Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Portfolio Theory and Performance Analysis

Acknowledgements.Biographies. Introduction.1. Presentation of the Portfolio Management Environment.1. 1 The different categories of assets.1. 2 Definition of portfolio management.1. 3 Organisation of portfolio management and description of the investment management process.1. 4 Performance analysis and market efficiency.1. 5 Performance analysis and the AIMR standards.1. 6 International investment: additional elements to be taken into account.1. 7 Conclusion.2. The Basic Performance Analysis Concepts.2. 1 Return calculation.2. 2 Calculating relative return.2. 3 Definition of risk.2. 4 Estimation of parameters.2. 5 Conclusion.3. The Basic Elements of Modern Portfolio Theory.3. 1 Principles.3. 2 The Markowitz model.3. 3 Efficient frontier calculation algorithm.3. 4 Simplified portfolio modelling methods.3. 5 Conclusion . 4. The Capital Asset Pricing Model and its Application to Performance Measurement.4. 1 The CAPM.4. 2 Applying the CAPM to performance measurement: single-index performance measurement indicators.4. 3 Evaluating the management strategy with the help of models derived from the CAPM: timing analysis.4. 4 Measuring the performance of internationally diversified portfolios: extensions to the CAPM.4. 5 The limitations of the CAPM.5. Developments in the Field of Performance Measurement.5. 1 Heteroskedastic models.5. 2 Performance measurement method using a conditional beta.5. 3 Performance analysis methods that are not dependent on the market model . 5.4 Conclusion.6. Multi-factor Models and their Application to Performance Measurement.6. 1 Presentation of the multi-factor models.6. 2 Choosing the factors and estimating the model parameters.6. 3 Extending the models to the international arena.6. 4 Applying multi-factor models.6. 5 Summary and conclusion.7. Evaluating the Investment Management Process and Decomposing Performance.7. 1 The steps in constructing a portfolio.7. 2 Performance decomposition and analysis.8. Fixed Income Security Investment.8. 1 Modelling yield curves: the term structure of interest rates.8. 2 Managing bond portfolio.8. 3 Performance analysis for fixed income security investment.Conclusion. Index.
Psychophysiological Assessment of Respiratory Function in Panic Disorder: Evidence for a Hyperventilation Subtype

Objective Previous research has found differences in respiratory function between panic disorder and other anxiety disorder populations. These differences have been explained as reflecting either a) a specific feature of panic disorder, b) merely a sign of increased general arousal, or c) a result of population sampling error. The current study addressed the question of such differences by using improved methodology over previous research. A preliminary evaluation of respiratory symptoms during panic attacks was undertaken as a means of identifying a respiratory-sensitive subtype of the panic patient. Method: Seventeen panic disorder patients (PD), 18 patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and 20 normal control (NC) subjects were administered a psychophysiological evaluation composed of baseline, stressor, and recovery phases. Panic patients were measured for the severity of respiratory symptoms during panic attacks. End-tidal CO2 (EtCO2) and respiration rate were measured throughout the psychophysiological evaluation. Results: PDs demonstrated significantly lower baseline EtCO2 levels than the GADs and NCs, in spite of being equivalent to GADs on baseline anxiety levels. Moreover, panic patients reporting a high level of respiratory symptoms during panic attacks seemed to account for the bulk of observed differences. Conclusions: These findings lend support to a group of studies showing differences in respiratory function between panic disorder and other anxiety disorder populations. In addition, this study provides preliminary support for the presence of a distinct "hyperventilation subtype" of panic disorder. The implications of these findings for future research and treatment are discussed.
Social policy and health: transition countries in a comparative perspective

T. Ferrarini, O. Sjoberg. Social policy and health: transition countries in a comparative perspective Int J Soc Welfare 2010: ••: ••–••© 2010 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and International Journal of Social Welfare. This article analyses the development and design of unemployment insurance and family policy benefits and their links to health outcomes in Estonia, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary from the mid-1990s. Comparing these six transition countries with long-standing welfare democracies reveals important similarities and differences in policy and health. Unemployment benefit schemes resemble corporatist schemes in important respects, however, with lower coverage and average benefits. Subjective wellbeing is also comparatively low among both employed and unemployed in the transition countries. Several transition countries have mixed family policy strategies that simultaneously support dual-earner families and traditional gender roles. One clear exception is Slovenia, which has a highly developed dual-earner support. Family policy generosity is related to lower rates of poverty, infant mortality and child injuries. The article demonstrates the fruitfulness of institutional analyses of the link between social policy and population health in a broader welfare state context.
Inhibition of Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Lipopolysaccharide Deacylation by Aminoarabinose Membrane Modification

