Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Development of Labour’s Share in the Swedish Transport and Communication Sector 1920-2000

Most OECD-countries, including Sweden, have during the last decades experienced a declining trend in the labour’s share – the ratio of incomes from employment in relation to the economy’s total income (GDP). This thesis analyses the declining labour’s share of the Swedish transport and communication sector 1920-2000. The transport and communication sector has gone through changes of importance to the total economy due to the introduction of railways, automobiles and telecommunications. The sector has also transformed from being a sector of large public-control into becoming a more competitive and liberalized market. The causal effect of openness of trade, competition, GDP growth and inflation to labour’s share is analysed through regressions of OLS and maximum likelihood. The result indicates that GDP growth and inflation have a negative impact on labour’s share, while no econometric relation can be stated between openness of trade, competitiveness and the declining labour’s share.
A novel voltage balance circuit for three-level diode-clamped inverter with small inductor

Voltage Balance of the series-connected dc-link capacitors is the key problem of three-level diode-clamped converters. In this paper, an auxiliary voltage balance circuit (VBC) is presented to maintain the voltage balance of dc-link capacitors. The voltage balance circuit consists of a clamping capacitor and a current-limiting inductor. With the clamping capacitor, the voltage stresses of the auxiliary circuit devices are restricted to one half of the bus voltage, and the current ripple of the inductor is also effectively suppressed. The operating principles of the auxiliary circuit are studied, and a time-domain model is derived. Accordingly, a control algorithm of the auxiliary circuit is proposed based on finite-control-set model predictive control. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the auxiliary voltage balance circuit. The auxiliary circuit is applicable for three-level DCI-based energy conversion systems, static reactive power compensations and medium-voltage highpower motor drives.
Mycotoxins in animal and human patients

The majority of human food and animal feed production occurs in a highly managed agroecosystem. Management decisions include variety grown, tillage and irrigation methods and practices, fertilization, pest and disease control, harvesting methods, and storage and transportation practices. This system is generally managed for optimum returns to labor and capital investments. The spores of toxigenic fungi have ubiquitous distribution and toxigenic fungi exploit food sources when conditions of moisture and temperature are above minimums for growth. The safety margins in the agroecosystem are close and are influenced by extrinsic factors such as climatic events. Control of fungal growth is important in management of raw feedstuffs, foodstuffs, condiments-spices, botanicals, and other consumable substances as they are grown, harvested, stored, and transported. The risk factors for mycotoxin production are weather conditions during crop growth and when the crop is mature, damage to seeds before, during, and after harvest, how commodities are physically handled, the presence of weed seeds and other foreign material in grain, and how commodity moisture and temperature are managed during storage and transportation. Diversion of commodities and by-products from human consumption to animal feedstuffs can increase the risk of mycotoxicoses in animals. The toxicology of selected toxigenic fungi and the mycotoxins they produce are reviewed.
Toward cardiovascular interventions guided by magnetic particle imaging: First instrument characterization

Magnetic particle imaging has emerged as a new technique for the visualization and quantification of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles. It seems to be a very promising application for cardiovascular interventional radiology. A prerequisite for interventions is the artifact‐free visualization of the required instruments and implants. Various commercially available catheters, guide wires, and a catheter experimentally coated with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles were tested regarding their signal characteristics using magnetic particle spectroscopy to evaluate their performance in magnetic particle imaging. The results indicate that signal‐generating and non‐signal‐generating instruments can be distinguished. Furthermore, coating or loading non‐signal‐generating instruments with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles seems to be a promising approach, but optimized nanoparticles need yet to be developed. Magn Reson Med, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Do European real estate stocks hedge inflation? Evidence from developed and emerging markets

This study examines the inflation-hedging properties of European real estate stocks in developed and emerging markets over 1990 to 2011. The Fama and Schwert model and a dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) regression were employed to study the inflation-hedging characteristics of European real estate stocks over the short run and long run. The empirical results show little inflationhedging ability of European real estate stocks over the short run. Over the long run, developed real estate stocks provide a positive inflation hedge against expected inflation, while no similar evidence is found in the emerging markets. The findings suggest that the inflation-hedging properties of real estate stocks are related to the institutional involvement in the real estate stock markets. The finding could have profound implications to institutional investors.
More than Meets the Eye: Convertible Bond Issuers' Concurrent Transactions

