Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The development of budgets and their use for purposes of control in Japanese aviation, 1928‐1945: The role of the state

Purpose - This paper aims to examine the role of the Japanese state in the development of budgets within “special companies” in the transportation sector between 1928 and 1945. Design/methodology/approach - Using evidence contained in the archives of “closedown institutions” this paper examines the role of the state in determining the use of budgets within Japan Air Transport (1928-1938) and Japan Airways (1938-1945). The paper adopts the lens of new institutional sociology to examine the changes in the use of budgets effected when Japan Airways succeeded Japan Air Transport. Findings - Prior to 1938, although subject to the need to provide budget statements to the government, the budget systems operated by special companies within the Japanese transportation sector were largely utilised for the purpose of legitimising receipt of government subsidies. Following the establishment of Japan Airways in 1938, however, an increasing use of the budget system as a control mechanism is observed. It is found that a key role in this coercive process was played by the Aviation Bureau of the Ministry of Communications, reflecting changes not only in its own status but also the financial pressures exerted on the Japanese government during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 and the Pacific War from 1941. Originality/value - This paper examines the development of the use of budgets at a time, the interwar period, which is considered critical to the development of budgets for purposes of control. By doing this within a context (special companies) and within a geographical space (Japan) which has not previously been analyzed by accounting historians, this study helps to add to the material available for conducting comparative international accounting research. Furthermore, by using the lens of new institutional sociology, this study provides an in-depth insight into how, and under what conditions, the degree of decoupling between formal policies and actual practices can vary over time depending on the extent of coercive pressures.
Decision of institutional cooperation on R&D

Purpose – The paper aims to examine the differences between manufacturing and service sector firms regarding the determining factors for the decision to cooperate with research institutions to perform R&D activities. The second key contribution provided is the identification of institutional cooperation profiles, based on the determining variables of institutional cooperation.Design/methodology/approach – On the one hand, drawing on the Community Innovation Survey for Spain, a Logit Regression Model is used to study the determining factors for institutional cooperation decision. On the other hand, in order to identify institutional cooperation profiles a confirmatory analysis was carried out applying the cluster methodology.Findings – The empirical study confirms that the differences are fundamentally related to transaction cost theory and resource‐based view with respect to the costs. Specifically, these theories' proposal dealing with the variable cost is not empirically confirmed for firms in the servi.
Widespread genomic divergence during sympatric speciation

Speciation with gene flow is expected to generate a heterogeneous pattern of genomic differentiation. The few genes under or physically linked to loci experiencing strong disruptive selection can diverge, whereas gene flow will homogenize the remainder of the genome, resulting in isolated “genomic islands of speciation. ” We conducted an experimental test of this hypothesis in Rhagoletis pomonella, a model for sympatric ecological speciation. Contrary to expectations, we found widespread divergence throughout the Rhagoletis genome, with the majority of loci displaying host differences, latitudinal clines, associations with adult eclosion time, and within-generation responses to selection in a manipulative overwintering experiment. The latter two results, coupled with linkage disequilibrium analyses, provide experimental evidence that divergence was driven by selection on numerous independent genomic regions rather than by genome-wide genetic drift. “Continents” of multiple differentiated loci, rather than isolated islands of divergence, may characterize even the early stages of speciation. Our results also illustrate how these continents can exhibit variable topography, depending on selection strength, availability of preexisting genetic variation, linkage relationships, and genomic features that reduce recombination. For example, the divergence observed throughout the Rhagoletis genome was clearly accentuated in some regions, such as those harboring chromosomal inversions. These results highlight how the individual genes driving speciation can be embedded within an actively diverging genome.
Co-operation in Regional Innovation Systems

