = b20 + b21 X1 + b22 X2 + . . . + b2p Xp . (2) It follows that the conditional probabilities of each outcome category given the covariate vector are: P(Y = 0| x) = 1/1 + eg1 (x) + eg2 (x) P(Y = 1| x) = eg1 (x) /1 + eg1 (x) + eg2 (x) (3) P(Y = 2| x) = eg2 ( x) /1 + eg1 (x) + eg2 (x) . Our model assumes the choice to use historical cost without revaluating as the referent or baseline outcome category to compare (Y ? 0), and forms logits comparing the choice to use historical cost with the IFRS1 revaluation of investment properties (Y ? 1) and fair value choice (Y ? 2) to it.Furthermore, the model assumes the following relation between the proposed explanatory variables and the fair value accounting choice: ln[P(Y = FV| x)/P(Y = COST| x)] = b0 + b1 LEV + b2 SIZE + b3 MTBV + b4 SM + b5 CNT + b6 EPRA + b7 ACT + 1 (4) where b ? CHOICEi ? bFV; dependent variable equal to 2 if the ? rm i adopts fair value model under IAS 40 in ? rst-time adoption (FTA), 1 if ? rm i adopts the historical cost and uses IFRS1 to revalue investment properties and 0 if the ? rm i adopts the historical cost without revaluating; Fair Value or Cost Model? LEVi ? SIZEi MTBVi ? ? SMij ? CNTi ? EPRA ? ACT ? 471 he average debt to asset ratio for ? rm i, measured over tw o years before FTA; log of the average total asset over the two years before FTA; market-to-book value of ? rm i calculated over the last month of the FTA year since the market is in? uenced by the IFRS immediately after the FTA year; dummy variable coded 1 if ? rm i has an earnings smoothing index . the average index of earnings smoothing in country j (? rm’s country of domicile) and 0 otherwise; dummy variable coded 1 if ? rm i has an external market capitalization on GNP . the average external market capitalization on GNP for his legal country of origin (from La Porta et al. 1997) and 0 otherwise; dummy variable coded 1 if ? rm i is a member of the European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA) and 0 otherwise; ratio between total rents and total operating income estimated over the ? scal year preceding the IFRS mandatory adoption. Following Leuz et al. (2003) and Burgstahler et al. (2006) our proxy to capture earnings smoothing policies in the pre-IFRS period is computed as the ratio of the standard deviation of operating income divided by the standard deviation of cash ? ow from the operation, both measures being computed over the four years before IFRS mandatory adoption.The ratio is then multiplied by 2 1 so that higher values are associated with higher earnings smoothing policies. Moreover, in order to capture the real signi? cance of the smoothing ratio (only values around zero denote strong earnings smoothing activities but the more the values decrease the more the smoothing signi? cance disappears), in our analysis for each ? rm we only measure the distance from the average value of the same ratio for the country of origin as measured in Burgstahler et al. (2006). So, the resulting dummy variable is equal to 1 if the ? m has an earnings smoothing index higher than the average index estimated for the country of origin and 0 otherwise. This procedure enables us to capture the peculiarity of each country due to the different local GAAP adopted b efore IFRS (Leuz et al. , 2003; Burgstahler et al. , 2006). We control for three variables we conjecture to affect the fair value choice by including them as independent variables in the model. Controlling for both the country of origin and the EPRA (European Public Real Estate Association) membership allows us to include two exogenous factors that could affect the fair value choice.The former factor is considered because the differences in the nature of ? nancial systems around Europe are innate factors for international divergences in accounting (Nobes, 1998), thus in? uencing the fair value choice as well. The 472 A. Quagli and F. Avallone latter factor is considered because the EPRA’s Best Practices Committee encouraged the members to adopt fair value accounting to enhance uniformity, comparability and transparency of ? nancial reporting by real estate companies (EPRA, 2006). Additionally, it makes sense to control for the ? m activity since the business segments within t he real estate industry could be considerably different (long-term investments, trading activity, development or services). With reference to the country (CNT), we do not use the distinction between Code Law Countries and Common Law Countries (Ball et al. , 2000), because