Human Resources Summaries Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

HR Summaries - Essay Example Because of lack, laborers were acquired transports from Lafayette, Louisiana, 70 miles away, every morning and returned them around evening time. Chiefs were staying at work past 40 hours to prepare new laborers. Indeed, even a very long time after Hurricane Rita struck, enormous and independent company was wildly attempting to discover laborers with the goal that they could fire up once more. Pretty much every business in the town had a ‘Help needed sign out front. One can land the position effectively and could order a superior pay. There was a colossal lack of laborers in the neighborhood. Eateries that typically open late into the night shut down at 6.00 PM. Eateries that stayed open regularly had an a lot more youthful staff, and the directors and aide administrators were staying at work longer than required to prepare these new specialists. Storm Rita is an average in a fiasco. It for all intents and purposes obliterates the typical existence of the zone. After Rita struck Lake Charles, in southwest Louisiana, gigantic pulverization was all over the place. Lake Charles, known for its enormous and wonderful oak and fine trees, at that point had the activity of evacuating those brought down trees. The town developed quickly in size due to the huge number of flotsam and jetsam and fix teams taking a shot at recuperation tasks. Traffic was unfathomably moderate. Frequently police didn't have the assets to ticket each bumper, so except if there were wounds, protection cards were traded and the police went on to the following mishap. The entire circumstance mirrors the gravity of the catastrophe. Worldwide Forest Products Company (IFP) is the biggest manager in Ouachita County, Arkansas, and is a significant piece of the neighborhood economy. As a cost-cutting move, organization chose to cut the workforce by 30 percent, and the obligation of presenting the proposed arrangement was depended on Scott Wheeler, the human asset executive by Janet Deason, leader of the organization. It was troublesome undertaking. Beside the effect on the individual laborers who were laid off, reductions would additionally discourage the zones economy. In any case, organization had no way out however

Lord of the Flies Theme Analysis Essay Example

Master of the Flies Theme Analysis Essay William Golding makes a general public that is destined to fall flat since it comes up short on the standards that are important for its endurance. At the point when left to their own gadgets, the young men demonstrate that human instinct must be harnessed or it will turn cataclysmic. William Golding accepts that all out and complete opportunity presents a threat to any general public. The utilization of hinting in the work, Jack’s inside clashes and Ralph’s acknowledge about humankind caution the peruser that the individuals in a general public can't be totally free or the general public will fall. William Golding shows how flimsy a general public without rules is by foreshowing a shocking end to the general public in the work of the novel. In the initial barely any pages of the novel when the young men are choosing a pioneer, they analyze Jack and Ralph taking note of that â€Å"while the most evident pioneer was Jack†¦ there was a tranquility about Ralph† (21) that makes them pick him as their pioneer. By looking at the two young men, the creator is hinting a future clash among them, and Jack’s possible ascent to control. The creator additionally utilizes clear symbolism and exemplification to represent their powerlessness to control certain parts of their general public. We will compose a custom article test on Lord of the Flies Theme Analysis explicitly for you for just $16.38 $13.9/page Request now We will compose a custom paper test on Lord of the Flies Theme Analysis explicitly for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Recruit Writer We will compose a custom exposition test on Lord of the Flies Theme Analysis explicitly for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Recruit Writer He exemplifies murkiness, clarifying how it â€Å"pour[s] out and submerge[s] between the trees†(31) making the timberland as â€Å"strange as the base of the sea†(31). By contrasting their condition with the base of the ocean, a spot where people can't make due for long, the creator is hinting a conclusion to their general public. Likewise, in light of the fact that the young men can't stop the dimness, the creator is representing that there are parts of their general public that are out of their control. The creator likewise utilizes in the article when he has Jack wound a blade into a tree trunk. Jack, baffled at not killing a pig, â€Å"snatch[es] his blade out of the sheath and slam[s] it into a tree trunk†(29) and pledges that â€Å"next time there would be no mercy†(29). Jack shows from the get-go in the novel that he needs things done his direction, and the viciousness with the blade demonstrates that he will take the necessary steps to get his direction. Jack is a key character all through the book, and the improvement of his character is one way that the writer communicates the subject. The creator utilizes Jack’s developing changes and interior clashes to grandstand the society’s decay into carnal conduct. In the article of the novel, Jack, keen on having rules in their general public, â€Å"cry[s] excitedly†¦ â€Å"We’ll have rules! Bunches of rules! At that point when anybody breaks ‘em-â€Å"(31). The creator demonstrates that Jack needs to be in control, and that he initially needs for there to be rules, with the goal that they can get away from the island. Subsequent to living without grown-ups for some time, in any case, Jack quits agonizing over being protected. Indeed, when Ralph makes reference to being safeguarded â€Å"Jack ha[s] to think for a second before he [can] recollect what salvage [is]†(49) and he returns to discussing how he needs to kill a pig. Jack realizes that slaughtering the pig will give him a sentiment of intensity that he aches for frantically, and it makes him significantly increasingly brutal. Jack in the long run drives a portion of the young men from Ralph and isolates himself further by painting his face, and requesting that he be named their Chief. At the point when one of the young men asks him an inquiry, â€Å"The Chief’s become flushed [is] covered up by the white and red clay†(147). By utilizing the earth to shroud his face, Jack is making himself resistant and out of reach, separating himself from the others. The last way that the creator demonstrates the topic is with Ralph’s acknowledge about humankind. Golding utilizes Ralph’s considerations and conclusions towards the finish of the book to show the significance of the novel. When Ralph takes a gander at himself and different young men and perceives how grimy they are, and how little that influences him, he understands â€Å"with a little fall of the heart that these were the conditions he took as ordinary now and that he didn't mind†(100). The way that he no longer cares that the young men are changing shows that he realizes that he can't control it. Another model would be that in the wake of assisting with executing Simon, Ralph doesn't deny what he did, yet rather says â€Å"I wasn’t frightened, I was-I don’t realize that I was†(142). Ralph recognizes that he and the others young men are changing to where they don’t even perceive themselves any longer. Ultimately, Ralph, chased by different young men, â€Å"feel[s] the purpose of his lance with his thumb grin[ing] without amusement†(175). Ralph doesn’t need to hurt the young men, however he realizes that he will do what he needs to so as to ensure himself. He went from being the person who needed request in their general public to somebody who needs to cover up for his own wellbeing. Golding builds up the subject that all out and complete opportunity presents a threat to a general public all through the entire novel. He utilized hinting in the work to show that the general public would fall flat. He likewise indicated Jack’s go wrong to represent the general public was an entire evolving. Finally, he utilized Ralph to communicate his perspectives on mankind. Golding utilized this novel as a notice to people in the future that an excessive amount of opportunity can, truth be told, be terrible. He accepts that it is human instinct to need to be on top, and that people will do what is important to arrive. Golding considers rules to be the one thing that shields people from their own viciousness. Works Cited Golding, William. Ruler of the Flies. US of America: Putnam, 1954.

The Nature of Construction Problems Past and Present Free Essays

Reflection: This paper targets finding a complete trepidation refering to the diverse structure inconveniences that have been looked in the days of old and are being confronted now in the present other than. It gives a realistic examination of why the employments were confronted, the nature of the occupations and how they were managed. It has been a long clasp since the primary inception of building musings that had crawled into our ancestors’ heads. We will compose a custom paper test on The Nature of Construction Problems: Past and Present or on the other hand any comparable point just for you Request Now Directly from the Stone Age, grown-up male has truly been into this demonstration of building material for doing his life simple. At the truly event of the Metal Age, he got a more remote consolation with the happening to new stuffs and building methods. Besides, came the occasions when engineering was at its extremum. Wherever known to mankind there was zest to assemble developments that non only made life comfortable for grown-up male, yet close to alleviated his eyes. The old style requests of the Greeks stuffed the clout of working as better auxiliary individuals alongside being a visual humble. The Romans had been understandable in building an effective arrangement of H2O flexibly in the signifier of a progression of curves together being called as aquaducts. It despite everything remains as a representation people admire plan urban infinites. Egyptians were no less. They were carefully constructing pyramids and morgue graves that were way past the human graduated table. They ha d planned the main signifiers of transport frameworks in structure building. So also, India saw the structure of a group of engineering admirations. Directly from the structure of the enormous stone developments of the Ajanta-Ellora caverns and the sanctuaries of Mahabalipuram to the Islamic developments of Taj Mahal and the Humayun’s grave it had been a phenomenal spring in the signifier of building headway. At last came the hours of disputes about engineering when Gustav Eiffel proposed the structure of an all metal development presently called the Eiffel tower. There was a cluster of clamor about the way that how it would in the end look when it was built in Paris. Numerous individuals said that it may end up being a cicatrix on the essence of the city. In any case, presently accidentally it is known as the primary thing that causes us place the city of Paris. There have other than been disputes about Zaha Hadid’s structures. She is one of the trailblazer architects each piece far as the utilization of fluidic signifiers is concerned. Her plans have about ever been in charge of ominous judgment by the senior creators of her occasions. In any case, she has been well-spoken in put to deathing her ain structures. Essentially, in the ongoing occasions Frank O’ Gehry had confronted a cluster of difficulties in passing on up his work called Bilbao historical center. He has been condemned like snake pit up to the level of being known as the frantic architect. Presently as we come up to the reality of such headway in the field of building, would we be able to deny that there experience been no difficulties in the structure of these well established developments? No will be the answer. As we return to the occasions when the enormous stone developments of the Kailasa sanctuary was built, we get the opportunity to cognize that awful building was accessible at that cut. In any case, they have figured out how to truly do it conceivable to sort out a solid sanctuary out of an individual stone. Envision that how the person who began the structure, actually simply utilized an etch and a cockerel to develop such a tremendous sanctuary. It is said that he began from the top and keep up on cheating till the underside. It is evident that this fabulous structure must hold taken a long clasp to come up. Be that as it may, it has non been developed by an individual sculpturer. Envision the difficulty in go throughing on a similar insight about the development to such a significant number of craftsmans over the ages. There may hold been a few changes made to this sanctuary development during the structure. This must hold made it significantly progressively hard for the sculpturer s. Presently raises the request of pull offing the waste that was created in this system. How were all the removed rocks utilized? Truly, they were utilized to do streets and for pety structures. Be that as it may, wasn’t it genuinely difficult to pull off these substantial hoards? Truly, it must hold been exhausting. A comparable development had come up prior. The Konark sanctuary in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa had a massive part in raising the compositional gustatory vibe of the individuals of the state. In this structure, they utilized the technique for building sand slants as it was being developed towards the top terminal. This had truly guaranteed that the development didn’t procure rotted during the structure system. In any case, this development had made utilization of a colossal post at the Center in the signifier of a magnet that gave the solid stone development its entire existence. This had been gained by the British during their reign in our state. Be that as it may, consequently on what it was utilized for figure knows. Simply think about how that tremendous magnet was made to stand just by the use of extremely essential devices. This talks about the difficulty in building developments having a place with the typology of rock sanctuaries. Presently, when the significance of Constantinople appeared, there was an abrupt interest for the structure of a few open buildings. At that cut there was a gigantic downturn in the field of working in Europe. There was a shortfall of assets, financess, originators and even workers. This thing offered ascend to another signifier of design. This signifier of design came to be known as Polymath Architecture. In this signifier of engineering the bing buildings were utilized to develop a few different structures. The Roman basilicas were utilized to develop the Basilican houses of worship that framed the balance of Christianity. The sections of the sentenced structures were truly shortened to secure an unvarying size. As a result, the structures were holding a size truly close to the human graduated table. Unequivocally or purposefully, this signifier of engineering happened to be all the more near individuals. Indeed, even the establishments of a few buildings were utilized to run into the requests of the occasions. The rotunda buildings were utilized to used to develop baptismal text styles when the request of child absolution appeared. These infinites required a kind of transmitting building program so as to suit the required movement. Along these lines, the unavailability of assets at that clasp was tended to in such a way. Presently, when we come to working of structures that are worked with the on open cash, the request of insignificant craftsmanship appears. The utilization of insignificant aggregate of asset and financess appears. Taking the outline of a case, when an architect is given endeavor of planing an open building, he needs to do sure that he does non raise the expense of the structure to the height of doing it impracticable. Presents, in case of working of open buildings, the factor of stamp fathers up. The individual thinking of the most arranged structure inside the least of cost outline regularly gets the endeavor. Such an example can be taken up with regards to the Bilbao gallery. It was structured by Frank O’ Gehry. He had experienced the negative judgment of the full universe in light of his structure. His plan was intricate to the point that it made use of airplane configuration bundle. He had truly gone to the point of overdriving assets. The edges of the structure were made using thick steel regions. A major bed of fabric was utilized to cover the building. Over this a bed of Ti sheets were utilized. Around twenty four 1000 square meters of such were utilized. As an outcome of this, he was reprimanded over the way that a comparative usefulness and feel was accomplishable with lesser use of assets. Be that as it may, he had paid no mindfulness to what the individuals said. He has a build of a fish just in light of the fact that he had recollections of making a trip to a fish showcase with his grandma. This dark defense realized a cluster of arrangements all through the universe. Luckily, the Ti fiscal qualities had gone down by then of clasp. In this way, he had the benefit of non obtaining the endeavor dropped. At the point when private endeavors are thought about, there are a few pety issues that surface. Fundss stay constrained in many examples. There have been occasions when working of an individual house has experienced a ceasework time of in excess of a twelvemonth simply because of the insufficiency of financess. Other otherworldly issues play a basic capacity in our state with regards to working of habitations uncommonly. A few people truly pull out when the originator is reluctant to tune in to his particulars about how the building ought to be. Mechanical structures have difficulties that are entirely extraordinary when contrasted with different buildings. They should hold the capacity to truly warrant all the specialists standards sing the moment focuses like waste coevals and danger security factors. They should hold specific anthropometric particulars however they ought to non use exorbitantly quite a bit of vast. Along these lines, as we come to reason this, we can truly observe that few issues are getting settled in this specific circumstance. A few planners are thinking of cutting edge contemplations to truly give to the musings of the specialists and the natural effect appraisal natural structures to do an announcement sing this undertaking. So permit us trust for a problem free and green from this point forward in front! ! ! Notices: History Of Architecture by Sir Banister Fletcher Development Delaies: Extension Of clasp and protraction guarantees by Roger Gibson The most effective method to refer to The Nature of Construction Problems: Past and Present, Essay models

