Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synthesis of consumer switching research: a proposal for comprehensive framework

Consumer switching can have a considerable effect to company performance through customer retention and acquisition. A literature review in this paper explores what has been researched regarding consumer switching behavior, especially in a context of information systems. In the review several theoretical and research practice related problem areas are identified. As a result, a theoretical contribution is made in a form of a proposal for comprehensive framework for switching. The proposed framework is based upon theory of migration (Lee 1966) and push-pull-mooring framework (Bansal et al. 2005; Moon 1995). The purpose of the proposed framework is to fill the identified gaps and serve for the benefit of future sense making, comparison and evaluation of consumer switching research.
Relationship between Inward Investment and Productivity in Oman

This study explores how the peculiarity of economic structure and institutions affect the relationship between inward investment and productivity of domestic firms in Oman. It provides its analysis through an examination of the policy framework that shapes the business environment; affects the quality of institutions and proper implementation of policies targeting inward investment; and influences productivity channels and mechanisms that facilitate the transmission of spillover effects from foreign to domestic enterprises. While international business literature attributes low productivity to low absorptive capacity of local firms, this study stresses the correlation between the quality of institutions and levels of productivity. Empirical evidence collected from 96 survey questionnaires and 42 interviews with government officials and executives confirms the essential role of the state through the creation of specialized institutions and proper implementation of investment policies in facilitating the transmission of productivity spillover effects from foreign to domestic enterprises.
DIVIDEND TAX, DIVIDEND PAYMENTS AND SHARE VALUES: A SOUTH AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

The study investigates the impact of changes in dividend taxes on dividend payment policies and in turn, the impact of dividend payments on share prices. An event study approach is used to analyse the share price movements before, on and after dividend announcement dates. The results for companies of which the dividend paid resulted in an increase in the dividend payout ratio were that share prices responded positively to the announcement on the announcement date and for the few days thereafter. The findings again underline the paradoxical nature of dividends and although a better understanding of the impact of dividends on South African companies was gained, the dividend puzzle remains largely unsolved.
The Brazilian Program for Family Farming Assistance and the Diffusion of Technical Patterns: An Institutional Approach

This article discusses the diffusion process of technical practices in order to understand how PRONAF-Credit (National Program for Family Farming Assistance) impacted the institutionalization of new technological standards in family farms in the region of MaringAi, PR, from 1997 to 2006. We aim to check the institutional assumption that proclaims itself in favor of coercion for institutionalization. Based on a cross-sectional research design with a longitudinal perspective analysis, interviewees were separated into two main groups representing different periods of involvement and types of relationship with the program. These procedures allowed comparing the interpretive schemes of farmers in different situations of dependency with the program. The premise is that dependence, as measured by whether or not the resources are used, implies stronger interpretive schemes in relation to the program and the techniques instructed. Comparison of the data allowed us to observe proximity between interpretive schemes of â€œquasi-experimentalâ€ and â€œcontrolâ€ groups, which reinforces evidence that there was internalization of the standards rather than just formal adoption. However, the results suggest that coercive diffusion in programs that aim to contribute perennially to their audiences should consider cultural background and relational aspects of people's context of reference. These aspects potentially can influence how coercion is interpreted, as they did in this case.
The mating system of polar bears: a genetic approach

Parentage analysis data for 583 individuals genotyped at 27 microsatellite loci were used to study the mating system of polar bears (Ursus maritimus Phipps, 1774) in the Barents Sea area. We discriminated statistically between full and half-siblings identified through only one common parent. We document for the first time multiple paternity in polar bears. We demonstrated for both sexes low fidelity to mating partners over time. We did not detect any significant difference between the age distribution of adult males at capture and the age distribution of males siring cubs. This might indicate that the male’s age and size are less indicative of the reproductive success than previously thought. This is further supported by a rather long mean litter interval of 3.9 years for males siring several litters. The mating system of polar bears in the Barents Sea appears to be promiscuous, usually with a single successful father siring full siblings within a year, but with consecutive litters of a mother being fathe.
Illicit dealings: Fossil fuel subsidy reforms and the role of tax evasion and smuggling

This study develops a computable general equilibrium model for Nigeria to study the impact of fossil fuel subsidy reform - and energy taxes - on key economic parameters, including consumption, income distribution, tax incidence, and fiscal efficiency. The model also examines the role of informality, tax evasion, and fuel smuggling, and shows that these factors can substantially strengthen the argument in favour of subsidy reform. The study shows that redistributing revenues from subsidy reform using uniform cash transfers has a strong progressive (i.e. pro-poor) distributional effect. Moreover, redistributing reform revenues by cutting pre-existing labour taxes not only increases fiscal effciency, but also reduces the welfare losses associated with tax evasion, which in turn reduces the welfare costs of reform by up to 40%. Regardless of the method of revenue redistribution, reducing subsidies diminishes the incentives for fuel smuggling, and hence the welfare losses associated with it.
IMPACT OF PETROLEUM TAX ON ECONOMIC GROWTH IN NIGERIA (1970-2012)

