Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multidimensional measure of household energy poverty and its determinants in Ethiopia 1

Access to and affordability of energy is crucial for the well-being of society. Life without energy is unthinkable. It is an important ingredient for attaining the general good quality of life. The objective of this study is to analyze the extent and determinants of energy poverty using the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey of 2011 and 2014 which is part of the World Bank survey on living standards. The analysis focuses on multidimensional measures of energy poverty using four dimensions and five variables for rural and small towns in Ethiopia. The determinants of multidimensional energy poverty and their effects are also examined using the static random effect logit model. The results show that the extent of energy poverty in rural and small towns in Ethiopia is very severe. About 74 per cent and 73 per cent of the respondents were found to be multi-dimensionally energy poor in 2011 and 2014 respectively. Further, the results also show that a larger family size, living in a rural area and male headed households significantly increase the probability of a household being multi-dimensionally energy poor while the age of the household head, the number of rooms occupied by the household and total household expenditure significantly reduce the probability of households falling into poverty. The study recommends that interventions for reducing energy poverty should be coupled with poverty reduction policies, promotion of rural energy and energy efficient technologies and appropriate energy source pricing mixes.
International assemblage of the security of tenure and the interaction of city politics with the international normative discourse

Abstract The article approaches the development of security of tenure as a core component of the international human right to adequate housing through the assemblage theory. The concept of security of tenure has been assembled through institutional processes led by UN-Habitat, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Adequate Housing, the World Bank and others. These international institutions have developed a plurality of approaches to the tenure security. In addition, through international regime interaction these different approaches eventually became linked and started influencing each other. In such a way, the security of tenure developed from underdeveloped and separated human rights norm, developmental goal, and attribute of freehold title to a house or land, to a complex and pluralistic concept. Furthermore, the recognition of the complexity and the plurality of forms of tenure security have been related to the semiformal nature of international processes led by UN-Habitat and others, which connected the international level with the local conditions around the world. Through these processes, a pallet of actors with local experiences made international institutions recognize the uniqueness and complexity of the urban/local space as crucial for approaching the tenure security. Acknowledging the specificity and the pluralism of local – urban – socio-political spaces by international institutions shows how interlinked international and urban levels of policy-making have become.
Is political business cycle an enemy to human development? Empirical evidence from Africa

Abstract Extant literature has argued that, with major extension of democracy since the 1990s, political business cycle has become more intense and has made African political systems more fragile. In light of this, this paper examines both the existence of African political business cycles and their impact on human development. It confirms the existence of political business cycles in Africa. Estimates of a panel fixed effects and system-GMM regression techniques for 38 African countries from 1990 to 2015 also suggest that such cycles worsen human development in African countries. This finding is consistent if we limit our analysis to various sub-regions of Africa, and also at two different income levels.
Essays in International Trade, Intellectual Property Rights, and Technology Transfer

In the first study, I investigate how preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with complex chapters covering IPRs affect the composition of members’ aggregate trade flows, focusing on hightechnology sectors. Despite the proliferation of PTAs with strong IPRs standards, their effect on such trade has not been studied systematically. The identification framework defines treatment PTAs as those in which one partner is the United States or either the European Union or European Free Trade Association—economies that include the most substantive IPRs provisions in the PTAs that they negotiate. The results are broken down by income groups and trade in specific IPsensitive sectors. I find that the addition of IPRs chapters with elevated regulatory standards into PTAs has relatively limited total effects on trade, but strongly encourages trade in biopharmaceutical goods. There are additional important but heterogeneous cross-border impacts, suggesting that “behind the border” regulations within PTAs do influence trade. In the second study, I extend the analysis of the first to assess the existence of IPR policy spillover effects on PTA members’ trade with partners outside of the PTA. Using a panel of bilateral trade data in a gravity framework, I analyze PTA members’ bilateral trade along both the intensive and extensive margins. Countries that enter into IPR-related PTAs with the United States or Europe exhibit a significant restructuring of their patterns of trade relative to otherwise similar countries that do not, in both exports and imports and along both margins. The third study unpacks the issues surrounding joint ventures and technology transfer in China. I first explore the selection of Chinese partners that form joint ventures. Second, I find evidence for technology transfer to Chinese joint venture partner firms. Third, I investigate whether joint ventures generate externalities to other Chinese firms, finding that such externalities are positive and large, perhaps twice the size of wholly-owned FDI spillovers. Furthermore, the positive external effect is largest if the foreign firm is from the United States, and this effect is virtually absent in broad sectors that include economic activities for which China’s FDI policy has prohibited joint ventures.
Charge-offs, Defaults and U.S. Business Cycles

