Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global financial cycle and Brazil’s financial integration

ABSTRACT Recent studies have discussed the influence of the global financial cycle on capital flows to emerging and developing countries. This paper evaluates the relationship between the greater degree of financial integration, and macroeconomic performance over the last two decades in Brazil. The literature has highlighted the Brazilian experience as being paradigmatic among emerging countries regarding the relationship between financial integration and regulation of capital flows to deal with boom and bust cycles. Methodologically, we employ a vector autoregressive model with error correction that allows us to evaluate the cointegration between the variables. Our main hypothesis is that a greater degree of financial integration is associated with negative developments in variables such as gross domestic product, country risk, interest rates, and exchange rate volatility. In addition, this study presents a further contribution by observing the existence of the interaction between the consequences of financial integration and the global financial cycle. More specifically, we found that: (i) an increase in the degree of financial integration generates deeper effects in downward periods of the global financial cycle; and (ii) a decline in that cycle generates greater impacts when a higher degree of financial integration is present.
Current and future challenges of the Chinese research system

ABSTRACT This paper assesses the evolution and current situation of the Chinese research system, mainly the academic research system from 1996 to 2017, using trend analysis and the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index. Despite the impressive growth of China’s knowledge capability, as measured by the number of publications in the international indexed literature over the past four decades, the country is still in a catching-up pattern with the world’s most advanced research systems, instead of being a full-fledged scientific superpower. The analysis shows that China’s publication growth has been to some extent inflated, as it was boosted by the inclusion of Chinese language journals in the international indexed literature. Therefore, this growth should be considered in a more moderate light. The competitiveness of China’s disciplinary areas appears somewhat stalled when comparing the 1996–2000 and 2013–2017 periods, during which the same STEM-related disciplinary areas were the most competitive. This finding reveals not only a specialised knowledge structure, typical of catching-up countries, but also underperforming and neglected disciplinary areas in the social sciences, humanities and health sciences from a research funding standpoint. Based on this assessment, it is recommended that policymakers and university administrators change their focus from research quantity to research visibility by allocating funding in a less concentrated way to STEM fields, while promoting collaborative initiatives that can encourage the qualifications of academics and the visibility of the knowledge they produce.
Planning Project Stakeholder Engagement from a Sustainable Development Perspective

Sustainability is one of the most important challenges of our time. As the role that projects play in sustainable development is still developing, the integration of the concepts of sustainability into project management is an important trend in project management today. However, despite the conceptual understanding of this integration, the literature still provides little practical guidance on how to apply sustainability to project management. This article aims to contribute to the integration of sustainable development and project stakeholder management by developing practical tools and frameworks that enable project managers to identify stakeholders, assess stakeholders, and plan stakeholder engagement activities with a consideration of sustainable development. The study takes a pragmatic design science approach in developing these tools and frameworks. The resulting frameworks build upon the concepts of sustainable development and form an elaboration of the documented practices of project stakeholder management.
Towards Comprehensive Parametric Code Generation Targeting Graphics Processing Units in Support of Scientific Computation

The most popular multithreaded languages based on the fork-join concurrency model (CilkPlus, OpenMP) are currently being extended to support other forms of parallelism (vectorization, pipelining and single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD)). In the SIMD case, the objective is to execute the corresponding code on a many-core device, like a GPGPU, for which the CUDA language is a natural choice. Since the programming concepts of CilkPlus and OpenMP are very different from those of CUDA, it is desirable to automatically generate optimized CUDA-like code from CilkPlus or OpenMP. In this thesis, we propose an accelerator model for annotated C/C++ code together with an implementation that allows the automatic generation of CUDA code. One of the key features of this CUDA code generator is that it supports the generation of CUDA kernel code where program parameters (like number of threads per block) and machine parameters (like shared memory size) are treated as unknown symbols. Hence, these parameters need not to be known at codegeneration-time: machine parameters and program parameters can be respectively determined when the generated code is installed on the target machine. In addition, we show how these parametric CUDA programs can be optimized at compiletime in the form of a case discussion, where cases depend on the values of machine parameters (e.g. hardware resource limits) and program parameters (e.g. dimension sizes of threadblocks). This generation of parametric CUDA kernels requires to deal with non-linear polynomial expressions during the dependence analysis and tiling phase of the input code. To achieve these algebraic calculations, we take advantage of techniques from computer algebra, in particular in the RegularChains library of Maple. Various illustrative examples are provided together with performance evaluation. Our preliminary implementation uses LLVM, Maple and PPCG; moreover, it successfully processes a variety of standard test-examples.
Sustainability of Leverage Levels in Response to Shocks in Equity Prices: Islamic Finance as a Socially Responsible Investment

