Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trading strategies of individual investors in times of financial crisis: An example from the Central European emerging stock market of Poland

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate equity appraisal techniques employed by non-professional investors from the Central European emerging stock market (CEESM) of Poland. The paper examines investment decision-making processes in the context of the current financial crisis in a pioneering attempt to shed some light on crisis-induced changes in investment strategies. In addition, the study tests the usefulness and predictive abilities of analytical tools employed by non-professional investors when faced with unstable stock-market conditions. Design/methodology/approach - Questionnaires and experiments conducted with a large group of Polish investors – trading equities in their home market – in order to gain information on the most commonly used investment strategies. Their views are contrasted with similarly obtained opinions expressed by UK non-professional investors to highlight differences in approaches to investments. Finally, a series of semi-structured interviews was conducted to discuss how the current financial crisis has affected investment strategies among Polish and UK investors. Findings - Technical analysis (TA) is the preferred tool utilized by non-professional investors in Poland. However, the current financial crisis caused the majority of Polish practitioners to adopt fundamental analysis which, in this case, is undertaken to support initial conclusions derived from TA. At this point, investees' financial statements coupled with analyses of the main macroeconomic indicators for CEESMs became the main source of decision-influencing information. Practical implications - The paper addresses an area which is gaining in importance and is of interest to both practitioners and service providers for non-professional investors. Further investigation is recommended of nascent challenges to investing in CEESMs with practical implications for policy makers and investors. Originality/value - The current paper refers to the global financial crisis which occurred in the years 2008-2010. To date, there are no previous studies devoted to an investigation of how investors' trading strategies were influenced by the international financial crisis. Moreover, there are relatively few studies which target practitioners from CEESMs. The paper focuses on the non-professionals, as this group of investors seems to be relatively under-researched. Therefore, a number of important implications can be drawn from the current paper with regard to investment strategies tailored to overcome a financial crisis.
THE BLACK HOLE MASS SCALE OF CLASSICAL AND PSEUDO BULGES IN ACTIVE GALAXIES

The mass estimator used to calculate black hole (BH) masses in broad-line active galactic nuclei (AGNs) relies on a virial coefficient (the “f factor”) that is determined by comparing reverberation-mapped (RM) AGNs with measured bulge stellar velocity dispersions against the MBH–σ* relation of inactive galaxies. It has recently been recognized that only classical bulges and ellipticals obey a tight MBH–σ* relation; pseudobulges have a different zero point and much larger scatter. Motivated by these developments, we reevaluate the f factor for RM AGNs with available σ* measurements, updated Hβ RM lags, and new bulge classifications based on detailed decomposition of high-resolution ground-based and space-based images. Separate calibrations are provided for the two bulge types, whose virial coefficients differ by a factor of ∼2: f = 6.3 ± 1.5 for classical bulges and ellipticals and f = 3.2 ± 0.7 for pseudobulges. The structure and kinematics of the broad-line region, at least as crudely encoded in the f factor, seems to be related to the large-scale properties or formation history of the bulge. Lastly, we investigate the bulge stellar masses of the RM AGNs, show evidence for recent star formation in the AGN hosts that correlates with Eddington ratio, and discuss the potential utility of the MBH–Mbulge relation as a more promising alternative to the conventionally used MBH–σ* relation for future refinement of the virial mass estimator for AGNs.
Differential pulse voltammetric determination of diclofenac in pharmaceutical preparations and human serum

This article describes a differential pulse voltammetric (DPV) method for the determination of diclofenac in pharmaceutical preparations and human serum. The proposed method was based on electro-oxidation of diclofenac at platinum electrode in 0.1 M TBAClO4/acetonitrile solution. The well-defined two oxidation peaks were observed at 0.87 and 1.27 V, respectively. Calibration curves that obtained by using current values measured for second peak were linear over the concentration range of 1.5-17.5 μg mL-1and 2-20 μg mL-1 in supporting electrolyte and serum, respectively. Precision and accuracy were also checked in all media. Intra- and inter-day precision values for diclofenac were less than 3.87, and accuracy (relative error) was better than 4.12%. The method developed in this study is accurate, precise and can be easily applied to Diclomec, Dicloflam and Voltaren tablets as pharmaceutical preparation. In addition, the proposed technique was successfully applied to spiked human serum samples. No electro-active interferences from the endogenous substances were found in human serum.
Private Information and the Design of Securities

