Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Propositional Logic Applied to Three Contradictory Definitions of the Zeta Function, and to Conditionally Convergent Series

The paper discusses the following contradictions: <br><br>(1) Contradictory definitions of the Zeta function. These three definitions of the Zeta function contradict each other: the Dirichlet series, Riemann’s Zeta function, and a third definition that is conditionally convergent throughout the critical strip and divergent throughout half-plane Re(s)≤0. If the Dirichlet series definition and one of the other two definitions are both true, then there is a contradiction regarding convergence/divergence of Zeta in the critical strip. If Riemann’s Zeta function and the third definition are both true, then there is a contradiction regarding convergence/divergence of Zeta in half-plane Re(s)≤0. And if only the Dirichlet series definition is true, than all theories that falsely assume that the other definitions are true are rendered logically unsound. <br><br>(2) The Hankel contour’s contradiction of the preconditions of Cauchy’s integral theorem. The derivation of the Riemann Zeta function uses both of these,but the contradiction between the two renders the Riemann Zeta function invalid. <br><br>(3) Conditionally convergent series. According to the Riemann series theorem, any conditionally convergent series can be rearranged to be divergent. This contradicts the associative and commutative properties of addition. It also means that all conditionally convergent series are paradoxes, and that any argument that uses a conditionally convergent series (e.g. the third definition of the Zeta function, and the definition of the Euler-Mascheroni constant) violates the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC) in logic, and triggers Ex Contradictione Quodlibet (ECQ), also called the "Principle of Explosion".
Appraisal Ratio and the Mutual Fund's Stock Picking Skill

According to the costly arbitrage theory, stocks with high idiosyncratic volatility deter arbitrageurs from trading against the temporal mispricing to gain profits. Hence, long equity holders, such as equity mutual funds, would not take on too much 'idiosyncratic risk' in their portfolios, unless they have strong beliefs that those assets are undervalued. In this study, we use the holding-based fund-level 'appraisal ratio', based on the Treynor and Black (1973) model, to infer the stock picking skill of actively managed mutual funds in the U.S. equity market. Overall, we find that the degree of a fund portfolio tilting towards stocks with higher 'appraisal ratio' helps to identify those funds with superior stock picking ability, which leads to better future performance. And the effect is stronger following periods with lower investor sentiment, indicating that this approach can identify those skilled fund managers who are active in terms of searching for undervalued stocks. Evidences from quarterly earnings announcements and analyst recommendations complement our conjecture that this measure is a good proxy for the stock picking ability of skilled fund managers in the U.S. active management industry.
An Empirical Analysis of the Stockholder-Bondholder Conflict in Corporate Spin-Offs

Spin-off announcements affect bondholders in two possible ways. Bondholders may profit from the increase in the total firm value that is caused by a spin-off. On the other hand, they may also suffer from a wealth transfer from bondholders to shareholders, because they loose part of the coinsurance effect that occurs in diversified firms. This problem is studied by analyzing daily stock and bond abnormal returns around spin-off announcements. Over a three-day event window, we find statistically significant abnormal returns of 3.07% for shareholders and 0.11% for bondholders. The latter result contrasts a finding by Maxwell and Rao (2003) who use monthly bond returns. Both stock and bond abnormal returns are higher for firms with higher pre-spin-off leverage and lower interest and dividend payouts. Focus-increasing spin-offs are associated with higher abnormal returns for shareholders, but not for bondholders. Overall, we find that the firm value increase compensates for the wealth transfer effect and that bondholders' wealth is not reduced as a result of spin-off.
On Distinguishing between Rationales for Short-Horizon Predictability of Stock Returns

In this paper, we shed theoretical and empirical light on short-horizon return reversals. We provide a model of price formation where risk averse agents absorb the order flow from outside investors. This framework captures both behavioral and inventory effects, and allows us to obtain analytical implications for the conditions required to obtain reversals in returns. Key to distinguishing between inventory and overreaction explanations for such reversals is the role of order flow. The inventory rationale requires a relation between returns and past order flow, whereas a reversion in beliefs of biased agents can cause reversal in returns independent of order flow. Our theoretical analysis further implies that lagged returns dominate lagged order flows in explaining current returns only if belief reversion is the dominant driver of return reversals. The empirical results indicate that, at monthly horizons, current returns are more strongly related to lagged returns than to lagged order imbalances. This suggests that monthly reversals are not completely captured by inventory effects and may be driven, in part, by belief reversion. We do find that returns are related to lagged imbalance innovations at horizons longer than a month. Finally, while the statistical significance of the reversal is quite strong, its magnitude is modest enough to not present substantial profit opportunities for individual investors.
The European Union Non-Financial Reporting Directive: Evidence on Regulatory Parameters and Firm-Value Consequences

