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Republican Gov. Jeff Landry produced
a solid budget request for Louisiana, in a refreshing change of pace one
designed to live within the state's means rather than as an instrument to grow
government.

Overall,
the budget envisions slightly lower spending, although about two-thirds of that
fall is driven by reductions in federal dollars as the debt binge used to hose
down states with money dries up. Much of the rest comes from a decline in
statutory dedication receipts, with very nominal decreases in the general fund
and self-generated funds. In these cases, the revenue sources that fell largely
are tied into economic activity at first overstimulated by the enormous
increase in federal spending then sapped by the resulting sagging
economy slowly slipping into recession.

Thus, Landry and budget architect Commissioner of
Administration Taylor
Barras concentrated on slicing spending tied to temporary initiatives or
bonuses. For example, higher
education received about a $100 million cut, but that mostly came from non-recurring
spending outside of the funding formula disappearing. In almost all instances spending
will continue at around standstill levels.

The budget also carves out new money for certain
initiatives. Perhaps principally, even as most parts of state government will
see pullbacks in spending, more dollars will go to corrections, likely in anticipation
of swinging back the pendulum in punishment from policy changes starting with a
special session on justice matters commencing next week for the next two that look
to increase costs through sentencing that requires more jail time and reduced reliance
on alternatives like parole. Of course, health care received the biggest absolute
increase, largely because state spending in that category is held hostage to
federal programmatic rules, with this reliance increasing substantially under Landry's
predecessor Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards.

That's the problem Landry faces. Edwards, perhaps
understanding the flukish nature of his governorship that pitted his
considerably leftist ideology against the center-right preferences of the
population and Legislature, tried to bake in as much government spending as
possible when in office, designing things to make it difficult to rein in
spending and where any economic downturn or amelioration of federal dollars flowing
into the state would produce revenue crunches that discouraged any kind of tax
relief.

This has left a poison pill for Landry, particularly
beginning in fiscal year 2026 staring next year when around $477 million in sales
tax receipts roll off the books. Even as other revenues as of now seem likely
to creep higher, that tax relief by cutting sales taxes by about a tenth
creates a budgetary headache for at least a couple of years.

It's not like insufficient revenues have been the
problem in the past two decades leading to this budget year. Rather, spending has
continued higher with general fund outlays averaging almost three percent a
year growth in that interval, outstripping inflation
over that time span by about 15 percentage points – while the state's
population increased exactly 0.5 percent. Less discretionary expenditures
through self-generated and statutory dedication funding grew even higher, while
federal funds leapt upwards at a rate over double that of general fund dollars.

Landry's task has been to corral higher spending
in order to induce the right-sizing of government dependent upon less revenues.
And the FY 2025 budget along with his handling of surpluses from previous years
give clues as to how he will approach that.

For starters, the state has a $91 million surplus
this current year that could be appropriated for any purpose. Landry wants to
have it go to justice measures, to backstop future emergency or disaster
spending, and to resolve the contentious issue of updating two-decade-old
voting machines.

With the $325 million from the previous fiscal
year, except for constitutional requirements steering money to the Budget
Stabilization Fund and to pay down unfunded accrued liabilities in pension
funds, he wants all of it to go to capital projects involving transportation,
coastal restoration, and deferred maintenance of state buildings. This explains
why the general fund contribution to capital outlay will drop 60 percent in the
upcoming budget, freeing up $100 million.

One
alternative would have put as much as possible into paying down the Teachers
Retirement System of Louisiana UAL, which would have freed considerable dollars
for local education agencies to provide educator pay raises on their own. Last
year, the Minimum Foundation Program had included these at a cost of $198
million, but the Legislature didn't accept that because at the last minute it
wanted to change allocations within it. The rules such as they are, legislators
had to budget with the FY 2023 formula that didn't include the raise.

This facilitated
a happy accident where instead of a permanent raise a stipend was given by
the state. Landry again chose this route rather than the paydown, as it
provided more flexibility to fulfill state priorities, even if outside the current
MFP formula, which the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education could alter
to reflect, that would promote performance pay and target high-need subjects.
It gives him the option to scale back next year and/or for BESE to adjust the
formula next year to account for fewer, but more efficiently spent, dollars.