The paper deals with co-operative relationships of manufacturing firms in three German regions. By applying a hurdle-count data model, differences between regions as well as between smaller and larger firms are analysed. The differences between regions regarding the propensity of firms to co-operate are mainly due to peculiarities of the small business sector. Spatial proximity is obviously of particular importance for horizontal co-operation and for relationships to publicly funded research institutions. The link between the cooperative behaviour of firms and the performance of the regional innovation system remains, however, unclear. Cet article traite du partenariat des entreprises industrielles situées dans trois régions en Allemagne. On anlayse les différences interrégionales ainsi que les différences entre les petites entreprises et les grandes entreprises. Pour ce qui est de la propensité des entreprises ¤ a coopérer, les différences interrégionales s'expliquent largement par des particularités de la petite entreprise. Il va sans dire que la proximitégéographique est d'une importance indéniable pour la coopération horizontale et pour les rapports avec les centres de recherche publics. Toujours est-il que le lien entre le partenariat des entreprises et la performance des systèmes d'innovation régionaux reste ambigu. In dem Aufsatz wird das Kooperationsverhalten von Industriebetrieben in drei deutschen Regionen anhand eines Hürden-Zähldatenmodells analysiert. Dabei werden sowohl interregionale Unterschiede als auch Unterschiede zwischen kleinen und größeren Betrieben herausgearbeitet. Es zeigt sich, dass Unterschiede hinsichtlich der Kooperationsneigung zwischen den Regionen vor allem auf entsprechenden Besonderheiten der Kleinbetriebe beruhen. Räumliche Nähe ist offenbar insbesondere für die horizontale Kooperationsbeziehungen sowie für die Zusammenarbeit mit öffentlichen Forschungseinrichtungen von Bedeutung. Der Zusammenhang zwischen Kooperationsneigung und der Leistungsfähigkeit des entsprechenden regionalen Innovationssystems bleibt unklar.
Decreases in a Slot Machine's Coefficient of Variation Lead to Increases in Customer Play Time

Profits generated from slot operations are critical to the success of all casinos, yet little research has addressed the nature of the customer experience regarding game interaction. The relationship between a reel slot player's time on device and the pay table's coefficient of variation (CV) is examined via computer simulation. The pay table CV is found to be inversely related to the player's expected time on device, as measured by pulls per losing player (PPLP). Findings confound the popular notion that par alone (i.e., house advantage) serves as a legitimate proxy for play time and bolster the research suggesting that standard deviation is the dominant force behind time on device, at the single-trip grain.
Governance and Performance of Microfinance Institutions in Mediterranean Countries

This paper examines empirically the relation between governance mechanisms and the performance of Euro‐Mediterranean microfinance institutions (MFIs) in terms of outreach and sustainability. Specifically, we found that performance‐based compensation of managers is not associated with better performance of MFIs. The results identify trade‐offs between MFIs outreach and sustainability depending on larger board size, and on higher proportion of unaffiliated directors. Moreover, the study shows that the more women there are on the board the better the performance, and reveals that external governance mechanisms help MFIs to achieve better financial performance. This study also allows us to distinguish other factors leading to better sustainability such as Regulation, and the use of individual lending methodology. However, the MFIs, active as NGOs, seem to be more consistent with their social mission than with their financial performance.
Local Government Tax Policy: Measuring the Efficiency of New York City's Tax Mix, FYs 1984‐1998

This article applies the Markowitz portfolio model to New York City's tax mix to determine whether it is ‘mix-efficient,’ in the sense that the portfolio minimizes volatility for given levels of growth. The results indicate that New York City's tax-revenue portfolio is very close to being mix-efficient. The analysis also extends the Markowitz portfolio model to consider the impact on growth and volatility of adopting a tax-equity constraint.
The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States

The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States, Pradeep K. Chhibber and Ken Kollman, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. xvi, 276. Mining electoral data to arrive at theories about the relationship between political party performance and party system determination and electoral and governmental institutions forms the main stream of political science. And one of its most enduring puzzles is the explanation of the patterns and diversities of party systems. With the famous “Duverger's Law” about single-member plurality systems and two-party political systems forming its point of departure, political scientists have attempted to substantiate their discipline's status as a “science” by producing theories about relationships between measurable political variables.
Geographic differences in antimalarial drug efficacy in Uganda are explained by differences in endemicity and not by known molecular markers of drug resistance.

BACKGROUND Recent clinical trials from Uganda have shown that the risk of failure following antimalarial therapy varies geographically. We tested the hypothesis that geographic differences in the response to therapy could be explained by differences in the prevalence of known molecular markers of drug resistance. METHODS Samples from 2084 patients treated with chloroquine (CQ) plus sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) and amodiaquine (AQ) plus SP were tested for the presence of known molecular markers of resistance. Differences in the risk of treatment failure across 6 sites were compared, and age and complexity of infection were controlled for. RESULTS The prevalence of molecular markers of drug resistance was high at all of the sites: 61%-91% of patients were infected with parasites containing the pfcrt Thr-76 mutation and dhfr/dhps quintuple mutation. The risk of treatment failure decreased with increasing transmission intensity for both CQ plus SP (73% to 19%) and AQ plus SP (38% to 2%). Restricting the analyses to patients infected with parasites containing all 6 mutations of interest did not affect these trends. CONCLUSIONS The risk of treatment failure was inversely proportional to transmission intensity and was not explained by differences in molecular markers of antimalarial drug resistance. Our findings strongly suggest that geographic differences in response to antimalarial therapy in Uganda are primarily mediated by acquired immunity associated with malaria transmission intensity, rather than by parasite factors.
Should central banks switch from inflation to price-level targeting? quantifying the benefits from long-term price stability.