We document that, in recent years, over 60% of convertible bond issuers conduct concurrent transactions including share repurchases, call option purchases, warrant sales, seasoned equity offerings, and stock lending program initiations. We investigate the determinants of issuers' choice of concurrent transactions and find that a proxy for capital supply (flows to convertible bond arbitrage hedge funds) is a significant determinant. Option purchases are more likely when capital supply is low and the convertible is dilutive to earnings. SEOs are more likely when firms have valuable growth opportunities and capital supply is low. Convertible issuers establish lending programs when arbitrageurs likely encounter difficulty shorting their stock, suggesting that these firms facilitate short selling in their own stock. These results suggest that, in the convertible bond market, the influence of capital supply extends beyond the issuance decision to the use of concurrent transactions and that these transactions offer important flexibility to issuers. We find that average equity market announcement effects differ when issuers conduct concurrent transactions. Consistent with models of adverse selection, concurrent transactions that reduce the dilutive impact on earnings, thereby making the design more debt-like, are associated with less negative announcement effects. Conversely, concurrent transactions that increase the dilutive impact on earnings, thereby making the design more equity-like, are associated with more negative announcement effects.
Why the Music Industry May Gain from Free Downloading - the Role of Sampling

Downloading digital products for free may harm creators and intermediaries because consumers may no longer buy the version for sale. However, as we show in this paper, this negative effect may be overcompensated by a positive effect due to sampling: consumers are willing to pay more because the match between product characteristics and buyers' tastes are improved. This indeed holds under sufficient taste heterogeneity and product diversity.
An Empirical Model of Labor Supply in a Life-Cycle Setting

This paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labor supply. Using theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behavior, a two-step empirical analysis yields estimates of intertemporal and uncompensated substitution effects which provide the information needed to predict the response of hours of work to life-cycle wage growth and shifts in the lifetime wage path.
Back to the future: The broadening accounting trajectory

Contemporary accounting practice has shown signs of a broadening scope of activities being undertaken both from within and as a service provided to organizations. Based upon a historiographic linking of past and present, this paper examines the past 100 years of broadening professional practice in the discipline as a basis for offering a presentist examination and critique of contemporary accounting education and research opportunities. The scope of what constitutes accounting work is found to have been expanding for over 100 years, becoming increasingly at variance with accountants’ traditional beancounter image. Recent professional accounting association investigations reveal an array of contemporary environmental factors that have accelerated this broadening of the profession’s scope into financial planning, assurance services, strategic, risk, knowledge and change management, and management advisory services. This has called for an expanded accounting skills base which has gained momentum towards the end of the 20th century. The elements of some of these developing areas of professional work and their implications for contemporary and future education and research are examined.
Predictors of warfarin-induced bleeding in a South Indian cardiology unit

Objectives: Warfarin-induced bleedingresults in increased morbidity and mortality and higher cost of healthcare. The objective of the study is to identify the predictors of warfarin-induced bleeding in the Cardiology Unit of a teaching hospital. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out for a period of six months in a tertiary care teaching hospital. A total of 235 patients were enrolled in the study, to identify the predictors of warfarin-induced bleeding. Only prescriptions with warfarin were selected for the study. The chi square test was used to find the association between demography and risk factors. Results: Out of 235 patients, 61 (25.95%) had developed warfarin-induced bleeding and the majority were in the age group of 41 – 61 years (60.65%), and it was also found to be higher in women (62.29%). The length of stay was > 14 days (65.57%) and the number of drugs prescribed was in the range of 6 – 12 (52.45%). Aspirin (40.98%), Heparin (36.06%), Clopidogrel (22.95%), and Streptokinase (14.75%) were the most common drugs involved, and other comorbid conditions like diabetes (37.70%), hypertension (32.78%), smoking (57.37%), and alcohol (32.78%) were found to be major predictors of warfarin-induced bleeding in this study. The severity of warfarin-induced most of the bleeding reactions were moderate (44.26%) and the most common site of bleeding was gastrointestinal system (34.42%). Conclusion: Predictors of warfarin-induced bleeding were found to be female gender, length of stay, number of medications, drugs like aspirin, heparin, and clopidogrel, and other comorbidities like smoking, alcohol, and hypertension.
Unemployment, Growth and Speed of Transition in China

We investigate the relationship between unemployment and growth in China. We find considerable differences in the nature of this relationship across Chinese regions. We argue that this may reflect the different progress in transition across regions, in line with the Aghion-Blanchard model of optimal speed of transition. When we test this model, we indeed find a hump-shaped relationship between unemployment and our proxy for the speed of reform. The current unemployment in China, furthermore, appears to be close to the level associated with optimal speed of transition.
Role of organizational justice in determining work outcomes of national and expatriate academic staff in Malaysia