In short, the effort wisely recognizes that the
state must live within its means that concomitantly acknowledges it has tried
to take too much from its people at the expense of economic development, and
sets up a good structure initially to achieve goals of right-sized government
at an appropriate taxing level. As well, it leaves open the opportunity of
future fiscal reform by not locking in new permanent programmatic commitments. The day/night contrast to the previous eight years is stunning and welcome.

This thesis contributes to the understanding of consumer credit decisions from a psychological point of view by investigating the influence of cognitive processes on perceived credit attractiveness and credit choice. A total of seven empirical lab studies conducted with university students in 2014 and 2015 can be grouped into three connected streams: The first stream focuses on the question whether the level of mental abstraction influences preferences for specific credit aspects (e.g., a low annual percentage rate). Participants' choice among several credit alternatives with full information on all credit aspects was not affected by construal level. Nor did construal level influence what participants perceived to be important when making up their mind about credit offers in general. The second stream focuses on the question how mental abstraction and the 0 in 0%-interest credits interact to influence credit evaluation as well as the choice of the product that is to be financed. Contrary to assumptions based on previous findings, participants did not react particularly positive towards 0%-interest credit offers in general, nor did mental abstraction influence their reaction. Also, the other way round, additional findings suggest that the prominent display of the number 0 in 0%-interest credit advertisement does not induce a higher level of mental abstraction and consequently does not influence the type of product to be financed on credit. The third stream focuses on the question whether consumers are more willing to take up a 0%-interest credit when they process information in a more intuitive and heuristic way. The idea behind this is that the central feature of a 0%-interest rate may divert attention from less advantageous aspects of such credits (e.g., an expensive mandatory residual debt insurance). The findings from the studies reject this hypothesis. Furthermore, it was investigated whether intended hedonic product use, as opposed to intended utilitarian product use, leads to higher credit attractiveness under intuitive information processing because of a carry-over effect of positive affect from anticipated use situations. No indication of such an interaction was found in the respective study. The thesis offers detailed interpretation of the results with a focus on possible explanations for the absence of significant effects. Despite the absence of significant results, the thesis makes a valuable contribution to the respective area of research. It highlights the need for research on 0%-interest credit offers as a new form of credit that is likely to accelerate the trend of growing debt accumulation. Also, the thesis is the first to apply two broadly successful theories – construal level theory and System 1 / 2 information processing – to aspects of decision-making in a consumer credit context. The results even more so show how little is known about how consumers process information when making such important decisions. The synthesis of previous findings reported in the theory section of this thesis furthermore points out the alarmingly low levels of credit understanding in the general population. This highlights the need for governments, and consumer protection institutions to invest more effort into the development and application of measures targeted to improve credit understanding and money management in a broader sense.

Perhaps coming as no surprise, Bossier City doesn't
appear ready to want to make history and desires to waste more taxpayer dollars
in the process.

Earlier this month, organizers of a charter change
that would place term limits on
city elected officials, three for all past and present mayors and councilors,
successfully completed the petition drive. The city charter says a third of the
amount of votes cast from the previous mayoral election, of valid registered city
voters at the time of petition submission to the parish registrar of voters,
may ask for this, which was verified by her – a first in the city's history.

The city charter in Chapter
5 outlines the process. After successful submission, the Council must pass
an ordinance in favor of each of the propositions within 30 days of reception –
practically speaking, during this week's or the Aug. 1 meeting. If not, it must
call an election for the public to weigh in within 90 days. That would force
the election on Nov. 18 (the Oct.
14 ballot having closed out earlier this week), along with other parish and
state runoff elections.

