Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Crime, Inequality and Subsidized Housing: Evidence from South Africa

We study the relationship between housing inequality and crime in South Africa. We create a novel panel dataset combining information on crimes at the police station level with census data. We find that housing inequality explains a significant share of the variation in both property and violent crimes, net of spillover effects, time and district fixed effects. An increase of one standard deviation in housing inequality explains between 9 and 13 percent of crime increases. Additionally, we show that a prominent post-apartheid housing program for low-income South Africans led to a reduction in inequality and a decline in violent crimes. Together, these findings suggest the important role that equality in housing conditions can play in the reduction of crime in an emerging economy context.
Judicial Efficiency and Banks Credit Risk Exposure

We exploit the outset of a regulation seeking to improve judicial efficiency through the rearrangement of courts’ geography in Italy to provide causal evidence on the relationship between judiciary structural reforms and banks financial stability. To this end, we apply a difference-in-differences approach on a dataset on annual proceedings handled by each court over the period 2010-2017, complemented by banks balance sheet information. Our findings yield a negative effect of the reform on both judicial efficiency and Non-Performing Loans ratio. Furthermore, we identify heterogeneous effects based on the existing capacity of the courts to dispose of pending proceedings and geographical location. Digging deeper into this mechanism, we set up a causal mediation analysis to prove that the judicial system affects banks credit risk exposure both indirectly (through judicial efficiency) and directly, thereby influencing borrowers who react to the perceived enforcement.
Informed Choices: Gender Gaps in Career Advice

This paper estimates gender differences in access to informal information regarding the labor market. We conduct a large-scale field experiment in which real college students seek information from 10,000 working professionals about various career paths, and we randomize whether a professional receives a message from a male or a female student. We focus the experimental design and analysis on two career attributes that prior research has shown to differentially affect the labor market choices of women: the extent to which a career accommodates work/life balance and has a competitive culture. When students ask broadly for information about a career, we find that female students receive substantially more information on work/life balance relative to male students. This gender difference persists when students disclose that they are concerned about work/life balance. In contrast, professionals mention workplace culture to male and female students at similar rates. After the study, female students are more dissuaded from their preferred career path than male students, and this difference is in part explained by professionals’ greater emphasis on work/life balance when responding to female students. Finally, we elicit students’ preferences for professionals and find that gender differences in information provision would remain if students contacted their most preferred professionals.
The Financial Accelerator in the Euro Area: New Evidence Using a Mixture VAR Model

We estimate a logit mixture vector autoregressive model describing monetary policy transmission in the euro area with a special emphasis on credit conditions. With the help of this model, monetary policy transmission can be described as mixture of two states, using an underlying logit model determining the relative state weights over time. We show that a widening of the credit spread and a tightening of credit standards directly lead to a reduction of real GDP growth, whereas shocks to the quantity of credit are less important in explaining growth fluctuations. The credit spread and—to some extent—credit standards are also the key determinants of the underlying state of the economy; the prevalence of the crisis state is more pronounced in times of adverse credit conditions. Together with a stronger shock transmission in the crisis state, this provides further evidence for a financial accelerator in the euro area.
Welfare Effects of Property Taxation

We analyze the welfare implications of property taxation. Using a sufficient statistics approach, we show that the tax incidence depends on how housing prices, labor and other types of incomes as well as public services respond to property tax changes. Empirically, we exploit the German institutional setting with 5,200 municipal tax reforms for identification. We find that higher taxes are fully passed on to rental prices after three years. The pass-through is lower when housing supply is inelastic. Combining reduced form estimates with our theoretical framework, we simulate the welfare effects of property taxes and show that they are regressive.
The Effect of Public Corruption on COVID-19 Fatality Rate: A Cross-Country Examination

This paper evaluates whether the level of public corruption influences COVID-19 case fatality rates. Using cross-section data, including 64 countries and multiple regression techniques, we find that the level of corruption is positively and significantly associated with COVID-19 human costs. These results are robust to control of other possible explanatory factors.
Can Charitable Appeals Identify and Exploit Belief Heterogeneity?

