Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The real effects of financial reporting on pay and incentives

This paper discusses two real effects of financial reporting on pay and incentives: (1) Better earnings leads to better incentives, and (2) If pay is mismeasured, pay can be misused. The first real effect follows from the fact that incentives are often based on earnings, and the effectiveness of earnings-based incentives is positively related to the quality of earnings. Greater use of earnings in incentives provides better incentives at a lower cost. The second real effect has to do with how well the accounting system measures the expense of various pay components. Complex calculations are required to value complex pay components such as options, post-employment benefits, and performance-vested equity, and these calculations have historically not been done correctly. The incorrect accounting leads to these pay components being misused. I conclude by discussing how accounting and disclosure of pay and incentives can be improved.
Molecular characterization of haemococcidia genus Schellackia (Apicomplexa) reveals the polyphyletic origin of the family Lankesterellidae

The current taxonomy on the haemococcidia establishes that the two genera of protozoan parasites that integrate the family Lankesterellidae are Lankesterella and Schellackia. However, the phylogeny of these genera, as well as the other coccidia, remains unresolved. In this sense, the use of type and described species is essential for the resolution of systematic conflicts. In this study, we molecularly characterize the type species of the genus Schellackia, that is, S. bolivari from Europe and also a described species of the same genus from Asia. At the same time, we contribute with the molecular characterization of another species of the genus Lankesterella. All this put together supports the polyphyly of the family Lankesterellidae. Therefore, we propose the resurrection of the zoological family, Schellackiidae Grassé , to include species within the genus Schellackia.
Litter size and latitude in a large mammal: the wild boar Sus scrofa

A positive relationship between clutch size or litter size and latitude exists in birds and many species of small mammal. Hitherto, however, analyses for large mammals have failed to provide evidence that litter sizes increase with latitude. 2. We collated data from published studies of wild boar in Europe, to analyse the relationship between litter size and latitude in this widely distributed terrestrial mammal. 3. Depending on the specific data set (whether only the most reliable data or all available data were included), latitude explained 58% to 72% of the variation in mean litter sizes across studies. On average, litter size increases by approximately 0.15 piglets per degree of latitude. 4. A strong correlation between litter size and latitude for wild boar in Europe provides a starting point for demographic modelling of this species of both ecologi- cal and economic importance. 5. The pattern for wild boar is consistent with Ashmole's explanation for the effects of latitude on reproduction. The contrast between our results and those generated for other large mammals may result from our focus on an herbivore in contrast to previous work which was focused on carnivores. Further work could usefully examine the extent of seasonality in the availability of resources for species of different dietary types.
The Cost of Staying Open: Voluntary Social Distancing and Lockdowns in the US

In combating the spread of COVID-19, some governments have been reluctant to adopt lockdown policies due to their perceived economic costs. Such costs can, however, arise even in the absence of restrictive policies, if individualsâ€™ independent reaction to the virus slows down the economy. This paper i¬ nds that imposing lockdowns leads to lower overall costs to the economy than staying open. We combine detailed location trace data from 40 million mobile devices with dii¬€erence-in-dii¬€erences estimations and a modii¬ cation of the epidemiological SIR model that allows for societal and political response to the virus. In that way, we show that voluntary reaction incurs substantial economic costs, while the additional economic costs arising from lockdown policies are small compared to their large benei¬ ts in terms of reduced medical costs. Our results hold for practically all realistic estimates of lockdown ei¬ƒciency and voluntary response strength. We quantify the counterfactual costs of voluntary social distancing for various US states that implemented lockdowns. For the US as a whole, we estimate that lockdowns reduce the costs of the pandemic by 1.7% of annual GDP per capita, compared to purely voluntary responses. Revised September 2020
Global Carbon Divestment and Firms' Actions

We examine the actions of financial institutions and firms regarding greenhouse gas emissions. We find that financial institutions around the world reduce their exposure to stocks of high-emission industries after 2015, especially for those located in high-climate-awareness countries, suggesting that institutions are concerned about climate risks in recent years. In the presence of divestment, firms in the same countries tend to experience lower price valuation ratios, which make equity financing costlier, but they increase capital expenditure and research and development (R&D) expenses and reduce emissions resulting from their operations. Our results support the notion that divestment campaigns by financial institutions exert pressure on firms to adopt climate-friendly policies and decrease carbon footprints.
FinTech Credit: A Critical Review of Empirical Research Literature