Examining the empirical relationship between Economic growth and petroleum taxation is a fundamental step to understanding the economy on the basis of endogenous growth theory and its applicability to the Nigerian situation. In an attempt to investigate the effect of petroleum taxation on economic growth, a simultaneous equation model was used to establish a relationship between the variables Domestic Consumption and production of crude oil, petroleum taxation and government policies. The result obtained from the analysis revealed that a strong positive relationship exist between domestic consumption, Petroleum profit tax (PPT), government policy and economic growth (GDP). It was found in the study that crude oil production had a negative but significant effect on economic growth and other variables. Based on these findings, policy recommendations were made that part of the revenue accrued to the government purse from the PPT should be directed towards exploration and development of other mineral resources in order to achieve diversification of economy. More so, government policy should create a conducive business environment that will attract foreign investors to the country.
Rethinking Greenwashing: Corporate Discourse, Unethical Practice, and the Unmet Potential of Ethical Consumerism

Utilizing data drawn from online and print advertisements, this research compares the green advertising techniques of companies with well-documented strong and weak social and environmental track records. Notwithstanding more subtle, divergent narratives suggesting that more responsible companies direct the consumer gaze toward more political and systemic issues while their counterparts tend to emphasize relatively low-cost, scientific, and philanthropic efforts, the main findings indicate that all companies employ a very similar grand narrative focused on consumer empowerment regardless of their actual ethical track record. This suggests that most attempts, by consumers and scholars alike, to determine anything meaningful about actual corporate practices via an analysis of environmental advertising, may be largely futile. A dramaturgical framework is employed to argue that the findings are most suitably explained by reframing green advertising as a form of impression management for an audience of ethical consumers. Thus, greenwashing emerges only when such performances are contradicted by a company’s actual environmental track record. The author proposes a more relational definition of greenwashing to reorient the analytical focus on the processes behind, and connections between, the product, the company, and the industry, including their broader cultural context.
Dynamic Trading: Price Inertia and Front-Running

We build a linear-quadratic model to analyze trading in a market with private information and heterogeneous agents. Agents receive private taste/inventory shocks and trade continuously. Agents differ in their need for trade as well as the cost to hold excessive inventory. In equilibrium, trade is gradual. Trading speed depends on the number and market power of participants, and trade among large market participants is slower than that among small ones. Price has momentum due to the actions of large traders: it drifts down if the sellers have greater market power than buyers, and vice versa. The model can also answer welfare questions, for example about the social costs and benefits of market consolidation. It can also be extended to allow private information about common value.
Evaluation: From Precision, Recall and F-Factor to ROC, Informedness, Markedness & Correlation

Commonly used evaluation measures including Recall, Precision, F-Factor and Rand Accuracy are biased and should not be used without clear understanding of the biases, and corresponding identification of chance or bas e case levels of the statistic. Using these measures a sy tem that performs worse in the objective sense of Informedn ess, can appear to perform better under any of these commonly used measures. We discuss several concepts and measures that reflect the probability that prediction is infor med versus chance. Informedness and introduce Markedness as a dual measure for the probability that prediction is marked versus chance. Finally we demonstrate elegant connection s between the concepts of Informedness, Markedness, Correlation and Significance as well as their intuiti ve relationships with Recall and Precision, and outline th extension from the dichotomous case to the general multi-class case.
An Automatic Test of Super Exogeneity

We develop a new automatically-computable test for super exogeneity, using a variant of general-to-specific modeling. Based on the recent developments of impulse saturation applied to marginal models under the null that no impulses matter, we select the significant impulses for testing in the conditional. Since zero-mean changes are relatively undetectable in both VARs and conditional equations, we focus on location shifts, although we also discuss variance changes. The approximate analytical non-centrality of the test is derived for a failure of weak exogeneity when there is a shift in the marginal process. Monte Carlo simulations confirm the empirical accuracy of the nominal significance levels under the null, and show rejections for this failure of super exogeneity. An empirical application to UK M1 delivers new results for this much-studied data set.
Haematological Response of Clarias Gariepinusto Rubber Processing Effluent

