Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DETERMINANTS OF DIVIDEND POLICY : THE CASE OF VIETNAM

There were several researchers who investigated dividend policy in developed countries like the USA (Chang and Rhee, 1990), the UK (Al-Najjar and Hussainey, 2009), Argentina (Bebczuk, 2005), Poland (Kowalewski et al., 2008) or Japan (Ho, 2003) and some authors studying this in developing countries such as Tunisia (Naceur et al., 2006) or Pakistan (Mehar, 2002) with widely different results but no researches have been done in Viet Nam about the determinants of its dividend policy. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of dividend policy in Viet Nam, an emerging stock market that was officially established in July, 2000. The paper identifies whether firms’ characteristics and corporate governance affect their dividend payments. Firms’ characteristics include profitability, firm size, debt level, liquidity, asset structure, industry type, growth opportunities plus business risk; corporate governance comprises management ownership, ownership concentration, board of directors along with audit quality. The author relies on a sample of 116 companies listed on the Hochiminh Stock Exchange (HOSE) and Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) for the year of 2009 in Viet Nam. Being similar to studies in the US, the UK, Argentina, Tunisia and Poland, it is found that, in Vietnam, profitability influences positively and business risk impacts negatively on dividend disbursement. Moreover, there are relationships between industry type as well as audit quality and dividend payments. This research contributes to Vietnamese literature in asserting that profitability is the most important determinant of dividend policy in Vietnam, so external investors can rely on expectations about the profitability of a firm in the future to consider whether they should buy, hold or sell its shares.
THE TWIN DEFICITS HYPOTHESIS ( THE TURKISH CASE )

The objective of this study is to identify historical relationships between trade and budget deficits for Turkey. Specially, the causal ordering of the variables within the linkages is tested in a vector autoregressive model (VAR). In addition, the moving average representation of the VAR is used to generate variance decompositions and impulse response function. The evidence from the eight variable VAR system supports the twin deficit notion that budget deficits influence trade balance. This system employs posterior probability bounds generated to assess significance
3 FISHING , WATER REGULATION , AND COMPETITION : THE PAST , PRESENT , AND FUTURE OF BROOK TROUT IN THE RAPID RIVER

The Rapid River, located in western Maine, has been renowned as a premiere native brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) fishery in the eastern United States since European settlement in the late 1800s. Since this time the Rapid River fishery has declined due to over harvest, heavy fishing pressure, introductions of non-native fish species, and habitat degradation from logging activities, including construction of dams. Currently, the greatest threat to the Rapid River brook trout is speculated to be the introduction of non-indigenous smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu). In addition to these impacts, the Rapid River brook trout population also may be influenced by more regional (e.g. acid rain) and global (e.g. climate change) environmental conditions. Increasing concerns about management and preservation of this brook trout population prompted this review of the life history of the eastern brook trout and the history of the fishery in the Rangeley Lakes region. Knowledge of both the historical and current factors that may limit brook trout is important in informing management decisions for the restoration and recovery of this important native species.
Early Movers Advantage? Evidence from Short Selling During After‐Hours on Earnings Announcement Days

We examine short sellers’ after-hours trading (AHT) following quarterly earnings announcements released outside of the normal trading hours. Our innovation is to use the actual short trades immediately after the announcements. We find that on these earnings announcement days, there is significant shorting activity in AHT relative to shorting activity both during AHT on non-announcements days as well as during regular trading sessions around announcements. Short sellers who trade after-hours on announcement days earn an excess return of 0.45 percent and 0.69 percent during before-market-open (BMO) and after-market-close sessions (AMC), respectively. The magnitude of these profits increases to 0.86 (1.54) percent for BMO (AMC) earnings announcements with negative surprise. We find that the reactive short selling during AHT has information in predicting future returns. Short-sellers’ trades have no predictive power if they wait for the market to open to trade during regular hours. In addition, we find that the weighted price contribution during AHT increases with an increase in after-hours short selling. Overall, our results suggest that short sellers in AHT are informed. Our findings remain robust using alternative holding periods and after controlling for macroeconomic news announcements during BMO sessions.
Stock Price Prediction Using Artificial Neural Network