Finding Hope and Courage Through Faith - Free Essay Example

When people go through a series of misfortunate events, they turn to believe in a universal power or put their faith in God. Having a strong belief in someone or something helps overcome everyday struggles. It makes people mentally stronger to be able to handle hardships. In the memoirs Every Falling Star and How Dare the Sun Rise, both Sungju Lee and Sandra Uwiringiyimana conquer fear and survival through developing hope and courage by turning to their faith while going through hardships. In both memoirs, the characters open up to God for the first time when they are in the need of survival. In Every Falling Star, Sungju was never exposed to the idea of praying to a higher power. He first sees his mother praying after his father leaves to china, so he asks, ?What does praying mean? (Lee 75). This reveals the lack of knowledge Sungju has towards the significance of praying at first. His mother and Sungju are struggling for food and are worried about his dad. His mother replies, some people talk to a higher power, a universal power, an energythat higher power listens and answers what we ask of it. We speak to that power in the form of prayers,(Lee 75). After his father left for China, the only way they believed they could communicate with him was through this universal power. This gave Sungju the urge to learn how to pray, so he can communicate with his dad which built hope in him that his father is safe wherever he is. His desire to have faith in a universal power help s him have hope that he will eventually meet his family again. This hope allowed him to continue to strive and survive as a kotjebi. In How Dare the Sun Rise, Sandra starts putting faith in God when her family is struggling to survive because of the discrimination towards her tribe. Sandra says, I began to open myself to the idea of Gods helpMy faith began to deepenI put my faith in God,(Uwiringiyimana 94). She opens herself up to God and begins praying. Sandras faith helps her throughout her journey by building hope and courage towards many things, such as moving to a different country. Her decision on putting her faith in God lets her build courage. The courage that she gained from her faith helped in many situations including her flashbacks. Both characters turn to their faith when they are in fear. In Every Falling Star, Sungju states, One morning after I awoke screaming from a nightmare in which I saw a strange white creature, half man, half monster, with fire for wings, I asked my mother to teach me how to pray,(Lee 76). Sungju feared getting these terrible dreams again, so instead, he started praying. Praying to this universal power that he believes in made all his fears disappear and made him gain courage and mental strength. Similarly, in How Dare the Sun Rise, Sandra faces fear during the massacre when she is unable to know whether her family members are alive. Sandra says, I prayed to god. ?If you keep my parents alive, I will be good I promised.I kept praying. I begged god to please let us all survive,(Uwiringiyimana 9). Sandra prays to god when she fears that her parents might have been killed during the massacre. She feels lonely and she is traumatized by all the blood. Praying to God during this fearful time helped her gain confidence that she and her family can survive the massacre. It also gave her the courage to keep running and trying to survive the massacre. For many people, faith isnt very easy to obtain. In both memoirs, Sungju and Sandra start praying to their God when they are in the need of survival. They also depend on faith to overcome fear. The faith that both the characters gain helps them throughout their journey. Sungju uses his faith as a support when he is a kotjebi and Sandra uses hers when she has a hard time in college. Sungju still has hope today that he will find his family back in North Korea, and Sandra gained the courage to talk about her experiences to inform other people in the world. Faith gives people hope and courage, it gives them the mental strength to handle any situation that arises. Works Cited Lee, Sungju and McClelland, Susan. Every Falling Star. New York: Amulet Books, 2016. Uwiringiyimana, Sandra and Pesta, Abigail. How Dare the Sun Rise. New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2017.

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Hitler s Effect On The German People And Nazi Rule

Nazi Germany Essay INTRODUCTION- discuss the question and what you are going to talk about in your essay From 1933-1938 life in Germany was worse for people because of the way that Hitler abused the power he had been given. Not only did he abuse the power but the people of Germany themselves. At the same time, there were also some positives in the way that Hitler ran things. He completely abolished unemployment rates, and gave the German people a sense of pride again. The key aspects of Adolf Hitler’s rule on Germany when he came into power were the separation of certain people such as communists, Jews and disable or handicapped people from the â€Å"pure† Germans. Hitler’s rule had several effects in the German people and their country. Hitler was very aware of things and therefore he knew what the people wanted and the things he needed to promise to them in order to be selected for the position of chancellor. This caused both positive and negative effects on the German people and Hitler’s Nazi rule. The Weimar Republic know as the ‘makeshift democracy ’ was set up as an emergency solution to assist with the diminishing of the post-war effects on the Germany society and population. The Government was unstable due to it having to face the harshest social, economic and political issues of Germany. The reason why the Weimar Republic was out ruled was because they gave too much power to the states and the army. PARAGRAPH 1- conditions in Germany when Hitler came to power includingShow MoreRelatedThe Nazi Regime Was Defined By Its Fascism Policies1345 Words   |  6 PagesThe Nazi regime was defined by its fascism policies in Germany that had on huge implications on the country s socio-political and economic settings. The National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi) evolved from the German Worker s Party. Adolf Hitler was the man behind the establishment of the Nazi party into the German political system as he rose to power in the late 1920s. He was the leader of the Nazi party. The party came to being from the Weimar Republic, which came about after GermanyRead MoreHow Hitler Became Chancellor Of Germany1164 Words   |  5 PagesWhen Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, he immediately began enforcing an authoritative state. An authoritative state is a state favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom. Hitler started a world war to achieve his dream of world domination. The war left behind an estimated 72 million dead, among them 47 million civilians, of whom some six million were Jewish. Jews were the targets of the Holocaust because HitlerRead MoreHow Did Hitler Become Chancellor in 1933?1659 Words   |  7 PagesHow did Hitler become Chancellor in 1933? Many events took place, leading to the rise of Hitler and his Nazi party. There was the growing unpopularity of the Weimar Republic, the federal republic established in 1919. At the same time, Hitler and his political party, the ‘Deutsche Arbeiterpartei’, commonly referred to as the Nazis (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) became more and more popular under the rule of their leader, Adolf Hitler. This rise to popularity was the effect of Hitler’sRead MoreEssay on Nazisms Effect on the German Society1680 Words   |  7 PagesNazisms Effect on the German Society When the Adolf Hitler came to power as chancellor on 30th January 1933, he immediately starting using his position to make the changes that he had wanted to see implemented for over a decade. With Von Papen as Vice Chancellor and Gobbles and Goering as ministers, the Third Reich was able to bring massive political, social and economic change to the lives of German people. The Reichstag became a forum for Hitler to expound his viewsRead MoreComparing The Way Of Adolf Hitler, A Fascist Dictator, And Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin1629 Words   |  7 PagesTo analyze the differences in the way Adolf Hitler, a fascist dictator, and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, a communist dictator, controlled their countries and made political decisions, we have to learn what Fascism and Communism are. We must also look at how Hitler and Stalin came to power, as well as how they controlled their government. Starting with Fascism, it is basically when the state is the supreme power. Nothing gives orders above the state, and the state gives all orders. It is a strongRead MoreNazi Germany And Its Detrimental Effects On The Social Outcasts967 Words   |  4 Pagesdetrimental effects on the social outcasts in Europe, it can be easy to deduce that the Nazi regime was one where Hitler walked in with his officials and took office by force. The truth is that, while the Nazi par ty is responsible for the atrocities that occurred before and during WWII, they would have not gotten far if it hadn’t been for the cooperation of the German people themselves. Life in the Third Reich provides proof through voting, youth programs and village life that the Nazi party roseRead MorePresident Hindenburg s Influence On The Rise Of Power1354 Words   |  6 Pagesgovernment to Hitler, but Hindenburg took the risk and didn’t know what he was in for. The argument produced is about the importance of President Hindenburg’s actions, what effect the Great Depression made on Hitler’s rise to power and the long term resentment about the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles which was established after World War One, contributed to the embarrassment and humiliation Germany was faced with. Land and Military were lost, but most of all respect from the German populationRead MoreHitlers Rise to Power: Personal or Political1494 Words   |  6 PagesTo what extent was Hitler’s rise to power due to personal appeal and ability? Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, at a time when the Weimar Republic was crumbling in on its self. The Republic was collapsing as a result of the economic conditions that were forced upon Germany by the Great Depression , beginning in 1929, and the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, as a result of Germany’s involvement in the First World War. Combined these two factors had the result of delivering a crippling blowRead MoreHow Restrictions On A Country End A War Or Setup The Start For Another War?1138 Words   |  5 Pageswhich would hold Germany solely responsible for starting World War One. Germany was one of the reasons that WWI started but the only reason. Since Germany had to take the responsibility for the war, they were faced with a crushing major debt. The Germans were at an all time low. This debt and unemployment cause civil unrest in Germany; setting up a perfect opportunity for a radical political leader to take control. Did the Treaty of Versailles pave the road for World War Two? The end of TheRead MoreEven Though Hitler Was Incontrol Of Killing Of Men And1561 Words   |  7 PagesEven though Hitler was incontrol of killing of men and women. His leadership helped Germany s economy. Adolf Hitler, the soldier who was once a decorated war veteran World War I, the leader who was once worshipped by millions of Germans, he was responsible for the massacre million Jews, is now the most hated dictator of the 20th Century. Everyone should know what Hitler has done to Jewish people of taht time. Hitler gained power because of society s discontent of the government and the society

