Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influence of behavioural and organisational characteristics on the success of international strategic alliances

With the current trend toward globalisation and the increasing competitive and technological challenges of today's environment the formation of international strategic alliances has become an important part of many firm's international business strategies. Experience with international strategic alliances has shown that they face a number of problems, which can often result in the termination of the alliance. This study, therefore, aims to assess the impact of both behavioural and organisational characteristics on the success of international strategic alliances. The results show that behavioural characteristics play a more significant role in explaining overall alliance performance compared to organisational characteristics. High levels of commitment, trust, coordination, interdependence and communication are found to be good predictors of international strategic alliance success. Conflict, meanwhile, is found to hamper good performance. By contrast organisational characteristics such as structure and control mechanisms are found not to strongly influence the success of international strategic alliances.
A new method for evaluation of intestinal muscle contraction properties: studies in normal subjects and in patients with systemic sclerosis

Abstract Systemic sclerosis is a connective tissue disease that involves the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Seventy‐five per cent of systemic sclerosis patients experience symptoms arising from oesophagus. The intestine has less frequently been subject for studies than the oesophagus. When the small intestine becomes involved, nausea, vomiting, bloating, diarrhoea and malabsorption may occur. Previous studies have shown decreased and abnormal intestinal motility, dilatation and a stiffer wall. The aim was to study muscle mechanics in systemic sclerosis patients using novel analysis of intestinal muscle contraction force–velocity and power. A volume‐controlled duodenal ramp‐distension protocol was used in nine patients and eight healthy controls. The wall stretch ratio, tension, shortening velocity and muscle power were computed from pressure and cross‐sectional area data recorded by an impedance planimetry system. The tension–stretch ratio relation obtained in patients was shifted to the left, indicating a stiffer wall. The in vivo tension‐shortening velocity relationship was quantified using Hill's equation. The maximum preload tension (tension at zero velocity) was lower in the patients than in the healthy controls (P < 0.001). The muscle power was lowest in the patients. An association was found between the duration of the disease and the maximum stretch ratio (P < 0.05). The study represents the first data with application of in vivo muscle force–velocity relations in patients with gastrointestinal diseases. Systemic sclerosis patients had increased stiffness and impaired muscle dynamics of the duodenum. Decreased muscle function and increased wall stiffness may explain the GI symptoms reported in this patient group.
Non-Audit Services, Audit Firm Tenure and Earnings Management in Malaysia

The main objective of this study is to investigate the association of auditor-provided non-audit services and audit firm tenure with earnings management in Malaysian public listed firms. Two measurements, namely, discretionary current accruals based on the performance-adjusted model developed by Ashbaugh, LaFond and Mayhew (2003) and discretionary total accruals based on the modified Jones model (1991), are employed to estimate the level of earnings management. Our sample consists of 525 companies for financial year 2009. The results suggest that longer audit firm tenure reduces earnings management. However, the magnitude of non-audit fees exacerbates earnings management. Based on the empirical evidence, any attempt to legislate audit firm rotation in Malaysia is unwarranted. Further research is required to move toward a policy resolution on the restriction of non-audit services in Malaysia.
Pro-Poor Programs of Nepal's Community Forestry: Who Benefits?

Nepal’s community forestry is a major program in the country in forestry sector. It generates income of over $10 million annually and also invests part of it in the village for developmental works including pro-poor programs. This paper examines the investment of community forest user group funds in pro-poor programs and also who benefits from it. The paper relies on primary data of 29 community forest user groups of three different mid-hill districts of Nepal. A set of questionnaire was developed and administered to a small group of the executive committee members. The generated income through community forestry is being invested in different development works. The pro-poor programs receive one-third of the annual investment of the community forest user groups which indicates a significant increment in the investment. Although the investment in pro-poor programs has increased significantly poor households are not benefiting from it as expected. Non-poor are benefiting more from flow of loan, one major activity of pro-poor programs, suggesting that pro-poor program is not really propoor. The paper argues that providing in-kind as loan rather than cash would benefit poor more and also concludes that the targeted pro-poor activities clearly need significant refinement and monitoring.
Coming Out in College Residence Halls: Negotiation, Meaning Making, Challenges, Supports.

