Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is Economic Growth Good for Investors?

When measured over long periods of time, the correlation of countries' inflation‐adjusted per capita GDP growth and stock returns is negative. This result holds for both developed countries (for which the correlation coefficient is –0.39 using data from 1900–2011) and emerging markets (the correlation is –0.41 over the period 1988–2011). And this means that investors would have been better off investing in countries with lower per capita GDP growth than in countries experiencing the highest growth rates. This seems surprising since economic growth is generally assumed to be good for corporate profits. In attempting to explain this finding, the author begins by noting that economic growth can be achieved through increased inputs of capital and labor, which don't necessarily benefit the stockholders of existing companies. Growth also comes from technological advances, which do not necessarily lead to higher profits since competition among firms often results in the benefits accruing to consumers and workers. What's more, it's important to recognize that growth has both an expected and an unexpected component. And one explanation for the negative correlation between growth and stock returns is the tendency for investors to overpay for expected growth. But there is another - and in the author's view, a more important - part of the explanation. Along with the negative correlation between long‐run average stock returns and per capita growth rates, the author also reports a strong positive association between (per share) dividend growth rates and overall stock returns. Such an association is not surprising since unusual growth in dividends is a fairly reliable predictor of increases in future earnings. But another effect at work here is the role of dividends - and, in the U.S., stock repurchases too - in limiting what might be called the corporate “overinvestment problem,” the natural tendency of corporate managers to pursue growth, if necessary at the expense of profitability. One of the main messages of this article is that corporate growth adds value only when companies reinvest their earnings in projects that are expected to earn at least their cost of capital - while at the same time committing to return excess cash and capital to their shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks.
Procurement and Renegotiation

Parties bound by an incomplete contract have an incentive to renegotiate after acquiring new information. The issue of the parties' investment in the relationship before renegotiation is analyzed in a simple two-period procurement model. The firm invests in the first period. It then learns its production cost, and the sponsor learns its value for the project. Williamson's underinvestment presumption is shown to hold under very general assumptions about bargaining and about the ex post asymmetry of information as long as the firm's investment is not observable by the sponsor. The introduction of a cancellation fee may well lead to even less investment contrary to what is sometimes argued. The role of ex ante price fixing as an alternative way to reintroduce some form of commitment and the problem of cost overruns are discussed. Last, it is shown that if investment is observable by the sponsor andthus may become a joint decision variable, the two parties may choose to under- or overinvest.
Interaction of Antibodies to Proteinase 3 (Classic Anti-Neutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibody) with Human Renal Tubular Epithelial Cells: Impact on Signaling Events and Inflammatory Mediator Generation1

Among the anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic Abs (ANCA), those targeting proteinase 3 (PR3) have a high sensitivity and specificity for Wegener’s granulomatosis (WG). A pathogenetic role for these autoantibodies has been proposed due to their capacity of activating neutrophils in vitro. Recently, PR3 was also detected in human renal tubular epithelial cells (TEC). In the present study, the effect of murine monoclonal anti-PR3 Abs (anti-PR3) and purified c-ANCA targeting PR3 from WG serum on isolated human renal tubular cell signaling and inflammatory mediator release was characterized. Priming of TEC with TNF-α resulted in surface expression of PR3, as quantified in immunofluorescence studies and by flow cytometry. Moreover, PR3 was immunoprecipitated on surface-labeled TEC. Primed TEC responded to anti-PR3 with a dose- and time-dependent activation of phosphoinositide hydrolysis, resulting in a remarkable accumulation of inositolphosphates. Control IgG was entirely ineffective, whereas PR3-ANCA reproduced the phosphoinositide response. The signaling response was accompanied by a pronounced release of superoxidanion into the cell supernatant. Moreover, large amounts of PGE2 and, to a lesser extent, of thromboxane B2, the stable metabolite of TxA2, were secreted from anti-PR3-stimulated TEC. In parallel, a rise in intracellular cAMP levels was observed, which was blocked by the cyclooxygenase inhibitor indomethacin. We conclude that anti-PR3 Abs directly target renal TECs, thereby provoking pronounced activation of the phosphoinositide-related signal transduction pathway. Associated metabolic events such as the release of reactive oxygen species and lipid mediators may directly contribute to the development of renal lesions and loss of kidney function in WG.
Before and After TANF: The Economic Well‐Being of Women Leaving Welfare

