The Lake School Poets Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Lake School Poets - Essay Example As Romanticists, they have been staunch supporters of freedom and the French Revolution. For them, it was a noble cause for it promotes the tenets of Romanticism, although they deny being a part of the said movement. The French Revolution symbolized liberty from the trappings of wealth that was the French Royalty. Not only that, it symbolized the inequality of power between the people and the monarchs. Because of this love for liberty, they believed on France’s Revolution and had their passionate beliefs. However, after some time, they abandoned their liberalist beliefs, especially William Wordsworth, and became conservatives, largely believing now in constitutional monarchy and the power of the Protestant Church as the guiding light for the British. Is the shift because of Napoleon’s failure to reach the poets’ expectations of being a libertarian because he also intended to conquer Europe, or is it because their own personal struggles that lead them to prioritiz e their own individual beliefs? Was it because of their age? This essay proposes that they became conservatives because of their Napoleon failed their expectations. II. Summary and Critique According to Bertrand Russell, â€Å"In his youth Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry, and had a natural daughter. At this period he was called a 'bad' man. Then he became 'good,' abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles, and wrote bad poetry.† This is an observation to the poet shifting from being a liberalist to a conservative. Romanticists are known to being ambivalent towards the society as they were politically involved but they were also distancing themselves from the public. And as romanticists, they strongly objected to the oppression and injustice. However, the Lake poets shifted to conservatism. There are many theories on why this has happened. There is a theory that it was because of Coleridge addiction to opium, the dea th of Wordsworth’s brother and their disenchantment on the French revolution. Coleridge’s addiction to opium was because of his chronic rheumatism. The doctors prescribed laudanum to him, an opium derivative, and became addicted for sixteen years. His condition never really affected his writings as he wrote good poetry even when he was high with drugs. His good friend Wordsworth even took him into his home and he spent two years there. When he moved out, he learned that Wordsworth told their mutual friend not to take him in because he had â€Å"a derangement in his intellectual and moral constitution† (Shmoop Editorial Team). This resulted in the breaking up of their friendship and they both wrote less poetry after the incident. Another theory is that Wordsworth’s brother’s death may have contributed to the shift of the poets to shift to conservatism. This happened in 1805 and has affected him strongly. This only happened to Wordsworth, not everyon e in their movement. Although they are all good friends, this could not have effected the others that much. The last theory proposed by Fairchild is that they were all disenchanted by the way Napoleon took over France after the French Revolution. Because after the Revolution ended, Napoleon began conquering other countries. This failed them because their cause about liberty and the revolution did not end up the way they wanted it to be as Napoleon also got into other

A Monologue for Love Essay Example for Free

A Monologue for Love Essay What becomes of the broken hearted? Nothing. You think you know love then that love turns out to be an egotistical self-involved bastard whos no braver than the house mouse living in your walls waiting til you least expect it. Ive made mistakes before. But nothing compares to the ones made with him. The ones made in his arms, his unloving false arms embrace that somehow once made me feel warm and made heart be tender. And in that false embrace I made mistakes under false illusions. Illusions that this.. boy, this child, could love me and make me feel like a woman! A woman I am not, I am but a child, a girl who has been broken by the same boy too many times and more. I tried to end it once, twice, and ended it be on the fifth. But this was all too little too late, as he had touched me and I him. And is it so much to ask that I be loved again? It must have been for once another man loved me A man this time. Not a child, a boy. A man. And this man I turned down. I gave him false reason. For the real reason was that I did wish to be with this man but I was too afraid. The fear growing inside of me, a seed planted by a boy. And in the heat of the moment I fell for that man only to wake the morrow to tell him it cannot be. Months later now, I thought I had convinced myself of this false reason. But in a moment of peace, no distractions to cloud my judgment, my heart caught up to my head and told me of the real reason. And now I am dead. The seed has stopped growing. But its venomous flower has already bloomed and done its damage. I am but one of many broken hearted souls with many mistakes done and many more to proceed, to follow. And I ask of you now What should a girl do? When she no longer welcomes love But instead wishes it she had never known?

Weak Form Efficient Market Hypothesis For Emerging Markets

Weak Form Efficient Market Hypothesis For Emerging Markets Literature Review The issue of market efficiency in emerging markets is of great significance for both foreign investors and policy makers in emerging economies. This project devotes large efforts to produce a thorough and in-depth literature review for this area. This topic is to be investigated from these aspects: theoretical foundation, methodologies of tests and empirical results. Firstly, traditional efficient market hypothesis (Fama, 1970; Makiel, 1973) and behavior finance theories developed in recent decades (Barbris, 1998; Shleifer, 2000) have formed two main schools of thought for the issue of market efficiency. Secondly, the evolution for a series of methodologies is important for testing market efficiency. Thirdly, the empirical evidence is reviewed by consideration three major factors: trade volume and non-linear behavior, structural breaks and market evolution through time. Finally, it also reflects some important policy implications for emerging markets. Many empirical studies have been widely carried to investigate the weak-form efficient market hypothesis for emerging markets, and the results are mixed. Generally, most of emerging markets are found to be inefficient. But for some countries, such as Istanbul, Egypt and Jordan, after correcting for institutional characteristics and trading conditions, such as thin trading and the presence of non-linearity, equity markets are found to be efficient. When structure break factors are taken into account, market efficiency is powerfully rejected for countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Greece and India. There is also evidence showing that initially emerging markets are inefficient, but over time they are moving toward to be more efficient, such as in Estonian, Lithuanian and Russia duo to economic liberalization policies. These results reflect some important policy implications. Infrequent trading and illiquidity of capital markets negatively affects market efficiency, so economic policy makers should devote efforts to minimize the institutional restriction and barriers on capital flow in the financial markets and to impose strict disclosure requirements, so that investors can easily access to high quality and reliable information. Improving liquidity of capital markets can provide lower borrowing costs for investors and greater opportunities for investment diversification with lower systematic risks. In addition, equity market liberalization is important to help achieving market development. It can reduce cost of capital and increase capital productivity with better capital allocation. Introduction: Due to the increasing globalization of financial markets, fast economic growth and adoption of financial liberalization policies for equity markets in emerging economies, it is widely indicated that equity investment in emerging economies can provide superior returns. Past decades have witnessed spectacular growth in both size and relative importance of emerging equity markets. The market capitalization of emerging market economies accounts for twelve percent of world market capitalization and has more than doubled, growing from less than $2 trillion in 1995 to $5 trillion in 2006 (Nally, 2010). By 2015, it is estimated that the combined GDP of emerging-market economies will surpass that of the top 20 developed economies (ibid). In addition, emerging market returns are weakly correlated with returns in developed markets, so international diversification with these emerging equities can give lower portfolio risks (Levy Sarnat, 1970). The potential high rates of returns and diversific ation benefits has attracted large number of foreign fund investors, so the investigation on whether emerging markets function efficiently is significantly important. By knowing degree of market efficiency, economy policy makers and regulators can gain insights to develop right institutional and regulatory frameworks to allocate scare resources efficiently, form favourable