Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Credit Constraints and US Households

Empirical tests of the permanent income/life cycle hypothesis of consumption often find that consumption is excessively sensitive to current income. Some evidence suggests that this finding is due to the existence of credit constraints on consumers. Using data relating to a period before 1983, Jappelli has tried to identify the characteristics of those who are credit constrained. However, conditions affecting the supply of credit have changed since then. Jappelli's work is replicated for a period before 1989. Using direct questions from the Survey of Consumer Finance, the paper identifies characteristics of households who have been rejected or discouraged from applying for credit, using untransformed household characteristics then using their principal components. The results show that being old and not working for pay, being White or having a high income and high wealth reduces the probability that a household will be rejected or discouraged from applying for credit.
Trust and Reciprocity in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters

Abstract Beyond all the material and economic losses that natural disasters produce, post-disaster environments can alter the social capital of a community by affecting social norms, attitudes, and people’s behaviour. To analyse this issue, we empirically investigate the effect that the aftermath of a disaster can have on trust and reciprocity of people within communities. We do this by comparing outcomes of trust games conducted in earthquake-affected and non-affected rural villages one year after the 2010 Chilean earthquake. Our findings show that while trust levels do not differ across cases, reciprocity is lower in earthquake-affected areas.
Forward Start Options Under Stochastic Volatility and Stochastic Interest Rates

Forward start options are examined in Heston's (Review of Financial Studies 6 (1993) 327–343) stochastic volatility model with the CIR (Econometrica 53 (1985) 385–408) stochastic interest rates. The instantaneous volatility and the instantaneous short rate are assumed to be correlated with the dynamics of stock return. The main result is an analytic formula for the price of a forward start European call option. It is derived using the probabilistic approach combined with the Fourier inversion technique, as developed in Carr and Madan (Journal of Computational Finance 2 (1999) 61–73).
Teaching the case method in an advanced management accounting course in a passive learning environment

This paper describes the experiences and challenges involved in teaching a case-based course in advanced management accounting to students in Malaysia, where the learning environment is more passive. The paper provides a detailed description of the course outline and course content as well as pedagogy and assessment of the Seminar in Cost and Management Accounting course in a large Malaysian public university. The paper, while acknowledging that case studies have numerous benefits, argues that instructors using this pedagogy in a passive learning environment need to adapt the approach to enhance learning. The paper then proceeds with recommendations for instructors, universities and educational authorities to resolve the many problems faced by accounting educators teaching case-based courses in a passive learning environment. Possible avenues for future research are also discussed.
A Measure of Stock Market Integration for Developed and Emerging Markets

A wide array of official capital controls across countries makes it difficult to perform cross-sectional analysis of the effects of market segmentation. This article constructs a measure of deviations from capital market integration that can be consistently applied across countries. It measures the deviations of asset returns from an equilibrium model of returns constructed assuming market integration. Applying the measure to stock returns from twenty-four national markets indicates that market segmentation tends to be much larger for emerging markets than for developed markets, and that the measure tends to decrease over time. Along several dimensions, the proposed measure yields results that are consistent with reasonable priors about the relations between effective integration and explicit capital controls, capital market development, and economic growth. Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.
The Pictorial Representation of Illness and Self Measure (PRISM) instrument reveals a high burden of suffering in patients with chronic urticaria.

BACKGROUND Chronic urticaria severely affects quality of life. To date, no gold standard has been established to measure the burden of suffering, which often correlates poorly with the skin symptoms observed in patients with chronic urticaria. OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of psychological factors on the course of urticaria. METHODS Health-related quality of life was assessed in 95 patients with chronic urticaria using the following instruments: Pictorial Representation of Illness and Self Measure (PRISM), Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI), and Skindex-29. Correlations were calculated. Cognitive flexibility and its correlation with the course of urticaria were assessed. Two case reports are presented to further elucidate features of PRISM. RESULTS PRISM revealed a high burden of suffering that was consistent with considerably impaired quality of life as measured by DLQI and Skindex-29 in the same patients. However, no significant correlation was observed between PRISM and the 2 quality of life questionnaires. From the baseline visit to the follow-up visit, quality of life scores improved significantly (DLQI, P = .001; Skindex-29, P = .001), whereas the PRISM score remained unchanged (P = .085). Disease course was favorable more often in cognitively flexible patients (n=54) (91%) than cognitively inflexible patients (P = .007). CONCLUSIONS PRISM revealed a high burden of suffering in chronic urticaria and provided helpful additional information for the management of these patients. In our cohort, cognitive flexibility was a positive predictive marker for the course of chronic urticaria.
Women Involvement in Livestock and Poultry Raising in Some Selected Areas of Mymensingh District, Bangladesh