We use administrative data from Wisconsin to compare employment, earnings, and income outcomes for welfare leavers under early reforms and under the later, more stringent Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. We find substantially higher rates of exit in the later period. Later leavers are somewhat more likely to work, but their earnings are lower. We also make a pre‐post comparison of individual employment and income experiences, examining a leaver’s outcomes during a calendar quarter of welfare receipt with these outcomes a year after leaving welfare. On average, substantial earnings growth is outweighed by declines in benefits, resulting in reduced total measured net income.
We Can Work it Out: The Impact of Technological Change on the Demand for Low-Skill Workers

There is little doubt that technology has had the most profound effect on altering the tasks that we humans do in our jobs. Economists have long speculated on how technical change affects both the absolute demand for labour as a whole and the relative demands for different types of labour. In recent years, the idea of skill-biased technical change has become the consensus view about the current impact of technology on labour demand, namely that technical change leads to an increase in the demand for skilled relative to unskilled labour painting a bleak future for the employment prospects of less-skilled workers. But, drawing on a recent paper by Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) about the impact of technology on the demand for different types of skills, this paper argues that the demand in the least-skilled jobs may be growing. But, it is argued that employment of the less-skilled is increasingly dependent on physical proximity to the more-skilled and may also be vulnerable in the long-run to further technological developments.
A New Vision for Mexico 2042: Achieving Prosperity for All

The basic objective of this article is to identify the priority issues that could influence Mexico’s long-term economic growth path, and to outline a balanced action program necessary to effectively address these issues. It includes reforms and actions that would simultaneously achieve much higher and more inclusive growth, and would thus restore the sense of pride and optimism among Mexicans that has been eroding in recent years. The issues discussed are of such importance that the legacy of the next presidency could be determined by the administration’s willingness and ability to implement the agenda outlined in this article.
Do Newspaper Articles Predict Aggregate Stock Returns?

We analyze whether newspaper content can predict aggregate future stock returns. Our study is based on articles published in the Handelsblatt, a leading German financial newspaper, from July 1989 to March 2011. We summarize newspaper content in a systematic way by constructing word-count indices for a large number of words. Word-count indices are instantly available and potentially valuable financial indicators. Our main finding is that newspaper articles have provided information valuable for predicting future DAX returns in and out of sample. We find evidence that the predictive power of newspaper content has increased over time, particularly since 2000. Our results suggest that a cluster analysis approach increases the predictive power of newspaper articles substantially.
Career Change: Myth or Reality?

There are many compelling social and economic reasons why managers and professionals may decide or be obliged to consider changing careers at mid life. While 30 years ago, only two out of every 100 executives were likely to make a radical career change, during the last decade, this figure has risen to 35 per cent. In reviewing the literature, examines the needs and motives for career change and the individual, organizational and wider societal factors likely to facilitate or impede that change. Reports on a continuing study comparing the experiences and characteristics of successful and unsuccessful mid‐career changers and suggests that personality differences may play an important role in determining outcomes.
An investigation into the effect of competitive context on brand price elasticities

Extensive research has attempted to determine factors that consistently influence consumers’ responses to brand price changes (as measured through brand price elasticity). Scriven and Ehrenberg (2004) identified one such factor as being whether the price change passes a competitor brand’s price. This paper examines the robustness of this finding through choice experiments across six frequently purchased consumer goods categories (beer, pasta sauce, toilet paper, bread, laundry detergent, and shampoo). The results indicate that brand price elasticities are consistently larger (i.e. more negative) for price changes that do pass another brand’s price. This effect is most pronounced (1) for price decreases, (2) in contexts with high-priced competitors, (3) among light/non-users of the brand, and (4) among heavy users of the brand being passed.
The Seasonal Stability of the Factor Structure of Stock Returns

This paper investigates the month-by-month stability of (1) daily returns and correlation coe fficients of stock returns; (2) correlation and covariance matrices; (3) the number of return-generating factors; and (4) the APT pricing relationships. The results show that there is a January effect and a small-firm effect in stock returns. Correlation and covariance matric es are not stable across months and across the sample groups. The num ber of return-generating factors is rather stable with occasional ins tabilities that are related to the average correlation coefficients a mong stocks. The APT pricing relationship does not seem to be support ed by the two-stage process using the maximum likelihood factor analy sis. Copyright 1987 by American Finance Association.
Missing Elements in the Analysis of Agglomeration Economies

