General Indebtedness Research Articles

DESEMPENHO ECONÔMICO-FINANCEIRO DAS EMPRESAS LISTADAS NO ÍNDICE DE SUSTENTABILIDADE EMPRESARIAL ISE B3

The study investigates the effect of including companies in the theoretical portfolio of the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE B3) on the average values of financial indicators. The variables of interest encompassed general liquidity (ILG), general indebtedness (IEG), return on investment (ROI), and return on equity (ROE). The ISE B3 consists of companies selected based on financial and sustainability criteria, with financial indicators crucial for monitoring business performance. The methodology was descriptive, quantitative, and qualitative, with hypothesis testing on two databases, including companies listed on the B3 between 2013 and 2022, comparing those that were included and those that were not included in the ISE B3 portfolio. Results revealed that companies included in the ISE B3 portfolio had higher ROI during the membership period, while those outside the portfolio showed higher ILG, indicating better liquidity. IEG was higher for companies outside the portfolio, suggesting higher indebtedness, while ROE was superior for companies included in the portfolio, indicating higher profitability on equity. Inclusion in the ISE B3 portfolio significantly influenced IEG, suggesting lower indebtedness for included companies, while ILG also showed statistically significant differences, indicating lower liquidity for companies in the portfolio, with ROI and ROE demonstrating significance at different levels, suggesting higher profitability returns for investments and equity in these companies. Further investigation of other indicators is recommended to better understand the variations influenced by companies' participation in the sustainability journey.

DETERMINANTS OF DEBT IN RURAL MUNICIPALITIES ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE WARMIŃSKO-MAZURSKIE VOIVODESHIP

One of the major consequences of the economic crisis with which the local governments had to deal was growing debt, the implications of which could endanger the continuity of public services. It appears that the largest cities in Poland were especially exposed to the negative effects of the indebtedness, yet the problem affected the village communes as well. Therefore, the main aim of the article was to assess the level of indebtedness of rural communes against other communes as well as to identify the determinants of the debt. As an example for the analysis communes of the Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodeship were selected, as the region is characterized by a high share of rural areas as well as a rather unfavourable economic situation. The general indebtedness of the selected rural communes remained at a relatively low level in comparison to the urban and urban-rural communes. Findings also suggest that the level of debt was influenced primarily by such factors as the number of inhabitants in the studied area, the number of primary schools, as well as the share of the post-working age population in the population total.

Revisiting Frank H. Knight's 'The Ethics of Competition'

James M. Buchanan revisited his mentor’s famous 1923 essay “The Ethics of Competition” in an essay written for the centenary celebration of Frank Knight’s birth in 1985. Buchanan’s paper focused on the first section of Knight’s essay, and outlined why it provided an inadequate criticism of a competitive market economy. Essentially, the essay was flawed by what Buchanan understood to be a methodological ambiguity which formed the basis for Knight’s ethical critique. A year later, in Buchanan’s Nobel Lecture, he made no reference to Knight, despite have widely acknowledged in other ways his general indebtedness to Knight’s appreciation for competitive markets in forming his own approach to public choice. After reviewing the structure of Buchanan’s criticism, the paper turns to examine what Knight did with his views on ethics, economics, and social/political organization after the mid-1920s. Knight’s Weberian turn led him to abandon the “successive approximation” method he had argued in favor of in Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), and instead seek an economics that provided general insights from an ideal type analysis of market interaction, combined with a) a comparative social and political institutional analysis; and b) a comparative study of ethical systems to evaluate which was appropriate to the problems of a liberal, democratic society. At the end, a brief look at Buchanan’s movement toward Knight on methodological issues after his Nobel Lecture is examined. Buchanan’s changes come from a new appreciation for increasing cost and social ideas and norms, as well as his growing appreciation for Knight’s notion of democracy as “government by discussion.”

