Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social responsibility of countries and their international trade: A gravitational approach

This article presents an econometric study based on a gravitational model estimation of the link between the prevailing social conditions in a country and its exports. It is based on an original indicator of social conditions: the Responsible Competitiveness Index (RCI) launched in 2007 by AccountAbility, the organisation that introduced the international AA1000 Standard. The regressions initially show a positive connection between the social responsibility of the countries and their exports. It is not a linear connection but shows a bell-shaped curve stronger in countries with lower levels of social responsibility (Southern countries): it can be negative in countries with high levels of social responsibility (Northern countries).
Ownership Structure, Technological Endowment and Competitive Advantage: Do Democracy and Business Fit?

The current study provides a model that aims to explain the origin of the competitive advantage of organizations in terms of the ownership structure. We have also studied the interactions between IT use and ownership structure. To reach these objectives, we have classified the organizations in two groups using the cooperative character criterion. The results show that cooperative firms achieve a superior competitive advantage regardless of the amount of IT that the firms use. The study is focused on the Spanish Pharmaceutical Distribution Industry.
Casual Employment in Australia and Temporary Employment in Europe: Developing a Cross-National Comparison

Labour market analysis conventionally distinguishes amongst employees according to whether their contract of employment is ‘permanent’ or ‘temporary’. The permanent contract of employment, best understood as a contract for an indefinite term, is the central form. It has served as the crucial pivot in the development of ‘industrial citizenship’ during much of the twentieth century. Most advanced capitalist societies, apart from isolated exceptions such as the United States, have followed a parallel historical course, whereby permanent employment – in particular in its full-time form – was installed both as the dominant form of employment and as the standard entry-point for access to a comprehensive set of industrial rights and benefits, including minimum wages and standardised working-time arrangements (Streeck 1992).
The examination on the drivers for green purchasing adoption among EMS 14001 certified companies in Malaysia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of four drivers, namely regulations (RG), customer pressures (CP), social responsibility (SR), and expected business benefits (EBB) on green purchasing (GP) in the Malaysian manufacturing sector.Design/methodology/approach – The Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers Directory 2007 and SIRIM organization, Malaysia, are the two sources provided the population units of 569, International Organization for Standardization 14001 certified manufacturing firms in Malaysia. Out of 569 firms, 132 (23.2 percent) positively responded for the mail survey on GP.Findings – The empirical findings of the study suggest that GP is affected by the drivers namely RG, CP, EBB, and firm ownership. The results also suggest that, although Malaysian firms show a high level of SR, it does not constitute a genuine driver for these firms to adopt GP.Research limitations/implications – This paper is considered as one of the first attempts to empirically investigate the drive.
Matrix spectral problem with multiple-order jumps and poles

Abstract The inverse spectral method for a general N × N spectral problem for solving nonlinear evolution equations in one spacial and one temporal dimension is extended to include multi-boundary jumps and high-order poles and their explicit representations. It therefore provides a formalism to generate soliton solutions that correspond to higher-order poles of the spectral data.
Ensemble Properties of High Frequency Data and Intraday Trading Rules

Regarding the intraday sequence of high frequency returns of the S&P index as daily realizations of a given stochastic process, we first demonstrate that the scaling properties of the aggregated return distribution can be employed to define a martingale stochastic model which consistently replicates conditioned expectations of the S&P 500 high frequency data in the morning of each trading day. Then, a more general formulation of the above scaling properties allows to extend the model to the afternoon trading session. We finally outline an application in which conditioned forecasting is used to implement a trend-following trading strategy capable of exploiting linear correlations present in the S&P dataset and absent in the model. Trading signals are model-based and not derived from chartist criteria. In-sample and out-of-sample tests indicate that the model-based trading strategy performs better than a benchmark one established on an asymmetric GARCH process, and show the existence of small arbitrage opportunities. We remark that in the absence of linear correlations the trading profit would vanish and discuss why the trading strategy is potentially interesting to hedge volatility risk for S&P index-based products.
All in the Family? An Exploratory Study of Family Member Advisors and Firm Performance

