Pengaruh Motivasi Kerja dan Disiplin terhadap Kinerja Guru di Lembaga Pendidikan Islam (Lpi) Nur Hikmah Bekasi

This study aims to determine the Influence of Motivation and Discipline on the Teacher Performance of Nur Hikmah Islamic Education Institute (LPI-NH) Bekasi either partially or simultaneously. The population in this study were 80 teachers in LPI-NH Bekasi, sample determination using formulas developed by Slovin to 65 teachers. Samples were taken using proportional random sampling technique. Method of collecting primary data in the form of questionnaire by using Likert scale. Validity and reliability testing using Pearson Product Moment and Cronbach Alpha statistics. The method of analysis to answer the hypothesis using multiple linear regression. The results showed that motivation and discipline have positive and significant influence either partially or simultaneously. Referring to the correlation matrix between dimensions, the highest correlation value is the dimension of adherence to the standard on the discipline variables on the dimensions of the implementation of learning on teacher performance variables. This suggests that a good learning quality will be achieved if the teacher is consistently disciplined to the standards set by the management. Through this research is expected to provide information and suggestions of strengthening to the LPI-NH management continue to make efforts to improve motivation and work discipline in order to make teacher performance can be optima

Pengaruh Brand Equity, Persepsi Harga Dan Distribusi Terhadap Kepuasan Pelanggan Produk Pakaian Merek Old Blue Company

This thesis aims is to know effect of brand equity, perceived price, and distribution to customer satisfaction on apparel brand Oldblue Company. The method that used is an explanatory analysis by data collection through literature review, observation, and interviews. This observation found that perceived price variables has no significant effect on customer satisfaction, while other variables, brand equity anddistribution in individually and simultaneously have significant effect on customer satisfaction. Brand feelings or self-confidence that is felt by customers when wearing Oldblue products make customers feel satisfied and make Oldblue as preferred customer favorite products. The availability of the product in Oldblue retailers make customers feel satisfied and created customers' loyalty, so that customers do not needto switch to another brand to get the product that suits with them because retailers of Oldblue always provide it. Brand equity and distribution affected customer satisfaction at 56.3%, so the remaining 43.7% is influenced by other variables not that not observed

Improvement of soft soil stiffness using geo-composite cellular mat

The highway construction over sub-grade consisting of problematic soils gives challenges to the engineer due to their weak geotechnical characteristic [1, 2, 3]; High water content, High compressibility, and Low bearing capacity

Determinants of Intention to Recommend WeChat Mobile Payment Innovation in China to be implemented in Indonesia

Mobile payment has received its importance recognition from the global society including government and businesses. It can lead to operation cost reduction on the cash-paper production on the Bank. Additionally, to familiarize the mobile payment utilization to the society has found to be a tough task for businesses and government. Therefore, the current study has objective to examine the determinants of intention to recommend mobile payment technology on the society. Hence, the authors picked WeChat mobile payment innovation in China as the mobile payment innovation method used to analyze the intention to recommend the utilization of mobile payment. The collected data were analyzed by the utilization of Partial Least Square (PLS)- Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) v. 3.2.7 and IBM SPSS Statistic 24. UTAUT 2 Theory, perceived technology security, and customer satisfaction were employed to examine the issues appear in the current study but hedonic motivation, price value, habit and the moderators role were excluded. Therefore, the findings indicate that perceived technology security have a positive significant relationship while performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, and social influence have a positive insignificant relationship on behavioral intention to adopt WeChat mobile payment. Moreover, Behavioral intention to adopt WeChat mobile payment and customer satisfaction have a positive significant relationship on the intention to recommend the designated technology. It also signified that perceived technology security is having indirect effect to behavioral intention to recommend WeChat mobile payment innovation

1,25-Dihydroxycholecalciferol with low-calcium diet reduces acute rejection in rat lung allotransplantation

