Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of transaction duration, volume and direction on price dynamics and volatility

We explore the role of trade volume, trade direction, and the duration between trades in explaining price dynamics and volatility using an Asymmetric Autoregressive Conditional Duration model applied to intraday transactions data. Our results suggest that volume, direction and duration are important determinants of price dynamics, while duration is also an important determinant of volatility. However, the impact of volume and direction on volatility is marginal after controlling for duration, and the impact of volume on volatility appears to be confined to periods of infrequent trading.
Extending beyond borders: Multinational companies and the international management of labour

The paper investigates the potential consequences of MNCs' globalizing strategies for the management of labour, drawing on findings from a survey of employee management among MNCs operating in the UK. It finds clear evidence of transnational forms of management organization, including in the personnel sphere. But it also underlines that moves to globalism are uneven. Structures and policies to develop international management teams were found primarily among certain types of MNC. Most striking was the extent to which MNCs are actively engaged in the management of non-managerial employees at international level. Seven out of every ten companies monitored labour performance across sites in different countries. The broader significance of this finding lies in the business decisions which flow from the use of such information. As MNCs develop continental production strategies, pressures on local workforces, keen to attract future investment, for performance improvements are likely to intensify. These developm.
Dynamic Capital Structure Choice: Theory and Tests

This paper develops a model of dynamic capital structure choice in the presence of recapitalization costs. The theory provides the optimal dynamic recapitalization policy as a function of firm-specific characteristics. The authors find that even small recapitalization costs lead to wide swings in a firm's debt ratio over time. Rather than static leverage measures, they use the observed debt ratio range of a firm as an empirical measure of capital structure relevance. The results of empirical tests relating firms' debt ratio range to firm-specific features strongly support the theoretical model of relevant capital structure choice in a dynamic setting. Copyright 1989 by American Finance Association.
Own‐ and Cross‐Price Elasticities for Games within a State Lottery Portfolio

Lotto demand modeling typically focuses on a single game and evaluates whether estimated “effective price” (expected loss from buying one ticket) elasticity is consistent with net revenue maximization. However, a portfolio of several different lottery games is now usually offered to players and judging the effectiveness of agencies in generating revenue requires estimation of both cross‐price and own‐price elasticities. Here we employ data from Spain to derive elasticities. Results imply that games are under‐priced if net revenue maximization is the goal. But the cross‐price estimates suggest that the operator is successful in limiting the extent to which a large jackpot on one game cannibalizes same‐week sales of other games. The paper also analyzes the impacts from two increases in the level of entry fees introduced during the data period. These appear to have affected net revenue favorably.
Natural Disasters and the Dynamics of Intangible Assets

Empirical evidence suggests that the higher-order effects of natural disasters, which affect intangible assets, may be even more important than the material inter-industry effects. However, most existing general equilibrium models ignore higher order effects concerning human capital. Moreover, it is recognized that natural resource dependence increases vulnerability to natural disasters. Recent studies have indeed shown the potential importance of subsistence traps caused by asset losses in low-income economies from a partial equilibrium perspective. This paper presents an analysis that allows for endogenous investments in real assets (physical capital) as well as in human capital, explicitly considering the potential for subsistence traps arising from minimum consumption and minimum natural resource irreversibility thresholds. The general equilibrium ramifications of subsistence traps are developed. The main issue is that the economy may be subject to hysteresis: A temporary shock such as a natural disaster may leave permanent consequences for the economy. An obvious permanent effect of a one-time disaster shock is that physical man-made and natural assets owned especially by poor households may end up completely wiped out. The disaster may not be the direct cause; it may be that poor households would have to obtain minimum subsistence consumption out of depleted assets. However, not all permanent effects of a one-time shock are negative. Under certain conditions, the destruction of man-made physical and natural capital may have general equilibrium effects that increase the incentives to invest in human capital and may even propel a formerly stagnating economy into a virtuous path of continuing growth.
Epidemiology of primary intracranial tumors in the Valle d'Aosta (Italy) during the 6-year period 1986-1991.

