Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Labour rebuilt: The new model party

Within 30 months of its third electoral defeat in a row, the Labour Party had undergone one of the biggest policy rethinks ever undertaken by a major political party. This book aims to be an objective account of this transformation, looking at the change from a unilateralist defence policy, and the revolution in its organization and its policy vis-a-vis the Trade Unions. The book examines the implications, permanence and significance of these dramatic changes and examines the party which might well form the next government.
The role of firm R&D effort and collaboration as mediating drivers of innovation policy effectiveness

Abstract This paper investigates the impact of firm R&D policies supporting R&D investment and collaboration on company innovation performance. Individual and cooperative R&D investments are considered as intermediate outcomes (input and behavioural additionality, respectively) contributing to the final outcome (probability of product innovation). We use a treatment random coefficient model to estimate the policy additionality on a panel data-set merging the third and the fourth wave of the Italian Community Innovation Survey. Results show a significant and positive policy impact on company propensity to product innovation only for the input additionality and for the interaction between the input and the cooperative additionality. This occurs when company cooperation scores overcome a given threshold, in accordance with the assumption that cooperation entails benefits but also coordination costs.
Modeling of periodic distributed MEMS-application to the design of variable true-time delay lines

This paper presents the modeling and design methods of true-time distributed microelectromechanical systems transmission lines (DMTLs) making use of periodic structure theory. New contributions to the analysis and reduction of the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) shunt capacitors parasitics are also introduced. A prototype of a digital DMTL has been fabricated and measured, showing very good agreement with the comprehensive circuit model used for the design. It is believed that the periodic structure approach presented could be useful for other microwave periodic MEMS devices
Determinants of Households’ Income Poverty in the South-South Geopolitical Zone of Nigeria

This paper analyzed income poverty in the south-south geopolitical zone of Nigeria using the FGT model and a logit regression on the 2009-10 National Living Standard Survey data. Zonal level results showed 0.4924, 0.203 and 0.113 poverty incidence, gap and severity respectively. Poverty incidence in Delta and Edo States were fairly higher than the zonal average while those of the other states were marginally less than the zonal average. While rural share of poverty was 82%, urban share was a meager 18%. Contrary to a widely held view this study showed that male contributed more (91.56%) to poverty than female (8.44%) in the zone. The agricultural sector had a share of 74.75%. This study recommended that poverty reduction efforts should aim at providing rural households equal opportunity to achieve their potentials not minding the state of residence.
Author Self-Citation in the General Medicine Literature

Background Author self-citation contributes to the overall citation count of an article and the impact factor of the journal in which it appears. Little is known, however, about the extent of self-citation in the general clinical medicine literature. The objective of this study was to determine the extent and temporal pattern of author self-citation and the article characteristics associated with author self-citation. Methodology/Principal Findings We performed a retrospective cohort study of articles published in three high impact general medical journals (JAMA, Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine) between October 1, 1999 and March 31, 2000. We retrieved the number and percentage of author self-citations received by the article since publication, as of June 2008, from the Scopus citation database. Several article characteristics were extracted by two blinded, independent reviewers for each article in the cohort and analyzed in multivariable linear regression analyses. Since publication, author self-citations accounted for 6.5% (95% confidence interval 6.3–6.7%) of all citations received by the 328 articles in our sample. Self-citation peaked in 2002, declining annually thereafter. Studies with more authors, in cardiovascular medicine or infectious disease, and with smaller sample size were associated with more author self-citations and higher percentage of author self-citation (all p≤0.01). Conclusions/Significance Approximately 1 in 15 citations of articles in high-profile general medicine journals are author self-citations. Self-citation peaks within about 2 years of publication and disproportionately affects impact factor. Studies most vulnerable to this effect are those with more authors, small sample size, and in cardiovascular medicine or infectious disease.
Time analysis of standard evolutionary algorithms as software programs

This article presents a study which characterizes the computational efficiency behavior of a standard EA as a software program. The study analyzes the effects of some implementation decisions regarding memory utilization (dynamic vs. static, local vs. global) and the generation of pseudorandom numbers, on the execution time of the resulting EA. The experimental analysis allows us to conclude that significant improvements in efficiency can be gained by applying simple guidelines on how to best program the EA.
Values and moral development of undergraduate accounting students at an Islamic university and a non-religious university in Malaysia