Parts Of The Microscope Essay Example For Students

Parts Of The Microscope Essay Varying the amount of light alters the image contrast. G. Mirror/ Light source: brightens up the view so the object can be seen more clearly H- Course focus knob: brings the object into the focal plane of the objective lens. Fine focus knob: makes fine adjustments to focus the image. J- Arm: a curved portion that holds all of the optical parts at a fixed distance and aligns them K- Stage Clips: holds the specimen on the stage. When looking at a magnified image, even moving the specimen slightly can move parts of the image out of view. Base: supports the weight of all of the microscope parts. Define the following microscopy terms: ; Focus: Focus is a means of moving the specimen closer or further away from the objective lens to be able to see a sharp image, ; Resolution: Resolution is the amount of detail you can see in an image. ; Contrast: Contrast is defined as the difference in light intensity between the image and the adjacent background relative to the overall background intensity. The purpose Of immersion Oil is to prevent the refraction Of light. Immersion Oil works by immersing both the objective lens and the specimen in transparent oil, now as immersion Oil, therefore increasing the amount Of light that can pass through the objective lens. Draw pictures of bacteria page 65 examples The Cisco look like small round balls. The streptococci remind me of the little Timmy silver balls that magnetite together and form a chain. The staphylococci remind me of the same balls only clustered together, much like a bowl of dip and dot ice cream. Lastly there is bacillus, which look much like rice that are either single grains, chains, or clusters. Exercise 2: observing Bacteria cultures in yogurt questions I. Describe your observations of the fresh yogurt slide. From observation to fresh yogurt slide was able to see some rod shaped and some round or spherical bacteria. 2. Were there observable differences between your fresh yogurt slide and the prepared yogurt slide? If so, explain. There were small observable differences in the fresh and prepared yogurt slides. The prepared slide seemed to be a little clearer as tar as being able to identity the different bacterial shapes than the fresh yogurt was. Surly this has to do with gestational time. In my opinion there were more bacterial cells on the prepared slide than there was the fresh slide. This could also have to do With the type of yogurt used. 3. Describe the four main bacterial shapes. The four main bacterial shapes are spheres, rods, commas and spirals. Spherical bacteria are called Cisco and look like small little balls. Rod shaped bacteria is called bacillus and looks like a macaroni noodle. The comma bacteria is called a brio and looks just as it sounds, like a comma. Lastly there is the spiral, which is really called the spiritual. 4. What are the common arrangements of bacteria? Diploid means paired. Streets means linked in chains. Soothsay means grouped in clusters, . Were you able to identity specific bacterial morphologies on either yogurt slide? If 50, which types? Was not able to identify specific bacterial morphologies on my slides. Imagine there are some that I should be able to identify but hopefully as I become more familiar with the microscope and become a better user I will be able to identify specific bacterial morphologies. Exercise 3: Preparing and observing a Blood Slide A. Describe the cells you were able to see in the blood smear. The cells that I avgas able to see in the blood smear were red blood cells. .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 , .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 .postImageUrl , .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 , .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7:hover , .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7:visited , .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7:active { border:0!important; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7:active , .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7 .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .uedc224513e3031669f6c150141f1b3a7:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: A Creative On A Birthday.... EssayThere were thousands of them. Deiced in my slide they appeared darker around the edges of the smear. Was able to see a few white blood cells that looks to me like interruptions, and sinkholes. Im sure there were hundreds Of many different types Of cells but those are the ones I was able to identify. B. Are the cells you observed in your blood smear different than the bacterial cells you have observed? Why or Why not? The yogurt bacteria slide appeared to have more diplomatically and stereoscopically shapes in them. I did not see this with the blood smear, In the blood smear the shapes were more consistent with Cisco or staphylococci shapes .

The Necessity Of Web Pages Essays - World Wide Web, Web Design

The Necessity Of Web Pages In todays modern world, in order to reach the most amount of people, using the least amount of time and money, one must have a web page. A web page is your universal, non-misplacable, chockfull of information, business card. It can display everything that the consumer needs to know, everything from prices to products, from times to locations. In order to succeed, you need a web page. Now, in order to display all this great content that one has brewing in their brain, one MUST get a domain. A domain is the physical local where the information for the web page is stored. Some domains offer vast amounts of space but slow download speeds; whereas others offer phenomenal download speed, but no for graphics, movies or other things to spruce up a page. When choosing a domain one must consider the name that the customer must type in to get to the web page. If one registers a web page with geocities, their url, or Universal Resource Locator, which indicates the page internet location would be something like, http://www.geocities.com/joeshmoe/index.html; not exactly easy to remember is it? But if one were to have, or register, their own url then the address could be, http://www.joeshmoe.com; which is much more personal and professional. To make the site surfer-friendly one should plan out the content of the web page and make sure that it is easy to navigate. When trying to make the web page look professional and user friendly frames versus flash is always a big controversy. Some people believe that because of the higher quality of images and interaction and motion that flash provides that it is the best when considering how to improve a page. I happen to believe, however, that because frames offers the same style of navigation, but also has a much smaller download time that it is the superior option. If one now knows what format they want, one should now plan out what the content should be. If one believes that they can do no more to the plan and one believes that the page is ready to publish then it is time to learn java, html, Microsoft Frontpage?, or flash; depending on what one choose as their format. I do not recommend using a publisher, whether it be geocities or frontpage, because then the web page designer isnt learning and it is the cheap easy way out, that doesnt always get one what they want. Publish the finished page to the server so that everyone can view it, there is only one step left. Now that everything is up and running there is only one thing left to do, ADVERTISE!! The only possible way to get people to see ones web site is to tell them about it. If they do not know it is there, they will not go. There are several ways to advertise, leave your web address on the answering machine, tell friends, put it on ones business card, join a web ring (a web ring is a ring of web pages all related to each other), and/or create banners to put on other peoples sites. Banners are images and/or links that contain information about ones site and attract customers, like a magazine advertisement. This is the process for creating a web page. It is very important to create a web page to fully impact an audience and get meaning and message across.

Launching Query Boot Camp

Launching Query Boot Camp Launching Query Boot Camp One of the number-one frustrations we hear from writers is that their query letters go unanswered or elicit only form rejections. For authors determined to land an agent, this can feel especially dishearteningbut Reedsy wants to help.We’re launching a new initiative here on the blog: Query Boot Camp. Every month, two brave authors (who shall remain anonymous), will volunteer their unsuccessful query letters and opening pages for review by Reedsy advisor and editor Rebecca Heyman.RFaithEditorial Want to learn more about Query Letters and how to apply to Reedsy's Query Bootcamp? Click here!Query Boot Camp Vol. 2, focused on Thrillers, is out! Have a read here.

International relations - contemporary global security Essay

International relations - contemporary global security - Essay Example Social constructivism may be a helpful tool in studying international relations. The discussion will be based on the thesis developed by Alexander Wendt: â€Å"Anarchy s what the state makes of it†. International relation theory is basically material. Social constructivism brings in a social ‘zest’ to theory of international relation. This research paper considers social constructivism as a perfect alternative for neorealist theory widely applied for international relations. Materialist theory analyzes behavior of states on the basis of material assets distribution. A balanced relation between states is usually measured by distribution of material power. It is relevant to note, that â€Å"social constructivists reject this narrow approach to analysis of the states’ power† (Social constructivism). From the perspective of social constructivism, a social aspect of international relations is of crucial importance. This point of view can be explained as f ollows: politics and society is developed under the influence of human consciousness (Social constructivism). Moreover, international system doesn’t exist separately. There are a lot of external and internal factors influencing on the global system development. Therefore, making analysis of global relations basing on a material basis is a narrow approach and there is a need to apply another theory that is more complex and socially-oriented. Anthropocentric context of the modern world’s development coincides with the ideas of Wendt, whose claim is discussed further on. Basic claims of social constructivism and neorealism applied for international relations The international society exists among people and thus is influenced by people’s ideas and not just by material assets. The system represents the result of human mental activity. As it is explained, the international system is â€Å"a set of ideas, a body of thought, a system of norms, which has been arranged by certain people at a particular time and place, a human invention or creation not of a physical or material kind but of a purely intellectual and ideational kind† (Social constructivism). In this paradigm, a claim made by Alexander Wendt â€Å"anarchy is what states make of it† (1992) may be interpreted in a different manner: for example, the system stability is questioned for sure. A constructivist theory of international relations should be considered in detail. For example, the main claim of constructivists is that it is possible to observe a correlation between neorealist uncertainty and materialist nature of the theory. Thus, in accordance with the social constructivism, it is better to focus on thoughts and ideas to realize the core essence of theory about anarchy and power balancing (Wendt, 1992). The difference between neorealism and constructivism can be seen in the following explanation of anarchy from these two different perspectives: thus constructivists c laim that structures (i.e., factors and regulations which direct social actions) can’t give explanation to the actors’ mechanical activities and neorealists state that â€Å"the structure of anarchy is oppressing for the state actors† (Fierke at al, 2001). Thus, we can see that both theories are focused on discussion about interrelation between actors and structures (Booth, 2005). Structures are actors’ constraints, but constructivists claim that structures can act in such a way that structures would be transformed in new directions. Therefore, there is a need to refer to ‘structuration’ which provides with a more flexible vision of structure and actors interrelation (Wendt, 1992). If to apply structural constructivism to international relation theory it will be clearly seen that anarchy should be considered in a less rigid manner. Power and interests of the state are not material factors, but rather are ‘objective entities’ (Wen dt, 1992). Moreover, Wendt claims that anarchy doesn’t lead to self-help. The interaction between states is a decisive factor of the

The Career of a Physician Assistant Personal Statement

The Career of a Physician Assistant - Personal Statement Example Technology for Medical and Health Professions, I received the relevant premed school training thanks to their intensive and comprehensive courses in health, science, and chemistry courses. This training included hands-on clinical rotation experience at the Valley Baptist Medical Center as well. I firmly believe that my experience at this particular satellite school helped mold me into the personification of the epitome of the UT Health Science Physician Assistant. As a Med Tech student at the satellite school, I was privileged to have been given an opportunity to be part of weekly department rotations. The rotation schedules allowed me to assist doctors, nurses, and other medical staff. However, it was my stint as an assistant to a physician assistant that helped cement my plans for the future. I took the time to observe these qualified physician assistants go about their tasks with the doctors in charge. I came to realize that I had found my calling as a physician assistant. I would be able to help doctors in the performance of their duties through a range of healthcare procedures and duties that I would be specifically trained for if and when I complete my training as a Physician Assistant. My goal in pursuing this line of education is to be able to return to my community, armed and educated in the medical field of my choice. My return will mark the day that I fulfill my personal pact to contribute to the improvement of the mental, social, and physical well-being of the under-served and vulnerable people of my community. I humbly present myself to the UTHSCA PA admissions board in the hopes of being granted an opportunity to learn about becoming an exemplary Physician Assistant from the best educators in the state.