investment condition and obtain further economic growth. Therefore, this essay is going to investigate the weak-form market efficiency in emerging markets. The efficient market hypothesis by Fama (1970), Random Walk module by Makiel (1973) and behaviour finance theories are directed related to this issue and form the theoretical foundations. Section 1 will critically give the theoretical review based on the two schools of thought that are EMH and behaviour finance theories. Section 2 will give a brief review of methodologies adopted in literature review. Section 3 will give empirical review of the weak-form EMH for emerging markets. Section 4 will indicate some brief policy implications for emerging economies and section 5 is the conclusion with some directions for further research. Theoretic Review of EMH VS Behaviour Finance Efficient Market Hypothesis Fama (1970) defines an efficient financial market as one in which security prices always instantaneously and fully reflect all available information. No investors can earn expected abnormal return by analysing past known information. Market efficiency is attained by two key forces: investor rationality and arbitrage activities (Fama, 1970). EMH assumes that investors are rational and can process information correctly and efficiently. Although some investors are irrational and may overact or underact to new information, these judgement errors are independent and random, hence can cancel out each other without affecting prices (Fama, 1998). Therefore, on average, the whole market is efficient. In addition, since numerous profit-maximizing investors are competing to analyse, value and trade securities based on all available information to exploit arbitrage opportunities, on aggregate level, security prices are adjusted quickly to reflect the effect of new information (Fama, 1998). Secur ity prices are driven close to intrinsic values. Expected returns implicit in the current price of a security should reflect its underlying risk, and higher returns are earned only as compensations for bearing higher risk. There are two main modules that explain EMH: fair-game model and random walk model (RWM). The fair-game model is expressed as: Zj,t+1 =rj,t+1-E(rj,t+1à ¯Ã‚ ½Ã…“à Ã‚ ¤t), E(Zj,t+1à ¯Ã‚ ½Ã…“à Ã‚ ¤t)=0 (Copeland, Weston Shastri, 2005). Information in à Ã‚ ¤t is fully utilized to determine equilibrium expected returns. On average, the expected return on an asset E(rj,t+1à ¯Ã‚ ½Ã…“à Ã‚ ¤t) equals its actual return (rj,t+1), so that no expected abnormal return can be gained from past information. RWM gives much stronger condition for EMH. It assumes that successive price changes have a same normal distribution and are independent. Its logic is that because new information is unpredictable and reaches market randomly, so under EMH, the resulting security price changes must be also unpredictable and random (Malkiel, 1973; Malkiel, 2003). No profit can be made from past information. There are three sub-hypotheses of EMH depending on the level of available information set (Fa ma, 1991). Firstly, market is weak-form efficient when prices reflect all security market information such as historical prices. Secondly, market is semistrong-form efficient when prices reflect all public information such as corporate news and financial statements. Thirdly, market is strong-form efficient when prices reflect all public and private information. Behaviour Finance Theories Figure1: Conceptual Framework of Behaviour Finance Source: Shleifer (2000) However, behaviour finance challenges EMH because it argues that psychological biases lead to investor irrationality and limits to arbitrage impede exploitation of mispricing opportunities (Shleifer, 2002). Psychological bias results into systematic overreaction or underreacion among investors. Many behaviour finance theories have been successfully developed to explain some market anomalies. Conservatism biases lead people adjust slowly to new information and hence the underreaction to new information leads to short-run momentum, while representativeness heuristic makes investors believe that past good stock performance will continue and people overreact to information (Barberis, Shleifer Vishny, 1998). Additionally, overconfidence causes investors to overestimate the precision of their own analyses and to neglect public signals (Daniel, Hirshleifer Subrahmanyam, 1998). Under positive (negative) private signal (which is shown in following graph), informed investors overreact and se curity is overpriced (underpriced). When public information becomes available, biased self-attribution causes security to be even more overpriced (underpriced). Eventually, public information proves initial investment judgement is wrong, so price is driven back to intrinsic value (Daniel et al, 1998). It explains that overconfidence leads to short-run return momentum and price correction leads to long-run return reversal. Figure 2: Overconfidence and Self-attributed bias Source: Daniel, Hirshleifer Subrahmanyam (1998) Moreover, classification is a human natural instinct to process information (Barberis Shleifer, 2003). Investors naturally classify stocks by styles, so styles returns are highly positive correlated. There are two kinds of investors: style switchers and fundamental traders. Style switchers are unsophisticated investors and chase investment styles based on past relative stock performance. When there is good news about stock X (shown following graph), they will drain funds away from less attractive style Y. It will push up stock Xs price, even higher than its intrinsic value, but further reduce stock Ys price. However, fundamental traders recognize stock Y is underpriced (Barberis et al, 2003). They arbitrage away mispricing opportunities and drive overpriced stocks back toward intrinsic value. Figure 3: Switchers and Fundamental Traders Source: Barberis Shleifer, (2003) On the other hand, limits to arbitrage may obstruct information to be impounded into prices, duo to the fundamental risk and implementation costs. Noise trader risk would prevent rational investors from arbitraging (Delong, Summer Waldmann, 1990). Pessimistic noise trader drive price below intrinsic value, arbitrageurs can buy the asset, but bear risk of further deviation from the intrinsic value when noise traders become even more pessimistic and price goes down even further (Delong et al, 1990). Arbitrageurs usually have short horizon and must liquidate before price recovers, so they will incur loss. The agency problems between professionals and investors also affect arbitrage (Shleifer Vishny, 1997), so not all mispricing would be arbitraged away to lead market become efficient. However, Fama (1998) argues that behaviour finance theories do well only on the anomalies they are specially designed to explain and cannot be generalized to the entire market. Rubinstein (2001) also argues that investor overconfidence would make market à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“hyper-rationalà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?. Methodologies Adopted to Test the Weak-form EMH Empirical researches on testing weak-form EMH can be divided into three broad categories. Firstly, they tests security return independence. If time-series pattern of security returns shows insignificant (significant) autocorrelations, then weak-form EMH holds (is rejected) (Copeland, Weston Shastri, 2005). Secondly, they test return momentum effect. If portfolio of stocks with higher returns in the short past continues to earn higher abnormal returns in the subsequent short term, then short-run past returns contain information that could predict future returns, so EMH will not hold (Copeland et al, 2005). Thirdly, they test technical trading rules. If no trading rules that consistently derive abnormal profits can be found, then weak-form EMH holds. A series of research methodologies have been developed to exam the EMH. The runs test is non-parametric, which is used to determine whether successive prices changes are independent. Unit root tests involve three different methods to test the null hypothesis of a unit root: the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test (1979), the Phillips-Peron (PP) test (1988) and the Kwiatkowski, Phillioh, Achmidt and Shin (KPSS) test (1992). Multiple variance ratio (MVR) tests are adopted to detect autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity in returns (Chow Denning, 1993). Empirical Results of Weak-form EMH for Emerging Markets The research results for testing weak-form efficiency on the emerging markets are mixed. World Bank study reports significant market inefficiency for 19 emerging equity markets (Claessens, Dasgupta Glen, 1995). Latin American emerging markets of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico are weak-form EMH (Urrutia, 1995), but under the variance ratio test, RWH is rejected (Ojah Karemera, 1999). Under ADF test, EMH is also generally supported for six Latin American stock markets (Choundhry, 1997). For the emerging markets in Asia, major Asian markets are weak-form inefficient, such as Korea and Taiwan (Cheung, Wong Ho, 1993), Singpore and Thiland (Huang, 1995), but some find it is efficient for Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan (Chan, Gup Pan, 1992). When the observed index levels are used, both RWH and EMH are rejected for three equity markets of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain after adjusting for infrequent trading , but when the corrected true indices are used, RWH is accepted (Abraha m et al, 2002). RWH is rejected in five Middle Eastern emerging markets, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, and Turkey (Omran and Farrar, 2001). Weak-form efficiency is rejected for Saudi and Palestinian financial market and inefficiency might be due to delay in operations and high transaction cost, thinness of trading and illiquidity in the market (Nourredine Kababa, 1998; Award Daraghma, 2009). Many researches find that emerging markets are becoming more efficient due to the liberalization policies. Istanbul stock exchange was inefficient in the early times but it becomes more efficient as the country started liberalization and deregulation (Antonios, Ergul Holmes, 1997). 