Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fiscal Limits and the Pricing of Eurobonds

This paper proposes a methodology to price bonds jointly issued by a group of countries—Eurobonds in the euro-area context. We consider two types of bonds; the first is backed by several and joint guarantees (SJGs), and the second features several but not joint guarantees (SNJGs). The pricing of SJG and SNJG bonds reflects different assumptions regarding the pooling of debtors’ fiscal resources. We estimate fiscal limits for the six largest euro-area economies over 2008–2021 and deduce counterfactual Eurobond prices. For the five-year maturity, SNJG bond yield spreads would have been about three times larger than SJG ones over the estimation sample. Hence, issuing SJG bonds could result in gains at the aggregate level. Notwithstanding, our model also predicts that gains may temporarily vanish in periods of acute fiscal stress. We finally envision postissuance redistribution schemes, whereby gains stemming from the issuance of SJG bonds could be shared among participating countries; we argue that these schemes may alleviate the reduction in market discipline resulting from common bonds issuance. This paper was accepted by David Sraer, finance. Funding: This work has benefited from financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation [Grant 182293]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023. 4740 .
ICOs: A New Eldorado for Investors and a Revolution in Startup Financing? A Survey

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a new financing source for startups based on the pillars of the blockchain ecosystem. ICOs are regarded as a disruptive way to raise funds digitally, ensuring speed, low cost and safety. ICOs have significantly increased in number and size in recent years, and emerging research has described facts about ICOs and their supposed safety. We offer a comprehensive discussion of the ICO “revolution” paradigm. We also compare ICOs with other financing sources available to startups. We show that ICOs require regulation and clear governance models and processes to ensure their long-term benefits.
Anticipatory effects around proposed regulation: Evidence from Basel III

Regulation is often proposed, developed, and finalized over a lengthy rule-making period prior to its adoption. We examine the period over which banking authorities discussed, adopted, and implemented Basel III to understand how firms respond to proposed regulation. We find evidence to suggest that affected banks not only lobbied rule makers against it, but that they also made strategic financial reporting changes and altered their business models in ways that reduced their exposure to the proposed rule prior to rule makers finalizing the regulation. Further, our results indicate a sequential response, with banks responding through lobbying and strategic financial reporting prior to making business model changes. These findings highlight the interplay among firms’ financial reporting, business model, and political choices in response to proposed regulation, and indicate that the appropriate date for an event study may be the regulation’s announcement date rather than its adoption or implementation dates.
Effect of reconditioning and reuse of sucrose syrup in quality properties and retention of nutrients in osmotic dehydration of guava

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to assess the effect of reconditioning and reuse (RR) of sucrose syrup in quality properties and retention of nutrients in guava during osmotic dehydration (OD). Two trials of 15 OD cycles were conducted with RR of osmotic solution. The parameters of water loss (WL) and solid incorporation (SI), as well as microbial load and physical–chemical properties of syrup and fruit were evaluated. The results showed that the RR did not modify the parameters WL and SI, and the microbial load remained low. The RR did not influence the color of osmodehydrated fruit, as well as the nutrient retentions, but probably it influenced the citric acid and reduced sugar retentions. At the end, the syrup was enriched of vitamin C, polyphenols, potassium, with traces of lycopene, β-carotene, and other minerals (Fe, Mg, Mn, and Zn) and could be used to formulate new products.
Teachers’ Perception towards Formative Assessment in Saudi Universities’ Context: A Review of Literature

Formative assessment has received considerable attention among scholars around the world. In Saudi Arabia, formative assessment is perceived as a promising opportunity for improving learning outcomes. The review of literature presents formative assessment as a serious issue that can affect students’ outcomes. In particular, teachers’ perception is an important factor that determines their willingness to apply specific assessment strategies in class. According to the findings, formative assessment leads to positive student outcomes. Importantly, the overall perception towards formative is multi-factored. As such, a single factor cannot be blamed for teachers’ perception and attitude outcomes. Notably, teacher’ experience, education level, and other factors define their perception towards formative assessment. As such, any efforts to influence their perspective will have a significant positive outcome on their willingness to apply formative assessment. However, a further study is needed to quantify the significance of teachers’ perception in influencing their decision to apply formative or summative assessment.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Improving Variational Autoencoders with Inverse Autoregressive Flow

The framework of normalizing flows provides a general strategy for flexible variational inference of posteriors over latent variables. We propose a new type of normalizing flow, inverse autoregressive flow (IAF), that, in contrast to earlier published flows, scales well to high-dimensional latent spaces. The proposed flow consists of a chain of invertible transformations, where each transformation is based on an autoregressive neural network. In experiments, we show that IAF significantly improves upon diagonal Gaussian approximate posteriors. In addition, we demonstrate that a novel type of variational autoencoder, coupled with IAF, is competitive with neural autoregressive models in terms of attained log-likelihood on natural images, while allowing significantly faster synthesis.
The Influence of Part-Time Lecturers' Payment Management on the Dons' Performance