FinTech credit has attracted significant attention from academics and policymakers in recent years. Given its growing importance, in this paper we provide an overview of the empirical research on FinTech credit to households and non-financial corporations (NFCs). We focus on three broad topics: i) the factors supporting the development of innovative business models for credit intermediation, such as marketplace lending; ii) the benefits of new credit risk assessment data and methods; iii) the implications of these innovations for access to credit. Three main messages emerge from the literature. First, the growth of lenders with innovative business models is mainly driven by the degree of local economic development and of competition in the banking sector. Second, new data and methods can improve traditional credit risk models because they are particularly helpful in screening opaque borrowers, such as those with scant credit history. Third, FinTech borrowers generally lack (or have limited) access to finance and tend to be riskier than traditional bank borrowers.
Bridge Proxy-SVAR: Estimating the Macroeconomic Effects of Shocks Identified at High-Frequency

This paper proposes a novel methodology, the Bridge Proxy-SVAR, which exploits high-frequency information for the identification of the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models employed in macroeconomic analysis. The methodology is comprised of three steps: (I) identifying the structural shocks of interest in high-frequency systems; (II) aggregating the series of high-frequency shocks at a lower frequency; and (III) using the aggregated series of shocks as a proxy for the corresponding structural shock in lower frequency VARs. We show that the methodology correctly recovers the impact effect of the shocks, both formally and in Monte Carlo experiments. Thus the Bridge Proxy-SVAR can improve causal inference in macroeconomics that typically relies on VARs identified at low-frequency. In an empirical application, we identify uncertainty shocks in the U.S. by imposing weaker restrictions relative to the existing literature and find that they induce mildly recessionary effects.
Effect of Different Fats Mixed with Barley or Soybean Meal on Feed Intake and Milk Production of Dairy Cows

Abstract Twelve animals in midlactation were offered grass silage for ad libitum intake and supplements of either barley or soybean meal with addition of either no fat or about . 4 kg/d of either tallow or soybean oil. Silage dry matter intake did not differ when supplements were given alone but addition of fat slightly reduced silage intake. Soybean oil depressed milk fat content and both fats depressed milk protein content. Soybean meal gave a higher milk yield than barley, and fat addition always increased milk yield although effect was small. It is concluded that soybean meal increased ration digestibility giving higher milk yield without increasing silage dry matter intake.
Are All Heuristics Created Equal? Evidence from P2P Investments

Heuristics have a ubiquitous influence on decision-making. Despite a large strand of literature on various heuristics, scant research addresses the concurrent applications of different heuristics or the interplay amongst them. Using detailed peer-to-peer (P2P) investment data from Renrendai, a leading Chinese P2P lending platform, we make the first attempt to uncover the relationship between two important numerological heuristics: the round-number heuristic and the lucky-number heuristic. We document a substitution relationship between these two heuristics. The selection of round numbers versus lucky numbers for the loan amount reveals borrowers’ credit quality and affects the loan funding success rate, though the ex post performance of funded loans is similar. Lenders also apply heuristics in setting the bid amount, which potentially reveals information about their activeness and risk preference. As lenders become more experienced, they form more sophisticated judgments about the loan quality from borrowers’ use of heuristics. Overall, our paper examines the heterogeneities and interlacing of heuristics by establishing a framework to extract information about individuals’ characteristics and preferences from the heuristics they use. Our findings are generalizable to many other real-life situations.
Morphometric differentiation between Neotropical black-eared opossums, Didelphis marsupialis and D. aurita (Didelphimorphia, Didelphidae)

Les opossums a oreilles noires neotropicaux sont representes par deux especes allopatriques limitees a des habitats de foret : Didelphis aurita, repartie depuis le nord de l'Argentine jusqu'au nord-est du Bresil, surtout le long de la foret atlantique, mais aussi sur les plateaux a Araucarias ; D. marsupialis qui se trouve surtout dans la foret d'Amazonie. Leur statut d'especes ou de sous-especes allopatriques a ete le sujet de debats. Dans ce travail nous donnons une analyse des differences morphometriques entre D. aurita et D. marsupialis en utilisant 18 mensurations du crâne. Une ANOVA entre sexes a mis en evidence l'existence d'un dimorphisme sexuel, les mâles etant plus grands que les femelles dans les deux formes. Les sexes ont donc ete traites separement. Une ANOVA entre D. aurita et D. marsupialis a montre que les deux especes sont significativement differentes pour 14 caracteres de femelles et 8 caracteres de mâles. D. aurita et D. marsupialis sont aussi immediatement separees par une analyse discriminante qui a permis de reconnaitre correctement plus de 80 % des specimens. Les carres des distances de Mahalanobis ont ete legerement superieurs a cinq pour les deux sexes. Malgre l'absence de caracteres morphologiques qualitatifs qui distinguent D. aurita de D. marsupialis, nos resultas montrent qu'ils sont morphometriquement identifiables et doivent etre consideres comme deux especes distinctes.
Short-Run Disequilibrium Adjustment and Long-Run Equilibrium in the International Stock Markets: A Network-Based Approach