This paper investigates the economic consequences of the European Union’s directive on non-financial disclosure (NFRD). We analyze data from a sample of 698 European firms and a matched control group of US firms to investigate two questions. First, we examine what effects the implementation of the NFRD has on a firm’s CSR disclosure level. Based on a sample of 5,584 firm-year observations, our results show that the NFRD has a positive effect on the level of CSR disclosure in the group of treated firms relative to the control group. This effect is more pronounced in countries where the scope of the mandate is further specified and sanctions in case of non-compliance are stronger. The effect is weaker in countries where national regulations require integrated reporting. Second, we examine how the relationship between CSR disclosure and firm value in the treatment group developed since CSR disclosure became mandatory, i.e., in 2017 and 2018. Our results show that the relationship between the voluntary components of CSR disclosure and firm value is positive. However, we found no evidence that the mandatory component of CSR disclosure has a significant effect on firm value.
Overview on Mentha and Thymus Polyphenols

Mentha and Thymus are important genera of the Lamiaceae family widely distributed in the entire World and commonly used in traditional medicine. Indeed, many species of the two genera have been credited with a large list of health-benefit effects, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, analgesic, neuroprotective and anticarcino- genic. In turn, these properties have been associated to the polyphenolic composition of the plants. The present review summarizes the phenolic constituents found in Mentha and Thymus genera, as well as the main methods applied in their extraction, purification and identification. Reported species of Mentha and Thymus usually comprise derivatives of caffeic acid and distinct glycosidic forms of the flavonoids luteolin, apigenin, eriodictyol and naringenin. At present, the phenolic composition of many relevant plants of Mentha and Thymus is still unknown and thus, more studies are required for the adequate phenolic characterization of these two genera. In this context, the present implementation of faster and reliable analytical methodologies, as e.g. the chromatographic techniques hyphenated with mass spectrometry, will surely be an enormous tool in the upgrading of the missing information.
Is Regional Trade Integration a Growth and Convergence Engine in Africa?

The main objective of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) is to stimulate economic growth in participating countries through increased trade, economies of scale, knowledge and technology transfer. Using a panel data over the period 1979 to 2018, this paper examines the contribution of regional trade integration (RTI) to economic growth and income convergence in Africa and its major Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The results of the instrumental variable and panel fixed-effects estimation show that RTI promotes economic growth in Africa. However, it fosters income divergence, reflecting the distribution of the gains from regional integration in favor of the more developed economies of the continent. The results of this study show the importance to support the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) project with policies aimed at reducing non-tariff barriers to trade and improving infrastructure in order to maximize the effects on growth in all participating countries.
Equilibrium 'Anomalies'

Many empirical "anomalies" are actually consistent with the single beta CAPM if the empiricist utilizes an equity-only proxy for the true market portfolio. Equity betas estimated against this particular inefficient proxy will be understated, with the error increasing with the firm's leverage. Thus, firm-specific variables that correlate with leverage (such as book-to-market and size) will appear to explain returns after controlling for proxy beta simply because they capture the missing beta risk. We demonstrate this by constructing a hypothetical economy where the single-beta CAPM prices all assets and where firms are allowed to have simple capital structures. This framework allows us to compare the true betas of the economy's financial assets with the proxy betas generated from any market proxy. Our model provides a specific roadmap for recovering CAPM expected returns for use in applications of the static CAPM (like performance measurement and the corporate cost of capital). The model implies that if the single-factor CAPM holds, factors formed on relative leverage and relative distress should provide the best complements to the equity market index for explaining the cross-section of returns. In fact, we find that loadings on portfolios formed on relative leverage and relative distress completely subsume the powers of the Fama and French (1993) SMB and HML factors in explaining cross-sectional returns.
When Can Life-Cycle Investors Benefit from Time-Varying Bond Risk Premia?

We study the economic importance of time-varying bond risk premia in a life-cycle consumption and portfolio-choice problem for an investor facing short-sales and borrowing constraints. On average, the investor is able to time bond markets only as of age~45. Tilts in the optimal asset allocation in response to changes in bond risk premia exhibit pronounced life-cycle patterns. Taking as a point of reference an investor who conditions only on age and wealth, we compute the management fee this investor is willing to pay to account for either current risk premia or for both current and future risk premia. We find the fees to account for current risk premia to be economically sizeable, ranging up to 1\% per annum, but this fee is comparable to the fee of the fully optimal strategy. To solve our model, we extend recently developed simulation-based techniques to life-cycle problems featuring multiple state variables and multiple risky assets.
How do investors learn as data becomes bigger? Evidence from a FinTech platform

