On the determinants of factoring as a financing choice evidence from the UK

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高一英语农学基础单选题50题

高一英语农学基础单选题50题1. In the agricultural field, the ______ of the new fertilizer has improved the crop yield significantly.A. usageB. useC. usefulD. useless答案：A。

本题考查名词的用法。

A 选项“usage”是名词，“使用；用法”；B 选项“use”既可以作动词也可以作名词，但此处需要名词形式，“usage”更强调“使用的方式、方法”，更符合语境；C 选项“useful”是形容词，“有用的”；D 选项“useless”是形容词，“无用的”。

2. The ______ weather has a great impact on the growth of crops.A. climateB. weatherC. climaticD. weathery答案：C。

本题考查形容词的用法。

A 选项“climate”是名词，“气候”；B 选项“weather”是名词，“天气”；C 选项“climatic”是形容词，“气候的”；D 选项“weathery”不是正确的单词。

这里需要形容词修饰“weather”，所以选C。

3. The farmers need to work ______ to harvest the crops before the rain comes.A. hardB. hardlyC. harderD. hardest答案：A。

本题考查副词的用法。

A 选项“hard”作副词时，表示“努力地；辛苦地”；B 选项“hardly”意思是“几乎不”；C 选项“harder”是“hard”的比较级；D 选项“hardest”是“hard”的最高级。

此处没有比较的意思，所以用“hard”。

4. The ______ of the soil is very important for the quality of the crops.A. qualityB. quantityC. qualificationD. qualificationally答案：A。

经济学原理1

Getting Started
1 CHAPTERห้องสมุดไป่ตู้
CHAPTER CHECKLIST
When you have completed your study of this chapter, you will be able to
1 Define economics and explain the questions that economists try to answer.
A market economy is one in which individuals and private firms make the major decisions about production and consumption. The extreme case of a market economy, in which the government keeps its hands off economic decisions, is called a laissez-faire economy.
Two big economic questions: • How choices determine what, how, and for whom goods and services get produced? • When do choices made in self-interest also promote social interest?
1.1 DEFINITION AND QUESTIONS
All economic questions and problems arise because human wants exceed the resources available to satisfy them.

北师大版高中英语选择性必修第一册精品课件 UNIT 3 CONSERVATION Section C

目录索引
Part 1 Reading comprehension Part 2 Language points
Part 1 Reading comprehension
第一步速读课文理清脉络 Task 1 Read the email quickly and find out what the email’s main purpose is. A.The definition of factory farming. B.The advantages of factory farming. C.The disadvantages of factory farming. D.The pros and cons of factory farming. 答案 D
仿写训练
另一方面,人工智能也引发了许多担忧。例如,存在失业的风险,因为人工
智能变得更有能力执行传统上由人类执行的任务。除此之外,过度依赖人
工智能可能会对人类的独立思考和发现能力构成潜在威胁,因为有些人会
停止思考,在做出决策时完全依赖人工智能。
On the other hand
,AI also raises a number of concerns.
4.How does the author present opponents’ viewpoint according to the third paragraph? A.By listing facts. B.By giving definitions. C.By comparing different views. D.By making a comparison. 答案 A
(三)赏逻辑之巧 On the other hand,opponents of factory farming say that it is cruel to the animals.For instance,many farm animals are kept in small spaces...People who fight for animal rights claim that these animals suffer terrible stress.In addition to this,factory farming has a negative impact on the environment because it creates a lot of waste products... 赏析:作者使用“On the other hand”和“For instance”以及“In addition to”介绍了反方观点:工业化养殖对于动物过于残忍。理由有:动物被关闭的空间小, 动物精神压力大;不环保。这些过渡词使得结构条理,表述清晰。文章还使用其他过渡词:According to,apart from,Moreover,To sum up,In my opinion等。

2020年英语专四单选及答案详解最新资料

2008年51. Our association, which has consistently pressed for greater employment opportunities for the disabled, will publish ____ proposals in the near future.A. theirB. ourC. hisD. its答案：D. 考查物主代词。

逗号与逗号之间的是作为插入语，是association的定语从句，在此association作为一个整体概念出现，且其定语从句中也是用单数谓语动词has pressed，后面对应的物主代词也应该是单数概念的，故选D。

句意：我们的协会一直在敦促给残疾人更多的就业机会，并且讲在最近公布建议书。

publish公布，proposal提议；建议，press for敦促；迫切要求。

52. Had Judy been more careful on the maths exam, she ____ much better results now.A. would be gettingB. could have gotC. must getD. would get答案：D.考查虚拟语气（错综时间虚拟语气）。

从句部分是对过去的虚拟，省略了if，因此出现倒装，但主句部分出现了明显的时间标志词now，可见是对现在的虚拟，故应该是would/could/should/might do的形式，而get为瞬间动词，不用进行时，故选D。

句意：如果朱迪数学考试时更认真一些，她现在成绩就会好多了。

53. Nine is to three _____ three is to one.A. whenB. thatC. whichD. what答案：D。

这是专四考试频考知识点了：A is to B what C is to D，由what引导的方式状语从句。

科技英语翻译1

驱动这些机器的动力装置是一台50马力的感应电动机。
► 2）通顺易懂 ► 译文的语言符合译语语法结构及表达习惯，容易为读者所理解和接受。
► A. When a person sees, smells, hears or touches something, then he is perceiving.
2. Cramped(狭窄的) conditions means that passengers’ legs cannot move around freely.
空间狭窄，旅客的两腿就不能自由活动。
3. All bodies are known to possess weight and occupy space.
忠实、通顺（普遍观点）
► 科技英语文章特点：(well-knit structure;tight logic;various styles)结构严谨，逻辑严密，文体多样
1. 科技翻译的标准：准确规范，通顺易懂，简洁明晰 1）准确规范
所谓准确，就是忠实地，不折不扣地传达原文的全部信息内容。所谓规范，就是译文要符合所涉及的科学技或某个专业领域的专业语言表
实验结果等，而不是介绍这是这些结果，理论或现象是由谁发明或发现的。
► In this section, a process description and a simplified process flowsheet are given for each DR process to illustrate the types of equipment used and to describe the flow of materials through the plant. The discussion does not mention all the variations of the flowsheet which may exist or the current status of particular plants. In the majority of the DR processes described in this section, natural gas is reformed in a catalyst bed with steam or gaseous reduction products from the reduction reactor. Partial oxidation processes which gasify liquid hydrocarbons, heavy residuals and coal are also discussed. The reformer and partial oxidation gasifier are interchangeable for several of the DR processes.