Kenya’s university student enrolment had risen in the year 2016 to around 23 percent following increased female enrolment, massive infrastructure development at the universalities, the introduction of new programs, lowering university entry grades as well as the opening of more campuses by the universities, (Wanjau, Okeyo, & Rimiru, 2016). In the period of 2015, the enrolment shot up from 361,379 to 443,783, and this has created more challenges for universities as they now have to reduce expenses and seek new funding avenues to expand facilities for coping with the surge, (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2015). The university student enrollment has further risen with the recent lowering of the entry cutoff points, as those KCSE candidates scoring grade C+ are now eligible for government funded university admission. This puts competitive pressure on the universities and also on the understaffed academic members and thus necessitating the engagement of part-time lecturers.
In-Vivo Stack Overflow Detection and Stack Size Estimation for Low-End Multithreaded Operating Systems using Virtual Prototypes

Constrained IoT devices with limited computing resources are on the rise. They utilize low-end multithreaded operating systems (e.g. RIOT) where each thread is assigned a fixed stack size during the development process. In this regard, it is important to choose an appropriate stack size which does not cause stack overflows and at the same time does not waste scarce memory resources by overestimating the required thread stack size. In this paper we propose an in-vivo technique for stack overflow detection and stack size estimation that leverages Virtual Prototypes (VPs) and is specifically tailored for low-end multithreaded IoT operating systems. We focus on SystemC-based VPs which operate on the TLM abstraction level. VPs are an industrial proven modeling standard to enable early software development and testing. We propose a non-intrusive extension for existing VPs which allows detecting stack overflows and provides a stack size estimation, which is beneficial to a VP-based development process. Our analysis works in-vivo, hence no modification of the executed software binary is required between testing and deployment. Our evaluation using the RIOT operating system revealed two previously unknown stack overflows in RIOT and identified potential stack size overestimation.
Using generalized non central t-distribution for estimation of confidence interval of coefficient of variation

The use of statistics in pharmaceuticals is increasing with advanced statistical methods being widely incorporated by the medical researchers and pharmacologists. Statistics methodologies are pivotal to determine the quality and maintain consistency in pharmaceutical drugs. The dataset for our research consists of weight measures for a pharmaceutical drug for different dosages. To maintain the consistency of the drug during production stage, a coefficient of variation range is obtained that can be treated as the standard during drug production stage. We observe that the inverse of the coefficient of variation of this dataset has a non-central t distribution and aim to obtain a confidence interval for this inverse coefficient of variation by employing the model of generalized t-distribution. The parameters for the generalized tdistribution being utilized are obtained by applying method of moments and optimized to obtain the narrowest confidence interval for the inverse of coefficient of variation. We then make use of this confidence interval for the inverse coefficient of variation to acquire confidence interval for the population coefficient of variation. The developed model is then validated by comparing it with classic McKay approximation method for normal and Gamma distributions to monitor how the model performs in comparison to an existing model.
Effect of Method of Application, Herbicide Rate and Cultivar on Processing Pea Tolerance to Saflufenacil

The purpose of this work was to determine the effect of method of application, herbicide rate and cultivar on tolerance of processing pea tolerance to saflufenacil. Two field experiments were established to address this—each experiment was conducted over a 3-year period. The first experiment, conducted in 2014, 2015 and 2016, was arranged in a split-plot design with method of application (pre-plant incorporation (PPI) or preemergence (PRE)) as the main plot factor, and saflufenacil rate (0, 75 and 150 g ai ha-1) as the subplot factor. Pea (Pisum sativum L.) was not injured, and dry matter, pea tenderness and yield were not less than the untreated check when saflufenacil was applied either PPI or PRE, at 75 and 150 g ai ha-1 of the herbicide. The second experiment was conducted from 2017 to 2019, at two locations each year; each repetition of this experiment was arranged in a factorial design to determine the effect of two factors on processing pea: saflufenacil rate (0, 75 and 150 g ai ha-1) and cultivar. Saflufenacil did not cause more than 5% visible injury to pea, nor did it reduce pea dry matter, tenderness or marketable yield of the eight cultivars included in the experiment. Application method, saflufenacil rate and cultivar did not affect pea tolerance across a wide range of soil and environmental conditions. Registration of saflufenacil in processing pea would significantly improve growers’ options for control of Group 2 resistant broadleaf weeds such as common lamb’s-quarters (Chenopodium album L.), eastern black nightshade (Solanum ptycanthum Dunal.) and common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia L.).
Presenting a Model of Good Corporate Governance as a Controller of Political Behavior of Human Resources in Tehran Province Water and Wastewater Company

Employees' political behavior is one of the critical and undeniable challenges regarding human resource management, with many solutions proposed and used to prevent it. Here, as a model for sustainable human resource development, good corporate governance (GCG) can probably mitigate the effects of political behavior in the organization. The study has tried to examine the effect of each of GCG constituent elements on reducing political behavior in the organization by presenting an indigenous model of GCG. The method was applied in terms of purpose and descriptive and survey in terms of the data collection method. The study was qualitative using semi-structured interview tools with eleven senior managers of Tehran Province Water and Wastewater Company (TPWWC) and faculty members selected using the snowball method. The results finally led to the identification of eight main components and twenty-three sub-components for GCG. 1) Sovereignty consciousness, 2) organizational culture, 3) disclosure of information, 4) responsiveness, 5) a network of relationships, 6) board size, 7) justice and fairness, and 8) ownership structure were identified as the main building blocks of GCG and the findings revealed that these components are solutions to prevent political behavior in organizations.
Serum soluble transferrin receptor levels are independently associated with homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance in adolescent girls