This thesis explores the implications of education within the context of an Islamic university on ethical development of accounting students, namely, on the aspects of moral reasoning ability and personal value preferences. A mixed-methodology research approach was used to address the thesis’ two-part research purpose. First, a case study investigation was carried out to explore the values that are emphasized at the Islamic University, and the ways the values are conveyed to the students. For comparison purpose, a similar investigation was conducted on the case of another university with generally secular orientation. The case study data were generated from semi-structured interviews with faculty members and students, documents, and direct observation. Second, data on moral reasoning ability and personal value preferences of accounting students at the two universities were gathered using a survey instrument containing Rest’s Defining Issues Test (DIT) and Schwartz’s Values Survey (SVS). The survey data were analyzed to establish the differences between accounting students from the two universities, and changes that could have taken place during their course of study. The findings of the case study revealed that the Islamic University indicates a greater commitment toward developing the students’ moral character, namely, by instilling Islamic values. There were indications that such values are delivered through the formal curriculum, the lecturers, and some aspects of the university’s general environment. Analyses of the survey data, on the other hand, have yielded mixed results. While moral reasoning ability was found to be higher for students at the Islamic University, there was no evidence of an increase with progression into a higher level of study, which is in contrast with the case of students at the non-religious University. There were also differences between these two cohorts as regards personal value preferences, particularly, in respect of values that are associable with religious commitment. In general, however, significant changes in personal value preferences seem unlikely for students at both universities. Overall, the findings have contributed toward understanding the impact of university setting on ethical development of accounting students, and thus are of potential benefits to accounting educators and regulators.
THE VILIBOR–EURIBOR SPREAD DYNAMICS DURING THE RECENT FINANCIAL CRISIS

This article deals with the influence of the international financial crisis on the Lithuanian interbank market interest rates. Specifically, VILIBOR–EURIBOR spread dynamics over the period from the beginning of 2005 until the end of 2010 is analysed. The objective of the study was to estimate and describe the main factors affecting the VILIBOR spread. Methods used in the study include a systemic analysis of related studies, historical data analysis and statistical testing. Several episodes of increased market volatility could be clearly identified during the period, under study and the volatility of the data series as well as changes in their statistical properties and interdependence make the statistical analysis of the relationship very complicated. Statistically robust results could be achieved only after introducing several restrictions. The EURIBOR, RIGIBOR and Lithuanian CDS indexes have been found to explain more than 40 percent of the largest VILIBOR spread changes.
A Contractarian Theory of Property Rights and Crime

As was noted long ago, war-like distributional squabbles which divert resources from socially productive uses will persist in a world without government. In this paper, we show that all agents can gain ex ante from the institution of a social contract which establishes property rights and levies a tax in order to finance a criminal justice system where punishment is threatened for violations of property rights. These ex ante gains hold even for individuals who may be harshly punished ex post. The optimal social contract (i.e. the optimal level of enforcement of property rights) is also characterized.
Subject Areas : Cosmology A Viewpoint on : Reexamination of the Power Spectrum in De Sitter Inflation

A period of rapid expansion (called inflation) in the early stages of the Universe is believed to be responsible for the generation of inhomogeneities in the distribution of matter [1]. These primordial inhomogeneities have evolved to form all the structures that we observe in the Universe, from the inhomogeneities in the cosmic microwave background to galaxies, stars, and planets (Fig. 1). However, calculations of the primordial distribution of inhomogeneities (or fluctuations) lead to values for their magnitudes that are too large unless the parameters of the models of inflation acquire seemingly unnatural values [2]. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Iván Agulló and José Navarro-Salas (University of Valencia), Gonzalo Olmo (Perimeter Institute and Institute of Materials Science, Madrid), and Leonard Parker (University of Wisconsin) argue that this problem might be alleviated if the physical spectrum of inhomogeneities was not the one usually assumed, but a modified version of it [3].
Essays on inequality, social mobility and redistributive preferences in Transition Economies