Belonging Related Texts Essay Example for Free

Belonging Related Texts Essay What do you think the most powerful influences that impact on an individual’s sense of belonging? * Strictly Ballroom by Baz Lurhmann * The Red Tree by Shaun Tan * Who you are by Jessie J You will almost always find where you belong if you search for it. So ultimately a sense of belonging comes down to perception. This starts from places and/ or relationships, which potentially alter your understanding or you and the world around you, so you can accept the person you are and your individual identity by creating this sense of belonging. In strictly ballroom by Baz Lurhmann, The Red Tree by Shaun Tan and who you are by Jessie J the composers use a wide range of techniques to convey the ideas belonging through forcible authority, challenging authority and alienation. These are illustrated through the concept of belonging to a person or place. These three ideas demonstrate what the most powerful influences are that can cause someone to feel a part of something or not. Forcible authority is illustrated in the film ‘Strictly Ballroom’ by Baz Lurhmann. Forcible authority is when a person or group has the power to make you feel a certain way that you may not agree on and make you feel as though you do or don’t belong. This is conveyed in the film when Barry Fife the president of Australian Dance Federation (ADF) forces Scott Hastings to dance a particular way. The forcible authority is demonstrated in Strictly Ballroom with close ups and bright lighting on Barry’s face. This creates attention and power to the audience’s concept on Barry. Scott then feels isolated from the ADF as a result of Barry’s ideas for the ADF. Forcible Authority is also shown in ‘The Red Tree’ by Shaun Tan. This is conveyed through visual techniques of the little girl standing alone in many pages of the book. The concept of a powerful influence is a little red leaf with â€Å"without sense or reason† this demonstrates herself as a symbol of the ‘little red leaf’ with many factors contributing to that idea. E. g. ‘The little girl with the red hair’ The little girl becomes frustrated by society and not being able to find her place or where she feels she belongs without sense or reason. Here the most powerful influences that influence the little girl is her on mind set on other people and how she see’s everyone trying to conform and belong to a place she hasn’t been nor understands. Forcible authority is again conveyed in the song ‘who you are’ by Jessie J through the singers lyrics. Jessie illustrates a strong opinion on society’s sense of belonging when she states â€Å"forget how to fit the mold, yeah! † this informs the audience that society’s conception of belonging is based on a mould and she feels out casted because she doesn’t know how to find her place in society anymore. Jessie feels as though society has clung to a certain way of thinking and living, this is because of the forcible authority, which is the society as a powerful influence on Jessie’s sense of belonging. Challenging Authority is another idea shown in ‘strictly Ballroom’ this can be when you choose to do something about following other rules from a higher authority. This is illustrated when Scott is introduced to Fran’s grandmother Ya Ya. She explains that dancing comes from the heart. The close ups of Ya Ya’s hands beating the traditional rhythm of the Paso Doble on Scott’s chest gives both Scott and Fran the inspiration to dance their own moves which demonstrates to the Audience how they are challenging authority and now have somewhere to belong to. Challenging authority is illustrated in ‘The Red Tree’ when the little girl struggles to find herself in society; this becomes an issue throughout the whole book, always feeling as though she didn’t belong. The very last page is her standing in her room with a large Red Tree filled with lots of red leaves and you can see that she has accepted herself in the society. She has done this because she has a glowing smile on her face. Jessie demonstrates challenging authority in â€Å"Who you are† by giving advice to other people to be yourself instead of living a lie and following society’s rules. This is illustrated when Jessie sings â€Å"Don’t lose who you are in the blur of the stars! † Alienation is the estrangement of somebody who is forced or unforced to distance people from each other or of people from what is important or meaningful to them. Strictly Ballroom demonstrates many moments of alienation, one particularly is Scott feeling as though he doesn’t belong in the ADF because he doesn’t confine with the ballroom dancing rules. This is illustrated when himself and Fran dance their own steps and cause a stir in the ADF judging, this is a powerful impact on belonging because if you don’t follow the rules you are forced to feel neglected. Alienation is also illustrated in The Red Tree through pictures and descriptive language. The visual technique as quoted, â€Å"nobody understands†, It is raining and the brushstrokes are soft but distinctive nd the colours are dull and dark creating the audiences idea of how the girl is feeling. The girl is a seclusion to society showing her being an ‘outsider’, the visual techniques are a powerful influence to belonging and clearly demonstrate how the girl feels alienated by society. Jessie J also shows alienation in ‘Who you are’ b y the visual technique in the film clip, Jessie sings â€Å"Sometimes it’s hard to follow your heart. † In this particular part she is sitting in an empty bathroom with dim lighting, this demonstrates her feelings of loneliness and confusion. Jessie feels confused because she doesn’t know what the right thing to do is and this causes her alienation to the environment she is in, this particular songs provides proof with her excluding herself from society until she makes up her mind. Jessie being the most powerful influence as she is the only one making the decision to alienate herself. Strictly Ballroom by Baz Lurhmann , The Red Tree by Shaun Tan and Who you are by Jessie J all convey powerful influences such as authority to demonstrate people belonging and not belonging . This is conveyed through the techniques of forcible authority, challenging authority and alienation.

Macbeth - Characters In The First Three Acts :: essays research papers

Compare and contrast the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the first three Acts of Macbeth. Macbeth, the tragedy, is a penetrating, concentrated, and harrowing study of ambition. The play itself tells the story of a man, urged by his wife and foretold by prophecy, who commits regicide in order to gain power. His ostentatious appetite for domination only leads to his triumphal downfall deeming he and his wife naught but the, "dead butcher and his fiend like queen." However, the final analogy is a product of circumstantial change made evident in the first three acts. Macbeth is a basically good man who is troubled by his conscience and loyalty though at the same time ambitious and murderous. He is led to evil initially by the witches' prophecies, and then by his wife's provocation, which he succumbs to because of the unrequited love he has for her. In retrospect, Lady Macbeth, whilst appearing patronising and manipulative, is in essence, a good wife who loves her husband. She is also ambitious but lacks the morals and integrity her husband posesses. To achieve her ambition, she rids of herself of any kindness that might stand in the way. However, she runs out of energy to supress her conscience and commits suicide. A foundation reputation for Macbeth is fashioned before he comes on to the stage. The Sergeant who has fought on his side harps about Macbeth’s valour in war, "But all’s too weak | For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name"(Act I, scene II). We then hear from Ross, who consistently speaks of Macbeth’s courage in battle, "The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict | †¦Point against point, rebellious arm ‘gainst arm | Curbing his lavish spirit: and to conclude | The victory fell on us - "(Act I, scene II). These accounts imply a mighty, patriotic warrior and a loyal subject to the King. As the plot thickens, Macbeth falls short of these expectations, as a cloud of suspicion hangs over his conspicuous relationships with the Three witches. The suspicion grows when he (aside) confesses his "black and deep desires"(Act I, scene IV). Macbeth knows in order to obtain the throne he must kill Duncan yet acutely acknowl edges the duty he owes to Duncan. He knows to kill Duncan would ultimately be an enormous sin, a crime against heaven and therefore Macbeth is restrained.

The Roles of Corporate Governance in Bank Failures During the Recent Financial Crisis