This study looks at how firms react to shocks in equity prices based on a classification which arises from social pressures rather than the financial objective of maximizing shareholders’ wealth. In order to meet the objective of the study, a sample of Malaysian firms from the period of 2003 to 2018 was utilized to evaluate the relationship between market and book debt ratios based on a social distinction. The study is based on the theoretical expectation that managers are inclined to adjust book debt ratios to converge with market debt values which arise from changes in equity values over time. We introduce a unique institutional setting into the relationship which is readily observable in the Malaysian capital market given the existence of Shari’ah and non-Shari’ah compliant company classifications on the stock exchange (Bursa Malaysia), as screened by the Securities Commission. The classification forms the basis for distinguishing Socially Responsible Investment options for investors. The findings reveal the existence of asymmetries in how both categories of firms adjust towards shocks in equity prices. The findings document that both compliant and non-compliant firms decrease book debt ratios in line with increases in firms’ equity values. Compliant firms, on the other hand, are more likely to increase book debt ratios during periods of decreases in equity values. Non-compliant firms do not significantly alter book debt ratios during periods of declining equity prices. The findings indicate that whilst firms tend to decrease debt levels in the presence of future growth potential, the response is asymmetric during periods of suppression of share prices. Thus, the screening of compliant versus non-compliant firms allows investors to distinguish sustainable firms in the long run, which further allows diversification when holding socially responsible investment portfolios. Our conclusions have wide reaching implications on a global scale for the development of sustainable capital markets.
Regulated Price and Demand in China’s IPO Market

Abstract We use simultaneous equations to model the bi-directional causality between IPO initial returns and oversubscription ratios in China. We find that the causality is one-directional from oversubscription ratios to IPO initial returns in the post-reform period (2005–2015), which is consistent with a demand effect. By contrast, a demand effect did not exist in the pre-reform period (1996–2004). Our findings suggest that the 2005 reform of the IPO pricing mechanism has allowed IPO prices to be determined by market forces in China.
The Taxpayer’s Behavior at South – Eastern European Level

Through this article we have identified factors of influence that determine a significant impact in the change of taxpayer behavior in the South East of Europe. In this regard, we considered seven countries for which we selected and centralized data on tax rates, corruption indices, corruption control, government efficiency, economic growth and the underground economy. The tax rate was the dependent variable in the multifactorial model, a model that was applied to each country, and the rest of the variables were dependent variables. As a result, we have been able to see that the rate of taxation is influenced by corruption and how it is perceived, as well as the efficiency of governance, including the capacity to increase domestic product and the underground economy in countries such as Greece, Poland and Bulgaria.
Monetary Policy and Exchange Rate Returns: Time-Varying Risk Regimes

We develop an empirical model of exchange rate returns, applied separately to samples of developed (DM) and developing (EM) economies’ currencies against the dollar. Monetary policy stance of the global central banks, measured via a natural-language-based approach, has a large effect on exchange rate returns over the ensuing year, is closely linked to the VIX, and becomes increasingly important in the post-crisis era. We document an important spillover effect: monetary policy of the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the ECB is as important as Fed policy in forecasting currency returns against the dollar. In the post-crisis era, a one standard deviation increase in dovishness of all four central banks forecasts a 5.8% (4.0%) one-year excess return of DM (EM) currencies. Furthermore, we find that the relation between a DM country’s interest rate differential relative to the dollar (carry) and the future returns from investing in its currency switches sign from the pre- to the post-crisis subperiod, while for EMs the carry variable is never a significant predictor of returns. The high profit from the carry trade for EM currencies reflects persistent country characteristics likely reflective of risk rather than the interest differential per se. While measures of global monetary policy stance forecast exchange rate returns against the dollar, they do not predict exchange rate returns against other base currencies. Results regarding returns from carry, however, are insensitive to the choice of the base currency. We construct a no-arbitrage pricing model which reconciles many of our empirical findings.
Can Corporate Income Tax Cuts Stimulate Innovation?

