Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exchange rate modelling for Lithuania and Switzerland

In this research, the equilibrium real exchange rate as well as exchange rate misalignment in Switzerland and Lithuania is estimated based on behavioural equilibrium exchange rate and structural vector autoregression models. Moreover, driving forces of the real effective exchange rate are identified based on these methods for both countries. For estimation purposes data from various sources, such as Reuters, Eurostat, Swiss National Bank, Bank of Lithuania, Datastream, World Bank, IMF and others, is used. The results indicate that openness differential, net foreign assets, commodity terms of trade, productivity differential and fiscal balance to gross domestic product differential are significant determinants of the real effective exchange rate in Switzerland, and the latter three variables are significant in determining the real effective exchange rate in Lithuania. Results also give evidence that real effective exchange rate is mainly driven by demand shocks in both countries. Several periods of significant misalignment are detected for both Switzerland and Lithuania. The Thesis supports the exchange rate policy implemented by the Swiss National Bank and the internal adjustment strategy pursued by the Lithuanian government.
Instrumental support to facilitate hepatitis C treatment adherence: Working around shortfalls in shared-care

Adherence to treatment for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is associated with the successful eradication of infection. However, patients often have difficulty adhering to HCV treatment because of factors such as the psychiatric side effects of regimens and social disadvantage. Commonly, health professionals including specialist physicians, nurses, social workers and psychologists work together under a multidisciplinary model of shared-care to support patients’ adherence to HCV treatment. In some HCV treatment clinics, shared-care is not always available, or only partially implemented and this has implications for patient adherence. To explore the facilitators of adherence, an interview-based study was conducted in 2012 with a purposive sample of Australian physicians and nurses (N = 20). The findings reveal that when comprehensive shared-care was limited or unavailable, physicians and nurses filled in the gaps by assuming roles outside of their expertise to help patients adhere to HCV treatment. Physicians and nurses applied instrumental support strategies based on psychosocial interventions, namely patient advocacy, pragmatic problem-solving, treatment engagement and emotional support. These strategies were provided by dedicated physicians and nurses to address shortfalls in multidisciplinary shared-care. Although these interventions were reported to assist adherence, there is an increased risk of complications when physicians and nurses move beyond the bounds of their disciplinary training, for example, to assess and manage patients’ psychiatric side effects or advocate on their behalf for social services. Future research should measure the effectiveness of instrumental support strategies on HCV treatment adherence, and explore the costs associated with physicians and nurses providing instrumental support in the absence of comprehensive multidisciplinary shared-care.
Semaphorin 7A Contributes to West Nile Virus Pathogenesis through TGF-β1/Smad6 Signaling

Semaphorin 7A (Sema7A) is a membrane-associated/secreted protein that plays an essential role in connecting the vertebrate neuronal and immune systems. However, the role of Sema7A has not been elucidated in viral pathogenesis. In this study, we show that abrogation of Sema7A protects mice from lethal West Nile virus (WNV) infection. Mice lacking Sema7A showed increased survival, reduced viral burden, and less blood–brain barrier permeability upon WNV infection. Increased Sema7A levels were evident in murine tissues, as well as in murine cortical neurons and primary human macrophages upon WNV infection. Treatment with Sema7A Ab blocked WNV infection in both of these cell types. Furthermore, Sema7A positively regulates the production of TGF-β1 and Smad6 to facilitate WNV pathogenesis in mice. Collectively, these data elucidate the role of Sema7A in shared signaling pathways used by the immune and nervous systems during viral pathogenesis that may lead to the development of Sema7A-blocking therapies for WNV and possibly other flaviviral infections.
Rubral lateropulsion due to vertebral artery dissection in a patient with Klippel-Feil syndrome.

BACKGROUND Neurologic deficits in patients with Klippel-Feil syndrome usually are attributed to direct compression of neuronal structures or hypoperfusion secondary to compression of the vertebral arteries by bony abnormalities. OBJECTIVE To describe a 38-year-old woman with known Klippel-Feil syndrome who developed lateropulsion. RESULTS The results of magnetic resonance imaging were consistent with rubrothalamic stroke. The cerebral angiogram confirmed vertebral artery dissection at the level of her previously observed bony abnormality. CONCLUSIONS Hypermobility adjacent to fused vertebrae subjects the vertebral artery to increased shear forces. Thus, Klippel-Feil syndrome may be a predisposing factor for vertebral artery dissection. Moreover, to our knowledge, this case represents the second known case of rubral lateropulsion.
Co‐integration of housing prices and property stock prices: evidence from the Swedish market