Should Banks Be Diversified

Should Banks Be Diversiﬁed?Evidence from Individual Bank Loan PortfoliosAbstractWe study empirically the eﬀect of focus(specialization)vs.diversiﬁcation on the return and the risk of banks using data from105Italian banks over the period1993–1999.Speciﬁ-cally,we analyze the tradeoﬀs between(loan portfolio)focus and diversiﬁcation using data that is able to identify loan exposures to diﬀerent industries,and to diﬀerent sectors,on a bank-by-bank basis.Our results are consistent with a theory that predicts a deterioration in the eﬀectiveness of bank monitoring at high levels of risk and upon lending expansion into newer or competitive industries.Our most importantﬁnding is that both industrial and sectoral loan diversiﬁcation reduce bank return while endogenously producing riskier loans for high risk banks in our sample.For low risk banks,these forms of diversiﬁcation either produce an ineﬃcient risk–return tradeoﬀor produce only a marginal improvement.A robust result that emerges from our empiricalﬁndings is that diversiﬁcation of bank assets is not guaranteed to produce superior performance and/or greater safety for banks.JEL Classiﬁcation:G21,G28,G31,G32Keywords:Focus,Diversiﬁcation,Monitoring,Bank risk,Bank return1IntroductionShouldﬁnancial institutions(FIs)and banks be focused or diversiﬁed?Does the extent of focus or diversiﬁcation aﬀect the quality of their loan portfolios?Does diversiﬁcation, based on traditional portfolio theory wisdom,lead to greater safety for FIs and banks? In this paper,we undertake an empirical investigation of these questions.The evidence we present suggests that,in contrast to the recommendations of traditional portfolio and banking theories,diversiﬁcation of bank assets is not guaranteed to produce superior return performance and/or greater safety for banks.There are several reasons why the focus vs.diversiﬁcation issue is important in the context of FIs and banks.First,FIs and banks face several(often conﬂicting)regulations that create incentives either to diversify or focus their asset portfolios,such as the imposition of capital requirements that are tied to the risk of assets,branching and asset investment restrictions, etc.Hence,from a policy standpoint,it is interesting to ask if FIs and banks beneﬁt or get hurt from diversiﬁcation of their loan portfolios.In addition,the very nature of an intermediary’s business activities makes the question of focus versus diversiﬁcation an interesting economic issue to explore.FIs and banks act as delegated monitors in the sense of Diamond(1984),and acquire proprietary information about theﬁrms they lend to,as noted by Fama(1980,1985),and James(1987),and as modelled by Rajan(1992)and Sharpe(1990).The quality of monitoring and information acquisition is however an endogenous choice of FIs and banks.This choice is governed by the extent of agency conﬂict between equity holders(bank owners)and creditors of an FI. As explained below,this agency conﬂict is aﬀected by the downside risk of the FI and by the extent of the FI’s focus or diversiﬁcation.For the sake of illustration,consider the extreme case where the FI’s downside risk is extremely high so that on an expected basis most beneﬁts from monitoring accrue only to its creditors(uninsured depositors and providers of borrowed funds).In this case,bank owners have little incentive to monitor.All else being equal,the FI’s under-investment in monitoring will be more severe the greater is its downside risk of failure.Under such an incentive structure,can FIs and banks monitor their loans eﬀectively as they expand into diﬀerent industries and segments of the loan markets?How does the decision to be focused or diversiﬁed aﬀect their monitoring incentives and the endogenous quality,i.e.,the risk and the return,of their loans?To answer these questions,we examine data on the asset and loan portfolio composition of individual Italian banks during the period1993–1999.The choice of Italian banks is driven by the availability of detailed data on the industrial and sectoral composition of their balance-sheets.By contrast,in the United States,publicly available data on bank loan1portfolios is restricted to call reports which do not contain such“ﬁne”asset decompositions. In particular,U.S.regulators do not provide a breakdown of individual(or aggregate)bank lending to speciﬁc industries or industrial sectors.Instead,the general level of disaggregation is highly coarse in nature,speciﬁcally into household sector loans,commercial and industrial loans,etc.We obtain results that are suﬃciently striking and robust to warrant a closer look at the wisdom of simply advocating banks to diversify as much as possible.In turn, they suggest that a more careful assessment needs to be made of the costs and beneﬁts of diversiﬁcation in banking in general.Some of these issues have been examined at a theoretical level in a recent paper by Winton (1999).Traditional arguments based on Diamond(1984)suggest that banks should be as diversiﬁed as possible.This precludes any agency problem between bank owners and bank creditors.In practice,however,banks cannot fully diversify all their risks.Winton presents a theoretical framework that allows for a residual agency problem between bank owners and bank creditors and investigates the merit of the proverbial wisdom of not putting all your eggs in one basket.1The model provides a number of testable empirical hypotheses that are central to the focus versus diversiﬁcation debate in banking.We state below the empirical hypotheses we test and discuss the economic intuition for them in Section2.H.1The relationship between bank return and diversiﬁcation is non–linear in bank risk (inverted U–shaped).To be precise,diversiﬁcation across loan sectors helps a bank’s return most when loans have moderate exposure to sector downturns(downside risk)2;when loans have low downside risk,diversiﬁcation has little beneﬁt;when loans have suﬃciently high downside risk,diversiﬁcation may actually reduce returns.H.2A bank’s monitoring eﬀectiveness may be lower in newly entered and competitive sectors,and thus,diversiﬁcation can result in an increase in the downside risk of the bank’s loan portfolio.Broadly speaking,these hypotheses reﬂect the view that a bank’s credit risk depends on its monitoring incentives(and eﬀectiveness)as well as on its degree of portfolio diversiﬁcation.1Winton motivates the issue by comparing the following two advices:“It’s the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow and not venture all his eggs in one basket”by Miguel de Cervantes(Don Quixote de la Mancha,1605),and,Behold the fool saith“Put not thine eggs in one basket”-which is but a manner of saying,“Scatter your money and attention”;but the wise man saith“Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket”by Mark Twain(Pudd’nhead Wilson,1894).2By portfolio“downside risk,”we mean the likelihood that the portfolio return will be lower than a given threshold(e.g.,level of deposits in the bank’s capital structure),an event that constitutes a“default.”In the paper,we have employed several measures of downside risk,both expected and unexpected,based on their availability and measurability.2Overall,our results provide support for these two hypotheses.We measure focus using the Herﬁndahl index for a bank’s(i)non-ﬁnancial and housing loan portfolio(I–HHI),(ii)overall asset sector portfolio(A–HHI),and(iii)geographical portfolio(G–HHI).3Thus,a decrease in HHI implies an increase in diversiﬁcation and a reduction in focus.Since geographic focus measure,G-HHI,is notﬁne enough to produce a suﬃcient variation across banks,we focus our study on industrial and sector focus measures,I-HHI and A-HHI,respectively.Weﬁnd that the relationship between focus and bank return is non–linear in the risk of the bank and may in fact be U–shaped as implied by hypothesis H.1.Speciﬁcally,increased industrial diversiﬁcation appears to decrease return for banks with high risk levels,and produces either a relatively smaller decrease or only a small increase in return for banks with moderate risk levels.The eﬀect of increased asset sectoral diversiﬁcation is analogous,hurting returns of high risk banks and producing only a marginal eﬀect on returns of low risk banks.These results are robust to measurement of bank risk and to endogeneity of focus measures.Speciﬁcally,we proxy for bank risk using a variety of measures:(i)realized risk measured as a bank’s doubtful and non–performing loans to assets ratio(DOUBT),(ii)unexpected risk measured as the sample standard deviation of DOUBT and the total as well as the idiosyncratic volatility of the bank’s stock market returns(if it is publicly traded),and (iii)expected risk measured as the ratio of loan-loss provisions to assets.Our results are qualitatively robust across these diﬀerent measures of bank risk.We also correct for the endogeneity of industrial and asset sectoral focus by conducting a simultaneous equations estimation of bank return and bank focus where additional variables are employed to serve as instruments that explain focus.The U–shaped relationship of hypothesis H.1is robust to this correction,and in fact,statistically stronger in most cases.We test hypothesis H.2by examining endogenous loan quality(risk)and treating risk as a dependent variable that is aﬀected by the extent of focus(diversiﬁcation).Our empirical results suggest that increased focus in terms of industrial sector or asset sectoral exposure (high values for I–HHI and A–HHI)improves loan quality(reduces risk).This eﬀect is also robust to treating focus measures as endogenous variables.Further,the reduction in risk upon an increase in industrial focus is greater,the greater the competition for loans that the bank faces in the industries it lends to.We alsoﬁnd some evidence supporting the hypothesis that when banks enter as lenders into“newer”industries or industries where they had less exposure before,there is a contemporaneous deterioration in a bank’s loan quality(increase in its risk).4This deterioration is smaller,the greater the industrial focus of the bank’s loan3The Herﬁndahl index is the sum of the squared weights corresponding to a bank’s exposure to diﬀerent in-dustries,sectors,or geographical areas,a higher value corresponding to greater focus or lower diversiﬁcation.4We use the qualiﬁer“newer”for industries in the sense that they are newer to the bank,i.e.,previous exposures of the bank to these industries had been lower or non–existent,rather than being newer in the sense of technological changes produced by the industries.3portfolio.These results underscore the importance of“watching the basket”of loans and the improvement in monitoring eﬀectiveness of banks from specialization.From the combined results on bank loan return and risk,we conclude that increased industrial and sectoral loan diversiﬁcation both result in an ineﬃcient risk–return tradeoﬀfor the(Italian)banks in our sample,the eﬀect being strongest for banks with relatively high levels of risk.5We conduct additional robustness checks by separating the sample into state-owned and private banks,into money center national and non-national banks,and ﬁnally,into banks that are members of a consortium group and those that are not.The results are supportive of our main conclusions.These results have important and direct implications for the optimal size and scope of banks.While traditional banking theory based on a delegated monitoring argument recommends that it is optimal for a bank to be fully diversiﬁed across sectors or“projects”(see,for example,Boyd and Prescott,1986),our results suggest that there are diseconomies of scope that arise through weakened monitoring incentives and a poorer quality loan portfolio when a risky bank expands into additional industries and sectors.This complements the agency theory based analysis of the boundaries of a bank’s activities as proposed in Cerasi and Daltung(2000),Stein(2002)and Berger et al.(2001).6From a normative standpoint, our results sound a cautionary note to the adoption of regulatory mechanisms that encourage bank–level portfolio and/or activity diversiﬁcation,or attempt to measure credit portfolio risk through traditional diversiﬁcation measures.The issue of focus versus diversiﬁcation has not been addressed thoroughly in the con-text ofﬁnancial institutions and banks,although it has a long history in the corporate ﬁnance literature.7This is primarily because it has been diﬃcult to obtain bank-level(cross-5While we do not report these results due to the lack of richness in the measure of geographic diversiﬁ-cation,weﬁnd that geographic diversiﬁcation does result in an improvement in the risk–return tradeoﬀfor banks with low or moderate levels of risk.6We believe that the agency theories based on conﬂicts acrossﬁrm segments proposed in corporate ﬁnance to explain the poor performance of conglomerates cannot completely explain the perverse eﬀect of diversiﬁcation on bank returns and risk.A bank’s lending to diﬀerent industries is much more centralized than is the operation of a typical conglomerate’s operating segments.Stein(2002)and Berger et al.(2001), however,tie incomplete contracting to the inability of large banks to process“soft”information about their borrowers.This potentially leads to diseconomies of scale for FIs and banks.7The early evidence in this literature seemed to suggest that diversiﬁcation destroys value on average leading to what is popularly known as the“diversiﬁcation discount.”See,for example,Lang and Stulz (1994),Comment and Jarrell(1995),Berger and Ofek(1995),Lins and Servaes(1999).The issue of there being a discount on average is,however,disputed.Campa and Kedia(2000),Villalonga(2001),Graham, Lemmon and Wolf(2002),Maksimovic and Phillips(2002)examine the endogeneity of the decision to focus or diversify and question this early evidence,both on empirical as well as economic grounds.Several theories have been proposed to explain why focus(diversiﬁcation)may aﬀectﬁrm value.These are based on managerial risk-aversion(Amihud and Lev,1981),agency problems between managers and4sectional)portfolio data and construct measures of industrial and geographical diversiﬁcation that are as“ﬁne”or“micro”as those employed in this paper.Using somewhat coarser measures,Hughes,Lang,Mester and Moon(1996),Saunders and Wilson(2001),and Berger and DeYoung(2001)examine geographical diversiﬁcation.Caprio and Wilson(1997)examine cross–country evidence for a relationship between on–balance sheet concentration and bank insolvency.Klein and Saidenberg(1998)present portfolio simulations to compare lending by multi–bank bank holding companies and their pro forma “pure–play”benchmark banks.Berger,Demsetz and Strahan(1999)ﬁnd that consolidation inﬁnancial services industry has been consistent with greater diversiﬁcation of risks on average but with little or no cost eﬃciency improvements.DeLong(2001)examines the merger ofﬁnancialﬁrms in the U.S.andﬁnds that bank mergers that are focusing in terms of geography and activity produce superior economic performance relative to those that are diversifying.Finally,Stiroh(2002)ﬁnds that during the period from late1970s to2001,a greater reliance on non-interest income by the U.S.banks,particularly on trading revenue, is associated with higher risk and lower risk-adjusted proﬁts at the individual bank level.Section2discusses the economic intuition behind the empirical hypotheses.Section3 describes our data.Section4formalizes the hypotheses and presents our empirical results. Section5provides a discussion and concludes.2Empirical HypothesesWe restate the empirical hypotheses of Winton(1999)and provide their economic underpin-nings.The essence of Winton’s model lies in understanding that the quality of bank loan portfolios is endogenous:it is determined,in part,by the levels of monitoring induced by a change in the bank’s focus or diversiﬁcation.H.1The relationship between bank return and diversiﬁcation is non–linear in bank risk (inverted U–shaped).To be precise,diversiﬁcation across loan sectors helps a bank’s return most when loans have moderate exposure to sector downturns(downside risk);when loans have low downside risk,diversiﬁcation has little beneﬁt;when loans have suﬃciently high downside risk,diversiﬁcation may actually reduce returns.INSERT FIGURE1HERE.shareholders(Denis,Denis and Sarin,1997,and Cornett et al.,2001),the ineﬃciency of internal capital markets(Scharfstein and Stein,2000),and power-struggles between diﬀerent segments of aﬁrm(Rajan, Servaes and Zingales,2000).5From traditional portfolio theory,we know that diversiﬁcation increases the central ten-dency of the distribution of a loan portfolio.However,as Winton(1999)notes,when debt is risky and the central tendency of distribution is low relative to the level of debt,diversiﬁca-tion can in fact increase the probability of default.This would occur for example if downside risk of bank loans is substantial.For the sake of illustration,Figure1plots the cumulative probability function for two normal distributions with diﬀerent standard deviations and with a common mean of zero.Suppose these distributions correspond to(suitably scaled)two possible distributions for realization on bank loans.Suppose further that the level of debt varies along the x-axis.If the level of debt is to the left of zero(under a suitable scale),e.g.,at x=−1,then a decrease in standard deviation,by reducing the likelihood of events in the left tail of the distribution(the“default”states),reduces the probability of default.However,if the level of debt is to the right of zero,e.g.,at x=1,then a decrease in standard deviation,by reducing the likelihood of events in the right tail of the distribution(the“no-default”states),in fact increases the probability of default.The left skewed nature of a typical loan portfolio’s return distribution implies that the level of debt,in fact,may not need to be too high for this eﬀect to arise.An additional impact bolstering hypothesis(H.1)arises from the interaction of this per-verse eﬀect of diversiﬁcation on bank risk and the bank’s monitoring incentives.The conﬂict of interest between bank owners and bank creditors(similar to the equity holder vs.creditor conﬂictsﬁrst described in Jensen and Meckling,1976,and Myers,1977)implies that an increase in the probability of default reduces the incentives of bank owners to monitor their loans.If the loan portfolio has high downside risk,then an improvement in loan monitoring and,in turn,in loan quality produces greater beneﬁts to the creditors than to the bank owners.Since the cost of monitoring is borne by the bank owners(the residual claimants), it follows that if the loan portfolio has high downside risk,then an increase in diversiﬁcation leads to weaker incentives for bank owners to monitor loans.This,in turn,leads to lower bank returns reinforcing hypothesis H.1.H.2A bank’s monitoring eﬀectiveness may be lower in newly entered and competitive sectors,and thus,diversiﬁcation can result in an increase in the downside risk of the bank’s loan portfolio.There are at least three reasons why this might arise.First,banks may lack the moni-toring expertise in lending to a new sector when learning costs are present.Second,when the loan sector to which banks migrate is already being supplied with credit by other banks, the new bank entrants may be subject to adverse selection and a“winner’s curse”eﬀect.88In addition to Winton(1999),several papers have discussed the adverse eﬀect of competition on bank6This suggests that diversiﬁcation could lower returns on bank loans and increase the risk of failure to a greater degree when the sectors into which the bank expands are subject to greater competition.Third,diversiﬁcation can cause a bank to grow in size,subjecting it to agency–based scale ineﬃciencies discussed in the corporateﬁnance literature.Thus,diversiﬁcation per se is no guarantee of a reduced risk of failure.By the same token,regulatory requirements to diversify are no assurance of greater banking system safety or stability.9In this paper,we empirically test these hypotheses using bank-by-bank data on focus(diversiﬁcation),return,and risk for Italian banks.3Data3.1Data sourcesData for the industrial,asset,and geographic decompositions of the portfolios of Italian banks in our study are taken from the regulatory reports submitted by these banks to the Bank of Italy,the Italian Bankers’Association(ABI),and the Interbank Deposit Protection Fund of Italy(FITD).The latter is the Italian equivalent of the U.S.Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation(FDIC).Our sample starts with a base of105primarily commercial banks that reported their asset portfolio and other data during the entire1993–1999period.The sample period starts in1993since the banking law of August27,1993(consolidating act) marked a regime shift in the Italian banking structure.It revolutionized the Italian banking system by encouraging the new model of a“full-service”ﬁnancial institution.It eliminated the distinction between specialized lending institutions(medium and long-term credit)and retail banks(short-term credit),as opposed to the pre-existing system of specialized banks.A complete list of the banks and the ones that are traded publicly during our sample period is shown in Appendix A along with the average size of each bank over the sample period.These105banks constitute over80percent of the total banking assets of Italy.A few of the banks in our sample undertook acquisitions of other banks.The data set, however,does not provide any details as to which were these acquiring banks and which banks they acquired.Furthermore,the data set does not include foreign bank operations in Italy.Over our sample period,the foreign bank penetration of the Italian banking market is however weak largely due to the prohibition on foreign banks from accepting deposits of Italian residents.loan quality.These include Gehrig(1998),Dell’Arricia,Friedman,and Marquez(1999),Boot and Thakor (2000),and Hauswald and Marquez(2002)for theory,and Shaﬀer(1998)for empirical results.9For example,in the U.S.,regulations restrict a bank’s lending to any one counterparty to a maximum of15%of that bank’s capital.7In terms of size,8of these105banks are“very large”(as deﬁned by the Bank of Italy), 7are“large,”15are“medium,”and the remaining75are“small.”In terms of geographical scope of banking activities,9of these banks are“national,”18are“regional,”13are“intra–regional,”10are“local,”and the remaining55are“provincial.”Finally,34of these banks are publicly traded and62of them were state–owned at the beginning of1993.10While there are natural diﬀerences between the banking sectors of any two countries, there are several dimensions along which the Italian banking system is similar to that in the U.S.:(1)Unlike other banking systems in Continental Europe,Italy has a large number of banks(about850at the beginning of our sample)giving rise to a less concentrated banking system like that of the U.S.(2)The branching restrictions on banks in Italy were removed in 1990as they were in the U.S.in the mid1980s.(3)There has been a wave of consolidation in the banking system in1990s mirroring that in the U.S.(4)The banking system comprises of a few very large banks and a large number of medium-to-small sized banks as in the U.S. In addition,the risk levels of Italian banks in our sample exhibit economically signiﬁcant variability,from being very safe to being very risky,which lends an element of robustness and generality to our results.Finally,Italy diﬀers from the U.S.in that many of its banks are state-owned although state-ownership has been steadily declining over the past decade following the Amato-Carli law.However,our results are found to hold for both the privately-owned and the state-owned samples of banks(see Section4.4).These stylized facts and the use of Italian banking data to address other important economic issues such as the beneﬁt of relationship banking(Degatriache et al.,2000)and the eﬀect of bank mergers on loan contracts(Sapienza,2002a)lead us to believe that our results would generalize to banking sectors of other countries,including the U.S.11For each bank in our sample,data is available to calculate the following portfolio decom-positions:1.A disaggregated industrial sector decomposition based on each bank’s topﬁve indus-trial sector exposures with a sixth exposure comprising of the sum of the remaining exposures,where the exposures could be to any of the23industries among:(1)Agri-cultural,Forestry,and Fishing products,(2)Energy products,(3)Iron and non–iron Material and Ore,(4)Ores and products based on non-metallic minerals,(5)Chemicals,(6)Metal products,apart from machinery and means of conveyance,(7)Agriculturaland Industrial machinery,(8)Oﬃce,EDP Machinery,and others,(9)Electric mate-10We are very grateful to Paola Sapienza for supplying us the state–ownership dummy for our sample based on her work on Italian banks in Sapienza(2002b).11Descriptions of the Italian banking sector can be found in Degatriache et al.(2000)and Sapienza(2002a). Industry perspectives on the developments of the Italian banking system can also be found in BNP Paribas (2001)and Goldman Sachs(2001).8rial,(10)Transport,(11)Food products,Beverages,and Tobacco-based products,(12) Textile,Leather,Shoes,and Clothing products,(13)Paper,Publishing,and Print-ing products,(14)Rubber and Plastic products,(15)Other Industrial products,(16) Construction,(17)Services trade and similar,(18)Hotel and Publicﬁrms products,(19)Internal Transport services,(20)Sea and Air Transport,(21)Transport relatedservices,(22)Communication services,and(23)Other Sales related services.Note that in aggregate these exposures(collectively deﬁned in the data as Non–ﬁnancial and Household exposures)constitute the dominant part of each bank’s portfolio.2.A broad asset sector decomposition based on exposures to(1)Sovereigns,(2)Othergovernmental authorities,(3)Non–ﬁnancial corporations,(4)Financial institutions,(5)Households,and(6)Other counterparties.Note that the size of bank lending to a particular sector or industry in our data set is net of loans that are already classiﬁed as either doubtful or non–performing.Unfortunately,our data set does not provide more detailed loan-by-loan or borrower-by-borrower information within these decompositions.The Financial Statement variables and capital structure variables are obtained from the Bank of Italy and Bankscope data bases.Stock market data items for the34banks that are publicly traded were taken from the Datastream and Milan Stock exchange information bases on Italian Banks.A few banks had to be discarded from the sample due to missing values of relevant variables,e.g.,doubtful and non–performing loans.3.2Construction of Herﬁndahl indicesWe measure focus(diversiﬁcation)by employing a Hirschman Herﬁndahl Index(HHI)mea-sure.HHI is the sum of the squares of exposures as a fraction of total exposure under a given classiﬁcation.In our case,we construct two diﬀerent kinds of HHI’s,which consist of Industrial and Household sector HHI,more simply referred to as Industrial sector HHI (I–HHI)and Broad Asset sector HHI(A–HHI).I–HHI is based on the5top industries where loans were made for each bank.The6th exposure considers the rest of the industrial loan portfolio.For the6th exposure,we em-ployed two conventions:ﬁrst,where the6th exposure is treated as a separate“hypothetical”industry,and second,where the6th exposure is treated as being equally divided among the remaining18industries.Our results were not sensitive to this choice.Hence,we report results with I–HHI computed using the6th exposure as a hypothetical industry.Thus,if the proportional exposures to six industries are X1,X2,X3,X4,X5,and X6,respectively,then I–HHI equals 6i=1(X i/Q)2,where Q= 6i=1X i.Note that the HHI has a maximum of1 when all loans are made to a single industry.9。

Unit 3 Faster, higher, stronger 同步练习-高中英语外研版(2019)