Charitable fundraisers frequently announce giving by others, and research shows that this can increase donations. However, this mechanism may not put information about peers to the most efficient use if it is costly to inform individuals who are indifferent to peer actions or causes some individuals to give less. We investigate whether a simple mechanism without incentives can predict heterogeneity in charitable responses to peer decisions. We elicit beliefs about donations in a baseline solicitation, and in subsequent solicitations we randomly assign information about others’ donations. We find that elicited beliefs are often logically inconsistent and that many subjects fail to update beliefs when treated. However, elicited beliefs can predict heterogeneous treatment effects if individuals are engaged and the information is salient.
Detecting coverage bias in user-generated content

ABSTRACT The importance of user-generated content is growing as media consumption is moving online; yet, investigations of media bias on user-generated content platforms are rare. We develop a novel procedure to detect coverage bias – i.e., bias in the amount of coverage certain topics or issues receive – on user-generated content platforms. We proceed in two steps. First, we focus on a sample of homogeneous observations and control for observable differences. Second, we compare the coverage of our observations between different language versions of the same platform in a difference-in-differences framework, which allows us to disentangle coverage bias from unobserved heterogeneity between observations. We apply our procedure to Wikipedia and examine whether it has a coverage bias in its biographies of German (and French) Members of Parliament (MPs). Our analysis reveals a small to medium size coverage bias against MPs from the center-left parties in Germany and in France. A plausible explanation are partisan contributions to the Wikipedia biographies, as we show by analyzing patterns of authorship and Wikipedia’s talk pages for the German case. Practical implications of our results include raising users’ awareness of coverage bias when searching for and processing information obtained on user-generated content platforms.
ABC: An Agent Based Exploration of the Macroeconomic Effects of COVID-19

We employ a new macro-epidemiological agent based model to evaluate the “lives vs livelihoods” trade-off brought to the fore by Covid-19. The disease spreads across the networks of agents’ social and economic contacts and feeds back on the economic dimension of the model through various channels such as employment and consumption demand. We show that under a lockdown scenario the model is able to closely reproduce the epidemiological dynamics of the first wave of the coronavirus epidemic in Lombardy. We then explore the efficacy of the fiscal response to Covid-19 which may take different routes: income support, liquidity provision, credit guarantees. In an agent based setting we gain additional insights on the way in which fiscal measures impact not only on GDP but also on the defaults of firms and the allocation of inputs. We find that liquidity support for firms, a short-time working scheme with compensation for workers, and direct transfer payments to households are effective policy tools to alleviate the economic impact of the epidemic and the lockdown.
Running head: IMPOVERISHED POSITIVE MENTAL IMAGERY IN ADOLESCENT DEPRESSION

Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Occurrence of Additional Canals in Mandibular Lower Anteriors In Between Male and Female Patients

The endodontic treatment with excellent outcomes depends on the critical identification of the root and its canals anatomy. The successful identification of these anatomies guaranteed the pulp tissue extirpation completely, with efficiency in chemo-mechanical cleaning and shaping. All these lead to the most proper three-dimensionally root canal obturation with the most reliable inert filling. The purpose of this study is to provide clinical data on the presence of additional canals in mandibular anterior teeth among males and females.Patients reported from June 2019 to March 2020 were reviewed. 82000 patient records were reviewed and data related to patients undergone Root canal therapy in mandibular lower anteriors. Data includes age, gender and number of additional canals in lower anteriors. The collected data was tabulated in the excel sheet. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS software (version 9.0.3). The prevalence of patients with additional canals in mandibular anteriors was 8.1% . For females, the prevalence of additional canals was 3.24% whereas in males it is 4.86%. However, there is no relation between the gender and presence of additional canals in mandibular anteriors.
STUDY ON ASEAN LISTED COMPANIES : CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FIRM PERFORMANCE

This study aims to examine the performance of listed company in ASEAN based on GCG Score Card and firm performance. It was assumed that there is relationship between GCG performance and firm performance. Public corporate governance in ASEAN was measured using the ASEAN Score Card consist of five corporate governance indicators, namely: right of shareholders, equitable treatment of shareholders, role of stakeholders, disclosure and transparency, and responsibilities of the board. Firm performance was measured from two aspects, namely market performance and operational performance. The type of research methodology uses causal research methods and Cross-sectional survey is applied to collect data from companies listed on the ASEAN Star Financial Time Series (FTSE) in 2014-2017. The research framework is tested by analysing the data of 240 and The analytical method used is regression (confirmatory) with Partial Least Square (PLS) software. The results showed that the GCG Score Card had a significant positive effect on operational performance, while the GCG Score had no significant positive effect on market performance of the FTSE ASEAN Star companies. GCG has no direct effect on stock prices, but GCG can be a trigger for companies to be able to manage assets efficiently. Implementation of good governance will help management to achieve long-term performance and sustainable growth.
Investor Rewards to Climate Responsibility: Stock-Price Responses to the Opposite Shocks of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Elections