our sample is entirely made up of Code Law Countries. Since accounting practices usually adhere to ? nancing systems (systems based on banks are generally more conservative than systems based on markets), we decided to capture the country effect with the level of ? ancial market development. So, following Nobes (1998), we theoretically classify countries included in our sample in two groups: countries where the role of ? nancial markets is more developed (capital market-based systems) and countries where ? nancial markets are less developed (credit-based systems). We can assume that the adoption of the fair value method should be easier in capital market based systems, where the indirect cost of information product ion should be lower and the more developed market could better appreciate the informative content of fair value estimates. In order to summarize ? ancial market development, we use the same variable and values as in La Porta et al. (1997). Speci? cally, we ? rstly computed the ratio of stock market capitalization held by minorities to gross national product. Hence, the higher ratio value is associated with highly diffused equity and, as a consequence, with more ? nancially developed markets. Therefore, we adopt a dummy variable coded 1 if the ? rm has an external market capitalization on GNP higher than the average external market capitalization on GNP for its legal country of origin (from La Porta et al. , 1997) and 0 otherwise.The stock market capitalization held by minorities is computed as the product of the aggregate stock market capitalization and the average percentage of common shares not owned by the top three shareholders in the 10 largest non-? nancial, privately owned do mestic ? rms in a given country. The lack of availability of certain data forced us to use the same values estimated by La Porta et al. With reference to the EPRA membership, we only use a dummy variable (EPRA) that takes a value of 1 for ? rms that are EPRA members and 0 otherwise. Lastly, we control for ? rm activity (ACT).Particularly, since real estate companies could operate in many businesses (renting out investment properties, services, trading of investment properties and development), we use a variable to discriminate the ? rms which generally rent out investment properties from ? rms that operate in trading, services and development. Thus, we use the ratio between total rents and total operating income as a proxy of ? rm activity. So, the high values of the ratio suggest that the renting activity may be considered the company’s core business while low values of the ratio express the opposite.Both rents and total operating income are hand-collected from ? nancial sta tements for the ? scal year preceding the IFRS mandatory adoption and the latter Fair Value or Cost Model? 473 has been computed as the sum of rents, services, realized gains/losses on investment property sales and other operating revenues. In terms of empirical predictions, we conjecture a positive relationship between the fair value choice (CHOICE) and both ? nancial market development (CNT) and EPRA membership (EPRA). The present work makes no prediction with respect to the other control variable (ACT).Table 1, Panel A presents the proxies used for independent variables and the predicted sign of each relation between covariates and fair value choice for investment properties under IAS 40. Moreover, Table 1, Panel B only shows the relations between independent variables and the choice to use historical cost with IFRS1 revaluation, if theoretically signi? cant. Sample and Data Our study focuses on a sample of real estate ? rms from countries where a systematic use of fair value mod el was not allowed for investment property assets by pre-IFRS domestic GAAP.A sample of 76 companies was selected from a population of 216 European real estate companies listed in their own country of origin in December 2007 in the following stock markets: Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden. In December 2007, the Datastream International database revealed 216 real estate ? rms from the countries that were analysed (235 items, of which 19 were paid rights, preferred share, etc. ). This sample was then screened against a set of conditions: (i) the availability of the full version of the ? rst ? ancial statement complying with IFRS, obtained from the corporate website or via a speci? c request to Investor Relators, (ii) investment property assets on the balance sheet (as