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The enhanced access of developing countries to the international financial market since the seventies has been characterized by boom-bust cycles of unfettered external borrowing followed by abrupt financial crises. The first chapter analyzes the macroeconomic effects of volatile capital flows to a developing country. The analysis shows that investment, consumption, and the current account deficit depend positively on the expected availability of external finance. If international investors may unexpectedly decide to reduce their exposure to financial assets issued by the country, the optimal cost of external borrowing should exceed the interest rate paid by domestic residents in the international financial market. In the absence of insurance markets for this type of risk, a tax on capital inflows can be optimal.Recent endogenous growth models characterize a firm's technology as a commodity which is both partly excludable and associated with some production inputs, such as human capital and equipment. The second chapter explores the nature of the link between equipment investment and technology at the plant level in a large sample of Colombian manufacturing establishments. The results support the endogenous growth model's notion that technology is associated with the production inputs. Larger plants that invest more in machinery and equipment and employ higher levels of human capital tend to be more efficient.Models of investment with non-convex costs of adjustment predict that microeconomic time series of investment may be characterized by infrequent investment spurts and prolonged periods of little or no investment. In the third chapter I study the pattern of investment at the plant level in different categories of capital goods. As in the U.S., plant-level investment in Colombia is lumpy, and the probability of observing a large investment episode depends positively on the time elapsed since the latest large investment episode. As a contribution to the literature, I propose and implement two alternative econometric methods for the estimation of a simple model of irreversible investment. The results show that increases in the real exchange rate (pesos per dollar) have a consistently negative effect on investment, regardless of the type of capital good.

Diligent application of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) approach is believed by many to provide a comprehensive system for food safety management. This belief, however, is not shared uniformly by all stakeholders. Because of the dichotomy of opinion surrounding food safety, there is a compelling need for additional dialogue and consensus on this issue. The aim of this expert survey instrument is to identify the gaps and the areas of agreement among various stakeholders. Two hundred and thirty-one survey instruments were received out of three hundred and sixty sent (64.2% response rate) to food safety professionals in academia, industry, federal and state government, and consumer protection groups.

Unlike many other works in this area, this research is devoted to the micro issues of banking. There are many excellent texts that study the macroeconomics of banking, and the role of financial institutions in a monetary economy. This area [micro issues] of banking is important. Bank professionals require a thorough grounding in the micro foundations of banking, if they are to make important managerial decisions, or implement banking policies. What exactly will be the nature of the future of banking? These pages provide you with comprehensive insight into where banking is going.In order to provide a thorough understanding of the subject, this study begins by looking at the traditional theory of banking. A bank is a financial firm which offers loan and deposit products on the market. The intermediary role played by banks, another area of our interest, is the reason why banks exist in modern economies.The main objective of Chapter 2 is to provide an overview of bank structures and related issues in industrialised countries, developing economies and emerging markets in Eastern Europe. Chapter 2 also considers various stylised facts on contemporary banking. It reveals some large differences between countries in the way banks operate. It reviews various performance measures of banks, and considers the results of several investigations of bank performance.The remaining part of the research analyses modern trends of Global banking development. During the course of study the following trends were recognised as major and the most noteworthy ones: Consolidation, Globalisation, Development of Information Technology, Risk Management, Competition, The Euro, Regulation, Development in Asset Management.

Shape classification is a challenging image processing problem because shapes can occur in any position, at any orientation, and at any scale in an image. Shapes can also be obscured by gaps in their boundaries, occlusions, and noise. General shape classifiers often suffer from low precision, and specialized shape classifiers rely on specific features, like vertices or connected boundaries, making them difficult to generalize. The objective of this research is to design, implement, and test a general, high-precision two-dimensional shape classifier that is invariant to translation, scale, and rotation, as well as robust to gaps in the shape boundary, occlusions, and noise. To achieve this objective, the radial feature token (RFT) is implemented as the ALISA Shape Module, which learns to classify shapes in ALISA geometry maps derived from a supervised set of training images. These learned shapes are stored as a set of vectors that are then used to classify shapes in test images. Experiments have demonstrated that this method can learn to classify general shapes from small training sets, as well as effectively classify similar shapes independent of their position, scale, and orientation. The Shape Module is also robust to gaps in shape boundaries, occlusions, and noise. The Shape Module is also shown to outperform some established shape recognition techniques, such as the Generalized Hough Transform.

In middle schools today, teachers meet many challenges.The research question addressed in this dissertation was: What are the effects of instructional technology on motivation, attitudes and behavior of at-risk learners in the middle school general music classroom? The purpose of this study was to determine if the implementation of instructional technology, specifically digital piano keyboards and computers, in the middle school general music program would have a positive effect on the motivation, attitudes and behaviors of at-risk learners. To this end, a study was conducted in which at-risk learners received instruction delivered through a higher concentration of technology.Students completed a pretest and a posttest consisting of the Motivation Achievement Profile, audiation/listening and audiation/reading scales of Level One of the Iowa Tests of Music Literacy and the Middle School Music Attitude Scale. The experimental group received music instruction through a higher concentration of technology while the comparison group participated in an equally desirable music program.Data was analyzed using an analysis of covariance, in which the posttest mean of the experimental group was compared with the posttest mean of the comparison group with the pretest scores used as a covariate. Overall, no statistical significance was found; however, statistical significance was found on 2 of the 22 measures taken. Furthermore, there was a remarkable degree of consistency for the experimental group. Overall, consistency was seen with the experimental group scoring higher on 18 of the 22 measures indicating that perhaps if there had been more students a significant effect might have been seen. Nonetheless, the consistency leads to the conclusion that the treatment had some kind of effect. There is an implication that a positive, although not statistically significant effect on the motivation, attitudes and behaviors of at-risk learners occurred.