Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consequences of Government Provision and Regulation of Health Insurance

The first two chapters of this dissertation concern the effect of public catastrophic insurance programs. In the first chapter, I show how these programs, which only protect against large health shocks, induce advantageous selection in private insurance. I use data on older Americans with Medicare insurance from the Health and Retirement Study to test if individuals with supplemental private health insurance are systematically lower-risk in states with public catastrophic insurance programs. I find that these programs decrease the average health risk for the privately insured by $700 and that a one standard deviation increase in an individual’s health risk decreases her probability of having private insurance by 4 percentage points. In the second chapter, I show that these programs reduce the incentive to invest in risk-reducing activities. I find large decreases in self-protection after a program is introduced and that individuals for whom the program is less generous are more likely to engage in self-protection. These effects are stronger for women than for men and apply to a variety of investments in health, including decisions about smoking, obesity, and cancer screening. The third chapter considers a different form of government intervention in insurance markets. In this chapter, I study laws mandating that employer-sponsored health insurance provide coverage for mental illness. I show that industries for which mental health coverage became more generous had larger increases in the average mental distress of their insured workforce. Part of the increase in generosity was due to regulations mandating coverage of mental health benefits. I then show that these regulations affected the behavior of individuals in the labor market—individuals who value more generous mental health benefits and switch jobs work longer hours after these regulations take effect, but individuals who do not value mental health benefits decrease their labor supply. These results are consistent with firms cutting back on their demand for labor due to the cost of the mandate, which leads to lower wages and a decrease in labor supply by individuals who do not value mental health benefits, but an increase in labor supply by individuals who do value mental health benefits highly.
Dietary supplementation of antioxidants improves semen quality of IVF patients in terms of motility, sperm count, and nuclear vacuolization.

BACKGROUND This study aimed to investigate the influence of an oral antioxidative supplementation on sperm quality of in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients, as analyzed by sperm motility according to the WHO criteria and motile sperm organelle morphology examination (MSOME). METHODS Semen samples were collected from 147 patients before undergoing an IVF/intracytoplasmic morphologically-selected sperm injection (IMSI) cycle and 2 - 12 months after an antioxidative supplementation. Semen analysis was evaluated according to WHO and MSOME criteria. Spermatozoa were grouped according to the size of nuclear vacuoles within the sperm's heads. Patients were divided into oligoasthenoteratozoospermic (OAT) and non-OAT men. Between first and second semen analysis, patients were supplemented orally with an antioxidative preparation. RESULTS After the antioxidative therapy we observed a significant reduction in the percentage of immotile sperm cells in the patients. Additionally, the percentage of class I spermatozoa according to MSOME criteria was significantly higher after antioxidative supplementation. In OAT patients the percentage of class I sperm was found to be increased, although not significantly. However, we observed a drastic improvement in sperm motility as well as in total sperm count in this group. CONCLUSION The results demonstrated a considerable improvement in semen quality, notably in OAT patients. Considering the putative relationship between semen quality on the one hand and reactive oxygen species on the other, the observed changes in the sperm parameters indicate that a decline in semen quality, and even subtle morphological changes, might be associated with oxidative stress. Our findings suggest that an antioxidative and micronutrient supplementation has a remarkable benefit for IVF patients having restricted sperm parameters, in particular.
The emergence of cooperation: national epistemic communities and the international evolution of the idea of nuclear arms control

An American epistemic community played a key role in creating the international shared understanding and practice of nuclear arms control. In the absence of nuclear war, leaders' expectations of nuclear war and of its control were affected by causal theories and abstract propositions and models which, given their “scientific” and technical nature, were developed by an epistemic community. This study, which emphasizes the roles played by epistemic communities in policy innovation and in the diffusion of understandings across nations and communities, analyzes how the theoretical and practical ideas of the arms control epistemic community became political expectations, were diffused to the Soviet Union, and were ultimately embodied in the 1972 antiballistic missile (ABM) arms control treaty. In contrast to those studies that have concentrated primarily on the workings of international epistemic communities, this study stresses the notion that domestically developed theoretical expectations, which were worked out by a national group of experts and selected by the American government as the basis for negotiations with the Soviets, became the seed of the ABM regime. Moreover, by suggesting that the arms control epistemic community was really an aggregation of several factions that shared common ground against various intellectual and policy rivals, this study sheds light on the question of how much coherence an epistemic community requires. The political selection of new conceptual understandings, followed by their retention and diffusion at national and international levels, suggests an evolutionary approach at odds with explanations of international change advanced by structural realism and approaches based on it.
Kausalitas Antara Ekspor Dan Pertumbuhan Ekonomi

