Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ex-Dividend Day Stock Price Anomaly: Evidence from Greece

This paper examines the ex-dividend price and trading volume behaviour in the Greek stock market. The examined period spans over the period 2000-2004. We use both the standard event study methodology and the regression analysis in order to assess the ex-dividend stock price anomaly. We find that stock prices drop less by than the dividend amount. By examining abnormal returns as well as abnormal trading volume around the ex-dividend day, we find strong evidence of short-term trading which is consistent with the presence of dividend-capturing activities around the ex-dividend day. The results from the cross-sectional regression analysis confirm that the short-term trading hypothesis explains the ex-day stock price anomaly in Greece.
RDAs, Sub-Regional Partnerships and Local Regeneration

This article examines the structures and relationships being formed between regional, sub-regional and local levels of governance. It highlights how traditional methods for the delivery of regeneration, based on Weberian formalization, centralization and bureaucratic procedures, are being challenged by the call for more flexible arrangements with decentralized decision-making and wider participation, a key philosophy of contemporary regeneration management. It is suggested that the implementation of programmes is problematic because cultural and professional differences emerge between professional regeneration managers an d the recipients of regeneration projects. By focusing on the emergence of four Sub-Regional Partnerships (SRPs), a new intermediary in regeneration, in the North East of England, this article will be of interest to both practitioners and academics. Early evidence tends to indicate that through SRPs, the governance of regeneration appears to be an other ‘managerial fix’ rather than a new form of political articulation.
Consensus and majority voting in the WTO

Abstract This article's subject is the implications that consensus/unanimity and majority voting might have for the World Trade Organization's (WTO) decision-making system. First it looks at some consequences that replacing the consensus rule with majority voting might have for the WTO, including justice concerns, legitimacy, homogeneity of WTO membership, and international enforcement. Second, it summarizes some solutions found in the European Union (EU) for coping with unanimity and majority rule, including constructive abstention, reallocation of contractual responsibilities, and the Luxembourg compromise. Finally, it considers some reform options for the WTO and offers some conclusions, namely expanding majority voting on certain areas only, redefining competences, multi-speed proposals (rethinking the single undertaking, constructive abstention, and the scheduling approach), redefining consensus, combining consensus and majority voting, and issuing interpretations.
Neuroimaging Findings in Congenital Zika Syndrome

Since the early 2015 outbreak of the Zika virus, an arbovirus originally identified in Africa and Asia-Pacific and transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the virus has spread rapidly from Pernambuco State throughout Brazil and the Americas. In Brazil, more than 30,000 clinical cases have been
A Theoretical Framework for Evaluating the Impact of Universal Reserve Requirements

This paper provides an appropriate framework to evaluate the impact of the universal reserve requirements called for by the new DIDMC Act of 1980. We derived the optimal reserve ratios for a dual banking system under the objective of controlling the monetary aggregates and the level of output. Then optimal reserve requirements were calculated from illustrative money market and macroeconomic parameters since the usual comparative statics were not useful. The results, generally, suggested optimal reserve ratios which were significantly higher than the old dual or the new universal reserve regimes for all targets. However, the calculation of values for the loss functions under various reserve regimes suggests that attainment of rl*, r2*, and t* may not be imperative, since the discrepancy between losses for optimal and various nonoptimal reserve schemes were not large. A major result of this paper, observed for both monetary and real targets, was that the differences in the instability of the targets for the old dual reserve ratios and the Fed's new universal reserve scheme were small. This result clearly suggests that although the DIDMC Act may solve the Federal Reserve's membership problem, it will not significantly enhance the Fed's effectiveness in controlling monetary or real sector aggregates. FOR 30 YEARS, THE Federal Reserve has argued for and finally obtained legislation that would force nonmember state chartered commercial banks to satisfy the same level of reserve requirements which nationally chartered banks satisfy. Until the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 (DIDMC), reserve requirements for nationally chartered commercial banks were more burdensome than state requirements because they were higher and satisfied only with vault cash and deposits with the Fed. ' The Federal Reserve's quest for universal reserve requirements became more intense in the late 1970s with the erosion of Reserve membership accelerating due to the increasing opportunity costs of Fed memberships; see [3]. By the middle of 1980, the percentage of commercial banks belonging to the Fed had declined to 39 percent compared with 45 percent at the end of 1966. Arthur Burns [4] argued that the Fed's declining membership eroded its ability to control the money supply because the existence of dual reserve requirements decreased the predictability of the relationship between bank reserves and the relevant monetary aggregate.
Chagas disease: role of parasite genetic variation in pathogenesis