The privileged information that the owners have on their firms may discourage rational financial investors and consequently may prevent the entrepreneurs from floating their company on the market. The paper studies the validity of this argument in a model similar to that of Grossman and Stiglitz [8]: an entrepreneur who contemplates issuing a new security faces a trade-off between speculative gains, which arise from his privileged information, and an insurance motive, associated with the insurance provided by the stock market. We make explicit how this trade-off depends on the fundamentals of the economy: aggregate risk, risk tolerance, precision of the privileged information.
Consumer response to innovative products: with application to foods

This thesis aims at gaining a deeper understanding of how consumers perceive product newness and how perceived newness affects the market success of new product introductions. It builds on theories in psychology that identified "collative" variables closely associated with newness perceptions on the part of the consumer. AIso, it explores the effect of newness on market success after one year and the pattem of market success during that time period. It is hypothesized that perceived newness is a two-dimensional (rather than unitary) construct and that its two dimensions, (1) mere perception of newness and (2) perceived complexity, have different effects on product liking and market success over time. Consistent with our hypotheses, product liking linearly decreases with perceived complexity and cross section analysis reveals the same relationship with market success after one year. The hypothesized inverted-U shaped relationship does not hold in the case of product liking as it linearly increases with perceived incongruity (i.e. mere newness perception). In contrast, and consistent with our hypothesis, cross section analysis reveals an inverted-U relationship between perceived incongruity and market success after one year. Over time, the key findings from this work emphasize that high perceived product complexity is a disadvantage to new product success in the short run. However, market success of complex products increases over time once initial rejection is overcome (i.e. learning to like). In addition, the mere perception of newness does not appear to have a significant effect on the shape of the diffusion curve. Finally, for a given product, qualitative comparisons between countries suggest that incongruity and complexity may differentially participate to overall newness and therefore affect liking.Overall, the thesis reveals the importance of considering product newness as a two­dimensional construct since each of these dimensions brings in key information to explain consumers' response to innovative products.
Efficacy of Epidural Perineural Injections With Autologous Conditioned Serum for Lumbar Radicular Compression: An Investigator-Initiated, Prospective, Double-Blind, Reference-Controlled Study

Study Design. Prospective, double-blind, reference-controlled, investigator-initiated, single center. Objective. To evaluate the efficacy of Autologous Conditioned Serum (ACS; Orthokine) for the treatment of lumbar radicular compression in comparison to triamcinolone. Summary of Background Data. Evidence from animal studies indicates that cytokines such as interleukin-1 play a decisive role in the pathophysiology of lumbar radiculopathy. ACS is enriched in the interleukin-1 receptor antagonist and other anti-inflammatory cytokines. Methods. Thirty-two patients were treated by epidural perineural injections with ACS; 27 patients were treated with 5 mg triamcinolone and 25 patients with 10 mg triamcinolone. Treatment was applied once per week for 3 consecutive weeks and followed for 6 months. The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) of low back pain was the primary outcome measure. The Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) was the secondary endpoint of the study. All statistical analyses were performed in an exploratory manner using SAS for Windows, version 8.2, on a personal computer. Descriptive statistics were calculated for the VAS and ODI by treatment group and time point. The data were submitted to a repeated-measurements analysis of variance with effects on treatment group, time, and treatment group-by-time interaction. Results. Patients with lumbar back pain who were treated with ACS or the 2 triamcinolone concentrations showed a clinically remarkable and statistically significant reduction in pain and disability, as measured by patient administered outcome measurements. From Week 12 to the final evaluation at Week 22, injections with ACS showed a consistent pattern of superiority over both triamcinolone groups with regard to the VAS score for pain, but statistical significance was observed only at Week 22 in direct comparison to the triamcinolone 5 group. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the 2 triamcinolone dosages during the 6 months of the study. Conclusion. ACS is an encouraging treatment option for patients with unilateral lumbar radicular compression. The decrease in pain was pronounced, clinically remarkable, and potentially superior to steroid injection.
Women’s Education and Fertility: An Analysis of the Relationship between Education and Birth Spacing in Indonesia