But now the city is squawking about the validity
of the request. It points to Ch. 5's wording (section
5.01) that indicates that it is an ordinance to be proposed. This, it's
argued, creates ambiguity with the first parts of Chapter 3 (City Council, sec.
3.01) and Chapter 4 (mayor, sec.
4.01) which indicate that these elected officials "shall" be eligible for
reelection. Hierarchically, an ordinance can't supersede the charter. To sort
things out, the Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration put on the Council agenda
a request to have outside counsel review the matter and didn't cue up a Council
vote on the enabling ordinance.

At first glance, this might look like prudence.
Republican Chandler – among the very first signatories of the petition – might
be trying to ensure before any actions take place that everything is solid
legally, rather than taking votes in one form or another or even implementation
happening and then have everything upended by a successful legal challenge. Yet
a closer look reveals there's really nothing there except a potential waste of
taxpayer dollars on needless advice that could become significant if the city, despite
Chandler's professed desire for term limits even on himself, wants to dig in against
it.

Ch. 21 addresses charter changes, which refers clearly
to the petition process in 5.01 as a means of proposing amendments (sec.
21.01(b)). Further, it reinforces that idea in its discussion of submission
of amendments as a byproduct of a petitioning process (sec.
21-04). Even to those without legal training, it seems crystal clear that,
in this particular process, the charter permits ordinance to trigger charter amending
– much like it allows
the Council to approve job searches within the executive branch by way of
ordinance.

That calls into question why the city not only
would spend resources trying to cast doubt on the legality of the two proposals,
one affecting the mayor's job and the other city councilor posts, but also
employ additionally costly outside counsel to do it. After all, it has City
Attorney Charles Jacobs and his assistant Richard Ray on the payroll.

If one wanted to defeat the proposals, one way to
maximize the chances of succeeding would be to drag out the process as much as
possible. Going to outside counsel advances this agenda by ensuring the Council
doesn't have to address the matter until towards the end of the 30-day window,
or even longer by setting the stage to try to avoid that by going to court, favorable
opinion in hand. Of course, proponents in response simply could, using the
courts if necessary, have it put on the Nov. 18 (deadline Sep. 25) ballot by
noting the Council failed to pass the ordinance within 30 days.

But the end game may be to try to force the
measure off that ballot by gambling on getting a 26th District judge
to agree with the invalidity argument. The thing about legal opinions, both of
lawyers and judges, is that the law often is flexible enough where a preferred
argument can be shoehorned into existence. Even though a mountain of other
parts of the law, past opinions, and the like may counter that interpretation,
shunting those away and concentrating on the desired end state often finds a
path to it. Jacobs himself provides a classic example when a district judge
with his ruling that Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District Executive Director Robert Berry did not violate dual officeholding law
by simultaneously being on the District's Board of Commissioners, which later
the Louisiana Supreme Court in
no uncertain terms overruled him, instructing lower courts to rule exactly the
opposite.

Of course, usually (but
not always) the day of reckoning comes when a flawed ruling gets fixed. However,
its presence can delay that comeuppance to a more politically opportune time,
and in this instance it's when the proposals hit the ballot. A straightforward following
of the law places that at a bad date for opponents: where the general election
runoff for parish and state offices guarantees a relatively high turnout. The instinct
of the greater proportion of casual voters who turn out for these defaults to
favoring term limits, so the higher the turnout, the more support for term
limits.

The real end game is to try to push it to a
special election as a single ballot item, which in Bossier Parish voting under these
conditions often fails even crack single digits in turnout. Certainly,
motivated pro-limits voters will show up, but those with vested interests in
allowing unlimited terms and their allies would have their best chance of enough
turnout to draw level or better under a low-stimulus scenario as this.

The goal could be to push it back to the Apr. 27,
2024 municipal general election, trying to pass by the Nov. 15 deadline that
would put the propositions onto another high-stimulus ballot, the presidential
preference primaries on Mar. 23, 2024. For Bossier City residents, it would be
the only item on the ballot on that date.

Given it's such a stretch to conclude the entire
petitioning process was legally infirm, the city trying to undermine it only
makes sense as a rearguard action to push the inevitable voting on the propositions
into a window less favorable for passage. Not only is this an abject waste of
taxpayer dollars, it also is a subversive use of the people's money to try to thwart
them from exercising their popular will.