This exploratory study investigates the relationship between family members serving in an advising capacity and family firm performance. Integrating the stewardship and agency perspectives, we predict an inverted U-shaped relationship between the number of family advisors and family firm performance. We argue that the generation in control moderates this relationship such that family member advisors have a positive relationship with performance in first-generation family firms and an inverted U-shaped relationship with performance in later-generation family firms. Our empirical analysis on a sample of 128 Swedish family firms confirms our hypotheses. In the concluding section, we discuss results, contributions and future research directions.
Classification of Depressive Illness

conditioning techniques are of the disease-attacking sort, and should be as specffic as possible, while all relationship therapies, from psycho-analysis onwards, are non-specific. 5. Prognosis. It is within the proper exercise of the doctor's authority to decide how far the sufferer's environment (as contrasted with his disorder) affects the prognosis. Environmental stress, whether social or other, affects prognosis whenever specific treatments for disease are less than ioo per cent successful. In psychiatry this means almost always. These comments should suffice to show that the kind of depersonalized model described by these authors cannot be an exclusive source of the doctor's authority. Medicine may be, as they say (p. 955) a â€ ̃¿ dirty, rough business', but it is still, at least on this side of the Atlantic, concerned with real human beings as well as models.
BRICOLAGE AND GROWTH STRATEGIES: EFFECTS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF PALESTINIAN WOMEN-LED FIRMS

This study explores the relationships between bricolage, firm performance and growth opportunities in contexts characterized by extreme resource scarcity. Using a sample of 160 Palestinian female entrepreneurs as representative of entrepreneurs acting in extremely resource-deprived environments, we find that bricolage has a positive influence on firm performance. Further, as predicted in the hypotheses, the role of bricolage differs depending on the type of strategy the firm develops. When firms seek to introduce new products/services or modifications in their current products/services, a high level of bricolage hinders performance. Conversely, when firms seek to expand by introducing their current products/services in new markets and opening new locations, bricolage enhances performance. This study offers a more nuanced understanding than previous research of the role of bricolage in contexts of extreme resource constraints.
Growth and development of collagen fibrils in immature tissues from rat and sheep

The collagen fibril diameter distribution of four immature tissues from both rat and sheep have been determined from transverse sections observed in the transmission electron microscope. In many instances before birth, the form of the distribution for the tissues is both unimodal and sharp and the mean diameters of the distributions lie close to a multiple of 80 Å. For some tissues, the collagen fibril diameter distributions may be resolved into a number of components, each of which represents a population of fibrils with a diameter close to a multiple of 80 Å (8 nm). These data confirm and extend previous observations by the authors that small collagen fibrils all have diameters that are multiples of about 80 Å and that the fibril growth occurs by the accretion of 80 Å units. The form of the collagen fibril diameter distribution at birth is broad for the sheep tissues but narrow for the rat tissues, thus confirming that the range of fibril diameters at this stage of life reflects the differing degree of development of precocious and altricious animals.
The influence of dividend yield and dividend stability on share returns : implications for dividend policy formulation

The relevance of the dividend decision has been a contentious issue in corporate finance research, partly due to contradictory views reported in existing literature. When faced with the dividend decision, management should understand its impact on shareholder value maximisation. This paper investigates the influence of the dividend decision on share returns for a sample of firms listed on the JSE from 1990 to 2010. Firms are allocated to portfolios based on dividend yield and dividend stability, and risk-adjusted abnormal returns for these portfolios are estimated. Results indicate that share returns were influenced not only by dividend payments levels, but also by the stability of these payments over time. The nature of a firm’s dividend decision could therefore have an effect on its share return. Although these results contribute to understanding the dividend characteristics that are relevant to investors, future research should investigate different types of dividend policies in order to assess specific investor preferences.
Changes in precipitation frequency and intensity in the vicinity of Taiwan: typhoon versus non-typhoon events

The hourly rainfall at 21 ground stations in Taiwan is used to investigate changes in the frequency, intensity, and duration of rainfall, which can be divided into typhoon and non-typhoon rainfall, in the period of 1970–2010. As a whole, the frequency of rainfall shows a decreasing trend for lighter rain and an increasing trend for heavier rain. Also, the typhoon rainfall shows a significant increase for all intensities, while the non-typhoon rainfall exhibits a general trend of decreasing, particularly for lighter rain. In rainfall intensity, both typhoon and non-typhoon rainfall extremes become more intense, with an increased rate much greater than the Clausius–Clapeyron thermal scaling. Moreover, rainfall extremes associated with typhoons have tended to affect Taiwan rainfall for longer in recent decades. The more frequent, intense and long-lasting typhoon rainfall is mainly induced by the slower translation speed of the typhoons over the neighborhood of Taiwan, which could be associated with a weakening of steering flow in the western North Pacific and the northern South China Sea.
fMRI evidence for multisensory recruitment associated with rapid eye movements during sleep