This study intends to examine the extent of women involvement in livestock and poultry raising and utilisation pattern of income earned in three selected upazilas of Mymensingh District. Women played an important role in the activities dealing with livestock and poultry such as, care and management, transformation and marketing of certain livestock products. The participation of male and female in raising livestock and poultry was 38 per cent and 42 per cent respectively during the study period. In decision making relating to raising large and small stock, males played dominant role for large animals and those of females for small ones. The males however played dominant role in decision making for family affairs. The average Decision Making Index (DMI) for raising livestock was 1.05 whereas it was 0.92 in the case of household affairs. Maximum of income (15.08%) earned has been spent for purchasing food for the family.
Mutual Funds as an Alternative Banking System

The paper examines some of the drawbacks of the existing banking system, from the standpoint of both the industry and the taxpayer, and the considers the possible role that mutual funds might play in an alternative banking system. In particular, the characteristics of money market funds are described, and they are evaluated as an alternative basis for a transaction account and payments transfer system.
Effects of Gender Reassignment on Quality of Life and Mental Health in People with Gender Dysphoria.

OBJECTIVE Our purpose was to compare the life style, family and social relationships (social adaptation) and the quality of life in people with gender dysphoria with and without history of sex reassignment surgery. METHOD Twenty individuals (SR group) who were earlier followed in Istanbul University Psychiatry Department Psychoneurosis and Psychotherapy Unit with gender dysphoria diagnosis in order to have confirmative reports for the sex reassignment (SR) surgery were interviewed at least one year after the surgery. For comparison, 50 individuals with gender dysphoria (NSR group) who had recently applied to the same unit were interviewed. Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders (SCID-I), Family Assessment Device (FAD), Multidimensional Scale for Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale (WHOQOL-BREF) were administered. RESULTS In the SR group, concerns about gender related discrimination and victimization were lower, but concerns related to the disclosure of transgender identity were higher compared to the NSR group. The SR group scored lower on FAD Affective Involvement, Problem Solving, Affective Responsiveness subscales, but scored higher on MSPSS family subscale and psychological domain of WHOQOL-BREF. CONCLUSION The sex reassignment surgeries (SRS) required for legal change in gender status of individuals with gender dysphoria are helpful in relieving the conflicts. SRS causes improvements in the quality of life, family support, interpersonal relationships and reduces the concerns about the gender related discrimination and victimization.
Dynamics of Stock Prices and Exchange Rates Relationship: Evidence From Five Sub-Saharan African Financial Markets

This article examines the dynamic relationship between stock prices and exchange rates for five Sub-Saharan African financial markets: Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria and South Africa. It uses weekly data, covering the floating exchange rate regime from January 14, 2000, to December 31, 2009, and applies both the Vector Autoregression and the Dynamic Conditional Correlation models. Results from the Vector Autoregression model suggest no evidence of cointegration between stock prices and real exchange rates for all the five countries in the sample. Results from the dynamic conditional correlation show that the correlation coefficients are not constant for the period under study, and the estimates largely show a negative time-varying correlation for all the countries except Ghana that indicates a positive correlation.
Disentangling Representations of Object Shape and Object Category in Human Visual Cortex: The Animate–Inanimate Distinction

Objects belonging to different categories evoke reliably different fMRI activity patterns in human occipitotemporal cortex, with the most prominent distinction being that between animate and inanimate objects. An unresolved question is whether these categorical distinctions reflect category-associated visual properties of objects or whether they genuinely reflect object category. Here, we addressed this question by measuring fMRI responses to animate and inanimate objects that were closely matched for shape and low-level visual features. Univariate contrasts revealed animate- and inanimate-preferring regions in ventral and lateral temporal cortex even for individually matched object pairs (e.g., snake–rope). Using representational similarity analysis, we mapped out brain regions in which the pairwise dissimilarity of multivoxel activity patterns (neural dissimilarity) was predicted by the objects' pairwise visual dissimilarity and/or their categorical dissimilarity. Visual dissimilarity was measured as the time it took participants to find a unique target among identical distractors in three visual search experiments, where we separately quantified overall dissimilarity, outline dissimilarity, and texture dissimilarity. All three visual dissimilarity structures predicted neural dissimilarity in regions of visual cortex. Interestingly, these analyses revealed several clusters in which categorical dissimilarity predicted neural dissimilarity after regressing out visual dissimilarity. Together, these results suggest that the animate–inanimate organization of human visual cortex is not fully explained by differences in the characteristic shape or texture properties of animals and inanimate objects. Instead, representations of visual object properties and object category may coexist in more anterior parts of the visual system.
The MNE investment location decision: Some empirical evidence