Colin Grabow


Earlier this week an unusual event took place: a U.S. shipyard delivered an oceangoing merchant ship. Named the Janet Marie, the vessel will transport goods between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland. Anyone tempted to toast the new ship as a symbol of U.S. shipbuilding prowess, however, should keep the champagne bottle corked. More an embarrassment than cause for celebration, the containership serves as a rich symbol of the heavily protected U.S. shipbuilding industry's myriad shortcomings.
The most glaring problem with the Janet Marie is its price. Although the exact figure has not been published, its George III sister ship—a vessel delivered last year with the exact same specifications—was revealed to cost "$225 million‐​plus." It's a safe bet Janet Marie did not cost less. In comparison, two similarly‐​sized containerships were ordered from a South Korean shipyard in 2021 for $41 million each. The vast difference ($184 million) is no anomaly, comporting with previous assessments from maritime industry observers that U.S.-built cargo ships are five times the price of those constructed abroad.
The length of time required to build the Janet Marie provides another unfavorable contrast. From the time steel was cut until the ship's delivery was approximately 50 months. In contrast, the Ever Alot—one of the largest containerships in the world with a cargo capacity nearly 10 times that of the Janet Marie (and a price tag $80 million lower)—required just 19 months to build. Originally slated for delivery in the third quarter of 2020, the Janet Marie is a full three years late.
Unfortunately, construction times significantly longer than those of foreign shipyards have been a feature of the U.S. shipbuilding industry for decades.
Faced with such high prices and lengthy construction times, the market for U.S.-built merchant ships is limited to those who must buy them to comply with the 1920 Jones Act, which requires vessels transporting goods within the United States to be constructed in U.S. shipyards. Understandably, these vessel operators delay purchasing new ships for as long as possible. Instead of buying new ships when existing ones approach the 20 year mark as is commonly done abroad, Jones Act‐​compliant ships are often not scrapped until age 40 or older.
As a result, few ships are built. In fact, with the Janet Marie now delivered there are currently no merchant ships under construction in the United States (there are, however, three containerships on the order book slated for delivery in 2026 and 2027 at the astounding price of $333 million each).
Since 2000 deliveries of oceangoing merchant ships by U.S. shipyards combined have averaged fewer than three per year.