In this qualitative study, researchers examined the coming out process experienced by 20 gay, lesbian, and bisexual students in the residence halls of a major research institution. The students ranged in age from 18-26 and included 10 men and 10 women. Eighteen were White, one was Asian American, and one was Latino American. Students reported how they disclosed their sexual orientation, factors influencing the process, and reactions to their disclosures. Recommendations for residence hall professionals are provided.
How Did the Financial Crisis Affect Small Business Lending in the U.S.?

I analyze changes in lending by U.S. banks to businesses during 1994-2011. I find that lending to businesses and, in particular, to small businesses, declined precipitously following onset of the financial crisis. I also examine the relative changes in business lending by banks that did, and did not, receive TARP funds from the U.S. Treasury, and find that banks receiving capital injections from the TARP failed to increase their small-business lending; instead, these banks decreased their lending by even more than other banks. Finally, I find a strong and significant positive relation between bank capital adequacy and business lending.
Catering Convertible Design to Hedge Fund Demand

The investor base in the primary convertible bond market experienced a major change towards the end of the 20th century, as convertible bond arbitrageurs entered a market that had been traditionally dominated by long-only investors. We document the impact of this shift in investor type on convertible bond issuer characteristics, design, and pricing. We find that firms taking advantage of the increased demand from convertible bond arbitrageurs were not only financially constrained issuers, but to a larger extent firms with debt capacity available. We also document that the ability of these arbitrageurs to diversify equity risk alters the relationship between convertible bond delta and underpricing. This change allows issuers to accommodate the preferences of hedge funds through a more equity-like bond design, while obtaining better pricing in the process.
Authorities' Beliefs About Foreign Exchange Intervention: Getting Back Under the Hood

This paper presents the results of a survey of monetary authorities with respect to their beliefs about foreign exchange intervention. The survey provides evidence on new intervention issues that would be difficult to investigate otherwise, such as conditional response times, non-foreign exchange factors in intervention and beliefs about profitability. At the same time, the survey provides new evidence on issues that have been investigated with other methods, such as channels of effectiveness, effect on currency components, profitability, and motivations for secrecy. Respondents disagreed with the predominant views on intervention's effect on volatility and common arguments against intervention. The exchange rate regime of a central bank explains its beliefs about several important aspects of intervention, including factors in a successful intervention and the potential profitability of intervention.
LIFE WITHOUT TRUCKS: THE IMPACT OF A TEMPORARY DISRUPTION OF ROAD FREIGHT TRANSPORT ON A NATIONAL ECONOMY

In order to illustrate the dependence of the UK economy on the road freight sector, this paper presents the results of a macro-level assessment of the impact of a catastrophic failure of the UK's road transport system. The likely consequences of a complete cessation of trucking services over the period of a week are explored. Inventory levels, lead times, dependence on road transport and opportunities for substitution in critical sectors are analyzed. Findings suggest that there would be huge economic losses and a rapid deterioration in living conditions if there were a week-long disruption in all truck traffic. Implications of this research are discussed.
Probability CONTROLLED EQUILIBRIUM SELECTION IN STOCHASTICALLY PERTURBED DYNAMICS By

We consider a dynamical system with finitely many equilibria and perturbed by small noise, in addition to being controlled by an ‘expensive’ control. The controlled process is optimal for an ergodic criterion with a running cost that consists of the sum of the control effort and a penalty function on the state space. We study the optimal stationary distribution of the controlled process as the variance of the noise becomes vanishingly small. It is shown that depending on the relative magnitudes of the noise variance and the ‘running cost’ for control, one can identify three regimes, in each of which the optimal control forces the invariant distribution of the process to concentrate near equilibria that can be characterized according to the regime. We also obtain moment bounds for the optimal stationary distribution. Moreover, we show that in the vicinity of the points of concentration the density of optimal stationary distribution approximates the density of a Gaussian, and we explicitly solve for its covariance matrix.
Political Risk and Discount Rates: Evidence from the Croatian Pension System