de? ned by IAS 40) not equal to zero, and (iii) the full data availability in the Datastream International database. Of the original 216 ? rms, 40 had neither website nor IR contact, 26 had ? nan cial statements not complying with IFRS in the period of analysis (2005– 2007), 7 had no investment properties, 27 failed to respond and 40 ? rms did not have complete availability of data in ? nancial statements or in the Datastream database.Thus, only 76 ? rms had suf? cient information for the above-mentioned explanatory variables to be included in the sample. Table 2, Panel A shows the sample selection procedure. The described procedure clearly illustrates that our sample consists of the maximum number of companies for which it is possible to obtain suf? cient information for the analysis, starting from the initial number of companies identi? ed in the database (N ? 216). Nevertheless, our analysis could have introduced a selection bias if an association between ? rms’ disclosure policies (e. g. assuring the availability of the full ? ancial statement on the corporate website or replying to a speci? c request) and the accounting choice had existed. In order to remo ve any doubts, we test whether there is a difference in drivers of choice used in our analysis between ? rms that provide an annual report or disclose it 474 A. Quagli and F. Avallone Table 1. Proxies and predicted signs for explanatory variables. The variables are grouped according to the main hypotheses for fair value choice and for the choice to use historical cost with IFRS1 revaluation Hypotheses Predicted sign Proxies Explanatory variables Panel A: explanatory variables and fair value choice 1) Contractual ef? ciency The probability of choosing (H1) 2 Debt/asset LEV fair value model decreases (leverage) with higher leverage The probability of choosing (H2) 2 Log of total asset SIZE fair value model decreases with the size (2) Information asymmetry The probability of choosing (H3a) + Market-to-book MTBV the fair value model value increases the higher is information asymmetry (3) Managerial opportunism The probability of choosing (H4) 2 Earning SM the fair value model Smoothing decreases with the extent to Index (dummy which corporate insiders variable) reduce the variability of eported earnings (earnings smoothing) (4) Control variables Firm’s country of origin + External cap/ CNT (? nancial markets GNP (dummy development) variable) EPRA members (European + Yes/no (dummy EPRA Public Real Estate variable) Association) Firm activity ? Total rents/total ACT operating income Panel B: explanatory variables and historical cost with the IFRS1 option (2) Information asymmetry The probability of choosing (H3b) + Market-to-book MTBV the historical cost with value IFRS1 option increases the higher is the information asymmetry after request (the sample) and those that do not.Of course, we could only test the difference between the variables we collected from the Datastream database because we do not have access to the ? nancial statements of non-disclosing ? rm. Thus, we do not control if a difference exists in ? rm activity (ACT) between sampled and non-sampl ed ? rms. Fair Value or Cost Model? 475 Table 2 . Sample selection procedure and breakdown by country Number Panel A: sample selection procedure European Real Estate Firms listed in their own country of origin in December 2007 in the following stock markets (source: Datastream): Finland, France,Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden (countries where systematic revaluation of investment properties was not allowed before the IFRS adoption) Excluding the ? rms: – not reporting under IAS/IFRS in the period of analysis (2005– 2007) – with no investment property assets (or with investment properties equal to zero) – with neither website nor IR contact – failing to respond – with insuf? cient data to estimate equation (3) (in ?nancial statements or in Datastream database) Per cent 216 100% 2 26 12% 27 3% 2 40 2 27 2 40 18. 5% 13% 18. 