Title of dissertation: ESSAYS ON INEQUALITY, SOCIAL MOBILITY AND REDISTRIBUTIVE PREFERENCES IN TRANSITION ECONOMIES Alexandru Cojocaru, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Dissertation directed by: Professor Carol Graham School of Public Policy In this dissertation I rely on attitudinal and subjective well-being data from Transition Economies to examine several aspects of the relationship between inequality, social mobility and citizens’ preferences for government involvement in redistributive policies. In the second chapter I suggest that if aversion to inequality is driven by social mobility considerations or by differences in status between self and relevant others, then aggregate statistical indices of inequality will be unable to capture in a meaningful way changes in status implicit in inequality dynamics. An alternative test of inequality aversion that derives from the experimental literature is adopted, that is better able to capture status driven aversion to inequality. The third chapter investigates empirically the link between the prospects of upward mobility (POUM) and preferences for redistribution. The POUM hypothesis is tested while directly accounting for other factors affecting preferences for redistribution such as risk aversion, beliefs regarding effort and luck as determinants of success, past economic mobility, or religious preferences. The chapter then looks at what shapes individuals’ beliefs vis-a-vis future economic mobility. In particular, I examine the role of perceived inequality of opportunity, conceptualised in the spirit of John Rawls. The fourth chapter is concerned with the body of literature that suggests that relative status is an important determinant of well-being by looking at the effect of one’s income relative to some reference group on self-reported life satisfaction. In most of these studies the data come from developed countries, while the reference group of the individual is unknown, and thus imposed by the researcher. This essay looks instead at self-reported relative deprivation based on data from six countries from different parts of Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union and which are at different levels of economic development. The relative salience of several reference groups is examined. Given the cross-sectional nature of the data, an instrumental variable strategy is employed to establish a causal link between relative deprivation and the level of satisfaction with the household’s standard of living. ESSAYS ON INEQUALITY, SOCIAL MOBILITY AND REDISTRIBUTIVE PREFERENCES IN TRANSITION ECONOMIES by Alexandru Cojocaru Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Advisory Committee: Professor Carol Graham, Chair Professor Branko Milanovic Professor Madiha Afzal Professor Peter Murrell Professor Andrew Clark c © Copyright by Alexandru Cojocaru 2012
The Effect of SOX Internal Control Deficiencies on Firm Risk and Cost of Equity

ABSTRACT The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) mandates management evaluation and independent audits of internal control effectiveness. The mandate is costly to firms but may yield benefits through lower information risk that translates into lower cost of equity. We use unaudited pre-SOX 404 disclosures and SOX 404 audit opinions to assess how changes in internal control quality affect firm risk and cost of equity. After controlling for other risk factors, we find that firms with internal control deficiencies have significantly higher idiosyncratic risk, systematic risk, and cost of equity. Our change analyses document that auditor-confirmed changes in internal control effectiveness (including remediation of previously disclosed internal control deficiencies) are followed by significant changes in the cost of equity that range from 50 to 150 basis points. Overall, our cross-sectional and intertemporal change test results are consistent with internal control reports affecting investors' risk assessments and firms' cost of equity. Copyright (c), University of Chicago on behalf of the Institute of Professional Accounting, 2008.
Auditory perception at the root of language learning

Learning a spoken language presupposes efficient auditory functions. In the present event-related potential study, we tested whether and how basic auditory processes are related to online learning of a linguistic rule in infants and adults. Participants listened to frequent standard stimuli, which were interspersed with infrequent pitch deviants and rule deviants, violating a nonadjacent dependency between two syllables. Only infants who showed the more mature mismatch response for the pitch deviants (i.e., a negativity) showed a mismatch response to the rule deviants. Concordantly, the small group of adults who showed evidence of rule learning showed larger mismatch effects for pitch processing. We conclude that the ability to extract linguistic rules develops in early infancy and is tightly linked to functional aspects of basic auditory mechanisms.
Explorations of object and location memory using fMRI