In this paper, we propose a network-based analytical framework that exploits cointegration and the error correction model to systematically investigate the directional interconnectedness of the short-run disequilibrium adjustment towards long-run equilibrium affecting the international stock market during the period of 5 January 2007 to 30 June 2017. Under this setting, we investigate whether and how the cross-border directional interconnectedness within the world's 23 developed and 23 emerging stock markets altered during the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis, 2010-2012 European Sovereign Debt Crisis, and the entire period of 2007-2017. The main results indicate that changes in directional interconnectedness within stock markets worldwide did occur under the impact of the recent financial crises. The extent of the short-run disequilibrium adjustment towards long-run equilibrium for individual stock markets is not homogeneous over different time scales. The derived networks of stock markets interconnectedness allow us to visually characterize how specific stock markets from different regions form interconnected groups when exhibiting similar behaviours, which none the less provides significant information for strategic portfolio and risk management.
Distance

Geographic distance plays an important role in many disciplines like economic geography, trade or demography. In international economics and finance, it is primarily used as a substitute of transaction costs in gravity equations of bilateral trade in goods and assets. This paper is a synthesis of the work on gravity models and the way distance coefficients are (or should be) interpreted. Specifically, I argue that the persistent and seemingly puzzling influence of geography goes mainly through a familiarity preference due to information asymmetries and suggest a new method to measure the magnitude of the "information exchange" across economic agents.
Pattern of Discharge and Mass Loading during Drainage of Excavated Ponds Used for Food Fish Production of Channel Catfish

Abstract We evaluated the temporal pattern of solids, organic matter, and nutrient concentrations in the discharge effluent of three commercial-size excavated ponds with two types of drainage structures used in catfish production in Mississippi. Measurements of effluent water quality and pond stage elevation were used to calculate solids, organic matter, and nutrient mass loading when ponds were drained. Solids, organic matter, and nutrient concentrations in effluent from ponds with fixed internal drains were very high during the first 10– 30 min of pond draining. Thereafter, effluent solids and nutrient concentrations were similar to those of the bulk pond water. The initial flush of effluent contained solids that settle easily. Mass discharge was directly proportional to volume discharged in two ponds. In the third pond, mass discharge increased as a function of pond volume because poorly consolidated pond sediment exposed during draining was eroded by rainfall and wind-generated waves. Average mass dis.
House Prices and Household Consumption in Korea

<b>English Abstract:</b> We measure impact of real estate housing prices on household consumption and investigate channels in operation, making use of panel data from Korea. Our baseline finding is that households expand their consumption by 0.194 percentage points in response to a 1 percentage point increase in the real house price index. This result is driven to a larger extent by home-owning households rather than non home-owning households, and by falling prices rather than rising prices. In an attempt to find clues as to the operation of relevant channels, we further breakdown total households into subgroups based on multi-house ownership, ages of the householders, size of the housing unit, and borrowing constraints that the household may face. In examining these subgroups of homeowners, we find evidence consistent with the operation of the wealth effect channel, but we do not find evidence supporting the operation of the collateral effect channel. Estimates for non home-owning households are broadly consistent with the precautionary saving effect channel, but we also find results that might be interpreted as there being a discouragement effect channel for a subgroup of non home-owning households.
Loss on ignition and kjeldahl digestion for estimating organic carbon and total nitrogen in estuarine marsh soils: Calibration with dry combustion

Soils (n=250) were collected from ten salt and brackish-water marshes of North Carolina and analyzed for organic matter content by loss on ignition (LOI) and Kjeldahl nitrogen (KN). Total organic carbon and total nitrogen were determined on the same samples using an elemental CHN analyzer. Regression analyses indicated that LOI and KN were excellent estimators of organic C (R2=0.990) and total N(R2=0.986), respectively, in low clay content (0–11%) marsh soils containing a wide range of soil organic C (0.1–28%) and total N (0–1.6%). A quadratic equation best described the relationship between organic C and organic matter (Organic C=0.40 [LOI] +0.0025 [LOI]2) while a linear model accurately described the relationship between total N and Kjeldahl N (Total N=1.048 [KN]−0.010). The proportion of organic C in organic matter (C/OM) increased with increasing soil organic matter content, probably as a result of aging. Young marshes, which are characterized by low soil organic content contain C/OM ratios similar to emergent vegetation (40–45%). In old organic soils (70–80% organic matter), C/OM increased to 57–60% due to accumulation of reduced organic materials.
Does Better Information Curb Customs Fraud?