We uncover a new fact: U.S. banks counter-cyclically vary the ratio of charge-offs to defaulted loans. The variance of this ratio is roughly 15 times larger than that of GDP. Canonical financial accelerator models cannot explain this variance. We show that introducing stochastic default costs into the model helps to resolve the discrepancy with the data. Estimating the augmented model using Bayesian techniques reveals that the estimated default cost shocks not only help account for the variance of the banking data but also help account for a significant fraction of the U.S. business cycle between 1984 and 2015.
The Impact of Whatsapp on EFL Students' Vocabulary Learning

Social networking applications have emerged as potential new tools for enhancing second language vocabulary learning. The current study explores the development of academic vocabulary knowledge of English as a foreign language (EFL) students using WhatsApp compared to the traditional method of vocabulary instruction. It also aims at investigating students’ perceptions about the use WhatsApp in learning vocabulary. Forty Arab EFL students at the elementary level enrolled at a public university in the Arabian Gulf region participated in the study. Twenty one participants belonging to the same class were randomly assigned to the experimental group. They completed and submitted their vocabulary assignments which consisted of looking up the meanings of new words in a dictionary and building a sentence using each word and submitting their sentences via WhatsApp. Nineteen students from another class were assigned to the control group. They had to submit the same homework assignment using the paper and pencil method. Data were collected using pretest-posttest design. Results of t-test scores indicated that WhatsApp group significantly outperformed the traditional group on a vocabulary test. Furthermore, results of a questionnaire that gauged participants’ perception of the use of WhatsApp in learning vocabulary show that generally participants have positive attitudes towards learning new vocabulary items via WhatsApp. Implications for teaching and future research are discussed.
Global Environmental Governance: A Reform Agenda

Global Environmental Governance (GEG) is the sum of organizations, policy instruments, financing mechanisms, rules, procedures and norms that regulate the processes of global environmental protection. Since environmental issues entered the international agenda in the early 1970s, global environmental politics and policies have been developing rapidly. The environmental governance system we have today reflects both the successes and failures of this development. It has become increasingly clear that the GEG system, as we know it, has outgrown its original design and intent.
An anatomy of entrepreneurial pursuits in relation to poverty

ABSTRACT This study examines the causal relationships between inequality, poverty and entrepreneurship. We hypothesize that income inequality influences entrepreneurial activity, and entrepreneurial activity alleviates absolute poverty. Findings from longitudinal analyses of a dataset from all 50 US states over an 18-year period provide robust support for these hypotheses. Furthermore, the results suggest that antipoverty public policy aimed at encouraging work (i.e. Earned income tax credit, EITC) can be detrimental to entrepreneurial activity. These findings underscore the importance of linking public policy efforts aimed at poverty alleviation with those aimed at encouraging additional entrepreneurship.
BTEX Concentrations and Associated Health Risks at Urban Vegetative Sites in Delhi, India

Abstract Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) compounds are known for their toxic effects. The ambient BTEX levels were studied at various urban vegetative locations of Delhi to assess the health risks involved. The average concentrations were higher for toluene and xylene among BTEX compounds. The cancer risks for benzene exceeded the benchmark limits of USEPA and WHO. The study suggests that the vegetative areas in Delhi are not safe for public health and regulatory bodies need to initiate some action.
TYPES AND FUNCTIONS OF CITATIONS IN MASTER’S THESES ACROSS DISCIPLINES AND LANGUAGES

Citation is an essential and common feature of academic writing and is used by academic writers to achieve different purposes. This study investigated disciplinary variations in terms of citation practices in the genre of Master’s theses with a specific focus on discussions. To this end, sixty discussions produced by MA/MS students of two key universities in Iran from both hard and soft disciplines were analyzed in terms of citation types and functions. The medium of writing whether English or Persian was also taken into account for its probable influence on the employed citation practices. The results revealed that integral citations were used more frequently by writers in soft knowledge fields, allowing them to make evaluations, whereas non-integral citations were mostly used by hard discipline writers. As for rhetorical functions, Support and Comparison were the dominant functions in these text types. However, there existed subtle differences both in the degree and the way these writers draw intertextual links to their disciplines. The findings can be of considerable help to EAP instructors and thesis supervisors to raise their students’ awareness and refine their understanding of citation strategies in thesis writing.
Adjuvants in Primates CpG Oligodeoxynucleotides as Vaccine

