Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why Do CEOS of Publicly Traded Firms Prefer Reporting Small Increases in Earnings and Long Duration of Consecutive Earnings Increases?

Previous studies document that publicly traded firms report more small increases in earnings than small decreases in earnings and long strings of consecutive earnings increases. Although the two earnings properties have been partially attributed to earnings management, there is little consensus on why CEOs of publicly traded firms have incentives to do so. Using a sample of publicly traded firms from the EXECOMP database during 1992-98, the objective of this study is to analyze the determinants of the two properties of accounting earnings. Specifically, this study considers both direct CEO compensation incentives (i.e., bonus and equity incentives) and other earnings management incentives, including book-to-market ratio (a proxy for value vs. growth stock), financial leverage, and analyst following. Probit regression results indicate that the probability of reporting a small increase in earnings is increasing in CEO equity-based compensation incentives and decreasing in a firm's book-to-market ratio. Regression results from the event history analysis determine that the duration of consecutive earnings increases is increasing in both CEO bonus incentive and equity incentives but decreasing in a firm's book-to-market ratio. In addition, the event history analysis suggests that, as the duration of consecutive earnings increases becomes longer, firms with low book-to-market ratios (growth stocks) have a stronger incentive to report continuous increases in earnings than firms with high book-to-market ratios (value stocks). Interestingly, firms with high analyst following and high leverage are less likely to report either small increases in earnings or long duration of consecutive earnings increases. The above conclusions were obtained after controlling for changes in operating cash flows, changes in nondiscretionary accruals, and other control variables. The results in the paper contribute to our understanding of the determinants of accounting earnings for publicly traded firms.
Search-based requirements traceability recovery: A multi-objective approach

Software systems nowadays are complex and difficult to maintain due to the necessity of continuous change and adaptation. One of the challenges in software maintenance is keeping requirements traceability up to date automatically. The process of generating requirements traceability is time-consuming and error-prone. Currently, most available tools do not support the automated recovery of traceability links. In some situations, companies accumulate the history of changes from past maintenance experiences. In this paper, we consider requirements traceability recovery as a multi objective search problem in which we seek to assign each requirement to one or many software elements (code elements, API documentation, and comments) by taking into account the recency of change, the frequency of change, and the semantic similarity between the description of the requirement and the software element. We use the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) to find the best compromise between these three objectives. We report the results of our experiments on three open source projects.
Informed Option Trading and Stock Market Mispricing

Despite the theoretical prediction that options improve market efficiency, this study finds that option trading does not attenuate the well-known idiosyncratic volatility anomaly, i.e., the negative relation between idiosyncratic volatility and subsequent stock returns. We argue that the relation between informed option trading and the magnitude of the anomaly is driven by two effects: participation by informed investors improves market efficiency (a causality effect), but their option trades are likely to occur on most inefficiently priced stocks (a selection effect). Using two proxies for informed option trading, we show that the selection effect dominates. Among stocks with high informed option trading intensity, a long-short portfolio based on idiosyncratic volatility deciles generates returns as high as 2.11% per month. By contrast, for stocks with low informed option trading intensity, idiosyncratic volatility does not predict stock returns. We also find that the private information possessed by option traders is related to forthcoming corporate earnings news.
Mutual Funds: An Influential Review of Studies in Performance, Persistence, Investment Styles, Managerial Skills, Fund Characteristics and Behavioral Patterns

This study seeks to review the most recent studies in the field of mutual funds (2005-2009). Virtually all articles reviewed by this paper belong to top journals and top institutions. Moreover, this study also attempts to evaluate some other articles published prior to 2005 and defined as legendary (i.e. Fama and French, 1993). As the mutual fund industry has developed rapidly over the past 20 years, there has concomitantly evolved a rich plausible academic literature consisting of numerous topics. One of the most frequently addressed topics in the current literature is that of mutual fund performance. While earlier studies lay emphasis on the straightforward performance measures and benchmarking, this focus on performance dimension seems to have changed from performance-based studies to style-based studies which also present information regarding persistence in fund performance, fund characteristics, behavioural patterns, stock-picking and timing abilities of managers. Following this shift of emphasis, the methods applied and the data employed by other papers have changed too. This study therefore aims to build on the current literature by assessing all these relevant studies. It further complements the literature by evaluating studies in terms of five distinct dimensions, namely “Questions Addressed by Author(s), Method(s) Adopted, Data Employed, Key Findings, and Contribution to the extant literature and Critique”. Consequently, this study satisfies the need to synthesize the key contributions that have recently been made on the history of mutual funds by other papers. Having investigated the recently evolving body of the literature on the respective topics, the common findings are as follows; a) small-cap funds generally outperform large-cap funds and large-cap funds possess more style consistency than do the mid/small-cap funds. Growth funds play a dominant role in the late 1990s, whereas value funds are very common before and after this period. b) There are no clear persistent patterns found and even if there are, it is generally due to luck rather than skill. c) Actively managed funds generally underperform passive strategies and there is very little evidence of fund managers with timing/picking abilities. d) Low expense ratios are related to superior performance and fund flows are found to be positively related to advertising and distribution fees. Female managers participate in excessive trading and are more risk-averse compared to their male counterparts.
The Effect of Japanese Financial Liberalization on Keiretsu, the Main Bank System, and Japanese Corporate Financing: Evidence for 1972-1992