Impacto da reconfiguração dos passivos contingentes no desempenho financeiro: Uma análise nas empresas brasileiras do setor de energia elétrica

O objetivo desta pesquisa é verificar qual o efeito da reconfiguração dos Passivos Contingentes no desempenho econômico-financeiro das empresas brasileiras do setor de energia elétrica nos anos de 2013 a 2015. A amostra foi composta por 53 empresas e foram analisados 153 demonstrativos financeiros. Como modelo de reconfiguração dos passivos contingentes para provisão foi utilizada a abordagem por níveis percentuais desenvolvida por Rosa (2014). A autora classifica a reversão em 5 cenários: Otimista (20%), Parcialmente Otimista (40%), Moderado (60%), Parcialmente Pessimista (80%) e Pessimista(100%). Para representar o desempenho econômico e financeiro foram selecionados três indicadores: Liquidez Geral (LG), Endividamento Geral (EG)e Retorno do Ativo (ROA). Os resultados obtidos revelam que, para os cenários mais pessimistas, existe uma diferença significativa entre os indicadores calculados com os dados originais em comparação com os mesmos calculados com os cenários reclassificados. A estatística D de Cohen (1988) apontou que, além de estatisticamente significativa, nos piores cenários, o tamanho do efeito também foi elevado, principalmente para o ROA e para o Endividamento. Na Liquidez as diferenças não foram tão expressivas. Os achados desta pesquisa servem de alerta aos usuários das demonstrações financeiras ao realizar suas análises acerca do desempenho econômico-financeiro das empresas, devendo os mesmos levarem em consideração os impactos das diferentes interpretações dos indivíduos envolvidos nas decisões acerca das probabilidades de perda das Provisões e dos Passivos Contingentes.

ESTIJOS, LIETUVOS IR ARGENTINOS VALIUTŲ VALDYBOS MODELIŲ INSTITUCINĖ ANALIZĖ

This article analyses currency boards from the perspective of new institutionalism, namely historical institutionalism. New institutionalism holds the view that institutions have independent, autonomous effects on the social world. Once established, institutions tend to become stronger over time due to path dependency. At the same time, the new institutionalist literature has been criticized for either ignoring or not being able to properly account for institutional change. This article pays attention to both self-enforcing and self-undermining effects generated by currency boards. Furthermore, the interaction of the currency board regime with other national institutions is analysed. After laying out the theoretical arguments, this article empirically assesses them with the analysis of three cases of currency board regimes in Estonia, Lithuania, and Argentina. One of the findings is that currency boards tend to become more popular over time. This tendency can be explained by several self-enforcing effects related to growing indebtedness in foreign currencies, currency boards’ role in ensuring macroeconomic stability as well as emerging ideational consensus supporting the regime. However, currency boards also unleash self-undermining tendencies, primarily related to the increasing general indebtedness and deteriorating competitiveness. The relationship of currency boards with the broader institutional set-up proved to be important. Unlike in Lithuania and especially in Estonia, the national institutional landscape in Argentina was unfavourable for the existence of the currency board regime. This was especially evident during the economic downturn of 1998–2002 when Argentina attempted to implement the internal adjustment strategy in order to safeguard the currency board. Nevertheless, Argentina’s inability to quickly adopt a major fiscal consolidation package eventually led to the demise of the currency board regime. In turn, this inability can be attributed to the lack of informal norms of fiscal prudence, decentralized nature of Argentina’s political institutions, and the organization of interest groups. The analysis provided in this article thus suggests that, despite important self-enforcing effects of currency boards, they are not sufficient to bring about the major transformation of a generally unfavourable national institutional landscape.

An Artificial Intelligence Approach towards Investigating Corporate Bankruptcy

Corporate bankruptcy analysis is very important for investors, creditors, borrowing companies, as well as governments. The assessment of business failure provides tremendous information for governments, investors, shareholders, and the management based on which financial decisions are taken towards preventing potential losses. Likewise, by researching corporate downfall there could be gathered an early warning signal, together revealing the fields encountering problems. Moreover, nowadays the corporations are facing the senior staff retirement, thus being confronted by the loss of knowledge. Artificial intelligence (AI) seeks the promotion of systems related with human intelligence, comprising reasoning, learning, and problem solving. The most powerful applied field of AI is the area of expert systems (ES). However, the ES are applications that could reproduce the knowledge and experience of a human expert. This paper aims at designing and implementing an ES prototype towards corporate bankruptcy analysis. Therefore, we have considered a couple of production rules based on indebtedness ratios (e.g. General Indebtedness Ratio, Global Financial Autonomy Ratio, Financial Leverage Ratio), as well as solvency ratios (e.g. General Solvency Ratio, Patrimonial Solvency Ratio). For this purpose, Exsys Corvid® was used since it transforms expert knowledge into a structure that enables rendering of guidance and prescription to refine performance, capability, and efficiency, alongside lowering training and costly errors.