Economic researchers have not yet quantified the long-term benefits of price-level targeting. Consequently, central banks are unable to conduct a full cost-benefit analysis vis-a-vis inflation targeting. The primary contribution of this thesis is to quantify these benefits within a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework, thereby laying the foundations for a full cost-benefit analysis. The thesis focuses on three key areas: consumption volatility social welfare and inflation risk premia on long-term nominal contracts. Conventional wisdom holds that the main benefit of price-level targeting is a reduction in long-term inflation risk. However, the current workhorse model for monetary analysis cannot be used to evaluate this benefit, because long-term inflation risk does not affect agents' welfare. This thesis therefore builds and simulates overlapping generations models in which long-term inflation risk matters for social welfare. In these models, consumers save over a long horizon for old age using indexed and nominal government bonds that offer imperfect insurance against inflation risk. Importantly, the extent of nominal indexation is chosen endogenously in response to monetary policy in order to address the Lucas critique and to allow for heterogeneities across countries and over time, three separate models are simulated in which consumers have access to different assets. Key findings are as follows. First, price-level targeting reduces long-term inflation risk substantially compared to inflation targeting, leading to an increase in social welfare and a reduction in consumption volatility. Second, price-level targeting reduces by an order of magnitude the inflation risk premium on nominal bonds. Finally, optimal indexation of government bonds is substantially lower under price-level targeting. Notably, there is considerable heterogeneity in results across model specifications. The estimated welfare gain from price-level targeting ranges from 0.01 to 0.17 per cent of aggregate consumption, and the estimated reduction in consumption risk ranges from 13 to 95 per cent.
Oligarchic Populism: Prabowo Subianto’s Challenge to Indonesian Democracy

In 2014, Indonesian democracy came close to experiencing significant regression when Prabowo Subianto missed winning the presidential election by 6.5 percentage points. Prabowo, a leading hardline general during the final years of the Suharto regime, aimed to wind back important elements of Indonesia’s democratic reforms. This article analyzes the ideological and material foundations of Prabowo’s challenge, and its implications for Indonesian democracy. It argues that Prabowo presented a classically populist challenger, advancing an economic nationalist platform and depicting himself as embodying the popular will and as a strong leader who would smash through the corruption gripping the political elite. Prabowo mounted this challenge using economic and political resources that he derived from his position as a leading oligarch. A member of a prominent Suharto-era elite family, his campaign underlined the fusion of informal political and economic power that continues to characterize Indonesia’s oligarchy. His campaign, moreover, was supported by a wide array of established parties and entrenched economic interests, pointing not so much to the vulnerability of Indonesian democracy to outsider challenge as to the fragility of many of its core participants’ commitment to democratic values and procedures.
Testing Proportionality, Symmetry and Exclusiveness in Long‐run PPP

Present some empirical evidence on long-run Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) using a sample of annual data covering the period 1900-1987. Three exchange rates are used in the analysis: the dollar, yen and French franc against the pound. It is shown that PPP does hold in the long run and that is some evidence for the proportionality and symmetry restrictions. Evidence for exclusiveness is mixed and the results are influenced by model specification. Estimates of error-correction models show that there are substantial short-run deviation from PPP that take two to three years to correct.
What Local People Think About Crocodiles

This article challenges several assumptions that have shaped environmental policy in the Philippines. Policy makers assume that people are antagonistic toward conserving crocodiles in the wild and think that the enforcement of environmental legislation in a context of widespread rural poverty is illegitimate and ineffective. They argue that these negative public attitudes can only be transformed by generating revenues for rural communities, for example, through crocodile ranching or ecotourism. Despite the evident failure to conserve crocodiles in the wild, this thinking continues to underpin policy and practice in the Philippines. A community-based conservation project in the northern Sierra Madre on Luzon puts this utilitarian logic in perspective. The project succeeded in transforming hostile attitudes toward crocodiles and mobilized broad societal support for the protection of the Philippine crocodile and its freshwater habitat. Cultural values, such as pride in the occurrence of this rare and iconic species, form an important incentive for people to support the preservation of the species in the wild. These experiences highlight the importance of moving beyond ideological positions in discussions on biodiversity conservation, and enable the design of integrative and innovative solutions to conserve wildlife in human-dominated landscapes.
Urinary bisphenol A is associated with insulin resistance and obesity in reproductive‐aged women