Critics of the Japanese financial system have long held that Japanese keiretsu and the Main Bank system have helped Japanese corporations reduce their cost of capital and therefore gain a cost comparative advantage over their western counterparts. These institutional practices, claim critics, have limited the access of foreign firms to the Japanese product and financial markets. In this paper we bring some evidence in support of these critics' claim, but only for the period 1972-1985. From the mid-1980s onwards, the evidence shows that Japanese financial liberalization has not only reduced the financial influence of these institutions, but has had a varied impact on Japanese corporate flow-of-funds patterns and on Japanese corporate size. The first section of this paper introduces the Keiretsu, the Main Bank system, and the impact of financial liberalization; the second section presents the data and data analysis, and the third section ends with the summary and conclusions.
Right Person at the Right Place: How IPR at the Host Location Influences the Internal Division of Innovative Labor in Multinational Enterprises

The internationalization of R&D activity by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is increasing, with a recent big push towards emerging economies. Understanding how MNEs organize collaborative R&D across geographies is therefore an important area of scholarship. However, little attention has been paid towards understanding the factors that influence the division of innovative labor within an MNE across geographies – the internal division of innovative labor. Drawing on the literature that shows that strong protection for intellectual property (IP) is important for the efficient division of innovative labor between firms, we argue and show that differences in effectiveness of IP protection between international locations significantly influences the internal division of innovative labor, especially for R&D aimed at the host market when compared to R&D aimed at the home market.
The Role of Late INa and Antiarrhythmic Drugs in EAD Formation and Termination in Purkinje Fibers

Multiple components of cardiac Na current play a role in determining electrical excitation in the heart. Recently, the role of nonequilibrium components in controlling cardiac action potential plateau duration, and their importance in regulating the occurrence of afterdepolarizations and arrhythmias have garnered more attention. In particular, late Na current (late INa) has been shown to be important in LQT2 and LQT3 arrhythmias. Class III agents like dofetilide, clofilium, and sotalol, which can all cause a drug‐induced form of LQT2, significantly lengthen action potential duration at 50% and 90% repolarization in isolated rabbit Purkinje fibers, and can initiate the formation of early afterdepolarizations, and extra beats. These actions can lead to the development of a serious ventricular tachycardia, torsades de pointes, in animal models and patients. However, pretreatment with agents that block late INa, like lidocaine, mexiletine, and RSD1235, a novel mixed ion channel blocker for the rapid pharmacologic conversion of atrial fibrillation, significantly attenuates the prolonging effects of Class III agents or those induced by ATX‐II, a specific toxin that delays Na channel inactivation and amplifies late INa greatly, mimicking LQT3. The Na channel block caused by lidocaine and RSD1235 can be through the open or inactivated states of the channel, but both equivalently inhibit a late component of Na current (INa), recorded at 22°C using whole‐cell patch clamp of Nav1.5 expressed in HEK cells. These protective actions of lidocaine, mexiletine, and RSD1235 may result, at least in part, from their ability to inhibit late INa during action potential repolarization, and inhibition of the inward currents contributing to EAD and arrhythmia formation.
What is the frequency of carbohydrate metabolism disorder in CKD?

