Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The emergence of network media logic in political communication: A theoretical approach

In this article we propose a concept of network media logic in order to discuss how online social media platforms change political communication without resorting to technological determinism or normalization. We argue that social media platforms operate with a distinctly different logic from that of traditional mass media, though overlapping with it. This is leading to different ways of producing content, distributing information and using media. By discussing the differences between traditional mass media and social media platforms in terms of production, consumption and use, we carve out the central elements of network media logic – that is, the rules/format of communication on social media platforms – and some consequences for political communication.
Size, Value, and Momentum in Emerging Market Stock Returns

In this paper, we examine value and momentum effects in 18 emerging stock markets. Using stock level data from January 1990 to December 2011, we find strong evidence for the value effect in all emerging markets and the momentum effect for all but Eastern Europe. We investigate size patterns in value and momentum. After forming portfolios sorted on size and book-to-market ratio, as well as size and lagged momentum, we use three well-known factor models to explain the returns for these portfolios based on factors constructed using local, U.S., and aggregate global developed stock markets data. Local factors perform much better, suggesting emerging market segmentation.
Managerial Delegation Contracts under Centralized Unionization

This paper studies how alternative managerial delegation contracts in a duopoly product market interact with wage decisions taken by a central (industry-wide) union in the labor market. Interestingly, results prove to be more varied with respect to findings by the managerial delegation literature with exogenous production costs. Most notably, it is pointed out that, in equilibrium, both firm profitability and welfare outcomes can be superior under both sales delegation and relative profit delegation, depending on various factors such as the degree of product differentiation and the competition regime. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Barriers to Trade in the Second Era of Globalisation: Empirical Evidence from Korea

Korea has been witnessing a sharp rise in merchandise trade and showing greater trade interdependence on a large variety of goods. At the same time, rising transportation costs continue to impede Korea‘s merchandise trade. This paper provides sufficient evidence to ascertain that variations in ad-valorem transportation costs strongly influence trade flows in Korea. The analysis carried out in this paper indicates that a 10% fall in ad-valorem transportation cost would likely to increase Korea‘s trade by 12%. One of the conclusions of this paper is that transportation cost is relatively more important than tariff in enhancing Korea‘s trade. Reduction in transportation costs should therefore get utmost priority while formulating policy for Korea‘s infrastructure development and trade facilitation since the fall in transportation costs, as an outcome of improved infrastructure and trade facilitation, will stimulate trade.
Clinical relevance of quality‐of‐life data in laryngectomized patients

Statistically significant differences in health‐related quality of life (HRQL) are not always clinically relevant. It is also plausible that patients perceive other changes to be relevant than health professionals do. The objective of this study was to find thresholds for HRQL that laryngectomees consider to be clinically relevant 1 year after surgery, (i.e., the level of HRQL that patients rate as satisfactory). A second aim was to investigate how many laryngectomized patients reached those targets.
Social Capital, Social Funds and Poor Communities: An Exploratory Analysis

Social capital has captured the attention of social policy-makers and development administrators, with its emphasis on social relationships, civic participation, collaborative action and norms of reciprocity. Social funds support small-scale community-based development projects aimed primarily at reducing poverty. This article synthesizes the relevant literature and explores the nexus between social capital and social funds in relation to poor communities. Drawing upon primary research in Jamaica, the article reports the outcomes of eight social fund sub-projects that involved local organizations in community-driven development processes. It analyzes the role of social networks and the influence of community power structures in social capital creation. Social policy implications of the findings are discussed.
Non-linear error correction and the UK demand for broad money, 1878-1993

In this paper we reconsider an error-correction model of UK broad money demand by Ericsson, Hendry and Prestwich. Their model is non-linear in both variables and parameters, and it can be viewed as an approximation to a smooth transition regression (STR) type specification. The corresponding STR model, when specified and estimated, fits the data better than the original model. Adopting a somewhat more general modelling approach leads to another STR model. This model variance dominates the other two, and the encompassing tests performed in this paper indicate that it is an improvement over the other two specifications. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Specialization in Government

Relatively little is known about the remarkable increase in the use of special districts for urban service delivery. The author assesses the utility of four alternative theoretical perspectives on the uneven use of districts in metropolitan areas. Empirical analysis of district patterns in more than 300 metropolitan areas in 1987 reveals multiple influences on district use. Local government structure and legal factors emphasized by institutional-reform and metropolitan-ecology perspectives are especially important relative to the service-demand factors asserted by public-choice and critical political-economy perspectives. Of particular note are different motivations associated with use of different geographic and financial subtypes of districts.
Exchange Controls, Capital Controls, and International Financial Markets