5% Final sample 76 35% Panel B: breakdown of sampled ? ms by country and the number (percentage) of companies sele cting fair value, cost with the IFRS1 revaluation or cost method Country No. of sampled Weight Fair value Cost with the Cost (%) companies (%) (%) IFRS1 (%) Finland France Germany Greece Italy Spain Sweden Total 4 26 22 4 8 4 8 76 5 34 29 5 11 5 11 100 4 (100) 11 (42) 12 (55) 3 (75) 2 (25) 0 (0) 8 (100) 0 (0) 4 (16) 4 (18) 1 (25) 1 (12) 3 (75) 0 (0) 0 (0) 11 (42) 6 (27) 0 (0) 5 (63) 1 (25) 0 (0) Panel B shows the breakdown by country of the sample and the proportion of companies that select fair value, cost with IFRS1 revaluation or cost method without revaluating in each country.We considered companies listed in: Helsinki (Finland), Paris (France), Frankfurt and Munich (Germany), Athens (Greece), Milan (Italy), Madrid (Spain) and Stockholm (Sweden). Of the original 67 non-disclosing ? rms (which have neither website nor IR contact or failed to respond), 34 ? rms did not have complete data availability on the Datastream database. Thus, only 33 ? rms had suf? cient information to be included in the test. For non-disclosing ? rms, we collected data using the same rules as applied in the sample and considering 2005 as a reference date unless companies were still not listed.In that case the reference date has been considered as the listing year. The results show that disclosing ? rms (the sample) are not statistically different from the non-disclosing ? rms in terms of the explanatory variables we selected except for the size ( p-value of 0. 000). 476 A. Quagli and F. Avallone This result is consistent with the literature that shows disclosure levels are usually positively correlated with ? rm size because of the decrease in the cost of disclosure (Lang and Lundholm, 1993). However, we keep the variable in the analysis for two reasons. Firstly, the ? m size (our proxy for political costs) could have both a possible negative relationship with fair value choice and a positive relationship with earnings smoothing (Watts and Zimmerman, 1978). If we do not include the ? rm size in the analysis, a signi? cant negative relation between earnings smoothing and fair value choice could be observed even if the size were the true explanatory variable. Secondly, even if a difference between sampled ? rms and non-disclosing ? rms exists in terms of size, summary statistics show a deviation in size within the sample that does not affect the results of the analysis.With reference to the control variables, among the non-sampled ? rms only one company is an EPRA member. This is an expected result because the EPRA’s objective is to establish best practices in reporting and to provide high-quality information to investors. The result, however, does not introduce a selection bias in the analysis because the sample is made of both EPRA’s members (34 ? rms, around 45% of the sample) and companies that are not (42 companies, 55% of the sample). For these reasons, the results validate our sample and suggest that the sample selection did not introduce a bias into the analysis.We relied on two sources for obtaining data for tests: (i) the ? rst ? nancial statement compliant with IFRS and (ii) the Datastream database. The former source enables us to verify the ? rms’ fair value or cost method choice for investment properties (IAS 40), the choice of ‘fair value as deemed cost’ under IFRS1 and to hand-collect from notes the portion of revenue that is a result of rental activities. The latter source provides all the accounting and non-accounting data we need to de? ne the other explanatory and control variables.Non-accounting data includes market-to-book ratio while the accounting data consists of leverage (debt to asset ratio), total asset, operating income and cash ? ow from the operation (the last two accounting numbers have been used to estimate the earnings smoothing ratio) and the revenues that come from rents. Since the aim of this study is to ? nd out why fair value might be preferred to cost under IAS 40, we have commonly used data which is not in? uenced by the choice. In order to make sense of this key assumption, we referred to different periods for market records and information collected from ? ancial statements when collecting data. Market data refers to the end of the FTA year because the market is in? uenced by IFRS immediately after the FTA year. In other words, immediately after the FTA ? nancial data under IFRS is actually disclosed in ? nancial statements (which explains why the market-to-book value is collected during the last month of the ? rst-time adoption ? scal year). Financial data was collected over the two ? scal years before the FTA. Two years of ? nancial data rather than one year is considered to be more representative of a ? rm’s general characteristics and, in particular, able to reduce the effectsFair Value or Cost Model? 