The concept of agglomeration economies continues to represent an important aspect of locational analysis and regional economics. However, the term agglomeration economies is frequently used as a jargon or shorthand, leading to the obvious dangers of misspecification and misinterpretation. Treating agglomeration economies as cost savings to the individual firm, it is argued that these may be seen as particular forms of internal economies and also as particular forms of external economies. It is further argued that each group of economies (internal or external) can be examined in terms of the dimensions of scale, scope, and complexity. Such an approach forms the basis for a classification of agglomeration economies. This classification, which contains an important parallelism of form, is then used to consider a neglected aspect of the analysis—namely, the coexistence of different types of agglomeration economy.
Efficiency of cognitive control recruitment in the very early stage of multiple sclerosis: a one-year fMRI follow-up study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) studies have established that patients with multiple sclerosis show stronger activation in the lateral prefrontal cortices (LPFC) than healthy control subjects during effortful cognitive tasks. The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of these activation changes on cognitive performances. In addition to 19 controls, who were tested at a single time-point to define a standard pattern of fMRI activation during the performance of the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT), 13 patients with clinically isolated syndrome underwent a longitudinal fMRI examination while performing the PASAT at the beginning of the study (M0) and one year later (M12). Relative to the M0 scores, PASAT performances improved in eight patients (group A) and either decreased (n = 4) or remained unchanged (n = 1) (group B) in five patients at M12. Random effect analyses (SPM2; Wellcome Institute, London, England) were performed to compare intra-group time-related effects on brain activation (paired t-test between M0 and M12), and inter-group differences were also compared between the two groups of patients (analysis of covariance with PASAT performances as the covariate). Relative to group B, group A showed larger increase in activation between M0 and M12 in the right LPFC. In the whole group of patients, interaction analyses showed that the differences in the PASAT scores between M0 and M12 were correlated with the differences in activation observed in the right LPFC. This longitudinal study shows that in patients with early multiple sclerosis, the increased levels of activation in the right LPFC was associated with improved individual working memory and processing speed performances.
The Theory of Endogenous Market Structures

Most market structures are neither perfectly or monopolistically competitive: they are characterized by a few large firms that are engaged in strategic interactions in their production and investment decisions and whose number is endogenous. The theory of endogenous market structures analyzes markets in partial and general equilibrium where strategies affect entry and entry affects strategies, and exogenous primitive conditions on technology and preferences affect the equilibrium. We discuss applications to industrial organization, international trade, business cycle theory, international finance, growth and implications for welfare and for competition, trade, fiscal and monetary policy.
A Temporal Analysis of Quarterly Earnings Thresholds: Propensities and Valuation Consequences

Applying a Burgstahler and Dichev (1997)/Degeorge et al. (1999) type methodology to quarterly data for the 1985–2002 time period, we show that, since the mid‐1990s, but not before then, managers seek to avoid negative quarterly earnings surprises more than to avoid either quarterly losses or quarterly earnings decreases. Our findings suggest that the quarterly earnings threshold hierarchy proposed by Degeorge et al. (1999) does not apply to recent years, and that managers' claim that avoiding quarterly earnings decreases is the threshold they most seek to achieve (Graham et al. 2004) is inconsistent with their actions. We provide an intuitively appealing economic rationale for why the shift in threshold hierarchy occurred; since the mid‐1990s, but not before then, investors unambiguously rewarded (penalized) firms for reporting quarterly earnings meeting (missing) analysts' estimates more than they did for meeting (missing) the other two thresholds. We provide several explanations for why investors unambi.
Impact of Corruption on Per-Capita Income Growth: A Meta-Analysis

Corruption is an indication of weak institutional quality and could have potentially adverse effects on economic growth. To synthesize the empirical findings, we extracted 406 effect estimates from 32 studies, following a peer-reviewed and pre-published systematic review protocol. The evidence base indicates that the partial correlation coefficients for the effect of corruption on per-capita GDP growth are predominantly negative and tend to be significant beyond study selection bias. However, these results from simple precision-effect and funnel-asymmetry tests (PETs and FATs) also indicate that the association is weak (about 0.05-0.10) and may conceal substantial between-study variations. Meta-regression analysis (MRA) accounts for about 29-40 percent of the variations and indicates that the negative association between corruption and per-capita GDP growth is not robust to inclusion of moderating variables reflecting study characteristics. We also report that direct effect of corruption is weaker than indirect effects, adverse effect of corruption in low-income countries is less adverse than mixed-country samples, and journal articles tend to report stronger negative effects.
Promotion, turnover and preemptive wage offers

