Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Redefining Financial Constraints: A Text-Based Analysis

We score 10-K text to obtain annual measures of financial constraints, with separate measures for firms reporting equity and debt financing issues. Equity market constraints are associated with firms funding growth opportunities, have more severe consequences for the firm following large unexpected negative shocks, and are likely driven by informational asymmetries. A significant population of firms reporting equity market constraints also declare that they possess material undisclosed proprietary information. Constraints in the debt markets are distinct and are linked to covenant violations. Our measures outperform others used in the literature in predicting investment cuts following negative shocks.
Has Education (Human Capital) Contributed to the Economic Growth of Nigeria

Education, generally believed, contributes to the growth of an economy through acquisition of training and skills. For over 160 years, Nigeria had embarked on implementation of education policies affecting primary school, secondary school and tertiary institutions. This study used an econometric model to examine the contributions of primary education, secondary education and tertiary education to economic growth of Nigeria. These variables were proxied by school enrolments at various levels. Other variables included physical capital formation, health measured through total expenditure on health. In all primary school input, physical capital formation and health were found to contribute to growth. Secondary school input and tertiary institutions were found to dampen growth. Among others, this paper recommends that there should be adjustment in admission process in favour of core science and technical oriented course. The paper also recommends that schools should be adequately funded. Key words: Education, econometric model, economic growth, Nigeria.
The impact of research design on consumer price recall accuracy: An integrative review

For almost half a century, researchers have examined consumer knowledge of prices, often with disturbing and conflicting results. Although the general findings suggest that consumer knowledge of prices is poorer than assumed in neoclassical economic theory, significant variations among results exist. The authors synthesize findings from prior studies to determine the impact of research design choices on price recall accuracy measures. A meta-analysis indicates that a significant amount of variation in the accuracy of consumers’ price recall is related to research design characteristics such as the presence of financial rewards, respondents’ task size, and the price elicitation approach. Implications for price awareness research are discussed.
Home Sweet Home: Home Bias and International Diversification Among Individual Investors

A striking feature of international portfolio investment is the extent to which equity portfolios are concentrated in the domestic market of the investor. Many authors have tried to explain this home bias, but so far, this literature has not succeeded in providing a generally accepted explanation for it. Also, there are no previous results regarding home bias on an individual level, i.e. what characterises an individual who show a relatively large reluctance towards international diversification and investments. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a home bias in the portfolios of mutual funds, which are formed as a part of the pension plan in Sweden. While controlling for several reasons for home bias which are found in the previous research, as e.g. transactions costs and risk level of investments, this study analyses the nature of portfolio allocation and the home bias on an individual investor basis. A multinomial logit model is formulated to estimate the likelihood of home bias, where demographical features of the individuals are used as explanatory variables. The results show several significant, statistically and economically, relationships between individual characteristics and the likelihood of home bias. In particular, age, gender, net wealth, occupation and familiarity with risky investments are important. The type of individual with the highest likelihood of home bias is identified as a not so wealthy older man, who works for the government and holds no other risky assets.
Isolation and process parameter optimization of Brevibacterium casei for simultaneous bioremediation of hexavalent chromium and pentachlorophenol.

Chromate and pentachlorophenol are major pollutants discharged through tanneries. Three bacteria resistant to high Cr(6+) and PCP concentrations simultaneously were isolated. The TVS-3 strain was tolerant to highest 850 mg l(-1) Cr(6+) and 1000 mg l(-1) PCP concentration and concomitantly reduced 69% Cr(6+) and degraded 72% PCP within 168 h at pH 7.5, 35 ± 1°C temperature, was selected and identified as Brevibacterium casei. At 168 h of growth, bacterium showed maximum PCP utilization of 720 mg l(-1) and released 900 mg l(-1) chloride ion. The bacterium exhibited remarkable ability to significantly reduce Cr(6+) and degrade PCP in presence of other metals, between 100-120 rpm aeration and over broad pH (6.5-10.0) and temperature (30-40°C) range. Maximum 78% Cr(6+) reduction and 82% PCP degradation was observed at pH 8.0, 35 ± 1°C within 168 h of incubation, 120 rpm and initial concentration of 850 mg l(-1) Cr(6+) and 1000 mg l(-1) PCP. This is the first study reporting 78% Cr(6+) reduction and 82% PCP degradation simultaneously by single native bacteria under wide growth conditions utilizing PCP as sole carbon source. This bacterium may potentially be useful for simultaneous bioremediation of Cr(6+) and PCP containing wastes in the environment.
“Soft edges” in residential streets

