Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consumer Skepticism of Advertising Claims: Testing Hypotheses from Economics of Information

Propositions regarding consumers' differential skepticism for search, experience, and credence claims are tested in an experiment using adult consumers. The results provide clear support for Nelson's (1970) hypotheses that consumers are more skeptical of experience than search attribute claims and more skeptical of subjective than of objective claims. No support is found, however, for the Darby and Karni (1973) hypothesis that consumers will be more skeptical of credence than of experience attribute claims or for the hypothesis that consumers will not be less skeptical of experience claims for low-priced goods. Copyright 1990 by the University of Chicago.
New forms of global political economy and ageing societies.

Globalisation changes the way in which societies sustain themselves across generations. The growth of pension fund capitalism has produced a new global political economy. In the 1990s crisis in the provision of public pensions contrasted with the enormous expansion of privately controlled pension funds. These funds have themselves turned to crisis in recent years. There are conflicting class and generational interests in these developments. The tidal wave of international capital reflects a generational feature of society - the demography of the baby-boom generation and its economic opportunities. The subsequent downturn in world stock-markets has exposed the class cleavages in access and control of pension funds. There is a contradiction between, on the one hand, social cohesion and long-term financial security for older people, and on the other, the increasingly global and ‘efficient’ financial markets through which their pension funds are invested. Although some see a potential in the growth of occupational pension funds as a form of workers control, there is a clear alienation of the producers of wealth from the results of their collective efforts. The dominance of pension fund capitalism is a manifestation of the class relationship between North and South. An internationalist perspective helps provide a critical analysis of the limitations of nationalist, commercial and kinship ideologies in providing a secure old age. Unless there are new political economies that result in bonds of mutual responsibility across generations and which are global in scope, the twin goals of sustainable demography and a secure old age will be unachievable.
Household Borrowing Behaviour: Evidence from HILDA

Over the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, household debt grew strongly in response to lower nominal interest rates and innovation in the financial system. Since the mid 2000s, the pace of growth in borrowing has slowed significantly. Using household-level data, this article confirms that this slowing has occurred across all age groups. Following the global downturn and the decline in interest rates over 2008/09, there was also a sharp increase in the number of households reporting that they were ahead of schedule in their home loan repayments or paying off their credit card balance each month.
Cadrisme within a Post-Keynesian Model of Growth and Distribution

The 1990s, especially in the United States, witnessed an unprecedented change in income distribution, with a large redistribution towards rentiers on the one hand, and towards the upper ranks of the managerial bureaucracy on the other hand, as became ever more obvious after the financial scandals affecting large corporations such as Enron and Worldcom. This has also been accompanied by large capital gains that benefited top-file managers as well as shareholders. Ordinary employees and workers, as a counterpart, have seen their real purchasing power stagnate. Despite all this, and in contrast to the predictions of the canonical Kaleckian growth model, many countries achieved respectable growth rates of capital and output. The purpose of the present paper is to explain this paradox and to provide a consistent post-Keynesian model of growth that would model the main features identified above, making a distinction between managerial labour, basically overhead labour, and workers, essentially direct labour – a distinction that was recommended, but never implemented by Kaldor. The model is based on target-return pricing procedures. We then study the implications of cadrisme, a managerial-friendly regime based on large pay packages for the managerial class.
The role of visually rich technology in facilitating children's writing

Abstract A significant sample of children in any class may be categorised as having a preferred visual learning style. The writing outcomes of a case study group of five upper primary children with a strongly preferred visual learning style were examined when the children were encouraged to write with the aid of a computer and a visually rich software medium. A constructionist classroom environment was established in which children were exhorted to dare to experiment, play and problem set, especially when using microworlds and laptop computers. The writing outcomes of this group grew in volume and linguistic complexity when the students were offered the opportunity to use the visual and animation features of the software at the same time as engaging in narrative writing tasks. These outcomes are situated in recent neuro-psychological theory of the role of the right brain hemisphere as a platform for language development and comprehension, and suggest the possible vital place of computers in the full realisation of their potential by children with a visually preferred learning style.
Misperceptions and Monetary Policy in a New-Keynesian Model

This paper studies the consequences for the monetary policy design of information shortages on the part of the private sector. We model these shortages as exogenous shocks to expected output, which through an IS curve, disturb demand and output themselves. We constrain policymakers to follow Taylor-like rules but allow them to optimise coefficients: we find that the presence of misperceptions makes the optimised Taylor rule respond more aggressively to inflation and the output gap. We also find that if the policymaker is uncertain about misperceptions, then it is less costly to assume they are pervasive when they are not than the reverse. In other words, setting policy on the basis that the private sector is subject to misperceptions is a 'robust' policy
The Effects of Leniency on Cartel Pricing