2 ABSTRACT: A stock market is a public market for the trading of company stock. It is an organized set-up with a regulatory body and the members who trade in shares are registered with the stock market and regulatory body SEBI. Since stock market data are highly time-variant and are normally in a nonlinear pattern, predicting the future price of a stock is highly challenging. Prediction provides knowledgeable information regarding the current status of the stock price movement. Thus this can be utilized in decision making for customers in finalizing whether to buy or sell the particular shares of a given stock. Many researchers have been carried out for predicting stock market price using various data mining techniques. This work aims at using of Artificial Neural Network techniques to predict the stock price of companies listed under LIX15 index of National Stock Exchange (NSE). The past data of the selected stock will be used for building and training the models. The results from the model will be used for comparison with the real data to ascertain the accuracy of the model.
A Secondary English Teacher's Use of New Literacies with Voice and Struggling Writers

Voice is an integral part of writing instruction, and over half of state writing assessments include voice on scoring rubrics; yet, there is a dearth of research on voice and writing instruction with adolescents. Increasingly new literacies and digital tools are being used in the high school English classroom but with relatively little known about how these tools can teach voice during writing instruction. This qualitative single-case study examined how a public school, ninth-grade English teacher used new literacies to develop voice in students’ writing and participants’ perception of these instructional choices. The sample included the teacher and 14 students, and data collection included classroom observations, participant interviews, motivation inventories, reflective logs, state writing scores, students’ writing folders, and wiki documents. An iterative process of inductive and deductive analysis led to key findings about instructional planning, purposeful writing assignments, teacher feedback, and participant response. Findings indicate that further attention is needed with respect to text structure development, writing pedagogy, and voice in writing; teachers’ response to students’ writing in digital environments; and motivation and adolescent writing.
When You Work with a Superman, Will You Also Fly? An Empirical Study of the Impact of Coworkers on Performance

We examine a large operational data set in a casual restaurant setting to study how coworkers’ sales ability level affects other workers’ sales performance. We find that waiters react nonlinearly to their coworkers’ ability. In particular, when coworkers’ overall sales ability is low, increasing this ability may prompt waiters to redouble both upselling and cross-selling efforts. When overall coworkers’ ability is high, however, further increasing their ability may trigger waiters to reduce sales efforts. Our empirical findings imply that, to maximize sales, managers should mix waiters with heterogeneous ability levels during the same shift. Through a counterfactual analysis, we find that considering the inverted U-shaped peer effects when optimizing current waiters’ schedules without changing their utilization may increase total sales by approximately 2.48% at no extra cost. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management.
Theorizing E-Commerce Business Models: On the Impact of Partially and Fully Supported Transaction Phases on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Although considerable research has been conducted on the definition and classification of e-commerce business models, little research has integrated the support and impact of distinct transaction phases within e-commerce business models. Indeed, any channel design decisions depend on the arrangement of the three transaction phases, viz. information phase, agreement phase and fulfilment phase. Whereas in literature, a complete support of transaction phases is implicitly assumed, in practice, e-commerce firms exist that consciously do not support all three transaction phases through the online channel. In cases for which only certain phases are supported in one channel, the customer is required to switch to another channel to complete the transaction. To gain an initial understanding of the relevance of transaction phases, we examine the influence of transaction phase support in one channel on satisfaction and reuse intention of an e-commerce website under consideration of users’ prior experiences. We conduct a laboratory experiment involving two e-commerce business models that differ only in the number of supported transaction phases via the online channel. Empirical data was analysed using a Bayesian network approach. Our analysis indicates the types of users who value partial support compared to those users who prefer full support of transaction phases. The results will assist firms in meeting future challenges regarding user engagement and attraction to their online stores.
A biologically inspired model of decision making controlled by random neural activity.

This work describes research in detailed neural modelling of decision making. Although the study of formal models and of the psychology of decision making has a long history, only relatively recently has it been possible to explore its neural basis. Our models and simulations are based on a simple benchmark visual decision task. This is a typical task that has been used for decades in neurological studies in which a primate has to express with an eye movement a decision based on simple visual stimuli called kinematograms, whilst its neural activity is recorded. This experimental paradigm has enabled the discovery of neural pathways and patterns of activity involved in decision making. However, the neural mechanisms generating these features are still a subject of intensive investigation. In this thesis, after reviewing the experimental background, we give an overview of current neural modelling of decision making. We then propose a more detailed and biologically inspired neural network model that generates such behaviour, from stimulus perception to decision making and the eye movement that expresses it. First, we model early visual processing and discrimination of the general direction of movement in the stimulus. This model explains how correlation and inhibitory inputs account for the input variance to integrate and fire neurons and shows that increasing this variance is in fact beneficial to the discrimination accuracy of the neuron. Then we present a model for decision making based on accumulation of evidence and neural competition generated by recurrent excitation and inhibition. Our simulations of this model show that the low level stochastic background activity of the brain can control the speed and accuracy of decision making. The underlying conviction of this work is that random neural activity is fundamental to understanding the dynamics of most stages of any mental activity. Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Sussex
Seeing and Believing: An Analysis of Transparent and Nontransparent Short Sales

