Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Business cycle synchronisation in the European Union: The effect of the common currency

In this paper, I analyse the synchronisation of business cycles within the European Union (EU), as this is an important ingredient for the implementation of a successful monetary policy. The business cycles of twelve EU countries and two sub-groups of countries are extracted for the period 1989Q1-2010Q2. The cycle of G3, the group of the three largest European economies (Germany, France and Italy) is then used as a benchmark series for the comparisons. The sensitivity of the data to alternative cycle extraction methodologies is explored employing the Hodrick-Prescott and Baxter-King filters using alternative parameter specifications and leads/lags. The strength of cycle synchronisation is measured using linear regressions, crosscorrelation coefficients and the Cycle Synchronisation Index (CSI). To assess whether synchronisation is stronger after the introduction of the common currency, we also test two sub-samples pre- and post-EMU (1999Q1). The empirical results provide evidence that cycle synchronisation within the euro area has become stronger in the common currency period.
BVAR as a category management tool: An illustration and comparison with alternative techniques

Category management—a relatively new function in marketing—involves large-scale, real-time forecasting of multiple data series in complex environments. In this paper, we illustrate how Bayesian Vector Auto regression (BVAR) fulfils the category manager's decision-support requirements by providing accurate forecasts of a category's state variables (prices, volumes and advertising levels), incorporating management interventions (merchandising events such as end-aisle displays), and revealing competitive dynamics through impulse response analyses. Using 124 weeks of point-of-sale scanner data comprising 31 variables for four brands, we compare the out-of-sample forecasts from BVAR to forecasts from exponential smoothing, univariate and multivariate Box-Jenkins transfer function analyses, and multivariate ARMA models. Theil U's indicate that BVAR forecasts are superior to those from alternate approaches. In large-scale forecasting applications, BVAR's ease of identification and parsimonious use of degrees of freedom are particularly valuable.
Natural Hazards And Risk Aversion: Experimental Evidence From Latin America

We use experimental and survey data from two natural-hazard prone countries in Latin America to test the hypothesis that natural hazards affect risk aversion. We use two methods to measure risk aversion: simple questions on the willingness to pay for a hypothetical lottery and more complicated experiments involving real pay-offs. We find that whereas the experiments provide reasonable estimates of risk aversion, the hypothetical questions result in unrealistic distributions of preferences. The experimental results strongly support the hypothesis that experiencing natural shocks makes people more risk averse, not only in the short run but also in the medium and long run.
Geometric Relationship between Word and Context Representations

Pre-trained distributed word representations have been proven to be useful in various natural language processing (NLP) tasks. However, the geometric basis of word representations and their relations to the representations of word's contexts has not been carefully studied yet. In this study, we first investigate such geometric relationship under a general framework, which is abstracted from some typical word representation learning approaches, and find out that only the directions of word representations are well associated to their context vector representations while the magnitudes are not. In order to make better use of the information contained in the magnitudes of word representations, we propose a hierarchical Gaussian model combined with maximum a posteriori estimation to learn word representations, and extend it to represent polysemous words. Our word representations have been evaluated on multiple NLP tasks, and the experimental results show that the proposed model achieved promising results, comparing to several popular word representations.
Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society

This study uses a controlled experiment to explore whether there are gender differences in selecting into competitive environments across two distinct societies: the Maasai in Tanzania and the Khasi in India. One unique aspect of these societies is that the Maasai represent a textbook example of a patriarchal society whereas the Khasi are matrilineal. Similar to the extant evidence drawn from experiments executed in Western cultures, Maasai men opt to compete at roughly twice the rate as Maasai women. Interestingly, this result is reversed amongst the Khasi, where women choose the competitive environment more often than Khasi men, and even choose to compete weakly more often than Maasai men. We view these results as potentially providing insights into the underpinnings of the factors hypothesized to be determinants of the observed gender differences in selecting into competitive environments.
Policy window entrepreneurship: the backstage of the world’s largest REDD+ initiative