The Roles of Corporate Governance in Bank Failures during the Recent Financial Crisis Berger, Allen N. 1 | Imbierowicz, Bjorn2 | Rauch, Christian3 July 2012 Abstract This paper analyzes the roles of corporate governance in bank defaults during the recent financial crisis of 2007-2010. Using a data sample of 249 default and 4,021 no default US commercial banks, we investigate the impact of bank ownership and management structures on the probability of default.The results show that defaults are strongly influenced by a bank’s ownership structure: high shareholdings of outside directors and chief officers (managers with a â€Å"chief officer† position, such as the CEO, CFO, etc. ) imply a substantially lower probability of failure. In contrast, high shareholdings of lower-level management, such as vice presidents, increase default risk significantly.These findings suggest that high stakes in the bank induce outside directors and upper-level management to control and reduce risk, while greater stakes for lower-level management seem to induce it to take high risks which may eventually result in bank default. Some accounting variables, such as capital, earnings, and non-performing loans, also help predict bank default. However, other potential stability indicators, such as the management structure of the bank, indicators of market competition, subprime mortgage risks, state economic conditions, and regulatory influences, do not appear to be decisive factors in predicting bank default.JEL Codes: G21, G28, G32, G34 Keywords: Bank Default, Corporate Governance. Bank Regulation 1 University of South Carolina, Moore School of Business, 1705 College Street, Columbia, SC, USA, Phone: +1803-576-8440, Wharton Financial Institutions Center, and CentER, Tilburg University, Email: [email  protected] usc. edu 2 Goethe University Frankfurt, House of Finance, Grueneburgplatz 1, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Phone: +49-69798-33729, Email: [email  protected] uni-frank furt. de 3 Goethe University Frankfurt, House of Finance, Grueneburgplatz 1, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Phone: +49-69798-33731, Email: christian. . [email  protected] com The authors would like to thank Lamont Black, Meg Donovan, Xiaoding Liu, Raluca Roman, Sascha Steffen, Nuria Suarez, Larry D. Wall, and participants at the 29th GdRE International Symposium on Money, Banking and Finance for useful comments. 1 Why do banks fail? After every crisis, this question is asked by regulators, politicians, bank managers, customers, investors, and academics, hoping that an answer can help improve the stability of the financial system and/or prevent future crises.Although a broad body of research has been able to provide a number of answers to this question, many aspects remain unresolved. After all, the bank failures during the recent financial crisis of 2007-2010 have shown that the gained knowledge about bank defaults is apparently still not sufficient to prevent large numbers of banks from failing. Most studies of bank default have focused on the influence of accounting variables, such as capital ratios, with some success (e. g. Martin, 1977; Pettway and Sinkey, 1980; Lane, Looney, and Wansley, 1986; Espahbodi, 1991; Cole and Gunther, 1995, 1998; Helwege, 1996; Schaeck, 2008; Cole and White, 2012). However, almost no research to date has empirically analyzed the influence corporate governance characteristics, such as ownership structure or management structure, have on a bank’s probability of default (PD). 1 This is perhaps surprising for two reasons. The first is the calls for corporate governance-based mechanisms to control bank risk taking during and after the recent financial crisis (e. . , restrictions on compensation and perks under TARP, disclosure of compensation and advisory votes of shareholders about executive compensation under DoddFrank, guidance for compensation such as deferred compensation, alignment of compensation with performance and ris k, disclosure of compensation, etc. by the G20, or more recent discussions in the UK regarding a lifetime ban from the financial services industry on directors of collapsed banks), which are largely without basis in the empirical literature on bank defaults.The second is the literature showing that governance mechanisms can have a very strong influence on bank performance in terms of risk taking (e. g. , Saunders, Strock, and Travlos, 1990; Gorton and Rosen, 1995; Anderson and Fraser, 2000; Caprio, Laeven, and Levine, 2003; Laeven and Levine, 2009; Pathan, 2009, Beltratti and Stulz, 2012). It is therefore the goal of this paper to analyze the roles of corporate governance, including both ownership structure and management structure, in bank defaults. The results are key to underpinning the recent calls for changes in corporate governance to control risk.As well, the results may add a new dimension to the extant literature on the effects of corporate governance   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   1 An exception is Berger and Bouwman (2012), which controls for institutional block ownership, bank holding company membership, and foreign ownership in models of bank survival and market share. However, the paper does not focus on these variables, nor does it include the ownership of directors and different types of bank employees, which are the key corporate governance variables of interest here. 2 on bank performance.Although this body of research has clearly established the causalities between corporate governance and bank risk taking, no study has so far used corporate governance structures to help explain bank defaults or to distinguish default from no default banks. Our paper attempts to fill this void. To analyze the influence of corporate governance structure s on bank defaults, we analyze 249 US commercial bank defaults during the period of 2007:Q1 to 2010:Q3 in comparison to a sample of 4,021 no default US commercial banks. We use five sets of explanatory variables in multivariate logit regression models of default.First, we include the impact of accounting variables on banks’ probability of default (PD). These accounting variables are well represented in the established literature on bank default. Second, we employ various corporate governance indicators to measure banks’ ownership structure and management structure. For ownership structure, we use the shareholdings of different categories of bank management, whether the CEO is also the largest shareholder, whether the bank or its holding company is publicly traded, and whether the bank is in a multibank holding company.For management structure, we use the numbers of outside directors, chief officers, and other corporate insiders (all normalized by board size), the board size itself, and if the Chairman of a bank is also the CEO. For the purposes of this paper, we define â€Å"chief officers† as all bank managers with a â€Å"chief officer† position, such as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Lending Officer (CLO), or Chief Risk Officer (CRO). Third, we incorporate measures of market competition.We thereby account for the large literature on bank market power which is inconclusive on the effects of higher market power on bank stability, depending on whether the traditional â€Å"competition-fragility† view or the â€Å"competition-stability† view dominates, as discussed in Section II A. We also account for the bank’s competitors’ subprime loan exposure – a factor often cited as a major source of default risk in the recent crisis – which could help the bank by weakening or eliminating some of its competition.Fourth, we employ economic variables at the state level – GDP growth and the house price inflation – the latter of which is believed to have contributed to instability in the banking system due to banks being able to only partially recover collateral in defaulted mortgage loans. Finally, we account for potential differences among federal bank regulators. Our results confirm the extant bank failure literature by finding that accounting variables such as the capital ratio, the return on assets, and the portion of non-performing loans, help predict bank default. Our key new finding is that the ownership structure of a bank is also an important predictor of bank PD. Specifically, three bank ownership variables prove to be significant predictors of bank failure: the shareholdings of outside directors (directors without other direct management executive functions within the bank), the shareholdings of chief officers, and the shareholdings of other corporate insiders (lower-level management, such as vice presidents). Interes tingly, the effects differ among these three groups.While our results suggest that large shareholdings of outside directors and chief officers decrease a bank’s probability of default, larger shareholdings of lower-level management significantly increase bank PD. We find that these ownership structure variables add substantial explanatory power to the regressions, raising the adjusted R-Squared of the logit equations by more than half relative to the accounting variables alone. We offer explanations for these perhaps unexpected findings.We hypothesize that lower-level managers with large shares may take on more risk because of the moral hazard problem, whereas this problem may not apply as much to outside directors and chief officers because they are vilified in the event of a default. However, our other corporate governance indicators for management structure do not appear to significantly influence bank default probabilities. Perhaps surprisingly, bank market power, competi tors’ subprime loan exposure, state-level house price inflation and income growth, and different primary federal regulators also have little or no influence on bank failure.These results are robust to different specifications, time periods prior to default, as well as a possible sample selection bias caused by the types of banks for which corporate governance data are available. In an additional analysis, we develop a variable based on the individual shareholdings of outside directors, chief officers, and other corporate insiders as a single default predictor variable. This measure confirms that the ownership structure of a bank has significant predictive power for bank default, especially if observed some time period prior to default.Overall, our results add substantially to the question of why banks fail, and also contribute to the aforementioned discussion of corporate governance-based mechanisms to control bank risk taking. The remainder of the paper is structured as foll ows. In Section I, we provide an overview of the relevant literature regarding corporate governance and bank stability. In Section II A, we describe the composition of our data set. Section II B contains the summary statistics on anecdotal evidence of the reasons behind bank failures during the financial crisis of 2007-2010.We describe the ownership and management structures of the banks in our sample in Section II C. 4 Section II D contains summary statistics on the accounting, competition and economic data. Section III reports our main multivariate results, and in Section IV we develop and test a single indicator of bank ownership structure to predict default. Section V concludes. I. Literature Overview Our paper builds upon and expands the existing literature in two closely connected areas of research: bank defaults and the influence of corporate governance structures on bank risk taking.The literature on bank default mostly focuses on testing a wide variety of bank accounting va riables on banks’ default probabilities in discriminant analyses and regressions of dependent binary default indicator variables. Examples that precede the recent financial crisis are Meyer and Pfifer (1970), Martin (1977), Whalen and Thomson (1988), Espahbodi (1991), Thomson (1991, 1992), Cole and Fenn (1995), Cole and Gunther (1995, 1998), Logan (2001), and Kolari, Glennon, Shin and Caputo (2002). The predominant findings are that the default probability increases for banks with low capitalization and other measures of poor performance.Following this body of research, there are only few papers to date analyzing the relevant drivers of bank default during the recent financial crisis: Torna (2010), Aubuchon and Wheelock (2010), Ng and Roychowdhury (2011), Berger and Bouwman (2012), and Cole and White (2012). Torna (2010) focuses on the different roles that traditional and modern-day banking activities, such as investment banking and private equity-type business, have in the f inancial distress or failure of banks from 2007 to 2009 in the US. The paper shows that a stronger focus on these modern-day activities significantly increase a bank’s PD.Aubuchon and Wheelock (2010) also focus on bank failures in the US, comparing the 2007-2010 period to the 1987-1992 period. They predominantly analyze the influence of local macroeconomic factors on banks’ failure probability. Their study shows that banks are highly vulnerable to local economic shocks and that the majority of bank failures occurred in regions which suffered the strongest economic downturn and the highest distress in real estate markets in the US. Ng and Roychowdhury (2011) also analyze bank failures in the US in the crisis period 2007-2010.They focus on how so called â€Å"add-backs† of loan loss reserves to capital can trigger bank instability. They show that add-backs of loan loss reserves to regulatory capital increase banks’ likelihood of failure. Berger and Bouwman (2012) focus on the effects of bank equity capital on survival and market share during both financial crises (including 5 the recent crisis) and normal times. They find that capital helps small banks survive at all times, and is important to large and medium banks as well during banking crises.Finally, Cole and White (2012) perform a test of virtually all accounting-based variables and how these might add to bank PD, using logit regression models on US bank failures in 2009. Using the standard CAMEL approach, they find that banks with more capital, better asset quality, higher earnings and more liquidity are less likely to fail. Their results also show that bank PD is significantly increased by more real estate construction and development loans, commercial mortgages and multi-family mortgages.Although our paper is closely related to these studies – especially to the post-crisis research and in terms of sample selection, observation period, and methodology – we strongl y expand the scope of the existing analyses to include corporate governance variables and other factors and are therefore able to substantially contribute to the understanding of bank failure reasons. Our most important contribution is the analysis of detailed ownership and management structure variables in the standard logit regression model of default.The distress of the banking system in the wake of the recent financial crisis has triggered a discussion about the role of corporate governance structures in the stability of financial institutions. Politicians (e. g. , the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report, 2011), think tanks (e. g. in the Squam Lake Working Group on Financial Regulation Report, February 2010), NPOs (such as in the OECD project report on Corporate Governance and the Financial Crisis, 2009), and academic