477 that might occur from any unusual or abnormal data from a single year. Only the earnings smoothing ratio required a longer perio d of time; we used a four-year time period before the FTA for both operating income and cash ? ow from operation in order to estimate the related standard deviations. These two values were then compared to detect any earnings smoothing propensity. Financial information about the Swedish ? rms is converted into euros on the date of download from Datastream. Market data was automatically converted by the Datastream database. 6. Analysis of Results Summary StatisticsTable 2, Panel B shows the sample by country breakdown and displays both the number and the proportion of companies that select fair value, fair value with IFRS1 or cost model, respectively, in each country. At ? rst glance, Table 2, Panel B seems to reveal some national patterns in explaining the selection between fair value, historical cost with IFRS1 and cost model without revaluating investment properties. Despite the relatively small number of companies selected in some countries, it has still been possible to observe that companies from Finland, Greece and Sweden are extremely prone to adopting the fair value method.Conversely, Italian companies seem to prefer historical cost without revaluating, Spanish companies have a preference for historical cost with the IFRS1 choice to revalue investment properties, while companies from France and Germany, the main countries in our study in terms of number of companies examined, do not show an a priori preference. Thus, the results justify our choice to control for a country variable through the multivariate analysis. Table 3 presents summary statistics for the full sample of 76 ? rms.It should be noted that the two variables, market-to-book value (MTBV) and leverage (LEV), give rise to outlying observations implied by the values in the minimum and maximum columns of the table. One ? rm in particular had problematic values of both MTBV (value below zero) and LEV (value above one), due to a negative book value and this observation was removed from the anal ysis. Additionally, we isolate the outlying observations by means of the three sigma (standard deviation) rule (Barnett and Lewis, 1994), thus separating companies which have x ? m(x) ? 3s(x) (5) where s(x) is the standard deviation of the variable (x).To remove the possible effects of the outliers on the results, we present both the nonparametric analysis and the multinomial logistic regression excluding these values (N ? 73). 478 Variable Explanatory variables: LEV SIZE MTBV SM Control variables: CNT EPRA ACT Mean Std. dev. Minimum Q1 Median Q3 Maximum 0. 5881 12. 7876 1. 4739 0. 3684 0. 2802 1. 6774 1. 1350 0. 4855 0 8. 2765 2 0. 17 0 0. 4829 11. 9451 0. 965 0 0. 6015 12. 9058 1. 3 0 0. 7235 13. 9800 1. 615 1 2. 07 16. 6882 8. 94 1 0. 4736 0. 4473 0. 4999 0. 5026 0. 5005 0. 3492 0 0 0. 1834 0 0 0. 4551 1 1 0. 7778 0 0 0 1 1 1 LEV ? leverage; SIZE ? og of total asset; MTBV ? market-to-book value; SM ? earnings smoothing (dummy); CNT ? ?nancial market development (dummy); EPRA ? EP RA member (dummy); ACT ? ?rm activity. A. Quagli and F. Avallone Table 3. Summary statistics of explanatory variables for sampled ? rms (n ? 76) Fair Value or Cost Model? 479 Nonparametric Mann – Whitney Test To begin by analysing the characteristics of the ? rms that adopt the fair value method or the historical cost with the IFRS1 revaluation in comparison to those that adopt the historical cost without revaluation, we use a Mann–Whitney twosample rank-sum test.In view of the small size of the three groups, a nonparametric alternative to a conventional t-test is justi? ed because of the less challenging assumptions it requires, although this test has some limitations of its own, including being somewhat less powerful than the t-test. Table 4 shows evident differences across our independent variables, some of which appear statistically signi? cant. Consistent with the information asymmetry hypothesis (H3a), the output shows that there is a statistically signi? cant di fference in MTBV between real estate ? ms that choose the fair value method and real estate ? rms that adopt historical cost without revaluation (difference signi? cant at 0. 000 level). The analysis of both means and median for fair value and cost groups makes the direction of the difference clear (for the fair value group, a mean of 1. 203 and a median of 1. 11 against 1. 775 and 1. 