We examine the pricing implications of short sales by differentiating between regulated and standardized, ―transparent‖, and unregulated or ―nontransparent‖ shorts, with stock borrowing via centralized versus OTC lending markets. While centralized shorts aid liquidity, OTC shorts demand liquidity but provide information and prevent overvaluation. However, we also find some adverse effects of short selling in the extremes. Stocks with either transparent and/or nontransparent shorting exhibit higher return volatility, cross correlation, and price delay, stocks with concentrated shorts have the lowest pricing efficiency measures. These results challenge the regulatory view that nontransparent or unregulated shorts are major concern for developed exchanges.
The Labor Market for Directors and Externalities in Corporate Governance: Evidence from the International Labor Market

Using data on over 39,000 outside directors from 38 countries, we investigate whether the labor market offers incentives for independent directors to monitor managers. We provide three novel findings. First, global reputation events have significant labor market consequences to outside directors. Second, investor protection plays an important role in shaping directors’ incentives to build shareholder-friendly reputation. Third, global reputation events impact director pay as well as the average stock market reaction to director appointments. Our findings suggest that the labor market offers limited incentives for independent directors to monitor managers in weak investor protection countries and provide one potential reason why country characteristics are so important to corporate governance.
Value of Control in Family Firms: Evidence from Mergers and Acquisitions

This article studies European acquisitions in the period 1990-2013 to examine the relationship between family ownership and the propensity to undertake diversifying acquisitions. We show that family firms, especially those highly leveraged, tend to make more cross-industry acquisitions as this allows the owners to effectively diversify their wealth without selling their shares. Our results also indicate that family firms that value control high (i.e., family firms with high leverage) appear not to diversify at the detriment of minority shareholders.
A Role Stress Model of the Performance and Satisfaction of Industrial Salespersons

This research proposes an integrative model of the antecedents and consequences of salesforce role stress, with particular emphasis on two outcomes important to sales reps and firms alike: salesforce performance and satisfaction. Drawing on data from 196 sales representatives for five major industrial firms, the linkages in the proposed model are tested with path analysis procedures. The model is sufficiently comprehensive that it provides a basis to replicate and extend, in one study, much of the key research on the sales representative's role environment, especially as it relates to role conflict, role ambiguity, and their relationships with job performance and satisfaction. Implications of this research for sales managers and researchers in the sales area are given.
The Influence of Information Asymmetry on IPO Lock-up Provisions: Evidence from Malaysian Market

Most of major shareholders, known as promoters of the firms, are subject to lock-up ratio for a certain period, following their company’s IPO listing. Interestingly, the lock-up ratio among firms vary, suggesting that it serves as a signalling tool to minimize potential conflicts between insiders and uninformed investors. This article investigates the influence of two main factors, that is, underwriter reputation and market capitalization on lock-up ratios. The regression results show that market capitalization, a proxy for firm size, tends to have a positive impact on lock-up ratio while the effect of underwriters’ reputation is weak. The findings also indicate that large firms with quality underwriters (proxied using the interaction of market capitalization and underwriter reputation) have lower information asymmetry and risk, and, therefore, are associated with higher lock-up ratios.
Accounting Conservatism and Earnings Management in the Banking Industry

Executive summary Previous studies have examined the relation between accounting conservatism and earnings management. Those studies conclude that accounting conservatism reflected in earnings is explained mostly by the accrual component of earnings instead of the cash flow component (Roychowdhury and Watts, 2006 and Pae, 2007). To measure earnings management, the accrual component of earnings is often used. Because of the different nature of accruals at financial firms, in prior research, financial firms were not included into the samples (Pae, 2007, p. 688). This research introduces an approach to examine this relation for banks. The findings indicate that US bank managers use their discretion over loan loss provisions (large accruals for banks) to manage earnings and influence conditional accounting conservatism into the managements’ desired direction.
Corporate governance mechanisms and firm financial performance in Nigeria