A multitude of surveys has established that life in residential streets and other public spaces is a major attraction and a very highly valued amenity. Trends in the 198 —such as declining household size and technological changes affecting both the character and amount of work— point towards a growing importance of lively residential streets for formal and informal social activities. This article discusses a number of conditions for supporting this function of residential streets. The focus is primarily on the importance of creating “soft edges” by way of frontyards/forecourts/porches in order to provide better opportunities for staying in the public spaces for residents of all ages. Studies of residential street life in Australia, Canada, and Scandinavia are presented to support the conclusion that “soft edges” may be a most important way of promoting an active life in present‐day residential streets.
Financial Reporting to Financiers Australian Manufacturing SMEs

P(ROFE SS()w Rt CHARI) G. P. MCMAH1ON 1S hlead of the Sc(hool of Cominerce at the Fl incle rs t.J"niversity of South Austrialia. Alsti-alba. The obj ctiXe of this papet is to preselmt nieNv empirical evideince oii financial r eporting to financiers by small and mnedilun-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are engaged in imianufactttring it) A,ustralia and which are legally organisedl as pr oj)iictarvx com-lpanies. The pr imiary c o0nc c rn is xv ith pi eparation and lisseminiation to extet nal providers of finanic e of general purpose financial i eports thiat imiay be historical and/oi litture olienited. The niature and(l frtecqencx of formal financial repor tinig, illnclel takinig financial audits, the closetiess of ielationships with financiers o'tside of fornmal financial reporting, iespondents' xiews oIn how well their financiers appear to understand theii busillesses, and the propensity for the imaniufactturinig SMEs studied to change their finian-icicrs are all considered. The fin-idings suggest that compared with other Atustralian SME research, finianicial r eporting to financiers by the collaborating businesses is evidentix, eiv conmprehensive. This mutst be secen as encouraging from a finiancial conitrol viexpoinlt anid in terims of facilitatinig ac(ess to essenitial growth fuindingo
The Impact of Option Expirations on Stock Prices

One of the innovative and successful new markets developed in recent years has been the registered exchange for the trading of option contracts. Key innovations provided by the option exchanges include the standardization of some contractual terms and the creation of a central clearing corporation to serve as issuer and obligor of each option contract, thus severing the contractual link between a specific option writer and buyer. These changes have facilitated the trading of existing call options in the secondary market and have provided increased liquidity, continuous public reporting of prices, better information on trading volume and open positions, and reduced transaction costs.
Between workfare and enablement – The different paths to transformation of the welfare state: A comparative analysis of activating labour market policies

The concepts that address different paths to transformation of the welfare state as a ‘workfare’, an ‘enabling’ or an ‘activating’ state share the idea that traditional welfare policies, mostly aiming at decommodification, are more and more replaced by social policies emphasising (re-)commodification. Activating labour market policy therefore is supposed to play a central role within the paradigm shift of welfare state policies. It is understood to involve a mix of the enforcement of labour market participation, the conditioning of rights and growing obligations of the individual at one side, and an increase of services in order to promote employability and restore social equity at the other. In this article, the different perceptions of the workfare and the enabling state perspectives on the positive and negative aspects of activating policies are reconstructed as ‘pure forms’ in order to obtain theoretical standards against which the empirical cases of activating labour market policies in Denmark, the United Kingdom and Germany are characterised and compared. The actual reform path is described by a combination of two indicators: the strength of the workfare and the strength of the enabling elements of the activating labour market policies. The evidence on activating labour market reforms confirms that in both dimensions a move in the same direction is taking place, but without producing growing convergence. Different welfare state types keep on producing different mixes of workfare and enabling policies, leading to very different levels of decommodification and (re-)commodification. Thus, an ongoing divergence of policies also exists within the new paradigm of an activating labour market policy, although single countries seem to change their alignment to a particular welfare state type.
Importance of anonymity to encourage honest reporting in mental health screening after combat deployment.

