Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Intergenerational Transfers and Life Cycle Saving in the Accumulation of Wealth

he purpose of this paper is to review what economists know at present about the following question: How large a portion of the existing wealth is the result of a bequest motive, that is, of accumulation for the specific purpose of leaving bequests? I will also endeavor to clarify why an answer to this question is of interest. In the early Keynesian period when the study of national saving first attracted wide interest, relatively little attention was paid to what led people to save, though it was generally understood that the main systematic reason was to leave bequests. J. M. Keynes, in the famous chapter 9 of the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), had listed seven distinct motives for saving besides the leaving of bequests. But five of these, which include "to increase one's future income," or "to insure one's independence and power," implied that all, or nearly all, the accumulation would finally wind up as bequeathed wealth. This, in turn, meant that most private wealth originated through bequests-that is. it either had been received through bequests or was destined to be bequeathed. And, indeed, how else could society accumulate wealth? However, Keynes (1936, p. 107) also mentioned two further motives: "Precaution," that is, "to build up a reserve against unforeseen contingencies;" and "Foresight," that is, "to provide for an anticipated future relation between the income and the needs of the individual or his family different from that which exists in the present, as, for example, in relation to old age, family education, or the maintenance of dependents. " These motives, in contrast to most of the previous ones, have the
Creating better boards through codification: Possibilities and limitations in UK corporate governance, 1992–2010

Since the beginnings of the global debate over corporate governance in the early 1990s, academics, practitioners and policymakers have focused on changing boards of directors to improve corporate governance. The financial crisis of 2007–09 arose despite two decades of codification of corporation governance, a process that continues in the light of concern about corporate performance and accountability: codes have not eliminated the problems they set out to address. Analysing the three main versions of the UK code of corporate governance, we see a shifting discourse of ‘structures’ in Cadbury to ‘independence’ under the reforms in 2003, and then in the 2010 iteration towards ‘behaviour’, as the code seeks to improve boards as mechanisms of corporate governance. The evolution in the language and recommendations of the code reveals growing understanding both of the practical challenge of board effectiveness and of the limitations to codification.
Adaptive Media Streaming to Mobile Devices: Challenges, Enhancements, and Recommendations

Video streaming is predicted to become the dominating traffic in mobile broadband networks. At the same time, adaptive HTTP streaming is developing into the preferred way of streaming media over the Internet. In this paper, we evaluate how different components of a streaming system can be optimized when serving content to mobile devices in particular. We first analyze the media traffic from a Norwegian network and media provider. Based on our findings, we outline benefits and challenges for HTTP streaming, on the sender and the receiver side, and we investigate how HTTP-based streaming affects server performance. Furthermore, we discuss various aspects of efficient coding of the video segments from both performance and user perception point of view. The final part of the paper studies efficient adaptation and delivery to mobile devices over wireless networks. We experimentally evaluate and improve adaptation strategies, multilink solutions, and bandwidth prediction techniques. Based on the results from our evaluations, we make recommendations for how an adaptive streaming system should handle mobile devices. Small changes, or simple awareness of how users perceive quality, can often have large effects.
Microfoundations of Management: Behavioral Strategies and Levels of Rationality in Organizational Action

Behavioral strategies are a potentially promising microfoundation of management research. Organizational scholars are investigating strategies involving momentum, feedback, inference, and anticipation, and evidence is mounting for each one. These strategies are interesting because they reflect how boundedly rational decision makers reach different levels of collective rationality in organizational action, and they have consequences for organizational learning and adaptation. They also serve as windows into decision-making processes and sources of puzzles that can guide direct investigation of decision-making processes. The combination of evidence, consequentiality, and generative power for future research argues for giving behavioral strategies a role in the microfoundations of management theory.
Towards effective immunotherapy of myeloma: enhanced elimination of myeloma cells by combination of lenalidomide with the human CD38 monoclonal antibody daratumumab