选择性必修第一册 Unit 3(限时：35分钟)Ⅰ.阅读理解AHere are some fun and engaging ways to learn about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and what you can do to take action to make them a reality.Freerice from WFPFreerice is a free online educational game where people of all ages can do their part —simply by playing.Every right answer on Freerice brings a real financial donation to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) from sponsors worth about 10 grains of e your time and knowledge to help provide food for people in need.FriedaStorytelling is a powerful communication tool and helps children remember lessons and virtues that they will use in everyday life. The idea behind the production of the story of Frieda is to simplify the lessons of the SDGs so young children can better understand the SDGs.SDG PandasInspired by reallife animal ambassadors (大使) Qiqi and Diandian, SDG Pandas are stickers that you can use in your WhatsApp conversations to help spread the SDGs and inspire action for a better world.SDG ElyxElyx, the United Nations' digital ambassador, uses various expressions and actions to help demonstrate the meaning of each Sustainable Development Goal.Created by French artist YAK, Elyx has no race, sex or nationality and is a universal character promoting the importance of the United Nations' work.A．Freerice from WFP.B．Frieda.C．SDG Pandas.D．SDG Elyx.2．What are inspired by real animals?A．The WFP's programs.B．Frieda's stories.C．The virtual stickers.D．The digital ambassador.3．What's Frieda meant to do?A．Promote students' storytelling ability.B．Encourage financial donation for the SDGs.C．Guide children in practicing virtues in daily life.D．Make the SDGs easier for children to understand.BAttention managers: the next time you need to inspire your team creatively, be more attentive to your employees' feelings when you deliver negative feedback (反馈).Kim, who worked as a software engineer for Samsung after graduation from college, is familiar with having his creative work picked apart.“I personally hate hearing negative feedback as most people do and I wondered if it really improved my performance, particularly when it came to completing creative tasks.” In two studies, Kim found that negative feedback can help or prevent creativity.What is most important is where the criticism (批评) comes from.When creative professionals or participants received criticism from a boss or a peer, they tended to be less creative in their later work.Interestingly, if a person received negative feedback from an employee of lower rank, they became more creative.It makes sense that employees might feel threatened by criticism from their managers.Supervisors(监督员；管理者)have a lot of power in deciding promotions or pay raises.So negative feedback from a boss might cause career(职业) anxiety.It also stands to reason that feedback from a co-worker might also be received as threatening.We often compete with our peers for the same promotions and chances.What Kim found most surprising was how criticism proved to improve supervisors through lessons learned from negative feedback that came from their followers (employees that they manage).“But we tend to believe we shouldn't criticize the boss，”says Kim.“In reality, most supervisors don't detest negative feedback since they want to learn from it.Another reason is thatthey are in a natural power position and can deal with the discomfort of negative feedback better.”As for giving suggestions to employees, bosses should point out a follower's poor performance or weak points in time.But they should keep their feedback specific to tasks.Explain how the point they're discussing relates to only their task behavior, not to aspects of the person.Meanwhile, feedback receivers need to worry less when it comes to receiving criticism.4．What's the motivation behind Kim's study?A．To work on his essays for graduation.B．To have a better knowledge of criticism.C．To call for understanding between workers.D．To encourage a culture of criticism in the workplace.5．What's the main idea of Paragraph 4?A．What typical power supervisors possess.B．What feedback can cause career anxieties.C．How workers can have a good impression on bosses.D．Why certain criticism harms a person's performance.6．What amazed Kim mostly in the study?A．Some people enjoy negative feedback.B．Employees are brave to criticize the boss.C．Followers' criticism may benefit managers.D．Many bosses sometimes struggle in their work.7．Which of the following would the author agree with?A.Bosses should give criticism actively and also properly.B.Workers should avoid exposing their own personal matters.C.Workers should compromise with each other sometimes.D．People should try to avoid criticizing their coworkers.CThere have been many headlines in recent years about the potentially negative impacts contact sports can have on athletes' brains.However, a study by Northwestern University (NU) showed that in the absence of injury, athletes across a variety of sports, including football, basketball and hockey, have healthier brains than nonathletes.The researchers examined the brain health of 495 Northwestern student athletes and 493 citizens.They delivered speech syllables to study the participants through earbuds (耳塞) and recorded the brain's activity with scalp electrodes (头皮电极).They analyzed the ratio of background noise to the response to the speech sounds by looking at how the response to sound was relative to the background noise.Athletes have a better ability to diminish background electrical noise in their brain to better process external sounds, such as a teammate yelling or a coach calling to them from the sidelines.“No one would argue against the fact that sports lead to better physical fitness, but we don't always connect brain fitness with sports，”said Senior author and professor Nina Kraus.He likens (比喻) the phenomenon to listening to a DJ on the radio.“Think of background electrical noise in the brain like static (天电干扰)on the radio，”Kraus said.“There are two ways to hear the DJ better —minimize the static or increase the DJ's voice.We found that athletes' brains use the first way to hear the ‘DJ’ better.A serious commitment to physical activity is beneficial to the nervous system, and perhaps, if you have a healthier nervous system, you may be able to better handle injury or other health problems.”“The findings could motivate athletic interventions for those who struggle with hearing processing.In particular, playing sports may offset(抵消) the excessively noisy brains often found in children from low-income areas，”Kraus said.8．What's new about contact sports in NU's study?A．The physical fitness sports bring.B．The potential risk of sports to athletes.C．The influence of sports on athletes' attention.D．The ways to help athletes avoid injuries during sports.9．What does the underlined word “diminish”in Paragraph 3 probably mean?A．Bring down.B．Make use of.C．Take in. D．Pay attention to.10．Why does Kraus talk about listening to a DJ on the radio in Paragraph 4?A．To show the static's effects on ordinary people.B．To prove the importance of decreasing the noise.C．To encourage people to listen to the radio more.D．To stress the special ability of athletes' brains.11．What may be the significance of the study's findings?A．Reminding athletes to listen to what their teammates say carefully.B．Encouraging people with hearing problems to exercise more.C．Motivating athletes to help each other while competing.D．Protecting those who usually get injured in sports.DEveryone knows that to help lessen the ongoing climate crisis, we need to plant new trees.A paper recently published in Science predicts that our Earth could support an additional 9，000，000 sq km of forest, potentially hosting 500 billion trees that are able to absorb more than 200 billion tons of CO2.It would be a serious help.The Earth's land is 149，000，000 sq km.According to our study, when we take out glaciers and deserts, we are left with 104，000，000 sq km.When we further take out cities, freshwater, forests, etc., we finally get 51，000，000 sq km of arable (适于耕种的)land badly needed to feed 7.5 billion human beings.Very few people are aware of the great complexity of the whole system.“Widespread use at the scale of millions of square kilometers globally of treeplanting and bioenergy crops (用于制造生物能源的农作物)planting，”reads an IPCC report, “could have potentially bad consequences for food security and land degradation (退化).” In other words, more widespread monoculture(单一栽培)and more bioenergy crops could degrade soil.Bioenergy now has a 50 per cent share of the world's renewable energy consumption, according to expert Fatih Birol's words: “as much as wind, solar and all others combined”．It's good news, but not entirely.One reason is that rising ocean levels and deserts spreading are taking away more arable land.So we arrive at a tough choice.Should we use our spare soil for agriculture, reforestation or bioenergy?Firstly, when planning to use lots of spare land to grow trees, we should notice that last year, 36，000 sq km of forest was cut down.So wouldn't it be better to start by stopping cutting down forests altogether? Besides, animal farming takes up 77 per cent of the world's arable land and provides us with 18 per cent of the calories.Shouldn't we globally cut back on meat consumption? Lastly, modern bioenergy, which is made from nonfood-crops, is already available.Shouldn't weavoid firstgeneration biofuels, which are obtained from food crops?12．What does the Science paper predict?A．People will be more active in planting trees.B．The climate change will lessen in the future.C．Large quantities of trees can help handle CO2.D．Trees will play a much bigger role in our daily life.13．What are the figures in Paragraph 2 mainly intended to show?A．Humans face a freshwater crisis.B．The Earth's land has various functions.C．Forests take up a small part of the Earth's land.D.The arable land is hard to feed the world's population．14．What can be inferred from the IPCC report?A．Planting trees benefits bioenergy crops.B．More land can be used for growing bioenergy crops.C．The condition of plenty of land has been improved.D．Large scale of treeplanting may be a doubleedged sword.15．What's the last paragraph mainly about?A．How to properly use our spare soil.B．How to produce more trees and biofuels.C.Why to protect our environment.D．What to know about our role in nature.Ⅱ.阅读七选五Social psychology's roots were laid in the late 1800s of Europe.Social psychology became a distinct discipline in the 1920s. 16 He was called the “father” of the discipline.17 Social psychology studies people's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.It also examines interpersonal interaction, analyzing the way in which someone interacts with other people.It also examines cultural influences like advertisements, books, films, television, and radio.Social psychologists like to use empirical (以实验为依据的)methods to conduct studies in their fields.These methods often involve experiments which can bring up complex ethical (伦理的) problems.One of the most infamous social psychology experiments was the Stanford PrisonExperiment. 18 To avoid a repeat of such questionable experiments, social psychologists rely on the efforts of ethics committees to ensure that their work is ethically allowable.The study of social psychology is significant.It can explain how groups make decisions, which social conditions can lead to improper behavior, etc.And social psychologists are constantly learning more about the science behind human interactions. 19If you want to learn more about this field of psychology, you may be able to take an introductory course at a local college in your area. 20 Once you start studying the discipline, try to be devoted to it!A．Or you may give lectures on this field.B．Social psychology deals with a wide range of areas.C．It was shut down at last because it got out of control.D．One of the major influences in the field was Kurt Lewin.E．So social psychology is a discipline that's beneficial to humans.F．Zimbardo is also a very famous social psychologist in the world.G．You can also consult your library for some published texts on the subject.选择性必修第一册 Unit 3(限时：35分钟)Ⅰ.阅读理解AHere are some fun and engaging ways to learn about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and what you can do to take action to make them a reality.Freerice from WFPFreerice is a free online educational game where people of all ages can do their part —simply by playing.Every right answer on Freerice brings a real financial donation to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) from sponsors worth about 10 grains of e your time and knowledge to help provide food for people in need.FriedaStorytelling is a powerful communication tool and helps children remember lessons and virtues that they will use in everyday life. The idea behind the production of the story of Frieda is to simplify the lessons of the SDGs so young children can better understand the SDGs.SDG PandasInspired by reallife animal ambassadors (大使) Qiqi and Diandian, SDG Pandas are stickers that you can use in your WhatsApp conversations to help spread the SDGs and inspire action for a better world.SDG ElyxElyx, the United Nations' digital ambassador, uses various expressions and actions to help demonstrate the meaning of each Sustainable Development Goal.Created by French artist YAK, Elyx has no race, sex or nationality and is a universal character promoting the importance of the United Nations' work.语篇解读：本文是一篇应用文。

lsu_sh2011

C A L L F O R P A P E R SLATVIA UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTUREF A C U L T Y O F E C O N O M I C Sin cooperation withLatvia Academy of Agricultural and Forestry SciencesNordic Association of Agricultural Scientistsinvites to the 12thInternational Scientific ConferenceECONOMIC SCIENCE FOR RURALDEVELOPMENT ‟ 2011April 28-29, 2011, Jelgava, LatviaACADEMIC TRACKSWe invite papers in one of the following academic tracks:∙Production and co-operation in primary and secondary agriculture∙Integrated and sustainable development∙Finance and tax∙Education and science∙Resources and sustainable consumption∙Home economicsAuthors may deliver their work during the conference either as a regular presentation or a poster presentation.THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEEProfessor Baiba Rivža, Latvia University of Agriculture /Latvia/Professor Edi Defrancesco, University of Padova /Italy/Professor Arild Sæther, University of Agder /Norway/Professor Jacques Viaene, University of Gent /Belgium/Professor Bo Öhlmer, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences /Sweden/Professor Vilija Alekneviciene, Lithuanian Agricultural University /Lithuania/Professor Antoni Mickiewicz,University of Agriculture in Szczecin /Poland/Associate Professor Ferhat Baskan Ozgen, University of Adnan Menderes /Turkey/ Associate Professor Bruna Maria Zolin,University of Venice /Italy/Professor Irina Pilvere, Latvia University of Agriculture /Latvia/Professor Ingrida Jakušonoka,Latvia University of Agriculture /Latvia/Associate Professor Gunita Mazūre,Latvia University of Agriculture /Latvia/ IMPORTANT DATESThe most important dates to remember are as follows:∙Submit your registration through the online submission form before November 15, 2010.∙Pay the registration fee for the conference before March 15, 2011 (early bid payment –January 15, 2011).∙The conference will be held during April 28-29, 2011.∙Email your formatted manuscript after your online submission is accepted and before January 15, 2011.∙The proceedings will be published before the Conference.Authors shall email the complete article, signed and scanned the author‟s guarantee form to Gunita.Mazure@llu.lv and by post to the address below. Within a few days of receiving your online submission, we will notify you on the acceptance or rejection for the conference. CONFERENCE LANGUAGEThe official language of the Conference is English. Simultaneous interpreting (English-Latvian-English) will be provided during the Plenary session.REVIEW AND PUBLISHINGAll papers will be reviewed by two reviewers. All participants have to provide one review from their own country (both - electronic and signed) along with the paper. The other reviewer will be provided by the Conference Editorial Board. After the reviewing procedure and consideration of remarks the article may be returned to the author for revision. One week is given (starting from the day when the article is returned to the author) to review the article following reviewer‟s remarks.ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING SERVICESFull length papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings (ISSN 1691-3078). The Conference Proceedings are indexed in AGRIS, CAB Abstracts and EBSCOhost Academic Search Complete databases.CONFERENCE PROGRAMMEThursday, April 28th10.00 – 12.00 Opening and Plenary session12.00 – 13.00 Poster presentation13:00 – 14:00 Lunch break14.00 – 18.00 Sessions18.00 Welcome dinnerFriday, April 29th9.00 – 13.00 Sessions13:00 – 14:00 Lunch break14.00 – 19.00 Conference TourCONFERENCE FEEThe conference fee is EUR 120 or LVL 85. Early Bid payment fee is EUR 100 or LVL 70. The participation fee includes reviewing and editing of papers, technical costs for publishing the Proceedings, welcome dinner and coffee breaks during the conference. The fee does not cover accommodation, travel costs and the conference tour.The Conference fee shall be paid to:Latvijas Lauksaimniecības universitāteReg. No. 90000041898Bank: Valsts kaseSWIFT code: TRELLV22Account No.: LV76TREL9160031000000Aim:Payment for the Conference “Economic Science for Rural Development‟ 2011”. Payments missing the aim and the payer‟s name, surname will be considered invalid. REGISTRATIONRegistration form found at http://www.ef.llu.lv/index.htm?p=2 shall be filled in before November 15, 2010.CONTACT INFORMATIONContact person: Gunita MazūreE-mail: Gunita.Mazure@llu.lvPh. (+371) 29844628Address: Svētes iela 18, Jelgava, LV- 3001Yours faithfully,IRINA PILVERE,Professor, Dr. oec.Dean of the Faculty of EconomicsREQUIREMENTS FOR RESEARCH PAPERS PUBLISHED IN THE PROCEEDINGS “ECONOMIC SCIENCE FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT”LanguageArticles submitted for publication shall be in English. Articles shall conform to the standard language (British English) usage requirements, be edited and proofread.LayoutThe manuscript should be laid out on a A4 size (210 x 297 mm) paper and set in a single column. The length of the article should be 7-10 pages in Times New Roman, font size 11 pt, line spacing 1.5 and margins 25 mm, justified. Articles shall be created with Microsoft Word editor (preferably in 2003 version) for Microsoft Windows operating system.Structure of the paperTitle of the Paper(14 pt, Bold, centred)Name Surname (12 pt, Bold)A uthor‟s affiliation, scientific or academic degree(10 pt, Normal, Italic)Abstract (11 pt, Bold)Abstract shall be written in the same language as the article (up to 250 words in English reflecting the essence, content and research results of the paper) and placed before the main body of the article.Key words:not more than 5 items(11 pt, Bold).Introduction (12 pt, Bold)Introduction includes the description of the situation, problems, set hypothesis, aim and tasks of the research, research methods applied, and presents novelty and topicality of the research as well as lists problematic questions of the conducted research (11 pt, Normal).Results and discussion (12 pt, Bold)Text, tables, figures, formulae with references, data source references, evaluation of validity for calculations (11 pt, Normal).Conclusions, proposals, recommendations (12 pt, Bold).Text(11 pt, Normal).Bibliography(11 pt, Bold)Text(10 pt, Normal).Text requirementsTables - MS Word or Excel, understandable even without reading the text. Tables in the paper shall be given in Arabic numerals. The word …Table‟ and number are placed at the right margin. Table‟s title is centred in a new paragraph. Tables in size over a full page are not recommended.Table 1TitleNo. Question Group A Group B1. Text 1 5 82. Text 2 7 3Source: ....If a provided table or its part has been published in another source, a primary source shall be indicated below (10 pt).Figures–in black and white, background not shaded. Titles of figures are placed below the figures.B ACSource: ....Fig. 1. TitleFormulae - MS Equation, numbered.References shall be given in the Harvard System of short references (e.g. Jacob E., 1998) with a full alphabetical list at the end. If a publication is authored by an organisation or has no author, the title of the organisation or publication and year of publication are indicated, e.g. (Ministry of Economics, 2010). If the publication has no author and its title is long, first three words followed by ellipsis and year of publication are indicated, e.g. (Company Financial Indicators ..., 2007).Pages are numbered.Use (.) as decimal point in the text, tables and figures, e.g., 0.56 or 12.67%Guidelines for formatting the bibliography:1.Journal article with author(s)Soufani, K. (2002). On the Determinants of Factoring as a Financing Choice: Evidence from the UK.Journal of Economics and Business, Volume 54, Issue 2, pp. 239-252.2.BooksPhelps, E. S. (1972). Inflation Policy and Unemployment Theory. New York: Norton. p. 322.3.Internet sourcesKaranassou, M., Sala, H., Salvador, P.F. (2007). Capital Accumulation and Unemployment: New Insights on the Nordic Experience. IZA Discussion Paper, 3066. Retrieved: /abstract=1025889. Access: 16 September, 2009.AUTHOR…S GUARANTEE FORMCONCERNING THE ARTICLE PRESENTED FOR PUBLICATION..... - ..... - 2011Author(s),_______________________________________________________________________________First name, last name____________________________________________________________________________, guarantee(s) that the article_______________________________________________________________________________Title of the article____________________________________________________________________________,hereinafter referred to as “Paper”, presented at the 12th International Scientific Conference “Economic Science for Rural Development‟ 2011”is an original paper and1)it was written by the Author(s) indicated in the Paper;2)the material of the Paper was not published in any other publication;3)the material of the Paper is not and will not be presented for publication to anyother publication;4)the Paper does not contain statements, which do not correspond to reality, ormaterial, which may infringe upon the intellectual property rights of another personor legal entity, and upon the conditions and requirements of sponsors or providersof financial support;5)all references used in the Paper are indicated and, to the extent the Paperincorporates text passages, figures, data or other material from the works of others,the undersigned has obtained any necessary permits;6)permit shall be granted to distribute the Paper in any format;7)undertakes to indemnify and hold harmless the publisher of the journal and thirdparties from any damage or expense that may arise in the event of a breach of anyof the guarantees set forth above;8)the Author(s) shall bear legal responsibility for correctness of the data provided inthe Author…s Guarantee Form in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Latvia.If the Paper is not accepted for publication in the Proceedings, this guarantee form becomes null and void, and the submitted Paper is not returned to the Author(s).Authors:________________________________________________________________________ (First name, last name)(signature)________________________________________________________________________ (First name, last name)(signature)________________________________________________________________________ (First name, last name)(signature)________________________________________________________________________ (First name, last name)(signature)。