4.1 Thin Trading and Non-linearity It is argued that such mixed evidences of the weak-form EMH in emerging markets are only reliable if the methodologies adopted take accounts for the institutional characteristics and trading conditions of the markets, such as thin trading and the presence of non-linearity (Antoniou, Ergul Holmes, 1997). Ignoring these factors may lead to statistical illusions regarding efficiency. The conventional tests of efficiency based on linear model have been developed to test markets with high levels of liquidity, sophisticated investors with access to reliable information and few institutional impediments (Antoniou, Ergul Holmes, 1997). Therefore they are not suitable for testing EMH for emerging markets with characteristics of thin trading, low liquidity and less well informed investors with access to unreliable information. Thin trading will bring serious serial correlation (Fisher, 1996), so the observed dependence does not necessarily represent serial correlation among securities return s. In addition, prices responds to information in a non-linear behavior especially during the early development stages of emerging markets (Schatzberg Reiber, 1992), so if the return generating process is non-linear but a linear model is used to test efficiency, then EMH may be wrongly accepted. This is because non-linear systems such as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“chaoticà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? ones look very similar to a random walk (Savit, 1988). However, the conventional tests cannot recognize this problem. There are several reasons for the existence of non-linear reaction of price to information in emerging markets. Transaction costs are high, information is relatively not reliable and market is illiquid or there are restrictions on trading (Stoll Whaley, 1990). As a result, investors do not always respond instantaneously to the information, which contradicts the assumptions of investor rationality and linear response of price. Scheinkman and LeBaron (1989) and Peters (1991) also empirically support th e non-linearity of stock returns. A number of studies have researched the impact of thin trading (Fisher, 1966; Dimson, 1979; Cohen, 1978; Lo Mackinlay, 1990). Many empirical studies also have taken account of the non-linearity in price series and remove the impact of thin trading by the AR (1) model proposed by Miller (1994). Antoniou, Ergul and Holmes (1997) find that there is apparent predictability of stock returns for Istanbul stock market, but after considering the impact of thin trading, the random walk hypothesis is accepted and the market is informationally efficient for 1990 onwards. Abuzarour (2005) examines the effect of non-trading on market efficiency for three emerging Arabian equity markets: Jordan, Egypt and Palestine using the variance ratio test and the run test during the period of 1992 and 2004. Both random walk hypothesis and weak form efficiency are rejected when the observed index levels are used. However, when the indices are corrected by the Miller, Muthuswamy and Whaley methodologies (1994 ) to take account for thin trading, weak-form EMH is accepted for Egypt and Jordan stock market but it is still rejected for Palestine. All these empirical researches suggest that markets become more efficient when trading volume is high, information is much reliable and institutional frameworks are appropriate. 4.2 Structural Breaks Research on efficiency for emerging markets should not only take account for institutional characteristics and trading conditions, but also should take account for the structural breaks in the underlying series that arise from the liberalization. Ignoring structural breaks can lead to wrong inference that these indices are following random walks. Many emerging countries are liberalizing their financial markets with various degrees (IFC, 1997) and such structure changes would have affected their equity markets (Bekaert et al, 2002; Henry 2000). For instance, huge shocks occurred for equity index level for Greece, Malaysia and Philippines in late 1980s and early 1990s, which are around the same year of their market liberalization. As Perron (1989) have demonstrated that traditional standard tests for RWH in stock prices have low power against the alternative hypothesis in small samples, and the problem is especially serious when structural changes are involved. Thus failure to consider these breaking points may wrongly support the RWH. Therefore, many empirical researches try to incorporate the structural breaks factor by more powerful test methods, such as the Zivot- Andrew sequential test (Zivot Andrew, 1992). Chaudhuri and Wu (2001) adopt both the standard ADF test and Zivot- Andrew sequential method to test the EMH in seventeen emerging markets: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Greece, India, Jordan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. Results for the ADF test without breaks to each series tend to show non-rejection of the RWH. However, results for the Zivot- Andrew test with structural breaks show that RWH can be powerfully rejected at the one percent significant level in ten markets: Argentina, Brazil, Greece, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Taiwan and Zimbabwe (Chaudhuri Wu, 2001). 4.3 Market Evolution Although structural breaks have been taken into account in many researches, it is argued that standard techniques are still not fit to test the weak-form EHM for emerging market, because they are not able to evaluate the evolving efficiency in emerging markets. It is also argued that methods such as a time varying parameter model and Kalman Filter technique not only can indicate the movement of stock returns from inefficiency to efficiency, but also can measure the timing of the movement towards full efficiency(Rockinger Urga, 2000; Zalewska-Mitura Hall, 1999). It is generally agreed that emerging markets are evolving from inefficiency to efficiency with the higher disclosure degree of firm practices, high trading volume and lower institutional barriers to trade (Cornelius, 1994). According to Laurence (1986), the methods of OLS or GMM test market efficiency over the whole period and hardly capture the tendency towards efficiency, so under these methods, early inefficiency would wr ongly lead to the conclusion that there are profit opportunities based on the past asset price movement. In addition, the variance of the error process in the conventional test models is not constant over time, so if this changing variance structure is omitted and has a serial correlation property, then market efficiency would be incorrectly rejected (Hall Urga, G2002). Hall and Urga (2002) deal with these problems by using the Kalman Filter and combing the time varying parameter model with a standard GARCH-M model (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity in mean). They apply this procedure to the two indexes of Russian stock market from 1995 to 2000. And find that with regard to RTS index (Russian Trading System), the market is initially inefficient and it takes about two and a half years to become efficient, while for the ASPGEN Index (Skate Press Agency General), the market is still predictable. There is evidence of a tendency towards being efficient. Kvedaras and Basdevant (2002) also investigate the market efficiency in the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by using the time-varying variance ratio statistic robust to heteroscedasticity based on time-varying autocorrelations. They find a clear trajectory to weak-form efficiency in the Estonian and Lithuanian capital markets. Its relatively small inefficiency ca n be explained by transaction costs and information acquiring costs (Grossman and Stiglitz, 1980). In the Latvian market, it is inefficient even at the very end of the analyzed period. Policy Implications These results have some important implications for developing effective institutional and regulatory frameworks. Since infrequent trading negatively affects market efficiency and liquidity in emerging markets, economic policy makers should pay attention to minimize the institutional restriction and barriers on capital flow in the financial markets, impose strict disclosure requirements and ensure that investors can easily access to high quality and reliable information. Improving liquidity of capital markets can provide lower borrowing costs for investors and greater opportunities for investment diversification with lower