The Character of Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities Essay -- Tale T

The Character of Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities    Literature takes a single sentence and turns it into a powerful story with sorrow, humor, and mystery. Combined with literary elements, the reader experiences the power of extreme emotions and is taken past the boundaries of reality. In reading, a reader takes on the role of a character through characterization. They experience problems they would not usually encounter and the complications people endure to overcome obstacles. Charles Dickens proves how strong a golden thread is and the lengths by which a man will go to restore it through the light bringing character of Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities.    Lucie Manette is a breathless mermaid attracting men with her magnetic traits. Following Lucie's rescue of her father, after being in prison for 18 years, she settles down with him in a quiet home in Soho. But the silence does not last long and the house becomes full with the footsteps of hundreds of suitors looking for the heart of an angel. In a conversation between Miss Pross and Jar...

Performance management in UFI Essay

Before UFI can start giving employees bonuses or begin to sack people they need to know how well they and the business is performing. On the 10th of May each year UFI will release their end of year report, which shows how well they have performed during the past year, on the same date they also release the objectives for the year proceeding. This is when the business hand out their â€Å"UFI planning and feedback form† (attached) to each employee to fill in accordingly. Analysis of UFI planning and feedback form S1 = This sheet is to show who has filled the form in, who their line manager is and to arrange a date to review how they are doing and if they are on target to reach the objectives S2 = On sheet two the employee writes down his/her objectives, which is obviously important as they need to know their objectives so they can aim for them! The priority of the objective is also written down, this is also an important task because it is natural in every aspect of work for some areas to have a higher priority then others. If the business wants to aim more into one direction then another then it will want its employees to do the work that will help the business succeed in that area. Finally on this sheet is the â€Å"summary of achievement including demonstration of values† which in laymen terms means = ‘what you have done’ S3 = If the employee feels that he/she needs training in a certain area thus improving their productivity for the business then they write that in here. By doing this, UFI are making sure that all their employees are skilled individuals who are competant and able to do work that is asked of them. Also on this sheet is the managers summery, which, as the name suggests, is where the employees manager summarises on his/her workers performance. S4 = On sheet five is the â€Å"end of year colour band.† This is a key for you to tick where you feel the description best shows how well you have worked this year. By doing this UFI can analyse how well their staff believe they have done, e.g. if they employed 200 people ==> Yellow = 5 Purple = 14 Red = 114 Green = 47 Blue = 20 Then with this information UFI could draw up charts, graphs or whatever they want to do with it. Also on this sheet there is a section titled â€Å"individual’s comments.† This space is more then likely to be filled in with people who have just ticked the yellow or purple box with reasons/excuses of why they haven’t ticked the purple box! S5 = on this sheet is the key for the colour band for the sheet before. Another reason why UFI uses this colour band is for employee morale. As most probably the majority of employees will be ticking the red, green or blue boxes, they then turn the page and read how important they are to the businesses drive to success. What could be better for your ego then reading ==> â€Å"You have been a role model in the demonstration of UFI’s values†?

The Wilkie investment model - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 10 Words: 3134 Downloads: 8 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Economics Essay Type Narrative essay Did you like this example? CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research Design The ultimate purpose in this paper was to describe and compare a number of published models, to provide some comparison of the distributions that result from them, and to determine which best suit the Ghanaian economic data. This research focuses on the strategic asset allocation models. This is because these models have the tendency to capture several investment series in a single model development procedure. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "The Wilkie investment model" essay for you Create order The data used for the empirical analysis in this paper were taken from the Bank of Ghana data base. Yearly data were considered because the stochastic asset models used in the study (Wilkie, 1986; 1995; Whitten Thomas, 1999) used similar data frequency. The selection of the models is purely purposive and convenience. Modelsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ parameters are calculated using the Ghanaian economic data. Subsequently, some statistics are investigated for easy comparison of the models. This helped in identifying the best model for the Ghanaian economic data. The models considered were; (a) The Wilkie model, as described in Wilkie (1995); (b) The ARCH variation of the Wilkie model, also described in Wilkie (1995) (c) The Whitten Thomas model, as described in Whitten Thomas (1999). Before the models comparison, I also looked at the characteristics of the data in other to understand and present the nature of the Ghanaian economic variables. Statistical univariate time serie s analysis were conducted, also, basic assumptions for stochastic modelling were checked. Actuarial stochastic modelling usually follow the standard assumption that the model errors are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) normal random variables and that, in practice the variables used in the actuarial applications, such as the inflation or interest rate, are assumed to be autoregressive and have constant unconditional means (Sherris, 1997). The existence of unit roots in the series for models show the nature of the trends in the series. If a series contains a unit root then the trend in the series is stochastic and shocks to the series will be permanent and this can be an accumulation of past random shocks otherwise, the series is termed as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“trend stationaryà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . An investigation concerning the unit root and stationarity of the series were also conducted. This is because trend stationary has major implications for investment models in actua rial applications (Sherris et al. 1999). The Dickey and Fuller (1979) test is employed for this purpose. 