Albert A. Gam, Brenda Friedag and Dennis M. KlinmanDaniela Verthelyi, Richard T. Kenney, Robert A. Seder,http://www.jimmunol.org/content/168/4/1659J Immunol€2002; 168:1659-1663; ;Referenceshttp://www.jimmunol.org/content/168/4/1659.full#ref-list-1This article cites 37 articles, 14 of which you can access for free at: Subscriptionshttp://jimmunol.org/subscriptionsInformation about subscribing to The Journal of Immunology is online at: Permissionshttp://www.aai. org/ji/copyright.htmlSubmit copyright permission requests at: Email Alertshttp://jimmunol.org/cgi/alerts/etocReceive free email-alerts when new articles cite this article. Sign up at:
The Impact of Credit Ratings on Corporate Behavior: Evidence from Moody's Adjustments

Abstract Moody's adjusts a firm's reported leverage across several dimensions to determine credit ratings. I find that changes to this adjustment methodology affect firm capital structure and investment decisions. In particular, in 2006, Moody's made several changes to its adjustment methodologies, which are arguably exogenous to changes in firm fundamentals. I show these changes significantly affect adjustments for firms in this year. I then show that these changes to adjustments in 2006 affect capital structure and investment decisions in 2007, especially for those firms with greatest exposure to the methodology changes. These results show that rating agencies have the power to affect corporate decisions.
Anaerobic Digestion of Food Waste with Unconventional Co-Substrates for Stable Biogas Production at High Organic Loading Rates

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is widely considered a more sustainable food waste management method than conventional technologies, such as landfilling and incineration. To improve economic performance while maintaining AD system stability at commercial scale, food waste is often co-digested with animal manure, but there is increasing interest in food waste-only digestion. We investigated the stability of anaerobic digestion with mixed cafeteria food waste (CFW) as the main substrate, combined in a semi-continuous mode with acid whey, waste bread, waste energy drinks, and soiled paper napkins as co-substrates. During digestion of CFW without any co-substrates, the maximum specific methane yield (SMY) was 363 mL gVS−1d−1 at organic loading rate (OLR) of 2.8 gVSL−1d−1, and reactor failure occurred at OLR of 3.5 gVSL−1d−1. Co-substrates of acid whey, waste energy drinks, and waste bread resulted in maximum SMY of 455, 453, and 479 mL gVS−1d−1, respectively, and it was possible to achieve stable digestion at OLR as high as 4.4 gVSL−1d−1. These results offer a potential approach to high organic loading rate digestion of food waste without using animal manure. Process optimization for the use of unconventional co-substrates may help enable deployment of anaerobic digesters for food waste management in urban and institutional applications and enable increased diversion of food waste from landfills in heavily populated regions.
Context Not Candidate Sex: A Case Study of Female Vote Choice for Mayor

It is expected that women who run for office will receive significantly more support from women relative to male voters. However, evidence for this gender affinity has been mixed. In fact, recent experimental studies, and elections, have not found it to exist for female candidates. To test the presence of gender affinity, we examine the case where voters have the opportunity to elect the first female mayor in a major US city. Using exit poll data, we find that women (and men) who cited gender as an important quality in choosing a candidate were significantly more likely to support the female candidate, but only a small portion of voters felt gender was the most important candidate quality. For the majority of women, we find that there were confounding factors, such as uncertainty of the female candidate’s leadership skills and issue positions, which prevented her from gaining the majority she needed to win.
Cyber defense in breadth: Modeling and analysis of integrated defense systems

Cybersecurity is one of most critical concerns for any organization, as frequency and severity of cyber attacks constantly increase, resulting in loss of vital assets and/or services. To preserve key security goals such as confidentiality, integrity, and availability, a variety of defense techniques have been introduced. While intrusion detection system (IDS) has played a key role in cybersecurity for a long time, recently new proactive defense techniques, called intrusion prevention techniques, have emerged, aiming to resolve the known IDS limitations. The intrusion prevention techniques have been introduced to control actions of attackers as a proactive defense that can be deployed independently or combined with other defense techniques that have the purpose of achieving “Defense in Breadth. ” In this work, we develop a probability model using Stochastic Petri Nets that describes an integrated defense system with the defense techniques of both intrusion detection (i.e., IDS) and intrusion prevention (i.e., honeypots and platform migration) and analyze its performance compared to single defense or partially integrated defense approaches. Our result shows that the integrated defense system outperforms the compared approaches by minimizing attack success while maximizing system lifetime (i.e., mean time to security failure). Further, we investigate the effect of the interplay between different defense techniques in terms of the defense cost and attack cost.
Effects of the ECB's Unconventional Monetary Policy on Real and Financial Wealth