We hypothesize that corporate income taxes distort firms’ incentives to innovate by reducing their pledgeable income. Using a differences-in-differences methodology, we document that large corporate income tax cuts boost corporate innovation. We find a similar but opposite effect for tax increases. Most of the change in innovation occurs 2 or more years after the tax change, and there’s no effect before the tax change. Exploring the mechanisms, we show that tax cuts have a stronger impact on innovation for firms with weaker governance, greater financial constraints, fewer tangible assets, smaller patent stock, and a greater degree of tax avoidance.
Central Bank Capital as an Instrument of Monetary Policy

We examine the use of central bank capital as an unconventional monetary policy tool. In this setting, a central bank employs digital currency to transfer digital cash to each household, thus supporting consumption directly when needed. The asset side of the central bank’s balance sheet remains unchanged, and the creation of new digital cash is offset by a decrease in central bank capital. The central bank thus incurs an immediate loss but does not take on any additional risks for its future income statements. We address several objections to this policy, paying particular attention to the claim that weakening the financial strength of the central bank endangers long-term price stability. Through a meta-analysis of 176 estimates reported previously in the literature, we find that central bank financial strength has not historically correlated with inflation performance.
BOARD OF DIRECTOR’S GENDER DIVERSITY AND ITS IMPACT ON EARNINGS MANAGEMENT: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS FOR SELECT EUROPEAN FIRMS

From a corporate governance point of view, this paper addresses the question about how board gender diversity influences managerial opportunistic behavior for solving agency conflicts from a sample of European countries. Specifically, we analyzed indexed non-financial companies from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom for the period 2006–2016. Several panel data techniques are used in the empirical analysis to deal with the endogeneity and heterogeneity problems. To the best of our knowledge our research is novel in the literature by providing a multi-country approach in board gender diversity, as well as considering contextual country variables and the role of the regulatory system as determinants of earnings management. Our results confirm the benefits of having a balanced board in terms of gender diversity. An equilibrated board tends to mitigate earnings management practices, reinforcing the value of the laws passed in recent decades in Europe. Our analysis reveals that the regulatory framework regarding board gender diversity established by each country has a determinant role in reaching equality in decision-making positions, as a founding value of the European Union. We provide several policy recommendations from our main findings
The political economy of agricultural and food policies

Food and agriculture have been subject to heavy-handed government interventions throughout much of history and across the globe, both in developing and developed countries.1 Political considerations are crucial to understand these policies since almost all agricultural and food policies have redistributive effects and are therefore subject to lobbying and pressure from interest groups and used by decision-makers to influence society for both economic and political reasons. Some policies, such as import tariffs or export taxes, have clear distributional objectives and reduce total welfare by introducing distortions in the economy. Other policies, such as food standards, land reforms, or public investments in agricultural research, may increase total welfare but at the same time also have distributional effects. These distributional effects will influence the preferences of different interest groups and thus trigger political action. The inherent interlinkage between efficiency and equity issues in policymaking meant that for much of history, economics and politics were closely related disciplines, often written about by the same authors, as reflected in the works of the original architects of the economics discipline—Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, and so on. In the late 19th century the economics discipline started separating itself from the “political economy” framework. The revival (or return) of political economy started in the 1950s and 1960s and was referred to as “neoclassical political economy” or “new political economy,” as economists started using their economic tools to analyze how incentives of political agents and constraints of political institutions influenced political decision-making. The start of this field is often associated with
Shareholder Bargaining Power and the Emergence of Empty Creditors

Credit default swaps (CDSs) can create empty creditors who potentially force borrowers into inefficient bankruptcy but also reduce shareholders' incentives to default strategically. We show theoretically and empirically that the presence and the effects of empty creditors on firm outcomes depend on the distribution of bargaining power among claimholders. Firms are more likely to have empty creditors if these would face powerful shareholders in debt renegotiation. The empirical evidence confirms that more CDS insurance is written on firms with strong shareholders and that CDSs increase the bankruptcy risk of these same firms. The ensuing effect on firm value is negative.
Multinomial Logit Contextual Bandits: Provable Optimality and Practicality