Background In our efforts to develop novel effective treatment regimens for multiple myeloma we evaluated the potential benefits of combining the immunomodulatory drug lenalidomide with daratumumab. Daratumumab is a novel human CD38 monoclonal antibody which kills CD38+ multiple myeloma cells via antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity, complement-dependent cytotoxicity and apoptosis. Design and Methods To explore the effect of lenalidomide combined with daratumumab, we first carried out standard antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity and complement-dependent cytotoxicity assays in which the CD38+ multiple myeloma cell line UM-9 and primary multiple myeloma cells isolated from patients were used as target cells. We also tested the effect of lenalidomide on daratumumab-dependent cell-mediated-cytotoxicity and complement-dependent cytotoxicity of multiple myeloma cells directly in the bone marrow mononuclear cells of multiple myeloma patients. Finally, we determined the daratumumab-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity using peripheral blood mononuclear cells of multiple myeloma patients receiving lenalidomide treatment. Results Daratumumab-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity of purified primary multiple myeloma cells, as well as of the UM-9 cell line, was significantly augmented by lenalidomide pre-treatment of the effector cells derived from peripheral blood mononuclear cells from healthy individuals. More importantly, we demonstrated a clear synergy between lenalidomide and daratumumab-induced antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity directly in the bone marrow mononuclear cells of multiple myeloma patients, indicating that lenalidomide can also potentiate the daratumumab-dependent lysis of myeloma cells by activating the autologous effector cells within the natural environment of malignant cells. Finally, daratumumab-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity was significantly up-regulated in peripheral blood mononuclear cells derived from 3 multiple myeloma patients during lenalidomide treatment. Conclusions Our results indicate that powerful and complementary effects may be achieved by combining lenalidomide and daratumumab in the clinical management of multiple myeloma.
Back to the Future: History and the Diagnosis of Environmental Context

Traditionally, scenario thinking has been a planning tool used for improving foresight by generating alternative stories of future contexts. Such stories should enable organizations to develop better contemporary strategies and policies. However, scenario thinking has been charged with a failure to identify weak signals in contextual environments, thereby placing its strategic reputation in the balance. In this paper, we examine the scenario-building process, expose the weaknesses inherent therein, and suggest remedies for improving the strategic narrative. In particular, we investigate the linkages between scenario thinking into the past—referred to as counterfactual reasoning in psychology—and scenario thinking into the future, and their role in generating and understanding context as an emergent phenomenon. The concept of causal fields is adapted from anthropology as a diagnostic technique for assessing the weak cues to causality that influence the generation of alternative contexts. Its incorporation into the scenario method is proposed as a partial solution to the previous travails of scenario thinking.
Can the Eurozone Countries Still Live Together Happily Ever after?

After the Greek public debt crisis and the bilateral loans to Greece from the other members of the European Monetary Union (EMU), in May 2010 the Ecofin Council launched the European Financial Stabilization Mechanism (EFSM). In June of the same year the EMU countries instituted the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). These two mechanisms, which are charged with providing support to EMU countries in “exceptional difficulty”, received their baptism of fire with Ireland in January 2011 and successfully made their first bond issue on the market.
Toward a Positive Theory of Corporate Financial Policy

This paper offers an alternative theoretical structure to the neoclassical valuation model that has been the cornerstone of theories of finance for a quarter of a century. It begins by outlining the neoclassical model in simple but surprisingly robust terms. More recent extensions and refinements are then discussed. The alternative model, which does not rely on modern financial economic theory but which is consistent with real world empirical behaviour, is developed next. Finally, a new research agenda for finance is proposed.
Consumption of olive oil has opposite effects on plasma total cholesterol and sphingomyelin concentrations in rats

The hypothesis that olive-oil consumption alters plasma sphingomyelin concentrations and hepatic sphingomyelin metabolism was tested. Rats were fed on purified, high-cholesterol diets with either coconut fat or olive-oil (180 g/kg). In accordance with previous work, olive-oil v. coconut-fat consumption significantly elevated hepatic and total plasma cholesterol concentrations. During the course of the experiment, the concentration of plasma sphingomyelin rose in the coconut-fat group and remained constant in the olive-oil group. When compared with the coconut-fat-fed group, the plasma sphingomyelin levels were significantly lower in the olive-oil-fed group after 14 and 21 d of treatment. Dietary olive oil raised the amounts of cholesterol and sphingomyelin in the VLDL density region, and this change was associated with a reduction in the cholesterol and sphingomyelin contents of the LDL and HDL density ranges. Olive-oil consumption reduced the activity of serine palmitoyltransferase, while the activities of phosphatidylcholine:ceramide cholinephosphotransferase and phosphatidylethanolamine:ceramide ethanolaminephosphotransferase were left unchanged. Dietary olive oil also enhanced the activity of acidic sphingomyelinase, but not that of neutral sphingomyelinase. The present data indicate that dietary olive oil v. coconut fat has opposite effects on total plasma cholesterol and sphingomyelin concentrations. The lower plasma sphingomyelin levels observed in olive-oil-fed, as compared with coconut-fat-fed rats, may be explained by a simultaneous elevation and reduction in sphingomyelin catabolism and synthesis respectively, as based on the measured enzyme activities.
A pervasive mechanism for analgesia: Activation of GIRK2 channels