Abstract We analyze how leniency affects cartel pricing in an infinitely repeated oligopoly model where the fine rates are linked to illegal gains and detection probabilities depend on the degree of collusion. A novel aspect of this study is that we focus on the worst possible outcome. We investigate the maximal cartel price, the largest price for which the conditions for sustainability hold. We analyze how the maximal cartel price supported by different cartel strategies adjusts in response to the introduction of (ex-ante and ex-post) leniency programs. We disentangle the effects of traditional antitrust enforcement, leniency, and cartel strategies on the maximal cartel price. Ex-ante leniency cannot reduce the maximal cartel price below the price under antitrust without leniency. On the other hand, for ex-post leniency, improvement is possible and granting full immunity to single-reporting firms achieves the largest reduction in the maximal cartel price. To reduce adverse effects under both leniency programs, fine reductions to multiple-reporting firms should be moderate or absent. Finally, ex-post leniency should provide less generous fine reductions to multiple-reporting firms, which is supported by the current practice in the US and the EU.
Segment Disclosure and Cost of Capital

We investigate whether segment disclosure influences cost of capital. Improved segment reporting is expected to decrease cost of capital by reducing estimation risk. However, in a competitive environment segment disclosure may also generate uncertainties about future prospects and lead to a larger cost of capital. Asset-pricing tests confirm that segment disclosure is a priced risk factor. Also, segment disclosure reduces ex-ante estimates of cost of equity capital and other measures connected to risk. These results suggest a negative relation between segment disclosure and cost of capital. Our results also show that competition reduces, but does not eliminate, the previous relationship.
Friedrich Hayek, Austrian Economist

Friedrich A. Hayek was an Austrian economist. Although this is perhaps not the most controversial claim put forward in the history of economics, it is one that needs to be repeated and revisited from time to time. Over the last twenty to thirty years, there has been an avalanche of scholarly and popular work on Hayek. The scholarly work was likely prompted by his having received the Nobel Prize in 1974 and the subsequent revival of Austrian economics (and the continuing criticisms of, and searches for alternatives to, the mainstream of modern economics). The popular work reflects the revival of classical liberalism more broadly, both in the world of ideas and in the events of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the global marketplace. Hayek’s name is invoked as the source of a great number of economic and political ideas these days, both for the better and the worse. Oftentimes, these treatments, especially but not only the popular ones, misunderstand key Hayekian themes. The main reason they do so is that they forget that the entire edifice of Hayek’s social and political thought is built upon the foundations of the ideas he first engaged as a young man, those of the Austrian school of economics. This argument is made clear in the contrast between two recent books on Hayek’s thought. Alan Ebenstein’s Hayek’s Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek is a companion volume to his Friedrich Hayek: A Biography that appeared a couple of years ago. Ebenstein’s volume is not a critical exploration of Hayek’s thought, but an attempt to delve somewhat more deeply into Hayek’s ideas than he did in the biography, and to draw linkages between Hayek and other major thinkers who either influenced him or with whom his work can be contrasted. The chapter titles thus vary between topics, book titles of Hayek’s, and the names of other major thinkers. In less than 250 pages of text, Ebenstein tries to cover a great deal of intellectual ground.
Structural organization of the pentameric transmembrane alpha‐helices of phospholamban, a cardiac ion channel.

Phospholamban is a 52 amino acid calcium regulatory protein found as pentamers in cardiac SR membranes. The pentamers form through interactions between its transmembrane domains, and are stable in SDS. We have employed a saturation mutagenesis approach to study the detailed interactions between the transmembrane segments, using a chimeric protein construct in which staphylococcal nuclease (a monomeric soluble protein) is fused to the N‐terminus of phospholamban. The chimera forms pentamers observable in SDS‐PAGE, allowing the effects of mutations upon the oligomeric association to be determined by electrophoresis. The disruptive effects of amino acid substitutions in the transmembrane domain were classified as sensitive, moderately sensitive or insensitive. Residues of the same class lined up on faces of a 3.5 amino acids/turn helical projection, allowing the construction of a model of the interacting surfaces in which the helices are associated in a left‐handed pentameric coiled‐coil configuration. Molecular modeling simulations (to be described elsewhere in detail) confirm that the helices readily form a left‐handed coiled‐coil helical bundle and have yielded molecular models for the interacting surfaces, the best of which is identical to that predicted by the mutagenesis. Residues lining the pore show considerable structural sensitivity to mutation, indicating that care must be taken in interpreting the results of mutagenesis studies of channels. The cylindrical ion pore (minimal diameter of 2 A) appears to be defined largely by hydrophobic residues (I40, L43 and I47) with only two mildly polar elements contributed by sulfurs in residues C36 and M50.
Pathways of gallopamil metabolism. Regiochemistry and enantioselectivity of the N-dealkylation processes.