Prior findings suggest that investors learn with experience. We study the complementary channel of learning from data, particularly the effects of making additional predictive signals available to investors. We analyse a panel of systematic traders' investment outcomes, sourced from a FinTech platform that organises trading contests under highly-controlled conditions that allow us to identify learning effects. Investor outcomes improve with experience, and this is also apparent when counterfactually assessing their trading decisions on historical data, suggesting that they make use of historical data to attain their objectives. Importantly, when additional predictive variables are added to the common part of investors' information sets, the individual-level dispersions of investors' performance outcomes narrow, while their relative performance outcomes improve at higher experience levels. To explain why this widening of their common dataset benefits experienced investors, we model an investor as choosing a portfolio by learning from historical data while also taking model uncertainty into account. The robust learner therefore ignores predictive signals with historical predictive contributions below a subjective model uncertainty threshold; we conjecture this threshold varies with experience.
Does Hedge Fund Activism Improve Investment Efficiency in US Firms?

We examine the impact of hedge fund activism on investment efficiency in target firms. On average, targets’ investment efficiency improves after experiencing hedge fund activism. However, activism improves investment efficiency only for overinvested target firms by reducing their propensity to overinvest. Investment efficiency is associated with closer involvement of activist hedge funds through private settlements and board representations. Further, hedge fund activism does not significantly affect the investment efficiency of underinvested target firms. We find that managers’ hostile resistance to activism (managerial entrenchment) is positively associated with firms’ likelihood of underinvestment. Overall, our findings suggest that it is relatively easier for activist hedge funds to monitor assets-in-place and influence managers to reduce overinvestment. This reduction in overinvestment also creates a positive impact on firm value.
A Geometry of Innovation

We use methods from Natural Language Processing to characterize the innovative content of patents. We develop several metrics that compare inventions to existing and future innovations. The intuition guiding us is that patents dissimilar to past inventions and similar to future ones may have anticipated or started shifts in innovation topics. We find evidence that such patents have higher citations and the firms owning them grow faster and are more profitable relative to other firms. Analysis of trends suggests that innovative ideas may have gotten harder to find over time in high-innovation fields.
Foreign Aid, Public Investment, and the Informal Economy

This paper uses a two-sector open economy model to examine the dynamic absorption of foreign aid in the presence of both formal and informal production. Calibrating the model to yield a long-run equilibrium consistent with sample averages for 72 aid-recipient developing countries for the period 1990-2017, we show that an increase in foreign aid impacts the sectoral composition of the recipient economy, driving resources into the informal sector, and away from the formal sector. Further, if aid is untied (say, provided for general budget support), then the expansion of the informal sector can lead to a contraction of the aggregate economy through the Dutch Disease effect. If the recipient government’s objective is to drive an economic expansion by increasing the share of formal production, then re-allocating existing aid to public investment is more effective than an increase in the aggregate level of aid.
Strategic Uncertainty and Probabilistic Sophistication

This paper uses laboratory experiments to study subjects' assessment of uncertainty resulting from strategic and non-strategic decisions of other players. Non-strategic events are defined by the colors of balls drawn from urns, whereas strategic events are defined by the action choice in Stag Hunt (SH) and Prisoners' Dilemma (PD) games. We elicit subjects' matching probabilities and examine if they satisfy the law of probability including monotonicity and additivity. Violations from the law are observed for both uncertainty sources, but are more substantial for strategic uncertainty. In particular, we observe a coordination fallacy, a violation of monotonicity whereby the probability weight placed on a symmetric coordination profile of the games exceeds that placed on the corresponding action choice. The violation is found to be severer for an efficient coordination profile.
Production and Organoleptic Attributes of Ogiri-Ahuekere Produced from Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea Linn) Seeds

Production and evaluation of ogiri-ahuekere- fermented groundnut (Arachis hypogaea Linn) seed condiment were studied. The groundnut seeds were sundried, dehulled and boiled for 8 hours. The cooked groundnut cotyledons were ground into a paste and wrapped in small portions (30g) with blanched plantain leaves. The wrapped samples were fermented anaerobically in an air-tight container for 1–10 days while the unfermented cooked groundnut paste was used as a control. The samples were dried in the oven at 50oC-70oC. The effects of fermentation time (day) on the organoleptic characteristics of ogiri-ahuekere samples were evaluated. Statistical analyses of the data were carried out using the ANOVA method with the application of SPSS Version 20. The significant difference between the mean values was determined by Turkey’s test at a 95% level of confidence. The mean overall acceptability of soups prepared with ogiri-ahuekere samples were as follows: unfermented ahuekere sample had approximately 5.0 (neither like nor dislike); 1-3 day(s) samples had approximately 4.0 (dislike slightly); 4 and 5 days samples had 6.0 (like slightly); 6 and 7 days samples had approximately 7.0 (like moderately) and 8-10 days samples had approximately 8.0 (like very much). This showed that the increase in the fermentation time improved the organoleptic properties (quality) of the ogiri-ahuekere samples.
Students as Responsible Consumers - Agents for Social Change