49 for the cost group). The output exhibits a negative relation between the MTBV and the fair value choice, contrary to the prediction derived by the traditional meaning of MTBV as proxy for information asymmetry.In fact, the usual interpretation of high MTBV ratios as a signal of information asymmetry is based on the existence of growth options well known by managers, not revealed by accounting rules and, consequently, not identi? ed by investors. In theory, more growth options for high-tech ? rms in particular, are supposed as a consequence of a large bulk of intangibles whose recognition in ? nancia l statements is not allowed, even though investors can estimate their importance (Smith and Watts, 1992; Amir and Lev, 1996).However, in the real estate industry the relevance of intangibles seems less important than in high-tech ? rms. The main assets are investment properties, whose fair value could be easily estimated by ? nancial analysts. In this context, the meaning of high MTBV ratios might be in direct con? ict with the original intuition. In the cost accounting systems before IFRS adoption, higher values of MTBV ratios revealed growth opportunities associated with a fair estimation of investment properties and therefore with a lower information asymmetry. Conversely, lower MTBV ratios for real estate ? ms adopting the cost method could feasibly be the effect of information asymmetries on investment properties value and managers could prefer to use fair value method to reduce these asymmetries. In more precise terms, under the assumption that disclosure is not equivalent to recognition (Schipper, 2007), lower MTBV ratios estimated before the IFRS adoption for real estate ? rms adopting historical cost should be the result of information asymmetries on investment properties value. Thus, lower MTBV ratios could justify the managers’ preference to the fair value method in order to reduce the asymmetries.This reasoning makes it possible to demonstrate the validity of the hypothesis (H3a), even if the sign of the variable is opposite to the traditional interpretation of the relationship between MTBV and information asymmetry. 480 A. Quagli and F. Avallone Table 4. Mann– Whitney two-sample rank-sum test. Fair Value Group vs. Cost Group (NFV ? 38; NCOST ? 16) and Cost with IFRS1 revaluation vs. Cost Group (NIFRS1 ? 19; NCOST ? 16) Group Explanatory variables: LEV SIZE MTBV SM Control variables: CNT EPRA ACT Z-Statistics Pr . |Z| FV vs. COST IFRS_1 vs. COST FV vs. COST IFRS_1 vs. COST FV vs. COST IFRS_1 vs. COST FV vs. COSTIFRS_1 vs. COST 2 0. 11 4 1. 192 0. 682 0. 762 3. 543 1. 258 0. 814 2 1. 185 0. 909 0. 233 0. 495 0. 446 0. 000 0. 208 0. 415 0. 235 FV vs. COST IFRS_1 vs. COST FV vs. COST IFRS_1 vs. COST FV vs. COST IFRS_1 vs. COST 2 2. 018 2 1. 931 2 1. 007 0. 040 2 3. 523 2 0. 364 0. 043 0. 053? 0. 314 0. 968 0. 000 0. 715 This table presents the Mann–Whitney two-sample rank-sum test for both explanatory and control variables. ? , and indicate statistical signi? cance at less than 10%, 5% and 1% level, respectively. The sample (excluding the outliers) comprises 73 companies from seven countries, split into three groups: ? ms that adopt the fair value model (NFV ? 38), ? rms that choose the historical cost and use the IFRS1 option to revalue investment properties (NIFRS1 ? 19) and ? rms that adopt the cost model without revaluating (NCOST ? 16) for investment properties under IAS 40. LEV ? leverage; SIZE ? log of total asset; MTBV ? market-to-book value; SM ? earnings smoothing (dummy); CNT ? ?nancial market de velopment (dummy); EPRA ? EPRA member (dummy); ACT ? ?rm activity. Furthermore, both the ? nancial market development (CNT) and the ? rm activity (ACT) appear statistically signi? ant as well, with a difference signi? cant at 0. 043 and 0. 000 levels, respectively. The analysis of the means and median for CNT (mean of 0. 5526 and median of 1 for the fair value group against a mean of 0. 25 and median of 0 for the cost group) also shows a direction for the difference consistent with our assumption. Particularly, more developed ? nancial markets (estimated as in La Porta et al. , 1997) with the ratio of stock market capitalization held by minorities to GNP) seem to facilitate the adoption of fair value. Hence, the companies from countries where the role of ? ancial markets is more developed (capital market based systems) appear to view the fair value method more favourably than companies from countries where the markets are less developed (credit-based systems). With respect to the ? rm activity (ACT), we made no prediction of the sign. Both the output and the analysis of the mean and the median (mean of 0. 