systematic risks. In addition, equity market liberalization is important to help achieving market development. It can reduce cost of capital and increase capital productivity with better capital allocation. Conclusion 6.1 Short Summary In conclusion, as two main schools of thought in modern financial theories, there is a hot debate between efficient market hypothesis and behaviour finance. EMH asserts that financial markets are informationally efficient and equity stock prices instantaneously and fully reflect all known information. While behaviour finance argues that psychological biases lead to investor irrationality and limits to arbitrage impede exploitation of mispricing opportunities, so market is not efficient. There are wide empirical researches on the issue of market efficiency in emerging markets with mixed results. It is generally found that most of emerging markets are still inefficient, but after correcting for institutional characteristics and trading conditions, such as thin trading and the presence of non-linearity, some researches find that equity markets are efficient for some countries such as for Istanbul, Egypt and Jordan. When structure break factors are taken into account, market efficiency i s powerfully rejected for most emerging countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Greece and India. There are also some evidence shows that duo to economic liberalization policies, many emerging markets are moving towards more efficiency such as Estonian, Lithuanian and Russia. 6.2 Limitations of Empirical Researches and Proposed Further Research However, there are some limitations involved in these empirical researches. Some researches ignore whether the distribution is normal or not. Others using equally weighted indices may bias the results. The possible auto-correlation might be due to the noise traders but doesnt imply return predictability (Cuthberston, 1996). Most of these studies focus on the test of time series of equity return to investigate EMH, but don not investigate the momentum effect or the profitability of technical trading to earn abnormal return. Therefore, further research can be extended in several dimensions. Firstly, it suggests trying to combine the tests of momentum effect or technical trading rules with the time series tests to make more robust conclusions. Secondly, since most of researches focus on traditional EMH, it can consider the factors of investor behaviour, such as psychologies bias and limits to arbitrage to do further in-depth testing of EMH. Finally, further researches for more novel and accurate methodologies of testing EMH are significantly essential. Weak Form Efficient Market Hypothesis For Emerging Markets Weak Form Efficient Market Hypothesis For Emerging Markets Literature Review The issue of market efficiency in emerging markets is of great significance for both foreign investors and policy makers in emerging economies. This project devotes large efforts to produce a thorough and in-depth literature review for this area. This topic is to be investigated from these aspects: theoretical foundation, methodologies of tests and empirical results. Firstly, traditional efficient market hypothesis (Fama, 1970; Makiel, 1973) and behavior finance theories developed in recent decades (Barbris, 1998; Shleifer, 2000) have formed two main schools of thought for the issue of market efficiency. Secondly, the evolution for a series of methodologies is important for testing market efficiency. Thirdly, the empirical evidence is reviewed by consideration three major factors: trade volume and non-linear behavior, structural breaks and market evolution through time. Finally, it also reflects some important policy implications for emerging markets. Many empirical studies have been widely carried to investigate the weak-form efficient market hypothesis for emerging markets, and the results are mixed. Generally, most of emerging markets are found to be inefficient. But for some countries, such as Istanbul, Egypt and Jordan, after correcting for institutional characteristics and trading conditions, such as thin trading and the presence of non-linearity, equity markets are found to be efficient. When structure break factors are taken into account, market efficiency is powerfully rejected for countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Greece and India. There is also evidence showing that initially emerging markets are inefficient, but over time they are moving toward to be more efficient, such as in Estonian, Lithuanian and Russia duo to economic liberalization policies. These results reflect some important policy implications. Infrequent trading and illiquidity of capital markets negatively affects market efficiency, so economic policy makers should devote efforts to minimize the institutional restriction and barriers on capital flow in the financial markets and to impose strict disclosure requirements, so that investors can easily access to high quality and reliable information. Improving liquidity of capital markets can provide lower borrowing costs for investors and greater opportunities for investment diversification with lower systematic risks. In addition, equity market liberalization is important to help achieving market development. It can reduce cost of capital and increase capital productivity with better capital allocation. Introduction: Due to the increasing globalization of financial markets, fast economic growth and adoption of financial liberalization policies for equity markets in emerging economies, it is widely indicated that equity investment in emerging economies can provide superior returns. Past decades have witnessed spectacular growth in both size and relative importance of emerging equity markets. The market capitalization of emerging market economies accounts for twelve percent of world market capitalization and has more than doubled, growing from less than $2 trillion in 1995 to $5 trillion in 2006 (Nally, 2010). By 2015, it is estimated that the combined GDP of emerging-market economies will surpass that of the top 20 developed economies (ibid). In addition, emerging market returns are weakly correlated with returns in developed markets, so international diversification with these emerging equities can give lower portfolio risks (Levy Sarnat, 1970). The potential high rates of returns and diversific ation benefits has attracted large number of foreign fund investors, so the investigation on whether emerging markets function efficiently is significantly important. By knowing degree of market efficiency, economy policy makers and regulators can gain insights to develop right institutional and regulatory frameworks to allocate scare resources efficiently, form favourable investment condition and obtain further economic growth. Therefore, this essay is going to investigate the weak-form market efficiency in emerging markets. The efficient market hypothesis by Fama (1970), Random Walk module by Makiel (1973) and behaviour finance theories are directed related to this issue and form the theoretical foundations. Section 1 will critically give the theoretical review based on the two schools of thought that are EMH and behaviour finance theories. Section 2 will give a brief review of methodologies adopted in literature review. Section 3 will give empirical review of the weak-form EMH for emerging markets. Section 4 will indicate some brief policy implications for emerging economies and section 5 is the conclusion with some directions for further research. Theoretic Review of EMH VS Behaviour Finance Efficient Market Hypothesis Fama (1970) defines an efficient financial market as one in which security prices always instantaneously and fully reflect all available information. No investors can earn expected abnormal return by analysing past known information. Market efficiency is attained by two key forces: investor rationality and arbitrage activities (Fama, 1970). EMH assumes that investors are rational and can process information correctly and efficiently. Although some investors are irrational and may overact or underact to new information, these judgement errors are independent and random, hence can cancel out each other without affecting prices (Fama, 1998). Therefore, on average, the whole market is efficient. In addition, since numerous profit-maximizing investors are competing to analyse, value and trade securities based on all available information to exploit arbitrage opportunities, on aggregate level, security prices are adjusted quickly to reflect the effect of new information (Fama, 1998). Secur ity prices are driven close to intrinsic values. Expected returns implicit in the current price of a security should reflect its underlying risk, and higher returns are earned only as compensations for bearing higher risk. There are two main modules that explain EMH: fair-game model and random walk model (RWM). The fair-game model is expressed as: Zj,t+1 =rj,t+1-E(rj,t+1à ¯Ã‚ ½Ã…“à Ã‚ ¤t), E(Zj,t+1à ¯Ã‚ ½Ã…“à Ã‚ ¤t)=0 (Copeland, Weston Shastri, 2005). Information in à Ã‚ ¤t is fully utilized to determine equilibrium expected returns. On average, the expected return on an asset E(rj,t+1à ¯Ã‚ ½Ã…“à Ã‚ ¤t) equals its actual return (rj,t+1), so that no expected abnormal return can be gained from past information. RWM gives much stronger condition for EMH. It assumes that successive price changes