The study presents the findings of socially responsible consumption behaviour assessed on a regional sample of one hundred student-respondents; using Socially Responsible Consumption Behaviour (SRCB) Scale; developed from literature, modified to suit Indian conditions. In the article, statistical techniques of Mean comparison, Regression Analysis and ANOVA are applied to find the determinants of socially responsible consumption behaviour and socially responsible consumers. The study attempts Academic Intelligence and Civic Sense as SRCB determinants; thus fills the knowledge gap in literature as no study in the past has utilized the two as behavioural determinants. The results for Place of Living, Academic Intelligence and Civic Sense are found to be significant.
Impact of Perceived CSR on Organizational Commitment: A Perspective of Service Employees

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has gained increasing attention over the past few decades. Although, many studies tried to investigate impact of CSR on consumers, the only dearth of research tried to understand CSR impact on employees. This study investigates the relationship between perceived CSR and Organizational Commitment (OC) in the service sector of Pakistan. The four dimensions of CSR employed in the study include economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic. Data were collected through a self-administered survey method from 220 employees of 4 and 5 stars hotels of Pakistan. The findings of the study reveal that perceived CSR has a significant and positive correlation with organizational commitment. The results of correlation and regression analysis also reveal that not all dimensions of CSR have the same effect on organizational commitment. The economic and philanthropic aspects have more influence on organizational commitment of employees. The researchers also provide some implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research.
Correlation Between Rewards and Commitment: An Empirical Investigation of Independent Financial Adviser in Malaysia

Do extrinsic rewards able to encourage employee commitment especially those in the professional industry and in high position? The purpose of this research is to critically examine the link between rewards and organisational commitment underpinned by motivation theory; Self-Determination Theory and Regulatory Focus Theory among Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs) in Malaysia. This research used a scaling questionnaire covering 2 categories on a 6-point Likert scale. The survey involved 260 IFAs registered with Securities Commission Malaysia using the SurveyMonkey web tools consisting of 18-item scale for measuring a three-component model of organisation commitment (Affective Commitment, Normative Commitment and Continuance Commitment) and a 14-item scale for measuring a five-component model of rewards (Extrinsic Rewards: Pay Satisfaction, Promotion and Team Support; Intrinsic Rewards: Autonomy and Participation in Decision Making). This research used a measurement model via Structure Modelling Equation (SEM) to find the factor analysis for each latent variable. The hypotheses tested clearly show that rewards have a positive and significant effect on organisational commitment. This research has been able to identify the most practical and effective rewards for IFAs. For extrinsic rewards, prospects of promotion have the most positive effect on employee commitment which can be translated into employee performance. Besides that, autonomy and participation in decision making able can foster intrinsic motivation among IFAs. Overall, employee commitment is one of the antecedent determinants of employee performance.
An Analyses of Formula-Based Intergovernmental Transfer Using A Comprehensive Model

In this paper we analyze the tactics used by the central government during the allocation of grants toward local governments, by implementing the guidelines of the comprehensive model of Fiorillo and Merkaj (FM’s model) (2020)*. We apply the model to investigate a formula-based unconditional grant in a post-socialist economy, namely Albania, by assuming the value of three key structural parameters of the model. Using panel data for the period 2004-2011, we find that in Albania although the central government appears to follow the principles of equity and efficiency, political and electoral objectives of the incumbents do influence the allocation of transfers. Results confirm the predictions of the FM model: in a country with weak local government, where central government is perceived as the true policy maker even of local policies, in the presence of a proportional electoral rule, the incumbent tends to shape tactical allocation in favour of supporters. <br><br><br><br>*Fiorillo Fabio and Merkaj Elvina "A Comprehensive Approach to Intergovernmental Grants’ Tactical Allocation. Theory And Estimation Guidelines", submitted to International Tax and Public Finance (2020)
Equal Opportunities for All? How Income Redistribution Promotes Support for Economic Inclusion

Abstract We experimentally investigate how income redistribution shapes support for economic inclusion, i.e., a policy that creates equality of opportunity for income generation. We study a setting in which low-endowment subjects are excluded from investment opportunities unless those with high endowments transfer resources to the low-endowment subjects. We find that support for economic inclusion is stronger among high-endowment subjects when incomes are known to be redistributed in the future compared to when redistribution is precluded by design. Income redistribution spreads both risks and returns of investments in the population, which in turn induces a higher rate of profitable investments, and this prospect tends to foster support for economic inclusion. Income redistribution thus induces more equal and efficient outcomes by boosting popular support for economic inclusion.