Chagas disease, caused by the parasite protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, is characterised by a variable clinical course, from symptomless cases to severe chronic disease with cardiac and/or gastrointestinal involvement. This variability has been attributed both to differences in the host response and to genomic heterogeneity of the parasite. This article reviews the evidence in favour of an important role of the genetic constitution of T. cruzi in determining the clinical characteristics of Chagas disease and discusses the basis of the ‘Clonal-Histotropic Model’ for the pathogenesis of this disease.
The changing face of healthcare in Saudi Arabia

Many countries now struggle to provide cost-effective, quality healthcare services to their citizens. Saudi Arabia has experienced high costs along with concerns about quality of care in its public facilities. To address these issues the country is currently restructuring their healthcare system to privatize public hospitals and introduce insurance coverage for both foreign workers and citizens. The changes provide an interesting and insightful case for the challenges in radically changing a country’s healthcare system. The situation also demonstrates a unique case in the Middle East for greater reliance of the private sector to address rapidly escalating healthcare costs and deteriorating quality. The complexity of changing a healthcare system is discussed with the many challenges associated with the change.
The soft budget constraint

The author’s ideas on the soft budget constraint (SBC) were first expressed in 1976. Much progress has been made in understanding the problem over the ensuing four decades. The study takes issue with those who confine the concept to the process of bailing out loss-making socialist firms. It shows how the syndrome can appear in various organizations and forms in many spheres of the economy and points to the various means available for financial rescue. Single bailouts do not as such generate the SBC syndrome. It develops where the SBC becomes built into expectations. Special heed is paid to features generated by the syndrome in rescuer and rescuee organizations. The study reports on the spread of the syndrome in various periods of the socialist and the capitalist system, in various sectors. The author expresses his views on normative questions and on therapies against the harmful effects. He deals first with actual practice, then places the theory of the SBC in the sphere of ideas and models, showing how it relates to other theoretical trends, including institutional and behavioural economics and theories of moral hazard and inconsistency in time. He shows how far the intellectual apparatus of the SBC has spread in theoretical literature and where it has reached in the process of “canonization” by the economics profession. Finally, he reviews the main research tasks ahead.
Do trading volumes explain the persistence of GARCH effects?

We examine the role of trading volumes in Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH)-based tests of the Mixture of Distributions Hypothesis (MDH) on firm-level data for the 20 largest Fortune 500 stocks. In doing so, we provide a set of increasingly generalized nested models within which to examine the role of trading volumes, beginning with the AR(1)-GARCH(1,1) model with no trading volumes, progressing to the univariate AR(1)-GARCH(1,1)-X, the AR(1)-GARCH(1,1)-M and the AR(1)-GARCH(1,1)-M-X models, the constant correlation bivariate AR(1)-GARCH(1,1)-M-X model, and culminating with the Dynamic Equicorrelation-GARCH (DECO-GARCH) model. Amongst our main findings, the trading volumes are robustly significant and positively signed in the volatility of returns equations for most firms, acting to reduce the persistence and to eliminate the need for GARCH terms. As we progress from the AR(1)-GARCH(1,1) to the AR(1)-GARCH(1,1)-X, AR(1)-GARCH(1,1)-M-X and the bivariate AR(1)-GARCH(1,1)-M-X models, the persistence parameters decline from an average of 0.987 to 0.143, 0.206 and 0.141 respectively. Our results are robust and consistent with the MDH in most cases.
The Arbitrage Pricing Theory: Some Empirical Results

THE ACCUMULATION of empirical evidence inconsistent with the simple oneperiod capital asset pricing models of Sharpe (1964), Lintner (1965), and Black (1972) indicates that alternative models of capital market equilibrium deserve investigation. A minimum requirement for any alternative model should be that it explains the empirical anomalies which arise within the simple CAPM. One such anomaly is observed when portfolios are formed on the basis of firm size (see Banz [1978] and Reinganum [1980b, c]). Small firms systematically experienced average rates of return nearly 20% per year greater than those of large firms, even after accounting for differences in estimated betas. An adequately specified model of equilibrium should eliminate these persistent "abnormal" returns. The arbitrage pricing theory (APT) proposed by Ross (1976) is a plausible alternative to the simple one-factor CAPM. The appeal of the APT probably comes from its implication that compensation for bearing risk may be comprised of several risk premia, rather than just one risk premium as in the CAPM. Roll and Ross (1979) claim to find empirically at least three and probably four factors that are priced from 1962 to 1972. However, Roll and Ross do not offer an economic interpretation of these factors and admit that their test is a weak one. This research investigates empirically whether a parsimonious arbitrage pricing model can account for the differences in average returns between small firms and large firms which are traded on the New York and American Stock Exchanges. If a parsimonious APT can explain these differences, then one might feel more confident in using the APT as an empirical replacement for the CAPM, even though the economic nature of the risks is not fully understood. However, if a parsimonious APT fails to account for differences in average returns, then the model ought to be rejected. There can be no justification for embracing a complicated model if it does not convey any more information than does the simple model.
Commitment in the workplace: The impact of income and age on employee commitment in Nigerian banking sector