Although much has been written about policy windows and policy entrepreneurship, less attention has been given to how policy windows are actually constructed and utilised, how public interest organisations can play decisive roles in such processes, and their motivation for doing so. Drawing on the emergence of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative, this case study demonstrates how two environmental nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) utilised a policy window by joining forces and linking their core issues, redefining one major environmental issue – rainforests – as a solution to another – climate change. The decisive event in the NGOs’ favour was a political battle over a cross-party parliamentary climate settlement – an initiative strongly advocated by one of the NGOs a few months earlier, thus making this actor both a producer and user of the policy window. The result was the establishment in record time of the world’s largest donor-side REDD+ initiative.
Deprivation and Subjective Well‐Being: Evidence from Panel Data

type="main"> This paper uses data from the 2000–08 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel dataset (SOEP) to assess the impact of deprivation in various life domains upon individual well-being. Unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for by means of a random effects model extended to include a Mundlak term and explicit controls for the respondents' personality traits. The paper shows that people care about social comparison information in a number of domains, not just income. Using an equivalent income approach, the estimates suggest that a one standard deviation deterioration of the individual position in the income distribution is as important as a 33.5 percent decrease in own income. This monetary equivalent amounts to an income variation of between 25 and 43 percent when it comes to other deprivation domains, including durables, accommodation, health, and social relations. These results recommend that in the fight against deprivation more emphasis should be directed to these non-monetary relevant dimensions.
A high incidence of melanoma found in patients with multiple dysplastic naevi by photographic surveillance

(1) To assess the incidence of melanoma in a cohort of patients with dysplastic melanocytic naevi (DMN) and the relationships between Incident melanomas and preexisting naevi and between melanoma risk and numbers of DMN. (2) To examine the role of the patient versus the physician In detecting melanoma and the relative value of surveillance versus prophylactic excision.
The Human Side of Public Organizations

Researchers in recent years have focused systematically on whether public management matters in the performance of public organizations. Internal management of organizations' human capital is one such managerial function, and a growing literature argues for its importance in delivering results. A management-and-performance model available in the literature suggests an approach to test empirically for this relationship. Here evidence from hundreds of public organizations over a 4-year period is assembled toward that end. Even when a number of other aspects of management are included, the management of human capital is related positively to virtually all performance indicators. The findings validate arguments in the recent literature of the field and emphasize the importance for performance of public organizations' investing in their people.
Learning to Predict Readability Using Eye-Movement Data From Natives and Learners

Readability assessment can improve the quality of assisting technologies aimed at language learners. Eye-tracking data has been used for both inducing and evaluating general-purpose NLP/AI models, and below we show that unsurprisingly, gaze data from language learners can also improve multi-task readability assessment models. This is unsurprising, since the gaze data records the reading difficulties ofthe learners. Unfortunately, eye-tracking data from language learners is often much harder to obtain than eye-tracking data from native speakers. We therefore compare the performance of deep learning readability models that use nativespeaker eye movement data to models using data from language learners. Somewhat surprisingly, we observe no significant drop in performance when replacing learners with natives, making approaches that rely on native speaker gaze information, more scalable. In other words, our finding is that language learner difficulties can be efficiently estimated from native speakers, which suggests that, more generally, readily available gaze data can be used to improve educational NLP/AI models targeted towards language learners.
Monetary Policy Implications of State-Dependent Prices and Wages

We study the effects of monetary shocks in a model of state-dependent price and wage adjustment based on “control costs”. Suppliers of retail goods and of labor are both monopolistic competitors that face idiosyncratic productivity shocks and nominal rigidities. Stickiness arises because precise decisions are costly, so agents choose to tolerate small errors in the timing of adjustments. Our simulations are calibrated to microdata on the size and frequency of price and wage changes. Money shocks have less persistent real effects in our state-dependent model than they would a time-dependent framework, but nonetheless we obtain sufficient monetary nonneutrality for consistency with macroeconomic evidence. Nonneutrality is primarily driven by wage rigidity, rather than price rigidity. State-dependent nominal rigidity implies a flatter Phillips curve as trend inflation declines, because nominal adjustments become less frequent, making short-run inflation less reactive to shocks.
Animal Spirits and Extreme Confidence: No Guts, No Glory?