have a same normal distribution and are independent. Its logic is that because new information is unpredictable and reaches market randomly, so under EMH, the resulting security price changes must be also unpredictable and random (Malkiel, 1973; Malkiel, 2003). No profit can be made from past information. There are three sub-hypotheses of EMH depending on the level of available information set (Fa ma, 1991). Firstly, market is weak-form efficient when prices reflect all security market information such as historical prices. Secondly, market is semistrong-form efficient when prices reflect all public information such as corporate news and financial statements. Thirdly, market is strong-form efficient when prices reflect all public and private information. Behaviour Finance Theories Figure1: Conceptual Framework of Behaviour Finance Source: Shleifer (2000) However, behaviour finance challenges EMH because it argues that psychological biases lead to investor irrationality and limits to arbitrage impede exploitation of mispricing opportunities (Shleifer, 2002). Psychological bias results into systematic overreaction or underreacion among investors. Many behaviour finance theories have been successfully developed to explain some market anomalies. Conservatism biases lead people adjust slowly to new information and hence the underreaction to new information leads to short-run momentum, while representativeness heuristic makes investors believe that past good stock performance will continue and people overreact to information (Barberis, Shleifer Vishny, 1998). Additionally, overconfidence causes investors to overestimate the precision of their own analyses and to neglect public signals (Daniel, Hirshleifer Subrahmanyam, 1998). Under positive (negative) private signal (which is shown in following graph), informed investors overreact and se curity is overpriced (underpriced). When public information becomes available, biased self-attribution causes security to be even more overpriced (underpriced). Eventually, public information proves initial investment judgement is wrong, so price is driven back to intrinsic value (Daniel et al, 1998). It explains that overconfidence leads to short-run return momentum and price correction leads to long-run return reversal. Figure 2: Overconfidence and Self-attributed bias Source: Daniel, Hirshleifer Subrahmanyam (1998) Moreover, classification is a human natural instinct to process information (Barberis Shleifer, 2003). Investors naturally classify stocks by styles, so styles returns are highly positive correlated. There are two kinds of investors: style switchers and fundamental traders. Style switchers are unsophisticated investors and chase investment styles based on past relative stock performance. When there is good news about stock X (shown following graph), they will drain funds away from less attractive style Y. It will push up stock Xs price, even higher than its intrinsic value, but further reduce stock Ys price. However, fundamental traders recognize stock Y is underpriced (Barberis et al, 2003). They arbitrage away mispricing opportunities and drive overpriced stocks back toward intrinsic value. Figure 3: Switchers and Fundamental Traders Source: Barberis Shleifer, (2003) On the other hand, limits to arbitrage may obstruct information to be impounded into prices, duo to the fundamental risk and implementation costs. Noise trader risk would prevent rational investors from arbitraging (Delong, Summer Waldmann, 1990). Pessimistic noise trader drive price below intrinsic value, arbitrageurs can buy the asset, but bear risk of further deviation from the intrinsic value when noise traders become even more pessimistic and price goes down even further (Delong et al, 1990). Arbitrageurs usually have short horizon and must liquidate before price recovers, so they will incur loss. The agency problems between professionals and investors also affect arbitrage (Shleifer Vishny, 1997), so not all mispricing would be arbitraged away to lead market become efficient. However, Fama (1998) argues that behaviour finance theories do well only on the anomalies they are specially designed to explain and cannot be generalized to the entire market. Rubinstein (2001) also argues that investor overconfidence would make market à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“hyper-rationalà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?. Methodologies Adopted to Test the Weak-form EMH Empirical researches on testing weak-form EMH can be divided into three broad categories. Firstly, they tests security return independence. If time-series pattern of security returns shows insignificant (significant) autocorrelations, then weak-form EMH holds (is rejected) (Copeland, Weston Shastri, 2005). Secondly, they test return momentum effect. If portfolio of stocks with higher returns in the short past continues to earn higher abnormal returns in the subsequent short term, then short-run past returns contain information that could predict future returns, so EMH will not hold (Copeland et al, 2005). Thirdly, they test technical trading rules. If no trading rules that consistently derive abnormal profits can be found, then weak-form EMH holds. A series of research methodologies have been developed to exam the EMH. The runs test is non-parametric, which is used to determine whether successive prices changes are independent. Unit root tests involve three different methods to test the null hypothesis of a unit root: the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test (1979), the Phillips-Peron (PP) test (1988) and the Kwiatkowski, Phillioh, Achmidt and Shin (KPSS) test (1992). Multiple variance ratio (MVR) tests are adopted to detect autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity in returns (Chow Denning, 1993). Empirical Results of Weak-form EMH for Emerging Markets The research results for testing weak-form efficiency on the emerging markets are mixed. World Bank study reports significant market inefficiency for 19 emerging equity markets (Claessens, Dasgupta Glen, 1995). Latin American emerging markets of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico are weak-form EMH (Urrutia, 1995), but under the variance ratio test, RWH is rejected (Ojah Karemera, 1999). Under ADF test, EMH is also generally supported for six Latin American stock markets (Choundhry, 1997). For the emerging markets in Asia, major Asian markets are weak-form inefficient, such as Korea and Taiwan (Cheung, Wong Ho, 1993), Singpore and Thiland (Huang, 1995), but some find it is efficient for Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan (Chan, Gup Pan, 1992). When the observed index levels are used, both RWH and EMH are rejected for three equity markets of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain after adjusting for infrequent trading , but when the corrected true indices are used, RWH is accepted (Abraha m et al, 2002). RWH is rejected in five Middle Eastern emerging markets, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, and Turkey (Omran and Farrar, 2001). Weak-form efficiency is rejected for Saudi and Palestinian financial market and inefficiency might be due to delay in operations and high transaction cost, thinness of trading and illiquidity in the market (Nourredine Kababa, 1998; Award Daraghma, 2009). Many researches find that emerging markets are becoming more efficient due to the liberalization policies. Istanbul stock exchange was inefficient in the early times but it becomes more efficient as the country started liberalization and deregulation (Antonios, Ergul Holmes, 1997). 4.1 Thin Trading and Non-linearity It is argued that such mixed evidences of the weak-form EMH in emerging markets are only reliable if the methodologies adopted take accounts for the institutional characteristics and trading conditions of the markets, such as thin trading and the presence of non-linearity (Antoniou, Ergul Holmes, 1997). Ignoring these factors may lead to statistical illusions regarding efficiency. The conventional tests of efficiency based on linear model have been developed to test markets with high levels of liquidity, sophisticated investors with access to reliable information and few institutional impediments (Antoniou, Ergul Holmes, 1997). Therefore they are not suitable for testing EMH for emerging markets with characteristics of thin trading, low liquidity and less well informed investors with access to unreliable information. Thin trading will bring serious serial correlation (Fisher, 1996), so the observed dependence does not necessarily represent serial correlation among securities return s. In addition, prices responds to information in a non-linear behavior especially during the early development stages of emerging markets (Schatzberg Reiber, 1992), so if the return generating process is non-linear but a linear model is used to test efficiency, then EMH may be wrongly accepted. This is because non-linear systems such as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“chaoticà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? ones look very similar to a random walk (Savit, 1988). However, the conventional tests cannot recognize this problem. There are several reasons for the existence of non-linear reaction of price to information in emerging markets. Transaction costs are high, information is relatively not reliable and