researchers (an overview of scholarly papers regarding corporate governance and the financial crisis is provided by e. g.Mehran, Morrisson and Shapiro, 2011 ) have recently not only intensely discussed, but also strongly acknowledged, the importance of corporate governance for bank stability. The discussions resulted in a number of actions from regulators addressing corporate governance in banks, such as restrictions on compensation and perks under TARP, various compensation guidelines set forth by the G20, or â€Å"clawback† clauses for executive compensation in addition to guidance for deferred compensation in Dodd-Frank. Banks even started to implement voluntary â€Å"clawback† clauses for bonus payments (such as Lloyds TSB) in addition to these mandatory clauses.However, the finding that corporate governance has implications for bank stability was already established long before the recent financial crisis. Several studies such as Saunders, Strock and Travlos (1990), Gorton and Rosen (1995), and Anderson and Fraser (2000) show that governance characteristics, such as shareholder composition, have substantial influence on banks’ 6 overall stability. Their findings support that bank managers’ ownership is among the most important factors in determining bank risk taking.The general finding in all studies is that higher shareholdings of officers and directors induce a higher overall bank risk taking behavior. Saunders, Strock and Travlos (1990) show this for the 1979-1982 period in the US, and Anderson and Fraser (2000) confirm this for the 1987-1989 period. Although Gorton and Rosen (1995) obtain the same result for the 1984-1990 period, they additionally show that the relationship between managerial shareholdings and bank risk depends on the health of the banking system as a whole: it is strongly pronounced in periods of distress and might reverse in times of prosperity.Pathan (2009) provides empirical evidence for the period 1997-2004 that US bank holding companies assume higher risks if they have a stronger shareholder representation on the boards. Based on these findings, we have s trong reason to believe that corporate governance structures might also have an influence on bank default probability. In light of the recent financial crisis, some studies, such as Beltratti and Stulz (2012) and Erkens, Hung and Matos (2012), analyze bank ownership structures with special regard to bank risk. Testing an international sample of large publicly traded banks, Beltratti and Stulz (2012) find that banks with better governance (in terms of more shareholder-friendly board structures) performed significantly worse during the crisis than other banks and had higher overall stability risk than before the escalation of the crisis. Specifically, they find that banks with higher controlling shareholder ownership are riskier. This result is confirmed by Gropp and Kohler (2010).Erkens, Hung and Matos (2012) analyze the influence of board independence and institutional ownership on the stock performance of a sample of 296 financial firms (also including insurance companies) in over 30 countries over the period 2007-2008. They find that banks with more independent boards and greater institutional ownership have lower stock returns. Also testing an international sample, Laeven and Levine (2009) show that banks with a more diversified and outsidercontrolled shareholder base have an overall lower risk structure than banks with a highly concentrated hareholder base in which most of the cash-flow rights pertain to one large (inside or outside) owner. Kirkpatrick (2008) also establishes that weak corporate governance in banks 2 Another corporate governance-related body of research focuses on compensation structures in banks with special regard to risk. Among the most recent works on bank management compensation and risk taking behavior are Kirkpatrick (2009), Bebchuk and Spamann (2010), DeYoung, Peng, Yan (2010), Fahlenbrach and Stulz (2011), and Bhattacharyya and Purnanandam (2012). leads to inadequate risk management, especially insufficient risk monitoring through the board, a factor which contributed greatly to the bank instabilities during the crisis. 3 Although the existing body of research has clearly established a connection between governance and bank risk taking behavior, none of the studies investigates the influence certain governance characteristics might have on bank default. The risk variables most often investigated are the stock price (e. g. , Beltratti and Stulz, 2012), returns (e. g. Gropp and Kohler, 2010), lending behavior (e. g. , Gorton and Rosen, 1995), or general stability indicators, such as the Z-score (e. g. , Laeven and Levine, 2009). Standard governance proxy variables are managerial shareholdings (e. g. , Anderson and Fraser, 2000), bank insider shareholdings (Gorton and Rosen, 1995), the ownership percentage of the single largest shareholder (Beltratti and Stulz, 2012), or the shareholder friendliness of the board (as developed by Aggarwal, Erel, Stulz, and Williamson, 2009, and used by e. g.Beltratti and Stulz, 2012). Our paper offers three important contributions to the literature. We are the first paper to combine a range of these factors by investigating the influence the ownership and management structures in banks may have on their default probability. We are the first paper to differentiate between top- and lower-level shareholdings as well as between outside and inside director shareholdings. Finally, our paper is the first to analyze the influence of management structures on bank default probability. II. Data A. Sample SelectionOur main data set is a collection of more than ten different data sets merged manually on the bank level. We start with the population of US commercial banks using the FFIEC Call Report data set to collect bank balance sheet, income statement, and off-balance sheet data for each 3 As noted above, Berger and Bouwman (2012) include institutional block ownership, bank holding company membership, and foreign ownership as control variables in models of bank survi val and market share. They do not find strong, consistent results for any of these variables. 8 bank. We exclude systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), commercial banks with at least $50 billion in total assets (as defined by Dodd-Frank), as none of these institutions failed during the crisis, perhaps because of the TARP bailout and/or extraordinary borrowing from the discount window. 5 These data are augmented by two additional data sets containing general economic indicators on the state level. The real estate price development is measured using the quarterly returns of the seasonally-adjusted Federal Housing Financing Agency (FHFA) house price inflation index for the state.The quarterly percentage change in state GDP is taken from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis â€Å"Federal Research Economic Database† (â€Å"FRED†). The fourth data set we use contains detailed information on the annual census-tract- or MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area)-leve l mortgage lending in the United States. This data set is referred to as the â€Å"Home Mortgage Disclosure Act† or â€Å"HMDA† data set, obtained through the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC).This data contains the total amount and volume of mortgage loans by year and census tract/MSA, both on an absolute level as well as broken down by borrower characteristics. We classify each mortgage granted to a borrower with an income of less than 50% of the median income in the respective census tract or MSA as â€Å"subprime. † Although we acknowledge that borrowers falling into this income group might also be classified as â€Å"prime† borrowers in some cases, we believe it to be a fair assumption that mortgage borrowers of this category can be deemed as rather high-risk borrowers, and hence we group these as â€Å"subprime. We include the ratio of originated subprime mortgage loans to total originated mortgage loans in our data set cal culated on census tract or MSA level. We use the subprime variable and the Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI) of local market concentration as measures of competition. The HHI is based on the FDIC Summary of Deposits data on the branch level. We use each bank’s share of deposits by branch in each rural county or MSA market for these calculations, and take weighted averages across markets for banks in multiple local markets using the proportions of total deposits as the weights. 4 Merged or acquired banks are treated as if the involved banks had been merged at the beginning of the observation period, by consolidating the banks’ balance sheets. As a robustness check, we exclude all merged and acquired banks from our data set. Results remain unchanged. 5 We also exclude all savings institutions with a thrift charter obtained through the Office of Thrift Supervision. This also includes all failed thrifts and thrift SIFIs (such as Washington Mutual and IndyMac).We do so for r easons of comparability and to obtain a homogenous sample of commercial bank failures only. 6 We use total deposits in calculating the HHI because it is the only variable for which bank location is available. 9 In a next step, we collect data on corporate governance, specifically, ownership and management measures. The information is taken from four sources: the Mergent Bank Database, the SEC annual bank reports publicly available through the SEC’s EDGAR website, the FDIC Institutions data, and CRSP.The Mergent data base contains detailed ownership and management information for 495 US commercial banks (both stock-listed and private). We specifically use information on each bank’s shareholders, their directors, and officers as well as on the other corporate insiders. To expand the sample, we complement the Mergent data base with the information given in the annual reports filed with the SEC of each bank with registered stock. The information on whether a bank is in a m ultibank holding company or not is taken from the FDIC Institutions data set, obtained through the official FDIC website.Public banks are all banks or banks in bank holding companies (BHCs) with SEC-registered shares which are publicly listed and traded on a United States stock exchange over the observation period. We treat subsidiaries of multibank holding companies as public banks if their respective BHC is publicly listed. Information on trading and listing is obtained from CRSP. Banks with (CUSIP registered-) shares which have been sold in private placements are treated as privately-owned banks. All banks without a stock listing and without a stock-listed BHC are treated as private banks.In a last step, we have to determine which banks failed within our observation period. As we only focus on US commercial bank failures in the recent financial crisis of 2007-2010, we use the FDIC Failed Institutions list as reported by the FDIC. 7 This list contains a detailed description of eac h failure of an FDIC-insured commercial bank or thrift, including the name of the bank, the exact date of failure (i. e. , when the bank was put into FDIC conservatorship), its location, the estimated cost of the failure to the FDIC, as well as information on the acquiring institution or liquidation of the failed bank.This list allows us to compile the data set of all failed institutions which are eligible for the analyses in our paper. To gather additional information on each failure, we use multiple sources. First, we employ the Material Loss Reports (MLRs) published by the FDIC as part of their bankruptcy procedure for all material bank failures. 8 In it, the FDIC provides a detailed report on the causes for the failure of the bank, whether or not the failure was caused by the bank’s management and its (lack of)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   7 As obtained through the FDIC website: http://www. dic. gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist. html The FDIC publishes Material Loss Reports for all bank defaults which result in a â€Å"material loss† to the FDIC insurance fund. On January 1st 2010, the threshold for a â€Å"material loss† to the FDIC fund was raised from $25 million to $200 million. 8 10 risk management, and whether or not the failure could have been anticipated by the regulatory and supervisory authorities of the bank. For failed institutions for which no MLR was published, we gather news wire articles, press releases or reports from newspapers located in each bank’s local market.The information we take from these multiple sources is: the exact failure reason, whether or not bad risk management was among the causes for the failure, whether or not regulatory action had been taken against the failed bank (especially ce ase-and-desist orders), and whether or not the failure came as a surprise to the regulatory and supervisory authorities. We use one additional source to determine the surprise of each bank’s failure: stability reports (â€Å"LACE Reports†) published by Kroll Bond Ratings, an independent firm specialized in rating banks and other financial services firms.These reports contain a rating scheme for each bank (based on a number of standard rating indicators) ranging from A (best) to F (worst). As the ratings are published quarterly, we are able to determine whether or not a bank has a rating better than â€Å"F† in the quarter prior to failure. We deem any failure as â€Å"surprising† if either the MLR specifically states that it was surprising or the LACE report shows that the failed bank’s rating was better than â€Å"F† in the quarter prior to failure.This leaves us with a data set of 249 default banks and 4,021 non-default banks. All bank fai lures occur in the period 2007:Q1 to 2010:Q3. For the regressions we obtain a total of 79,984 bankquarter observations in an unbalanced panel. As corporate governance information cannot be obtained for all banks, we exclude all failed and non-failed banks from our subsample of banks with corporate governance data for which we cannot obtain reliable information on the desired ownership and management variables.Our final subsample of banks with corporate governance data consists of 85 default banks and 243 no default banks, recorded over the same period, for a total of 5,905 bank-quarter observations. A detailed description of all of the explanatory variables used in the regressions is provided in Table 1. (Table 1) B. Anecdotal Evidence on Bank Defaults We first investigate the causes of bank failures on an anecdotal level. We do so to better understand the different reasons for bank failures and to ensure that our sample of bank failures is not biased by e. . too many cases of fraud or regulatory intervention. We draw on the 11 aforementioned Material Loss Reports (MLRs) and news sources to determine that the reasons for bank failures can be clustered into six distinct groups: â€Å"General Crisis Related,† â€Å"Liquidity Problems Only,† â€Å"Loan Losses Only,† joint â€Å"Liquidity Problems and Loan Losses,† â€Å"Fraud,† and â€Å"Other. † The MLRs and other sources reporting on the failures mentioned these six groups of failure reasons almost exclusively.If MLRs and/or news reports do not contain a specific failure reason, but instead mention that the failure came as a result of the general economic conditions or the crisis, we label the failure as â€Å"General Crisis Related. † As shown in Table 2, Panel A, we find that 95 out of 249 banks fall into this category. If it is explicitly mentioned that either only liquidity problems, or only loan losses, or a combination of both was the cause for the failure, we cluster the banks in the respective groups â€Å"Liquidity Problems Only,† â€Å"Loan Losses Only,† or â€Å"Liquidity Problems and Loan Losses. We find that only one bank was put into FDIC conservatorship as the result of liquidity problems only. In contrast, 106 banks’ failures were triggered by loan losses only and 22 banks defaulted after the joint occurrence of both liquidity problems and loan losses. Finally, we find that 5 banks failed or were taken into FDIC conservatorship due to management fraud. For 20 banks, a specific failure reason could not be determined; we thus label their failure reason as â€Å"Other. These anecdotal results show that loaninduced losses played a dominant role for banks’ stability during the recent financial crisis, as opposed to liquidity problems. The FDIC also publishes the estimated cost of the failure to the FDIC insurance fund. We collect and report these numbers to show the economic importance and which fail ure types are the most costly. The overall estimated cost of all failures in our sample to the FDIC insurance fund amount to approximately $6. 