Donald Trump’s 2016 election and his nomination of climate skeptic Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency drastically downshifted expectations about U.S. policy toward climate change. Joseph Biden’s 2020 election shifted them dramatically upward. We study firms’ stock-price movements in reaction to these changes. As expected, the 2016 election boosted carbon-intensive firms. Surprisingly, firms with climate-responsible strategies also gained, especially those firms held by long-run investors. Such investors appear to have bet on a “boomerang” in climate policy. Harbingers of a boomerang appeared during Trump’s term. The 2020 election marked its arrival.
Did Minorities Invest More Post 2008?∗

We study the behavior of minorities over the 2007-09 period. We find that, despite the Great Recession, post-2008 and compared to white Americans, minorities have a higher propensity to increase risk tolerance, optimism, and allocations to risky assets and lower probability of exiting the stock market. These findings cannot be explained by changes in wealth or income and we ascribe them to the positive effects of the election of President Obama who is a role model for minorities. Overall, increased visibility of minority role models may encourage investing in risk assets by minorities and potentially alleviate the racial wealth gap.
Twin Defaults and Bank Capital Requirements

We examine optimal capital requirements in a quantitative general equilibrium model with banks exposed to non-diversifiable borrower default risk. Contrary to standard models of bank default risk, our framework captures the limited upside but significant downside risk of loan portfolio returns (Nagel and Purnanandam, 2020). This helps to reproduce the frequency and severity of twin defaults: simultaneously high firm and bank failures. Hence, the optimal bank capital requirement, which trades off a lower frequency of twin defaults against restricting credit provision, is 5pp higher than under standard default risk models which underestimate the impact of borrower default on bank solvency.
&Apos;Lucas&Apos; in the Laboratory

This paper reports on experimental tests of an instantiation of the Lucas asset pricing model with heterogeneous agents and time-varying private income streams. Central features of the model (infinite horizon, perishability of consumption, stationarity) present difficult challenges and require a novel experimental design. The experimental evidence provides broad support for the qualitative pricing and consumption predictions of the model (prices move with fundamentals, agents smooth consumption) but sharp differences from the quantitative predictions emerge (asset prices display excess volatility, agents do not hedge price risk). Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) tests of the stochastic Euler equations yield very different conclusions depending on the instruments chosen. It is suggested that the qualitative agreement with and quantitative deviation from theoretical predictions arise from agents&apos; expectations about future prices, which are almost self-fulfilling and yet very different from what they would need to be if they were exactly self-fulfilling (as the Lucas model requires).
Anticipating the Direct Effects of Credit Supply

Empirical studies of the direct effects of credit supply on asset prices often use difference-in-difference or event-study designs based on deregulatory events. The assumptions underlying such strategies are violated when there is anticipation by unconstrained buyers. We develop an information-revelation based model that allows us to estimate the direct effects of credit supply in the presence of anticipatory pre-trends using a simple linear dynamic panel approach. We apply the model to China's 2010-2015 stock margin lending reform, which precipitated a credit cycle and a stock market boom and bust. We estimate that margin lending increased the prices of treated stocks by 20%. More than 60% of this effect was already impounded in prices six months before the actual deregulation. <br>
Performance of subsurface flow wetlands with batch-load and continuous-flow conditions

Use of constructed wetlands designed for wastewater treatment is becoming common throughout the world. Oxidation of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) may be increased by transport of oxygen (O 2 ) into the rhizosphere of aquatic plants and periodic draining of the wetland. Outdoor microcosms of subsurface flow wetlands (SFs) were operated receiving continuous flow or batch loads of primary and secondary wastewater. Six-square meter microcosms planted with Scirpus pungens, received primary or secondary wastewater in batch load or continuous flow. Plants in SFs had significant effects on C and N oxidation, whereas, periodic draining of SFs had no significant effect. Greater than 90% carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand (CBOD) was removed within 18 hours in SFs with and without plants, after 6 and 12 hours plants had caused significant decreases in CBOD in the batch-load SFs. The first-order model for CBOD removal was not appropriate after 24 hours; removal rate coefficients were similar for batch-load and continuous-flow SFs with hydraulic retention times of 12 and 24 hours. Methanogenesis is the major respiratory pathway for CBOD removal. Oxygen transport in SFs estimated from C oxidation was 28.6 and 2.4 g/m 2 . d estimated from N oxidation.
Getting Into the Weeds of Tax Invariance