OBJECTIVE The objective of this paper is to detect the incidence of insulin resistance (IR) in Chronic Kidney disease (CKD) patients and the presence of impaired fasting glucose (IFG), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and diabetes mellitus (DM) in patients with/without IR. METHODS We enrolled 113 patients with CKD. Biochemical parameters were investigated. RESULTS IFG was found 59.3% of patients with CKD. Age (p = 0.012), BMI (p = 0.036), TG (p = 0.008), HbA1c(p = 0.002), hs-CRP (p = 0.015) levels were higher in patients with IFG. According to the results of Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), 69% of patients with CKD had a detected carbohydrate metabolism disorder, 9.7% had DM, 59.3% had IGT. In patients with IFG 13.6% had DM, 31.8% IGT, in patients without IFG 4.2% had DM and 29.8% IGT. The mean HOMA-IR and insulin levels were 3.03 ± 1, 97/11.9 ± 7.13. IR was detected 23% of patients with CKD. In patients with IR; FBG (p = 0.003), serum insulin (p = 0.001), TG (p = 0.05) and HbA1c (p = 0.004) levels were elevated. 31.3% of patients with IFG were found to be IR. CONCLUSION Carbohydrate metabolism disorder and insulin resistance are found in patients with CKD. Most patients with CKD who are elderly, obesity or overweight offer targets for additional risk factors. For these reasons, screening for DM may be recommended.
Italian-Arabic domain terminology extraction from parallel corpora

English. In this paper we present our approach to extract multi-word terms (MWTs) from an Italian-Arabic parallel corpus of legal texts. Our approach is a hybrid model which combines linguistic and statistical knowledge. The linguistic approach includes Part Of Speech (POS) tagging of the corpus texts in the two languages in order to formulate syntactic patterns to identify candidate terms. After that, the candidate terms will be ranked by statistical association measures which here represent the statistical knowledge. After the creation of two MWTs lists, one for each language, the parallel corpus will be used to validate and identify translation equivalents. Italiano. In questo lavoro presentiamo il nostro approccio all'estrazione di termini composti da un corpus giuridico parallelo italiano-arabo. In una prima fase vengono estratti termini composti dai corpora monolingui tramite un approccio ibrido che combina le annotazioni linguistiche fornite dal POS tagging con le informazioni statistiche offerte dalle misure di associazione lessicale. In una seconda fase viene utilizzato il corpus parallelo per estrarre equivalenti di traduzione.
Impact of cost and perceived quality on utilisation of primary health care services in Tanzania: rural-urban comparison

A cross-sectional study was carried out to assess the impact of perceived quality and cost of utilisation of primary health care services, in relation to malaria, in rural and urban districts in Tanzania. This study intended to explore whether there are differences between rural and urban users in terms of their perceptions of quality of health services and how these perceptions affect household decisions in utilising health services. The findings showed that socio-economic variables such as gender, income, education, wealth and household size were important in determining users' decision making on the amount and appropriate time to seek care and also mitigates effectively on the extent to which cost and perception of quality of care affect rural and urban users of health care services. The majority of rural households spent more time at the facility while waiting to be attended than urban users of health services. Female-headed households were more likely to use health care services more frequently than male-headed households. It was also shown that urban households used health care more frequently than rural ones; and lack of money was not as important as perceived quality both in relation to frequency in using nearby health facilities, and to the delay in seeking care. In conclusion, the perceived quality of health care services is a strong determinant of health care utilisation and it has a differential impact on utilisation of health services. Tanzania Health Research Bulletin Vol.6(2) 2004: 51-56
Measuring knowledge management

The American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) conducted its first examination of knowledge management (KM) at a Knowledge Imperative Symposium in 1995, at which time organizations were simply trying to come to grips with the power of sharing and reusing knowledge for business purposes. While KM has become a widely accepted business practice in the interim, companies still struggle to measure the gains it purports to offer. As APQC begins its 10th best-practice consortium study in KM (Using KM to Drive Innovation), measuring the success of knowledge management efforts still vexes many organizations. An 11th KM study by APQC, which will kick off in the fourth quarter of 2002, will focus on this critical component of KM.
Course Update for Nurse Anesthetists Residual Neuromuscular Blockade

Objectives At the completion of this course, the reader should be able to: 1. Identify the anatomy and physiology of acetylcholine and nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. 2. Describe the method of action of neuromuscular blocking drugs. 3. Describe the available methods for monitoring recovery from neuromuscular blockade. 4. Discuss the options available to reverse neuromuscular blockade and the optimal timing of reversal. 5. List postoperative implications of residual neuromuscular blockade.
Cows Come Down from the Mountains before the (Mw = 6.1) Earthquake Colfiorito in September 1997; A Single Case Study

Simple Summary Recent reports from several countries such as China, Italy and Japan support the existence of strange animal behaviour before strong earthquakes. However, the stimuli to which animals are sensitive preceding seismic activity are still not completely understood. Here we report the case of a herd of cows (reported by an entire village) leaving the hill pasture and descending near to the village streets two days before a strong earthquake. Abstract The September–October 1997 seismic sequence in the Umbria–Marche regions of Central Italy has been one of the stronger seismic events to occur in Italy over the last thirty years, with a maximum magnitude of Mw = 6.1. Over the last three years, a collection of evidence was carried out regarding non-seismic phenomena, by interviewing local residents using a questionnaire. One particular observation of anomalous animal behaviour, confirmed by many witnesses, concerned a herd of cows, which descended from a mountain close to the streets of a village near the epicentre, a few days before the main shock. Testimonies were collected using a specific questionnaire including data on earthquake lights, spring variations, human diseases, and irregular animal behaviour. The questionnaire was compiled after the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009, and was based upon past historical earthquake observations. A possible explanation for the cows’ behavior—local air ionization caused by stress-activated positive holes—is discussed.
Why Do Banks Ask for Collateral?