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend previous research on employee commitment to their organisation within the Nigerian banking sector. This paper aims to use income and age as variables in assessing employee commitment to their organisations in Nigeria.Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative approach was employed in data collection, using a 28‐item, seven‐point Likert scaled questionnaire administered to 200 participants with a 42 per cent usable response rate. A factor analysis resulted in three components of commitment.Findings – The results from the analysis indicate that employees with high income represent the same group of employees within the age groups 31‐35 with low commitment to their organisation.Originality/value – This paper demonstrates that the relationships between age, income and commitment might be explained by reference to cultural factors which might have stronger influence on employee expression of commitment to their organisations.
3-D Markerless Tracking of Human Gait by Geometric Trilateration of Multiple Kinects

In this paper, we develop an integrated markerless gait tracking system with three Kinect v2 sensors. A geometric principle-based trilateration method is proposed for optimizing the accuracy of the measured gait data. To tackle the data synchronization problem among the Kinect clients and the server, a synchronization mechanism based on network time protocol (NTP) is designed for synchronizing the server and Kinect clients’ clocks. Furthermore, a time schedule is designed for timing each Kinect client's data transmission. In the experiment, participants are asked to perform a 60-s walk, while the proposed tracking system obtains the participant's gait data. Six joints (including left hip, right hip, left knee, right knee, left ankle, and right ankle) of the participants are tracked where the obtained gait data are described as 6000 movements of joint positions (1000 movements for each joint). The results show that the trilateration tracking result by the three Kinect sensors has a much higher accuracy compared with the accuracy measured by a single Kinect sensor. Within a randomly sampled time period (67.726 s in the experiment), 98.37$\%$ of the frames generated by the gait tracking system have timing errors less than 1 ms, which is much better than the default NTP service embedded in the Windows 8.1 operating system. The accuracy of the proposed system is quantitatively evaluated and verified by a comparison with a commercial medical system (Delsys Trigno Smart Sensor System).
Home and Away: Mental Geographies of Young Migrant Workers and their Belonging to the Family House in Northern Ghana

In Northern Ghana migration is of topical interest since an increasing number of young men and women move towards the southern cities in response to harsh economic and climatic conditions in the northern regions. Large parts of the compound houses are abandoned. During their absence or upon their return the migrants build new rooms in expensive materials and with new designs, as witnesses of their partaking in a larger, so‐called ‘modern’ world. In this paper I focus on seasonal as well as permanent national migration among the Kasena people. I explicitly take up the point of view of those who stay behind in the homelands. Field research was carried out in the rural areas of the Upper East Region of Ghana. This contribution discusses the migratory movements in the light of mental geographies and their socio‐cultural and material implications for dwelling and belonging in rural compound houses.
The Evolution of the U.S. Output-Inflation Tradeoff

This paper proposes quantifying the evolution of the U.S. output-inflation tradeoff using a Time-Varying Parameter Structural VAR. This methodology circumvents issues with existing methods which tend to be either reduced form in nature or rely on more ad hoc assumptions regarding sample split dates and both trend output and trend inflation. Working through U.S. data since the 1970s reveals only a slight change in the tradeoff from around 1.70 to 1.75 percentage points of real output growth per percentage point increase in trend inflation. This contrasts with claims that the U.S. Phillips Curve has flattened dramatically.
Impact of remittances on poverty at origin: a study on rural households in India using Covariate Balancing Propensity Score Matching

In India, migration research has chiefly concentrated upon determining the causes rather than the effects of migration. A review of the extant literature reveals a near absence of studies exploring the linkages between remittances and poverty in India. This paper attempts to partly fill that void by assessing the effect of remittances on rural development. The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), which carried out a nationwide survey on migration in 2007–2008, reported that out-migrants from rural India have a much higher propensity to remit compared to their urban counterparts. As rural poverty in India continues to pose the most fundamental development challenge, this paper explores on the basis of unit level data obtained from the NSSO survey whether transfer income in the form of remittances help to alleviate/de-intensify poverty among recipient rural households. Using the nascent technique of covariate balancing propensity score, rural households receiving remittances are matched with households that have similar background characteristics but do not receive remittances, and the impact of remittance income on their poverty status is subsequently ascertained. After correcting for self-selection, the study finds that remittance income from both internal as well as international sources do serve to lower the incidence of poverty among rural households although, expectedly, international remittances seem to have a stronger poverty alleviating effect.
Exploring Space in the Consultation Room: Environmental Influences during Patient–Physician Interaction