75 billion. In 2009 the fund incurred the highest cost with an estimate of $2. 6 billion from 119 failures; however, the highest insurance costs per institution were incurred in 2008, with only 20 failures resulting in an estimated cost of $2. 61 billion. The 106 loan lossinduced failures are the most costly group with a total of $2. 08 billion. Interestingly, defaults due to both loan and liquidity losses seem to be much more expensive per institution as compared with loan loss-only failures. Although the overall contribution of the insurance cost to the overall estimated FDIC losses of the loan and liquidity loss group is only slightly smaller with $2. 3 billion, this group consists of only 22 banks, as compared to the 106 bank failures in the loan loss-only group. (Table 2) 12 In a second step, we collect anecdotal evidence on the role of the banks’ management and the regulatory agencies prior to bank failure. Specifically, we determine whether or not bad risk management contributed to the default. Whenever the MLRs, other official FDIC releases, or newspaper articles mention that the bank suffered from managers’ bad risk management, we classify the respective bank as a â€Å"Bad Risk Management† bank prior to default.Panel B in Table 2 shows that this is the case for only 18% of all defaults. The fact that not even a fifth of all bank defaults during the recent financial crisis happened due to inadequate risk control systems (or failures thereof) calls for a detailed investigation of alternative reasons for bank failures, such as the banks’ ownership and management structures. We also gather information on the actions taken by the regulatory and supervisory agencies prior to the default. Supervisory actions prior to default (especially cease-and-desist orders to prevent the bank from fail ing) are used in only 7. % of all defaults. Based on the MLRs and the LACE ratings, we also find that only 13. 6% of all bank failures came as a surprise and were neither anticipated by a rating agency nor by the supervisory authority. According to Panel B in Table 2, one explanation for this rather low percentage of surprises might be that most of the surprising failures occurred at the onset of the financial crisis, when market participants have not been able to predict the severity of the crisis, while in 2009 and 2010 more banks failed but this was expected more often.Taken together, Panel B in Table 2 shows that our sample of bank failures does not put too much weight on potentially distorting factors as for example regulatory intervention or fraud and emphasizes the requirement of an investigation of alternative reasons for bank failures, such as the banks’ ownership and management structures. C. Corporate Governance and Bank Defaults Table 3 shows summary statistics of the ownership and management data of our sample banks.We report summary statistics for the total sample, as well as broken down by default and no default banks, bad risk management, banks subject to cease-and-desist orders prior to default, and surprising versus non-surprising failures. We define â€Å"Outside Directors† as members of a bank’s board of directors, who do not perform any function other than being a board director in the respective bank. The literature on corporate governance also refers to this group as â€Å"independent directors. As noted above, we define â€Å"Chief Officers† as all bank managers with a â€Å"chief 13 officer† position. â€Å"Other Corporate Insiders† are all bank employees holding lower-level management positions in a bank, such as vice presidents, treasurers, or department heads. Note that these â€Å"Other Corporate Insiders† are neither â€Å"Chief Officers† nor members of the bank’s boa rd of directors. The shareholdings are determined based on the Mergent data base or SEC filings. The data contain name, title, and the amount of shares held by each manager.The shareholding variables are normalized by the number of the bank’s outstanding shares and the numbers of outside directors, chief officers and other employees are scaled by the board size. 9 Table 3 reports that, on average, default banks have much lower shareholdings of outside directors, slightly lower shareholdings of chief officers, and much higher shareholdings of other corporate insiders, as compared to no default banks. Additionally, the CEO is the single largest shareholder in some of the default banks. This is never the case in no default banks.In terms of management structures, we find that default banks have smaller boards, fewer outside directors and more chief officers relative to their board size, and the Chairman is less often also the CEO than in no default banks. (Table 3) These values paint an interesting picture of the ownership and management characteristics of default and no default banks in our sample. Table 3 provides empirical evidence that default banks tend to be characterized by fewer shareholdings of outside directors and chief officers and larger shareholdings of lower level management.A tentative conclusion of these descriptive results could be that the incentives are set very differently in default and no default banks. In no default banks, more than 80% of all shares are held by chief officers, who are responsible for the continuation of bank’s operations in the long term, or by outside directors, who are responsible for the oversight of these operations. Furthermore, outside directors and chief officers are publicly known figureheads of the banks. This might imply that their personal reputation is connected to the bank’s performance and survival, at least to some extent.In contrast, lower-level management, such as vice-presidents or t reasurers, hold more than 50% of all shares in default banks. This group is neither publicly known nor held responsible in public for the failure of the bank, even though they may exert a tremendous amount of direct influence on the actual risk 9 Note that the scaling with the board size does not imply that the sum of the three variables adds up to one because other corporate insiders are not members of the board while also chief officers are not always members of the board. 14 taking of the bank in its daily operations. 0 The position of lower level management is equivalent to equity holders in the classic Merton (1977) firm value model which states that shareholders of insured banks have a moral hazard incentive to increase variance of returns, since the assets of the bank can be put to the FDIC in the event of default. This incentive may be less for the outside directors and chief officers who are publicly known and vilified in the event of default as compared to opaque lower lev el management. Accordingly, Table 3 suggests that outside directors and chief officers behave more responsibly in terms of risk taking when they have large stakes in the bank.In contrast, other non-executive corporate insiders tend to increase risk taking when they hold shares of the bank. We investigate this result in more detail in the next section in a multivariate setting. Looking at the ownership structures of default banks with bad risk management, we find that they have fewer outside director shareholdings, fewer other corporate insider shareholdings and larger chief officer shareholdings as compared to banks where bad risk management is not mentioned.These exact same shareholder structures are featured by default banks against which cease-anddesist orders had been issued in comparison to banks without such orders before failure. Regarding the management structures of banks with bad risk management prior to default, we find that they are characterized by smaller board sizes, fewer chief officers and fewer outside directors relative to their size.Again, the exact same characteristics can be seen in banks against which cease-and-desist orders had been issued before default, except for the board size, which is slightly higher in banks with cease-and-desist order. These numbers allow for two tentative interpretations regarding the existence of bad risk management: first, banks run by managers facing little oversight through fellow corporate insiders or outside shareholders are more likely to be able to exercise bad risk management, causing the bank to fail.Second, the regulators might be aware of the bad risk management situation in these banks, but act to no avail, i. e. issue ceaseand-desist orders against the banks without being able to save them from defaulting. Interestingly, the ownership and management characteristics of bad risk management and ceaseand-desist-banks are also mostly shared by banks whose failure came as a surprise to markets and regul ators. As compared to banks whose failures were more predictable, they have fewer outside   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   10We acknowledge that there are a few exceptions, such as Nick Leeson, Jerome Kerviel, and Bruno Iksil, who became known to the public. However, individual traders have to severely cripple their financial institutions (with losses, only attributable to them, in the billions) before being in the news. Additionally, all of these now infamous cases were based on fraudulent risk taking, as opposed to risk taking within the allowed boundaries. The news on these tail events also supports the notion that lower-level employees may have a tremendous impact on bank risk. 5 directors and other corporate insiders as shareholders. In terms of management, they have slight ly smaller boards, more chief officers and outside directors relative to their board size. Only the number of shares held by chief officers is lower for surprising failure banks, a characteristic in which they differ from the bad risk management and cease-and-desist order banks. These governance features can be a sign of limited outside control of the bank’s executive management.As a result, executive managers might have been able to hide the true financial situation of the bank from regulators (in spite of a possibly higher scrutiny expressed by the cease-and-desist orders) and other stakeholders until the very end, either in an attempt to rescue the bank or for mere fear of admitting the failure of the bank. These structures might also allow for gambling for resurrection in an attempt to save the bank. Without outside control, the managers could have taken on excessive risks with promising high returns in a last effort to rescue the bank.We finally report information if the bank is publicly traded versus privately owned and if it is organized in a multibank holding company as this also describes a bank’s ownership structure. We also include these factors because publicly traded banks and banks in multibank holding companies might have access to additional capital markets besides only the bank’s internal funds (or the internal funds of the holding company) which, especially in times of distress, might serve as a source of financial strength.About 27% of all default and 41% of all no default banks in our sample were publicly traded over the observation period. Only 12% of the default banks and 14% of the no default banks were part of a multibank holding structure. We find similar numbers for the risk management, cease-and-desist order and non-surprising failure groups. Table 3 indicates that certain corporate governance characteristics, such as limited outside control of management through fellow top-level employees or through independent outside directors as hareholders, can foster bad risk management and the concealment of a bank’s true financial situation. If managers are inadequately monitored, they lack incentives to act in the best interest of shareholders. The fact that a small number of banks failed surprisingly might be an indication that it can be difficult for the regulator to recognize or anticipate problems if the managers are willing and able to conceal them. Our results are therefore in line with the findings of Anderson and Fraser (2000), who show that management shareholdings and risk taking are positively related.The results are also consistent with e. g. Laeven and Levine (2009), who show that banks with more concentrated ownership and management structures also exhibit higher overall risk 16 taking. We therefore substantially extend this body of literature by showing that the management shareholdings also have implications for the most extreme case of bank risk, which is default. D. Summary Statistics of Accounting, Competition and Economic Variables Table 4 provides summary statistics on the variables other than the corporate governance variables.It shows that default banks differ strongly from no default banks, especially in terms of general characteristics, business focus, and overall stability. As can be seen in the table, default banks are on average larger than no default banks as measured by asset size, have a lower capital ratio, lower loan volume relative to their assets, stronger loan growth as well as weaker loan diversification as measured by the loan-concentration HHI. On the funding side, default banks rely more on brokered deposits and less on retail deposits than no default banks.Not surprising, default banks also perform worse in terms of overall stability than no default banks: they have a negative return on assets and a much higher non-performing loan ratio. Interestingly, default banks have a lower exposure to mortgage-backed securities (MBS) than no default banks. Note that default banks do not have any off-balance sheet derivative exposure (not shown in the table), which is why we exclude this factor in our regression analyses. (Table 4) Table 4 also shows the differences in accounting data between default and no default banks for our sample with available corporate governance data.While most differences and values are very comparable between our full data sample and our corporate governance sample, one difference is asset size. The banks for which we are able to obtain ownership and management data are larger than the average banks in the full sample. However, this