In comparison, a single shipyard in South Korea is slated to deliver 47 ships this year alone.
But it's not just the large shipbuilders in Asia that have left protected American shipyards in the dust. Even European shipyards are churning out more vessels than those in the United States. Dutch shipyards, for example, delivered nearly 118,000 gross tons of merchant vessels in 2021 (latest available numbers) compared to less than 33,000 gross tons for U.S. shipyards. At 147,000 gross tons, Norway delivered almost five times the U.S. figure.
That U.S. shipyards produce so relatively little while charging so much should come to the surprise of no one. Having a captive Jones Act market means reduced incentive for U.S. shipyards to achieve the specialization and scale required for competition in the international market. It also means less competitive pressure—why be world‐​class when a lesser standard will suffice?
Another prominent factor is the large government contracts reserved for U.S. shipyards that many shipbuilders have prioritized at the expense of commercial shipbuilding. Indeed, the CEO of Overseas Shipholding Group, which operates Jones Act‐​compliant tankers, recently described the construction of commercial vessels to comply with the Jones Act as "a minor sideline interest" for most U.S. shipyards. His assessment appears borne out by the numbers, with a U.S. Maritime Administration study finding that government contracts accounted for nearly 80 percent of U.S. shipyard revenue in 2019.
Despite the U.S. shipbuilding industry's extraordinary costs and trivial levels of output, some may believe that protectionism is nonetheless warranted to avoid U.S. reliance on foreigners for its shipbuilding needs. But the Jones Act doesn't even do that. The Janet Marie's sister ship delivered last year, for example, is chock full of foreign components. A sampling of the ship's suppliers includes the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (supplier of the ship's provision cranes), Alfa Laval (Qingdao) Ltd. (fired exhaust gas boiler), Zhenjiang Tongzhou Propeller Co. (fixed pitch propeller), and Jiangsu Xiangsheng Heavy Industries Co. (anchors and anchor chains).
That's par for the course. Tankers built by the Philly Shipyard from 2004-06 required approximately 500 containers per vessel of material from South Korea as well as roughly 25 bulk shipments for larger items such as the main engine. While there is nothing wrong with relying on imported parts (imagine how costly these ships would be if all the components had to be U.S.-made as well!), notions that U.S. shipyards can produce ships without the need of foreigners is wishful thinking.
The Jones Act's requirement that vessels used in domestic trade be constructed in U.S. shipyards fails to pass even the faintest whiff of a cost‐​benefit analysis. Among its harms include higher costs for those that must rely on these ships, added stress on infrastructure and congestion as transport is shifted to less expensive modes, irritated relations with U.S. trading partners and allies, and a smaller and older U.S. fleet than would otherwise be the case.
The other side of the ledger, meanwhile, consists of a commercial shipbuilding industry that punches well below its weight. Indeed, when the United States first required ships flying the U.S. flag to be domestically built U.S. merchant shipbuilders were among the world's best and most competitive. Now they are a global afterthought, and there is good reason to think the industry would be better off without such heavy‐​handed protectionism.
Rather than a triumph, the Janet Marie offers a cautionary tale of protectionism's heavy toll. The Jones Act's U.S.-built requirement—if not the law entirely—should be discarded immediately.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) policies compensate individuals or communities for undertaking actions that increase the provision of ecosystem services such as water purification, flood mitigation, or carbon sequestration. PES schemes rely on incentives to induce behavioral change and can thus be considered part of the broader class of incentive- or market-based mechanisms for environmental policy. By recognizing that PES programs are incentive-based, policymakers can draw on insights from the substantial body of accumulated knowledge about this class of instruments. In particular, this article offers a set of lessons about how the environmental, socioeconomic, political, and dynamic context of a PES policy is likely to interact with policy design to produce policy outcomes, including environmental effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and poverty alleviation.