Content-specific sub-systems of visual working memory (VWM) have been explored in many neuroimaging studies with inconsistent findings and procedures across experiments. The present study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a change detection task using a high number of trials and matched stimulus displays across object and location change (what vs. where) conditions. Furthermore, individual task periods were studied independently across conditions to identify differences corresponding to each task period. Importantly, this combination of task controls has not previously been described in the fMRI literature. Composite results revealed differential frontoparietal activation during each task period. A separation of object and location conditions yielded a distributed system of dorsal and ventral streams during the encoding of information corresponding to bilateral inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and lingual gyrus activation, respectively. Differential activity was also shown during the maintenance of information in middle frontal structures bilaterally for objects and the right IPL and left insula for locations. Together, these results reflect a domain-specific dissociation spanning several cortices and task periods. Furthermore, differential activations suggest a general caudal-rostral separation corresponding to object and location memory, respectively.
DISCUSSION PAPERS Institute of Economics University of Copenhagen SME Growth an Did Direct

In this paper we provide evidence on the survival and growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam relying on three partly overlapping enterprise surveys sampled during the period 1990-2002. Our empirical results indicate that classical determinants of performance including firm age, firm size, location, ownership, degree of capital intensive production and the type of activity are also important in Vietnam. In addition to the traditional indicators we analyze the effect of government support. Government credit assistance during start-up contributed significantly to the growth of Vietnamese SMEs in the late 1990s, but the importance of this kind of support may be diminishing as new firms do not seem to benefit from this form of support. In contrast, the importance of legal advice appears to be increasing. JEL classification: 012, 038, 053
Asymmetric Labour Markets in a Converging Europe: Do Differences Matter?

In this paper we investigate whether differences we observe in European labour market transmission mechanisms matter for monetary policy design. We are particularly concerned with the robustness of the choice of rule by the European Central Bank (ECB) but we also comment on the choice of rules in the UK. Three different models of labour markets are constructed, one where the relationships are estimated separately, one where the most statistically acceptable commonalities across countries are imposed and one where common relationships are imposed across all countries. Panel estimation techniques are used to test for commonalities. These models are embedded into the National Institute's Global Econometric Model, NiGEM, and stochastic simulations are run to evaluate different monetary policy rules.
Kosovo: The Building of a European State or Just Another State in Europe?

On its own, Kosovo has neither come to where it is today nor could it move any forward in the near future. The role of the international community and especially that of the EU is crucial in helping Kosovo overpass some of the current barriers and become a truly European state, instead of just another state in Europe. Therefore, from a state-building perspective, this paper strives to shed some light on the process of state-building in Kosovo and the role of the international involvement during this past decade.
Understanding the Black College Student Experience: The Relationships between Racial Identity, Social Support, General Campus, Academic, and Racial Climate, and GPA.

According to the US Department of Education (2001), Black college students, when compared with other racial groups, have the highest drop out rate at both two-year and four-year colleges. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine factors that might place Black students at risk of discontinuing their higher education. A path analysis was conducted on 187 Black students attending four-year Predominately White Institutions (PWI) of higher education and Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Overall results indicated that for Black students at PWIs and HBCUs alike, completion of college is both directly and indirectly related to a blend of individual, environmental and racial experiences which, speculatively, may be affected by interventions designed to reduce Black student drop out rqtes. Understanding the Black College Student Experience Table of
The Effects of Fiscal Policy on Consumption and Employment: Theory and Evidence

This Paper compares the dynamic impact of fiscal policy on macroeconomic variables implied by a large class of general equilibrium models with the empirical results from an identified vector autoregression. In the data we find that positive innovations in government spending are followed by strong and persistent increases in consumption and employment. The effects are particularly pronounced when government wage expenditures increase. We compare these findings to several variations of a standard real business cycle model and we find that the positive correlation in the responses of employment and consumption cannot be matched by the model under plausible assumptions for the values of the calibration parameters.
Do Inventors Value Secrecy in Patenting? Evidence from the American Inventor's Protection Act of 1999

This study examines the revealed preferences of inventors towards secrecy in patenting by analyzing their disclosure choices before and after the enactment of the American Inventor’s Protection Act (AIPA) of 1999. We find that 7.5% of U.S. patent applications use AIPA’s provisions to keep their inventions secret before patent grant. Small U.S. inventors, in particular, are more likely than large corporations to prefer disclosure over secrecy for their most important inventions. Our findings question the conventional wisdomwhich seems to have shaped important policythat the disclosure of patent applications harms U.S. invention by increasing the risk of imitation for small inventors.