Purpose – The study aims to analyze the differences between national and expatriate academic staff perception of organizational justice in Malaysian institutions of higher learning. It also explores the role of organizational justice in shaping teaching faculties' attitude (job satisfaction and commitment) and behavioral intention (turnover intention). Design/methodology/approach – The sample consisted of teaching staff belonging to several faculties drawn from four public universities in Malaysia. Sample was divided into two groups – Malaysian nationals with tenure appointments and expatriates with contractual appointments. Data were collected using standardized tools to measure the study variables.Findings – Except for job satisfaction, where Malaysians recorded significantly higher endorsement compared to expatriates, no significant difference was found between the two groups on perception of distributive, procedural, and interactional aspects of organizational justice, as well as organizational commitm.
Boards of Directors in Tourism Organizations: Roles and Innovative Climates†

Abstract As the ultimate decision makers in organizations, boards of directors have a strong influence on organizational success. This study contributes to better understanding of the mechanisms of boards within the tourism sector, more precisely, destination-based tourism organizations wherein several stakeholders collaborate. First, we examine how tourism directors perceive their roles including strategic, control and service roles. Second, as tourism organizations are in a constant need for development and innovation, we study the role of innovative climates as part of the board dynamics. Third, we compare limited liability companies with other tourism organizations to explore the influence of legal structure on the perception of board roles and innovation. The directors perceived the control and strategic tasks as the most relevant for the boards of tourism organizations. Furthermore, they reported generally high scores on climate for innovation with somewhat stronger emphasis on the performance-related climate factors “objectives – mutual and achievable goals” and “task orientation – focus on excellence” than the factors more closely related to social relationships (“support” and “participative safety”). Limited liability companies scored significantly higher on the control and strategic roles as well as the combined climate for innovation variable indicating a stronger investment in the organizations due to the legal responsibility linked to the role of director in such organizations.
Understanding Voluntary Return

Voluntary return of refugees and asylum seekers is seen as an increasingly important element of the UK policy agenda on immigration and asylum, consistent with proposals contained within the 2002 White Paper Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration with Diversity in Modern Britain. Since 1999, the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) of the UK Home Office has been funding programmes to assist failed asylum applicants, those awaiting a decision and those with time-limited exceptional leave to enter or remain, who wish to return to their country of origin. In the context of increasing UK government interest in this area, this report describes the findings of a study commissioned by the Home Office to explore the factors influencing the decision to return, including the role played by incentives, as well as to enhance understanding of the concept of the ‘sustainability’ of return. The research was conducted by a team based at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research, and involved fieldwork both in the UK and in the Balkans. This chapter sets out the aims and objectives of the report, its background and relevance, and its structure.
Democracy Assistance in the Middle East and North Africa: A Comparison of US and EU Policies

This article compares US and EU efforts at democracy assistance in the Middle East and North Africa. Although the substantive content of what the US and the EU view as the type of democratic institutions to promote does not differ greatly, some puzzling variations are found in the area of funding party development and decentralization, a balanced top-down/bottom-up versus a top-down approach and slightly different thematic foci. The actors use similar implementation methods, but have differing approaches to partnership.
Formic acid, a novel metabolite of chronic ethanol abuse, causes neurotoxicity, which is prevented by folic acid.

BACKGROUND Methanol is endogenously formed in the brain and is present as a congener in most alcoholic beverages. Because ethanol is preferentially metabolized over methanol (MeOH) by alcohol dehydrogenase, it is not surprising that MeOH accumulates in the alcohol-abusing population. This suggests that the alcohol-drinking population will have higher levels of MeOH's neurotoxic metabolite, formic acid (FA). FA elimination is mediated by folic acid. Neurotoxicity is a common result of chronic alcoholism. This study shows for the first time that FA, found in chronic alcoholics, is neurotoxic and this toxicity can be mitigated by folic acid administration. OBJECTIVE To determine if FA levels are higher in the alcohol-drinking population and to assess its neurotoxicity in organotypic hippocampal rat brain slice cultures. METHODS Serum and CSF FA was measured in samples from both ethanol abusing and control patients, who presented to a hospital emergency department. FA's neurotoxicity and its reversibility by folic acid were assessed using organotypic rat brain hippocampal slice cultures using clinically relevant concentrations. RESULTS Serum FA levels in the alcoholics (mean +/- SE: 0.416 +/- 0.093 mmol/l, n = 23) were significantly higher than in controls (mean +/- SE: 0.154 +/- 0.009 mmol/l, n = 82) (p < 0.0002). FA was not detected in the controls' CSF (n = 20), whereas it was >0.15 mmol/l in CSF of 3 of the 4 alcoholic cases. Low doses of FA from 1 to 5 mmol/l added for 24, 48 or 72 hours to the rat brain slice cultures caused neuronal death as measured by propidium iodide staining. When folic acid (1 micromol/l) was added with the FA, neuronal death was prevented. CONCLUSIONS Formic acid may be a significant factor in the neurotoxicity of ethanol abuse. This neurotoxicity can be mitigated by folic acid administration at a clinically relevant dose.
Understanding the Sims-Cogley-Nason Approach in A Finite Sample