Many transactions between citizens and government – such as those related to the provision of future pension income – have an important inter-temporal element. In such settings, individuals may discount future cash flows more heavily if their confidence or trust in the government as the counter-party to the transaction is low. In this paper, we examine an economically meaningful choice faced by retirees in response to a Constitutional Court ruling over whether to accept a small, immediate pension payment or a stream of larger, delayed payments. Approximately 70 percent of retirees chose the more immediate payments, despite the fact that the deferred option provided a nominal internal rate-of-return in excess of 26 percent. We first document that these individual decisions are correlated in sensible ways with a wide range of covariates, including education, income, liquidity constraints, and longevity expectations. We then show that, even after controlling for such factors, individual choices are strongly influenced by their views about government policy parameters (e.g., inflation and exchange rate expectations), their overall confidence in government, as well as their views about the importance of receiving “the full amount owed” from the government. These findings indicate that a citizenry’s confidence in government can have important implications for how citizens value future benefit promises. Acknowledgements: We thank Malcolm Baker, Stephen Brown, Joshua Coval, Steve Dimmock, Ravi Jagannathan, Lubos Pastor, and Peter Tufano for helpful discussions. This research was supported by the U.S. Social Security Administration through grant #10-M-98363-1-02 to the National Bureau of Economic Research as part of the SSA Retirement Research Consortium. The findings and conclusions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not represent the views of the SSA, any agency of the Federal Government, or the NBER. Institutional Review Board (IRB) permission was granted to conduct this research at both Michigan State University and the University of Illinois.
The Mixed Blessings of Technological Innovativeness for the Commercial Success of New Products

This study addresses the contradiction that, although technological innovativeness of new products is often seen as a major driver of competitive advantage and commercial success, empirical research is not always able to show a significant performance influence. In order to find an explanation, the effects of technological innovativeness are decomposed as its influence on the market, the innovating firm, and the firm's environment is considered. The proposed model is tested on a sample of new product development projects. In order to avoid systematic biases, this paper uses a longitudinal survey design with two informants and a sample that includes both incremental and highly innovative projects. The results show that technological innovativeness has both positive and negative effects on the commercial success of new products. On the one hand, technological innovativeness can increase customer value, which in turn has a positive effect on success. On the other hand, incorporating new technologies into new products also implies changes in the innovating firm and potentially in its environment. These changes have a negative impact on commercial success. The positive and negative effects compensate for each other, so that the total effect of technological innovativeness on commercial success is close to zero. The findings imply that firms developing new products through incorporating radically new technologies often seem to underestimate the inherent complexities with respect to both internal and external changes. Developing and introducing new products with a radically changed technology also implies anticipating the need for new competences, processes, structures, and network partners. Social and political resistance against technological changes, large investments in new infrastructures, and the long duration of these changes additionally become frequent features of such innovation endeavors. Hence, firms embarking on a path of exploiting radically new technologies should consider those complexities very carefully when making their new product development decisions.
The Impact of Indian Overseas Listings on the Returns of the Underlying Shares

Between May 1992 and June 2001, 72 Indian companies tapped the international capital markets with their equity offerings in form of Depositary Receipt (DR) programs. Initially, most of these programs were in the form of Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) and were traded on London and Luxembourg stock exchanges. Since 1999, many Indian companies have been listing their American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the US stock exchanges. Home market responses to issuance of DRs are of interest to the policy makers, investors, market intermediaries, CFOs, and finance scholars. Policy makers in emerging markets are increasingly concerned about the consequences for the domestic equity market when companies list stocks abroad. The present paper assesses the impact of listing of ADRs/GDRs on the returns of the firm's underlying domestic shares by using a sample of 68 Indian DR programs that listed on the foreign markets between 1st January, 1996 and 30th June, 2001. We recorded that the impact on the returns available from the underlying domestic shares depends on the listing venue of the DR programs--- while the GDR listings adversely affects the returns, ADR listings do not seem to have any significant impact on the returns available from the underlying domestic shares. Our results are similar to the results recorded in the similar studies conducted with foreign listings from the other emerging economies.
The impact of electronic resources on humanities graduate student theses

Purpose – This study aims to answer the following questions about humanities graduate students: what are the characteristics of the documents cited in their theses? Where and how do they obtain those citations? Do students use and cite electronic resources? Do students favour electronic resources over paper versions? Design/methodology/approach – The study's participants were 20 humanities graduate students. Following an analysis of the citations in their theses, list‐checking and follow‐up interviews were conducted.Findings – The results showed that these humanities graduate students cited considerably more print materials than electronic resources. Most of the documents cited were supplied by the university library. Only a small proportion of the documents were available in electronic format either from the university library or from the internet. The availability ratio of journals was higher than that of books. Students' acceptance of e‐journals was higher than that of e‐books.Originality/value – The fi.
Adoption of E-Government Services in Ukraine