中央财经大学

10
Children born to serve the country (cont.d)
• Maintained the birth rate to maintain military power
Until 30 years old all men lived in one house and were not full-fledged citizens free to live with their wives, to make clandestine marriage instill an early burning love Physical training of bare boys and girls together in a place to draw and allure young men to marry while men who would not marry walked bare outside. Fathers of 3 exempt from military service The state would find another younger mate for a childless wife. • No jealousy • Children were not private to any men but common to the common
中国经济与管理研究院

March 28 & April 6 & 13, 2008 2008年3月28日和4月6和13日
1
Socrates (苏格拉底)
Taught, but not for money like the Sophists. Like the Sophists’, his pupils were from aristocratic party. Taught and sought knowledge by the method of dialectic (question & answer, first practiced by Zeno 芝诺) in dialogues

翻译文献一

ReviewClay in cement-based materials:Critical overview ofstate-of-the-artM.L.Nehdi ⇑Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,University of Western Ontario,London,Ontario,Canadah i g h l i g h t sCritical overview of effects of clay in cement-based materials is provided. Dimensional stability of aggregates bearing clay minerals is examined. Treatment of clays to mitigate their detrimental effects in concrete is outlined. Research on nano-clays in cement-based materials is highlighted.How to resolve ambiguity related to clays in cement-based materials is discussed.a r t i c l e i n f o Article history:Received 23May 2013Received in revised form 10October 2013Accepted 31October 2013Available online 28November 2013Keywords:Clay SandAggregate Concrete Workability Admixture Swelling Durability Nanoa b s t r a c tLimitations in guidelines and standards on the amount of clay in sand and coarse aggregate micro-ﬁnes and the inﬂuence of such micro-ﬁnes on fresh and hardened concrete properties is often ambiguous for practitioners and quality control professionals.This is compounded by conﬂicting related data in the open literature and the inadequacy of some standard test procedures for capturing the real problems associated with the presence of clays in cement-based materials.This paper examines the various types of clay,limitations on clays in aggregates in various standards,and the test methods used to assess the presence of clays in aggregates.A critical overview of literature on the possible effects of clay in cement-based materials is provided,including effects on water demand,workability,mechanical strength,dimensional stability and chemical admixtures dosage.The problem of dimensional stability of aggre-gates bearing clay minerals is examined.Possible chemical treatment of clays to mitigate their detrimen-tal effects in concrete is also outlined.Finally,emerging research on using nano-clays in cement-based materials is highlighted and recommendations to resolve ambiguity related to the presence of clays in cement-based materials are proposed.Ó2013Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved.Contents 1.Introduction (373)2.Different clay minerals and their behaviour................................................................................3733.Mechanisms of clay swelling............................................................................................3744.Effects of clay on properties of concrete...................................................................................3745.Effects of clay on chemical admixtures....................................................................................3766.Expansion of aggregates with clay bearing minerals.........................................................................3767.Test methods for clay in cement-based materials ...........................................................................3767.1.Aggregate durability index ........................................................................................3777.2.Sand equivalent test .............................................................................................3777.3.Methylene blue test .............................................................................................3777.4.Grace colorimetric modified methylene blue method ..................................................................3788.Standard limitations on clay content in aggregates..........................................................................3789.Chemical treatment of aggregates to mitigate effects of clay ..................................................................37810.Nano-clay in cement-based materials....................................................................................3790950-0618/$-see front matter Ó2013Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved./10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2013.10.059⇑Tel.:+1(519)6612111x88308.E-mail address:mnehdi@uwo.ca11.Concluding remarks (381)References (381)1.IntroductionThe Spanish proverb puts it best:‘‘clay and lime conceal much evil’’.This author sensed such perception of clay through personal involvement in high-proﬁle international projects(e.g.two of the tallest buildings in the world,world’s deepest and second largest water pumping and treatment plant,one of the world’s largest air-ports,a world landmark bridge,etc.).Ambiguity arises when stan-dards,technical provisions and subsequently project speciﬁcations may be unnecessarily restrictive on the amount of micro-ﬁnes al-lowed in aggregates used in concrete,while locally available sands and/or coarse aggregates cannot meet such limitations at compet-itive cost.Often futile debate emerges on what exactly is the nat-ure of aggregate micro-ﬁnes at hand,is it responsible for any performance issues of the concrete produced,how such an inﬂu-ence can be accurately quantiﬁed for various microﬁne contents, and can the limits on micro-ﬁnes be relaxed without short-or long-term performance problems of the concrete.The discussion can be fuelled with conﬂicting pieces of information sourced from the open literature or through personal communications.Therefore,this article is an attempt to demystify clay in con-crete,critically overview the state-of-the-art on this issue,and pro-vide a self-contained document that can scrutinise existing related data and the various pieces of evidence,examine the available test methods for evaluating the existence and effects of clays in ce-ment-based materials,and essentially savefort of navigating through this often2.Different clay minerals and theirDetailed information on clay mineralsin Fowden et al.[24].Clay minerals areand layered crystalline substances thatweathering of certain rock formingicates of aluminium and other metallictially two fundamental crystal layers,alumina(octahedral).It is basically theare stacked together with differentthe crystal lattice that differentiates clayite,illite and montmorillonite from onegeological conditions and prevailingmine which type of clay is formed.Clay minerals are commonly found in75l m material)of natural aggregates.ically less than2l m in size,but can be10sized clay materials and their unit cellsative charges on their surfaces.Whenbetween clay particles gets occupied byThe simultaneous presence of negativelyand the dipoles of water create electro-tract and hold the dipoles of water.Claymulti-layer formations.The chargedcharge around the particles are togetherlayer[39].The space between layers and the freeinterlayer space are the chief reasons formineral has a swelling behaviour.Theabsorption of water dipoles to theto be achieved.With decreased interlayeramong the layers become powerful and of water,so swelling does not occur.Conversely,as the interlayer space becomes more signiﬁcant,interlayer forces are so that water absorption in the interlayer space can progress until interlayer bonds fail.Hence,the clay particles get separated and rearranged and swelling occurs.The extent and kinetics of the mechanisms de-scribed above depend on several other parameters acting individ-ually or in combination.These include the density of the surface charge,the type and valence of the cations,the concentration of the electrolytes and the dielectric constant.Therefore,swelling depends on the type of clay mineral.Gener-ally,smectite minerals,with montmorillonite being a chief repre-sentative of this group,are considered swelling.Such smectites encompass repeat units of silica,gibbsite(aluminium hydroxyl groups)and adjacent silica layers joined by Van der Waals bonds (Fig.1).The substitution of aluminium for magnesium in the gibb-site layer and for silicon in the silica layer results in a net negative charge in smectites,thus imparting a high cation exchange capac-ity.In addition to their high cation exchange capacity,the inter-layer spacing between silica layers can increase in smectites through water absorption,causing substantial swelling.Con-versely,clay minerals such as pyrophyllite,margarite and illite are considered non-swelling.For instance,kaolinites comprise re-peat units of silica and gibbsite and lack the inter-layer spacing found between adjacent silica layers in smectites.Hence,their cat-ion exchange capacity is less than that of smectites and is predom-1.Schematic illustration of the layered structure present in montmorillonite (courtesy of J.Plank,2013).M.L.Nehdi/Construction and Building Materials51(2014)372–382373d-spacing when exchangeable cations are hydrated by an aqueous solution[7].The presence of clay minerals in coarse andﬁne aggregates can have remarkable effects on the workability of fresh concrete,effec-tiveness of chemical admixtures,and on the mechanical strength, dimensional stability and durability of hardened concrete.There-fore,it is paramount to determine the type and content of clay minerals in aggregates,develop rapid and reliableﬁeld test meth-ods to quantify deleterious clay minerals in aggregate stockpiles and recommend remedial techniques,if any,to make the clay-con-taminated aggregates adequate for use in concrete.In this article,a critical overview of the effects of clay minerals in cement-based materials is provided.The test methods used to assess the presence of clay in aggregates are examined,and inter-national standards on clay minerals in concrete are highlighted. The problem of dimensional stability of aggregates bearing clay minerals is discussed.Possible chemical treatment of clays to mit-igate their detrimental effects in concrete is also outlined.Finally, emerging research on using nano-clays in cement-based materials is highlighted.It is hoped that this critical analysis of international literature could mitigate existing ambiguity on the topic of clay in concrete among engineers and practitioners.3.Mechanisms of clay swellingThe mechanisms of clay swelling have been extensively dis-cussed in the literature.Only aspects relevant to clays in cement-based materials are considered herein.Much of this discussion is based on a review by Anderson et al.[8].In contact with water, exchangeable cations in the clay interlayer space tend to hydrate, forcing clay layers apart.Swelling can occur via two different re-gimes;crystalline and osmotic swelling.Crystalline swelling can occur in all types of clay minerals.This was shown to be a short-range swelling occurring in a discrete fashion,through the stepwise formation of mixtures of interlayer hydrates.Several layers of water molecules line up to form a qua-si-crystalline structure between unit layers resulting in an in-creased interlayer spacing.For instance,smectite clays absorb water and form one-,two-,three-and four-layer hydrates.The equilibrium layer spacing for a certain clay mineral is the state whereby the thermodynamic potential(free energy)is a global minimum given thermodynamic constraints of temperature,pres-sure,and water chemical potential(Anderson et al.[8]).Typical interlayer spacing recorded in the crystalline swelling regime ranges from9to20Å.Osmotic swelling occurs in particular clay minerals known to contain exchangeable cations in the interlayer region.When the concentration of cations in the interlayer space is higher than that in the surrounding solution,water molecules migrate into the interlayer space to restore cation equilibrium.This type of swelling can cause appreciably larger volume increases(interlayer spacing of20–130Å)than that resulting from crystalline swelling.For in-stance,smectites can swell in this osmotic fashion.Conversely, K+saturated smectite clay do not swell in this manner and form crystalline hydrates even in aqueous suspension[52].Thus,the K+ion can be used to prevent the swelling of sodium saturated clay minerals(Anderson,2010).The type,size and charge of exchangeable cations present in the clay interlayer space have a predominant effect on the magnitude of clay swelling.Water desorption isotherm measurements of montmorillonite intercalated with different monovalent exchange-able cations(Li+,Na+,K+,Rb+and Cs+)indicated that for larger cations,less water is adsorbed[40].Clay minerals incorporating monovalent cations having larger hydration energies tend to swell more than those containing cations with lower hydration energies.Furthermore,the type of substitutions present and layer charge of a clay mineral can signiﬁcantly inﬂuence its swelling characteris-tics.This is discussed in greater detail in Anderson et al.[8].4.Effects of clay on properties of concreteThere has long been concern that clay particles may be harmful to concrete because of their ability to absorb water and swell, which increases the water demand in fresh concrete.As early as 1933,Parsons[48]studied the effects of partially substituting clay for either10%by volume of cement or7.5%by volume ofﬁne aggregate,on the compressive strength,absorption,and perme-ability of concrete.Three different clays were used:red surface clay from Occoquan,blue clay from Baltimore,Maryland and yellow clay from Alexandria,Virginia,It was believed the clays were free from organic matter as they were used in brick manufacturing.It was observed that substituting10%of clay for cement by volume caused around0–10%decrease in compressive strength at ages be-yond three months,but there was no appreciable effect on perme-ability.Also,substituting clay for7.5%ofﬁne aggregate increased compressive strength by up to37%.The effects of clay on the water absorption,permeability,and resistance to freezing and thawing cycles of concrete were not signiﬁcant.In1934,Lyse[37]reported that experimental work at Lehigh University supported the claim that severe limits on the contents ofﬁnes in concrete were unnec-essary and even could become illogical when chemical admixtures are permitted.More recently,Solomon and Ekolu[60]investigated the incor-poration of clay soil into concrete mixtures as a means of making low-cost,low-strength construction materials for infrastructure in developing countries.Four control concrete mixtures with 350kg/m3of cement and water-to-cementitious content(w/cc)ra-tio of0.70,0.75;and with280kg/m3cementitious content with w/ cc=0.80and0.85were tested.Further mixtures had10%,20%,30%, 40%,and60%partial substitution of cement with local raw clay.It was found that clay–cement concrete mixtures with a maximum w/cc=0.80and20–30%clay replacement for cement can be suited to fulﬁl the strength and workability requirements for low-cost, low-strength applications including housing,roads and dams.Olanitori[47]reported that the higher the clay and silt content in sand,the higher was the cement dosage increment needed to maintain the compressive strength of concrete beyond20MPa, which is the value generally speciﬁed at28-d in Nigeria for a mix-ture ratio1:2:4.He recommended carrying out a comparative cost analysis between the cement dosage increments used for sand with a particular clay/silt content,and washing the sand to reduce the clay/silt content,so as to determine which is more cost-effec-tive to maintain20-MPa compressive strength.Li et al.[32]studied the workability,strength and modulus of elasticity,drying shrinkage and creep,freeze–thaw resistance and chloride ion permeability of C60high-performance concrete (HPC)made with manufactured sand(MS)containing 3.5–14% crushed limestone dust,versus that made with river sand(RS)with clay amounts of3%and5%.The clay content in MS decreased work-ability,increased drying shrinkage and accelerated freeze–thaw damage of the C60-HPC,but did not affect its compressive strength and chloride ion permeability.It was concluded that C60-HPC can be made with MS with a high content of crushed limestone dust, but the amount of clay in MS should be controlled.Norvell et al.[46]explored the effects of clay minerals present in natural aggregates versus that of clay-sized particles present in manufacturedﬁne aggregates on concrete performance by‘‘dop-ing’’micro-ﬁne aggregates with clay minerals and non-clay con-taining particles of similar size.Speciﬁcally,they investigated the effects on water demand,water-reducing admixture demand,374M.L.Nehdi/Construction and Building Materials51(2014)372–382compressive strength and drying shrinkage.It was concluded that clays do increase the water and superplasticizer demand in accor-dance with their interlayer absorption and cation exchange capac-ity,respectively(Table1).However,clay-sized particles(particles of similar size to clay but with different mineralogy)did not signif-icantly affect the water and superplasticizer demands at the levels studied.At constant w/c,only smectite(montmorillonite)clay was found to decrease compressive strength and to increase drying shrinkage.Li et al.[33]explored the effects of the clay content and charac-teristics,methylene blue value(MBV ranging from0.35to2.5)of manufactured sand(MS)and the limestoneﬁnes content on the performance of concrete.Results showed that with an increase in MBV,the workability,ﬂexural strength and7-d compressive strength of the MS concrete decreased,while the28-d compressive strength was not affected.Also,increasing MBV enhanced plastic and drying shrinkage cracking of the concrete and remarkably accelerated its freeze–thaw damage and abrasion loss.It was con-tended that the critical MBV was1.4;a value below which the per-formance of MS concrete is not signiﬁcantly compromised by the presence of clay.Since different speciﬁcations and code provisions deﬁne various limits for theﬁne impurities content of the concrete coarse aggre-gate,Seleem and El-Hefnawy[56]evaluated the effects of different levels ofﬁne impurities normally found in coarse aggregates in Egypt on the compressive strength and dimensional stability of concrete.Based on their test results,a higher limit ofﬁne impuri-ties(5%)in coarse aggregate was suggested,particularly when the increase in shrinkage is overcome using a superplasticizer and low-er water-to-cement-ratio.Chan and Wu[14]argued that research has shown silts and clays to be deleterious because in the mixing of concrete con-taining silts and clays more water is added to achieve adequate workability.They reasoned that the use of a superplasticizer at similar w/c ratio to that of a control OPC concrete not containing silts and clays may provide good quality concrete.They con-ducted trial concrete mixtures with particles less than150l m in size consisting of silts and clays obtained from crushed gran-ite stone along with a sulphonated naphthalene superplasticizer. They concluded that durable concrete could be made with25% partial replacement of cement with silt and clay using a w/c ra-tio of0.5.However,Chan and Wu[14]explored workability, strength and permeability of the silt and clay concrete,but did not assess its dimensional stability,abrasion and freeze–thaw resistance.Courard et al.[18]investigated the effects of various limestone ﬁllers on the fresh and hardened properties of self-compacting mortars.Six different limestoneﬁllers were used at15%,25%and 35%partial mass replacement of cement.Theﬁllers incorporated clays and had methylene blue absorption values between0.7and 5.0.Among the sixﬁllers,two contained swelling clays.It was found that the water requirement of limestoneﬁllers was primar-ily affected by their content of swelling clay.The water require-ment had a direct correlation with the methylene blue absorption and the BET speciﬁc surface of theﬁllers.The consis-tency of fresh mortars decreased with increasing swelling clay con-tent of the limestoneﬁllers.It was argued that despite the effect on fresh mortar properties,no major inﬂuence of clays on the behav-iour of hardened mortars was observed.Even the swelling clays did not hinder the porosity of limestoneﬁller modiﬁed mortars.It was contended that should superplasticizers be used to solve rheologi-cal problems,ﬁllers from the aggregate industry and stone sawing could be used in concrete manufacturing.Fernandes et al.[22]carried out an experimental study on clay–cement–sand composites.They compared the effects of pure quartz sand to that of two synthesized sands made by dry mixing of this pure sand with either20%by mass of kaolin or20%by mass of montmorillonite.They made various mortars with Type I OPC and variable sand types,water/cement ratios and sand/cement ratios.The28-d compressive strength was measured and X-ray diffraction was employed to examine whether any reactions between the clay and cement had oc-curred.A linear relationship existed between the amount of clay and corresponding amount of water needed to maintain certain workability.XRD analysis did not identify any secondary prod-ucts forming in the presence of clay.Moreover,the mixtures incorporating kaolin clay followed similar strength-w/c relation-ship to that of normal concrete,with lower strengths attributed to increased water demand and/or increased compaction difﬁ-culty,while those including montmorillonite followed a different relationship,suggesting that this clay had other deleterious ef-fects beyond the increased water demand.It was postulated that for the typical w/c and strength values of building materials in developing countries,satisfactory mortar and blocks can be made from clay-contaminated sand.However,the effect of the type of clay is signiﬁcant and structural concrete made with such materials needs proper durability and dimensional stability investigation.The effects of coarse aggregate coatings on concrete proper-ties were explored by Muñoz et al.[43].Seven concrete mixtures were made with coarse aggregates containing two types of coat-ings:naturalﬁeld-coated aggregates,and manufactured coated samples of dust and clayﬁnes.The effects of these coatings on concrete performance were examined by comparing the relative changes in physical and mechanical properties of the concrete versus that of a control concrete made with washed aggregates. It was concluded that microﬁne coatings on coarse aggregates can inﬂuence the properties of fresh and hardened concrete even when their amount in the passing No.200sieve is less than 1.5%.The extent and nature of such inﬂuence depend on the quantity and type of the microﬁne.Thus,ASTM C117,which only accounts for the quantity of micro-ﬁnes present in the aggre-gates,was not considered an adequate monitoring tool for this problem.It was suggested that the product of MBV(methylene blue value)and P200(maximum percentage of material passing the No.200sieve),referred to as the MMBV was the best overall predictor.Table1Water and admixture demand with clay minerals and non-clay sized minerals (modiﬁed after[46].Type of Mineral Waterdemand Superplasticizer dosage (w/c=0.42)Control:granite sand0.47 4.5Clay mineral1%Kaolinite0.50 6.04%Kaolinite0.608.01%Illite0.49 5.54%Illite0.5110.01%Montmorillonite0.6218.54%Montmorillonite0.90186.0Clay sized particles1%Fine calcium carbonate(60%<2l m)0.48–4%Fine calcium carbonate(60%<2l m)0.48 4.01%Ultraﬁne calcium carbonate(90%<2l m)0.49–4%Ultraﬁne calcium carbonate(90%<2l m)0.49 4.01%Ground silica(96%<5l m)0.47–1%Ground silica(96%<5l m)0.47 2.5M.L.Nehdi/Construction and Building Materials51(2014)372–3823755.Effects of clay on chemical admixturesIt is believed that their ability to readily exchange cations is the most deleterious feature of clays in concrete.Cations are ex-changed in order to balance inherent electrical charges on the sur-face of clay particles.Such cations can be readily exchanged with organic materials such as water-reducing admixtures and superp-lasticizers.This high afﬁnity to organic substances competes with the adsorption and dispersing mechanisms of chemical admixtures at the surface of cement and supplementary cementitious materi-als particles.Subsequently,as clay particles consume part of the chemical admixture,a higher dosage will be required to achieve certain workability.This not only has cost implications,but the very high admixture dosage can lead to excessively long setting time,delays in strength gain and formwork removal.Table1exhib-its the substantial effect observed by Norvell et al.[46]of swelling clay on the superplasticizer demand of concrete.In particular,there has been growing evidence that polycarbox-ilate-based superplasticizers(PCEs)are more sensitive to clays than poly-condensate superplasticizers.This is primarily due to their incorporation into the layered clay structure via their side chains,which impedes their dispersing ability.It was observed by several researchers(e.g.[55,31]that different types of PCEs show pronounced sensitivity to clay and their dispersing force de-creases signiﬁcantly in its presence.The predominantly used side chain in PCE superplasticizers is poly(ethylene oxide),which is known to easily intercalate within alumosilicate layers of clays (e.g.[36].Montmorillonite(MMT)was found to be particularly harmful to concreteﬂuidity compared to other clay minerals such as kaolinites(e.g.[27].This is caused by the expanding lattices of MMT,allowing intercalation,swelling and cation exchange[38].Li et al.[34]studied the inﬂuence of clay on the disperse-ability of polycarboxylate superplasticizers.They investigated theﬂuidity and viscosity of cement paste and examined the inﬂuence of clayﬁltrate on the molecular structure and kinetics of adsorption of PCE on the surface of clay particles in a simu-lated alkaline environment consisting of saturated calcium hydroxide solution.Theirﬁndings indicate that PCE has no dis-persing effect on cement paste once the clay content reached 15%.Increasing the PCE dosage mitigated this negative effect of clay.Moreover,it was found that the clayﬁltrate did not change the molecular structure of PCE nor did it affect its disperse-abil-ity.The kinetics of clay adsorption in the simulated alkaline environment on PCE was rapid,with an adsorption capacity about4times that on cement,with clay reaching its equilibrium adsorption within6min.Ng and Plank[44]tested PCEs consisting of methacrylic acid/ MPEG methacrylate-ester with molar ratios of6:1and1.5:1.They found that the tested PCEs sorb chemically and physically onto clay by amounts about100times higher than that on cement.Chemi-sorption appeared to take place via intercalation of the poly(ethyl-ene oxide)side chains into the interlayer region between alumos-ilicate layers,while physic-sorption occurred on positively charged clay surfaces through uptake of Ca2+.The type of sorption was dos-age dependent,with side chain intercalation dominating at higher PCE dosage,while electrostatic attraction via the clay surfaces an-ionic backbone prevailed at lower dosage.Since PCEs possessing high grafting density were more vulnerable to clay effects,it was argued that poly-glycols can be utilised as sacriﬁcial agents when highly grafted PCEs are employed at high dosages.Lei and Plank[31]asserted that new PCE superplasticizers pos-sessing modiﬁed chemical structure for enhanced robustness to-wards clay need to be developed.Hence,they synthetized modiﬁed PCEs from methacrylic acid and hydroxyl-alkyl methac-rylate esters and tested their dispersion performance in cement with and without montmorillonite clay.The new PCE was found to disperse cement effectively in the presence of clay and was much less affected by clay than conventional PCEs.A mechanistic study including adsorption and XRD experiments revealed that the new PCE only adsorbs on the surface of clay and does not incor-porate into its layered structure,which explains its tolerance to clay contamination.6.Expansion of aggregates with clay bearing mineralsThe dimensional stability of aggregates versus moisture changes has been discussed in detail by Shayan[59].Generally, dense and un-weathered aggregates are not affected by changes in moisture content.Their water absorption is generally less than 1%by mass of rock.Hence they usually retain their dimensions un-der wet or dry conditions.However,some vesicular rocks may ex-hibit high water absorption,yet can remain dimensionally stable provided they are free of expansive clay minerals.Once altered or weathered,rocks can exhibit expansive minerals,yielding high water absorption due to the ability of clay minerals to accommo-date water in its interlayer spaces.The formation of expansive clay minerals has been reported by several authors in basaltic rocks and in granophyre(e.g.in[59];its effects on the properties of the rock as a source of concrete aggregate have also been well documented.Water absorption by clay minerals in aggregates can cause expansion of the granular matrix,hence causing expansion of the concrete.Drying can exhibit excessive shrinkage,possibly leading to cracking,especially under repeated wetting/drying conditions (e.g.[16,54].Water vapour and nitrogen absorption studies and measurements of internal and external surface area of basalts (e.g.[16,58]revealed a direct relationship between the length change of rock prisms subjected to wetting/drying cycles and their clay content.Similar relationships have also been established for granophyre and basalt[58,67].The dimensional stability and moisture sensitivity of rocks can be experimentally measured on prism specimens subjected to re-peated wetting–drying cycles and monitoring the associated length changes using accurate length measurement comparators (e.g.[16,57].Some indirect methods including correlating drying shrinkage with moisture absorption of aggregate or with adsorp-tion of other polar molecules such as methylene blue dye,have been used to predict the drying shrinkage of aggregates[59].In particular,the MBV value had a reasonable correlation with the clay content of tested materials and was successfully used to eval-uate a source rock for drying shrinkage before the development of a quarry at the site[57].Using124test specimens,a correlation was developed by Sha-yan[57]between drying shrinkage of aggregate and its MBV value. It was shown that MBV levels beyond1.75ml/g were associated with unacceptable aggregate drying shrinkage.Table2lists typical ranges of moisture-induced length changes measured on different rock prisms from Australian aggregate source rocks and reported by[59].It can be observed that andesitic tuffs,grey basalts and sandstones undergo signiﬁcant length changes upon wetting and drying,at times exceeding1000micro-strains.Except grey basalt, substantial dimensional instability in rocks has been linked to higher clay content.Likewise,when clay occurred in the form of an interconnected network in basalt(e.g.[17]or in the form of veins in granophyre(e.g.[57],the length change was much larger than when a similar amount of clay was present in isolated patches or in vesicles.7.Test methods for clay in cement-based materialsConsidering the signiﬁcant inﬂuence of the type and content of clay on the water and chemical admixture demand,mechanical376M.L.Nehdi/Construction and Building Materials51(2014)372–382。