textabstractThis study investigates to what extent extreme confidence of either management or security analysts may impact financial or operating performance. We construct a multidimensional degree of company confidence measure from a wide range of corporate decisions. We empirically test this measure for large US companies from 1980 -2008 and find significantly different company and performance characteristics between confidence extremes. Diffident firms tend to be smaller, more distressed, less conservatively financed and, except for the new millennium, yield a lower return on invested capital with higher variability. When adjusting stock returns for risk, the performance differences prior to moving to extreme confidence become even more pronounced. Extreme confidence could also distort earnings forecasts as analyst may overly rely on an anchor or make insufficient adjustments. Innate bias, anchoring to prior year earnings, risk attitude and responses to recent news are conditional on the level of analysis. Innate optimism prevails on the industry and analyst level. We find no support for anchoring by analysts with a long track record or across industries, which suggests a bottom-up approach. Long-term risk is considered as upside and short-term risk as downside potential. There is also a tendency to underreact to news, the extent of which seems conditional on the direction.
Human Capital Location Choice: Accounting for Amenities and Thick Labor Markets

A growing literature has found a positive association between human capital and long‐run employment growth across cities. These studies have increased interest in understanding the location choices of university degree holders, a group often used as a proxy measure of human capital. Based on data from the 2001 Canadian Census of Population, this paper investigates determinants of the location choices of degree and nondegree holders. With a multinomial logit model, it tests a series of hypotheses about the differential effects of thick labor markets and amenities on the location choice of these groups across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in Canada.
The measurement of job performance and its impact on effectiveness

This study extends previous research by investigating the issue of which measure of job performance plays a substantial role in influencing any effectiveness outcome. Little research has examined the relationship between job performance and effectiveness. Four items for task performance, five items for contextual performance and three items for effectiveness (productivity and quality and innovation) were used for assessing employee performance. A total of 600 employees in the company participated in this study. The result shows that two items 'attention to important details and creativity to solve a work problem', were the most effectual items to contribute to productivity, quality, and innovation, respectively. Education level and job experience had more effect on effectiveness. Job performance measures used in the company have different effects on each of the effectiveness indicators. The result of this study shows that training programmes in purpose of enhancing employee effectiveness in the hard workers jobs at the industry should focus on attention to important details and creativity to solve a work problem.
Power, participation and political renewal: Theoretical and empirical perspectives on public participation under New Labour

This article discusses the contribution of a study of public participation in two English cities to the theorization of the relationship between policy context and local action, the conceptualization of "publics" who get involved, and the micropolitics of deliberation within participative forums. It addresses these issues within the particular context provided by the discourses of the New Labour government in the United Kingdom but relates this to broader theorization of the way institutional rules and norms shape access, agenda setting, and modes of deliberation, of the mobilization of collective action within social movements, and of the relationship between styles of exchange and the legitimation of contributions to a process of citizen/official dialogue.
A Tunable Dynamic Range Digital Single Photon Avalanche Diode

We characterize a digital, tunable dynamic range, single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) pixel fabricated in a standard 0.5 μm, 2-poly, 3-metal CMOS process. The principal sensor used in the pixel is based on the perimeter gated SPAD. The perimeter gate enhances device performance through prevention of premature breakdown, with the added advantage of a tunable dynamic range. Experimental measurements of the signal-to-noise ratio over the visible spectral range show the perimeter gate improves the dynamic range at a small expense of the sensitivity.
Essays on Health and Retirement in Canada

My dissertation is composed of an introductory chapter followed by three independent chap1 ers focusing on two themes: health and retirement. The last chapter concludes. After the introductory chapter, the second chapter investigates whether selfreported general ~tress is a mediator in the relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and health. I use a six-year long panel of the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics and employ dynamic econometric modelling techniques to study men and women who are major income earners in their families. I find little evidence that general stress is a pathway from SES to health. While the results suggest a strong negative associati :m between stress and health for both men and women, they provide little support to the hypothesis of a significant effect of income on stress, consistent with the direction of th! SES-health gradient. The third chapter studies whether self-assessed health status (SAH) contains information about future mortality and morbidity, beyond the information that is contained in standard "observable" characteristics of individuals (including pre-existing diagnosed medical conditions). Using a ten-year span of the Canadian National Population Health Survey, we find evidence that SAH does contain private information for future mortali:y and morbidity. Moreover, the extra information in SAH is greater at older ages. Our r! sults suggest that a shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pension arrangements may carry with it the cost of exacerbated adverse selection in the
The Impact of China's Economic Reforms on Agricultural Productivity Growth