Factors governing MNE investment are typically divided into three groups-infrastructural variables, location-specific risk factors and government policy variables. The first objective of this paper is to assess the influence of these factors on MNE location decisions. The second objective is to test whether government participation in location tournaments (whereby local governments offer incentives to MNEs to influence their location decisions) is worthwhile. Arthur (1986,1990) points out that such participation is worthwhile if government policy has irreversible effects that persist after policy is withdrawn. In the estimation of the model, neither risk nor infrastructural factors are found to have a significant effect on the MNE investment location decision. However, there seems to be some evidence indicating that past investment decisions tend to have irreversible effects. Thus, government participation in location tournaments may be worthwhile.
Open Market Stock Repurchase Signalling

This paper presents a signaling model of open market repurchases that simulates the effects of a repurchase on the insiders' utility. If insiders refrain from tendering, then they are exposed to more risk. If insiders are risk averse, then the market can draw several inferences regarding the insiders' expectations of their firm's future earnings: 1) firms that repurchase more have higher earnings; 2) holding the repurchase proportion constant, riskier firms have higher earnings; and 3) holding proportion constant, firms where insiders have a greater ownership stake have higher earnings. I test the model's implications with a sample of over 700 US repurchases and find support for all three.
Stock return volatility and information: an empirical analysis of Pacific Rim, UK and US equity markets

Using weekly share return data from a sample of five Pacific Rim and the UK and US stock markets over the period 1 January 1988-14 October 1994, this paper examines the relationship between conditional return volatility, market performance and news arrival at the market-place. Our results suggest substantial asymmetries in the dynamics of price changes both within and across markets.
Nonblind and Quasiblind Natural Preserve

This paper describes a new image watermarking technique based on the Natural Preserving Transform (NPT). The proposed watermarking scheme uses NPT to encode a gray scale watermarking logo image or text, into a host image at any location. NPT brings a unique feature which is uniformly distributing the logo across the host image in an imperceptible manner. The contribution of this paper lies is presenting two efficient nonblind and quasiblind watermark extraction techniques. In the quasiblind case, the extraction algorithm requires little information about the original image that is already conveyed by the watermarked image. Moreover, the proposed scheme does not introduce visual quality degradation into the host image while still being able to extract a logo with a relatively large amount of data. The performance and robustness of the proposed technique are tested by applying common image-processing operations such as cropping, noise degradation, and compression. A quantitative measure is proposed to objectify performance; under this measure, the proposed technique outperforms most of the recent techniques in most cases. We also implemented the proposed technique on a hardware platform, digital signal processor (DSK 6713). Results are illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed technique, in different noisy environments.
Museum Education

Abstract The study of adult education has much to offer museum education, particularly from the lens of nonformal education—education that takes place outside formal educational settings. Through analysis of two case studies of nonformal education at museums (parks, historical sites, and cultural institutions), findings reveal a much more complex picture of teaching in museums than is usually recognized. They shed light on the unique context and practice of museum education that significantly impacts the museum experience.
The Regret Elements Scale: Distinguishing the affective and cognitive components of regret

Regret is one of the most common emotions, but researchers generally measure it in an ad-hoc, unvalidated fashion. Three studies outline the construction and validation of the Regret Elements Scale (RES), which distinguishes between an affective component of regret, associated with maladaptive affective outcomes, and a cognitive component of regret, associated with functional preparatory outcomes. The present research demonstrates the RES’s relationship with distress (Study 1), appraisals of emotions (Study 2), and existing measures of regret (Study 3). We further demonstrate the RES’s ability to differentiate regret from other negative emotions (Study 2) and related traits (Study 3). The scale provides both a new theoretical perspective on regret, and a tool for researchers interested in measuring post-decisional regret.
Family Businesses Can Out–Compete: As Long as They Are Willing to Question the Chosen Path

This commentary extends the discussion of whether CEO tenure will lead to strategies that have a longer–term orientation by examining the moderating role of task conflict which may either foster a decision–making context in which a long–term orientation represents a superior approach to decision making, or foster one which leads to strategic inertia, depending upon its intensity. The findings indicate that family firms that persist with the same CEO tend to persist with the same strategy when the level of executive team task conflict is high.
THE DYNAMICS OF KEYNESIAN MONETARY GROWTH