In spite of the massive use of collateral, there exist only few studies on the reasons of the use of collateral. This paper aims at testing empirically the three major theoretical reasons for using collateral: reduction of loan loss in the event of default, adverse selection, and moral hazard. We use a dataset of 735 bank loans on French distressed firms, which contains the full information on debt contract characteristics including collaterals. This dataset allows providing a complete empirical framework to test the three theoretical arguments in connection with the type and the value of collaterals. Our conclusions are: (a) Collateral contributes to reduce loan loss in the event of default, with differences among types of collaterals in terms of the recovered value for a given initial value. (b) Collateral does not solve adverse selection problems, as there is a positive relationship between collateral and risk premium. (c) Collateral does not solve moral hazard, as secured loans are not associated with a lower probability of moral hazard behavior. Therefore, our work suggests that information asymmetries are not of prime importance in the decision of the bank to secure a loan, while the reduction of the loan loss and the observed-risk hypothesis may explain the use of collateral.
Compensatory growth after under-nutrition in market turkeys: effect of low protein feeding and realimentation on body composition.

Synopsis Turkey poults were fed starter diets containing either 29 or 20 per cent crude protein. Live‐weight at 6 weeks was depressed by about 30 per cent in poults fed the low protein diet. From 6 to 10 weeks of age four protein levels were fed but carcass studies were restricted to the groups which received adequate amounts of protein at this stage. Sixty poults from each treatment were slaughtered for carcass studies at 6 weeks of age, and also at 7 weeks when the undernourished poults had reached the body weight attained by fully fed groups at 6 weeks. Further samples were taken for carcass analysis at 20 weeks of age. Percentage body fat was increased and percentage protein in the fat‐free dry matter was decreased by feeding a low protein starter diet from o to 6 weeks. Poults fed the low protein starter diet retained nitrogen more efficiently during the period of undernutrition and in the first stages of recuperation. Following a return to full feeding at six weeks, body protein content was quickly .
Evolution of the chaperonin families (HSP60, HSP 10 and TCP‐1) of proteins and the origin of eukaryotic cells

The members of the 10 kDa and 60 kDa heat‐shock chaperonin proteins (Hsp10 and Hsp60 or Cpn10 and Cpn60), which form an operon in bacteria, are present in all eubacteria and eukaryotic ceil organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts. In archaebacteria and eukaryotic cell cytosol, no close homologues of Hsp10 or Hsp60 have been identified. However, these species (or ceil compartments) contain the Tcp‐1 family of proteins (distant homologues of Hsp60). Phylogenetic analysis based on global alignments of Hsp60 and Hsp10 sequences presented here provide some evidence regarding the evolution of mitochondria from a member of the α‐subdivision of Gram‐negative bacteria and chloroplasts from cyanobacterial species, respectively. This inference is strengthened by the presence of sequence signatures that are uniquely shared between Hsp60 homologues from α‐purple bacteria and mitochondria on one hand, and the chloroplasts and cyanobacterial hsp60s on the other. Within the α‐purple subdivision, species such as Rickettsia and Ehrlichia, which live intracellularly within eukaryotic cells, are indicated to be the closest relatives of mitochondrial Homologues, In the Hsp60 evolutionary tree, rooted using the Tcp‐1 homologue, the order of branching of the major groups was as follows: Gram‐positive bacteria — cyanobacteria and chloroplasts — chlamydiae and spirochaetes —β and γ‐Gram‐negative purple bacteria —α‐purple bacteria — mitochondria. A similar branching order was observed independently in the Hsp10 tree. Multiple Hsp60 homologues, when present in a group of species, were found to be clustered together in the trees, indicating that they evolved by independent gene‐duplication events. This review also considers in detail the evolutionary relationship between Hsp50 and Tcp‐1 families of proteins based on two different models (viz. archaebacterial and chimeric) for the origin of eukaryotic cell nucleus. Some predictions of the chimeric model are also discussed.