6558 and median of 0. 7507 for the fair value group against a mean of 0. 3005 and median of 0. 2756 for the cost group) show a positive direction of the difference. The result suggests that the predominant activity of the ? rms that choose the fairFair Value or Cost Model? 481 value model seems to be investment properties’ rental instead of other activities such as development and trading. Renting out properties implies a longer time period than other activities like development or trading, where assets would typically be sold in a shorter time. Thus, we could interpret the relation with fair value choice as the ? rms need to show the market value of their properties on the balance sheet when their realization will be in a longer time (rental activity). This would reduce the information asymmetry otherwise existing if properties were evaluated at cost. Conversely, when the business is more concentrated on development and trading, the need for fair value recognition is less strong, due to a shorter time horizon for the realization of these assets. Further explanatory variables, such as leverage (LEV), dimension (SIZE) and earnings smoothing (SM), appear not to be signi? cant in the univariate analysis. However, even if not signi? cant it seems interesting to highlight that for both the size (SIZE) and the earnings smoothing (SM) the analysis of the mean and median reveals differences coherent with our research proposition, hence larger size and earnings smoothing for ? ms adopting historical cost (for size, mean of 12. 781 and median of 12. 905 for the fair value group against mean of 13. 167 and median of 12. 932 for the cost group; for earnings smoothing, mean of 0. 263 and median of 0 for the fair value group against mean of 0. 375 and median of 0 for the cost group). Except for the ? nancial market development (CNT), neither ex planatory nor control variables seem to explain the managers’ choice to adopt the historical cost with the IFRS1 option to revalue investment properties rather than opting for historical cost without revaluation.As for fair value choice, the analysis of the means and median for CNT (mean of 0. 578 and median of 1 for the IFRS1 group against a mean of 0. 25 and median of 0 for the cost group) shows a direction for the difference consistent with the idea that in countries where the role of ? nancial markets is more developed (capital market based systems), companies seem to view the revaluation of investment properties allowed by IFRS1 more favourably than in countries where the markets are less developed (creditbased systems). Multivariate AnalysisBefore presenting the results of the multinomial logistic regression, we report the Spearman (rank) correlation coef? cients for the variables (Table 5). Considering the following multinomial logistic regression analysis, the depende nt variable has been split into three variables: (i) CHOICE, equal to 0 if companies adopt the historical cost, 1 if companies adopt the historical cost with the IFRS1 revaluation and 2 if ? rms embrace the fair value; (ii) FV vs. COST that only regards as fair value choice (Y ? 1) and historical cost (Y ? 0) and (iii) IFRS1 vs.COST that only takes into account the choice to adopt historical cost with the IFRS1 revaluation (Y ? 1) and the historical cost (Y ? 0). With reference to the dependent variable, Table 5 con? rms the previous univariate 482 Variables CHOICE FV vs. COST IFRS1 vs. COST LEV SIZE MTBV SM CNT EPRA ACT CHOICE – – – 0. 0552 2 0. 0620 2 0. 4343 2 0. 1728 0. 1890 0. 1462 0. 4707 FV vs. COST IFRS1 vs. COST – – 0. 0122 2 0. 0978 2 0. 4745 2 0. 0983 0. 2499? 0. 1356 0. 472 – 2 0. 2045 2 0. 1306 2 0. 2131 0. 2033 0. 3311? 2 0. 0068 0. 0625 LEV SIZE – 0. 1780 0. 1657 2 0. 1818 2 0. 312 0. 0895 2 0. 1136 – 0. 0915 0. 0781 0. 2874 0. 3638 0. 0239 MTBV SM CNT EPRA ACT – 0. 0633 – 2 0. 0826 0. 2091? – 0. 1176 0. 2734 0. 0400 – 2 0. 2627 2 0. 0525 0. 4447 0. 