This paper examines the effects of restrictions on international financial markets. We analyze a general equilibrium, rational expectations model of a two-country world in which well-functioning international financial markets premit trade in all state-contingent securities except insofar as governments restrict these markets. The restrictions we examine take the form of taxes or quantitative controls on purchases of foreign currency and on the income from foreign assets. State-contingent financial markets allow households to allocate wealth optimally across states so that the imposition of exchange and capital controls has, roughly speaking, only substitution effects but no wealth effect. These restrictions reduce international trade in goods and lower ex-post welfare in the country in which they are imposed. Nominal prices and exchange rate are nonmonotonic functions of these restrictions.
Reinventing auditing, redefining consulting and independence

This paper deals with recent developments in auditing, taking KPMG's 'business measurement process' as its example. From this example it is discussed how and why auditing is currently being 'reinvented'. The 'reinvention' of auditing, it is argued, represents a fundamental break with the established epistemological dualism between auditing and management advisory services,1 that is central to most literature on auditor independence, including the European Commission's Green Paper. Consequently, it is not only auditing that is being reinvented, it is also consulting and independence, and the consequences of this rupture are finally discussed. The paper concludes that the auditor cannot be independent because auditing is no longer independent.
Social enterprise manager's career path preferences

The purpose of this paper is to explore the career path preferences of third sector social enterprise managers in the UK. It is becoming evident that small social enterprise are seeking ways to provide managerial career options that are suited to individual and organisational need (Spear and Bidet, 2005; Maher, 2014). A survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 operational managers working in eight social enterprises. Eight HR managers working in the same eight organisations were interviewed to provide insight into managerial career path management systems in small social enterprises. The findings suggest that operational manager's career path preferences are influenced by the individual's values and career needs and the organisation's ability to provide career path options for managers. This is significant for small social enterprises seeking to retain managers; not through the promise of high salaries but through providing developing career paths that will match manager's career needs.
Light-Head R-CNN: In Defense of Two-Stage Object Detector

In this paper, we first investigate why typical two-stage methods are not as fast as single-stage, fast detectors like YOLO and SSD. We find that Faster R-CNN and R-FCN perform an intensive computation after or before RoI warping. Faster R-CNN involves two fully connected layers for RoI recognition, while R-FCN produces a large score maps. Thus, the speed of these networks is slow due to the heavy-head design in the architecture. Even if we significantly reduce the base model, the computation cost cannot be largely decreased accordingly. We propose a new two-stage detector, Light-Head R-CNN, to address the shortcoming in current two-stage approaches. In our design, we make the head of network as light as possible, by using a thin feature map and a cheap R-CNN subnet (pooling and single fully-connected layer). Our ResNet-101 based light-head R-CNN outperforms state-of-art object detectors on COCO while keeping time efficiency. More importantly, simply replacing the backbone with a tiny network (e.g, Xception), our Light-Head R-CNN gets 30.7 mmAP at 102 FPS on COCO, significantly outperforming the single-stage, fast detectors like YOLO and SSD on both speed and accuracy. Code will be made publicly available.
China's party-state and the private business sector: ‘Dog wags tail’ or ‘tail wags dog’?

The private business sector has come to play an important role in China's economy, and the Chinese communists have been forced to reassess both capitalism and their former class enemies, the capitalists. Most dramatically, the Communist Party decided to let capitalists become members in 2002, which definitively opened the doors for direct political influence for the old arch-enemy. The party-state had already co-opted private business people previously through business ownership, by allowing them into people's congresses and village committees, and through business organizations. However, the Party maintained control throughout. While exercising command, it also appears to have a genuine interest in creating a new, more professional and business-minded elite based on the philosophy that there is a convergence of interests between the party-state and business people. At this stage, the Party behaves as the ‘dog’ wagging the ‘tail’, i.e. the private sector. However, the article argues, in light of the growing economic and political influence of private business, there is a need to be acutely attentive to an alternative future scenario in which the ‘tail’ may attempt to ‘wag the dog’. The article presents data and an analysis to support this argument, though it is still too premature to be affirmative about it.
Organizational Learning and Productivity State Structure and Foreign Investment in the Rise of the Chinese Corporation