A total of 285 new cases of primary intracranial tumors (PIT: 178 cases, 62%) and secondary forms (107 cases, 38%) were detected by CT scan and MRI during a population-based study of the incidence rates of these neoplasms in the Aosta Valley (N.W. Italy: 114,325 residents in 1988) during the period 1986-1991. The PIT are discussed in this paper. Histological confirmation was obtained in 60%. Age- and sex-adjusted mean annual incidence rate for all PIT was 28.3/100,000 (men 21.7; women 28.1). The incidence rates by types were 9.7 for meningiomas (men 5.3; women 13.9), 9.1 for tumors of the neuroepithelial group (men 10; women 8.1), 3.7 for adenomas (men 2.6; women 4.6), and 1.9 for neurinomas (men 2.9; women 0.9). Incidence rate increased with age. Meningiomas comprised 37% of the PIT, followed by tumors of the neuroepithelial group (35%), adenomas (14%, neurinomas (7.3%) and malignant lymphomas (2.3%). The remaining subtypes were 4.6%. Our data showed a clearly higher incidence rate than in previous population-based surveys. The differences were most marked in the meningioma group. The extensive use of CT scan and the more intensive case-finding could explain the differences.
The Built Environment and Traffic Safety

The article reaches two conclusions counter to accepted transportation engineering theory. First, the traffic environments of dense urban areas appear to be safer than the lower-volume environments of the suburbs. The reason is that many fewer miles are driven on a per capita basis, and the driving that is done is at lower speeds that are less likely to produce fatal crashes. Second, at least in dense urban areas, less-“forgiving” design treatments—such as narrow lanes, traffic-calming measures, and street trees close to the roadway—appear to enhance a roadway's safety performance when compared to more conventional roadway designs. The reason for this apparent anomaly may be that less-forgiving designs provide drivers with clear information on safe and appropriate operating speeds.
Employee learning in New Zealand small manufacturing firms

Purpose – The paper aims to explain specific actions managers could take to improve support for the learning of staff and increase staff satisfaction with workplace learning.Design/methodology/approach – The paper shows the data gathered from 464 employees in 31 small manufacturing firms through mail survey questionnaires and analysed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression.Findings – This paper shows that the learning potential of the work systems is constrained mostly by limited employee scope for action and enhanced mainly by wide task variety. Managers are failing to create some important facilitating conditions, such as providing incentives to learn and modelling influences. Workplace supervisors are providing only low levels of learning support and are not proactive in fostering the learning of their staff. Employee perceptions of specific work environment characteristics and workplace supervisor behaviours are significant influencers of satisfaction with workplace learning.Research lim.
Incentives, learning, and compensation: a theoretical and empirical investigation of managerial labor contracts

This article analyzes properties and implications of multiperiod managerial labor contracts under two alternative hypotheses: incentives, in which productivity depends on unobservable effort, and learning, in which ability is unknown and is revealed over time. Shared and conflicting implications of these competing models are developed in terms of experience-earnings profiles and the relation between compensation and performance. I empirically examine these theoretical results by using a longitudinal sample of 1,488 chief executive officers followed from 1974-1985. The data yield mixed evidence that generally supports the learning hypothesis over the incentive hypothesis.
Utilizing Facebook pages of the political parties to automatically predict the political orientation of Facebook users

Purpose Social network sites have been widely adopted by politicians in the last election campaigns. To increase the effectiveness of these campaigns the potential electorate is to be identified, as targeted ads are much more effective than non-targeted ads. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose and implement a new methodology for automatic prediction of political orientation of users on social network sites by comparison to texts from the overtly political parties’ pages. Design/methodology/approach To this end, textual information on personal users’ pages is used as a source of statistical features. The authors apply automatic text categorization algorithms to distinguish between texts of users from different political wings. However, these algorithms require a set of manually labeled texts for training, which is typically unavailable in real life situations. To overcome this limitation the authors propose to use texts available on various political parties’ pages on a social network site to train the classifier. The political leaning of these texts is determined by the political affiliation of the corresponding parties. The classifier learned on such overtly political texts is then applied on the personal user pages to predict their political orientation. To assess the validity and effectiveness of the proposed methodology two corpora were constructed: personal Facebook pages of 450 Israeli citizens, and political parties Facebook pages of the nine prominent Israeli parties. Findings The authors found that when a political tendency classifier is trained and tested on data in the same corpus, accuracy is very high. More significantly, training on manifestly political texts (political party Facebook pages) yields classifiers which can be used to classify non-political personal Facebook pages with fair accuracy. Social implications Previous studies have shown that targeted ads are more effective than non-targeted ads leading to substantial saving in the advertising budget. Therefore, the approach for automatic determining the political orientation of users on social network sites might be adopted for targeting political messages, especially during election campaigns. Originality/value This paper proposes and implements a new approach for automatic cross-corpora identification of political bias of user profiles on social network. This suggests that individuals’ political tendencies can be identified without recourse to any tagged personal data. In addition, the authors use learned classifiers to determine which self-identified centrists lean left or right and which voters are likely to switch allegiance in subsequent elections.
Influence of monovalent cations on rat alpha- and beta-parvalbumin stabilities.