名师导学高考二轮总复习英语阅读理解课件“七选五”课件1

这三个层面的线索很好地结合起来。例如，在看到表示并列或递进关系的关联词时，一般表示前后句子的名词或句意具有同指性；而表示转折让步关系的词则往往表示前后句子的名词同指，但句意对立，或褒贬对立或肯否对立；而表示例证关系的词则意味着在举例之前或之后有表述概念或某一观点的句子，往往会有复数名词出现。以下四类为常用的关联词，请大家一定要背熟：
(4)时间顺序：afterwards， at first， at last， finally，first，firstly，in the first place，to start with，in the mean time， last， later， next， second， secondly， then， third， thirdly， to begin with 以及一些具体的时间。
对比关系。此时要注意在选项中查找表示转折、对比的关联词，同时注意选项中所讲内容是否与前文在同一主题上形成对立、对比关系。④与前
文是并列或排比关系。在这种情况下，通常是该段落要求补全说明本段主题的其他细节，因此根
据段落一致性原则，在原文和选项中找到相关的特征词，通常在选项中会出现表示并列/递进关系的关联词或与前文类似的句式结构，或出现同义词等其他信号线索。前面的一句与正确答案的第一句是紧
3.做完后，通读全文。将所选项放入空白处，通读一遍，看看是否与上下文构成语义及逻辑上的直接关系，是否符合该处语境。能否承接前后的写作线索。使文章无论内容还是衔接上都能做到通顺。若代入选项后，发现文章写作线索中断或是前后矛盾，应更换其它选项。同时，我们还应注意对相近选项的对比分析，个别干扰项由于与某个正确选项的内容相近具有很强的干扰性，这时就需要我们认真分析，仔细甄别，排除干扰，从而得出正确选项。

何凯文每日一句20

何凯文每日一句201.We are cut from the same cloth.我们是同一类人。

2.What you're asking is just shy of treason.注意短语：shy of 几乎…你要求我做的几乎就是在叛国。

3.I don't like frank.But I hate being in the minority even more.我不喜欢frank ,但我更不喜欢做少数派。

4.I am not the big fan of those odds.我不喜欢这样的机率。

5.Nobody on this planet wants to see frank underwood go to jail more than I do. 这个世界上没有谁比我更愿意看到frank underwood入狱了。

6.You did this to me.是你让我这样的。

（你害了我）7.The political landscape shifted. 政治的风向变了8.The truth is a powerful thing. 真相往往是最有力的。

9.Haven't you built a fortune by minimizing risk?难道你没有通过最小化风险来积累你的财富？10.Walker is a junk bond quickly depreciating, whereas I can end the conflict with China and keep you in the black.注意短语：in the black 赚钱Walker 就是一个垃圾股而且在迅速贬值。

但是我可以让你结束和中国的冲突，让你赚钱。

11.It might give you some small degree of comfort.这样可能会让你稍微好受一些。

应收账款外文参考文献

应收账款外文参考文献应收账款（Accounts Receivable）是指企业向客户出售商品或提供服务，而尚未收到与之相应的货款或费用时，对客户的债权关系。

应收账款对企业的现金流和财务结构具有重要影响。

以下是一些关于应收账款的外文参考文献供参考。

1. “The Impact of Accounts Receivable on a Firm's Financial Statements” by William Y. Jiang该文研究了应收账款对企业财务报表的影响。

作者指出，应收账款增加会增加企业的总资产和所有者权益，但会降低现金和流动资产比率。

此外，作者还从财务报表的角度分析了如何更好地管理应收账款，以提高企业的偿债能力和利润率。

2. “A Review of the Theories and Empirical Evidence on the Determinantsof Trade Credit” by Maurizio La Rocca and Tiziana La Rocca该文综述了有关贸易信贷决定因素的理论和实证研究。

研究者发现，除了企业的财务状况和信誉度，客户的经营能力、行业环境和政策法规等因素也会对应收账款的管理和授信决策产生影响。

该文旨在为企业制定应收账款策略提供参考。

3. “What Drives the Use of Factoring Services by Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises?” by Päivi Kozak and Yrjö Koskinen该文探讨了小型和中型企业使用保理服务的动因和效应。

研究者发现，应收账款的催收和融资是影响企业选择保理服务的主要因素。

此外，保理服务可以减少企业的信用风险和流动性风险，提高应收账款的转化率和减少账面账款欠款。

4. “The Relationship Between Accounts Receivable Management and Corporate Profitability: Evidence from the UK” by Nurul Nadia Mohamad Amin and Tunku Salha binti Tunku Ahmad该文从英国的实证角度分析了应收账款管理与企业盈利能力之间的关系。

英语四级必背写作套路

英语四级必背写作套路英语四级必背写作套路2016年12月英语四级考试马上就要来临了，大家的作文练得怎么样了?以下是yjbys网店铺整理的关于英语四级必背写作套路，供大家备考。