This paper presents a method for assessing the relative importance of price increases and strengthened individual incentives due to the introduction of the responsibility system for the post-1978 increase in China's agricultural productivity. Data on post-1978 Chinese agricultural performance suggest that a little over three-quarters of the measured productivity increase is due to payment system changes and the remainder to price increases. We also use our method to calculate incentive indices, giving an estimate of the fraction of their marginal product that peasants received under the pre-1978 regime.
The combination of erythropoietin and granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor increases the rate of haemopoietic recovery with clinical benefit after peripheral blood progenitor cell transplantation

In order to investigate the effects of erythropoietin (EPO) plus granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor (G‐CSF) administration after peripheral blood progenitor cell transplantation (PBPCT) we performed a phase I/II study in patients with high‐risk cancer. 15 consecutive patients were treated with recombinant human G‐CSF (rhG‐CSF) at the dose of 5 μg/kg subcutaneously (s.c.) every 24 h until day +12 and with recombinant human EPO (rhEPO) at the dose of 150 IU/kg s.c. every 48 h until day +11 following PBPCT. Their haemopoietic recovery was compared to that obtained in eight historic control patients who did not receive any cytokines after PBPCT. No side‐effects were observed during EPO plus G‐CSF treatment and the treatment was not discontinued in any of the patients before completion of the treatment plan. The administration of EPO plus G‐CSF after PBPCT produced a significant increase in the rate of white blood cell (WBC) (P = 0.0005), polymorphonuclear leucocyte (PMN) (P = 0.0005) and platelet (PLT) (P = 0.0105) recovery compared to the control group. The acceleration in haemopoietic recovery observed in the EPO plus G‐CSF‐treated patients produced a significant reduction of the days with WBC < 1×109/l (P = 0.0009), PMN < 0.2×109/l (P = 0.0030) and PMN < 0.5×109/l (P = 0.0006). EPO plus G‐CSF‐treated patients required a significantly lower number of single donor PLT transfusions (P = 0.0142) and did not experience neutropenic fever, but historic control patients experienced fever > 38°C for a median period of 4 d (0–12) with a median period of parenteral antibiotic administration of 7.5 d (0–17). The length of the hospital stay was significantly shorter in the study group than in the historic control group (P = 0.0264). In conclusion, we can confirm that EPO plus G‐CSF treatment is feasible and potentiates the haemopoietic recovery after PBPCT, thus simplifying the clinical management of cancer patients who undergo high‐dose chemotherapy.
Market Orientation, Innovativeness, Product Innovation, and Performance in Small Firms

Most research on market orientation, innovation and performance is related to big enterprises and small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). In this study a model is developed to investigate the combined effect of market orientation and innovativeness on product innovation and company performance, for small firms. A specific feature of our research is that we use an objective measure for product innovation in contrast to the self‐reported measures commonly used in research on innovation. To test our model data from 152 rose growers were used. This study's results show that the owner's innovativeness permeates all variables in the model and has a positive influence on market orientation, innovation, and performance. An interesting research result is also that customer market intelligence influences product innovation positively or negatively, depending on whether the innovativeness of the owner in the new product domain is weak or strong.
The Impact of Banking and Fiscal Policies on State-Level Economic Growth

This paper investigates the hypothesis that economic growth is affected by banking structure and fiscal policies. We use data from the 48 contiguous states for the period 1950–1980 aggregated into six five-year time periods, primarily to test the effect of the following factors on growth of state per capita income: (i) restrictions over branch banking, (ii) restrictions over multibank holding companies, (iii) the depth of financial assets in a state, (iv) the financial-intermediary mix, (v) the size of state government, and (vi) the methods of financing state government. We find no support for the hypotheses that branch banking or multibank holding company restrictions affect growth. However, financial depth and the mix of financial intermediaries are strongly correlated with economic growth. Finally, the state fiscal policy variables had no significant effect on income growth.