In late April, former President Donald Trump gave a wide-ranging interview to TIME magazine, which had a significant focus on foreign policy issues, particularly the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The resulting transcript revealed that a second-Trump term would be just as murky foreign policy-wise, as the former president used much of his time contradicting himself, criticizing his successor, and offering few details about how he would approach international issues if elected again.
On Tuesday, it was President Joe Biden's turn to get the same treatment. The outcome was not all that different.
Biden gave a long interview to TIME 's Washington bureau chief Massimo Calabresi and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, which centered almost exclusively on the president's foreign policy agenda, looking both back at his first term in office and forward at a possible second.
Biden aggressively defended his record, particularly when it came to his leadership in responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Like Trump, Biden was sure to emphasize differences with his opponent, especially in terms of maintaining American global leadership and supporting allies.
"We are the world power," he said in response to the first question about whether the U.S. could still play the same global role it did during World War II and the Cold War.Israel and GazaThe president was coy about how he would react to Israel's invasion of Rafah, suggesting that revealing his assessment of whether Israel had crossed his "red line" would imperil ongoing discussions with Tel Aviv.
"I'm not going to speak to that now, (...) I'm in the process of talking with the Israelis right now." he said. "If I tell you, you'll write it. It's not time for you to write it."
Biden did offer some mild criticism of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said that Israel's war strategy risked repeating American mistakes following 9/11, and could lead to an "endless war;" and that there was "every reason for people to draw" the conclusion that Netanyahu was determined to keep the war going for domestic political purposes. The president also said that his "biggest disagreement" with his Israeli counterpart is that Netanyahu does not share his belief that "there needs to be a two-state solution."
Biden did not offer any ideas of how he plans to square that circle, given his acknowledgement that the Israeli government is not interested in Palestinian statehood. The "roadmap to an enduring ceasefire" that the White House released last week notably had no mention of a path to Palestinian statehood.
Ultimately, however, Biden laid blame for both the start of the war and the inability to end it at the feet of Hamas. When asked whether Israel had violated international law, the president pivoted to discussing atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. And when asked whether the hold-up to reaching a ceasefire deal was due to Hamas, Israel or both, Biden was quick to blame the former, though his reasoning was unclear.
"Hamas could end this tomorrow," he said, emphasizing that Netanyahu was "prepared to do about anything to get the hostages back." In fact, the Israeli government has said that the war will not end until "the destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities" was complete, and Israeli officials have disputed Biden's description of the ceasefire proposal.
Biden was also inconclusive about whether Israel had been violating international law, saying that the evidence of whether the IDF had committed war crimes was "uncertain," and that, although they had taken actions that were "inappropriate" he did not believe that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war.
Prominent NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Oxfam have determined that Israeli assurances that they had not violated international law were "not credible" and had committed a series of violations of customary international humanitarian law. Members of Congress called on Biden to suspend arms transfers to Israel because of its blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza. One State Department official recently resigned because she said the department's report saying that Israel had not broken the law was "patently false."
If the U.S. did deem that Israel was violating international laws — as some administration officials have hinted — Washington would be required by law to cut off arms supplies, a step that Biden and his team have been wholly unwilling to take.Ukraine, NATO, and RussiaBiden was steadfast in arguing that his administration's approach to the war in Ukraine had been a success, and did not seem interested in facing any criticism about the current state of the war or a strategy to conclude it. He rejected the premise of a question about the dire battlefield situation and whether, at this point, reaching a peace agreement with Russia was the best way out of the war."I don't know why you skip over all that's happened in the meantime [between Russia's invasion and today]," Biden said. "The Russian military has been decimated. You don't write about that. It's been freaking decimated."He similarly dismissed questions about escalation and the possibility of a future NATO-Russia war, saying "we're on a slippery slope for war if we don't do something about Ukraine."Biden did not offer any specifics on what an end to the war would look like or what Washington's plan to get there is, saying only his conception of peace is "making sure Russia never, never, never, never occupies Ukraine. That's what peace looks like."However, he added that an end to the war "doesn't mean NATO, they are part of NATO. It means we have a relationship with them like we do with other countries." "I am not prepared to support the NATOization of Ukraine," Biden elaborated. "I spent a month in Ukraine when I was a Senator and Vice President. There was significant corruption."The president's views on the war seem to be informed by a belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin is motivated by a desire to make Ukraine a part of Russia and to expand Moscow's influence over the continent "He says this is part of reestablishing the Soviet Union," Biden said, referring to a speech Putin gave in 2022. "That's what this is all about. It wasn't just about taking part of—He wanted, he wanted to go back to the, to the days when there was NATO and there was that other outfit that Poland, everybody belonged to. So that's what it was about."Biden also talked up his success in strengthening NATO, emphasizing that two new countries had joined the alliance since his presidency started, and that Europe collectively had spent more money to aid Ukraine than had the U.S. As the TIME fact check showed, while Europe has committed to provide more money to Ukraine in the long-term, the continent has so far spent only $107 billion to Kyiv, compared to $175 billion from the U.S.China and TaiwanBiden said he is "not ruling out using military force" in the case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but added that "[he's] made clear to Xi Jinping that we agree with—we signed on to previous presidents going way back—to the policy of, that, it is we are not seeking independence for Taiwan."
Biden's apparent endorsement of strategic ambiguity , was a slight divergence from an earlier series of claims that Washington would come to Taiwan's defense if Beijing ever invaded.
Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific, the president celebrated Japan's defense spending increase, the formation of the Quad, and other U.S. military investments in the region.
"We are much stronger in the Pacific than we ever were before. China, by the way, China is very concerned about it," he said. "[Xi Jinping] wanted to know why I was doing all these things. I said the simple reason I'm doing those things: to make sure that you don't, that you aren't able to change the status quo any."
In his interview, Biden offered a straightforward defense of American primacy and global leadership, and painted it as the primary difference between himself and Trump. While he was light on the details, it ultimately appeared as if there would be little difference between a first and second Biden term when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.