1659 – This table provides Spearman (rank) correlation matrix for both explanatory and dependent variables. Considering the following multinomial logistic regression analysis, dependent variable has been split into three variables: CHOICE, equal to 0 if companies adopt historical cost, 1 if companies adopt historical cost with the IFRS1 revaluation and 2 if ? rms adopt the fair value; FV vs.COST that only regards the fair value choice (1) and the historical cost (0) and IFRS1 vs. COST that only takes into account the choice to adopt the historical cost with IFRS1 revaluation (1) and the historical cost (0). Values indicated in bold show statistically signi? cant relationship between variables. ? , and indicate statistical signi? cance at less than 10%, 5% and 1% levels, respectively (two-tailed). Pearson corr elation shows similar results. LEV ? leverage; SIZE ? log of total asset; MTBV ? market-to-book value; SM ? earnings smoothing (dummy); CNT ? ?nancial market development (dummy); EPRA ?EPRA member (dummy); ACT ? ?rm activity. A. Quagli and F. Avallone Table 5. Spearman (rank) correlation matrix Table 6. Multinomial logistic regression results Panel A: model summary – goodness of ? t Number of obs. ? 73 LR chi2 (14) ? 41. 81 Prob . chi2 ? 0. 0001 Pseudo-R2 ? 0. 2799 Log-likelihood ? 2 53. 766523 Panel B: estimated coef? cients Variable Hypothesis 1 LEV SIZE MTBV SM CNT EPRA ACT Constant LEV SIZE MTBV SM CNT EPRA ACT Constant – – (H3b) – – – – 2 (H1) (H2) (H3a) (H4) Predicted sign + 2 2 + 2 + + ? Coeff. 2 0. 6117228 2 0. 4409383 2 0. 6115429 0. 2741504 1. 900273 0. 8488012 2 0. 708886 6. 279216 1. 734055 2 0. 6789767 2 1. 662586 2 1. 692808 1. 510263 2. 449269 2. 263975 8. 836272 Std. err. 1. 681102 0. 2748586 0. 5957133 0. 8804852 0. 9 408805 1. 124734 1. 421061 3. 866769 1. 715306 0. 289514 0. 6609104 0. 9636362 0. 949826 1. 124299 1. 353768 3. 969725 z 2 0. 36 2 1. 60 2 1. 03 0. 31 2. 02 0. 75 2 0. 68 1. 62 1. 01 2 2. 35 2 2. 52 2 1. 76 1. 59 2. 18 1. 67 2. 23 P . |z| 0. 716 0. 109 0. 305 0. 756 0. 043 0. 450 0. 494 0. 104 0. 312 0. 019 0. 012 0. 079? 0. 112 0. 029 0. 094? 0. 026 95% conf. interval 2 3. 906621 2 0. 9796511 2 1. 779119 2 1. 451569 0. 0561811 1. 355637 2 3. 756117 2 1. 299512 2 1. 627883 2 1. 246414 2 2. 957947 2 3. 5815 2 0. 3513614 0. 2456834 2 0. 3893613 1. 055755 2. 683176 0. 0977746 0. 5560336 1. 99987 3. 744365 3. 053239 1. 81434 13. 85794 5. 095992 2 0. 1115397 2 0. 3672257 0. 1958842 3. 371888 4. 652855 4. 91731 16. 61679 483 (Continued ) Fair Value or Cost Model? LOGIT 484 Panel C: estimated odds ratios LOGIT Variable Odds ratio 1 LEV SIZE MTBV SM CNT EPRA ACT LEV SIZE MTBV SM CNT EPRA ACT 0. 5424156 0. 6434324 0. 5425132 1. 315413 6. 68772 2. 336844 0. 3787464 5. 663571 0. 5071357 0. 189 6479 0. 1840021 4. 527923 11. 57988 . 621254 2 Std. err. 0. 9118557 0. 1768529 0. 3231823 1. 158201 6. 292345 2. 628327 0. 5382217 9. 714756 0. 1468229 0. 1253403 0. 1773111 4. 300739 13. 01925 13. 02494 z 2 0. 36 2 1. 60 2 1. 03 0. 31 2. 02 0. 75 2 0. 68 1. 01 2 2. 35 2 2. 52 2 1. 76 1. 59 2. 18 1. 67 P . |z| 0. 716 0. 109 0. 305 0. 756 0. 043 0. 450 0. 494 0. 312 0. 019 0. 012 0. 079? 0. 112 0. 029 0. 094? 95% conf. interval 0. 0201083 0. 3754421 0. 1687867 0. 2342026 1. 057789 0. 2577831 0. 0233743 0. 1963449 0. 2875341 0. 0519254 0. 0278339 0. 7037294 1. 278495 0. 6774894 14. 63149 1. 102714 1. 743742 7. 388093 42. 8214 21. 18385 6. 137025 163. 3658 0. 8944559 0. 6926533 1. 216386 29. 13348 104. 884 136. 6346 Choice ? 0 (historical cost) is the base outcome. This table presents coef? cients/odds ratios from multinomial logistic regression (MLN). Our model assumes the choice to use the historical cost without revaluating as the baseline outcome category to compare (Y ? 0), and fo rms logits comparing the choice to use the historical cost with the IFRS1 revaluation of investment properties (Y ? 1) and their fair value choice (Y ? 2) to it. We present Wald statistics, log-likelihood and McFadden pseudo-R2. , and indicate signi? cance at less than 10%, 5% and 1% level, respectively. LEV ? leverage; SIZE ? log of total asset; MTBV ? market-to-book value; SM ? earnings smoothing (dummy); CNT ? ?nancial market development (dummy); EPRA ? EPRA member (dummy); ACT ? ?rm activity. A. Quagli and F. Avallone Table 6. Continued Fair Value or Cost Model? 485 analysis results. Our proxy for information asymmetry, the market-to book ratio (MTBV), has a strong negative association with fair value choice, thus discriminating the fair value model group from the cost model group.The result con? rms the above-mentioned interpretation of this sign. Furthermore, both the ? nancial market development (CNT) and the ? rm main business (ACT) condition the choice as well. Conversely , the choice to adopt the historical cost with IFRS1 revaluation is not accounted for by the explanatory variables except for the ? nancial market development (CNT). With reference to independent variables, Table 5 shows that some statistically signi? cant