Industrialization has led to huge waste generation over the last decades, the absence of adequate facilities for treating such wastes in most developing nations has led to the discharge of effluents into the environment without proper treatment. Toxicological effects of effluents from rubber processing plant (collected during the period of low rivertide i.e. between October 2012 and February 2013) were carried out in this study. Lethal concentration (96-h LC50) was evaluated using 0.25mg/L, 0.30mg/L, 0.35mg/L and 0.40mg/L while sub-lethal effects (42 days) was carried out on haematological parameters like Red Blood Cell (RBC), White Blood Cell (WBC), Haemoglobin (Hb), Packed Cell Volume (PCV), Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV), Mean Corpuscular Haemoglobin (MCH) and Mean Corpuscular Haemoglobin Concentration (MCHC) using 0.064mg/L, 0.048mg/L, 0.032mg/L and 0.016mg/L which are the 20%, 15%, 10% and 5% of the 96-h LC50 value. Mortality increased as the concentrations of the effluent increases and 0.32mg/L was obtained as LC50. In comparison with the control, the mean value obtained for PCV, HB and RBC showed significant differences (P<0.05) most especially at highest concentration while there was no significant difference in all values obtained for WBC, MCV, MCH and MCHC. It was concluded that the rubber processing effluent had some negative effect on the haematology of Clarias gariepinus. Therefore, it is recommended that the effluent should be properly treated before discharge into the environmen
Dynamic Capabilities in Small Service Firms

In constantly shifting service environments, managers face the challenge to renew, modify, and reconfigure their firm’s service offerings to respond effectively to industry turbulence. Dynamic capabilities have been proposed as a primary means by which firms can reconfigure their operational processes to generate these new service offerings. The role of dynamic capabilities in large organizations has been investigated extensively, but their role in small organizations has not yet received much attention. We explore how dynamic capabilities manifest in small service firms and how these firms use IT to achieve these capabilities. Using a multi-site case study in four small service firms, we examine how the four dynamic capabilities identified by Pavlou and El Sawy (2011) — namely, the capabilities of sensing, learning, integrating, and coordinating — are manifested. Our study extends the literature on dynamic capabilities by examining small service providers operating in the defense contracting industry. It explains how these firms can develop dynamic capabilities by reconfiguring operational capabilities when operating in a state of industry turbulence. Our findings also reveal IT as a critical enabler of dynamic capabilities. For managers, our study offers new insights into how they can better understand, assess, and acquire dynamic capabilities in their firms. Dynamic Capabilities in Small Service Firms
University of Groningen Keeping (Future) Rivals Down: Temporal Social Comparison Predicts Coworker Social Undermining via Future Status Threat and Envy Reh,

The extant social undermining literature suggests that employees envy and, consequently, undermine coworkers when they feel that these coworkers are better off and thus pose a threat to their own current status. With the present research, we draw on the sociofunctional approach to emotions to propose that an anticipated future status threat can similarly incline employees to feel envy toward, and subsequently undermine, their coworkers. We argue that employees pay special attention to coworkers’ past development in relation to their own, since faster-rising coworkers may pose a future status threat even if they are still performing worse in absolute terms in the present. With a set of two behavioral experiments (N = 90 and N = 168), we establish that participants react to faster-rising co-workers with social undermining behavior when the climate is competitive (vs. less competitive). We extended these results with a scenario experiment (N = 376) showing that, in these situations, participants extrapolate lower future status than said coworker and thus respond with envy and undermining behavior. A two-wave field study (N = 252) replicated the complete moderated serial mediation model. Our findings help to explain why employees sometimes undermine others who present no immediate threat to their status. As such, we extend theorizing on social undermining and social comparison.
Improved Current Decomposition in Helical Antennas Using the ESPRIT Algorithm

We apply the ESPRIT algorithm to decompose the currents on a helical antenna into difierent traveling wave modes. The strengths, phase velocities and decay constants of the various modes are extracted across frequencies. Their contributions to the antenna performance including gain, polarization and time-domain radiated pulse shape are investigated. Our results show that the T + 0 mode is a dominant contributor to the helix gain at the low end of the frequency band while the T + 1 mode contributes signiflcantly to the gain at higher frequencies. It is also found that the re∞ected current modes from the open end reduce the circular polarization purity of the helix. Lastly, it is observed that the T + 1 and T + 0 modes contribute constructively to a low-dispersion pulse from the antenna.
Spatial variability of soil acidity attributes and liming requirement for conilon coffee