The mammalian genome encodes both alpha- and beta-parvalbumin isoforms. The rat beta-parvalbumin (aka "oncomodulin") is more stable than the alpha isoform at physiological pH and ionic strength, despite its substantially higher charge density and truncated C-terminal helix [Henzl, M. T. , and Graham, J. S. (1999) FEBS Lett. 442, 241-245]. Reasoning that solvent interactions could contribute to this unexpected finding, we have examined the stabilities of the Ca(2+)-free alpha- and beta-parvalbumins as a function of Na(+) and K(+) concentration. Differential scanning calorimetry data suggest that, at physiological pH and ionic strength, the beta isoform binds roughly 2 equiv of Na(+) or a single equivalent of K(+) with moderate affinity. Under comparable conditions, the alpha isoform apparently binds just 1 equiv of Na(+) and essentially no K(+). Isothermal titration calorimetry experiments suggest that the bound monovalent ions occupy the EF-hand motifs. In 0.15 M K(+), at pH 7.4, the stability of the apo-beta-parvalbumin exceeds that of the alpha isoform by approximately 2.6 kcal/mol at 37 degrees C and by approximately 3.0 kcal/mol at 25 degrees C. The latter value represents a substantial fraction of the difference in Ca(2+)-binding free energies measured in vitro for the two proteins. Significantly, however, these results do not completely explain the paradoxical stability of the beta isoform, which maintains its higher melting temperature under all conditions examined.
Incentive Effects Favor Nonconsolidating Queues in a Service System: the Principal-Agent Perspective

In this paper, we study a service network in which an agency is responsible for satisfying a constraint on the expected waiting and service time experienced by customers. However, the agency does not render the actual service. Instead, it serves to coordinate independently operated facilities. The coordinating agency must devise a strategy for allocating compensation and customers to the self-interested operators in order to minimize its own costs. For a network of two facilities, we model the facilities' self-interested capacity decisions as the solution to a game. Using this analytical framework, we compare two types of customer allocation: one from a common queue, and one from separate queues. Our analysis shows that it can be in the best interest of the coordinating agency to adopt a separate queue allocation scheme instead of one based on a common queue. Although doing so sacrifices risk-pooling benefits, these can be more than offset by the stronger incentives that are created for the independent facilities.
The strategic role of HR in MNC subsidiaries in China between 1999 and 2006

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that have influenced the strategic role of the HR department in Western MNC subsidiaries in China between 1999 and 2006.Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on two sets of quantitative questionnaire data collected in 142 subsidiaries in 1999 and 2006. Qualitative interview data from 2006 are also used to shed light on the findings of the quantitative analysis.Findings – The results indicate that the role of the HR department was more strategic in 2006 than in 1999. Furthermore, subsidiary size and the size of the HR department were positively associated with the strategic role of the HR department.Originality/value – The study contributes to the literature on HRM in MNCs by examining the role of the HR department, which has received surprisingly little attention in previous research, especially the role of the HR department, in foreign MNC subsidiaries. The study also responds to calls for more empirical research examining the devel.
Hypotension during subarachnoid anaesthesia: haemodynamic analysis of three treatments.

We have compared three methods of preventing hypotension during subarachnoid anaesthesia. We attempted to maintain systolic arterial pressure (SAP) greater than 75% of baseline by use of i.v. fluids (preloading with normal saline 16 ml kg-1 and, if necessary, three subsequent boluses of 2.5 ml kg-1), an infusion of metaraminol titrated as necessary between 0 and 5 mg h-1 and an infusion of ephedrine titrated as necessary between 0 and 120 mg h-1. SAP and mean arterial pressure (MAP) were measured by automated oscillotonometry, central venous pressure (CVP) by a manometer and cardiac index (CI), stroke index (SI) and heart rate (HR) by transthoracic electrical bioimpedance. Systemic vascular resistance index (SVRI) was derived. Fluids alone failed to maintain SAP in five of 10 patients. Although CI and CVP were maintained, SVRI decreased (25 (SD 15)%; P = 0.02). Metaraminol maintained SAP in all 12 patients. The main cardiovascular change was decreased HR (15 (8)%; P = 0.0001). Ephedrine failed to maintain SAP in two of 12 patients and was accompanied by several cardiovascular changes: HR (21 (12)%; P = 0.001) increased and SI (16 (10)%; P = 0.0001), CVP (3.8 (1.5) cm H2O; P = 0.0001) and SVRI (24 (6)%; P = 0.0001) decreased. Treatment failures resulted from failures to maintain SVRI in the fluid group and CVP and SVRI in the ephedrine group.
Motivations for Changes in Disclosure Frequency and Its Consequences: An Examination of Voluntary Quarterly Segment Disclosures