The long run linkages between Swedish housing prices and property stock prices are investigated with the consideration that rental control system applied in Sweden could deviate asset prices from the suggested co‐integration. To confirm the degree of equilibrium, Error Correction Model with exogenous variables and the effect of the tax reform in 1991 are examined. Roles of rentals on the behavior of asset prices are also presented. This study confirms the existence of long‐term equilibrium between asset prices and indicates a semi‐strong efficiency of asset market. Furthermore, this study also suggests the effects of rentals on improving speed to the long‐term equilibrium.
The Pre-Acquisition Evaluation of Target Firms and Cross Border Acquisition Performance

The paper investigates the impact of the pre-acquisition evaluation of target firms on the performance of cross border acquisitions using data from a sample of acquisitions made by UK firms. The findings provide reasonable support for organizational learning theory, suggesting that the more the acquiring firm learns about the target firm then the better will be the acquisition performance. Specifically, we find support for the hypothesis that thorough evaluation of the strategic and cultural fit positively influences cross border acquisition success. Further, the analysis reveals that detailed evaluation of the target firm's employee and business capability improves acquisition performance. The managerial implications of the findings and directions for future research are also discussed.
Increasing the Adoption of E-Procurement Services at the Municipal Level

Despite high potentials and sophisticated goals set by federal policy-makers, local authorities are reluctant to move procurement to the Internet. This paper investigates the reasons of this phenomenon by presenting insights from a positivist multiple-case study among thirteen German municipalities. Our results suggest that perceived risks and benefits, acceptance among local businesses and neighboring municipalities are the strongest determinants for adoption. In order to tap the full potential of eprocurement in the public sector, federal policy-makers on the one hand should encourage pioneering municipalities to demonstrate other municipalities that eprocurement positively impacts public procurement and on the other hand should foster standardization of procurement platforms, thereby attracting more enterprises to build up the capabilities of using these platforms.
Dietary exposure to fumonisins and evaluation of nutrient intake in a group of adult celiac patients on a gluten-free diet.

SCOPE The main objectives of this study were to estimate dietary fumonisin exposure and nutrient intake in a group of patients diagnosed with celiac disease compared to non-celiac subjects. METHODS AND RESULTS The fumonisin level in 118 frequently consumed corn-based products was determined and dietary habits were recorded using a 7-day weighed food record. Data were then compared to those obtained for a control group. The fumonisin intake in the celiac patients was significantly higher than in controls, with mean values (± SE) of 0.395 ± 0.049 and 0.029 ± 0.006 μg/kg body weight per day, respectively. With regard to nutritional habits, celiac patients showed a preference for a high fat diet, coupled with a high intake of sweets and soft drinks and a low intake of vegetables, iron, calcium and folate. CONCLUSION These findings may have serious health implications for the celiac population due to the widespread occurrence of fumonisins in most of the widely consumed gluten-free products, leading to continuous exposure to this particular mycotoxin. Moreover, the recorded nutritional quality of the celiac patient's diet raises concerns regarding its long-term adequacy and its potential impact on chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
The Effects of Gender Cues and Political Sophistication on Candidate Evaluation

Gender-based political stereotypes pervade the media environment in the United States, and this may cause voters to automatically activate these stereotypes while evaluating politicians. In the research reported here, we investigate whether voters are able to reduce the automatic activation of unwanted stereotypes and how political sophistication influences this capacity. The current experiment uses self-reports to measure controlled stereotyping, and we develop a new eye movement metric to measure automatic stereotyping. We find that political sophisticates are more effective than novices at reducing unwanted gender-based political stereotypes. This study has two main implications for communication research. First, the results suggest that the effects of gender-based automatic stereotyping—induced by the information environment—on political judgments may not be as powerful as some of the current literature portrays them to be. Second, this study adds eye movements to the arsenal of tools available to communication scholars interested in measuring covert forms of stereotyping.
Impact of injuries and disease on a cohort of two- and three-year-old thoroughbreds in training