OBJECTIVES The effect of 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol (calcitriol, vitamin D3) with a low-calcium diet on the acute lung allograft rejection in a rat unilateral left lung transplantation model was evaluated. METHODS Three transplantation groups were studied (n=5, male Brown-Norway to Fischer F344, 235±15g body weight): calcitriol and low-calcium diet, low-calcium diet and normal diet. Calcitriol (4μg/kg/day) was injected intraperitoneally for 5 days, starting from the day of transplantation. In addition, two non-transplantation groups were compared: (n=3, Brown-Norway) to measure the level of cytokines, and Fischer F344 receiving calcitriol and a low-calcium diet to measure the serum calcium level. The recipients of transplantation were killed on Day 5 post-transplant. The contralateral right main bronchus and the pulmonary artery were occluded for 5min and blood was drawn for the blood gas analysis, and the grafts were assessed for histology (International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation 1996/rank scale). Lung levels of interleukin (IL)-2, IL-6, IL-12 and tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) were assessed within the calcitriol and low-calcium diet, low-calcium diet and Brown-Norway groups. The serum calcium level was assessed in the Fischer F344 group. An analysis of variance with Tukey's post hoc test was used to compare the arterial blood oxygen pressure and the lung cytokine expression between groups. A non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test followed by the Siegel and Castellan post hoc test was used to assess the differences between the groups according to the lung graft rejection grading. Student's paired t-test was used to compare the serum calcium level. RESULTS The arterial PaO2 was significantly higher in the calcitriol and the low-calcium diet groups when compared with low-calcium diet or normal diet groups (356±72mmHg; P<0.05 vs other groups). The arterial and bronchial rejection observed in calcitriol and low-calcium diet group was significantly milder than in the low-calcium diet or normal diet groups (A1-2, B1-2; P<0.05 vs other groups). IL-2 and IL-6 levels were significantly higher in low-calcium diet vs calcitriol and low-calcium diet and Brown-Norway groups. IL-12 and TNF-α did not differ among the groups. There was no significant difference in serum calcium level before and after the treatment in the Fischer F344 group. CONCLUSIONS Calcitriol with a low-calcium diet treatment improves lung function, reduces lung allograft acute rejection, decreases IL-2 and IL-6 allograft expression and does not change the serum calcium level significantl

Studying the Applications of Probability Metrics and Divergence Measures in Solving Classic Control Tasks

Choosing the correct statistical distance for a machine learning problem is vital when estimating the degree of dissimilarity between two discrete distributions. In the distributional reinforcement learning problem, the distribution of returns that can be obtained by an agent are approximated across the entirety of the state space. To describe the expected behavior of the agent as it interacts with the environment in the distributional setting, the C51 algorithm initially proposed using the Wasserstein distance due to the convergence guarantees it offered for the policy evaluation problem. However due to the biased sample gradients produced by the Wasserstein distance, the KL divergence was ultimately used as the categorical loss function in the C51 algorithm. In this thesis we studied two potential class of statistical distances and empirically observed their performance as viable categorical loss functions in the C51 algorithm as compared to the KL divergence. The first were probability metrics such as the Sinkhorn divergence and the Energy distance which attempt to alleviate the poor sample and computational complexity of the exact Wasserstein distance. The second were divergence measures that were instances of both the f divergence and α divergence. We studied the training time and testing time performance of these variations on the Acrobot and Cartpole environments. We demonstrated that the statistical distances most suitable for approximating value distributions in these environments were divergence measures that possessed the zero-avoiding property or an amalgamation of zero-avoiding and zero-forcing properties. Strictly zero-forcing divergence measures were unsuitable for use as a categorical loss function in these environments. The Sinkhorn divergence was ill suited to serve as a categorical loss function whereas the Energy distance demonstrated evidence of learning in these environments, although its training performance paled in comparison to the more successful crop of divergence measures. This indicated that if an optimal transport based categorical loss function was to be used in the C51 algorithm, maximal entropic regularization would have to be applied