3.2 DATA Stochastic modeling requires the use of data from the past to combine with the present to model the future. For a good model, the structure should be consistent with validated or widely accepted economic and financial theory. These theories and the developed models depend on empirical data for validation. Statistically analysing the historical data provides a better insights into the features of past experience inherent in the variable that the model must capture. Good models are consistent with historical data since the parameter estimations are usually based on the historical data. The data considered were: Consumer Price Index (CPI); Ghana Stock Exchange All Share Index (ASI); Share dividend yield The 90 day bank bill yields; One year note yield Logarithms and differences of the logarithms are used in the analysis of the CPI, ASI, and dividends. The difference in the logarithms of the level of a series is the continuously compounded equivalent growth rate of the series. The time series plots are used to show the pictorial behavior of the series used in this research. 3.3 ANALYTICAL TOOLS the descriptive statistics and graph were obtained (Talk about R) Normality Test UNIT ROOTS AND STATIONARY SERIES Stationarity When we want to estimate a VAR model, an important assumption is that the historical data is stationary. This means that the properties of the process such as the mean and the autocovariances are _xed and do not depend on time t (strictly speaking the process is covariance stationary under these conditions). Stationarity is a crucial assumption for being able to describe the stochastic behavior of some variable by a single model and to be able to estimate the parameters of such a model on one sample of data. Otherwise each point in time would require another model and only one observation would be available to estimate 3.4 THE MODELS The models are explained below showing the formulae and consider the nature of the variables as modelled by the respective Authors. The formulae define how each variable is simulated and each model requires certain parameters. All the models have been calibrated from past data and the authors have generally given the values of the parameters from their fitted model, but by fitting different economic data, it requires re-calibration to derive the parameter set that are useful to the study. In order to compare the models in certain respects I shall use the same data set for the parameter estimation. 3.4.1 THE WILKIE MODEL THE WILKIE MODEL The Wilkieà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s model is a cascade structure encompassing various investment series. In Wilkie (1986, 1995), the inflation series is assumed to be the driving force for the other investment series. The investment series are linked together through a vigorous study and analysis based on a mixture of statistical evidence and economic assumptions. The cascade structure of the Wilkie model and the outline are given below. Fig 3.1: Structure of Wilkie model Figure 2.1. The Cascade Structure of the Wilkie model. The parts of the Wilkie Model development in the UK included four fundamental variables, and these are: Retail price index (Q) Share dividends index (D) Dividend yield (Y) on share price index (P) Consols yield or longà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å"term government interest rate (C). Each of the variables are modeled within a cascade structure such that they are ordered from the top level to the lower levels. The values of the lower level variables depend on the lagged value of themselves and the values of the variables in the upper levels (Chao, 2007). Chao (2007) explains that the inflation rate, which is calculated from the change of retail price index, depends on its own lagged values and is placed on the top layer of the structure. The forecast of this variable depends on its historical evidence. Chao (2007) describes the dividend yield as being in the second layer, and that its prediction is based on both the historical evidence and that of inflation rate; and finally, the third layer includes dividend and consols, whose forecast are based on the historical data, that of dividend yield, and that of inflation rate. The variables of the Wilkie (1986, 1995) were modeled under the following procedures: Step one, the variables were modeled by the regression on the upper level variables. Then, the modelsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ residuals were tested and constructed through the standard Boxà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å"Jenkins univariate time series modeling method. Next, he tested other methods such as Vector Autoregressive (VAR) modeling of two correlated variables, and GARCH modeling for the variance of residuals. Formulae a. The Price Inflation Model. Inflation, as measured by the retail prices index (CPI), is modelled by a first order auto regressive (AR (l)) process. Wilkieà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s AR (1) price inflation model is of the form: Where is the force of inflation over year (t-1) to (t) and it is given as: Hence: That is is a series of independent, identically distributed unit normal variates, (the assumption is that, they have zero mean and unit standard deviation). Where QMU, QA and QSD are parameters to be estimated. This model is described as that, each year the force of inflation is equal to