We studied the neural correlates of rapid eye movement during sleep (REM) by timing REMs from video recording and using rapid event‐related functional MRI. Consistent with the hypothesis that REMs share the brain systems and mechanisms with waking eye movements and are visually‐targeted saccades, we found REM‐locked activation in the primary visual cortex, thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN), ‘visual claustrum’, retrosplenial cortex (RSC, only on the right hemisphere), fusiform gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex, and the oculomotor circuit that controls awake saccadic eye movements (and subserves awake visuospatial attention). Unexpectedly, robust activation also occurred in non‐visual sensory cortices, motor cortex, language areas, and the ascending reticular activating system, including basal forebrain, the major source of cholinergic input to the entire cortex. REM‐associated activation of these areas, especially non‐visual primary sensory cortices, TRN and claustrum, parallels findings from waking studies on the interactions between multiple sensory data, and their ‘binding’ into a unified percept, suggesting that these mechanisms are also shared in waking and dreaming and that the sharing goes beyond the expected visual scanning mechanisms. Surprisingly, REMs were associated with a decrease in signal in specific periventricular subregions, matching the distribution of the serotonergic supraependymal plexus. REMs might serve as a useful task‐free probe into major brain systems for functional brain imaging. Hum Brain Mapp 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Valuing Beach Width for Recreational Use: Combining Revealed and Stated Preference Data

Abstract In this article we present a travel cost model combining revealed and stated preference data on beach use in Delaware and use it to value changes in beach width. We use an in-person, on-site survey at seven bay beaches in the state. The analysis is in two stages. The first is a model for predicting the number of visitors at each site over a 12-month period based on an on-site count of visitors. The second is a single-site travel cost model that combines actual and contingent trip data. We estimate the loss for narrowing beaches to a quarter current width at about $5.00 per day at the beach and the gain from widening to twice current width at about $2.75 per day at the beach. The current width of the beaches is between 50 and 100 feet. JEL Classification Codes: Q51, Q26
Is the Announced Monetary Union in GCC Countries Feasible? A Multivariate Structural Var Approach

This paper tests the desirability and feasibility of the establishment of a monetary union in GCC countries using a multivariate structural VAR during the period 1980—2006. The paper builds on the earlier work, capitalizing on a methodology that captures supply and demand disturbances impinging on individual economies. Co-movements of shocks across countries are considered a crucial condition towards integration in a common currency area. Shocks are based on the estimation of a structural VAR model that comprises world real output, domestic output, real exchange rates, and the price level. Based on correlations using supply, demand, and nominal shocks, the paper establishes the following results: (i) countries of the region are still far from the necessary conditions to ensure the success of joining a currency union. Nevertheless, for a subset of countries (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar), conditions suggest higher potential to take the lead in endorsing and fostering a common currency zone, (ii) a higher degree of labor mobility, openness, and intra-regional mobility are still desired to accelerate regional integration and ensure a steady path towards the establishment of a currency union.
Valuing the Protection of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Sites

In this paper, a stated value experiment is reported that assesses values held for protecting Aboriginal cultural heritage sites in central Queensland. Choice Modeling, a stated preference non-market valuation technique, was used to estimate non-use values for protecting cultural heritage sites in the context of further water resource allocation and irrigation development. Three population groups were sampled, being an indigenous population, and regional centre and capital city populations. Results show that there are significant differences in values between indigenous and general population groups. The general population groups had negative values for high levels of cultural heritage site protection, but did have positive values for small increases in protection above current levels.
Classical and innovative insulin sensitizing drugs for the prevention and treatment of NAFLD.

BACKGROUND Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), the most common chronic liver disorder worldwide, comprises a spectrum of conditions ranging from simple steatosis to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and cirrhosis. NASH is associated with an increased risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and cardiometabolic disease. Insulin resistance (IR) is the underlying pathogenic mechanism for NAFLD, the presence of which in turn, is a strong predictor for the development of metabolic disorders. Hence, therapy of NAFLD with insulin-sensitizing drugs (ISDs) should ideally improve the key hepatic histological changes (steatosis, inflammation and fibrosis), but should also reduce cardiometabolic and cancer risk. OBJECTIVES In this review, the rationale for the use of ISDs and the evidence for their efficacy are detailed. In particular, the mechanism of action, potential for use, limitations and untoward effects of metformin and thiazolidinediones are systematically reviewed. Further, we discuss novel ISDs that may have potential clinical utility in NAFLD. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION Despite the theoretical prediction that ISDs might have beneficial effects on disease outcomes, evidence that ISDs are able to alter the natural history of NAFLD are presently not available. The exploration of novel strategies exploiting "nonconventional" ISDs is encouraged.
The effects of internal audit role and reporting relationships on investor perceptions of disclosure credibility