Will Expansion Work? On Mark Blyth, Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea

Blyth shows convincingly that ‘Austerity does not work’. But he seems to imply that financial repression, higher taxes and monetary expansion would. Are they really compatible, however? Financial repression requires growth, real or nominal. Real growth is widely believed to require lower, not higher taxes. Nominal growth, that is inflation, is difficult to contain as well as to bring about, given trade union weakness and widespread dependence on fixed transfer incomes. Monetary expansion, finally, may simply add to general indebtedness, as it has since the late 1970s when real growth embarked on a long-term decline.

Contested Terrain: The Suburbs as Region

Wilhite contends that a general indebtedness to Cold War cultural critique has kept literary scholars from reading the suburbs and suburban fiction for what they truly are: the endgame and final outpost of US regionalism. Drawing on discussions of regional writing and cultural geography, Wilhite argues that we should read suburban narratives for the ways they update and revise long-standing regionalist approaches to local and global concerns: the charged insularity of the domestic sphere, the geographic containment of racial difference, the repressive construction of a common national identity, and the imperial reach of nation. As a mode of geopolitical analysis, regionalism clarifies the fraught relationship between isolationism and imperialism that has shaped US residential geography. When read as form of regional writing, suburban fiction exposes our homes and neighborhoods as national and transnational “sites of contestation.” To develop this line of thinking, Wilhite offers Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (2001) and Chang-rae Lee’s Aloft (2004) as case studies for his broader claims about region and the spatial effects of residential sprawl and suburban domesticity. Franzen and Lee both locate the political subject within the competing ideologies of privatism and globalization, but they produce radically different responses to the suburb as a symptomatic fact of twenty-first-century life in the United States. Taken together, these novels offer divergent paths for understanding the suburbs as a uniquely problematic and potentially transformative cultural and geographic region.

A INFLUÊNCIA DA GOVERNANÇA CORPORATIVA NO DESEMPENHO E NA ESTRUTURA DE CAPITAL DAS EMPRESAS LISTADAS NA BOVESPA

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} The corporate governance relates to the management of an organization and becomes the target of interest of entrepreneurs when they realize that their practices contribute to solve conflicts of interests between directors and shareholders. This study aims to evaluate whether the adoption of corporate governance practices changes the capital structure and the companies' performance. The sample totalizes 84 companies holders of shares negotiated in BOVESPA and listed in the N1, N2 and NM. The research uses tests of differences to identify changes in structure and performance, and apply panel data regression with the purpose of assessing whether corporate governance influences variations in capital structure and the companies' performance. The independent variables are given by the index of governance, percentage of ordinary shares of the controlling shareholder, percentage of shares of the majority shareholder, the percentage of ordinary shares of the five majority shareholders and the independence of the board. The dependent variables include the equity return, stock return and general indebtedness. The result showed a little influence exercised by the independent variables in the dependent variable, thus it cannot be inferred that the corporate governance practices adopted by the companies that joined in N1, N2 and NM have contributed expressively to variations in the performance and the capital structure of the companies, at least within the limits of this sample.

The Oxford History of English Music, vol. 2, From c.1715 to the Present Day (review)

The period of the second volume of John Caldwell's history of English music, ca. 1715 to the present day, has already been covered by volumes 4-6 of The Blackwell History of Music in Britain ([Oxford: Blackwell, 1988-]; vol. 5 originally published as The Athlone History of Music in Britain [London: Athlone Press, 1981]), but a study of this kind has not been attempted by a single author since Ernest Walker's A History of [End Page 600] Music in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907; 2d ed., 1924; 3d ed., 1952) first appeared almost a century ago. Caldwell freely admits in his preface that the completion of the three Blackwell volumes "has been a particular convenience," and a general indebtedness is acknowledged (p. vii), but he has also had the benefit of a number of other studies, particularly studies of the "English Musical Renaissance," from which to develop his own perspective. Frank Howes's now somewhat dated The English Musical Renaissance (New York: Stein and Day, 1966) and Peter J. Pirie's generally poor and badly planned book by the same title (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979) are two that spring to mind, while Robert Stradling and Meirion Hughes's more controversial The English Musical Renaissance, 1860-1940: Construction and Deconstruction (London: Routledge, 1993) appeared relatively recently. Moreover, in the last twenty years there have been a considerable number of other, more detailed works of scholarship on English music of the last three centuries that Caldwell has been able to draw upon, and these he has attempted to bring together to form a larger purview of music's role in England--a thesis confirmed by the presence of the last chapter, "England and its Music" (pp. 537-53).