We assess the impact of the ECB's unconventional monetary policy (UMP) on the wealth distribution of households in ten euro area countries. For this purpose, we estimate the effects of an ECB balance sheet expansion on financial asset and housing prices by means of vector autoregressions. We then use the estimates to carry out micro simulations based on data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). We find that the overall effect of UMP on the net wealth distribution of households differs depending on which wealth inequality indicators we use. There is an inequality-increasing effect for the majority of the countries under review when we use wealth inequality indicators that are sensitive to changes at the tails of the wealth distribution. The effect is more equalizing when we base our assessment on the Gini coefficient. It is also important to note that one-third of the households in our sample does not hold financial or housing wealth and is thus not directly affected by UMP measures via the asset price channel.
Monopsony Power in Higher Education: A Tale of Two Tracks

This paper measures the degree of monopsony power in the US higher-education labor market by using school-specific labor demand instruments to directly estimate the residual labor supply curves facing individual universities. The results indicate that schools have significant monopsony power over tenure-track faculty but face perfectly elastic residual labor supply curves for non-tenure-track faculty. There is some evidence for three sources of monopsony power often discussed in the literature—employer concentration, search frictions/job-switching costs, and differentiated jobs. The results also suggest that monopsony over tenure-track faculty may have contributed to the trend toward hiring more non-tenure-track faculty.
Temptation and commitment: understanding the demand for illiquidity

The vast majority of household wealth in the U.S. is held in illiquid assets, primarily housing, making households vulnerable to unexpected income shocks. To rationalize this preference for illiquidity, we build a life-cycle model where households are tempted to consume their liquid wealth but can use illiquid housing as a savings commitment device. The importance of temptation and commitment is identi? ed using data on consumption, liquid assets, and housing wealth over the life-cycle. Our model matches observed portfolio choices and gives rise to a high demand for illiquid housing partially driven by the need for commitment. Preference for illiquidity has important implications for the consumption response to unexpected income shocks. Our model is able to replicate the recent empirical evidence that MPCs remain high in response to large shocks, a ? nding that cannot be explained by current heterogeneous agent models, but that has great signi? cance for ? scal stimulus targeting.
Wind Power on the Brazilian Northeast Coast, from the Whiff of Hope to Turbulent Convergence: The Case of the Galinhos Wind Farms

The convergent narrative which proposes an energy transition, aiming to replace fossil fuels with renewable energies, has in wind power technology a viable option that can consolidate this view. Brazil produced 14.8 GW of wind powered energy in 2019, 85.7% of this total in the Northeastern region. Social and environmental fragilities of local communities, overlooked an exclusionary planning, have led to opposition movements against wind farm implementation. This study aims to assess how the arrival of wind power dialogues with the demands of the communities living in the projects’ vicinities, as well as repercussions on institutional, socio-economic and environmental developments. A case study was conducted with regard to the Galinhos’ community reaction to the arrival of wind power. First, public domain narratives were evaluated, in order to ascertain the different perceptions from the social actors involved in the process. Next, the community’s vision was assessed regarding expectations and fears, created by the existence of the wind farm, before and after its implementation. The perception was that the wind farm did not change the population’s socioeconomic conditions and environmental issues require appraisals by the accountable bodies. In this scenario, the materiality of the narrative that justifies wind farm expansion in the Brazilian northeast was assessed.
Peer-to-Peer Lending, Joint Liability and Financial Inclusion with Altruistic Investors

Peer-to-peer lending platforms are increasingly important alternatives to traditional forms of credit intermediation. These platforms attract projects that appeal to socially motivated investors. There are high hopes that these novel forms of credit intermediation improve ﬁnancial inclusion and provide better terms for borrowers. To study these hopes, we introduce altruistic investors into a peer-to-peer model of credit intermediation where the terms of the loans are determined through bilateral bargaining. We ﬁnd that altruistic investors do not improve ﬁnancial inclusion in the sense that all projects that are ﬁnanced by altruistic investors are also ﬁnanced by rational investors. Altruistic investors oﬀer, however, better borrowing conditions in the sense that the borrowing rates with altruistic investors are always lower in comparison to the ones obtained with rational investors. Furthermore, investors with strong altruistic preferences are willing to ﬁnance projects which generate an expected ﬁnancial loss. We also introduce joint liability contracts and we ﬁnd that they increase borrowing rates and have no eﬀects on the surpluses of borrowers and investors. Finally, for a certain range of parameters the model’s allocation is observationally equivalent to a model with rational investors that have low bargaining power. Outside of this range, the model generates equilibrium allocations that are not incentive feasible in a model with rational investors which is interesting from the point of view of pure bargaining theory.