ABSTRACT Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium remodels the lipid A component of lipopolysaccharide, a major component of the outer membrane, to survive within animals. The activation of the sensor kinase PhoQ in host environments increases the synthesis of enzymes that deacylate, palmitoylate, hydroxylate, and attach aminoarabinose to lipid A, also known as endotoxin. These modifications promote bacterial resistance to antimicrobial peptides and reduce the host recognition of lipid A by Toll-like receptor 4. The Salmonella lipid A 3-O-deacylase, PagL, is an outer membrane protein whose expression is regulated by PhoQ. In S. enterica serovar Typhimurium strains that had the ability to add aminoarabinose to lipid A, 3-O-deacylated lipid A species were not detected, despite the PhoQ induction of PagL protein expression. In contrast, strains defective for the aminoarabinose modification of lipid A demonstrated in vivo PagL activity, indicating that this membrane modification inhibited PagL's enzymatic activity. Since not all lipid A molecules are modified with aminoarabinose upon PhoQ activation, these results cannot be ascribed to the substrate specificity of PagL. PagL-dependent deacylation was detected in sonically disrupted membranes and membranes treated with the nonionic detergent n-octyl-β-d-glucopyranoside, suggesting that perturbation of the intact outer membrane releases PagL from posttranslational inhibition by aminoarabinose-containing membranes. Taken together, these results suggest that PagL enzymatic deacylation is posttranslationally inhibited by membrane environments, which either sequester PagL from its substrate or alter its conformation.
Savings, investment and foreign capital flows: Have capital markets become more integrated?

How mobile is capital across countries? Does the expansion of world financial markets in the 1970s and 1980s reflect a tendency towards one integrated world capital market, accessible for both industrialised and developing countries? Or, alternatively, are savings and investment rates for each economy closely tied because of international capital market imperfections? This article critically assesses recent studies that have tested these hypotheses empirically for industrialised countries, presents new evidence and expands data analysis to include the group of developing countries. Contrary to recent studies it is concluded that across industrialised countries domestic investment and savings are now much less closely linked than in the 1960s. But the larger capital market integration does not extend to the group of developing countries despite their increased use of funds from international financial markets to finance domestic investment. The exploratory nature of the data analysis only permits to draw s.
Effects of International R&D Alliances on Performance of High-Tech Start-Ups: A Longitudinal Analysis

In this paper we use the theoretical lens of resource and competence-based perspectives and global strategic network theories to analyze the effects of international R&D alliances on the performance of high-tech start-ups. In the empirical section of the paper we consider the European Union funded international R&D alliances established by a large sample of Italian high-tech start-ups over the period from 1994 to 2003. We measure firm performance through total factor productivity and we resort to generalized method of moments system estimates to detect the treatment effect of alliance formation according to type and home country of the partners. The econometric results suggest that international R&D alliances are most beneficial to high-tech startups if i) they involve industrial partners located in a variety of countries and ii) these countries are closer to world knowledge sources.
The Evolution of English as the Business Lingua Franca

This study questions the conventional view of the indirectness of Chinese communication. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Finnish and Chinese business professionals, the authors examine the effect of cultural identity on the directness of the communication of Chinese professionals who work for internationally operating Finnish companies located in Beijing and Shanghai, China, and who use English as the shared language with their Finnish colleagues. Three components of cultural identity (i.e., vocation as an international business professional, fairly young age, and the use of English as the business lingua franca) are particularly relevant in the participants’ professional communication and stimulated its openness and directness. The study finds that the evolution of English as the business lingua franca can be detected in the signs of convergence identified in Chinese and Finnish professional communication.
The Primacy of Race in the Geography of Income‐Based Voting: New Evidence from Public Voting Records

Why does the relationship between income and partisanship vary across U.S. regions? Some answers to this question have focused on economic context (in poorer environments, economics is more salient), whereas others have focused on racial context (in racially diverse areas, richer voters oppose the party favoring redistribution). Using 73 million geocoded registration records and 185,000 geocoded precinct returns, we examine income-based voting across local areas. We show that the political geography of income-based voting is inextricably tied to racial context, and only marginally explained by economic context. Within homogeneously nonblack localities, contextual income has minimal bearing on the income-party relationship. The correlation between income and partisanship is strong in heavily black areas of the Old South and other areas with a history of racialized poverty, but weaker elsewhere, including in urbanized areas of the South. The results demonstrate that the geography of income-based voting is inseparable from racial context.
Estimating value-at-risk: a point process approach

We consider the modelling of extreme returns in financial time series, and introduce a marked point process model for the exceedances of a high threshold. This model has a self-exciting, Hawkes-process structure in which recent events affect the current intensity of threshold exceedances more than distant ones. Estimates of value-at-risk are derived for real datasets and the success of the estimation method is evaluated in backtests.
Myocardial tissue phase mapping with cine phase-contrast mr imaging: regional wall motion analysis in healthy volunteers.