A prospective study of injuries and disease in a cohort of Australian thoroughbreds in training was conducted with the participation of 24 trainers. From the horses catalogued at a major yearling sale in 1995, 169 were enrolled in the study and followed through their two- and three-year-old racing seasons. The principal aim was to quantify the time lost in training as a result of the various categories of injuries and disease, recorded as either days of modified training, or weeks rested at pasture. Shin soreness was the most common condition in two-year-olds (affecting 42 per cent of the horses that had entered training), followed by fetlock problems (25 per cent), and coughs and nasal discharge (16 per cent). Lameness, excluding lacerations and traumatic injuries, was the most common reason for lost training days (56.2 per cent of total days modified) and for resting horses at pasture (81.2 per cent of total weeks rested for injury or disease). Of the individual categories of injury or disease, lacerations and traumatic injuries, coughs and nasal discharge, shin soreness, carpal problems and fetlock problems were the most important causes of modified training days. In terms of weeks rested at pasture, fetlock problems, shin soreness, carpal problems, and coughs and nasal discharge had the greatest impact Major injury was uncommon in young horses in training, but there was a high incidence of relatively low-grade injuries and disease during the training of two-year-olds.
The causal relationship between domestic and outward foreign investment: evidence for Italy

This article examines the impact of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on domestic investment by applying cointegration techniques to macroeconomic time series data for Italy. We find that OFDI has negative short-run and positive long-run effects on domestic investment. Furthermore, our empirical results show that the long-run causality is bi-directional, suggesting that increased OFDI is both a cause and a consequence of increased domestic investment.
Adverse Selection and Capital Structure: Evidence from Venture Capital

Venture capitalists (VCs) in all non–U.S. countries around the world have consistently reported the use of a variety of securities, including common equity, preferred equity, convertible preferred equity, debt, convertible debt, and combinations (in the U.S., VCs typically use convertible preferred equity, and there is a tax bias in favor of that instrument in the U.S.). The types of entrepreneurial firms that receive venture finance may be defined by a variety of characteristics, such as stage of development, type of industry, and capital requirements. Given this broad context observed in practice, previous research has not considered the extent to which different securities, among the complete class of forms of finance, attract different types of entrepreneurial firms. In this article, we investigate the empirical tractability of the adverse selection risks associated with capital structure from 4,114 first–round Canadian venture capital investments. We first characterize the nature of uncertainty (in terms of the risk of financing a lemon or a nut) facing investors for different types of entrepreneurial firms. We then show that VC syndication significantly mitigates problems of adverse selection.
Interfuel Substitution in Steam Electric Power Generation

A translog normalized restricted profit function is used to study the characteristics of the production function for electric energy. The results indicate that fuel choice in existing steam electric plants responds to changes in fuel prices. The production function is also tested for separability of fuels from capital and labor, homotheticity, returns to scale, and embodied technical change.
The role of work engagement in the pursuit of organisational effectiveness

The profound influence of human capital on the success and growth of any organisation is momentous and cannot be unheeded in the contemporary business world. In this direction, the present paper reviews the organisational paradigms of employees' work engagement and attempts to relate it with organisational effectiveness. The study was designed to generate and test a hypothesised model colligating between the constituents of engagement namely vigour, dedication, and absorption and the organisational effectiveness. A survey-based study was conducted in 27 IT organisations across the national capital region (NCR), India. The sample size for the study comprised 304 Indian IT professionals. Data analysis, performed using structural equation modelling (SEM) approach, revealed that work engagement in terms of vigour, dedication, and absorption is significantly associated with organisational effectiveness in that it also entails a positive impact upon the effectiveness of a firm. The association is further explored to highlight the affective-motivational underpinnings through which employees' increased level of engagement is likely to elevate organisational effectiveness.
Are Local Milieus the Key to Innovation Performance?

This study investigates how local milieus foster innovation success in firms. We complement the common practice of linking firm performance indicators to regional characteristics with survey evidence on the perceived importance of locational factors. While the former approach assumes that location characteristics affect all firms in the same way, the survey allows us to model how firms judge the attractiveness of locations using a heterogeneous set of criteria. It turns out that the availability of highly skilled labor and the proximity to suppliers matter for firms' innovation performance. Interestingly, location factors obtained from the survey provide a more accurate explanation of how local milieus facilitate innovation.
The News under Russia's Old Regime: The Development of a Mass-Circulation Press

In this lively account of the rise of a commercial newspaper industry in imperial Russia, Louise McReynolds explores how the mass-circulation press created a forum for popular opinion advocating political change. From the Great Reforms of Tsar Alexander II in 1855 to the Bolsheviks' shut-down of the newspapers in 1917, she chronicles the exploits of publishers and editors, writers and readers. Arguing that this prosperous industry both expressed and shaped the development of ideas among new social groups, McReynolds provides insight into the growth in Russia of a fragile pluralism characteristic of modern societies. Her discussion of the relationship between communications and politics, which draws especially on Jurgen Habermas, combines a variety of interrelated ingredients: institutional histories of major newspapers, biographical sketches of journalists, the intellectual impact of the new language of newspaper journalism, the political ramifications of public opinion under the auspices of an autocratic government. Comparing the Russian press with independent commercial newspaper industries in the United States, England, and France, McReynolds examines the extent to which Russia was evolving according to Western political and socioeconomic patterns before the Bolshevik Revolution.Originally published in 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
A NOTE ON THE ECONOMICS OF STANDBY VERSUS STANDING PEACEKEEPING FORCES