Ṣūfī Magic – Graeco-Egyptian Magic

This paper examines the current relationship of Ṣūfīs to magic, their role in propagating magical practices and their general indebtedness to Greco-Egyptian magic.

An essay in speculative mysticism

I entitled the paper ‘An Essay in Speculative Mysticism’ because it undertakes, in the tradition of such ancient and mediaeval mystics as Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Hugh and Richard of St Victor, Nicholas of Cusa, Ruysbroeck, and Meister Eckhart, to mate psychological introspection with ontological speculation, focusing on the rather fundamental themes of Identity, Alterity, Transcendant Identity, and Illusion. I acknowledge my more recent, general indebtment to the rich reservoir of contemporary research in the area of Transpersonal Psychology, a research amply documented in the journal of Transpersonal Psychology, as well as in the bibliographies, most notably provided among others, in the respective works of Charles Tart, John White, and Ken Wilber. Since Transpersonal Psychology embraces within its attempts at controlled studies such sundries as altered states of consciousness, parapsychological phenomena, yoga, as well as doctrines which skirt the very frontiers of psychology's experimental ingenuity, namely the tenets of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, H. P. Blavatsky, Oscar Icazo, John Lilly, Roberto Assagioli, and many others, the rapport between a speculative study in mysticism and the background data supplied by Transpersonal Psychology becomes readily apparent. Furthermore, I accede to any reader's deft detection in my essay of a rather uncommon medley of remnants from Thomism, German Romanticism, British Neo-Hegelianism, Vitalism, and Structuralism. If, at last, I were to be questioned on the methodology of my paper, I would have to respond that it probably resembles most closely the methodology of two French Reflective thinkers, viz., Jean Nabert and Henry Duméry, and the French existential metaphysician, Jean Wahl. Since I owe so much to so many, I simply acknowledge my general indebtedness at the beginning and allow the essay to emerge with its own internal cogency. The paper's rationale should, therefore, emanate from a clear inner coherence of its ideas as these reflect communicable psychological experience and unfold some of the latter's ontological implications.

Browning’s Lyrics and the Language of Periodical Criticism

BROWNING'S LYRICS AND THE LANGUAGE OF PERIODICAL CRITICISM WILLIAM J. WHITLA York University (jen tlem en ," said Prince Albert at the Royal Academy Dinner on 3 May 18 51: the production of all works in art or poetry requires, in their conception and execution, not only an exercise of the intellect, skill and patience, but particularly a concurrent warmth of feeling, and a free flow of imagination. This renders them most tender plants ... An unkind word of criticism passes like a cold blast over their tender shoots, and shrivels them up, checking the flow of the sap which was rising to produce, perhaps, multitudes of flowers and fruit. But still criticism is absolutely necessary to the development of art, and the injudicious praise of an inferior work becomes an insult to superior genius.1 Punch demanded of the Prince: "What mistaken benevolence is this! ... We think it the especial duty of the critic, in order to test the vital strength of flowers in the bud, and fruit in the blossom, to drench them well with a solution of vitriol."2 Benevolence or vitriol. It must be doubted that Prince Albert's benevolent phrases "warmth of feeling" and "a free flow of imagination" would shrink a single Academic shoot: they, above all others, were well-rooted in England's artistic soil. But one might wonder how many Academicians would recognize the prince's general indebtedness to Wordsworth in such phrases from the preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" and "a certain colouring of imagination." However accept­ ing the Academy was to these pieties, critics in the popular press had fought over them, and, according to Mr. Punch, were still willing to fight. The con­ sort's Wordsworthian principles were both widely accepted and widely repudi­ ated. Three important areas of disagreement were the discreteness of genres, the nature of poetic thought, and the propriety of style. Several former students of F.E.L. Priestley have enlarged our understanding of Browning's position on some of these issues. David Shaw gave detailed treat­ ment to Browning's method of argument (certainly a large element of 'poetic thought') in The Dialectical Temper (Ithaca 1968). Donald Hair's Browning's English Studies in Canada, 1 , 2 (summer 1975) Experiments with Genre (Toronto 1972) deals with that crucial issue in the volumes between 1833 and 1864. Now appears Eleanor Cook's handsomely de­ signed and printed and intelligently argued volume on one genre, Browning's Lyrics: An Exploration (Toronto 1974). It comes trailing clouds of academic honours: in earlier form the first A.S.P. Woodhouse Prize, and awards from the Canada Council, the Humanities Research Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. No doubt it will win further critical laurels. In her preface Eleanor Cook says that her work became three things, "a handbook on the lyric," "a study of Browning's imagery in the lyric," and "an essay on Browning's poetics, chiefly as they bear on his lyrics." The book succeeds splendidly with respect to the first two goals, and, within the limits of her clear method, the third, much more difficult to accomplish, makes a welcome addition to our knowledge of Browning's practice and principles. As a "handbook" the study's major point is to concentrate our attention on Browning's best shorter poems, his "dramatic lyrics," not poems in which "the poet is overheard by the reader, but poems in which a speaker is overheard" (pp. xii-xiii). Eleanor Cook reads the lyrics in detail, moves away from them to other poems (including many longer ones), and relates the first discussion to similar or repeated images, themes, and structures. Not surprisingly, half of the book is devoted to the poems from Browning's two best collections, Men and Women (which itself has more than a hundred pages) and Dramatis Personae. The rest is given to aspects of Browning's theory of lyric as developed in his early long poems: Pauline ("the lyric as music"), Paracelsus ("the dramatic lyric"), and Sordello ("the lyric as sight"); to his early practice in the Bells and Pome­ granates volumes from Pippa Passes through Dramatic Lyrics; and...