Over the two and a half decades of economic reform in China, two types of Chinese firms have consistently outperformed their peers. In the 1980s, it was the firms at the lower levels of the industrial hierarchy, the township and village enterprises that were closely monitored by local governments. In the 1990s and beyond, the top performers have been those Chinese firms that have formal relationships with foreign investors. While many studies on the economic reforms in China have focused on the hardening of budget constraints and the transfer of technology from foreign to Chinese firms, I focus here on the stability created by relationships with local government offices and with powerful foreign investors. Where advocates of shock therapy have argued that a rapid transition to market institutions was the best path to building a market economy, I argue that the successful practices of the market are learned gradually over time, and the Chinese firms that are stabilized by attention from local government offices and relationships with foreign investors are well-positioned to successfully navigate China's emerging markets. A quantitative analysis of 81 firms in industrial Shanghai and three case studies help illuminate the mechanisms behind these relationships.
Ethnicity and Female Labour Market Participation: a New Look at the Palestinian Enclave in Israel

The enclave model and the cultural model have often been used by sociologists to explain the patterns of participation of minority women in western labour markets. While the cultural models explain, in general, the mechanisms that restrict women's employment, the enclave models, by contrast, explain the mechanisms that facilitate women's labour market participation. Using data from the 1995 Israeli population census and assuming these theoretical models, this paper aims to examine the labour market participation pattern of three groups of women in Israel: the Muslim-Arabs, the Christian-Arabs and the Druze-Arabs. The results indicate that the participation of Arab women in the Israeli labour market is determined primarily by their ethnic and religious affiliation, education (particularly post-secondary and academic education), marital status and age. By contrast, the ethnic enclave was found to exert a differential influence: its influence on the labour market participation of Muslim women was positive, while for Christian women it exerted a negative influence. The effects of labour market opportunities on female labour force participation are also discussed.
Predictors of academic achievement and academic self-concept; a longitudinal perspective.

BACKGROUND A large body of research supports the existence of an academic achievement--self-concept relationship. Path analyses mostly show academic achievement to be causally predominant in this relationship. AIMS This study aims to replicate these findings among Belgian primary school-age children, controlling for a number of other relevant variables such as school commitment, parental socio-economic status (SES), gender and teacher expectations. The longitudinal design of this study makes it particularly suited for this purpose. METHOD Data were analysed using correlation, regressions of time 1 independent variables on time 2 dependent variables, multiple classification analysis and path analysis using LISREL. RESULTS Academic self-concept and academic achievement were found to be strong predictors of one another, even controlling for other variables and stability of both over time. The only other variable to enter significantly into regressions on time 2 academic achievement and academic self-concept was parental socio-economic status (SES). Both the regression analyses and path analysis undertaken specifically to test causal predominance found achievement to be causally predominant in this sample. CONCLUSION The fact that academic achievement was causally predominant over academic self-concept, that global self-esteem was not a significant predictor of achievement, and the significant contribution of parental SES to achievement all suggest that self-esteem enhancement in itself cannot be a solution to the problem of academic failure.
Human and Organizational Risk Modeling: Critical Personnel and Leadership in Network Organizations

Abstract : Network organizations offer learning, adaptive and resilient capabilities that are particularly useful in high velocity environments as these capabilities allow the organization to effectively respond to change. The dynamic, evolutionary nature of network organizations affords such advantageous capabilities. Although the advantages of network organizations are well-studied, the risks associated with them are not. Of interest is the study of critical personnel. Understanding criticality within an organization can help improve performance and protect against the risk of loss. But the study of critical personnel has traditionally used static structural representations that do not represent the dynamic nature of network organizations. This thesis advances the study of critical personnel risks in network organizations by using Dynamic Network Analysis. Dynamic Network analysis is a methodology that incorporates both social network analysis and multi-agent simulation to represent structure and process -- the evolutionary nature of network organizations. Advances are made on two fronts. First, theory is developed about three dynamic risks related to critical personnel: intermittent availability, individual redundancy and shifts of critical personnel. These theories are built by using a reasoned computational approach that first validates the multi-agent simulation model and then creates forward grounded theory. Empirical data from two different network organizations are used to validate the model and build theory. Second, the foundations for a Dynamic Network Analytic Theory of Network Organization Leadership are established. Leadership is a subset of critical personnel and the specific risks of network organization leadership need studied as well. But traditional leadership theory has limited applicability to high velocity contexts and network organizations. Consequently, there has been a call for a paradigm shift in leadership theory.
Comparative study of selective media for isolation of Legionella pneumophila from potable water