its mean rate (QMU), plus a percentage of last years deviation from the mean (QA), plus a random innovation which has zero mean and a standard deviation of QSD (Wilkie, 1986). The assumption is that, inflation, being the factor of economic uncertainty, depends only on past values of itself. There is significant autocorrelation at lag 1, which provides stati stical justification for inclusion of the variable, and no other economically plausible autocorrelation or partial autocorrelation is significant at 95% (Whitten Thomas, 1995). The AR (1) model of the force of inflation is a statistically stationary series (i.e. in the long run the mean and variance are constant), of a b. Share Yields model Share yields are modelled as a function of the current inflation rate and the history of their past trends. The Wilkieà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s AR (1) model of the share dividend yield is given as: That is, is a series of independent, identically distributed unit normal variates, (the assumption is that, they have zero mean and unit standard deviation). Where, YMU, YA, YW and YSD are parameters to be estimated. This model uses logarithmic transformed dividend yield, as the response variable. Wilkie (1995) described the model as that, at any date the logarithm of the dividend yield is equal to its mean value (ln YMU), plus a pe rcentage of its deviation a year ago (YA) from the mean, plus an additional influence from inflation (YW) times the force of inflation in the previous year, plus a random innovation which has zero mean and a standard deviation of YSD. c. The Dividends model The model for share dividends, where is the value of a dividend index on ordinary shares at time t, is give as: Defining as the logarithm of the increase in the share dividends index from year to year , the Wilkieà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s MA(1) dividend yield model can also be represented as: Where, . Hence, Wilkie (1985,1995) modeled for P(t), the value of a price index of ordinary shares at time t as: Or . That is, is a series of independent, identically distributed unit normal variates, (the assumption is that, they have zero mean and unit standard deviation). Where, DMU, DB, DW, DX, DSD, DY and DD are parameters to be estimated. Wilkie (195) described the model in words as: à ¢Ã¢â€ š ¬Ã…“in each year the change in the logarithm of the dividend index is equal to a function of current and past values of inflation, plus a mean real dividend growth (which is taken as zero), plus an influence from last years dividend yield innovation, plus an influence from last years dividend innovation, plus a random innovation which has zero mean and a standard deviation ( DSD).à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  d. Long Term Interest Rate The long term interest rate model is for the Consols yield The model is based on , which is adjusted the long memory effect of inflation rate. The Wilkieà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s AR(1) consols yield model is presented as: This part is an exponentially weighted average of current and past price inflation, standing the expected future inflation over the life of the bond. This is a zero-mean AR (1) process which is independent of price inflation, and controls the long-term real interest rate. That is, is a series of independent, identica lly distributed unit normal variates, (the assumption is that, they have zero mean and unit standard deviation). Where, CMU, CW, CA, CSD, and CD are parameters to be estimated. The model is composed of two parts: an expected future inflation and a real yield (Sahin, et tal.). The portion representing the inflation part is modelled as a weighted moving average whiles the real part is modelled is an AR (1) with a contribution from the dividend yield. The parameter, CW = 1, which implies that, the model takes into account, the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Fisher effectà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ , in which the nominal yield on bonds reflects both expected inflation over the life of the bond and a à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢realà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ rate of interest Sahin, et tal.). Wilkie (1995) defines the logarithm of the real interest component as a linear autoregressive order one or three AR (1) or AR (3) but preferred the AR (1) model. e. Short Term Interest Rate (Bank Rate) Aside the fundamental parts of the Wilkie model, I consider one of the subsequent variables modelled by wilkie (1995). Wilkie used bank rate or bank base rate series to model short-term interest rates. Short-term interest rates are clearly connected with long-term ones. Wilkieà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s approach was to model the difference between the logarithms of the difference of these series where is the value of bank rate at time t. That is, is a series of independent, identically distributed unit normal variates, (the assumption is that, they have zero mean and unit standard deviation). Where, BMU, BA, and BSD, are parameters to be estimated. 3.4.2 THE ARCH MODEL The Wilkie ARCH Model The initial model developed by Wilkie (1986) assumed that the residuals of the inflation model were normally distributed. In 1995, he re-examined his own model and observed that the residuals were much fatter tailed than a normal distribution. In Statistics and Econometrics, one of the ways to model these fat ta iled distributions is using an Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (ARCH) model (Engle, 1982). In an Autoregressive Conditional Heteroschedastic (ARCH) model, the variance of the innovation term is modelled as a separate process (rather than assumed to be constant) (Wright, 2004). After the re-examination of the historical data, Wilkie (1995) proposed an ARCH model for the standard deviation of the inflation model. The ARCH model was seen to describe the data better than the original model by Huber (1997) and was suggested that, it should generally be used in applications of the model, unless the ARCH effect is not significant for those particular applications. In this ARCH model the varying value of the standard deviation, QSD(t), is made to