PURPOSE To establish prospectively a database of normal three-dimensional systolic and diastolic endocardial and epicardial velocity values for all myocardial segments in healthy volunteers by using cine phase-contrast velocity magnetic resonance imaging, also called tissue phase mapping (TPM). MATERIALS AND METHODS The study was approved by the institutional ethics committee and was conducted according to principles of the Declaration of Helsinki; each subject provided informed written consent. Ninety-six healthy volunteers (57 [59%] men, 39 [41%] women; mean age, 38 years +/- 12 [standard deviation]) underwent cardiac phase-contrast imaging with a black blood segmented k-space gradient-echo sequence for the analysis of three-dimensional myocardial velocity with high spatial resolution at 1.5 T on basal, midventricular, and apical short-axis views. Eighteen consecutive volunteers were imaged twice to determine interstudy reproducibility, and intra- and interobserver variability values were analyzed. Systolic and diastolic velocity curves were analyzed for peak velocity and time to peak velocity in the radial, circumferential, and longitudinal directions, as well as for torsion rate and longitudinal strain rate. Mixed-effects models with a random intercept for volunteers were used to test differences among the three ventricular sections and the transmural, endocardial, and epicardial parameters. RESULTS TPM enabled reproducible assessment of myocardial velocity with small intra- and interobserver variability values. Systolic peak radial velocity was lowest at the apical level (P < .001); diastolic peak radial velocity was similar at all three myocardial levels (P = .73). As viewed from the apex, a relative counterclockwise rotation during systole was followed by a relative clockwise rotation of the apex against the base. Diastolic and systolic peak longitudinal velocity values decreased from base to apex (P < .001). A gradient between endocardium and epicardium was observed for radial velocity values, with greater endocardial velocity values (P < .001). CONCLUSION TPM is a reproducible comprehensive modality for assessment of regional wall motion, and intra- and interobserver variability values are low.
The impact of information acquisition on EU performance judgements

Public evaluations of EU performance are not only critical indicators of the EU's output legitimacy, but also shape future support for European integration. For citizens to monitor the political performance of the EU they need relevant facts, yet it is anything but clear that gains in information about EU performance cause change in judgements about such performance. Drawing on two-wave panel data, this article examines whether acquiring information following a real-world EU decision-making event alters citizens' judgements about the utilitarian and democratic performance of the EU. It also examines how this effect differs for people with different levels of general political information. It is found that citizens who acquired performance-relevant information became more approving of the EU's utilitarian performance but did not change their judgements about its democratic performance. Also, individuals with moderate levels of general political information were affected most strongly by new facts about performance. The implications of these findings for EU-level representative democracy are considered.
Are Facebook user ratings associated with hospital cost, quality and patient satisfaction? A cross-sectional analysis of hospitals in New York State

Background Hospital care costs are high while quality varies across hospitals. Patient satisfaction may be associated with better clinical quality, and social media ratings may offer another opportunity to measure patient satisfaction with care. Objectives To test if Facebook user ratings of hospitals are associated with existing measures of patient satisfaction, cost and quality. Research design Data were obtained from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Hospital Compare, the Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System impact files and the Area Health Resource File for 2015. Information from hospitals’ Facebook pages was collected in July 2016. Multivariate linear regression was used to test if there is an association between Facebook user ratings (star rating and adjusted number of ‘likes’) and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) patient satisfaction measures, the 30-day all-cause readmission rate, and the Medicare spending per beneficiary (MSPB) ratio. Subjects One hundred and thirty-six acute care hospitals in New York State in 2015. Results An increase in the Facebook star rating is associated with significant increases in 21/23 HCAHPS measures (p≤0.003). An increase in the adjusted number of ‘likes’ is associated with very small increases in 3/23 HCAHPS measures (p<0.05). Facebook user ratings are not associated with the 30-day all-cause readmission rate or the Medicare spending per beneficiary ratio. Conclusions Results demonstrate an association between HCAHPS patient satisfaction measures and Facebook star ratings. Adjusted number of ‘likes’ may not be a useful measure of patient satisfaction.
Why Have Labour Market Outcomes of Youth in Advanced Economies Deteriorated?