CONTEXT US soldiers are required to undergo screening for depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other mental health problems on return from service in Iraq or Afghanistan as part of routine postdeployment health assessments. OBJECTIVE To assess the influence of the anonymity of screening processes on willingness of soldiers to report mental health problems after combat deployment. DESIGN Anonymous and nonanonymous surveys. SETTING US military. PATIENTS US infantry soldiers' reporting of mental health problems on the routine Post-Deployment Health Assessment was compared with their reporting on an anonymous survey administered simultaneously. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The Primary Care PTSD Screen, the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (modified), the suicidal ideation question from the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and several other questions related to mental health were used on both surveys. Soldiers were also asked on the anonymous survey about perceptions of stigma and willingness to report honestly. RESULTS Of 3502 US Army soldiers from one infantry brigade combat team undergoing the routine Post-Deployment Health Assessment in 2008, a total of 2500 were invited to complete the anonymous survey, and 1712 of these participated (response rate, 68.5%). Reporting of depression, PTSD, suicidal ideation, and interest in receiving care were 2-fold to 4-fold higher on the anonymous survey compared with the routine Post-Deployment Health Assessment. Overall, 20.3% of soldiers who screened positive for depression or PTSD reported that they were uncomfortable reporting their answers honestly on the routine postdeployment screening. CONCLUSIONS Current postdeployment mental health screening tools are dependent on soldiers honestly reporting their symptoms. This study indicates that the Post-Deployment Health Assessment screening process misses most soldiers with significant mental health problems. Further efforts are required to reduce the stigma of reporting and improve willingness to receive care for mental health problems.
Strategic Planning and Financial Performance in UK SMEs: Does Formality Matter?

SUMMARY The majority of the literature on corporate performance in SMEs has indicated that the absence of formal strategic planning (or inadequacies in its process) can be directly linked with failure, while its presence can be linked to success (Bracker and Pearson, 1986; Stoner, 1983). However, other empirical evidence fails to find a relationship (Robinson and Pearce, 1983). These differences are due to methodological and theoretical problems facing research in this domain. This paper attempts to improve on both issues. The hypothesis that ‘formal planning is not associated with better-than-average performance’ is tested on a sample of SMEs, controlled by sector, using a 5-year operating period. Five measures of financial performance are utilized, including both the arithmetic and geometric measurements of central tendency as appropriate. Moreover, perceptions of CEOs, rather than the aggregation of scale-based measurements of organizational variables, are used to prescribe the measure of formality used in the analysis.
Sticky Price and Limited Participation Models of Money: A Comparison

This paper provides new evidence that models of the monetary transmission mechanism should be consistent with at least the following facts. In response to a contractionary monetary policy shock, the aggregate price level responds very little, aggregate output falls, interest rates initially rise, real wages decline, though by a modest amount, and profits fall. The paper argues that neither sticky price nor limited participation models can convincingly account for these facts. The key failing of the sticky price model is that it implies profits rise after a contractionary monetary policy shock. This finding is robust to a variety of perturbations of the benchmark sticky price model that we consider. In contrast, the limited participation model can account for all of the facts mentioned above. But it can do so only if one is willing to assume a high labor supply elasticity (2) and a high average markup (40%). The shortcomings of both models reflect the absence of other frictions, such as wage contracts, which dampen movements in the marginal cost of production after a monetary policy shock.
Streaming Algorithms for Estimating the Matching Size in Planar Graphs and Beyond

We consider the problem of estimating the size of a maximum matching when the edges are revealed in a streaming fashion. When the input graph is planar, we present a simple and elegant streaming algorithm that, with high probability, estimates the size of a maximum matching within a constant factor using Õ(n2/3) space, where n is the number of vertices. The approach generalizes to the family of graphs that have bounded arboricity, which include graphs with an excluded constant-size minor. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first result for estimating the size of a maximum matching in the adversarial-order streaming model (as opposed to the random-order streaming model) in o(n) space. We circumvent the barriers inherent in the adversarial-order model by exploiting several structural properties of planar graphs, and more generally, graphs with bounded arboricity. We further reduce the required memory size to Õ(√n) for three restricted settings: (i) when the input graph is a forest; (ii) when we have 2-passes and the input graph has bounded arboricity; and (iii) when the edges arrive in random order and the input graph has bounded arboricity. Finally, we design a reduction from the Boolean Hidden Matching Problem to show that there is no randomized streaming algorithm that estimates the size of the maximum matching to within a factor better than 3/2 and uses only o(n1/2) bits of space. Using the same reduction, we show that there is no deterministic algorithm that computes this kind of estimate in o(n) bits of space. The lower bounds hold even for graphs that are collections of paths of constant length.
Relationship between types of school district expenditures and student performance

An educational production function is estimated using achievement test scores to proxy school output, with socio-economic characteristics and expenditures in various categories as inputs. The data are school district level expenditures. Unlike most past research, a correction is made for the heteroscedasticity created by differences in school district size. Correcting for heteroscedasticity leads to statistical tests with greater power. Test scores were positively related to expenditures on instruction and instructional support, and are negatively related to expenditures on student support, such as counselling and school administration. The negative effect of counselling and administration could be due to counsellors taking up classroom time or administrators using classroom time with announcements or assemblies. Alternatively, the causality could go the other way. It could be that schools with problems hire more administrators and counsellors. The socioeconomic variables included may not fully capture the problems that a school faces. The results show that spending is useful when targeted towards instruction. The effect, although statistically significant, is not large. But, the research still finds that money matters if it is spent on instruction.
How Changes in Labor Demand Affect Unemployed Workers