The debate about the role of exports in the development of economic theory has emerged since the 1950s. In the macroeconomic theory, the relationships between export and economic growth and / or national income is an identity because export is a part of national income, but in development economics, heavily concern over matters wether export make prosperity (wealth) or suffering to a nation. Jung and Marshall (1985) examine four viewpoints characterize equally plausible hypothesis of relationships between export and economic growth: (1) export-led growth hypothesis, (2) internally generated export hypothesis, (3) export-reducing growth hypothesis and (4) growth-reducing export hypothesis. The empirical result using real national income and real export data over 1969–1997 suggests that error correction causality tests show bidirectional pattern, but according to the value of error correction term, adjustment coefficient reaction, Granger-causality test (1969) and final prediction error (FPE) show unidirectional causality from real national income to real export. Thus, over the period 1969-1997, Indonesia supported internally generated export hypothesis.
Financing conservation: some empirical evidence from Florida local governments

Government is the primary financer of conservation services, but conservation financing in government is rarely studied. This study makes two contributions to understanding conservation financing in government. First, it develops a framework to classify and analyse conservation funding. Applying this framework to the data from Florida county governments, this study finds that conservation funding has become more stable and secure. More resources are used for large and long-term capital projects that benefit not only the current generation but also future generations, which reflects the ultimate goal of conservation. Second, this research offers an explanation about why some governments spend more on conservation than others. The results suggest that conservation funding in government is the result of combined forces in environmental pressure of economic activities and budgetary politics. The paper concludes that government should develop a structured conservation funding strategy that includes close monitoring of environmental pressure and proper political and institutional responses to the pressure.
Neutron-Induced Charge Collection Simulation of Bulk FinFET SRAMs Compared With Conventional Planar SRAMs

The relative neutron-induced soft-error rate (SER) of bulk FinFET SRAMs compared to planar SRAMs is estimated based on drain area, collected charge, and critical charge using mixed-mode 3-D TCAD simulations. The critical charges of the bulk FinFET and planar devices are comparable, with identical gate length, gate width, and gate oxide thickness. However, the charges collected by the bulk FinFET drain due to ion strikes are smaller than those by the planar FET drain. Bulk FinFETs are anticipated to exhibit lower SER sensitivity compared to planar FETs.
From Monterrey to Doha: Taxation and Financing for Development

Ill-conceived tax policies cost developing countries vast sums of public revenue, but this issue has received relatively little attention within the Financing for Development (FfD) process of the United Nations. The outcome documents of the FfD conferences in Monterrey (2002) and Doha (2008) largely neglect globalisation-related tax issues such as under-taxation of multinationals and capital flight to tax havens. This article analyses how this topic has been marginalised by powerful interests, ideas and institutional factors, but it also shows how a growing coalition of governments, international organisations and NGOs has recently succeeded in raising the issue much higher up the international agenda.
Risk, Process Maturity, and Project Performance: An Empirical Analysis of US Federal Government Technology Projects

In recent years, there has been increasing pressure on the US federal government to reduce spending and improve the management of its technology projects. Mitigating the adverse impact of risks on the performance of these projects presents a significant challenge for its stakeholders. Our research examines this challenge in two steps. First, we identify and define a set of salient risks in federal technology projects—specifically, complexity risk and contracting risk in the planning process, and execution risk in the execution process. Next, we investigate whether higher levels of process maturity, assessed by the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) framework, mitigate the negative effect of project risks on project performance. The analysis of time‐series data collected from 82 federal technology projects across 519 quarterly time periods indicates that each of the three types of risks has a significant negative effect on project performance. This finding highlights the practical significance of managing these risks in the federal technology project context. Further, we find that increasing levels of process maturity attenuate the negative effect of project risks on the performance of federal technology projects. However, the attenuation effects are consequential only at high levels of project risks; at low levels of project risk, increasing levels of process maturity can adversely affect project performance. To demonstrate the financial implications of increasing process maturity levels in federal technology projects, we examine the magnitude of project cost savings (and overruns) across different levels of CMMI and project risks. In summary, our study contributes to the sparse literature on public sector operations by addressing the understudied context of federal technology projects, and provides a nuanced examination of the implications of process maturity in managing the risk to performance relationship in such projects.
Insider ownership and financial flexibility