The prevalence of obesity has markedly increased and is closely related to insulin resistance. Although lifestyle and genetic predisposition are significant factors influencing the pathophysiology within the body, endocrine‐disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are also important triggers of metabolic disturbance. We investigated the relationship between exposure to EDCs and insulin resistance and obesity in healthy, reproductive‐aged women.
Taking the Oath: Investor Response to Sec Certification

This study investigates the market response to the requirement that the principal executive and financial officer of an SEC registrant each state under oath that the firm's annual and quarterly financial reports are materially accurate and complete pursuant to the Securities Act of 1934. We hypothesize that investors should recognize the importance of these changes in financial reporting and, thus, respond at or around those events that should reveal the most information about those changes, specifically, the SEC order to certify (June 27, 2002), the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (July 25, 2002), and the first certification filing by a registrant. We base our measure of investor response on unsigned market-adjusted daily excess return around those events and compare these responses with identical measures for the same companies and reports in prior periods. We use unsigned excess return because we expect investors to respond in different ways to the certification requirements. We also test for variation in investor response on the basis of a proxy for the quality of financial reporting and subject the analyses to a number of controls and robustness checks. These tests help assure us that the effects we document are in response to the SEC requirement rather than to other, possibly unspecified, factors. Overall, the empirical results are consistent with the view that investors on the identified dates did, in fact, respond to the SEC certification requirements.
CRIMINAL OPPORTUNITY THEORY AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POVERTY AND PROPERTY CRIME

Criminal opportunity theory suggests that community economic deprivation has two countervailing effects on property crime: it causes strain and disorganization which may encourage some individuals to offend, but it also simultaneously lessens opportunities to engage in property crime by reducing the supply of worthwhile targets in an area. The present study examines the relationship between economic deprivation and rates of burglary and motor vehicle theft for census tracts in two large American cities (Austin and Seattle). Regression analyses support the opportunity saturation hypothesis derived from criminal opportunity theory. This hypothesis suggests that the relationship between levels of deprivation and property crime is curvilinear where the positive effect of deprivation on property crime is stronger at low levels of neighborhood poverty than it is at high levels. Research and policy implications are discussed.
Modernization and divorce: contrasting trends in Islamic Southeast Asia and the West.

The author investigates differences in divorce rates in Western countries and in Southeast Asia. "First the general divorce rate trends.are elucidated using more-refined measures. Then the likely causes of the separate trends in Western countries and in Islamic Southeast Asia are examined to determine whether there is a unified explanation for the trends that is consistent with broader theories about divorce or whether the idiosyncratic features of the Malay-Muslim and Western settings restrict us to ad hoc interpretations of the trends. " (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA) (EXCERPT)
Generalized Disjunction Decomposition for Evolvable Hardware

Evolvable hardware (EHW) refers to self-reconfiguration hardware design, where the configuration is under the control of an evolutionary algorithm (EA). One of the main difficulties in using EHW to solve real-world problems is scalability, which limits the size of the circuit that may be evolved. This paper outlines a new type of decomposition strategy for EHW, the "generalized disjunction decomposition" (GDD), which allows the evolution of large circuits. The proposed method has been extensively tested, not only with multipliers and parity bit problems traditionally used in the EHW community, but also with logic circuits taken from the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC) benchmark library and randomly generated circuits. In order to achieve statistically relevant results, each analyzed logic circuit has been evolved 100 times, and the average of these results is presented and compared with other EHW techniques. This approach is necessary because of the probabilistic nature of EA; the same logic circuit may not be solved in the same way if tested several times. The proposed method has been examined in an extrinsic EHW system using the (1+lambda) evolution strategy. The results obtained demonstrate that GDD significantly improves the evolution of logic circuits in terms of the number of generations, reduces computational time as it is able to reduce the required time for a single iteration of the EA, and enables the evolution of larger circuits never before evolved. In addition to the proposed method, a short overview of EHW systems together with the most recent applications in electrical circuit design is provided
The Visualized Interventricular Septum on Cardiac Computed Tomography: A Clue to the Presence of Severe Anemia

Severe anemia (10 g hemoglobin or less) will provide sufficient negative contrast on computed tomography (CT) to visualize the intracardiac chambers or lumina of large blood vessels. In the presence of secondary hemochromatosis, imaging of the interventricular septum can be due to excess cardiac iron (hemochromatotic cardiomyopathy) or the underlying transfusiondependent anemia. Five percent glucose/water may be a satisfactory negative contrast agent for cardiac CT.