market is illiquid or there are restrictions on trading (Stoll Whaley, 1990). As a result, investors do not always respond instantaneously to the information, which contradicts the assumptions of investor rationality and linear response of price. Scheinkman and LeBaron (1989) and Peters (1991) also empirically support th e non-linearity of stock returns. A number of studies have researched the impact of thin trading (Fisher, 1966; Dimson, 1979; Cohen, 1978; Lo Mackinlay, 1990). Many empirical studies also have taken account of the non-linearity in price series and remove the impact of thin trading by the AR (1) model proposed by Miller (1994). Antoniou, Ergul and Holmes (1997) find that there is apparent predictability of stock returns for Istanbul stock market, but after considering the impact of thin trading, the random walk hypothesis is accepted and the market is informationally efficient for 1990 onwards. Abuzarour (2005) examines the effect of non-trading on market efficiency for three emerging Arabian equity markets: Jordan, Egypt and Palestine using the variance ratio test and the run test during the period of 1992 and 2004. Both random walk hypothesis and weak form efficiency are rejected when the observed index levels are used. However, when the indices are corrected by the Miller, Muthuswamy and Whaley methodologies (1994 ) to take account for thin trading, weak-form EMH is accepted for Egypt and Jordan stock market but it is still rejected for Palestine. All these empirical researches suggest that markets become more efficient when trading volume is high, information is much reliable and institutional frameworks are appropriate. 4.2 Structural Breaks Research on efficiency for emerging markets should not only take account for institutional characteristics and trading conditions, but also should take account for the structural breaks in the underlying series that arise from the liberalization. Ignoring structural breaks can lead to wrong inference that these indices are following random walks. Many emerging countries are liberalizing their financial markets with various degrees (IFC, 1997) and such structure changes would have affected their equity markets (Bekaert et al, 2002; Henry 2000). For instance, huge shocks occurred for equity index level for Greece, Malaysia and Philippines in late 1980s and early 1990s, which are around the same year of their market liberalization. As Perron (1989) have demonstrated that traditional standard tests for RWH in stock prices have low power against the alternative hypothesis in small samples, and the problem is especially serious when structural changes are involved. Thus failure to consider these breaking points may wrongly support the RWH. Therefore, many empirical researches try to incorporate the structural breaks factor by more powerful test methods, such as the Zivot- Andrew sequential test (Zivot Andrew, 1992). Chaudhuri and Wu (2001) adopt both the standard ADF test and Zivot- Andrew sequential method to test the EMH in seventeen emerging markets: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Greece, India, Jordan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. Results for the ADF test without breaks to each series tend to show non-rejection of the RWH. However, results for the Zivot- Andrew test with structural breaks show that RWH can be powerfully rejected at the one percent significant level in ten markets: Argentina, Brazil, Greece, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Taiwan and Zimbabwe (Chaudhuri Wu, 2001). 4.3 Market Evolution Although structural breaks have been taken into account in many researches, it is argued that standard techniques are still not fit to test the weak-form EHM for emerging market, because they are not able to evaluate the evolving efficiency in emerging markets. It is also argued that methods such as a time varying parameter model and Kalman Filter technique not only can indicate the movement of stock returns from inefficiency to efficiency, but also can measure the timing of the movement towards full efficiency(Rockinger Urga, 2000; Zalewska-Mitura Hall, 1999). It is generally agreed that emerging markets are evolving from inefficiency to efficiency with the higher disclosure degree of firm practices, high trading volume and lower institutional barriers to trade (Cornelius, 1994). According to Laurence (1986), the methods of OLS or GMM test market efficiency over the whole period and hardly capture the tendency towards efficiency, so under these methods, early inefficiency would wr ongly lead to the conclusion that there are profit opportunities based on the past asset price movement. In addition, the variance of the error process in the conventional test models is not constant over time, so if this changing variance structure is omitted and has a serial correlation property, then market efficiency would be incorrectly rejected (Hall Urga, G2002). Hall and Urga (2002) deal with these problems by using the Kalman Filter and combing the time varying parameter model with a standard GARCH-M model (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity in mean). They apply this procedure to the two indexes of Russian stock market from 1995 to 2000. And find that with regard to RTS index (Russian Trading System), the market is initially inefficient and it takes about two and a half years to become efficient, while for the ASPGEN Index (Skate Press Agency General), the market is still predictable. There is evidence of a tendency towards being efficient. Kvedaras and Basdevant (2002) also investigate the market efficiency in the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by using the time-varying variance ratio statistic robust to heteroscedasticity based on time-varying autocorrelations. They find a clear trajectory to weak-form efficiency in the Estonian and Lithuanian capital markets. Its relatively small inefficiency ca n be explained by transaction costs and information acquiring costs (Grossman and Stiglitz, 1980). In the Latvian market, it is inefficient even at the very end of the analyzed period. Policy Implications These results have some important implications for developing effective institutional and regulatory frameworks. Since infrequent trading negatively affects market efficiency and liquidity in emerging markets, economic policy makers should pay attention to minimize the institutional restriction and barriers on capital flow in the financial markets, impose strict disclosure requirements and ensure that investors can easily access to high quality and reliable information. Improving liquidity of capital markets can provide lower borrowing costs for investors and greater opportunities for investment diversification with lower systematic risks. In addition, equity market liberalization is important to help achieving market development. It can reduce cost of capital and increase capital productivity with better capital allocation. Conclusion 6.1 Short Summary In conclusion, as two main schools of thought in modern financial theories, there is a hot debate between efficient market hypothesis and behaviour finance. EMH asserts that financial markets are informationally efficient and equity stock prices instantaneously and fully reflect all known information. While behaviour finance argues that psychological biases lead to investor irrationality and limits to arbitrage impede exploitation of mispricing opportunities, so market is not efficient. There are wide empirical researches on the issue of market efficiency in emerging markets with mixed results. It is generally found that most of emerging markets are still inefficient, but after correcting for institutional characteristics and trading conditions, such as thin trading and the presence of non-linearity, some researches find that equity markets are efficient for some countries such as for Istanbul, Egypt and Jordan. When structure break factors are taken into account, market efficiency i s powerfully rejected for most emerging countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Greece and India. There are also some evidence shows that duo to economic liberalization policies, many emerging markets are moving towards more efficiency such as Estonian, Lithuanian and Russia. 6.2 Limitations of Empirical Researches and Proposed Further Research However, there are some limitations involved in these empirical researches. Some researches ignore whether the distribution is normal or not. Others using equally weighted indices may bias the results. The possible auto-correlation might be due to the noise traders but doesnt imply return predictability (Cuthberston, 1996). Most of these studies focus on the test of time series of equity return to investigate EMH, but don not investigate the momentum effect or the profitability of technical trading to earn abnormal return. Therefore, further research can be extended in several dimensions. Firstly, it suggests trying to combine the tests of momentum effect or technical trading rules with the time series tests to make more robust conclusions. Secondly, since most of researches focus on traditional EMH, it can consider the factors of investor behaviour, such as psychologies bias and limits to arbitrage to do further in-depth testing of EMH. Finally, further researches for more novel and accurate methodologies of testing EMH are significantly essential.