Patients' disclosure of personal information is a key factor in health communication. Research shows that the environment can affect self-disclosure. The 2 studies reported in this article set out to examine the effects of the perceived spaciousness of a consultation room on patient readiness to communicate personal information to his or her physician. To influence perceived spaciousness, desk size and room size were manipulated. Results from both studies show that an increase in room size in particular positively influences perceived comfort and intended self-disclosure. However, the affective valence of the conversation was found to influence this relation, indicating that people prefer a smaller interpersonal distance when the conversation is positively framed and room size is large. Furthermore, findings show that spaciousness effects on self-disclosure are qualified by patient characteristics.
SPECTRAL PROPERTIES OF ASSET PRICING MODELS: A GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM PERSPECTIVE

This paper studies asset returns adopting an alternative strategy to assess a model's goodness of fit. Based on spectral analysis, this approach considers a model as an approximation to the process generating the observed data, and characterizes the dimensions for which the model provides a good approximation and those for which it does not. Our aim is to offer new evidence regarding the size and the location of approximation errors of a set of stochastic growth models considered to be decisive steps in the progress of the asset pricing research program. Our specific objective is to reevaluate the results of Jermann's (1998) model extending the calculations to the spectral domain. Spectral results are relatively satisfactory: the benchmark model needs very few contributions of approximation errors to account for the empirical equity premium. Second, the location of the approximation errors, when they are substantial, seems to be essentially concentrated at high frequencies.
BRAZIL'S SOYBEAN PRODUCTION AND IMPACT

Soybean production in Brazil has grown rapidly in recent years. The objective of this publication is to evaluate the potential impact of Brazilian soybean production on North Dakota and other producers. Brazil, followed by Argentina, is the leading producer in South America. All South American soybean production surpassed the United States during 2002-03. In Brazil, production and yields have grown the fastest in Mato Grosso (Center-West) and other expansion states that have Cerrado land. Soybean costs of production for 2003 harvest are considerably lower in Mato Grosso than in North Dakota and Iowa even when freight costs to Rotterdam are considered, giving them a strong competitive position in the world market. Consequently, Mato Grosso soybean production is considerably more profitable. In the future, a 500 percent increase in Brazil cropland acres is possible. It would appear that world demand can accommodate the current pace of growth in Brazil at prices profitable to North Dakota producers.
Kupffer cell production of cytokine‐induced neutrophil chemoattractant following ischemia/reperfusion injury in rats

We investigated the role of hepatic macrophages in the inflammatory response following reperfusion injury by blocking Kupffer cell phagocytosis with gadolinium chloride (GdCl3). Liver ischemia was induced in rats by occluding the portal vein for 30 minutes. A bolus of GdCl3 (7 mg/kg) was injected intravenously 1 and 2 days before surgery. The serum levels of cytokine‐induced neutrophil chemoattractant (CINC) in untreated rats increased following reperfusion, peaked after 6 hours, and then gradually decreased. GdCl3 or heparin alone significantly decreased the serum levels of CINC (P < .05). In addition, pretreatment with GdCl3/heparin further inhibited the rise in the serum levels of CINC following reperfusion compared with those in untreated animals (P < .01). The in vitro production of CINC by Kupffer cells, obtained from animals pretreated with heparin or GdCl3, was significantly lower than that of cells isolated from untreated animals. Pretreatment with GdCl3/heparin further decreased CINC production by Kupffer cells compared with that of cells from animals that were pretreated with heparin or GdCl3 alone. The expression of CINC transcripts in Kupffer cells or in liver tissue peaked 3 hours after reperfusion in untreated animals. Pretreatment with heparin, GdCl3, or both significantly decreased the levels of CINC messenger RNA (mRNA) transcripts. Pretreatment with heparin, GdCl3, or GdCl3/heparin significantly decreased the number of neutrophils that accumulated in the liver 24 hours following reperfusion, compared with those in untreated animals. These results suggest that Kupffer cells release CINC and may play an important role in early neutrophil infiltration into the liver following ischemia/reperfusion.