The N-dealkylation pathway for the metabolism of pseudoracemic gallopamil was studied in the presence of rat and human liver microsomes and in vivo in rats and man. Metabolites were characterized by comparison of their GC/MS retention times and fragmentation patterns with those of authentic compounds. In the presence of rat liver microsomes, N-dealkylation accounted for about 90% of the observed oxidative metabolism, affording a 4:1 ratio of norgallopamil (2) and, N-methyl-N-[2-methyl-3-cyano-3-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl)-6-hexyl] amine (3), and about 1% of N-methyl-N-(3,4-dimethoxyphenethyl)amine (4). Secondary amines 2 and 3 arose enantioselectively from S-(-)-gallopamil, the S/R ratios being 1.36 and 1.71, respectively. The alcohols, 3,4-dimethoxyphenylethanol (6) and 2-methyl-3-cyano-3-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl)-6-hexanol (8), were formed from the respective intermediate aldehydes 5 and 7, probably non-enzymatically, under the reductive conditions (NADPH) of the microsomal incubations. Incubation of gallopamil with 9,000g supernatant fraction of rat liver led to carboxylic acid metabolites arising from oxidative metabolism of the aldehydes. 3,4-Dimethoxyphenylacetic acid (12) and 4-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl)-5-methyl-4-cyanohexanoic acid (11) were formed in a 3:5:1 ratio. In the presence of human liver microsomes, formation of 2 also predominated over formation of 3, with alcohols 6 and 8 being produced as well. However, 4 was not observed. Consistently, the N-dealkylation process provided slightly more R than S products with the S/R ratio being 0.7-0.9 for metabolites 2, 3, 6, and 8. The amines formed from N-dealkylation were also observed as urinary metabolites in a human subject after a single oral dose of pseudoracemic gallopamil. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Are Founder Directors Detrimental to New Ventures at Initial Public Offering?

New ventures often form a formal board of directors for the first time at the initial public offering (IPO). The tumult of external changes places a premium on rapid decision making within a resource-constrained venture. According to the social psychological theory, group consensus and decision alternatives serve as two key drivers for making rapid decisions. Therefore, based on signaling theory, the valuation from investors at the IPO depends on the observable signals that can imply the group consensus and decision alternatives in a board. We argue and test the hypothesis that, when group consensus and decision alternative signals are jointly considered, the relationship between the ratio of founders on the board and the IPO price premium will have an inversed U shape. In addition, we analyze how three contextual factors (original chief executive officer [CEO], founders’ ownership, and venture capitalist [VC] on the board) can influence their signal consistency with founder directors on group consensus and decision alternatives, which ultimately changes the pattern of the inverted U shape. Based on a unique sample of 274 Chinese new venture IPOs over the period from 2004 to 2009, our results show that if the firm is managed by a nonoriginal CEO, the relationship between the founder–board ratio and the IPO price premium is an inverse U shape. Furthermore, if a VC sits on the board, the presence of founder directors has a linear positive effect on IPO premium; otherwise, the inverse U-shaped relationship still holds.
Leveraging brand value through corporate responsibility

Measurements of corporate values are associated with a number of challenges. The needs for making measurements relate to making strategic decisions for internal and external stakeholders. Traditionally, these estimates of, for example, brand value, have been expressed purely in terms of financial value aimed at maximising created shareholder value. However, in the last decades, measurements of value based on a triple bottom line has implied additional challenges by taking economic, social and environmental values into account for a wide set of stakeholders with an extended time frame. Various theoretical management schools offer interpretations of how corporate responsibility may be taken into account in brand value measurements, such as institutional theory, for example, focusing on agency perspectives, stakeholders, resources, or network theory providing interpretations of inclusion of corporate responsibility in brand value measurements.
Predictive and prognostic factors for gliomas