Abstract: Youth labour outcomes in comparison to those of prime-age adults have worsened across the OECD since the mid-1970s. English-speaking countries experienced mostly declines in relative pay; continental European countries experienced mostly declines in relative employment. This paper aims to explain these developments by estimating a system of simultaneous equations on a panel of 10 advanced economies. The results suggest that the deterioration in the youth labour market has been due to inward shifts in relative demand, offset only partially by reductions in relative supply. The heterogeneity in the deterioration across countries was caused partly by differential rates of relative pay adjustment, depending on each country’s mix of labour market institutions and the priority attached by social partners to youth employment.
Lipidic Antagonists to SNARE-mediated Fusion*

SNARE proteins mediate the fusion of lipid bilayers by the directed assembly of coiled-coil domains arising from apposing membranes. We have utilized inverted cone-shaped lipids, antagonists of the necessary membrane deformation during fusion to characterize the extent and range of SNARE assembly up to the moment of stalk formation between bilayers. The inverted cone-shaped lipid family of acyl-CoAs specifically inhibits the completion of fusion in an acyl-chain length-dependent manner. Removal of acyl-CoA from the membrane relieves the inhibition and initiates a burst of membrane fusion with rates exceeding any point in the control curves lacking acyl-CoA. This burst indicates the accumulation of semi-assembled fusion complexes. These preformed complexes are resistant to cleavage by botulinum toxin B and thus appear to have progressed beyond the “loosely zippered” state of docked synaptic vesicles. Surprisingly, application of the soluble domain of VAMP2, which blocks SNARE assembly by competing for binding on the available t-SNAREs, blocks recovery from the acyl-CoA inhibition. Thus, complexes formed in the presence of a lipidic antagonist to fusion are incompletely assembled, suggesting that the formation of tightly assembled SNARE pairs requires progression all the way through to membrane fusion. In this regard, physiologically docked exocytic vesicles may be anchored by a highly dynamic and potentially even reversible SNAREpin.
Intellectual capital on listed agricultural firms’ performance in Malaysia

This study investigates the intellectual capital on agricultural firms' performance listed on the Malaysian Stock Exchange during 2003-2009. It is also our intent to explore whether firm size and corporate governance characteristics, in the form of control variables, influences a firm's performance. Pulic's value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) methodology is used as the efficiency measure of intellectual capital, and panel regressions are used to examine the relationship between intellectual capital and a firm's performance. Panel regressions' results showed that a firm's intellectual capital has a positive impact on financial and productivity performances. However, the association between intellectual capital and economic performance is insignificant. The results also indicate that the capital employed and structural capitals are major determinants of financial and productivity performances. Board features, however, fail to show a consistency between themselves and firm's performance across any of the three measurements included in the current study.
Value Destruction in the New Era of Chapter 11

Over the past two decades, control over the US bankruptcy reorganization process has shifted from a debtor's pre-bankruptcy managers to holders of secured claims. The result has been increased adherence to absolute priority and a harder landing for the debtor's managers and shareholders. Because managers still make or can influence the decision whether or when to file a bankruptcy petition, we hypothesize that anticipation of bankruptcy under these new conditions will result in a delay in filing, increased leverage, increased secured debt, and a reduction of asset value for firms at the time they file. We present empirical evidence consistent with our hypotheses. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.
Information Risk and the Cost of Capital

This article applies a unique accruals measure to empirically test whether accruals quality affects the cost of capital for property–liability insurers. We utilize insurer loss reserve errors to accurately measure the quality of accruals. This measure, as well as conventional accruals measures, is used to investigate the extent to which accruals quality is priced into both debt and equity capital. We find that accruals quality is priced into debt capital; however, we find virtually no evidence that accruals quality is priced into equity capital. Our results should be of particular interest to insurers as it affects pricing ability. Specifically, insurers who provide primary debtholders (i.e., policyholders) less information risk are able to command higher prices. Furthermore, our results suggest that insurance is not a diversifiable asset.
Reduced tillage and nitrogen effects on soil water dynamics and maize (Zea mays L.) yield under semi-arid conditions

Soil water and nutrients are critical drivers of crop production for smallholders of southern Africa. A three-year study was conducted to assess the effect of integrating single and double ploughing, ripping and planting basins with nitrogen fertilizer (0, 10 and 20 kg N ha–1) on soil water dynamics and maize (Zea mays L.) yields. The experimental design was factorial with four tillage methods and three nitrogen levels as treatment factors. The study was conducted under semi-arid conditions of Zimbabwe. Tillage methods had similar soil water patterns in the profile and no tillage × N interaction effects were observed on soil water dynamics. Soil water penetrated deeper into the profile under ripper and basin methods than conventionally ploughed treatments. Nitrogen increased maize yields (14–96%) and rainwater-use efficiency (20–92%) regardless of tillage methods and growing season quality. However, more studies are required to explore complementary techniques that can improve rainwater capture and prolong soil water storage, and improve soil fertility.