Everything about Marijuana Essay -- Illegal Drugs Narcotics Cannabis

"I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?" (Willie Nelson) Marijuana is a psychoactive product, meaning that it interacts with the central nervous system and can alter perception, mood and behavior. It is widely and illegally used by many people all over the world. Marijuana is used for its euphoric feeling and pleasure when smoked, but also for its medical purposes. Marijuana comes from two main flowering plants, Cannabis Sativa and Cannabis Indica. Cannabis Sativa plants are generally tall, thin plants with narrow leaves and a rather light green color. They are natively grown in Mexico, Colombia, Thailand and Southeast Asia. In contrast, Indica plants grow in hash producing countries like Afghanistan, Morocco and Tibet. They are shorter, have broader leaves and usually look bushier than Sativa plants. Sativa plants are used more often for smoking, and said to have a stronger effect than the Indica plant. Such plants usually grow in the wild, but some people illegally grow marijuana in their homes, using special lights and growing tools. There are many substances in marijuana, over 400 known. The substance that creates a person to get ?high? while smoking marijuana is called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). THC is a type of cannabinoid which is a strong chemical in the plant, found in the flower or buds, stems and leaves. The higher content of THC is usually found in the buds, the most smoked part of marijuana. When weed is smoked, the THC goes straight through the blood stream, into the lungs and the brain. People usually start to feel ?hi... ...ers are also used to roll loose marijuana. The filled cigar or swisher would be split in the middle, emptied and the marijuana would be added and then the blunt would be rolled. Other popular smoking items are water pipes, or bongs and just normal pipes. Bongs filter out the marijuana through the water and most of the THC is inhaled. Pipes come in many different shapes, colors and sizes and are sold at just about any smoke shop. Vaporizers are also used, mostly for medical purposes though, which filter out the marijuana but are very costly. Pot does not always have to be smoked. It can be cooked into foods or even made into teas. Marijuana is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world. After many centuries of using marijuana, it has become a trend for many people. It is smoked around the world today, and just about anyone can get their hands on this drug. Everything about Marijuana Essay -- Illegal Drugs Narcotics Cannabis "I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?" (Willie Nelson) Marijuana is a psychoactive product, meaning that it interacts with the central nervous system and can alter perception, mood and behavior. It is widely and illegally used by many people all over the world. Marijuana is used for its euphoric feeling and pleasure when smoked, but also for its medical purposes. Marijuana comes from two main flowering plants, Cannabis Sativa and Cannabis Indica. Cannabis Sativa plants are generally tall, thin plants with narrow leaves and a rather light green color. They are natively grown in Mexico, Colombia, Thailand and Southeast Asia. In contrast, Indica plants grow in hash producing countries like Afghanistan, Morocco and Tibet. They are shorter, have broader leaves and usually look bushier than Sativa plants. Sativa plants are used more often for smoking, and said to have a stronger effect than the Indica plant. Such plants usually grow in the wild, but some people illegally grow marijuana in their homes, using special lights and growing tools. There are many substances in marijuana, over 400 known. The substance that creates a person to get ?high? while smoking marijuana is called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). THC is a type of cannabinoid which is a strong chemical in the plant, found in the flower or buds, stems and leaves. The higher content of THC is usually found in the buds, the most smoked part of marijuana. When weed is smoked, the THC goes straight through the blood stream, into the lungs and the brain. People usually start to feel ?hi... ...ers are also used to roll loose marijuana. The filled cigar or swisher would be split in the middle, emptied and the marijuana would be added and then the blunt would be rolled. Other popular smoking items are water pipes, or bongs and just normal pipes. Bongs filter out the marijuana through the water and most of the THC is inhaled. Pipes come in many different shapes, colors and sizes and are sold at just about any smoke shop. Vaporizers are also used, mostly for medical purposes though, which filter out the marijuana but are very costly. Pot does not always have to be smoked. It can be cooked into foods or even made into teas. Marijuana is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world. After many centuries of using marijuana, it has become a trend for many people. It is smoked around the world today, and just about anyone can get their hands on this drug.

American Religion: The Puritans and the Quakers

In the mid-1500's, England saw a new trend in the way people worshipped and practiced religion. The new movement called â€Å"Puritanism,† called for a life lived simply and spent in prayer, listening to sermons and worship in Church. The Puritans lived seriously and believed that celebrations such as holidays like Christmas and Easter as well as the arts like music and dance were unnecessary trappings to have in life. They believed that people should only be concerned about â€Å"godly† ways and plain living in order to reach heaven. This presented problems at that time for Queen Elizabeth.In those years, the queen was tasked with stabilizing the country and decided that to do this, England had to have a comprehensive Church that could accommodate the views of both the Protestants and the conservative Catholics (Emerson 18). Therefore, it was decided that the Church of England teach doctrines that would be acceptable to the Protestants and at the same time keep alive t he Catholic traditions used in worship. The compromise did not quite sit well as hoped. The Puritans believed that in religious worship, only the spiritual doctrines were the only things that were important.All other external articles such as ministry vestments were not only unnecessary but could be taken as evil. The Conservatives however, defended the use of such vestments as traditional symbols of status and identification. Due to differences of opinion with regard to the way worship and the Episcopal structure is conducted in the Anglican Church, separatist and underground groups were formed with the object of seeking reform in the religious practices. Due to conflicts that usually arise where there is a difference of opinion, some Puritans decidedto leave England and settle in North America. It was in 1620 that the ship the Mayflower docked and the first Puritans came to settle in Massachusetts (Barbour, and Frost 5) One of the other Reformist groups was called the Quakers. Unl ike the Puritans, the Quakers believed that religious worship was a personal and individual thing that did not require any intermediary in the form of leaders, priests or ministers. Like the Puritans, the Quakers also suffered the consequences of conflict and therefore some decided to migrate and settle in America as well.It was in 1677 that a group of Quakers led by William Penn set foot on North American soil and settled in the state of Pennsylvania. This settlement of opposing religious groups would have significant effect on the way religion is practiced and how other differing faiths would be treated. The Quakers held meetings were people gathered to sit quietly to reflect and pray in silence. They only spoke up when they feel God wanted to, and this privilege was open to both men and women. They practiced their faith by action always looking out to help the poor and establish peace.They also campaigned for women's rights as well as that of the Native Americans. Despite their s imilarities in terms of experience of persecution in England, subsequent emigration to America and ideals of a Utopia brought about by spiritual living, the fundamental beliefs of both groups differed thoroughly. Whereas the Puritans insisted on strict hierarchies, conformity to religion and the singular importance of doctrine, the Quakers propagated tolerance for all religions and races. They supported pacifism in the search for peace and equality with women in spiritualism.The Quakers also believed that doctrine takes second place to an individual's â€Å"inner light. † This kind of thinking angered the Puritans so much that any Quaker who was caught trying to preach in Massachusetts was either tortured or executed (Hall 130) Such was the treatment experienced by female Quaker preachers Ann Austin and Mary Fisher (Jones, Sharpless, and Gummere 27) who tried to preach to the Puritan community in Boston in 1656. Upon arrival at Boston harbor, their luggage were seized and sea rched for â€Å"heretical and blasphemous doctrines.