Purpose – The reason for writing the paper is to cast doubt on the claim that the informational asymmetries uncovered by Bernhardt and Scoones constitute a market failure. Design/methodology/approach – The main method used is to quote these authors, and then critically comment upon their views. The theoretical scope of the paper is the premise that markets are efficient, effective and ethical. Findings – It was found in the course of the work that Bernhardt and Scoones were in error in their contentions. Research limitations/implications – Suggestions for future research; this paper is but the tip of the iceberg in terms of claims that markets perform badly, and are hence in need of governmental rectification. This entire literature cries out for more critical analysis. Practical implications – The public policy and practical implications emanating from this paper is that laissez-faire capitalism is the best way to organize an economy. Originality/value – What is new in the paper is that the work of Bernhardt and Scoones on informational asymmetries has not before been subject to critical analysis from the perspective of advocates of the free enterprise system. This is valuable, in that, when claims are subject to critique, they become more reliable. It is only through dialogue and debate of this sort that one can get that in closer to the truth.
Evidence that pretranslational and translational defects decrease serum insulin-like growth factor-I concentrations during dietary protein restriction.

Dietary protein restriction causes GH resistance and decreases serum insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) concentrations. To determine whether pretranslational or translational defects are involved in the decline of serum IGF-I concentrations during protein restriction, we measured hepatic IGF-I mRNA abundance together with the serum IGF-I peptide response to exogenous GH after 1 week of protein restriction (5% casein in diet; P5) in hypophysectomized rats. We compared these responses with those of hypophysectomized rats fed a protein-sufficient diet (15% casein in diet; P15) and given exogenous GH. A single injection of rat GH (200 micrograms/100 g BW) produced a comparable IGF-I mRNA increment in both groups (at 6 h, 7.8 +/- 1.1 arbitrary units in P5 vs. 8.2 +/- 1.1 in P15), but failed to raise serum IGF-I normally in the P5 group (at 6 h, 90 +/- 15 ng/ml in P5 vs. 216 +/- 63 in P15; P less than 0.01). The post-GH decline of the 7.5-kilobase (kb) IGF-I mRNA abundance was faster in P5 than in P15 animals. In another experiment in intact rats subjected to protein restriction, injections of pharmacological doses of rat GH (400 micrograms/100 g BW.day) for 1 week restored liver IGF-I mRNA abundance to normal without normalization of serum IGF-I (403 +/- 91 vs. 713 +/- 53 ng/ml; P less than 0.01). Our data suggest that 1) the machinery involved in the transcription of the liver IGF-I gene is intact in protein-restricted rats, because these animals retain the ability to muster normal IGF-I mRNA responses to high doses of exogenous GH; 2) the stability of the 7.5-kb IGF-I mRNA is probably decreased by the protein restriction, as suggested by the faster decline of the 7.5-kb transcript in P5 than in P15 hypophysectomized rats; and 3) the discrepancy between normal liver IGF-I mRNA abundance and low serum and liver IGF-I peptide concentrations suggests that translational stalling of the IGF-I mRNAs or increased serum IGF-I clearance is involved in the low serum IGF-I concentrations during dietary protein restriction.
Problems of functioning of Polish local action groups from the perspective of the social capital concept

Abstract The LEADER approach was introduced in Poland as part of the LEADER+ Pilot Programme (implemented in the programming period 2004-2006) and, at present, it is being implemented as Axis 4 of the Rural Development Programme. Many researchers are interested in its progress. In their analyses, they use various concepts of social capital. It may be concluded on the basis of the studies published so far that local action groups are dominated by the public sector, whereas the economic sector is rather marginalised. Having taken into account the available publications, a team of sociologists from the University of Łodź conducted in 2011-2013 research devoted to the level and structure of social capital of local action groups. The study focused on organisations from 6 voivodeships which implemented scheme 2 of the LEADER+ Pilot Programme. The article presents the analyses of the most important problems of these organisations related to the condition of the components of social capital possessed by their members (partners). The researchers used the material from individual surveys completed by 573 respondents from 34 local action groups. It was proven that the surveyed organisations mainly cope with the problem of a low activity level of their members (partners), petrification of their boards and councils, marginalisation of representatives of the economic sector, high level of professionalization and low level of generalised trust among the persons who belong to these groups.