With UN peacekeeping activities in recent years having become more numerous, complex and costly, alternative means of responding to emerging crises and conflicts are being proposed and considered, along with their financial costs and funding. This paper analyzes the economic costs and benefits of recent options from a global resource point of view. It is concluded that standby forces provided by Member States to the UN, such as the multinational Stand‐by Forces High Readiness Brigade for UN Operations (SHIRBRIG) and the more recent European Union (EU) Rapid Reaction Force (RRF), appear presently to be economically the most efficient means of providing UN peacekeeping. Standby forces, acknowledged by the UN as a feasible alternative to a UN standing army or police force, are economically the most efficient basically because they utilize more fully the existing military resources of Member States, rather than require major additional new resources for peacekeeping.
The (International) Political Economy of Falling Wage Shares: Situating Working-Class Agency†

This paper relates the financial and monetary dimensions of the contemporary economic crisis to working-class agency via a central concern of classical political economy: the distribution of surplus between the chief factors of production. The fall in the wage share of value added is now accepted as a stylised fact in the empirical economic literature. This paper argues that the punctuated pattern of the development validates the regulation theoretical narrative of an epochal shift from Fordism to finance-led accumulation. Furthermore, synthesising econometric studies supports a class-centred explanation. In the last instance, the falling wage share is due to successful transnational class rule in the form of a neoliberal hegemonic paradigm. Crucially, such class rule restructured the environment of trade unions, rendering increasingly ineffective its relational power resources. The paper concludes by considering the contradictory implications for organised labour of the current financial crisis. On the one hand, the financial crisis offers an opportunity to link its particular interests to the general interest of macroeconomic management since low wage share inhibits growth rates. But how might trade unions assert a higher wage share in the face of the structural power of (financial) capital?
The association between institutional ownership and audit properties

We are interested in channels through which institutional ownership affects corporate governance and in particular whether financial statement audit is one of them. We hypothesize that institutional investors can influence corporate policy to employ governance mechanisms that reduce their monitoring costs. Our evidence shows that firms are more likely to hire a Big 4 auditor (our proxy for audit quality) when long-term institutional ownership is high, suggesting that long-term institutional investors view high-quality audits as a viable means of improving corporate governance while reducing their direct monitoring costs. We find no association between auditor choice and short-term institutional ownership. Next, we find that auditors charge higher fees (our proxy for audit risk) when short-term institutional ownership is high, consistent with short-term investors creating greater incentives for managers to act myopically. We find no association between audit fees and long-term institutional ownership. Taken together, our evidence suggests that long-term institutional investors demand higher quality audits to enhance corporate monitoring, and that short-term institutional ownership is positively associated with higher audit risk.
LONE PARENTS, THE NEW DEAL AND THE OPPORTUNITIES AND BARRIERS TO RETAIL EMPLOYMENT

The number of lone parents has increased considerably in recent years and the UK Labour Government has reacted by encouraging them to move from welfare and into work. This group face multi-dimensional and complex barriers to employment that the government has attempted to rectify through the introduction of various initiatives such as the National Childcare Strategy, the Working Families Tax Credit and the New Deal. The availability of appropriate employment opportunities is central to this strategy. Retail employment is perceived to be one such opportunity. This article examines the Glasgow supermarket sector as a suitable employer for clients of the New Deal for Lone Parents programme. The findings demonstrate that lone parents still experience significant barriers to work, even in a sector that is considered a viable employment option.
Empirical Studies on Early Childhood Education in Germany

1 Self-productivity is a crucial feature in the process of skill formation. It means that skills developed in previous stages enhance the development of skills during later stages. This paper presents an empirical investigation of self-productivity in early childhood in Germany. The data are drawn from the mother-child questionnaire of the German Socio-Economic Panel for the birth cohorts 2002-2007. The magnitude of selfproductivity varies between skills and stages. In particular, the effect of skills acquired in the first stage on skills acquired at the second stage varies between 0.08 and 0.19 standard deviations, while the effect of skills developed at the second stage on skills developed on the third stage varies between 0.08 and 0.49. Our family fixed effects estimates support the hypothesis of the importance of self-productivity during early childhood.