讨论观点类Different people have different views on_____.Some people think that_____,whereas others aegue that __________.As far as I am concerned, I agree with the opinion that ___________.For one thing,I firmly believe that ___________.For another,_____________.Just think of________,who/which_______.Taking all these factors into consideration,we may safely come to the conclusion that______.Only if_______can we _______,just as the saying goes,________________.In recent years there have been many reports of ________.It turns a new chapter of _________in China,and will have far-reaching effects in the forthcoming years.The biggest benefit,in my eyes,is that_______.In addition,_______.Finally,______________.Apart from the benefits mentioned above,we should also face several unavoidable challenges.In the first place,_____________.In the second place,________.What’s more,_______________.In summary,we should_______________.Nowadays more and more ______are commonly and widely used in everyday life,ranging from __________to_____________.The popularity of _______will have a great influence on ______.On the one hand,_________.On the other hand,__________.To conclude,____________are just like a double-edged sword.With them we may________.However,one point should bekept in mind that we should make sensible use,always being a master instead of slaving of them.提出问题类It is quite natural for ________to ponder over the question of whether to _______________.Many _________will choose not to______________,generally for three reasons.On the one hand,___________.On the other hand,______________.Most importantly,__________.Nevertheless, oher people adopt a completely different view,thinking that_____________.Moreover, they further argue that___________.From what we have discussed above,we can draw the conclusion that the question quite depends on personal choice.In my own eyes,________.When taking about whether _____________,we will be most surprised to fnd that the present situation is utterly complicated,For one thing ,__________.For another,_________.Three factors,in my point of view,account for this phenomenon.First and foremost,________.Secondly,____________.Last but not least,____________.As far as I am concerned,I firmly believe that____________,only when_____________.A national debate has sprung up on_____________.Many people welcome it with applause and enthusiasm,believing that___________.However, those who strongly oppose the _________are not among the minority.They hold that______________.Moreover,____________.In aword,______________.From my perspective,________should be____________.On theone hand,personally I would argue that_____________.On the other hand,____________.In conclusion,____________.解决办法类With the rapid growth of national economy,more and more_________,which causes a serious problem of_________.Urgent measures are needed to tackle the above-mentioned problem.On the one hand ,_________so that ____________is at hand.On the other hand,_____________.More importantly,____________.All in all,only when______can we solve the problem of _____________so as to meet everyone’s need .Ultimately,_____________.Nowadays, __________.It has become such a serious problem that it is arousing the concern of the entire society.To put an end to the serious problem, in my mind, it calls for the efforts from all sides. First of all,__________. Moreover,___________. Last but not least,___________.In my point of view, only when all of us join in the efforts of __________ at all levels can we expect to have _________ and ___________.If the Chinese people even want to improve their life quality, the problem of __________ has to be solved. With more and more people _______, this problem is becoming more and more serious in terms of scale and scope.First of all,_________. What’s more,__________. Only when all the people stop pursuing personal interests at the price of ________ can we hope to put an end to this unfavorable situation.The _________ is of great importance to every member of our society. As long as the government, society and individuals make joint efforts, a sound solution is not far away.评论反驳类Recently it seems that____________.MANY people,especially___________,think it will certainly do good to_____________because_____________.Moreover,_________.Nevertheless,after careful consideration,I have to state that the above view is more than biased,given the following readons.First of all,____________.Besides,__________.Furthermore,__________.We can see clearly that although_________may bring favorable results,there are still problems concerning_______.It seems necessary for ___________to make a careful consideration befero________.Until recently most people hold hostile attitudes towards_______.Some people view it as_____________while others consider it____________.Recent research,however,shows that___________is of great benefit in many respects._________,scientists tell us,_____________.Surprisingly enougu,____________also_______.The most remarkable thing about_______is that_______.Now we can draw the conclusion that_______.I strongly advocate that we should make good use of it to_________.In current society,we come across too many peole who put much emphasis on __________.In many cases,________has become the sole criterion for judging a person’s__________.I argue that we should not put too much emphasis on________.To begin with,we should not take it for granted that those who__________will naturally______________.Moreover,_____________.Yet,_____________.The above discussion points to a fact that_______________.Consequently,it is of vital importance for us torealize that_____________.图表类According to the chart / graph / diagram / table, we clearly learn that _________. As early as _________,___________. Then,_________. Last,__________. In contrast, by _________,__________.There are many reasons accounting for _________. Firstly, _________.Secondly,__________. Finally,_________. As a result,_________.As far as I am concerned,_________. For one thing,__________. For another,________. In brief, I hold that__________.What is shown in the chart / graph / diagram / table above indicates that in recent years, more and more people pay attention to _________. The number of those who _________ has increased ________, and furthermore,____________.There are two factors responsible for the changes. In the first place,_________. Moreover,__________. Yet, it is noticeable that __________.From the analysis, we can safely draw the conclusion that__________. It is possible that in the future, the tendency will__________.As is shown in the chart / graph / diagram / table above, __________ has charged drastically in the past _________. While ___________,now the percentage of__________ is __________. Meanwhile, the number of _________ has soared up to ________.There are mainly two possible reasons contributing to the rapid changes. The first is that _________. Secondly,__________.In my point of view, the changes have a great influence on _________. At the same time,_______. To sum up ,_________.分析原因类_________ is currently becoming a serve problem in China, which happen to ________. So long as ________, ___________ willalways unsurprisingly ________.Why does ________ become so rampant? First and foremost,__________. Secondly,_________. Last but not least, ________. As a consequence,___________.During the last decade, there has been a steady rise in the number of _________. In detail,________.Three reasons, in my mind, account for this social phenomenon. First and foremost,__________. Moreover,_________. In addition,___________. As a result,__________.Personally, I firmly believe that the problem derives from __________. Thus, if the government make relevant policies and take relevant measure to __________, the problem can be readily solved in __________.Nowadays,_________ is/are doing great harm to ___________.What are the incentives that drive people to _________? The most important factors should be __________. Furthermore,________. It directly leads to the patent and salient harmfulness that ________.Consequently, it is high time that the whole society should contribute to the collective efforts to put an end to ________.更多英语四级写作相关内容推荐：1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.下载全文。

2024学年山东省菏泽一中、单县一中高考仿真模拟英语试卷(含解析)

2024学年山东省菏泽一中、单县一中高考仿真模拟英语试卷注意事项：1．答题前，考生先将自己的姓名、准考证号填写清楚，将条形码准确粘贴在考生信息条形码粘贴区。

2．选择题必须使用2B铅笔填涂；非选择题必须使用0．5毫米黑色字迹的签字笔书写，字体工整、笔迹清楚。

3．请按照题号顺序在各题目的答题区域内作答，超出答题区域书写的答案无效；在草稿纸、试题卷上答题无效。

4．保持卡面清洁，不要折叠，不要弄破、弄皱，不准使用涂改液、修正带、刮纸刀。

第一部分（共20小题，每小题1.5分，满分30分）1．The draft regulation on the online protection of minors, ________ for public opinions by the cyberspace authorities, has drawn wide public concern.A．releasing B．having releasedC．to release D．released2．His strong sense of humor was make everyone in the room burst out laughing.A．so as to B．such as toC．so that D．such that3．The conflict between economic development and environmental protection, if not appropriately _________, can cause disastrous consequences in daily life settings.A．being managed B．to manageC．managed D．managing4．—People should stop using their cars and start using public transport.—________. The roads are too crowded as it is.A．All right B．ExactlyC．Go ahead D．Fine5．Lisa wouldn’t ________ the job any more. She h ad a big argument with her boss and resigned.A．come up with B．keep up withC．make up with D．put up with6．The project is far behind schedule. It’s impossible for you to ______ it in a week.A．catch upon B．live up toC．add up to D．hold on to7．_____by the English teacher for the high grade, I felt my effort finally paid off.A．Praise B．Praised C．To praise D．Praising8．Oh! The flower can’t be saved. If the flower had been watered，it now.A．wouldn’t be dying B．is deadC．had been dead D．will not die9．With WeChat Pay coming into widespread use, our household bills are convenient ____.A．paying B．paid C．to pay D．to be paid10．The accident have been caused by a dog running across the road, but we don’t know for sure.A．might B．shouldC．will D．must11．Most students study because it’s unavoidable. ________, there are students who actually enjoy it.A．As a result B．In additionC．In conclusion D．By contrast12．—Thank God! This school term is coming to an end!—Yeah, after all that hard work, we all a holiday.A．preserve B．observe C．reserve D．deserve13．---Mary was asked to do something important.---It doesn’t matter. Let’s the work where it is left off.A．take up B．take down C．take in D．take off14．---When shall we start the reconstruction of the historic building?--- Not until our program ______ by the authority.A. will approveB. will be approvedC. has approvedD. has been approved15．At the end of the historic area，Wilmington displayed its ________ as a working port city：large ware-houses and a few other dated office buildings．A．achievement B．reputationC．character D．standard16．As you go through this book, you ________ that each of the millions of people who lived through World War II had a different experience.A．will find B．foundC．had found D．have found17．— What happened to the young trees we planted last week?—The trees __________ well, but I didn’t water them.A．might grow B．would have grownC．needn’t have grown D．would grow18．When you are dressed in the latest style, dancing to the most fashionable music after watching the latest film, you feel great,______?A．aren't you B．don't you C．do you D．are you19．---Nowadays, buyers accustomed to prices moving upward just adopt a wait-and-see attitude.---If they continue to _____, then our company is closing down.A．fish in the air B．sit on the fenceC．fly off the handle D．beat around the bush20．---What does PM 2. 5 mean？---It's a professional_____________ indicating the condition of air pollution.A．number B．markC．term D．item第二部分阅读理解（满分40分）阅读下列短文，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项。

考博英语-598_真题-无答案

考博英语-598(总分100,考试时间90分钟)Part Ⅰ Reading ComprehensionText 1An invisible border divides those arguing **puters in the classroom on the behalf of students' career prospects and those arguing **puters in the classroom for broader reasons of radical educational reform. Very few writers on the subject have explored this distinction—indeed, contradiction—which goes to the heart of what is wrong with the campaign to **puters in the classroom.An education that aims at getting a student a certain kind of job is a technical education, justified for reasons radically different from why education is universally required by law. It is not simply to raise everyone's job prospects that all children are legally required to attend school into their teens. Rather, we have a certain conception of the American citizen, a character who is incomplete if he **petently assess how his livelihood and happiness are affected by things outside of himself. But this was not always the case; before it was legally required for all children to attend school until a certain age, it was widely accepted that some were just not equipped by nature to pursue this kind of education. With optimism characteristic of all industrialized countries, we came to accept that everyone is fit to be educated. Computer-education advocates forsake this optimistic notion for a pessimism that betrays their otherwise cheery outlook. Banking on the confusion between educational and vocational reasons for **puters into schools, computer-ed advocates often emphasize the job prospects of graduates over their educational achievement.There are some good arguments for a technical education given the right kind of student. Many European schools introduce the concept of professional training early on in order to make sure children are properly equipped for the professions they want to join. It is, however, presumptuous to insist that there will only be so many jobs for so many scientists, so many businessmen, so many accountants. Besides, this is unlikely to produce the needed number of every kind of professional in a country as large as ours and where the economy is spread over so many states and involves so many international corporations.But, for a small group of students, professional training might be the way to go since well-developed skills, all other factors being equal, can be the difference between having a job andnot. Of course, the basics of using **puter these days are very simple. It does not take a lifelong acquaintance to pick up various software programs. If one wanted to become a computer engineer, that is, of course, an entirely different story. **puter skills take—at the very longest—a couple of months to learn. In any case, **puter skills are **plementary to the host of real skills that are necessary to become any kind of professional. It should be observed, of course, that no school, vocational or not, is helped by a confusion over its purpose.1. The author thinks the present rush to **puters in the classroom is ______.A. far-reachingB. dubiously orientedC. self-contradictoryD. radically reformatory2. The belief that education is indispensable to all children ______.A. is indicative of a pessimism in disguiseB. came into being along with the arrival of computersC. is deeply rooted in the minds of computer-ed advocatesD. originated from the optimistic attitude of industrialized countries3. It could be inferred from the passage that in the author's country the European model of professional training is ______.A. dependent upon the starting age of candidatesB. worth trying in various social sectionsC. of little practical valueD. attractive to every kind of professional4. What's the meaning of the underlined word "presumptuous" in Paragraph 3?A. assumptiveB. selfishC. presumableD. worshipful5. According to the author, **puter skills should be ______.A. included as an auxiliary course in schoolB. highlighted in acquisition of professional qualificationsC. mastered through a life-long courseD. equally emphasized by any school, vocational or otherwiseText 2One of the saddest things about the period in which we live is the growing estrangement between America and Europe. This may be a surprising discovery to those who are over impressed by the speed with which turbojets can hop from New York to Paris. But to anyone who is aware of what America once meant to English libertarian poets and philosophers, to the young Ibsen bitterly excoriating European royalty for the murder of Lincoln, to Italian novelists and poets translating the nineteenth century American classics as a demonstration against Fascism, there is something particularly disquieting in the way that the European Left, historically "pro-American" because it identified America with expansive democracy, now punishes America with Europe's lack of hope in the future.Although America has obviously not fulfilled the visionary hope entertained for it in theromantic heyday, Americans have, until recently, thought of themselves as an idea, a "proposition" (in Lincoln's word) set up for the enlightenment and the improvement of mankind. Officially, we live by our original principles; we insist on this boastfully and even inhumanly. And it is precisely this steadfastness to principle that irks Europeans who under so many pressures have had to shift and to change, to compromise and to retreat.Historically, the obstinacy of America's faith in "principles" has been staggering—the sacrament of the Constitution, the legacy of the Founding Fathers, the Moral Tightness of all our policies, the invincibility of our faith in the equality and perfectibility of man. From the European point of view, there is something impossibly romantic, visionary, and finally outrageous about an attachment to political formulas that arose even before a European revolutionary democracy was born of the French Revolution, and that have survived all the socialist Utopias and internationals. Americans honestly insist on the equality of men even when they deny this equality in practice; they hold fast to romantic doctrines of perfectibility even when such doctrines contradict their actual or their formal faith—whether it be as scientists or as orthodox Christians.It is a fact that while Americans as a people are notoriously empirical, pragmatic, and unintellectual, they live their lives against a background of unalterable national shibboleths. The same abundance of theory that allowed Walt Whitman to fill out his poetry with philosophical road signs of American optimism allows a president to make pious references to God as an American tradition—references which, despite their somewhat mechanical quality, are not only sincere but which, to most Americans, express the reality of America.1. The writer uses the example of Ibsen and others to maintain that ______.A. Europeans do not have the proper appreciation of the United StatesB. Europeans have made a notable shift in attitude toward the United StatesC. American culture has been rediscovered by EuropeansD. Europeans no longer feel that there should be an exchange of ideas with Americans2. Judging from the context, "estrangement" (Line 1, Para. 1) probably means ______.A. strange feelingB. remotenessC. loss of affection or interestsD. feeling of hostility3. Until recently, Americans thought of their country as a ______.A. source of enlightenmentB. leader in technological progressC. recipient of a European heritageD. peacemaker4. The author states that American democracy in practice sometimes is in conflict with ______.A. theoretical notions of equalityB. other political systemsC. Europe's best interestsD. orthodox Christianity5. Which of the following was NOT mentioned by the author as an American principle?A. Equality of man.B. Moral Tightness as American policy decisions.C. Man's capacity to become perfect.D. The inviolability of the individual's integrity.Text 3Works of architecture are so much a part of our environment that we accept them as fixed and scarcely notice them until our attention is summoned. People have long known how to enclose space for the many purposes of life. The spatial aspect of the arts is most obvious in architecture. The architect makes groupings of enclosed spaces and enclosing masses, always keeping in mind the function of the structure, its construction and materials, and, of course, its design—the correlative of the other two. We experience architecture both visually and by moving through and around it, so that we perceive architectural space and mass together. The articulation of space and mass in building is expressed graphically in several ways; the principal ones include plans, sections, and elevations.A plan is essentially a map of floor, showing the placement of the masses of a structure and, therefore, the spaces they bound and enclose. A section, like a vertical plan, shows placement of the masses as if the buildings were cut through along a plane, often along a plane that is a major axis of the building. An elevation is a head-on view of an external or internal wall, showing its features and often other elements that would be visible beyond or before the wall.Our response to a building can range from simple contentment to astonishment and awe. Such reactions are products of our experience of a building's function, construction, and design; we react differently to a church, a gymnasium, and an office building. The very movements we must make to experience one building will differ widely and profoundly from the movements required to experience another. These movements will be controlled by the continuity or discontinuity of its axes. For example, in a central plan—one that radiates from a central point, as in the Pantheon in Rome—we perceive the whole spatial entity at once. In the long axial plan of a Christian basilica or a Gothic cathedral, however, our attention tends to focus on a given point—the altar at the eastern end of the nave. Mass and space can be interrelated to produce effects of **plexity, as, for example, in the Byzantine Church of the Katholikon. Thus, our experience of architecture will be the consequence of a great number of material and formal factors, including training, knowledge, and our perceptual and psychological makeup, which function in our experience of any work of art.1. The author thinks architecture is an art of ______.A. spaceB. graphicC. environmentD. masses2. According to the passage, a section shows ______.A. the horizontal placement of masses in buildingB. the vertical placement of masses in a buildingC. an interior view of the buildingD. an exterior view of the building3. We react differently to a church, a gymnasium, and an office building because ______.A. these buildings have different functions, constructions and designsB. they are actually products of our imaginationC. we have a wide range of emotions from simple contentment to astonishment and aweD. we have different experience in life4. From the last paragraph we can infer that ______.A. in the Pantheon in Rome our attention tends to focus on the altarB. in a Gothic cathedral mass and space are interrelated to produce effects of **plexityC. a Christian basilica is an example of central planD. in the Byzantine Church of the Katholikon the axes are discontinuous5. The author believes that in appreciating a sculpture, the factors that will function include ______.A. trainingB. knowledgeC. perceptual and psychological makeupD. all of the aboveText 4What new research reveals about the adolescent brain—from why kids bully to how the teen years shape the rest of your life. They say you never escape high school. And for better or worse, science is lending some credibility to that old saw. Thanks to sophisticated imaging technology and a raft of longitudinal studies, we're learning that the teen years are a period of crucial brain development subject to a host of environmental and genetic factors. This emerging research sheds light not only on why teenagers act the way they do, but how the experiences of adolescence—from rejection to binge drinking—can affect who we become as adults, how we handle stress, and the way we bond with others.One of the most important discoveries in this area of study, says Dr. Frances Jensen, a neuroscientist at Harvard, is that our brains are not finished maturing by adolescence, as was previously thought. Adolescent brains "are only about 80 percent of the way to maturity," she said at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in November. It takes until the mid-20s, and possibly later, for a brain to become fully developed.An excess of gray matter (the stuff that does the processing) at the beginning of adolescence makes us particularly brilliant at learning—the reason we're so good at picking up new languages starting in early childhood—but also particularly sensitive to the influences of our environment, both emotional and physical. Our brains, processing centers haven't been fully linked yet, particularly the parts responsible for helping to check our impulses and considering the long-term repercussions of our actions. "It's like a brain that's all revved up not knowing where it needs to go," says Jensen.It's partially because of this developmental timeline that a teen can be so quick to conjure a stinging remark, or a biting insult, and so uninhibited in firing it off at the nearest unfortunate target—a former friend, perhaps, or a bewildered parent. The impulse to hurl an insult is there, just as it may be for an adult in a stressful situation, but the brain regions that an adult might rely on to stop himself from saying something cruel just haven't caught up.In a paper published last year in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Dr. Jay Giedd, a scientist at the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institutes of Mental Health, wrote that, according to brain scans conducted over several years, gray-matter volume peaks around or just before the beginning of puberty, and then continuously declines. In contrast, white matter (the stuff that helps connect areas of the brain) increases right up to, and beyond, the end of puberty.These adolescent brain developments don't happen to all parts of the brain at the same time. "The order in which this maturation of connection goes, is from the back of the brain to the front of the brain," says Jensen.And one of the last parts to mature is the frontal lobe, a large area responsible for modulating reward, planning, impulsiveness, attention, acceptable social behavior, and other roles that are known as executive functions. It's thanks in part to the frontal lobe that we are able to schedule our time with any sort of efficiency, plan in advance to arrange for a designated driver on a night out (or stop drinking before one is over the legal limit), and restrain ourselves from getting into fights any time we get involved in an argument. Unfortunately, it's just these sorts of behaviors that teenage brains are not fully endowed to deal with—and the consequences are potentially fatal when it comes to high-risk behavior like drinking and driving.This blast of teen-brain change is compounded by profound social and psychological shifts. Of particular importance is that adolescence is the time when we develop stronger social connections with our peers, and more independence from our parents."Before the transition to adolescence, kids interact with one another, and the kinds of friendships that they have, are substantially different," explains Dr. Mitch Prinstein, professor and director of clinical psychology, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "After adolescence they can really confide in friends, they turn to them as first sources of social support. Kids tell us all the time they are more likely to tell their friends about things going on in their lives, and stressors, than any adult. "This cuts both ways. Healthy relationships have a positive effect on how an adolescent navigates through a tumultuous period of life. But at the same time, this reliance on friends makes young people susceptible to the influence of peer pressure, even when it is indirect.1. One of the most important discoveries in the adolescent brain is that adolescent brains ______.A. have become fully developedB. are mainly affected by environmental and genetic factorsC. are particularly sensitive to activities such as drinkingD. remain immature2. Teenagers are likely to ______.A. hurt the people closest to themB. be indifferent to their environmentC. have bewildered parentsD. try to stop themselves from saying something cruel3. Which of the following statements is correct?A. At the beginning of adolescence, our brains' processing centers have been fully linked.B. White matter volume peak just before the beginning of puberty.C. All parts of the adolescent brain do not develop at the same time.D. The maturation of connection goes from the front of the brain to the back of the brain.4. With the maturity of the frontal lobe, teenagers ______.A. can deal with high-risk behavior like drinking and drivingB. will avoid arguingC. never get into fightsD. schedule their time efficiently5. The author's attitude towards kids' reliance on their friends is ______.A. positiveB. objectiveC. subjectiveD. skepticalText 5Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival. What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for real.The official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services together, productivity has grown on average by 1.2% since 1987. That is somewhat faster than the average during the previous decade. And since 1991, productivity has increased by about 2% a year, which is more than twice the 1978—1987 average. The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary, says, a "disjunction" between the mass of business anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics.Some of this can be easily explained. New ways of organizing the workplace—all that re-engineering and downsizing—are only one contribution to the overall productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery, new technology, and investment in education and training. Moreover, most of the changes **panies make are intended to keep them profitable, and this need not always mean increasing productivity, switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much.Two other explanations are more speculative. First, some of the business restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done. Second, even if it was well done, it may have spread much less widely than people suppose.Leonard Schlesinger, a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bong Pain, a rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes, says that much "re-engineering" has been crude. In many cases, he believes, the loss of revenue has been greater than the reductions in cost. His colleague, Michael Beer, says that far too **panies have applied re-engineering in a mechanistic fashion, chopping out costs without giving sufficient thought to long-term profitability. BBDO's Al Rosenshine is blunter. He dismisses a lot of the work of re-engineering consultants as mere rubbish—"the worst sort of ambulance-chasing".1. According to the author, the American economic situation is ______.A. not as good as it seemsB. at its turning pointC. much better than it seemsD. near to complete recovery2. The official statistics on productivity growth ______.A. exclude the usual rebound in a business cycleB. fall short of businessmen's anticipationC. meet the expectation of business peopleD. fail to reflect the true state of economy3. The word "disjunction" (Line 7, Para. 2) probably means ______.A. divisionB. connectionC. unionD. segregation4. The author raises the question "what about pain without gain?" because ______.A. he questions the truth of "no gain without pain"B. he does not think the productivity revolution worksC. he wonders if the official statistics are misleadingD. he has conclusive evidence for the revival of businesses5. Which of the following statements is NOT mentioned in the passage?A. Radical reforms are essential for the increase of productivity.B. New ways of organizing workplaces may help to increase productivity.C. The reduction of costs is not a sure way to gain long-term profitability.D. The consultants are a bunch of good-for-nothings.。