Crosses from the Walls of Zaitun

In November of 1952 I received a note from a medical doctor who some two years earlier had returned to Britain from Ch'üanchou, in the province of Fukien. A Chinese acquaintance had given him photographs of carved stones, Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian, collected by him in recent years, with the hope that someone in the West might publish them. At first glance I recognized fifteen undoubtedly Christian crosses, five with figures of angels on either side, and seven with considerable inscriptions. With the photographs came a copy of a Chinese monograph published by the collector, Wu Wen-liang, An Introduction to the Ancient Stone Carving of Ch'uan-chou. I had enlargements of the Christian set of photographs made, as published in plates II to XVII, 2 sent a set to Professor A. C. Moule, and sought his help. That help has been generously given, in translating part of Wu's monograph, in corresponding with other scholars who might decipher the inscriptions, and in assessing the significance of these new finds. It seems more suitable to recognize general indebtedness here than to refer to him by footnote at the end of every paragraph.

A Source of the "Confessio Amantis"

Thorpe finds an analogue for the Tale of the False Bachelor (from Book 2 of the CA) in the story Annulus, a brief exemplum told by the Empress in the thirteenth-century romance Le Roman de Marques de Rome. The Marques is a sequel of sorts to The Seven Sages of Rome, a tale collection Gower and Chaucer both borrowed from. Most extant manuscripts of the Marques also include the Seven Sages, and so it seems quite likely that Gower drew upon it directly, and did not consult a shared parent source. Thorpe provides a detailed parallel transcription of tale and source and notes some striking similarities in phrasing. Notable differences, on the other hand, include the intended moralitas or frame, the fact that Gower's version goes on for another 67 lines (describing the Bachelor's punishment), and the greater preoccupation of the Marques with aspects of contemporary warfare. Despite these differences, Gower’s general indebtedness is clearly evident. [CvD]

University and Educational Intelligence

BIRMINGHAM.—The first list of donations in response to the appeal of the University for 500,000l. has been published, showing gifts or promises to the amount of more than 250,000l. Nearly half of this amount, however, is given to the Petroleum Mining Endowment Fund, and, whilst making the University unique as a centre of instruction and research in this particular branch of engineering, it will not be directly available for relieving the general indebtedness. The largest single gift is an anonymous one of 50,000l. for the general fund. A sum of 5000l is earmarked for a chair of Italian, and an equal amount is given by the James Watt Memorial Fund for a James Watt research chair in engineering. The Birmingham Small Arms Co. gives 6500l, and the Daimler Co. 3500l A gratifying feature of the list is the number of names of old students who have contributed. The Birmingham Chamber of Commerce has given 3200l, and the Worcestershire Education Committee has made an additional grant of 200l per annum. It is announced that a second list will be issued shortly, and it is to be hoped that more of the large firms in the city and neighbourhood will appear therein.