This volume offers an introduction to large deviations. It is divided into two parts: theory and applications. Basic large deviation theorems are presented for i.i.d. sequences, Markov sequences, and sequences with moderate dependence. The rate function is computed explicitly.
The phenomenon of crony capitalism is often described as the major cause of the Asian economic collapse in 1997. The main objective of this study is to address this phenomenon empirically through the structure of Malaysian political economy and tests the hypothesis that crony fi…
This thesis estimates a dynamic model of the Nigerian current account over the period 1970–1999 using the permanent income hypothesis as a guiding principle. Our model augments the classical consumption smoothing model, which relates the current account to changes in net output …
Contextual factors—environmental stimuli external to individuals—are historically understudied loci of leadership. This dissertation comprises two chapters exploring characteristics of distal and historical context that impose constraints on leaders. In the first chapter, I exam…
This research proposes a novel framework to control the stencil cleaning operation in the stencil printing process (SPP) on a real-time basis. In a surface mount assembly (SMA) line, most of the soldering defects result from the SPP. Stencil cleaning is necessary to remove the a…
Objectives : Persons with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) have severe bone loss below the level of lesion with the distal femur (DF) and proximal tibia (PT) being the skeletal regions appreciated to have the highest risk of fracture. While a reference areal bone mineral densi…
This research effort presents a systematic review of high-quality, scholarly research applicable to a new type of virtual team, Unanticipated Virtual Teams (UVT), that were triggered by the recent coronavirus pandemic and, as such, have not previously been the focus of scholarly…
This study focuses on Indonesian central government grants to local governments. Such grants are a major source of funding for local public services, and they are important for the recently commenced decentralization of government finances. How does the distribution of funds cor…
With the emergence of postmodern models and critiques, the concept of symptom functionality has lost favor in the family therapy field. To be reconsidered as clinically valuable it must both demonstrate pragmatic utility and meet ethical and conceptual criteria. Functional hypot…
Why do we like the music that we like? This seemingly simple question is surprisingly understudied. This dissertation aims to give some answers to this question, with a focus on analyzing the dataset of the FAV Corpus, a collection of pieces and excerpts that 140 survey particip…
During the last four decades, advancing perspectives in behavioural ecology have generated a surge of research focusing on individual behavioural variation. The resulting literature has highlighted the substantial effects of this variation on ecological and evolutionary processe…
Plate tectonics convectively cools the Earth at present. Debate remains in defining plate tectonics as a dynamic system. What is the primary resistor to plate motions: plates, mantle viscosity, some mixture of the two? Here I shed some light on this debate. First, I quantify the…
Since the Mesozoic, the west coast of North America has experienced near continuous right-lateral shear. Over this time, a series of exotic crustal terranes accreted to and translated along the expanding westward edge of the continent. In this dissertation, I use low-temperature…
What factors contribute to long-lasting marriages? The frequency of divorce in the United States has caused many researchers to study why marriages end and try to determine the contributing factors to marital break-ups and divorce. In the United States, more than 50% of marriage…
The aims of my dissertation are to understand diversification in the genus Penstemon at three taxonomic scales: across the entire genus, where I use phylogenetic comparative methods to assess diversification rate variation and trait (phenotype and niche) lability; across species…