Recent global events concerning high-profile corporate failures have put back on the policy agenda and intensified debate on the efficacy of corporate governance mechanisms as a means of increasing firm financial performance. This study attempts to address this question using pooled ordinary least squares regression analysis for a sample of 93 firms quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange for the period 1996–1999. While making a case for a board size of ten and for concentrated as opposed to diffused equity ownership, the results argue for the separation of the posts of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chair. Moreover, although the results find no evidence to support the idea that boards with a higher proportion of outside directors perform better than other firms, there is evidence that firms run by expatriate CEOs tend to achieve higher levels of performance than those run by indigenous CEOs. In the main, the results are consistent with existing literature, but there is need to err on the side of caution in any attempt to generalize the findings as the sample selection was determined by the availability of data rather than by any probability criterion.
Do Surges in International Capital Inflows Influence the Likelihood of Banking Crises? Cross-Country Evidence on Bonanzas in Capital Inflows and Bonanza-Boom-Bust Cycles

This paper asks whether bonanzas (surges) in net capital inflows increase the probability of banking crises and whether this is necessarily through a lending boom mechanism. A fixed effects regression analysis indicates that a baseline bonanza, identified as a surge of one standard deviation from trend, increases the odds of a banking crisis by three times, even in the absence of a lending boom. Thus, a bonanza raises the likelihood of a crisis from an unconditional probability of 4. 4 percent to 12 percent. Larger windfalls of capital (two-s. d. bonanzas) increase the odds of a crisis by eight times. The joint occurrence of a bonanza and a lending boom raises these odds even more. Decomposing flows into FDI, portfolio-equity and debt indicates that bonanzas in all flows increase the probability of crises when the windfall takes place jointly with a lending boom. Thus, windfalls in all types of flows exacerbate the deleterious effects of credit. However, surges in portfolio-equity flows seem to have an independent effect, even in the absence of a lending boom. Furthermore, emerging economies exhibit greater odds of crises after a windfall of capital.
Family Succession and Firm Performance: Evidence from Italian Family Firms

This article contributes to the growing empirical literature on family firms by studying the impact of the founder-chief executive officer (CEO) succession in a sample of Italian firms. We contrast firms that continue to be managed within the family by the heirs to the founders with firms in which the management is passed on to outsiders. Family successions, that is, successions by the founder's heirs, are further analyzed by assessing the impact of the sectoral intensity of competition on the post-succession performance. This analysis also addresses the endogeneity in the timing of the CEO succession by controlling for a pure mean-reversion effect in the firm's performance. We find that the maintenance of management within the family has a negative impact on the firm's performance, and this effect is largely borne by the good performers, especially in the more competitive sectors. These results indicate that there is no inherent superiority of the family-firm structure and emphasize the importance of conducting an analysis of governance in a variety of institutional settings.
JOB SATISFACTION: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Job satisfaction represents one of the most complex areas facing today’s managers when it comes to managing their employees. Many studies have demonstrated an unusually large impact on the job satisfaction on the motivation of workers, while the level of motivation has an impact on productivity, and hence also on performance of business organizations.Unfortunately, in our region, job satisfaction has not still received the proper attention from neither scholars nor managers of various business organizations.
Market Orientation: Antecedents and Consequences

This research addresses three questions: (1) Why are some organizations more market-oriented than others? (2) What effect does a market orientation have on employees and business performance? (3) Does the linkage between a market orientation and business performance depend on the environmental context? The findings from two national samples suggest that a market orientation is related to top management emphasis on the orientation, risk aversion of top managers, interdepartmental conflict and connectedness, centralization, and reward system orientation. Furthermore, the findings suggest that a market orientation is related to overall (judgmental) business performance (but not market share), employees’ organizational commitment, and esprit de corps. Finally, the linkage between a market orientation and performance appears to be robust across environmental contexts that are characterized by varying degrees of market turbulence, competitive intensity, and technological turbulence.
Teaching OOP and COP Technologies via Gaming

This chapter introduces an innovative pedagogical method for teaching object-oriented programming (OOP) and component-oriented programming (COP) via gaming. Going through the evolution of the three-layer gaming framework, we clearly illustrate that gaming covers almost all core features of OOP and COP technologies. Teaching OOP and COP technologies via game development not only engages students’ efforts, but also opens an opportunity for involving students with industry-level projects and enhancing students’ ability to brainstorm and solve real-world problems. Furthermore, gaming may play an important role in developing other applications, especially those that feature visualization and animation.