This article focuses on the development and "success" of the ex-communist parties in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It begins by testing the effects of several commonly cited variables that have been employed to explain the development and achievements of the ex-communist parties in post-communist politics. Second, it offers an alternative explanation that focuses on regime type, the presence of left-wing competitors, and the success of the ex-communist parties, and identifies three modal patterns of development: ex-communist parties that emerged from patrimonial communist systems (as in Russia and Bulgaria), ex-communist parties that emerged from national consensus systems (as in Hungary and Poland), and ex-communist parties that emerged from bureaucratic authoritarian systems (as in the Czech Republic). According to the author, ex-communist parties that evolved from national consensus regimes are more likely to survive the passage of time than those that emerged from other types of regimes.

AbstractThis paper reconsiders the classical model for selling an asset in which offers come in daily and a decision must then be made as to whether or not to sell. For each day the item remains unsold a continuation (or maintenance cost) c is incurred. The successive offers are assumed to be independent and identically distributed random variables having an unknown distribution F. The model is considered both in the case where once an offer is rejected it may not be recalled at a later time and in the case where such recall of previous offers is allowed.

Legislative reaction to the current merger boom, and the likely economic consequences; US. The takeover process; how the merger boom in the 1980s has differed from previous periods of heightened corporate consolidations; federal issues, particularly the delineation of state and federal regulations and decisions of the Supreme Court; pros and cons of antitakeover legislation.

českých studentů na farmaceutické fakultě, kteří se připravují na profese mimo oblast ekologie. Na této fakultě nejsou emotivně založené přístupy k přírodě přípustné jako základ výuky a není tomu jinak ani v případě ekologie.Jako součást hodnocení kurzu "Ekologie pro farmaceuty" vyučované v prvním ročníku zhruba 120 studentům, vyplnili studenti – po písemné zkoušce – také dobrovolný dotazník. Cílem bylo nejprve zhodnotit environmentální znalosti získané studenty na středních školách a poté zjistit jejich ochotu naučit se více o ekologie a/nebo současných problémech životního prostředí.Výsledky ukázaly překvapivě nízkou úroveň nezájmu. Převažoval pozitivní vztah k ochraně přírody a vzdělávání, ačkoli více technicky orientovaný. Nicméně úroveň environmentálních znalostí získaných během středoškolského vzdělání se zdála být v mnoha případech nízká.Dle názoru autorky jsou environmentální gramotnost a povědomí univerzitních studentů v technických oborech velmi důležité, protože je to typicky na úrovni manažerů a vedoucích pracovníků, kde vznikají politiky, které jsou více, či méně, šetrné k životnímu prostředí.Tento článek může přispět k diskuzi o efektivnějším a lépe zaměřeném environmentálním vzdělávání nabízeném středními školami a dalšími vzdělávacími institucemi. ; The presented article offers an insight into the environmental literacy and attitudes of young technically oriented Czech university students at a faculty of pharmacy, in preparation for non-teaching and non-ecological professional careers. At this faculty, no philosophical or emotion-based approaches to nature and wildlife are acceptable as a teaching basis, even in the case of ecology. As an evaluation of the course 'Ecology for Pharmacists' taught in the first year, over 120 students completed – after a common credit test –an optional questionnaire. The goal was first to assess the environmental knowledge acquired by students at secondary education level and then to see their willingness to learn more about ecology and/or contemporary environmental problems. The results showed a surprisingly low percentage of indifference. Positive relationships to environmental protection and education, although more technically oriented, prevailed. However, the level of environmental knowledge gained from their secondary education seemed to be low in most cases. It is the opinion of the author that environmental literacy and consciousness of university students in technical fields is very important, since it is usually among middle managers and executives with technical education, that more or less environmentally friendly policies and strategies begin. This article might contribute to a discussion about more efficient and hopefully better targeted environmental education offered by upper secondary schools and further education.

The @failure of previous attempts to overhaul abusive and poorly performing police departments in South America offers lessons for current reform efforts in the United States.