In order to identify factors affecting e-government services adoption, a survey questionnaire and case study interviews were conducted to collect research data from 409 e-ready Ukrainians. The results of the mixed methods research confirmed eight factors, which seemed to be responsible for low adoption rates of e-government services in Ukraine, namely awareness, computer literacy, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived public value, the individual cultural value preferences for uncertainty avoidance, trust in the government, and trust in the Internet. The adoption of e-Government services amongst e-ready citizens in Ukraine was reported to be 56.5 percent or 23.6 percent of all legal-aged Ukrainians. Overall, the level of development of e-government in the Ukraine was found to be low. The TAM-based research model explained 42 percent of the variance in the behavioral intentions of e-ready citizens towards the use of e-government services. Eight out of ten hypothesized relationships were accepted.
Multiple stakeholders and multiple city brand meanings

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore whether multiple stakeholders imbue a single or multiple meanings to a city brand.Design/methodology/approach – The branding literature hints at multiple stakeholders but most studies take a single stakeholder perspective. A two‐stage quantitative study was used to examine similarities and differences between two stakeholder groups. The context for the study is city branding.Findings – The evidence suggests that different external stakeholders do have different brand meanings associated to a city brand. Each stakeholder group applies their own filter to interpret the meaning of the city brand. Essentially, a new conceptualisation of the city brand is provided.Research limitations/implications – Although the samples are reasonably large, it is important to apply the framework to other city brands to test for generalisability. Future research might also test the filter concept in the more general context of corporate branding.Practical implications – Organis.
Supplier-Induced Demand in Japan's At-home Care Industry: Evidence from Micro-level Survey on Care Receivers

We observed a remarkable increase in elderly care expenses in Japan after the introduction of public elderly care insurance in 2000. This study explores the possibility that a greater number of care providers under the deregulation of the entry policy stimulated care utilization. We take advantage of an original household-level survey data on care receivers to address the existence of supplier-induced demand in Japan's elderly at-home care market, by distinguishing between demand for care receivers and for suppliers. Our empirical results based on the two-phase model found little evidence of supplier-induced demand in the Japanese at-home care market. We also observed that a higher portion of for-profits did not induce care demand. JEL classification: I11 Key words: supplier-induced demand; at-home care; long-term care insurance; survey on care receivers
Genetic Analysis of nif Regulatory Genes by Utilizing the Yeast Two-Hybrid System Detected Formation of a NifL-NifA Complex That Is Implicated in Regulated Expression of nif Genes

ABSTRACT In diazotrophic organisms, nitrogenase synthesis and activity are tightly regulated. Two genes, nifL and nifA, are implicated as playing a major role in this regulation. NifA is a transcriptional activator, and its activity is inhibited by NifL in response to availability of excess fixed nitrogen and high O2 tension. It was postulated that NifL binds to NifA to inhibit NifA-mediated transcriptional activation of nifgenes. Mutational analysis combined with transcriptional activation studies clearly is in agreement with the proposal that NifL interacts with NifA. However, several attempts to identify NifA-NifL interactions by using methods such as coimmunoprecipitations and chemical cross-linking experiments failed to detect direct interactions between these proteins. Here we have taken a genetic approach, the use of a yeast two-hybrid protein-protein interaction assay system, to investigate NifL interaction with NifA. A DNA fragment corresponding to the kinase-like domain of nifL was PCR amplified and was used to generate translation fusions with the DNA binding domain and the DNA activation domain of the yeast transcriptional activator GAL4 in yeast two-hybrid vectors. Similarly, a DNA fragment corresponding to the catalytic domain of nifA was PCR amplified and used to generate translation fusions with the DNA-binding domain and the DNA-activation domain of GAL4 in yeast two-hybrid vectors. After introducing appropriate plasmid combinations in yeast cells, the existance of direct interaction between NifA and NifL was analyzed with the MATCHMAKER yeast two-hybrid system by testing for the expression oflacZ and his3 genes. These analyses showed that the kinase-like domain of NifL directly interacts with the catalytic domain of NifA.