We examine the determinants and effects of managers' decisions to increase segment disclosure frequency. Our sample consists of 107 multi-segment firms reporting industry segment data in their annual reports between 1987 and 1994. Of these 65 "change" firms initiated quarterly segment disclosures during the study period, while 42 "non-disclosing" firms provided no segment data in their interim reports at any time during this period. We find that during the two-year period leading up to the change, change firms experienced a decline in liquidity (measured by trading volume) and an increase in information asymmetry (measured by analyst forecast consensus). In addition, change firms were more likely to have made acquisitions and to have operations in industries in which other firms also provide quarterly segment disclosure. However, we find no significant differences between change and non-disclosing firms with respect to shifts in their competitive environments or analyst following in the pre-disclosure period or their propensity to access capital markets following the change. Following the onset of quarterly segment reporting, change firms experienced an increased analyst following. This paper contributes to the disclosure literature in several respects. First, by examining firm attributes previously associated with cross-sectional differences in disclosure levels, as possible explanations for differences in disclosure frequency and second by examining whether changes in these firm characteristics are associated with the decision to increase segment disclosure frequency.
Influence of Structural Changes in Transmission of Information between Stock Markets: An European Empirical Study

The aim of this study is to analyze the influence that the structural changes on volatility have on the transmission of information. We realized empirical evidence on European stock exchange markets using the principal European stock indexes: UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, for European Union and Swiss as European zone no euro. In order to include structural changes in variance, we followed the modification proposed by Sanso et al. (2002) of the methodology put forward by Inclan and Tiao (1994), to take account the problems of kurtosis and heteroskedasticity of the analyzed series. To study the existence of transmission of volatility we have used an asymmetric Bivariate GARCH model, specifically, the time-varying covariance asymmetric BEKK model (Engle and Kroner, 1995). The most outstanding result is the significance of the variables that represent these changes. Their consideration reduces the volatility persistence and influences the scheme of transmission. So structural changes must be incorporated in these types of studies.
REWARDS, EXPERIENCE AND DECISION COSTS IN FIRST PRICE AUCTIONS

Consistent with a model of asymmetric risk aversion, subjects in first price auctions consistently bid above the risk neu tral Nash prediction. It has been argued that this is due to low opportun ity cost of deviating from the risk neutral bid. The authors increase opportunity cost (and payoff levels) by factors of 0, 1, 5, 10, and 20 from the normal levels generating payoffs up to $250 for risk neutra l subjects and observe an insignificant increase in the slope of individual bid functions. The RMSE of bids declines significantly. T his is consistent with a reward/decision cost model of bidding behavior. Copyright 1993 by Oxford University Press.
Competing Perspectives in International Marketing Strategy: Contingency and Process Models

Empirical studies investigating the relationship between marketing standardization and performance have generated mixed results. This study investigates the causal ordering between marketing strategy and marketing structure as determinants of subsidiary performance. The authors propose a multiple contingencies approach that tests both the contingency (e.g., Chandler 1962) and the process (e.g., Bower 1970) frameworks in the subsidiary context. Findings based on a two-phase longitudinal study provide initial support for the framework that suggests that marketing structure follows marketing strategy. In response to increased target market similarity, companies in the study opted for more standardized marketing strategies. Furthermore, centralization of structure mediated the relationship between marketing strategy and subsidiary performance. The performance impact of centralization, however, was cross-lagged and negative. Results suggest adapting marketing strategies to local markets as a way of enhancing performance.
The Effects of Bussiness Cycles on Growth

This paper studies the link between business cycles and long-term growth rates. We present empirical evidence that uncovers interesting and significant interactions between cycles and growth. We show that business cycles cannot be considered as temporary deviations from a trend and that there is a strong positive correlation between the persistence of short-term fluctuations and long-term growth rates. A simple endogenous growth model where business cycles affect growth can easily replicate this correlation. We then study the link between volatility and growth. We show that countries with more volatile fluctuations display lower long-term growth rates. We also find evidence that there is a non-linearity in this relationship. The effect of business cycles on growth is much larger for poor countries or countries with a lower degree of financial development.
Hoarding in the Panic of 1907

The panic of 1907 witnessed a premium upon money in New York lasting two months and rising as high as 4 per cent. , 290–293. —The extent of hoarding on the part of the public is roughly indicated by the amount of money that disappeared from the banks, 293; and by the number of safe deposit boxes rented in New York and other cities, 294–296. —The banks of the South and West aggravated the situation by accumulating abnormal reserves, 296–299.