This study examines the cash flow sensitivity of external financing (financial flexibility (FF)) of firms from the perspective of the agency by focusing on whether and how insider ownership has a modifying effect on the FF of firms. Given the documented relationship between corporate governance and cost of external financing, insider ownership, an important proxy of corporate governance, should affect FF via the agency cost channel. A review of the US nonfinancial firms from 1992 to 2009 indicates that insider ownership aids in determining the FF of firms. More specifically, results indicate the existence of optimal insider ownership, and any deviation from it causes FF to decrease. In addition, FF is higher when CEO ownership is lower (<0.08%) and this phenomenon is more pronounced for financially unconstrained firms. Furthermore, FF is higher when non-CEO insider ownership is in the middle range (0.12–0.43%) for financially constrained firms, whereas non-CEO insider ownership has minimal impact on FF for unconstrained firms.
Adaptative high-gain extended Kalman filter and applications. (Le filtre de Kalman étendu à grand-gain adaptatif et ses applications)

The work concerns the “observability problem”—the reconstruction of a dynamic process’s full state from a partially measured state— for nonlinear dynamic systems. The Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is a widely-used observer for such nonlinear systems. However it suffers from a lack of theoretical justifications and displays poor performance when the estimated state is far from the real state, e.g. due to large perturbations, a poor initial state estimate, etc. . We propose a solution to these problems, the Adaptive High-Gain (EKF). Observability theory reveals the existence of special representations characterizing nonlinear systems having the observability property. Such representations are called observability normal forms. A EKF variant based on the usage of a single scalar parameter, combined with an observability normal form, leads to an observer, the High-Gain EKF, with improved performance when the estimated state is far from the actual state. Its convergence for any initial estimated state is proven. Unfortunately, and contrary to the EKF, this latter observer is very sensitive to measurement noise. Our observer combines the behaviors of the EKF and of the high-gain EKF. Our aim is to take advantage of both efficiency with respect to noise smoothing and reactivity to large estimation errors. In order to achieve this, the parameter that is the heart of the high-gain technique is made adaptive. Voila, the Adaptive High-Gain EKF. A measure of the quality of the estimation is needed in order to drive the adaptation. We propose such an index and prove the relevance of its usage. We provide a proof of convergence for the resulting observer, and the final algorithm is demonstrated via both simulations and a real-time implementation. Finally, extensions to multiple output and to continuous-discrete systems are given.
The South African fog-water collection experiment: Meteorological features associated with water collection along the eastern escarpment of South Africa

Recent experiments conducted in South America have indicated that fog is a potential source of domestic water in areas where advective clouds frequently move over the coastal mountain ranges. Advective and orographic clouds develop along the eastern escarpment of South Africa's Northern Province when onshore pressure gradients develop to the east of the country. Four synopt ic patterns associated with high-elevation fog are identified. These usually give rise to winds with a south-easterly or north-ea sterly onshore component. The geographic position of sea-surface atmospheric pressure gradients associated with these patterns accompanying fog events is identified using discriminant analysis. Sea-surface atmospheric pressure gradients in the identifi ed areas were found to predict 90% of the fog occurrence at selected test sites. The impact of the magnitude of these pressure gr adients on fog occurrence is also investigated.
Self Employment of Women Preference or Compulsion

After the recent releases of employment and unemployment data by NSSO the hype around self employment seems to have multiplied, though there have been some attempts to uncover details of the self employed. Whether individuals take to self employment as a result of a ‘push’ out of the formal economy, or a due to a ‘pull’ towards more lucrative and advantageous employment opportunities is an intensely debated topic in the labour economics literature. The analysis in the essay reveals that self employment in the post liberalisation period is not one of new productive opportunities, resultant of a high growth economy, but of lack of employment opportunities. The growing social and economic crisis is locking vast sections of women workers into a downward spiral of more labour for less income resulting in an enhancement of gender based inequality in the world of work as a whole.
Understanding the Connections between Large-Scale Assessment and School Improvement Planning.