Essays in Corporate Finance

Firm value creation and maximization is the primary objective of any firm and the most debated issue in corporate finance. Firms operate in the market to create value for the stakeholders. Valuation plays its role in many areas such as mergers and acquisitions, portfolio management and corporate finance. Corporate finance focuses on maximizing the value through the corporate strategy development, policy design, and financial decisions, as the value can be directly influenced by the decisions a firm makes, such as investments it makes, how they are financed, and the dividends offered. Feedback mechanisms formed by the variety of physical and managerial processes in the firm, the associated physical and financial accumulation processes, and their synergies formed by the non-linear interrelationships between them, contribute to the dynamic complexity of firm value creation and thus to its maximization over time. To manage the firm value effectively over time, strategic planning is called for, that aims at translating the corporate objectives into policies that govern the resource allocation decisions. A variety of tools are employed for strategic planning purposes. The inadequacy of long- range planning tools is, however, a commonly cited reason for corporate failure to achieve the stated objectives. Specifically, the complexity is at the core of strategic corporate finance management, yet research on that complexity has rarely been the subject of non-linear, dynamic feedback analysis. This dissertation enriches the corporate finance literature that deals with the firm value maximization by exploring the dynamic complexity of firm value maximization objective in the oil and gas sector, that is associated with high risk and return. The dissertation uses an international oil and gas firm, Equinor, headquartered in Norway, as a case. In its very nature, the oil and gas sector is very complex and the decisions made are characterized by uncertainty. For example, long-term and irreversible investment decisions are made based on uncertain and volatile oil price expectations. Thus, the value creation and its maximization become challenging and requires a systemic approach to the strategy development, policy design and decision making, - an approach that can account for the prevailing complexity characterizing both the firm and the environment in which it operates. Despite the extensive literature that exists on this topic, the debate on how strategies, policies and the resulting decision making affect the variety of physical and financial processes in such a firm, and how the interaction between these processes determines the outcome performance, i.e., the value creation and maximization over time, is sparse. Thus, the core objective of this dissertation is to contribute to the understanding of firm value creation and maximization. For this purpose, the dissertation applies the system dynamics method to address the five major research questions, - each at the core of an article. System dynamics is suitable for this study because it enables us to represent and analyze the non-linear feedback mechanisms and the associated accumulation processes, all present in a firm aimed at maximizing its value. It thus provides us with tools to adequately address the complex dynamic problems and to design and assess the impact of policies over time. The dissertation consists of an overall introduction followed by five articles. The purpose of the first article is to address the impact of the investment policy on the firm value in the presence of uncertain oil prices and, moreover, to propose an investment policy, that maximizes the firm value, given the prevailing oil and gas price expectations. The article documents a system dynamics model that portrays the case firm, incorporating the aggregated financial and physical processes of the firm required to produce oil and gas. The model operationalizes the discounted free cash flow (DCF) valuation method applied to perform the valuation of the firm. Testing various policy alternatives for the investment policy reveals that increasing the volume of investments over the current volume, reduces the cash flows and the total firm value over the first twenty years of the simulation period, but it increases the firm value thereafter as the new investments then yield returns. However, the investment policy which assumes a higher volume of investments than the current level decreases the market price per share, which is quite counter intuitive that I explain as follows. The capital required to finance the increased volume of investments requires issuance of higher number of shares that leads to decrease in the market price per share. The results highlight the short- term versus long-term trade-off faced by the firm managers; either to lower the volume of investments compared to the current level to increase the market price per share in the short- run, or to increase the volume of investments compared to the current level to realize the increased market price per share in the long-run after affording decreased market price per share in the short-run. The second article addresses the financing policy as a tool to enhance the firm value. The article builds on the base model from the first article and incorporates a module that incorporates the causal relationships between the factors that make up the financing policy, - as postulated by the theories. Various policy alternatives of debt and equity mix are analysed under different scenarios to assess their impact on the firm value and to identify the financing mix that maximizes the firm value. The simulation results reveal that increasing the debt percentage in the financing mix of the firm increases the total firm value and the market price per share and vice versa. The third article analyses the impact of dividend policy on the firm value and proposes the best combination of