The objective of this book is to provide “a systematic theory of endogenous business fluctuations and growth with a hierarchical structure of integrated macro-dynamical models” (p. 372). The starting point is Tobin's neoclassical model of monetary growth, and successive chapters show how Tobin's model can be extended in various “realistic” directions while preserving the relevant adding-up and balance-sheet constraints of a macro model. The work reported here is squarely in an ongoing European theoretical tradition that eschews the stochastic, representative-agent, approach to macroeconomic modeling. Absent stochastic disturbances, the authors provide a qualitative analysis of dynamic behavior for a variety of closed-economy models—a variety that, as the authors themselves point out, is closely related to three prototype models studied in Part I of Sargent's 1977 book, Macroeconomic Theory.
Geriatric Assessments and Association With VACS Index Among HIV-Infected Older Adults in San Francisco

Objectives:To perform geriatric assessments in older HIV-infected adults in San Francisco and examine the association with age and the Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS) index scores. Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted from 2012 to 2014 among HIV-infected patients ≥50 years at 2 San Francisco-based HIV clinics. We evaluated 4 health domains: (1) physical health and function (activities of daily living), instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), falls, gait speed, (2) social support (physical and perceived support, loneliness), (3) mental health (depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder) and cognition, and (4) behavioral and general health (antiretroviral adherence and quality of life). Contingency table and rank-sum analyses examined associations between these domains with age and VACS index scores. Results:Three hundred fifty-nine patients completed assessments (median age 57; 85% male; 57% white; 72% >high school education). On functional assessment, 39% reported dependence with ≥1 IADL, and 40% reported falls in the previous year. Fifty-eight percent experienced loneliness, 60% the lowest levels of perceived social support, 55% depression, and 12% posttraumatic stress disorder. Forty percent had possible mild cognitive impairment. Thirty percent reported poor or fair quality of life. Older age was associated with lower CD4 counts, balance problems, slower gait, lower anxiety, poorer general health, and higher antiretroviral adherence. VACS Index score was associated with dependence in ≥1 IADL and antiretroviral adherence. Conclusion:In a large sample of older HIV-infected adults, multiple significant aging-related conditions were identified. Integrating geriatric assessment tools into HIV/AIDS clinical care may help target interventions to optimize clinical care and quality of life for older HIV-infected individuals.
Bank Capitalization, Deposit Insurance, and Risk Categorization

This article examines the complementary relationship between bank capitalization and deposit insurance as tools that reduce the exposure of risk-averse depositors to a bank's random portfolio returns. In a costly state verification framework where banks possess private information about solvency, we establish that debt contracts are optimal and that banks both capitalize and purchase insurance. Moreover, optimal insurance contracts charge premiums which are conditioned on bank risk as indicated by the level of capitalization. A full-insurance scheme without risk categorization results in an equilibrium where banks totally decapitalize.
Methadone as treatment for iatrogenic narcotic dependency in pediatric intensive care unit patients.

Methadone has been used successfully to treat narcotic addiction for many years. We report three infants who underwent surgery for congenital heart disease and required prolonged postoperative ventilation and intensive care management. All three patients developed symptoms of narcotic addiction when parenteral narcotics were discontinued. Methadone was used successfully to control these symptoms in all three patients
Multiple-Use Management Strategies and Marine Reserves

Using parameters from an actual fishery, a dynamic optimisation model is used to evaluate the economic payoffs from fishing between: (1) no-take reserve and harvesting outside of a reserve; (2) unrestricted spatial access fishery; and (3) positive harvest rate in a restricted access area, but at a rate less than in unrestricted access area. The results indicate that under a wide range of parameters representing fish dispersal, imperfect control of exploitation rate, fish growth rates, and stochastic shocks a restricted spatial access fishery provides higher economic benefits than an unrestricted spatial access fishery as well as a no-take reserve. Optimal harvest and the economic gain of a restricted spatial access fishery increase the higher is the growth rate, the larger is reproductive advantage of protected area, the greater are the magnitude and frequency of shocks that reduce fish stock in unrestricted access area. By contrast, the optimal harvest and economic gain decline the greater is the mobility of the species and the higher is the level fishing activities harm fish growth in restricted access area. A key finding is that spatial management of fish habitat that allows for differential rates of exploitation by area can increase the inter-temporal fisher profits.
Giving older workers a voice: constraints on the employment of older people in the North West of England

This article contributes to the literature on older workers and employment, providing a regional perspective on the relationship between age and work. The study is based on interviews in conjunction with occupational-event calendars with 56 individuals in North West England. The primary aim was to gain in-depth understanding of perceived constraints that older people feel hinder their employment prospects within the context of their daily lives. Significant constraints on employment and re-employment were identified and attributed to health, negative perceptions of self, lack of formal human capital and undervaluation of experience, financial disincentives for employers to employ older workers and prevailing ageist attitudes.