We provide the first general empirical test of tax invariance (TIV). When a 25 percent tax remitted by manufacturers was eliminated in Washington state and the retail cannabis excise tax was simultaneously increased from 25 to 37 percent—a shift intended to be revenue-neutral—TIV did not hold. Manufacturers kept two-thirds of their tax savings instead of passing all their savings through to retail firms via lower prices as predicted by TIV. One-third of the retail tax increase was passed on to consumers via higher retail prices – TIV would have predicted constant or even declining tax-inclusive retail prices.
SiamCorners: Siamese Corner Networks for Visual Tracking

The current Siamese network based on region proposal network (RPN) has attracted great attention in visual tracking due to its excellent accuracy and high efficiency. However, the design of the RPN involves the selection of the number, scale, and aspect ratios of anchor boxes, which will affect the applicability and convenience of the model. Furthermore, these anchor boxes require complicated calculations, such as calculating their intersection-over-union (IoU) with ground truth bounding boxes. Due to the problems related to anchor boxes, we propose a simple yet effective anchor-free tracker (named Siamese corner networks, SiamCorners), which is end-to-end trained offline on large-scale image pairs. Specifically, we introduce a modified corner pooling layer to convert the bounding box estimate of the target into a pair of corner predictions (the bottom-right and the top-left corners). By tracking a target as a pair of corners, we avoid the need to design the anchor boxes. This will make the entire tracking algorithm more flexible and simple than anchor-based trackers. In our network design, we further introduce a layer-wise feature aggregation strategy that enables the corner pooling module to predict multiple corners for a tracking target in deep networks. We then introduce a new penalty term that is used to select an optimal tracking box in these candidate corners. Finally, SiamCorners achieves experimental results that are comparable to the state-of-art tracker while maintaining a high running speed. In particular, SiamCorners achieves a 53.7% AUC on NFS30 and a 61.4% AUC on UAV123, while still running at 42 frames per second (FPS).
Evolution of anti–de Sitter black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory

We study the nonlinear evolution of the spherical symmetric black holes under a small neutral scalar field perturbation in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory with coupling function $f(\phi)=e^{-b\phi}$ in asymptotic anti-de Sitter spacetime. The non-minimal coupling between scalar and Maxwell fields allows the transmission of the energy from the Maxwell field to the scalar field, but also behaves as a repulsive force for the scalar. The scalar field oscillates with damping amplitude and converges to a final value by a power law. The irreducible mass of the black hole increases abruptly at initial times and then saturates to the final value exponentially. The saturating rate is twice the decaying rate of the dominant mode of the scalar. The effects of the black hole charge, the cosmological constant and the coupling parameter on the evolution are studied in detail. When the initial configuration is a naked singularity spacetime with a large charge to mass ratio, a horizon will form soon and hide the singularity.
Reference and Probability-Matching Priors for the Parameters of a Univariate Student $t$-Distribution

In this paper reference and probability-matching priors are derived for the univariate Student t-distribution. These priors generally lead to procedures with properties frequentists can relate to while still retaining Bayes validity. The priors are tested by performing simulation studies. The focus is on the relative mean squared error from the posterior median (MSE(ν)/ν) and on the frequentist coverage of the 95% credibility intervals for a sample size of n = 30. Average interval lengths of the credibility intervals as well as the modes of the interval lengths based on 2000 simulations are also considered. The performance of the priors are also tested on real data, namely daily logarithmic returns of IBM stocks.
Causal description of marginally trapped surfaces in 
D
 dimensions

In this paper, we analyze the causal aspects of evolving marginally trapped surfaces in a Ddimensional spherically symmetric spacetime, sourced by perfect fluid with a cosmological constant. The norm of the normal to the marginally trapped tube is shown to be the product of lie derivatives of the expansion parameter of future outgoing null rays along the incoming and outgoing null directions. We obtain a closed form expression for this norm in terms of principal density, pressure, areal radius and cosmological constant. For the case of a homogeneous fluid distribution, we obtain a simple formula for determining the causal nature of the evolving horizons. We obtain the causal phase portraits and highlight the critical radius. We identify many solutions where the causal signature of the marginally trapped tube or marginally anti-trapped tube is always null despite having an evolving area. These solutions don’t comply with the standard inner and outer horizon classification for degenerate horizons. We propose an alternate prescription for this classification of these degenerate horizons.
Towards a Fast and Accurate Model of Intercontact Times for Epidemic Routing

We present an accurate user-encounter trace generator based on analytical models. Our method generates traces of intercontact times faster than models that explicitly generate mobility traces. We use this trace generator to study the characteristics of pair-wise intercontact-time distributions and visualize, using simulations, how they combine to form the aggregate intercontact-time distribution. Finally, we apply our trace-generation model to the epidemic routing protocol.