G protein-coupled inwardly rectifying potassium channels (GIRKs) provide a common link between numerous neurotransmitter receptors and the regulation of synaptic transmission. We asked whether GIRKs specify a single behavioral action that is produced by drugs acting on the diverse receptors coupled with GIRKs. By using GIRK2-null mutant mice, we found marked reduction or complete elimination of the antinociceptive (hot plate test) effects of ethanol, oxotremorine, nicotine, baclofen, clonidine, and the cannabinoid receptor agonist WIN 55,212. However, ketamine analgesia remained intact. For most drugs, there was a sex difference in antinociceptive action, and the impact of deletion of the GIRK2 channel was less in female mice. The deletion of the GIRK2 channel blocks the opioid-dependent component of stress-induced analgesia (SIA), whereas nonopioid SIA was not changed. We propose that opioid, α adrenergic, muscarinic cholinergic, γ-aminobutyric acid-B, and cannabinoid receptors are coupled with postsynaptic GIRK2 channels in vivo. Furthermore, this pathway accounts for essentially all of the antinociceptive effects in males, although females appear to recruit additional signal transduction mechanisms for some analgesic drugs.
Ownership, Governance, and Management Issues in Small and Medium-Size Family Businesses: A Comparison of Italy and the United States

This research note reports survey results of 252 Italian family firms based on the MassMutual framework. The objectives of the survey were to analyze the structure and behavior of Italian small and medium-size family firms and compare them with those in the United States. The note focuses on these comparisons with regard to family involvement, ownership and governance structures, top management teams, decision-making processes, strategic goals, and succession perspectives. The paper goes on to explore the implications of survey results for family firms, researchers, and practitioners.
Diabetes Empowerment Process Scale: development and psychometric testing of the Chinese version.

AIM This paper is a report of the development and psychometric testing of the Chinese version of the Diabetes Empowerment Process Scale. BACKGROUND In people living with diabetes, empowerment can improve metabolic and psychosocial outcomes. A scale for measuring empowerment processes can also help healthcare professionals to optimize their empowering actions and would improve their interactions with people living with diabetes. METHOD Based on literature reviews and interviews with people living with diabetes, a 27-item Chinese Diabetes Empowerment Process Scale was developed. Fifteen items were produced after item analysis and content validity testing. To test construct validity, concurrent validity and internal consistency, 211 outpatients living with diabetes completed the Chinese Diabetes Empowerment Process Scale, a Self-care Behaviour Scale and a Diabetes Empowerment Scale. Test-retest reliability was also analysed with 30 patients. The study was conducted in 2008 and 2009 in Taiwan. RESULTS Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a second-order factorial model with four subscales and 15 items best fitted the data. The four subscales were Mutual participation, Raising awareness, Providing necessary information and Open communication. Scores on the Chinese Diabetes Empowerment Process Scale correlated statistically significantly with those on the Self-care Behaviour Scale (r=0.21-0.40; P<0.01) and Diabetes Empowerment Scale (r=0.35-0.65; P<0.01). Reliability was supported by acceptable Cronbach's α (range: 0.73-0.91) and test-retest reliability scores (range: 0.75-0.83). CONCLUSION The Chinese Diabetes Empowerment Process Scale has satisfactory validity and reliability for measuring the empowerment process of health professionals. Further studies are needed to test the applicability of the scale to other populations.
Child-orientated environmental education influences adult knowledge and household behaviour

Environmental education is frequently undertaken as a conservation intervention designed to change the attitudes and behaviour of recipients. Much conservation education is aimed at children, with the rationale that children influence the attitudes of their parents, who will consequently change their behaviour. Empirical evidence to substantiate this suggestion is very limited, however. For the first time, we use a controlled trial to assess the influence of wetland-related environmental education on the knowledge of children and their parents and household behaviour. We demonstrate adults exhibiting greater knowledge of wetlands and improved reported household water management behaviour when their child has received wetland-based education at Seychelles wildlife clubs. We distinguish between ‘folk’ knowledge of wetland environments and knowledge obtained from formal education, with intergenerational transmission of each depending on different factors. Our study provides the first strong support for the suggestion that environmental education can be transferred between generations and indirectly induce targeted behavioural changes.
An Exploratory Study of Family Member Characteristics and Involvement: Effects on Entrepreneurial Behavior in the Family Firm

Family firms are essential for economic growth and development through new business startups and growth of existing family firms. Entrepreneurial behavior by the CEO is essential for such growth to occur. Entrepreneurial behavior can be influenced by inherent characteristics of the CEO, such as age and tenure, as well as by the degree of family influence in the firm, as indicated by the number of generations involved in the business. We assess the empirical relationships of these variables to both entrepreneurial behavior and subsequent firm growth.
The Intertemporal Consequences of Unauthorized Reproduction of Intellectual Property1