This paper examines how providing better information to customs inspectors and monitoring their actions affects tax revenue and fraud detection in Madagascar. First, an instrumental variables strategy is used to show that transaction-specific, third-party valuation advice on a subset of high-risk import declarations increases fraud findings by 21.7 percentage points and tax collection by 5.2 percentage points. Second, a randomized control trial is conducted in which a subset of high-risk declarations is selected to receive detailed risk comments and another subset is explicitly tagged for ex-post monitoring. For declarations not subject to third-party valuation advice, detailed comments increase reporting of fraud by 3.1 percentage points and improve tax yield by 1 percentage point. However, valuation advice and detailed comments have a significantly smaller impact on revenue when potential tax losses and opportunities for graft are large. Monitoring induces inspectors to scan more shipments but does not result in the detection of more fraud or the collection of additional revenue. Better information thus helps curb customs fraud, but its effectiveness appears compromised by corruption.
Wage Growth Distribution and Changes over Time: 2001-2018

This paper investigates how wage growth varies among Australian employees with different individual characteristics and job characteristics, and how the role of these characteristics has changed over the 2001-2018 period. The results show that after increasing between 2002 and 2007, wage growth had significantly slowed down post 2008, and particularly from 2013 onwards, returning to the levels of the early 2000s. Employees' age, education, employment contract, occupation and industry explain a large share of differences in wage growth between individuals, and these characteristics are more important than aggregate business cycle effects. Conversely, the employee's gender seems less important. Interestingly, the employee's occupation is more important post-2008 than pre-2008, with managers and professionals experiencing substantially higher wage growth than others since 2014, whereas education was more important pre-2008. Finally, we find that casual employees receive a wage growth premium during the economic upturn and a penalty during the economic downturn.
Infrastructure, Economic Growth, and Poverty: A Review

How much an economy should invest in its physical infrastructure is a crucial question being asked by policy makers from developing countries where financial resources for economic development are limited. This paper aims to address this question by bringing insights from the literature that investigates the relationship between infrastructure investment, economic growth, and poverty alleviation. The study shows that there is no consensus among the existing studies, which are mostly focused on industrialized economies, on the relationship between public investment and economic growth. Studies that investigate the relationship between physical infrastructure and economic growth mostly conclude that there exists a positive relationship. This is also true between physical infrastructure and income inequality, as reported by a few studies. This study also identifies many gaps in the literature and highlights the need for further studies to narrow them.
SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF CHEMICAL ATTRIBUTES OF THE SOIL AND PRODUCTIVITY IN THE BLACK PEPPER CROP (PIPER NIGRUM, L.)

O conhecimento de determinados atributos do solo associado a resposta de producao de pimenta-do-reino pode possibilitar a aplicacao racional, localizada e individualizada dos insumos. O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar a variabilidade espacial dos atributos quimicos e da producao de pimenta-do-reino. Os atributos quimicos do solo foram amostrados na projecao da copa da cultura e na profundidade de 0-0,20 m, com distância entre as linhas de 2,50 m e de 4,0 m entre amostras na linha de plantio, totalizando 76 pontos amostrais. Em cada ponto, foram determinados os atributos P, K, Ca, Mg, H+Al e acidez ativa (pH). Com base nessas analises, determinou-se a soma de cations basicos (SB), capacidade de troca cationica (CTC) e saturacao por cations basicos (V). Os atributos pH, P, K, Al, H+Al e producao apresentaram estrutura de dependencia espacial, o que permitiu o seu mapeamento com a utilizacao de tecnicas geoestatisticas. Os atributos quimicos apresentaram valores baixos de alcance, com excecao da variavel fosforo, evidenciando a baixa continuidade espacial do solo sob pimenta-do-reino. A grande amplitude de variacao dos atributos quimicos justifica a aplicacao diferenciada e localizada de fertilizantes na lavoura.
Potato proteins, and other plant proteins, as potential transgenic resistance factors to pollen beetles in oilseed rape

Summary Proteinase inhibitors (PIs), lectin and patatin purified from potato tubers were tested in no-choice feeding assays with pollen beetle larvae (Meligethes spp.). The idea was to search for resistance factors possible to introduce into oilseed rape (Brassica napus) by genetic engineering. The larval diet was prepared by soaking oilseed rape anthers in protein solutions of known concentrations. Potato lectin was the most potent in that it was the only of these proteins that reduced both larval survival and growth rate, while cysteine, aspartic and metallo PIs and patatin only reduced larval growth rate. Serine PIs had no significant effect on larval performance. Subsequently, the effect of potato lectin was compared to that of lectins from other food or feed crops, resulting in the following mortality- based ranking of activity: Con A from jackbean > wheat germ lectin > potato lectin > peanut lectin. In choice tests, larvae did not discriminate between Con A- and control-diets. These results suggest that the effect of Con A on larvae is toxic, not deterrent. Adult response was stronger to Con A than to potato lectin in no-choice tests, just as it was in larvae. However, adult survival rate and weight was not affected by Con A but the lectin significantly reduced adult feeding as well as oviposition rates. A resistance factor that suppresses adult feeding on flower buds is important for reduced impact of the pollen beetle on the Brassica oilseed crop.