Despite recent therapeutic advances, gliomas, in particular the most frequent and malignant glioblastoma, remain devastating tumors and need a better molecular characterization to improve both classification and treatment. Currently, three molecular markers, related to better outcome, are particularly useful and complement the histological classification: the 1p/19q codeletion strongly predicts prolonged response to treatment and prolonged survival in oligodendroglial tumors; the O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase promoter methylation, which is hypothesized to render the cell more vulnerable to alkylants, is associated with a stronger benefit of concomitant chemoradiotherapy in glioblastomas; mutations of the IDH1 (more rarely IDH2) gene affects 40% of gliomas (but 100% of the 1p/19q codeleted gliomas) and is inversely correlated to grade. IDH1 mutation is a strong and independent predictor of survival, whatever grade considered. The consequences of IDH1/IDH2 mutation (that results in a new enzymatic activity transforming alphacetoglutarate into 2-hydroxyglutarate) are currently under investigation. Recently, integrated genomic, transcriptomic and epigenetic studies have unraveled new glioblastoma subgroups that further refines the molecular classification of these tumors. Such an approach should be extended to lower grade gliomas.
The optimal inheritance tax in the presence of investment in education

This paper provides an example aimed at calculating the optimal inheritance tax in a model in which inheritances are used to finance investment in education. Two results are obtained: (1) The optimal inheritance tax schedule includes a threshold, estimated between 2.5 and 5.5 times per-capita GDP. This result holds for a Rawlsian social planner that maximizes the welfare of the poorest individual, who does not leave bequests. (2) Contrary to the result of a 100 % tax on pure accidental bequests, the optimal simulated tax rates are between 28 %, for the case of educational bequests, and 57 %, for the case where educational and accidental bequests interact. This range is in line with existing schedules in developed economies.
Cross-country analysis of efficiency and productivity in the biotech industry: an application of the generalized metafrontier Malmquist productivity index

Th e study investigates the productivity of 356 Biotech enterprises spanning 12 countries worldwide from 2001 to 2007 with a newly developed generalized metafrontier Malmquist productivity index (gMMPI) framework. Th e results su- ggested that the X ineffi ciency is prevalent in the current developmental phase of the Biotech worldwide, while the levels of technology vary substantially across enterprises and geographical regions. Moreover, the gMMPI decomposition manifests that the productivity growth in the Biotech is mainly driven by the effi ciency change, with an annual rate 20.64%. Meanwhi- le, the existing technologies continuously try to catch up with the grand technology, and the potential room for a further technological progress has also been advanced.
The role of work characteristics in enhancing older employees' performance: evidence from a post-Soviet country

This paper showcases the contextual development of age diversity in one post-Soviet country – Lithuania – and explores the theoretical grounding and empirical evidence of the role of work characteristics (work-scheduling autonomy (WSA), decision-making autonomy and social support) in the age–individual performance linkage. The individual performance was conceptualized in terms of task, adaptive and proactive performance. Based on empirical findings from multisource data (non-managerial employees and their direct supervisors), this study contributes to the existing literature by showing that high WSA and social support can buffer the negative age effect on performance and that the age–performance pattern depends on the performance criteria used and is not universal.
The Cities Service Takeover: A Case Study

THIS PAPER examines the stock market response to the events leading to the merger between Cities Service and Occidental Petroleum. These events include: a friendly and a hostile bid for Cities Service by Mesa Petroleum; a friendly and two hostile bids for Mesa Petroleum by Cities Service; a merger agreement between Gulf Oil and Cities Service; Cities Service's repurchase of stock held by Mesa and a standstill agreement between Mesa and Cities; Gulf Oil's termination of its merger agreement with Cities Service; and two friendly bids and one hostile bid by Occidental Petroleum for Cities Service. The effects of mergers, tender offers, targeted repurchases and standstill agreements have been studied extensively. These studies examine the average impact of each event individually by analyzing the average abnormal return for a sample of firms involved. This study complements this literature in two ways. First, it demonstrates the extent to which the empirical results of the prior studies can be used to forecast the market reaction to takeover announcements. Second, while there are many advantages to averaging techniques, the large sample sizes used in prior studies prohibit a detailed examination of the stock market response to the variety of events that precede takeovers. Thus, the prior studies focus on one or two information release dates for one type of event. However, the interaction between events affects the observed stock market response and its interpretation. This detailed examination of the stock price changes associated with the sequence of announcements that preceded the merger between Cities Service and Occidental Petroleum, therefore, complements the existing studies by providing evidence on the predictive ability of the existing empirical evidence and by demonstrating the importance of examining the sequence of events that preceded the merger. The results of this paper are generally consistent with the findings of earlier studies although there are some discrepancies. Shareholders of the target firm, Cities Service, realized an abnormal return of about 12.5 percent which translates into an abnormal equity value change of about $352 million. This result is consistent with the results of Dodd [5] and Asquith [1], although the magnitude of this abnormal return is substantially less than the average abnormal return of 34 percent for target firms reported by Dodd. The abnormal return for the successful bidder, Occidental Petroleum, is virtually zero. This result is consistent with the findings of Asquith, but is inconsistent with Dodd, who reports negative