In an intertemporal framework, the harm to firms from unauthorized reproduction of their products may be significantly greater than that predicted by most static models; copying by some consumers reduces the appropriable surplus from all consumers—including those consumers lacking any propensity to copy. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the commitment value of copies may also imply that profits are higher with copying than without copying. It is therefore suggested that firms may prefer differential copyright enforcement and that the commitment value of copies may offer a strategic explanation for free giveaways of abridged versions of intellectual property and vertical product differentiation more generally.
The extent of financial disclosure and its determinants in an emerging capital market: the case of Egypt

This paper uses panel data analysis to investigate the extent and determinants of disclosure levels of non-financial companies quoted on the Egyptian Stock Exchange. It distinguishes between private sector companies and public business sector companies in terms of company characteristics and disclosure practice. Results show gradual increases in disclosure levels, with a high compliance for mandatory disclosure, although the voluntary disclosure level was rather limited. Public business sector companies appear generally to disclose less information than private sector companies. Furthermore, more profitable companies disclose more information than less profitable ones. Results for firm size, gearing and stock activity are mixed.
Qualitative Assessment of Rivalry and Conference Realignment in Intercollegiate Athletics

Conference realignment has fundamentally impacted the landscape of intercollegiate athletics in a myriad of ways, one of which is the competitive relationships schools share with each other. The loss of traditional rivals has left many teams, schools, and fan bases the task of finding new teams to fill the void (Maisel, 2011; Thorburn, 2010; Ubben, 2011). The current study utilized various individual and group theories to qualitatively investigate fan reactions to their favorite teams moving to a conference separate from their traditional rivals. In particular, participants were asked to describe their initial and lasting impressions of their favorite teams no longer playing their traditional rivals, their perceptions of conference realignment in general, and to describe the ways conference realignment has and will impact their favorite and traditional rival teams. Through interviews with sixteen fans of intercollegiate teams impacted by conference realignment, fundamental need for rivalry was identified as the core category, along with three supporting categories; derogation of the rival, life cycle of the rivalry, and replacing the rivalry. The current study can help academics and practitioners understand how fans replace a traditional rival that is lost as a consequence of conference realignment. Areas for future research are also discussed.
Does It Pay to Be Green? Financial Benefits of Environmental Labeling among Chinese Firms, 2000–2005

ABSTRACT Drawing on economic, sociological, and strategic perspectives, we use data of a large sample of 936 Chinese manufacturing firms in the period from 2000 to 2005 to examine how environmental labeling may affect a firm's financial performance. We argue that reducing information asymmetry, increasing legitimacy, and differentiating strategically through environmental labeling may prompt customers to patronize the firm, thereby enhancing firm performance. However, not all firms benefit equally; environmental labeling conveys fewer benefits for larger firms and for firms listed in a stock market, because they are less threatened by information asymmetry or insufficient organizational legitimacy. Our findings suggest that environmental labeling has generally limited influence on financial performance, but for small and unlisted firms, environmental labeling increases sales.
Corporate Governance and Chief Executive Officer Dismissal Following Poor Performance: Australian Evidence

This paper investigates the association between corporate performance and the probability of chief executive officer (CEO) dismissal for large corporations in Australia. Consistent with prior US and UK studies, corporate performance is negatively related to the probability of CEO dismissal, using both accounting and market-based performance measures. This paper also investigates whether key corporate governance characteristics affect the likelihood of CEO dismissal, by examining their effect on the strength of the negative association between corporate performance and CEO dismissal. The only significant variable is size of the board. Although its effect is opposite to that hypothesized, this paper provides a plausible explanation. Overall, the results are consistent with shareholder wealth considerations dominating board behaviour in Australia.
Greek Pregnant Women Demonstrate Inadequate Micronutrient Intake Despite Supplement Use

ABSTRACT Background/Aim: Maternal diet is important in the outcome of pregnancy and the health of the children. The present cross-sectional study aimed to assess the use of dietary supplements during pregnancy and define the maternal characteristics associated with supplement use. Methods: The diet of 100 childbearing women was recorded for three consecutive days and micronutrient supplementation was added to the dietary intake and the median values were used in the analyses. Results: The majority of the participants (92%) consumed at least one supplement. Supplementation of folic acid (FA) was significantly lower during the third trimester compared to the second (p ≤ .007). Higher intake of Ca and Fe supplements was observed in the second trimester (p ≤ .001). The use of supplements contributed to an attenuated consumption of all reported micronutrients (Mg, Ca, FA, and Fe, p ≤ .001). The principal components analysis revealed that the most important factor contributing to supplementation was primiparity. Conclusions: Overall, a high prevalence of micronutrient supplementation during pregnancy was observed without ensuring adequacy in the micronutrient intake. The increased rates of supplement users might be the result of an act for balancing diet in unplanned pregnancies.