坚志破浪行的英语作文

Determination is the key to breaking through the waves of life.It is the unwavering resolve that propels one forward,even in the face of adversity.A person with a strong will is like a ship with a sturdy hull,capable of weathering the stormiest seas.In life,we encounter numerous challenges and obstacles.It is our determination that helps us overcome these hurdles and move towards our goals.When faced with a difficult task,a determined person does not give up easily.Instead,they analyze the situation, devise a plan,and take action to achieve their objectives.One of the most important aspects of determination is the ability to set and pursue goals.A person with a strong will is able to identify their aspirations and work tirelessly to achieve them.They set clear,achievable targets and break them down into smaller, manageable steps.This approach allows them to track their progress and stay motivated throughout the journey.Another crucial element of determination is resilience.Life is full of ups and downs,and it is our ability to bounce back from setbacks that defines our success.A determined individual does not let failures or rejections deter them from their path.They learn from their mistakes,adapt their strategies,and continue moving forward.Persistence is also a hallmark of a determined person.They understand that success rarely comes overnight and are willing to put in the time and effort required to achieve their goals.This unwavering commitment to their objectives,even in the face of obstacles,is what sets them apart from others.Moreover,determination is closely linked to selfdiscipline.A person with a strong will is able to resist distractions and maintain focus on their goals.They prioritize their tasks, manage their time effectively,and stay disciplined in their pursuit of success.In conclusion,determination is an essential quality for anyone who wishes to achieve greatness in life.It is the driving force that helps us break through the waves of challenges and reach our destination.By setting clear goals,being resilient,persistent, and disciplined,we can cultivate a strong will and navigate the tumultuous seas of life with confidence and grace.。

无形要素禀赋假说

【专题名称】国际贸易研究【专题号】F52【复印期号】2011年07期【原文出处】《中国经济问题》(厦门)2011年2期第59～67页【英文标题】The Intangible Factor Endowment Hypothesis【作者简介】何琼隽，广东工业大学管理学院副教授，经济学博士（广州510520）。

【内容提要】本文从理论范式进步的角度，考察要素禀赋理论的现实解释力与理论框架拓展之间的关系。

由于经济全球化不同于自由贸易的基本假定，政府干预已成为国际经济活动的不可缺少因素，因而需要恰当地将代表政府干预的变量因素嵌入到以自由市场为制度特征的国际贸易纯理论框架，使贸易模型更能贴近当今国际经济现实。

本文选定国家竞争战略为这一变量因素，作为国家利益冲突本质特征函数的变量；假设“北方”、“南方”两国，分别拥有有形要素和无形要素两种要素禀赋，前者是可以通过市场获得的要素，后者则是指一国在全球市场中采取竞争战略等非市场机制所获得的要素；再进一步地，假定北国是无形要素丰裕的国家，南国是无形要素不丰裕的国家。

于是，本文得到了一个在无形要素禀赋意义上的“南—北贸易模型”理论框架。

显然，本文通过理论演绎得到的这一结果，扩充了要素禀赋理论框架。

通过对日美之间国家利益冲突如何从贸易摩擦演化成为汇率系统的战略较量的历史进行实证分析，验证了无形要素禀赋假说是成立的。

This paper explores the relationship between realistic explanation and theoretical framework developmentof factor endowments from the perspective of theoretical paradigm improvement. Government interventionshave been a critical factor in international economic affairs due to the globalization assumption, ratherthan the free-trade assumption. In order to describe current international reality more precisely bytrade model, it is necessary to embed the variable of government interventions into the theoreticalframework of international trade, which treats free market as its institutional feature. Nationalcompetitive strategy is selected as a variable, which implies nature of national interest conflicts:There are two countries, the North and the South, and both of them possess two factor endowments,tangible factor and intangible factor, and the former can be acquired from market exchange, while thelater one is the factor which can only be obtained by non-market mechanism, saying competitive strategy,in global market. Furthermore, the North is presumed as an intangible-factor-abandon country; whereas theSouth is presumed to be not an intangible-factor-abandon country. A theoretical framework on "South-NorthTrade Model" has been derived, on the implication of intangible factor endowments, and the research isconducted by theoretical induction, which expands the Factor Endowment Theory Framework. Focused on theevolution of national interest conflict from trade friction to strategic competition of exchange ratesystem between Japan and America, the Intangible Factor Endowment Hypothesis is tested empirically.【日期】2010-11-15【关键词】无形要素禀赋/国家竞争战略/国际贸易纯理论/自由市场经济体制/混合经济体制intangible factorendowment/national competitive strategy/international trade theory/free market economic institution/mixedeconomic institutionEE111UU1834341一、引言要素禀赋理论一向被视为国际贸易纯理论的核心内容，它有着丰富的内涵(Haberler，1950)。