depend on the previously observed value of the principal variable, I(tà ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬â„¢1), which itself is modelled by an autoregressive series. The suggested model (with a slight alteration in the notation) was: That is, is a series of independent, identically distributed unit normal variates, (the assumption is that, they have zero mean and unit standard deviation). Where, QMU, QA QSA QSB, and QSC, are parameters to be estimated. This implies that the variation depends on how far away last yearà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s rate of inflation, , was from some middle level, QSC (similar to the mean, QMU), but with the deviation squared, so that extreme values of inflation in either direction would increase the variance (Sahin, 2010). Comparing the ARCH model to the initial autoregressive model showed that, the distribution of the force of price inflation) exhibits fatter tails and a greater concentration around the long-term mean value (Wright, 2004). The ARCH variation was incorporated in only the price inflation model. Therefore, the remainder of the series follow the modelling as in the initial Wilkie model since Wilkie (1995) found no basses to re-model them as ARCH models. The ARCH mod el appears to give a better representation of inflation than the models assuming constant variance. 3.4.3 THE WHITTEN AND THOMAS MODEL Whitten and Thomas model The main underpinning belief for this model is that, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“the economy behaves differently in times of hyperinflation, than it does in times of normal inflation levelsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Whitten Thomas (1999). This belief is non-linear in nature and hence could not have been modelled linearly. After vigorous exploration of several alternative, Whitten Thomas (1999) adapted the Wilkie model (linear model) to incorporate their non-linearity assumption, rather than fundamentally changing the whole formulation. Whitten Thomas (1999) did not model the heteroscedastic nature of the price inflation using the ARCH model as in Wilkie (1995) due to the challenges in estimating the model since and that it can give rise to troubling results from simulation. Whitten Thoma (1999) employed the threshold modelling techn ique since threshold models are also capable of representing conditional variance, and moreover, exhibit short-term changes in mean. They proposed two regimes for each of the variables. The processes in each regime are similar to those defined by Wilkie (1986;1995). Following the same cascade structure above, the formulae for the models are given below: The Price Inflation Model Inflation is assumed to be represented as a SETAR (self-exciting threshold autoregressive) model, with delay 1, and a threshold that differentiates between normal and high inflation. They fitted many different threshold models. Due to the paucity of data partitioned into the upper regime, it was difficult to postulate any sort of autocorrelation structure in the hyperinflation regime Whiten Thomas (1999). The final suitable for threshold model for the price inflation is SETAR (2; 1, 0), thus: That is is a series of independent, identically distributed unit normal variates, (the assumption is that, they have zero mean and unit standard deviation). Where QMU1, QA1, QSD1, QMU2, and QSD2 are parameters to be estimated. The model is described as that if the inflation in the previous year was below a certain threshold (QR), then the expected force of inflation () is equal to its mean (QMU1), plus a percentage of last yearà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s deviation from the mean (QA1) plus a random innovation which has zero mean and standard deviation QSD1. Conversely if the inflation in the previous year was above the threshold, then the expected force of inflation presently is equal to its mean (QMU2), plus a random innovation which has zero mean and standard deviation QSD2. The model is able to control heteroscedasticity in a way because the expected variance of inflation when it is in its excited phase is greater than when it is in its quiescent phase Whitten Thomas (1999). The dividend model Following Wilkie (1986, 1995), Whitten Thomas (1999) also represented the share d ivided series as moving average of order one (MA (1)). Defining as in the Wilkie model as the logarithm of the increase in the share dividends index from year t-1 to t, this model is similar to the Wilkie model but with the introduction of a normal and a high inflation regimes. In economic sense, dividends do better in times of normal inflation, than in times of high inflation therefore, the model employs the condition that The model for is of the form: Where, That is is a series of independent, identically distributed unit normal variates, (the assumption is that, they have zero mean and unit standard deviation). Where Where, DMU1 DMU2, DB, DW, DX, DSD, DY and DD are parameters to be estimated. The share yield model Our share yield model is different to Wilkie.s lnY(t) in that we include a transfer effect from à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬ ¡lnC(t) to YN(t). lnY(t) was re-estimated a TAR model, with extra parameters YY1 and YY2, to include this transfer, i.e. where, That is, is a series of independent, identically distributed unit normal variates, (the assumption is that, they have zero mean and unit standard deviation). Where, YMU, YA, YW and YSD are parameters to be estimated. consol It is not easy to estimate the exponential smoothing parameter, CD, for each regime in C(t). There are problems when using a more sensitive smoothing parameter, in that {C(t) . CM(t)} 0, i.e. we cannot allow a negative real interest rate. It seemed a necessary simplification to have the allowance for expected future inflation over the life of the bond (CM(t)), and hence the parameter CD, defined the same for each regime. It therefore follows that, like the Wilkie model, our model gives a unit gain between inflation and interest rates. 4.4.6 C(t) was then re-estimated as a TAR model, i.e. short term interest rate BD(t) was re-estimated as a TAR model, i.e. 3.5 COMPARISON OF T HE MODELS 3.6 Parameter estimation 3.7 Simulation procedure