Kehoe2006 advocates that in evaluating an economic model, the Sims-Cogley-Nason (SCN) approach should be adopted in which empirical impulse responses are compared to those obtained from the identical structural VAR run on model generated data of the same length as actual observations. This paper examines, using Monte Carlo simulation, finite sample properties of the SCN approach. Throughout the paper, we use the simple textbook New-Keynesian model as data generating process, and focus on effects of the identified monetary shocks, derived by structural VAR with short-run identification assumption. We find that when the model violates the identifying restriction and monetary shocks are misidentified, the SCN approach has poor small sample performance. We show that: 1) The estimated impulse responses are biased and uninformative; 2) The parameter estimates derived by matching impulse responses are biased and with large mean square error. Ironically, the very reason calling for the SCN approach - mis-identification, is also the cause for its poor finite sample performance.
Growing sustainable consumption communities: The case of local organic food networks

Purpose – Sustainable consumption is increasingly on the policy menu, and local organic food has been widely advocated as a practical tool to make changes to conventional production and consumption systems. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of community‐based initiatives at achieving sustainable consumption objectives.Design/methodology/approach – A new multi‐criteria evaluation tool is developed, from New Economics theory, to assess the effectiveness of initiatives at achieving sustainable consumption. The key indicators are: localisation, reducing ecological footprints, community building, collective action and creating new socio‐economic institutions. This evaluation framework is applied to an organic producer cooperative in Norfolk, UK, using a mixed‐method approach comprising site visits, semi‐structured interviews and a customer survey.Findings – The initiative was effective at achieving sustainable consumption in each of the dimensions of the appraisal tool, but nevertheles.
Using Hot-Spot Analysis to Study the Clustering of Section 8 Housing Voucher Families

This paper seeks to improve local policy makers' ability to monitor changes in the spatial distribution of Section 8 housing voucher recipients by combining hot-spot analysis with dot mapping and census tract analysis. All three methods were used to analyze the distribution of more than 6,000 Section 8 participants in Hamilton County, Ohio (Cincinnati). The hot-spot analysis identified three groupings of high density Section 8 housing voucher clusters (1) clusters: that were located in the center or at the edge of Cincinnati's black ghetto to the east of the industrial Mill Creek Valley, (2) clusters to the west of the Mill Creek Valley in areas that in recent years have begun to experience racial transition and (3) clusters related to suburban development funded by the federal government's Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. While the latter are located in middle-income census tracts, voucher recipients comprise a majority of the tenants. We recommend that planners and housing officials use hot-spot analysis in the future in conjunction with the more widely known dot mapping and census tract analysis techniques.
Entrepreneurs' and Students' Knowledge Structures: A Journey into Their Entrepreneurial Mindset

This paper investigates how entrepreneurs and students associate a set of 18 concepts in order to gather their Entrepreneurial mindset. Which is the connection that entrepreneurs and students believe to be among concepts such as intuition, innovation and entrepreneur? How they think innovation is associated to risk in an entrepreneurial domain? To what extent passion is connected to the idea of entrepreneur? These questions represent some extract of concepts we asked to connect. An ad-hoc software implementing the Pathfinder algorithm produced a visual representation (simplified networks) of the mindset of each group, composed by 167 students and 29 entrepreneurs. Three questions have driven our study: (1) which are the characteristics of the entrepreneurs and students mindset? (2) Are there any differences between the two representations? (3) Are there any differences among students depending on their educational background? A qualitative inspection, supported by network centrality measures, and a quantitative analysis, based upon the number of links in common among groups' networks (closeness index) and the rank-order correlation among each couple of concepts, have shown that entrepreneurs' and students' representations differ and that these differences increase when comparing entrepreneurs with students in human and natural sciences, rather than with students in social and engineering sciences. Through additional analysis we observed that the highest differences concern concepts such as Failure, Success, Social and Regional context and, in some cases, Innovation and Risk. Suggestions for future research are presented.