The negative relationship between women’s education and fertility is one of the strongest empirical regularities in social science, yet there are few empirical studies that identify the mechanisms through which education affects fertility. This article goes beyond the usual interpretation of education as a proxy for wage by testing whether education affects fertility through demand for children or through availability of contraceptives. Using the Indonesian case, it examines one aspect of fertility, namely, birth spacing, over the period 1970–93. I find that higher levels of female education are associated with a shorter birth interval among earlier cohorts but with a longer birth interval among later cohorts. The key finding is that changes in the effects of education on birth hazard over time are primarily driven by changes in the availability of contraceptives rather than by changes in the demand for children. In the context of contraceptive technology, the result can be interpreted as evidence for the hypothesis that education enhances the ability to decipher new information.
An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Monitoring Intensity on the Relation between Equity Incentives and Earnings Management

Prior studies suggest that equity incentives inherently have both an interest alignment effect and an opportunistic financial reporting effect. Using three distinct proxies for earnings management we find evidence consistent with the incentive alignment (opportunistic financial reporting) effect of equity incentives increasing as monitoring intensity increases (decreases). Furthermore, using the accrual-based earnings management and meet/beat analyst forecast models we find that the opportunistic financial reporting effect of equity incentives dominates the incentive alignments effect for firms with low monitoring intensity. Using proxies for real earnings management, we find that the incentive alignment effect dominates the opportunistic financial reporting effect for high and moderate monitoring intensity firms. However, for low monitoring intensity firms the opportunistic reporting effect mitigates, but does not completely offset, the benefits of the incentive alignment effect. Overall, these findings are consistent with the level of monitoring affecting the relation between equity incentives and earnings management.
Location Matters: An Examination of Trading Profits

The electronic trading system Xetra of the German Security Exchange provides a unique data source on the equity trades of 756 professional traders located in 23 different cities and eight European countries. We explore informational asymmetries across the trader population: Traders located outside Germany in non-German-speaking cities show lower proprietary trading profit. Their underperformance is not only statistically significant, it is also of economically significant magnitude and occurs for the 11 largest German blue-chip stocks. We also examine whether a trader location in Frankfurt as the financial center, or local proximity of the trader to the corporate headquarters of the traded stock, or affiliation with a large financial institution results in superior trading performance. The data provide no evidence for a financial center advantage or of increasing institutional scale economies in proprietary trading. However, we find evidence for an information advantage due to corporate headquarters proximity for high-frequency (intraday) trading. Copyright The American Finance Association 2001.
A General Distribution for Describing Security Price Returns

This paper introduces a generalized distribution, called the GB2 distribution, for describing security returns. The distribution is extremely flexible, containing a large number of well-known distributions, such as the lognormal, log-t, and log-Cauchy distribu tions, as special or limiting cases and allowing large, even infinite, higher moments. This flexibility allows a direct representation of different degrees of fat tails in the distribution. The properties of the GB2 make it useful in empirical estimation of security returns and in facilitating the development of option-pricing models and other models that depend on the specification and mathematical manipulation of distributions. Copyright 1987 by the University of Chicago.
Accounting for the Changing Role of Family Income in Determining College Entry

In this paper, I analyze the determinants of college enrolment and the changes in these determinants over time. I propose a quantitative life-cycle model with college enrolment. Altruistic parents provide financial support to their children. Using counterfactual experiments, I find that 24 percent of all households are financially constrained in their college decision. Constraints become more severe over time. I show that my model is consistent with a narrow college enrolment gap between students from rich and poor families, as previously reported in the empirical literature. The estimation of enrolment gaps is a popular reduced-form approach for measuring the fraction of constrained households. My results suggest that these reduced-form estimates are misleading, and that a structural model of parental transfers is needed to correctly identify constrained households. Further, I show that parental transfers are an important driver behind the changing role of family income as a determinant of college entry, a fact that is well documented for the US economy.
Applying the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria: an approach to strengthen organisational memory and process innovation

The paper aims to establish a theoretical framework to investigate the relationships between total quality management (TQM) practices, organisational memory (OM) and process innovation (PI). To construct the model, the theory of TQM and of both OM and PI are established as starting points. Through the extensive review of past literature, the integrated conceptual model linking TQM with both OM and PI was constructed. Six TQM practices based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria formed the independent construct for this study. The model based on the MBNQA criteria with respect to OM and PI provides a basis for assessing the effectiveness of such a framework on both OM and PI. Given that OM and PI are essential for a firm's survival, it is essential for managers to devote their time and effort to identifying the most effective TQM framework, so that both OM and PI can be enhanced. As such, this model proved to be both beneficial and valuable. The proposed theoretical model provides greater insights into analysing the tridimensional relationships between TQM, OM and PI, in which TQM acts as an independent variable on both OM and PI. The design stands in contrast to other research as OM is investigated as the mediating factor between TQM and PI.
Diagnostic imaging of medullary thyroid cancer

Medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) is an uncommon malignancy with a high tendency to metastasize both to lymph nodes and distant localizations. In recurrent disease the most important prognostic factors are the early diagnosis, localization of the recurrent lesions and adequate patient selection for further treatment. An important role in monitoring of patients with medullary thyroid cancer plays periodical measurement of calcitonin concentration, which allows to detect the recurrence early. There is no single universal diagnostic method to localize all medullary thyroid cancer recurrence lesions, however, the development of positron emission tomography (PET) methods observed in recent years led to an important progress in this field. Conventional diagnostic methods (ultasonography, computed tomography, magnetic resonance) currently play the basic role in the diagnosis of the medullary thyroid carcinoma. In this article we also described nuclear medicine imaging, both convencional scintigraphy and positron emission tomography methods, used in diagnosing of this neoplasm. Particular attention was paid to the use of each method depending on the clinical situation and the suspected location of tumor foci.
The challenge of managing organizational change: Exploring the relationship of re-engineering, developing learning organizations and total quality management

Coping with increasing rates of environmental change and turbulence requires that management changes an organization to a form that is flexible, adaptive, responsive and value adding. Having this as a widely accepted clear goal for organization transformation, the emphasis shifts to how to accomplish the desired change. Several approaches seem to compete for this task, with total quality management (TQM), re-engineering and learning organizations being the most promising options in this decade. This article examines the relationship of re-engineering, TQM and the learning organization, the last two considered most likely to yield enduring long-term results. Unlike re-engineering, they manage to accomplish this without disrupting the social fabric that affects an organization's human resources, widely accepted as the most valuable means to bring about such transformation.
Web campaigning from a global perspective

Since the mid-1990s, political parties around the world have been moving into cyberspace. During the early years, it was not evident that many of them had any clearly defi ned ideas about why the internet would prove useful, or how they should present themselves on it. As time has passed, however, a number of key uses for the new technology have emerged as well some common trends in parties' and candidates' website content and appearance. Paramount among those uses has been the increasing use of the World Wide Web (WWW) and email as electioneering tools. This paper aims to chart the development of so-called "cyber-campaigning" by political parties both in terms of what they are doing (supply side) and also how the electorate are responding (demand side). The two key questions that will be addressed are 1) whether the practice is adding anything new to parties' campaign practices, and 2) what difference, if any, it is making for voters. Does cyber-campaigning play a decisive role in terms of changing minds, if not hearts? The analysis covers developments in cyber-campaigning across a number of contexts but has particular emphasis on Europe, the US, and Australia. Beginning with an historical overview, we chart the rise of web campaigning since the mid-1990s in the US and then move to look at the academic research that has attempted to compare and contrast website content and quality and also explain the distribution of party and candidate sites. After identifying some of the key elements within the cyber-campaign tool box, and the factors that appear to promote its practice, we then turn to look at the audience for election websites and discuss the crucial issue of the extent to which having a website actually matters for parties. One obvious measure of success may be whether the site actually produces an increase in the electoral support for the party. However, using such a measure may present problems given that more than half of the electorate in most countries remains without access to the web. Perhaps cyber-campaigns benefi t parties and candidates in more subtle and diffuse ways? Would perhaps having an attractive and user friendly website contribute to a positive image of organisational competence, and more importantly, contemporary relevance?
A wideband endfire CP antenna using magnetic dipole

This paper presents a wideband circularly polarized (CP) antenna with high gain and end-fire radiation. The antenna consists of two metal strips on the same side of two substrates separated at a distance of 0. 09λg, where λg is the guide wavelength at the lowest operating frequency. The two metal strips are shorted together at three edges. Two pairs of tapered stubs are protruded from the metal strips to generate two resonances and two orthogonal electric fields with 90°-phase difference, resulting in a wideband CP antenna. Simulation results show that the antenna has a wide impedance bandwidth (IMBW) of 2.31–4.00 GHz (53.6%) for S11<−10 dB and axial-ratio bandwidth (ARBW) of 2.30–3.81 GHz (49.4%) for AR<3 dB. Stable endfire radiation is observed over the operating bandwidth with a peak gain of 7.83 dBi. The antenna is a good candidate for uses in radio frequency identification (RFID) readers to cover the ISM band.