This study analyzes the manner in which certain favorable shifts in labor demand affect job search. Although all shifts increase reservation wages, they do not necessarily decrease expected unemployment spell durations and increase expected post-unemployment wages, so that upward-sloping short-run Phillips curves may occur. A result due to Chamberlain is used to demonstrate that if the wage offer distribution is restricted to be logconcave, two of the shifts guarantee downward-sloping Phillips curves. For one of these two shifts, previous research by Flinn and Heckman used logconcavity in a different manner to achieve properly shaped Phillips curves.
Effects of Various Articulatory Features of Speech on Cortical Event-Related Potentials and Behavioral Measures of Speech-Sound Processing

Objective: To investigate the effects of three articulatory features of speech (i.e., vowel-space contrast, place of articulation of stop consonants, and voiced/voiceless distinctions) on cortical event-related potentials (ERPs) (waves N1, mismatch negativity, N2b, and P3b) and their related behavioral measures of discrimination (d-prime sensitivity and reaction time [RT]) in normal-hearing adults to increase our knowledge regarding how the brain responds to acoustical differences that occur within an articulatory speech feature and across articulatory features of speech. Design: Cortical ERPs were recorded to three sets of consonant-vowel speech stimuli (/bi versus /bu/, /ba/ versus /da/, /da/ versus /ta/) presented at 65 and 80 dB peak-to-peak equivalent SPL from 20 normal-hearing adults. All speech stimuli were presented in an oddball paradigm. Cortical ERPs were recorded from 10 individuals in the active-listening condition and another 10 individuals in the passive-listening condition. All listeners were tested at both stimulus intensities. Results: Mean amplitudes for all ERP components were considerably larger for the responses to the vowel contrast in comparison with the responses to the two consonant contrasts. Similarly, the mean mismatch negativity, P3b, and RT latencies were significantly shorter for the responses to the vowel versus consonant contrasts. For the majority of ERP components, only small nonsignificant differences occurred in either the ERP amplitude or the latency response measurements for stimuli within a particular articulatory feature of speech. Conclusions: The larger response amplitudes and earlier latencies for the cortical ERPs to the vowel versus consonant stimuli are likely related, in part, to the large spectral differences present in these speech contrasts. The measurements of response strength (amplitudes and d-prime scores) and response timing (ERP and RT latencies) for the various cortical ERPs suggest that the brain may have an easier task processing the steady state information present in the vowel stimuli in comparison with the rapidly changing formant transitions in the consonant stimuli.
Babesia bigemina in ticks grown on non-bovine hosts and its transmission to these hosts

The failure of Boophilus microplus to be cleansed of Babesia bigemina while the ticks were growing on non-bovine hosts, as well as the infection of the non-bovine hosts, was demonstrated in experiments in which infected ticks were released on a number of sheep, a goat and a horse. Seven of ten batches of ticks, collected from six non-bovine hosts, retained their babesia-infection. Blood subinoculated into cattle from seven of nine sheep and from the horse showed that these animals carried B. bigemina whilst the ticks were feeding on them. This suggested that ticks may have become reinfected from the non-bovine hosts, a possibility supported by the finding of B. bigemina in blood smears from two of the sheep. This work was performed at the Animal Research Institute, Yeerongpilly, and in the Department of Parasitology, University of Queensland, and supported by funds from both organizations. I am indebted to Mr G. D. Daly for technical assistance, to Professor J. F. A. Sprent and Dr H. M. D. Hoyte for their interest and help.
The impact of Financial Times Deutschland news on stock prices: post-announcement drifts and inattention of investors

In this paper, we analyze the impact of Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) news on stock prices and trading volumes. Based on a sample of all news about German DAX, MDAX, and SDAX companies published in the news section of the FTD between 2006 and 2010, our results show that articles that contain positive (negative) information are associated with significantly positive (negative) abnormal returns and abnormal trading volumes around their publication. Furthermore, our results show an initial underreaction to these articles and subsequent post-publication drift. Based on the inattention hypothesis, we show that high-attention news (proxied by abnormal trading volume) almost instantaneously moves stock prices to their new valuation levels, whereas the price adjustment process takes much longer following low-attention news. Our results also hold within multivariate regressions where we additionally control for stock-specific characteristics (e.g., institutional ownership, size, and price-to-book ratio) as well as other attention-grabbing events (as measured by ad hoc announcements and cover-page news articles). Finally, we show that results primarily hold in the non-crisis period.