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to assess whether internal audit role and reporting relationships affect investor perceptions of disclosure credibility. Design/methodology/approach - The experiment involved a 2 × 2 design with internal audit role and reporting relationship randomly assigned among 84 MBA students serving as proxies for nonprofessional investors. Findings - The results indicate that participants perceived disclosure credibility to be significantly higher when the Chief Audit Executive reported functionally to the audit committee and administratively to the CEO (versus both strategically and administratively to the CFO). The results reveal no significant differences in perceived disclosure credibility from the differing audit roles (i.e. primarily assurance versus primarily consulting). Originality/value - The findings contribute to the internal audit and corporate governance literatures by providing further evidence of the importance of internal audit in investor judgement and decision making.
The influence of distributor support and price adaptation on the export performance of small and medium-sized enterprises

Although a number of studies have examined the antecedents of export performance, little empirical attention has been given to the influence of distribution support and price adaptation on this issue. To address this gap in the literature, this article develops a new model which integrates these two constructs as key variables affecting export performance. The results suggest that support given to the distributor has a strong and positive impact on export performance. In addition, the findings indicate that distribution support plays a mediating role in the model. Contrary to expectations, the results show that price adaptation has no significant impact on export performance. Although in the literature price adaptation and export performance is assumed to have a linear relationship, further analysis shows a non-linear (U-shaped) relationship between these two constructs. The implications of these findings along with the limitations of the study are discussed.
Relationships Among Customer Satisfaction, Delight, and Loyalty in the Hospitality Industry

Customer satisfaction has been a focus of researchers and marketers as an important antecedent of customer loyalty. Some recent studies propose that customer delight possibly produces greater customer loyalty than satisfaction. Loyalty has also become of greater interest to researchers and marketers as a multiphase concept as well as a useful segmentation of customers with accompanying targeted strategies. As one of few empirical studies on customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty, the primary objectives of this research is to understand how customer satisfaction and delight influence loyalty and to understand the multiphase framework of loyalty, including cognitive, affective, and conative loyalties. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on customer satisfaction, delight, and loyalty and provides theoretical and applied suggestions for the hospitality industry.
Defining evolutionary boundaries across parapatric ecomorphs of Black Salamanders (Aneides flavipunctatus) with conservation implications

The accurate delimitation of evolutionary population units represents an important component in phylogeographic and conservation genetic studies. Here, we used a combined population assignment and historical demographic approach to study a complex of ecomorphologically distinctive populations of Black Salamanders (Aneides flavipunctatus) that are parapatrically distributed and meet at a three‐way contact zone in north‐western California. We used mitochondrial tree‐based and multilocus clustering methods to evaluate a priori two‐ (Northern and Southern) and three (Northern, Coast and Inland) population hypotheses derived from previous studies. Mitochondrial results were consistent with the two‐ and three‐population hypotheses, while the nDNA clustering results supported only the two‐population hypothesis. Historical demographic analyses and mtDNA gene divergence estimates revealed that the Northern and Southern populations split during the Pliocene (2–5 Ma). Subdivision of the Southern population into Coast and Inland populations was estimated to be late Pleistocene (0.24 Ma), although our mtDNA results suggested a Pliocene divergence. Effective gene flow estimates (2Nem) suggest that either the two‐ or three‐population hypotheses remain valid. However, our results unexpectedly revealed that the Northern population might instead represent two parapatric populations that separated nearly 4 Ma. These results are surprising because the Pliocene divergence between these ecomorphologically conservative forms is similar or older than for the ecomorphologically divergent Coast and Inland sister populations. We conclude that Black Salamanders in north‐western California belong to at least three or four populations or species, and these all meet criteria for being Evolutionary Significant Units or ‘ESUs’ and therefore warrant conservation consideration.
Growth Effects of Spatial Redistribution Policies

Regional income disparities have increased in many European countries recently, even as national and supra-national policy instruments were created to correct them. To explain these evolutions, we develop a two-region, two-sector model with migration and public investment in infrastructure and education. Accumulation and creation of new ideas and technologies as well as migration are at the core of differential regional growth. In this framework, we assess the effectiveness of structural funds, modeled on the EU policy. In a numerical example calibrated to Portugal, we find that, to diminish the initial gap in income per capita, the backward region needs to receive over 8% of its own GDP in structural funds, while the actual disbursements were around 4%. We also find that maximizing innovation in the backward region conflicts in the short run with the goal of maximizing its income per capita. Moreover, the rich region has an incentive to bias the allocation of structural funds towards human capital formation.