This study explored how teachers and school administrators connect large-scale assessment results with school improvement planning. Using a semi-structured format, 20 teachers and 17 administrators were interviewed from two school districts in southern Ontario, Canada. The interview protocol contained a range of questions related to teaching and administrative experience, large-scale assessment knowledge, professional development, and instructional planning in response to large-scale assessment results. Analysis of the interviews followed a constant comparison method and suggested few educators, particularly at the secondary level, are using large-scale assessment results in a sophisticated fashion for data-integrated decision-making. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to professional development, capacity building, and instructional leadership.
Procurement strategy role in the performance of public limited and private limited companies

The paper presents a study relating to the strategic decision of make or buy, type of companies incorporated and organisational performance. A study was conducted on manufacturing companies in Malaysia. Convenience sampling was done and 314 companies responded in this study. The findings indicate that there were no significant differences between the performance of companies that 'make' or 'buy'. But when the two groups were further scrutinised, based on the type of company incorporated, the results indicated the companies incorporated as 'public limited company' perform better than the 'private limited company'. However, the combination of type of company incorporated (public limited company – big company, and private limited company – medium size company) with procurement strategy does effects organisational performance. This study found, private limited companies that opted for make strategy perform better than other type of combinations. This means, the type of companies incorporated is an important indicator in determining the most appropriate procurement strategy, which positively related to performance, and could enhance competitiveness of a company in facing today's hyper competitive environments. The findings may add another dimension for consideration in the strategic decision choice process.
Small business performance: business, strategy and owner‐manager characteristics

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the factors that influence small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance and particularly, growth. Design/methodology/approach: This paper utilises an original data set of 360 SMEs employing 5-249 people to run logit regression models of employment growth, turnover growth and profitability. The models include characteristics of the businesses, the owner-managers and their strategies. Findings: The results suggest that size and age of enterprise dominate performance and are more important than strategy and the entrepreneurial characteristics of the owner. Having a business plan was also found to be important. Research limitations/implications: The results contribute to the development of theoretical and knowledge bases, as well as offering results that will be of interest to research and policy communities. The results are limited to a single survey, using cross-sectional data. Practical implications: The findings have a bearing on business growth strategy for policy makers. The results suggest that policy measures that promote the take-up of business plans and are targeted at younger, larger-sized businesses may have the greatest impact in terms of helping to facilitate business growth. Originality/value: A novel feature of the models is the incorporation of entrepreneurial traits and whether there were any collaborative joint venture arrangements.
Capital Controls: Country Experiences with Their Use and Liberalization

This paper examines country experiences with the use and liberalization of capital controls to develop a deeper understanding of the role of capital controls in coping with volatile capital flows, as well as the issues surrounding their liberalization. Detailed analyses of country cases aim to shed light on the motivations to limit capital flows; the role the controls may have played in coping with particular situations, including in financial crises and in limiting short-term inflows; the nature and design of the controls; and their effectivenes and potential costs. The paper also examines the link between prudential policies and capital controls and illstrates the ways in which better prudential practices and accelerated financial reforms could address the risks in cross-border capital transactions.
Estrogen therapy and variable‐resistance weight training increase bone mineral in surgically menopausal women

This study was undertaken to examine the effect of estrogen replacement therapy alone and estrogen replacement therapy plus variable‐resistance weight training on the bone mineral content of surgically menopausal women. A total of 20 surgically menopausal women were randomized and treated with either 0.625 mg conjugated estrogen daily or the same dose of estrogen plus a closely monitored exercise program involving the use of Nautilus muscle strengthening/endurance equipment. After 1 year's observation, the bone mineral density (BMD) of the spine determined by dual‐photon absorptiometry increased in the exercising subjects by 8.3 ± 5.3% (p = 0.004), 95% confidence limits (CL) 3.9–12.8%; the group with estrogen replacement therapy alone maintained their BMD: 1.5 ± 12.4% (p = 0.36; 95% CL = −6.9–9.8%). The total body BMD of the exercising group increased by 2.1 ± 1.5% (p = 0.003; 95% CL = 0.8–3.3%); the nonexercising women had a nonsignificant 0.6 ± 2.9% change (p = 0.30; 95% CL = −1.4–2.5%). A significant increase of 4.1 ± 4.3% (p = 0.01; 95% CL = 0.8–7.4%) in the radial midshaft BMD of the exercising group was found; the estrogen alone group recorded a nonsignificant change of −0.3 ± 3.1% (p = 0.33; 95% CL = −1.7–2.4%). The results of this study suggest that variable‐resistance training in estrogen‐replete women adds bone to both the axial and appendicular skeleton.
Modern Anti-Capitalistic Ideologies

Ideology is pretty efficient machinery to decrease collective action's costs. People not need to communicate or even to be familiar one another to participate the joint action, to support the policy or resist the same. The chapter studies the impact which new ideologies of the 21st century (feminism, multiculturalism, and so on) have had on those institutions, through which the Western world has become wealthy and free.