The soils of Espirito Santo State are low natural fertility level, which frequently limit crop yields due to deficiencies of some soil elements, however, it presents high production potential. The purpose of this work was to describe the spatial variability of attributes related to soil acidity (pH, potential acidity, aluminum, calcium, magnesium), organic matter and liming requirement in a conilon coffee plantation (Coffea canephora Pierre) in a typical dystrophic Yellow Latosol (LAd). The study was carried out in a farm area, in the Northern part of the state of Espirito Santo, Brazil. The experimental area was 20 x 61.6 m (1.232 m2) in a regular grid where 60 samples were equally spaced in grids of 5.6 x 5 m, at a soil depth of 0-20 cm. All property semivariograms disclosure were satisfactorily described by spherical model with a moderate and strong spatial structure with ranges of spatial structure varying from 8.0 m to 33.58 m.
Are unequal societies more migratory?

Are unequal societies more migratory? The position of this paper is: not necessarily, it depends on the type of inequality. By proposing horizontal and vertical inequality between and within ethnic groups as separate drivers of migration, we hypothesize that heightened emigration is a consequence of vertical inequality and feelings of individual relative deprivation, whereas people facing horizontal inequality feel rather strongly about collective relative deprivation, making non-migration more likely. Consequently, inequality and relative deprivation can work in both directions, i.e. either as a driver or a barrier of migration, depending on whether social comparisons are made within or between ethnic groups. Analysis of emigrant stocks for a large set of developed and developing countries show that countries with higher levels of horizontal inequality across ethnic groups show a lower emigration propensity whereas vertical within-group inequality seems rather a reason for people moving abroad. The analysis also shows that the relative size of these behavioural responses depends on people’s educational levels which largely reflect their exit opportunities.
Dephosphorylation of myristoylated alanine-rich C kinase substrate accelerates wound-induced migration of SH-SY5Y cells

Inflammation, which is induced after infection of bacteria and tissue injury, is one of the important early stages of wound healing. Bradykinin is increased during acute and chronic inflammation. We previously reported that bradykinin stimulation induces dephosphorylation of myristoylated alanine-rich C kinase substrate (MARCKS) after phosphorylation by ROCK leading neurite outgrowth in neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells. In this report we showed that knock-down of MARCKS by RNAi reduced cell migration. Wild-type MARCKS-overexpressed SH-SY5Y cells migrated faster than the control cells. Unphosphorylatable MARCKS-overexpressed cells notably migrated fast. Moreover, chronic MARCKS dephosphorylation by a ROCK inhibitor HA-1077 promoted the cell migration, on the other hand a PKC inhibitor Ro-31-8220 did not. After wounding, MARCKS was transiently phosphorylated and dephospho-rylated by 20 min. Immunocytochemistry showed that the dephosphorylated MARCKS was localized at neurite tips. These findings suggest that MARCKS dephosphorylation is important in wound-induced migration of SH-SY5Y cells. It indicates the possibility that MARCKS is associated with wound repair after inflammation.
Effect of damped outriggers arrangement on the seismic response of high-rise steel structures

Recently, a novel structural system, which is defined as damped outrigger system, has been proposed to control dynamic vibration of tall buildings. This paper examines seismic performance of tall buildings involving multiple outriggers equipped with viscous dampers. In this respect, a dual structural system (braced moment frame) is selected as a bare structure. In addition, the number and position of outriggers are assumed to be variable along the height of structure. Nonlinear response history analysis (RHA) is performed to evaluate the efficiency of damped-outrigger system under eight scaled ground motions. The results are presented based on the average of all ground motions. The mean inter-story drift ratio and maximum base shear force are compared in order to determine the best arrangement of damped outriggers. Conclusively, based on minimizing base shear force, the optimal location of damped outriggers under dynamic excitation is generally the same as that made for conventional outriggers. According to the inter-story drift ratio parameter, it is recommended to place one of the outriggers at the roof level.
Tracing the Gender Gap in Political Interest Over the Life Span: A Panel Analysis

Despite recent advances in gender equality in political representation and the availability of resources, this article shows that there is a persistent gender gap in declared political interest over the life cycle. Using evidence from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) we track the gender gap through the life span of citizens. At age 15 there is already a substantial gender gap of 20 percentage points in the probability of respondents reporting being politically interested, pointing to gendered socialization processes as the key explanation for such differences. In the following 10 years, as people develop into adults and unravel their political orientations, the extent of the gender gap continues to grow by about 10 additional percentage points. Following these formative years, attitudes crystallize and so does the gender gap, remaining at the same size (around 30 percentage points of difference between women and men) over the life course. These findings suggest that the development of gender roles during early childhood is a crucial phase in the source of the gender gap, deserving further attention from scholars.