A total of 100 water samples, 95% of which were taken from hospital potable water fixtures, were cultured on three different media used for the isolation of Legionella pneumophila. The media used were buffered charcoal-yeast extract medium (BCYE alpha medium), BCYE alpha medium with antimicrobial agents (BMPA alpha medium), and BCYE alpha medium with antimicrobial agents, glycine, and differential dyes (MWY medium). An acid wash procedure was also used for specimens plated on BCYE alpha and BMPA alpha media. A total of 24 samples were culture positive for L. pneumophila by one or more techniques. MWY medium detected 92% of positive cultures, BCYE alpha medium with the acid wash detected 83% of positive cultures, BMPA alpha medium detected 79% of positive cultures. BCYE alpha medium detected 71% of positive cultures, and BMPA alpha medium with the acid wash detected 62% of positive cultures. MWY medium was the best medium for isolating L. pneumophila from potable water specimens and can probably be depended upon as the sole medium for this type of testing.
Remittances and Household Behavior in the Philippines

As one of the world’s largest recipients of remittances, the Philippines received remittances roughly 12% of its gross domestic product in 2008. Remittances have become the single most important source of foreign exchange to the economy and a significant source of income for recipient families. Using the instrument variable estimation technique, this study examines the role of remittances in increasing household consumption and investment and thereby their potential for rebalancing economic growth and creating long-term human and capital investment. The results indicate that remittances negatively influence the share of food consumption in the total expenditure. However, unlike previous studies, the estimations show that remittances to the Philippines do not have a significant influence on other key items of consumption or investment such as spending on education and health care. A further analysis using logistical regression shows that remittances help to lift households out of poverty. Remittances thus may help in fighting poverty in the Philippines but not in rebalancing growth, especially in the long run.
The influence of local institutional differences on the capital structure of SMEs: Evidence from Italy

This paper explains both capital-structure and debt-maturity choices for SMEs in terms of institutional differences at the local level, making use of regions as the unit of analysis. Specifically, the article considers local financial development and the effectiveness of the local enforcement system, controlling for firm-specific characteristics. The ability of the local financial market to provide funds efficiently is of particular interest to SMEs, due to the fact that large firms can tolerate imperfections in the local financial system by moving to international, more highly integrated financial markets. The main findings of the analysis suggest that capital-structure and debt-maturity choices interact as complementary factors and that corporate financial decisions are not only the result of firm-specific or industry-specific characteristics, but are also based on the institutional climate in which a firm operates. After controlling for heterogeneity in firm characteristics, leverage was found to be positively influenced by local financial development, while the enforcement system was less relevant. Conversely, debt maturity was longer in regions with high levels of law enforcement, whereas local financial development did not play a relevant role.
Emotional capture by fearful expressions varies with psychopathic traits

ABSTRACT Task-irrelevant emotional expressions are known to capture attention, with the extent of “emotional capture” varying with psychopathic traits in antisocial samples. We investigated whether this variation extends throughout the continuum of psychopathic traits (and co-occurring trait anxiety) in a community sample. Participants (N = 85) searched for a target face among facial distractors. As predicted, angry and fearful faces interfered with search, indicated by slower reaction times relative to neutral faces. When fear appeared as either target or distractor, diminished emotional capture was seen with increasing affective-interpersonal psychopathic traits. However, moderation analyses revealed that this was only when lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were low, consistent with evidence suggesting that these two facets of psychopathic traits display opposing relationships with emotional reactivity. Anxiety did not show the predicted relationships with emotional capture effects. Findings show that normative variation in high-level individual differences in psychopathic traits influence automatic bias to emotional stimuli.
The Politics and Complexity of Trade Union Responses to New Management Practices

Miguel Martinez Lucio and Syd Weston, who are Lecturers in Human Resource Management at the Cardiff Business School, emphasise that, in seeking to understand trade union responses to HRM and new management practices, it is important to take into account their traditions and internal decision-making processes as well as external influences. They suggest, in particular, that it is possible to identify three main ‘clusters’ of opinion which have emerged in recent years and which go to make up the complex position of the TUC. They go on to argue that, as unions learn more about HRM and new management practices, they will tend to exert a more significant influence on the form and implementation of such initiatives.