We consider a sequential assortment selection problem where the user choice is given by a multinomial logit (MNL) choice model whose parameters are unknown. In each period, the learning agent observes a d-dimensional contextual information about the user and the N available items, and offers an assortment of size K to the user, and observes the bandit feedback of the item chosen from the assortment. We propose upper confidence bound based algorithms for this MNL contextual bandit. The first algorithm is a simple and practical method that achieves an O(d√T) regret over T rounds. Next, we propose a second algorithm which achieves a O(√dT) regret. This matches the lower bound for the MNL bandit problem, up to logarithmic terms, and improves on the best-known result by a √d factor. To establish this sharper regret bound, we present a non-asymptotic confidence bound for the maximum likelihood estimator of the MNL model that may be of independent interest as its own theoretical contribution. We then revisit the simpler, significantly more practical, first algorithm and show that a simple variant of the algorithm achieves the optimal regret for a broad class of important applications.
Information and Communication Technology Adoption in Micro and Small Firms: Can Internet Access Improve Labour Productivity?

The rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) may increase firms&#8217; productivity with important consequences for job creation and for economic growth. This article contributes to this discussion by analysing the impact of internet adoption on labour productivity and the mechanisms shaping this relationship in Peruvian micro and small manufacturing firms over the period 2011&#8211;2013. The article estimates a reduced form where labour productivity is a function of internet adoption and other explanatory factors. Internet adoption is instrumented using a measure of the availability of financial opportunities for micro and small firms in Peru. Findings indicate that internet adoption: (a) increases firms&#8217; labour productivity; (b) reallocates employment away from temporary administrative workers and non&#8208;remunerated workers and expands employment of permanent production workers; (c) leads to the formalization of labour relationships, to the implementation of new organizational practices and to the improvement of training measures. While changes in employment and formalization of workers are linked to labour productivity gains, increases in training measures and organizational changes do not generate any additional productivity increase. Policies oriented to promote the adoption of ICT in micro and small firms can be beneficial to close the productivity gap with larger firms in Peru. Moreover, policies directed to the formalization of the workforce can provide an extra benefit, i.e. additional labour productivity gains in firms adopting the internet. Finally, policies oriented to the development of digital skills are also important to ease the re&#8208;employment of those workers losing their jobs and the achievement of additional productivity gains that new organizational practices can provide.
Portfolio choice with skewness preference and wealth-dependent risk aversion

This paper studies a dynamic portfolio choice problem for an investor with both wealth-dependent risk aversion and wealth-dependent skewness preferences. In a general economic setting, the solution is characterized in terms of a system of extended Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (EHJB) equations and the solution is given in closed form in some special cases. We demonstrate the effects of higher order risk preferences and state-dependent risk aversion on the optimal asset allocation decisions. We find that wealth-dependent risk aversion facilitates risk taking and the skewness preference leads to a more positively skewed portfolio in certain circumstances.
Antecedents and Outcome of Waqif's Trust in Waqf Institution

This study is undertaken to determine the ability of Waqf institutions toward influencing Waqif’s trust and commitment. The stakeholder trust model for Waqf institution proposed by Hasan & Siraj (2017) was empirically tested with a sample of fifty-four Waqifs of public Waqf institution in Bangladesh. Results from Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using Smart PLS 3.0 provided statistical validity of the model. Among the three components of board attributes, only board integrity has a statistically non-significant impact on Waqif’s Trust. While board opportunism negatively affects trust, communication and accountability are found to have a positive association with Waqif’s trust. Trust is also found to have a positive impact on commitment. The established model does not consider social, economic and psychological dimensions that might determine Waqif’s trust and commitment toward public Waqf institutions. Results provided by the study will allow policy makers to focus on key issues that facilitate in developing trust and commitment between Waqif and Waqf institution. This study is the first to empirically test the commitment-trust theory in the context of Waqf operating in a South-East Asian country using Structural Equation Modelling technique.