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Journal of Economics and Business 54(2002)239–252On the determinants of factoring as a ﬁnancing choice:evidence from the UKKhaled Soufani ∗Department of Finance,John Molson School of Business,Concordia University,1455de Maisonneuve Blvd.West,Montreal,Que.,Canada H3G 1M8Received 30November 1999;received in revised form 21February 2001;accepted 27March 2001AbstractThis paper develops and tests hypotheses that explain the choice of factoring as a ﬁnancing source and the type of businesses using it in the UK.The tests focus on establishing a proﬁle of borrowers,based on ﬁrm’s demographic characteristics such as age,turnover,industry,and type of legal ownership.In addition to that we extend the analysis to test whether there exist any association between the use of factoring and the availability of credit to ﬁrms,the collateral requirements by banks and its value,the value of the ﬁrm’s debt,and also whether the business is experiencing ﬁnancial difﬁculties.The analysis refers to a survey of 3805companies of which 212were using factoring services.We ﬁnd evidence that each is an important determinant in ﬁrms’choice of factoring as a source of ﬁnance for working capital and an instrument to cash-ﬂow improvement but it is a ﬁnancial option that is not universally available.©2002Elsevier Science Inc.All rights reserved.JEL classiﬁcation:G32;G29Keywords:Factoring;Invoice ﬁnancing;Working capital1.IntroductionFactoring is a ﬁnancial process where a specialized ﬁrm purchases from its clients the trade debts or accounts receivables arising from the sales of goods or the provision of services to trade customers.The customer of the client ﬁrm becomes the debtor of the factor and thus,∗Tel.:+1-5514-848-2926.E-mail address:ksoufani@mercato.concordia.ca (K.Soufani).0148-6195/02/$–see front matter ©2002Elsevier Science Inc.All rights reserved.PII:S0148-6195(01)00064-9240K.Soufani/Journal of Economics and Business54(2002)239–252has to pay the factor directly.The factoring company assumes the credit risk,sales ledger administration and collection for the accepted accounts and maintains all necessary records in order to collect debts purchased.The process can be considered as a form of short-termﬁnancing that can potentially improve the working capital positions and alleviate the cash-ﬂow problems of businesses.The factoring market in the UK has grown steadily during the1990s recording an average annual rates of growth in excess of21%standing at about£60billion in1999(Factors and Discounters Association,2000).Finance through factoring is estimated to contribute over 6%in additionalﬁnance toﬁrms compared with3%provided through venture capital and 40%through bank loans(Bank of England,1998).Small–medium-size enterprises(SMEs)are seen as the driving force behind the growth of the industry(Hawkins,1993),however,small businesses face problems with regard to raisingﬁnance through regular borrowing andﬁnancial difﬁculties due to late payments,bad debts and cash-ﬂow crunches(Soufani,Binks,&Bruce, 1999).With the many difﬁculties faced by the small business sector,the uniqueﬁnancial problems that confront small businesses pertain to credit rationing(Stiglitz&Weiss,1981;Cressy,1996) andﬁnance gaps(Storey,1994;Mason&Harrison,1991;and Binks&Ennew,1997).This relates to the inability of theﬁrm to obtain start-up,early stage and cash-ﬂow enhancement ﬁnance from banking institutions.The existence of this problem normally directs many busi-nesses to seek alternative forms ofﬁnancing for their operations especially if the business is involved in trade credits which normally give rise to accounts receivables;the main collateral forﬁnance through factoring.Despite the impressive development in the factoring market little academic work has actually been undertaken to establish the role of this industry in business ﬁnance and the proﬁle of businesses constituting its client base.The work by Mian and Smith(1992)was mainly theoretical they prove using US data that there is the potential to develop an alternative and a robust theory with regard to accounts receivable management policy in businessﬁnance.The theory can then be tested empirically to evaluate the implications.Smith and Schnucker(1994)provided an empirical examination of organizational structure, where the economics of the factoring decision was evaluated.Their paperﬁnds that economies of scale have an impact on the decision to integrate,because credit management internalization is greater when the sellingﬁrm is larger and the percentage of trade credit customers is higher.A more recent work was conducted by Summers and Wilson(2000)using UK data.They found evidence of a“ﬁnancing demand”explanation for the use of factoring,and also some support for the theories which relate the decision to use the services of a factor to theﬁrm’s product characteristics and to the preference of the factor(supply constraint).They argued that the motivation to use factoring is more related to a demand for asset-basedﬁnance from small companies than toﬁrm-level choice about organizational structure.The evidence in this paper is presented in order to explain the motivation for using factoring and the type of businesses choosing it in terms of their demographic characteristics,such as size,age,sector,and type of ownership.In addition to that the paper examines whetherﬁrms’ﬁnancial distress and the relationship with their banks through the availability of credit,size and value of the collateral,total value of theﬁrms debt have an effect on their choice of using factoring.The explanatory variables were selected from a survey of3805companies of which 212were using factoring.K.Soufani/Journal of Economics and Business54(2002)239–252241 The paper is organized as follows.Section2will brieﬂy present,the background to the UK factoring industry and theﬁrms that traditionally use thisﬁnancial service.Section3establishes, the relationship between trade credit and factoring.Section4deals with the motivation for factoring use.The data and research method will be in Section5,while the testable hypothesis and the basic results andﬁndings will be presented in Sections6and7,respectively.Conclusions are given in Section8.2.The UK factoring industryThe historical development of the present day factor allows for a systematic evaluation of the traditional relationship between factoring and the type of businesses using it in the UK economy.Although factoring can be considered a relatively recent instrument inﬁnance,it nevertheless dates back to the middle ages when the factor fulﬁlled what was primarily a marketing role(Forman&Gilbert,1976).The English cloth industry in the14th and15th centuries experienced a major expansion and an increase in supply of raw materials on which heavy export duties were levied.The period relating to the expansion of the English cloth trade showed an extensive usage of credit in dealings between buyers and sellers.They argued that the shipping of merchandise to the factor that would act as a commission agent or represen-tative provided a convenient method for the manufacturer or the local merchant.The factor would take goods on consignment basis;his function would be the selling of these goods and consequently collecting the cash for the seller.For these functions of selling,maintenance of a sales ledger,and collection the factor would receive a commission.Since the factor had knowledge of the local market then he provided advice as to the suitability of the merchan-dise in that locality,the credit worthiness of the individual customer and for an additional fee guarantees the ability of the buyer to pay to the manufacturer or the merchant.This ad-vice was made possible because of the credit and market information which he accumulated through his dealings with a number of buyers,and as a result was able to form relatively pre-cise assessment and evaluation of the terms and times of payments.Therefore,since the factor had more knowledge about the credit situation and the receipt from debtors he was able to make advance payment to the manufacturer and consequently was able to ease theﬁnancial burden upon the supplier through the manufacturing,shipment,selling and collection period. It was further argued by Forman and Gilbert(1976)that the factor is found in the earliest records of trade between England and America.As the American and UK economies devel-oped further the textile industry grew and the traditional role between the factor and these ﬁrms remained.Over the years the factor dropped the marketing function but maintained the ﬁnancial one.Many of the UK textileﬁrms developed their own in house sales people and also depended on a network of brokers to exercise the marketing function whilst used the services of the factor to control credit,protect against bad debt andﬁnance the accounts receivables.Although larger textileﬁrms became less dependent on the services of the factor many smallerﬁrms maintained theﬁnancial aspect of the relationship.The factoring industry then expanded in the early1960s away from textile to other areas where knowledge and experience of credit checking,protection against bad debts,sales ledgering,debt242K.Soufani/Journal of Economics and Business54(2002)239–252collection and receivableﬁnancing could be applied.The expansion covered manufacturing, distribution and transportation.During the early1970s,the UK clearing banks began to participate in factoring and so there began the process and mechanism through which the concept of service factoring gained ground. Therefore,it would be fair to say that the basic shape of the present UK factoring industry was laid down by the mid-1970s.It was during this period that the service aspect of factoring was emphasized,the higher quality of the client was demanded,and the techniques of the factor was accepted not only in the textile industry where the historical association lies but also throughout the business community(Soufani,2000).This period saw the increased interest and involvement of the banking institutions;this was evident by seeing the banks taking a controlling shareholder position in most of the factoring companies.Bank owned factors account for93%of the market and independents the remaining7%.It is estimated that the industry provides working capital to over24,000businesses that between them employ over half a million people in the UK(Factors and Discounters Association, 1999).3.Trade credits and factoringIt has been the business norms for manyﬁrms to sell goods and services on credit rather than requiring immediate cash payment.It is estimated in the UK corporate sector that about 80%of daily business transactions are on credit terms(Summers&Wilson,2000).Firms extending credit must have an objective of minimizing the cost of credit extended to customers, the procedure must aim at ensuring that the cash forecasts relating to theﬂow of funds are conducted without cash-ﬂow strains,and these cash forecasts are upheld.Firms extend trade credit for many reasons,Mian and Smith(1992)identiﬁed three main incentives:cost advantage,market power,and taxes.Emery(1984)argues that trade credits are extended to avoidﬁnancial intermediary“rent”by directly conducting business outside theﬁnancial market.The dominance of customers was also sighted as a good reason for trade credit.The degree of competition in the market has meant that manufacturers and sellers have to conduct a non-price competition strategy,this is in order to acquire or even maintain existing customers(Soufani,2000).So in general for theﬁrm to adopt the policy of“buy now and pay latter”,credit extension becomes a source of survival and growth.Petersen and Rajan(1997)recognized the problem of testing theories of trade credit due to the limited availability of data.However,they found evidence thatﬁnancing to be a major factor inﬂuencing trade credit with smallﬁrms.Theﬁndings suggest that smallﬁrms use trade credit when credit fromﬁnancial institutions is not available.With regard to the suppliers decision they found that trade credit is extended to constrainedﬁrms because suppliers have more information in the market about the buyers,and that because of their position in the market they can liquidate assets more efﬁciently.In addition to this it was observed that suppliers who have an implicit equity stake in the smallﬁrm tend to extend trade credit.The study conducted by Long,Malitz and Ravid(1993)which developed and tested hypothe-sis using a large sample of manufacturingﬁrms in the US concluded that there were differences in trade credit both across and within industries.The importantﬁndings were that smallerﬁrmsK.Soufani/Journal of Economics and Business54(2002)239–252243 with longer production lead time,and thoseﬁrms that produce products that take a longer time to evaluate their quality tend to extend trade credit.Furthermore,they found that producers might increase the implicit cost of extending trade credit byﬁnancing their receivables through payables and short-term borrowing.In addition to thatﬁrms with more variable demand tend to extend more trade credit thanﬁrms with stable demand.The extension of trade credits generates accounts receivable to theﬁrm,where it is estimated that they represent up to35%of total assets for all companies’balance sheet in the UK(Summers&Wilson,2000).The existence of accounts receivable pertains to the availability of cash that needs to be unlocked for theﬁrm to enhance its working capital and improves its cash-ﬂow situation,hence sustaining its business operation;it is in this area the factoring industry can play a role.Cash strappedﬁrms due to the generation of trade credits and accounts receivable seekﬁnancial support in the form of overdraft facilities,credit lines,and short-term loans.However,manyﬁrms in the UK have ex-perienced difﬁculties in their relationship with the banking institutions because of the increased conservatism of UK banks that require collateral either in the form ofﬁxed assets or personal guarantees(Binks&Ennew,1998).Manyﬁrms especially small medium size enterprises have difﬁculties producing sufﬁcient collateral to obtain funds that alleviate working capital and cash-ﬂow problems;this situation can force them into bankruptcy.Consequently the use of a ﬁnancing option such as factoring becomes an important decision to increase theﬁrms liquidity by providing the accounts receivable as the collateral to acquireﬁnance.Depending on the type and size of the business,factors will immediately advance between80%and90%of the value of invoices.The remainder of theﬁnance is transferred to the business after the invoice has been paid less the charge for the service(approximately2%)and the interest payment(Bank of Eng-land,1999).This type ofﬁnance though more costly than a traditional bank loan or line of credit can greatly assist cashﬂow because it is sales-based(trade credits)rather than asset-based. 4.Motivation for factoringThe factoringﬁrm provides its clients with speciﬁc functions,namely,it substitute cash for accounts receivable,hence placing the client’s extension of credit on a self-liquidating basis as if it was selling for cash(i.e.,provision ofﬁnance for working capital).It assumes the credit risk for the accepted accounts,and thus,takes full responsibility for the solvency of such customers and their commitment to pay to the extent of the accepted or approved amounts(i.e.,provision of credit management).It also checks the credit and collects the accounts(i.e.,offering accounting services).The difference between factoring services and bank loans begins with the type of collat-eral used by theﬁrm seeking credit.Small businesses and growing corporations often have insufﬁcient assets to back up loans.Instead these businesses offer their accounts receivables as collateral.It is important to stress that accounts receivable are non-realized assets.Asset-based ﬁnancing is different in that tangible assets such as buildings,machinery and equity are used as collateral.These realized assets do not posses the same degree of risk as non-realized assets because they can be obtained and sold if theﬁrm defaults.Another difference between factoring and bank loans is the performance of credit risk assessment;factoring companies are interested in a number of qualitative and quantitative244K.Soufani/Journal of Economics and Business54(2002)239–252characteristics in determining loan acceptance or rejection.The risks related to these charac-teristics determine the fees attached to the credit.It is argued that the type of business(limited liability,proprietorship or partnership),its size,age,the sector to which the business belongs and also the type of customers the business is dealing with,all seem to be prime areas of interest for credit analysis(Soufani,2000).Factors are interested in good debtors to their clients be-cause ultimately the factoringﬁrm deals with the customer rather than its client,if the customer defaults it is the factor that assumes the risk and can potentially force them into bankruptcy. Banks on the other hand deal directly with the clientﬁrm seeking the loan.Factoring loans are fast,provided that the business is generating invoices and that the factor knows the customers of the supplier.Bank loans have a lengthy approval process that can be detrimental to businesses in need for immediate cash.Also the funding of the factor is tied to sales and that the proﬁtability of the business is not a prerequisite forﬁnance unlike in the case for bank loans.Factoring companies often claim that they are the idealﬁnancing option for small sized, young,and fast growingﬁrms operating in a speciﬁc business activity(e.g.,Hawkins,1993; Smith&Schnucker,1994;Bickers,1994).The available evidence on the supply side analysis of the factoring market show that the segmentation ofﬁrms that use factoring are more focused on smallﬁrms with turnover between£250,000and£3millions,1–5-year-old,limited liability companies in manufacturing,distribution,and transportation(Soufani,2000).If this is true then it will be reﬂected in the pattern of demand byﬁrms for factoring services.5.Data and research methodThe results of the analysis where derived from the survey of SMEs by the Forum of Private Business(Binks&Ennew,1996).This was theﬁfth biennial survey of the relationship between SMEs and their banks and theﬁrst to include a question on the use of factoring and invoice discounting.The survey recorded a total response of3805ﬁrms.This constituted a response rate of around30%.In terms of turnover the size distribution is skewed towards larger busi-nesses with around a quarter of the respondents represented in the smallest size category of £150,000–£500,000,nearly one-ﬁfth in the category between£500,000and£1million,and one-ﬁfth citing turnovers of over£1million.The sectoral distribution comprised of10%in primary,about20%in manufacturing,nearly30%in distribution and30%in services with 12.5%citing‘other’as a category.The average age ofﬁrm was16.69years with over55% between1and10-year-old.Therefore,there is sufﬁcient representation in all categories for the purposes of this analysis.A total of212ﬁrms used factoring accounting for around6%of respondents.This result is consistent and close to theﬁndings of other studies which investigated alternative forms of ﬁnancing small enterprises in the UK.Such as the ones conducted by the British Chamber of Commerce(February1994),and the Cambridge Small Business Research Centre(CSBRC, 1994)all of which reported average proportions of about6%.More detailed comparisons of the overall survey distribution and thoseﬁrms using factoring are presented below in Table1.A multivariate logistic regression model is used to control jointly for the determinants of factoring use.The logistic regression was used to model a binary variable,set to0for thoseK.Soufani/Journal of Economics and Business54(2002)239–252245 Table1Descriptive statistics of respondentﬁrmsNumber ofﬁrms Percent ofﬁrmsin sample(%)using factoring TurnoverLess than£1999958(1.6)(3)1.4%£20000–£49999226(6.2)(5)2.3%£50000–£149999717(19.8)(18)8.4%£150000–£249999554(15.3)(31)14.5%£250000–£499999729(20.1)(50)23.4%£500000–£749999382(10.5)(21)9.8%£750000–£1million258(7.1)(22)10.3%£1–£3million499(13.8)(44)20.6% Over£3million186(5.1)(19)8.9% SectorConstruction261(7.1)(11)5.6% Manufacturing731(19.6)(66)31.5% Transport/communication117(3.1)(7)3.3% Wholesale226(5.9)(24)11.3% Retail789(20.8)(28)13.2% Agriculture/forestry/ﬁshing63(1.6)(4)1.8% Financial services89(2.3)(3)1.4% Services704(18.5)(34)16% Professions336(8.8)(9)3.7% Other475(12.5)(26)12.2% AgeLess than1year48(1.3)(2)0.9%1–5years608(17)(63)29.7%6–10years890(24.9)(59)27.8%11–15years637(17.9)(26)12.2% Over15years1385(38.8)(62)29.2% Organizational formSole proprietors936(24.6)(36)17% Partnerships1042(27.4)(32)15% Limited companies1822(47.0)(144)68% Credit andﬁnancial situationCredit availability3273(86.0)(202)6.1% Collateral3222(62.4)(201)6.2% Value of collateral3332(87.5)(207)6.2% Value of loan1182(31.0)(84)7.1% Financial difﬁculty1561(42.9)(161)10.3% companies that do not use factoring and1for those that do,as a function of the determined explanatory variables.The use of factoring is postulated to be a function of a number of de-mographic characteristics such as size of a clientﬁrm,industry,age,and organizational form. Alsoﬁnancial and credit characteristics such as the availability of credit,availability and value246K.Soufani/Journal of Economics and Business54(2002)239–252of the collateral,value of loan and the prevalence ofﬁnancial difﬁculty.The choice of the inde-pendent variables is effectively based on the ones selected by Soufani(2000)when examining the inﬂuences on factoring use from the supplier’s perspective.Also the assumptions that exist in theory with regard toﬁrms seeking alternative forms ofﬁnancing due to their relationship with the banking institutions as delineated by parameters such as credit availability,collateral demand,andﬁnancial difﬁculties.The choice of the demographic characteristics of size as deﬁned by turnover,age,sector and type of ownership provide a foundation to build a proﬁle of theseﬁrms that use factoring and have problems with access toﬁnance.The choice of size as a variable indicates whether the clientﬁrm using the service is small,medium or large,thus,identifying a selection criterion and theﬁnancial and policy implications associated with it.Identifying the industry type of theﬁrms using factoring is conducive to establishing any relationship that may exist between the choice ofﬁnance and an industry due to the different parameters associated with the industry type, this allows for a market segmentation in terms of the provision ofﬁnance.The age of the client ﬁrm is considered an important variable to analyze for factoring use because it can identify the role of the business’life cycle and theﬁnancial needs and options available to it.Therefore, we can establish the potential role of factoring in relation to the number of years the business has been in operation and whether factoringﬁnance can be used for start-up,growing,mature or decliningﬁrms.The type of organization a clientﬁrm is can indicate if public companies, sole proprietors and partnerships,or limited companies prefer factoring as aﬁnancing option.If for example,the analysis reveals that public companies demand the factoring service then this contradicts earlier suggestions that small and youngﬁrms constitute the demand for factoring, therefore,some corroboration is useful to represent the analysis.Theﬁnancial variables chosen to explain the factoring use are credit availability and the value of the loan to theﬁrm,demand for and value of the collateral,and also theﬁnancial distress. Theory suggests that credit rationing(Stiglitz&Weiss,1981)andﬁnance gaps(Storey,1994; Mason&Harrison,1994;Binks&Ennew,1998)exist in small businessﬁck of credit availability;low loan value and demand for high level of collateral can act as proxies to represent credit rationing.Therefore,establishing whether there exists a relationship between factoring use and theseﬁnancial and credit explanatory variables can be conducive to setting a stage for the development of a robust theoretical and empirical analysis of alternativeﬁnancing option where factoring is assessed more closely as a possible potentialﬁnancing option.6.Testable hypothesesA comprehensive survey of factoring service suppliers in the UK in1997/1998(Soufani et al.,1999)and the one conducted for the Forum of Private Businesses(1996)revealed the following characteristics in terms of the proﬁle of the customer base and its relationship to the banking sector.They are treated as hypotheses for the purposes of analysis presented below. We focus on additional issues relating toﬁnancial variables as addressed in Hypotheses5–9. Hypothesis1.Businesses using factoring are relatively small when measured either by em-ployment or turnover.K.Soufani/Journal of Economics and Business54(2002)239–252247Hypothesis2.Factoring services tend to be more focused upon manufacturing and distribution. Hypothesis3.Factoring services tend to be focused uponﬁrms of1–5-year-old. Hypothesis4.Factoring services focus upon limited companies.Hypothesis5.The less is the availability of credit by banks the higher the usage of factoring. Hypothesis6.The less realistic the collateral requirements the higher the use of factoring. Hypothesis7.The use of factoring increases the higher is the value of collateral requested by banks.Hypothesis8.The higher the amount of debt,the more the business will use factoring. Hypothesis9.The greater theﬁnancial difﬁculty the business is facing the higher is the use of factoring.7.Basic results andﬁndings7.1.Factoring and business sizeThe analysis of the suppliers of factoring services(Soufani et al.,1999)suggested that the bulk of the market consisted ofﬁrms with turnovers of less than£1million.Evidence from interviews also suggested that the smallest and youngestﬁrms would rarely gain access to factoring services.This would support the argument in theory that the smallest and youngest ﬁrms would be excluded on the basis of low levels of business activity with associated low levels of potential factoring requirements or due to a lack of experience and track record.Conversely, more established and larger businesses might be expected to have developed more sophisticated relationships with their banks and other sources ofﬁnance alongside more developed invoicing and payment systems.Table3,supports the evidence collected from factoring suppliers and the arguments put forward for supposing that factoring would tend to be concentrated in a size band between the smallest at around£250,000turnover and£3million.Weﬁnd a signiﬁcantly positive relationship between factoring use and turnover except for less than£250and over£3million in annual turnover.Thisﬁnding supports the theoretical notion that small newﬁrms at their inception stage may have difﬁculty in raising any form of externalﬁnance.Thisﬁnding is consistent with the argument that factoringﬁrms need to observe sufﬁcient sales generated by their clients so that they can diversify their risk by controlling for a higher number of invoices issued and also a wider exposure to the customer base of their clients.As for turnover above£3million it is argued by Soufani et al.(1999)thatﬁrms reach a growth or success stage that may render the use of invoiceﬁnancing inefﬁcient in terms of cost effectiveness and the wider availability of alternativeﬁnancial resources such as bank credit.Therefore,it can be argued that ifﬁnancing by factoring is considered in the context of the stage model theories put forward by Churchill and Lewis(1983)and Scott and Bruce (1987)we might possibly expect the existence of a stage model ofﬁnancing the growth of small businesses.Where factoring can be considered as possible suitable option at a certain stage of theﬁrm’s development.。