is to be expected, as mostly large banks register shares with the SEC, which in turn requires them to publish ownership and management data. We will therefore also test our results with respect to a possible sample selection bias in our following analyses with a specific focus on bank size and publicly traded shares.Finally, in the last three columns, the table shows the development of accounting variables from two years prior to default until the quarter immediately preceding the default. In line with expectations, we observe on average a very strong decline of the capital ratio, the return on assets, and the loan growth, paired with a strong increase in the ratio of non-performing loans 17 over the last two years before default. This confirms a rapid decline in bank profitability and a deterioration of stability.Interestingly, banks seems to strongly increase the amount of retail funding in the form of brokered deposits, from roughly 9% two years before default up to 18% in the quarter before default. At the bottom of Table 4, we show summary statistics for the market competition and state economic condition variables. For market competition, we report the deposit-based HHI of market concentration and the subprime lending ratio of originated subprime mortgage loans to total originated mortgage loans on census tract or MSA level.The state economic condition variables include the house price inflation indicator, calculated using the average quarterly returns of the seasonally-adjusted Federal Housing Financing Agency (FHFA) house price inflation index for the bank’s states, and the quarterly percentage changes in state GDP. 11 Comparing the values for default and no default banks, we find that default banks face slightly higher market concentration, competitors with lower subprime exposure, a steeper decrease in house price values and a slightly lower GDP growth than no default banks.These differences are confirmed for our subsample of banks for which corporate governance data is available, with the exception of market concentration, which is slightly lower for default banks than for no default banks. We do not detect any substantial change in the market competition variables over the twoyear period leading up to defaults. Market concentration only increases marginally, subprime risk remains virtually unchange d. We see slightly stronger variations in the two state economic indicators.The FHFA house price index stays negative throughout the period, decreasing slightly in the year before the default but moving to a slightly higher value in the quarter before default. The same goes for the GDP growth, which turns negative in the year before default, but moves back up to slightly positive values in the quarter before default. We will forego a detailed analysis of these univariate statistics and instead rely on the multivariate regression results to interpret the variables’ influence on bank defaults in greater detail. 11 We use the state economic variables from the states in which the banks have deposits.For banks with branches in different states, we calculate the weighted exposure to each state through the FDIC Summary of Deposits data, as previously used for the HHI calculation, to obtain a weighted exposure to the state economic variables. 18 III. Multivariate Analysis A. Methodol ogy In this section, we investigate the possible influence factors have on bank failure in a multivariate logistic regression framework with an indicator variable for bank failure in the default quarter as dependent variable and a number of predictor variables.By choosing this model specification, we follow a broad body of literature having established this approach as standard procedure (e. g. , Campbell, Hilscher, and Szilagyi, 2008), which was pioneered for banks by Martin (1977). We include a total of five sets of explanatory variables: accounting variables, corporate governance variables, market competition measures, state economic indicators, and bank regulator variables. We combine these sets of variables to test eleven different model specifications, in which each specification is comprised of either a different set of variables or a different subsample.As reported in Table 4, we have a main sample of 249 bank defaults and 4,021 no default banks. We also have a subsample com prised of 85 default banks and 243 no default banks for which we obtain corporate governance data of a bank’s ownership and management structures. The different model specifications alternate between these two data samples. We include both subsamples in our analyses to show that our data does not suffer from selection biases – i. e. , that similar results hold for banks with and without available corporate governance data.We test the contribution the different variable sets or combinations thereof have on the explanatory power of our model of bank default. We additionally test each model for three different time periods: the quarter immediately preceding the default, as well as one and two years prior to default. By also testing the time component, we follow a body of research (e. g. , Cole and Gunther, 1998; Cole and White, 2012) which shows that the predictive power of binary regression models in the context of bank defaults varies over time.Table 5 contains eleven m odels together with an additional model in which we account for a possible sample selection bias. Models I and II test only the influence of accounting variables on bank defaults, separately for all banks (Model I) and the subsample of banks with available corporate governance data (Model II). These models most closely resemble the extant empirical literature on bank defaults. Models III and IV focus on the corporate governance sample only. They incorporate accounting variables in addition to six corporate governance ownership variables (Model III) and five corporate governance management variables (Model IV).Model V subsequently investigates the joint influence of the accounting and all the corporate governance variables on bank default. Models VI-VIII expand 19 this setting by adding market competition variables, the bank’s local market power and its competitors’ subprime loan exposure (Model VI), by adding economic indicators for the state house price inflation and the quarterly change in state GDP (Model VII), and by adding possible effects stemming from different primary federal bank regulators (Model VIII), respectively.Models IX and X jointly incorporate these three variable sets together with accounting data and exclude corporate governance variables. Model IX does so for all banks, and Model X includes only the sample of banks with available corporate governance data. In Model XI, we include all variables. The final model, labeled â€Å"Heckman Selection Model,† presents a robustness check using a Heckman Selection model which will be explained later in more detail.In running these tests, we are primarily interested in three questions: First, how do the different sets of variables and combinations thereof contribute to the overall explanatory power of the regression? Second, which variables are statistically significant in explaining bank failures? Finally, at what point in time prior to the actual default date do sets of variable s or individual variables have the largest explanatory power in predicting bank defaults?The accounting variables include measures of the bank’s size, return on assets, capitalization, loan portfolio composition, funding structure, securities business, and off-balance sheet activities. By doing so, we follow a large number of articles on bank default (e. g. ; Lane, Looney, and Wansley, 1986; Whalen and Thomson, 1988; Espahbodi, 1991; Logan, 1991; Thomson, 1991; Cole and Gunther, 1995, 1998; Kolari et al. , 2002; Schaeck, 2008; Cole and White, 2012) who show that accounting variables have significant explanatory power in predicting bank default.By including the log of total assets, the ratio of equity to assets, and the return on assets, we follow Cole and Gunther (1995, 1998), Molina (2002) and others who show that these variables can serve as valid indicators for size, capitalization, and profitability. To measure the composition and stability of the bank’s loan portf olio, we include five accounting variables. We use the ratio of total loans to total assets, excluding construction and development (C&D) loans, as well as the ratio of C&D loans only to total assets.In doing so, we follow Cole and White (2012), who show that C&D loans have strong explanatory power in predicting bank defaults, especially in the recent financial crisis. We account for this finding by investigating the singular influence of C&D loans in a bank’s overall loan portfolio on the likelihood of bank failure, as well as incorporating the ratio of the bank’s remaining loans to its assets. We also include a loan concentration index, the growth of a bank’s loan portfolio and the ratio of non-performing loans to total loans in the 20 regressions to account for concentration and credit risk.Short-term funding and illiquidity risks are measured by the ratios of short-term deposits to assets and brokered deposits to assets, respectively. We additionally include the ratio of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to assets. Finally, the ratio of unused commitments to assets is included as a measure for off-balance sheet risks. We do not include the off-balance sheet derivative exposure of the banks in our analyses as no default bank in our data sample has any exposure to these in any time period. The corporate governance variables are taken from the set of measures introduced above.To account for the bank’s ownership structure, we include the number of shares held by outside directors, chief officers, and other corporate insider shareholders (defined as in section II. C). Each of these variables is standardized by the number of shares outstanding of the respective bank. We also include a dummy variable indicating whether or not the bank’s CEO is also its single largest shareholder. In addition, we include dummy variables for whether a bank is organized in a multibank holding company, and whether the bank or its BHC is publicly trad ed.As mentioned before, publicly traded banks and banks in multibank holding companies might have access to further capital markets which might serve as an additional sources of financial strength. 12 By including these ownership variables in our multivariate regression framework, we account for the previous literature on the relationship between banks’ ownership structures and bank stability, such as Saunders, Strock and Travlos (1990), Gorton and Rosen (1995), Anderson and Fraser (2000), Caprio, Laeven and Levine (2003), Laeven and Levine (2009), and Pathan (2009).We thereby moreover investigate if the stark differences in the descriptive statistics between default and no default banks in terms of ownership structure also hold in a multivariate setting. To further proxy for the bank’s management structure, we include the number of outside directors, the number of chief officers, the number of other corporate insiders, all scaled by the bank’s board size, to ac count for relative differences in management and oversight among banks. 3 We additionally employ (the logarithm of) the number of members of the board of directors (â€Å"Board Size†) and an indicator variable if the CEO of the bank is also its Chairman. We are thereby the first to explicitly investigate the impact of a bank’s management structure on bank default. 12 As a robustness check, we replace the multibank holding company (BHC) dummy with a dummy variable indicating whether or not the bank is part of any BHC structure, either single-bank or multibank. The results remain unchanged. 13As a robustness test, we also standardize the number of outside directors, chief officers, and other corporate insiders variables by the asset size of the bank. The results remain unchanged. 21 The set of variables on bank competition contains the Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI) of bank market power on MSA or rural county level, its squared value, as well as the ratio of originated subprime mortgage loans to total mortgage loans originated on census tract/MSA level. We use the HHI as a proxy for the competition a bank faces in its local market.To calculate the HHI, we define the deposits held by each bank’s branches as the product market, the rural county level or MSA in which the bank’s branches are located as the local market, and each quarter as the temporal market. Using the standard HHI calculation method, we sum up each bank’s squared market share in each market and quarter. For banks which are active in multiple markets, we use the weighted average across each market to determine the HHI. A broad body of research has shown that competition is an important stability factor for banks.According to the literature, higher market power may result in either a higher or a lower probability of bank failure. In the traditional â€Å"competition-fragility† view, higher market power increases profit margins and results in greater franch ise value with banks reducing risk taking to protect this value (e. g. , Marcus, 1984; Keeley, 1990; Demsetz, Saidenberg, and Strahan, 1996; Hellmann, Murdock, and Stiglitz, 2000; Carletti and Hartmann, 2003; Jimenez, Lopez, and Saurina, 2007). Thus, a higher HHI may result in a lower probability of failure.In contrast, in the â€Å"competition-stability† view, more market power in the loan market may result in higher bank risk and a higher probability of failure as the higher interest rates charged to loan customers make it harder to repay loans and exacerbate moral hazard and adverse selection problems (e. g. , Boyd and De Nicolo, 2005; Boyd, De Nicolo, and Jalal, 2006; De Nicolo and Loukoianova, 2007; Schaeck, Cihak, and Wolfe, 2009). Martinez-Miera and Repullo (2010) furthermore argue that this effect may be nonmonotonic.We control for this possibility by also incorporating the squared value of local market power. Berger, Klapper, and Turk-Ariss (2009) argue that the effe cts of both views may be in place – banks with more market power may have riskier loan portfolios but less overall risk due to higher capital ratios or other risk-mitigating techniques – and find empirical evidence of these predictions. In addition to the HHI, we also include in our analyses the ratio of originated subprime mortgage loans to total mortgage loans originated to account for the particularities of the recent financial crisis.As is known now, the excessive origination of mortgages to borrowers with subprime creditworthiness led to high losses for banks in the recent financial crisis. Additionally, prior research establishes that real estate loans in general also played an important role for bank stability in earlier crises (e. g. , Cole and Fenn, 1995). We include the average subprime mortgage loan ratio in a bank’s census tract to measure the subprime risk exposure of 22 the bank’s local competitors.Based on the aforementioned literature and the characteristics of the recent financial crisis, we hypothesize that stronger subprime exposure of a bank’s competitors could increase the competitors’ risk structures and therefore also their default risk, which might have helped the observed banks survive the crisis by weakening their competitors. The set of v