investment, financing, and dividend policies for the firm value maximization. Building on the system dynamics model developed in article 2, this article integrates a dividend policy by adding a structure based on the relevant theories. Various dividend policy alternatives and scenarios combinations have been simulated and analysed to identify the policies that maximize the market price per share. The simulation results reveal that lowering the volume of investments, increasing the percentage of debt in the financing mix, and lowering the dividend payment increases the market price per share as compared to the base case that assumes that the firm continues with the current policies. These policies lead to the increased future cash flows of the firm and reduced discounting rate, thus increased market price per share as per the discounted cash flow method. This study has implications for the policy makers and concludes that the combined outcome of the policies should be considered to achieve the value maximization objective. Article 4 develops a model of exchange rate determination and forecasting to provide a reasonable long-term forecast for the exchange rate. As described by the interest rate parity (IRP) and the purchasing power parity (PPP) theories, the model developed for article 4 incorporates the nonlinear relationships between the exchange rate and the macroeconomic factors, including the interest rate, inflation, per capita income, terms of trade and the oil prices. The simulation results reveal that the model can mimic reasonably well the historic behavior of long-term exchange rate and thus provides insightful long-term forecasts for the future development of the exchange rate. This study has implications for individuals, businesses, and the Government because they are affected directly or indirectly by the exchange rate movements, and the study contributes to the debate on exchange rate determination and forecasting. Article 5 explores as how the changes in exchange rate (i.e., appreciation or depreciation of the local currency) influence the value of an international firm – the case firm. The study integrates the system dynamics-based model from article 4 into the model developed in article 3 to endogenize the exchange rate and analyze its impact on value of the case firm. The results reveal that an appreciation of the local currency, Norwegian Kroner (NOK), against the US dollar leads to an increase in the market per share of the firm. The simulation results are quite counter intuitive and oppose many studies that report the positive influence of depreciation of local currency on firm value. The study has implications for the policy makers of the firm as well as Norway because any change in the macroeconomic factors and the consequent change in the exchange rate have an impact on the case firm as well as the Norwegian economy, as the case firm is a major contributor to the Norwegian exports. Understanding of the key factors involved and their impact on any possible change is vital to effectively manage the firm as well as the economy. Overall, the five articles contribute to the firm value creation and maximization debates on the methodological, the conceptual as well as the applied level. The dissertation contributes to the conceptualization of the elements involved to manage the firm to maximize the firm value, as well as the strategy (combined set of policies) and its underlying decisions that may help enhance the firm value while considering the macroeconomic factors beyond the control of a single firm. The dissertation translates the relationships between investment, financing, and dividend policies as well as macroeconomic factors to determine the exchange rate as described by the prior published theories into a system dynamics model and extend the span of the methodologies applied to study these intertwining relationships and the resulting firm value. The use of system dynamics, its peculiar focus on the accumulation processes and nonlinearities prevalent in the structure of the system that drive the behavior, reveal that the strategies and the policies are subject to organic, endogenous, and dynamic interactions that can contribute to the enhancement or detraction in the firm value. Thus, along with contributing to the discipline specific knowledge, the dissertation advocates the complementary benefits of system dynamics that facilitates the integration of the relationships described by different theories in a comprehensive model to prescribe the actions taken by the decision makers (resulting from the strategies developed and policies designed) to manage the firm to create the value and maximize it over time.Doktorgradsavhandlin

A System Dynamics Model Of Exchange Rate Determination And Forecasting

Objective: The objective of this paper is to develop a model of exchange rate determination and forecasting to provide reasonable forecasts for the exchange rate to facilitate long-term investments. Design: The study develops the model using the system dynamics method. Grounded on the fundamental theories, the model incorporates nonlinear feedback relationships of interest rate, inflation, per capita income, terms of trade, and oil prices with the exchange rate. Findings: The simulation results indicate the robustness of the model to mimic not only the long term past behavior of the exchange rate but also its ability to provide a reliable long-term forecast for the exchange rate. The model is portable and applies to any oil-exporting country after calibration. Policy Implications: The study has practical implications for individuals, businesses, and the Government because they are all influenced by the exchange rate movements. Specifically, this model provides a useful tool for long term strategic financial planning of oil firms. Originality: The study develops a model for exchange rate accounting for nonlinear feedback relationships among the variables