† The women themselves were taken to prison and stripped before being confined in total darkness. It was only later that the captain of the ship that brought them was compelled to take them back to Barbados. These all happened despite the lack of any law declaring being a Quaker as illegal. Governor Endicott who was away from Boston at that time even said that had he been there, the women would never have been freed without some whipping. Later investigations as to why Boston was so hostile to the women reveal:It must be said in the first place that the judgment of the officials, and particularly of the ministers, in the Massachusetts Colony had been seriously prejudiced by rumours and accounts that had preceded the arrival of the two women. Anti-Quaker pamphlets had already come from the press in great numbers, and they were unsparing in their accounts of the new â€Å"heresy. † Some of these pamphlets were written b y ministers who, either before or after the publication of their attack, were settled in New England and were in high repute there. (Jones, Sharpless, and Gummere 29)Modern studies also reveal that the Puritans believed that the Quakers brought with them discord, rebellion and witchcraft that threatened to undermine the sanctity of the Puritan community. Because the Quaker tenets were so opposed to that of the Puritans, Quakers were viewed to represent a new spiritual empire that threatened to overthrow the spiritual empire which the Puritan in strict religious fervor was building. Another main difference between the Puritan and Quaker settlers was their treatment and dealings with the Native Americans.Due to their belief that every human being was born with the â€Å"inner light,† the Quakers treated the Native Americans as friends and equals. In his â€Å"Letter to the Lenni Lenape Indians,† William Penn states: â€Å"†This great God has written his law in our hearts, by which we are taught and commanded to love and help and do good to one another, and not to do harm and mischief one unto another. â€Å"† â€Å"†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ I have great love and regard toward you, and I desire to win and gain your love and friendship by a kind, just, and peaceable life; and the people I send are of the same mind, and shall in all things behave themselves accordingly.And if in anything any shall offend you or your people, you shall have a full and speedy satisfaction for the same by an equal number of honest men on both sides, that by no means you may have just occasion of being offended against them. â€Å"† (Soderlund 88) The Puritans on the other hand, viewed the polytheistic and unorganized nature of religion in addition to the â€Å"inadequate† clothing of the Native Americans as â€Å"sinful. † With their literal translation of the Bible, the Puritans viewed the Native Americans' regard for everything living in additio n to the one â€Å"Great Spirit† as idolatry.The Puritans also believed that only a select group of people was chosen by God to join Him in heaven. The Native Americans believed that in all men, were equally good in the â€Å"Great Spirit's sight. † The difference between the Puritan and Native American view of sin didn't help either. While the Puritans looked at man as â€Å"evil,† and life was only a temporary transit before the more important and worthy life with God, the Native Americans believed that man was made up of both good and evil and that life in the present was no different from the afterlife.(Culture Clash: The Puritans and the Native Americans) Both the beliefs fostered by the Puritans and the Quakers contributed greatly to ideals of America as it is today. The value of hard work, discipline and steadfastness promoted by the Puritans in conjunction with the equality and emancipation brought by the Quaker attitude of tolerance for race, gender and religion, are just a few contributing factors that has made America society the way it is today. Works Cited Barbour, Hugh, and J.William Frost. The Quakers. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. Questia. 18 Sept. 2007 . â€Å"Culture Clash: The Puritans and the Native Americans. † 123HelpMe. com. 18 Sep 2007 . Emerson, Everett. Puritanism in America, 1620-1750. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977. Questia. 18 Sept. 2007 . Hall, Thomas Cuming. The Religious Background of American Culture.Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1930. Questia. 18 Sept. 2007 . Jones, Rufus M. , Isaac Sharpless, and Amelia M. Gummere. The Quakers in the American Colonies. London: Macmillan, 1911. Questia. 18 Sept. 2007 . Soderlund, Jean.. ,†Handwritten Letter to the Indians (Lenni Lenape)† William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania, a Documentary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983

Life In The U.S

It took me eighteen years to realize what an extraordinary Influence both of my parents are to my life. As well as me, they were both born in Mexico. I come from a family that takes risks in order to achieve something in life. ThatS exactly what they did once my mother Maria gave birth tome in Mexico. It only took a short amount of time to realize they didn't want me or my sibling to go through everything they went through when they were younger. They changed their whole lives around just for their family. Knowing they had to go through a lot to get where they are right now.I admire the person they have become and they influence me because I want to be able to achieve my goals and become someone in life Just for them. My name is Deyanira Cerriteno. I was born in September 13, 1995. This is my last year attending at Benson Polytechnic High School. At the age of 4 months until four years old I lived with my Grandparents ; my Aunts and uncles when my mom came here to the united States. Let me tell you a little something about my mother Maria. She was born in Michoac?n, Mexico. She was a mommy's girl and not so much of a daddy's girl.She had eight brothers and sisters. She Is the 4th oldest out of all and she was one of the most caring ones. She would always take care of her younger siblings. She would talk about boys Just like any other teenager in the world. But just like any other family, her family had struggles. They had financial struggles. At one point they were a moderate family but everything went down the hill. They couldn't keep up with all of their children's school pays, house rent, water payment, food to feed the whole family, and money for necessary things like clothes, etc†¦ en she knew she was pregnant of me that's when she realized she didn't want me to go through the struggles that they were going through. They wanted me to have a good life and actually be someone in life so that their grandsons/daughters would not go through the struggles a s well. Her and my father were closer than they were before and they both took the decision to immigrate here to the Unites States. Unlike my father, my mother was scared to get caught by immigration and get sent back to Mexico. They had to go through the dessert where they found scorpions, and cactus.Not the safest environment. It's awesome to know they did it for me. My father Enrique on the other hand was born in M ©xico as well. My father had 5 brothers and sisters. Both of his parents got separated and went their own way. But his father was an alcoholic and only decided to take both of the oldest kids that were working at the time. After his father left his mother with the other 4 kids, everything got worse. My dad felt useless and felt Ilke his dad never felt love for him. Not long after my grandfather left, my grandmother got sick and that's when she as diagnosed with cancer.My dad didn't know what to do. They were all alone. No one had a Job. My grandmother wasn't able to take care of her kids because she was weak most of the time. My father being the oldest that was left was going out in the streets and begging for money, looking out for any jobs that were available. He was only 8 years old. He left school and supported his mother because she couldnt do 1 OF2 tne same tnlngs sne usea to. He naa turned Into tne Tatner Tlgure Tor nls Drotners and sisters. He found a Job and was able to feed 5 mouths and his own.People round didn't like my grandmother because they thought she was the reason why her husband left but in reality, it was all of my grandfather's fault. he was the one that was never there to help my grandfather with all I've the kids, he wasn't being responsible . I know I don't have the right to Judge anyone. My parents taught me better. Behind everything there is always a reason. My parents did something illegal. But they took the risk to cross the border and also risks their lives Just so that me and my future siblings could have a better life then they did.I understand what they went hrough. I honestly appreciate their hard work. That's why, in my future as a nurse I am going to help out the ill and also make my parents proud of me because that's why they came here in the first place. I am not ashamed to tell people I once came from a place where we had no house or were poor and hardly had money to feed ourselves. That's where everyone begin. They begin from the bottom and take their selves up high. Both of my my parents were the strong ones and came from a family were they take risks and l, once again , am the person I am. Thanks to them.