Introduction Markers of iron homeostasis are related to insulin resistance (IR) in adults. However, studies in children and adolescents are scarce and show contradictory results. The aim was to evaluate the potential relationship between iron status markers and IR. Additionally, no previous study has explored the mutual effect of biomarkers of iron homeostasis and inflammation (i.e. high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP)), and adipokines (i.e. retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4)) on IR in the cohort of adolescent girls. Material and methods A total of 60 girls age between 16 and 19 years were included in the study. Serum levels of ferritin, transferrin, soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR), hsCRP, and RBP4 were measured by immunonephelometry. Homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) and iron homeostasis indexes were calculated. Univariate and multivariate binary logistic regression analysis were used to investigate the possible independent associations of the examined biomarkers. Principal component analysis was used to examine their mutual effect on HOMA-IR in the studied girls. Results Ferritin, sTfR, hsCRP and RBP4 were significant predictors for higher HOMA-IR in univariate analysis (p = 0.020, p = 0.009, p = 0.007, p = 0.003, respectively). Multivariate regression analysis after adjustment for waist circumference (WC) showed that serum sTfR levels remained positively associated with higher HOMA-IR (p = 0.044). Factorial analysis revealed that the obesity-inflammation related factor (i.e., WC and hsCRP) and adipokine-acute phase protein related factor (i.e., RBP4 and ferritin) showed significant differences between HOMA-IR < 2.5 and HOMA-IR ≥ 2.5. Conclusions Serum sTfR levels are independently associated with HOMA-IR, whereas higher serum ferritin levels together with higher RBP4 are related to higher HOMA-IR in adolescent girls.
Taxpayer wealth and federal tax revenue under a tax policy that shields retained earnings used for growth from taxes

This article addresses shortcomings in US tax policy: the interest tax shield (ITS) that favours debt over equity; the unfavourable tax treatment of retained earnings (RE) that is used for growth; and the inequalities in the taxing of ownership forms. Taxpayer wealth is calculated under the assumption that growth increases 0.78% with the enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), which is an increase projected by tax experts. We discover that taxpayer wealth under TCJA with an ITS increases 15.69% beyond it pre-TCJA value; total federal tax revenue (TFTR) decreases 4.20%; and C corporations are no longer taxed more heavily than pass-throughs. If we replace an ITS with a 50% retained earnings tax shield (1⁄2RTS) where half of every dollar used for RE is shielded from taxes, we show that taxpayer wealth increases 4.51% and TFTR rises 3.15%. If we replace a 1⁄2RTS with an RTS (where 100% of RE is shielded from taxes), we find that taxpayer wealth and TFTR together increase 5.53%. The switch to an RTS further serves to equalise the taxing of pass-throughs and C corporations. Finally, switching from an ITS to an RTS does not materially alter the optimal debt-to-firm value ratio.
Business Networking and Performance of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Benue State, Nigeria

The impact of business networking on the performance of SMEs in Benue State, Nigeria is investigated in this study. The study focuses on the impact of network governance, network content, and network structure on SMEs in Benue State, Nigeria. The study employs a survey design, with a questionnaire serving as the data gathering tool. The study's population consists of 650 licenced SMEs in Benue State, with a sample size of 242 obtained via stratified sampling. The KMO and Bartlett's tests show that variables are highly significant, and principal component analysis was appropriate at 0.631. The reliability test-retest result revealed a reliability index of (0.702). Regression analysis was used to examine and present the data received from the businesses surveyed. Network governance (42.2 percent), network content (30.2 percent), and network structure (46.2 percent) all have a positive and significant effect on the performance of SMEs in Benue State, Nigeria, according to the results of tested hypotheses. According to the study's findings, business networking in a business environment is concerned with characteristics such as network governance, network content, and network structure, which create the foundation upon which SMEs connect with their surroundings. The research also revealed that business networking has a significant impact on SMEs' performance. SMEs working in any business environment should build up a formation structure that allows them to engage freely within the environment, according to the report.
Tax morale, perception of justice, trust in public authorities, tax knowledge, and tax compliance: a study of Indonesian SMEs

This study aims to analyse whether and to what extent tax morality, trust in public authority, perception of justice, and tax knowledge are associated with tax compliance by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Using a sample of 232 Indonesian SMEs in 2020, we found that SME taxpayers’ level of tax compliance is positively associated with their level of tax morality, perception of justice, and trust in public authorities. Our results also show that tax morality has the greatest magnitude in this association, which indicates its role as the main driver of tax compliance. We also found a significant positive association between tax knowledge and tax compliance, confirming the notion that taxpayers’ intrinsic motivation should be equipped with adequate tax knowledge. Our results suggest that in improving SMEs’ tax compliance, regulators need to consider strengthening the intrinsic motivation as well as enhancing the tax knowledge that promotes a greater understanding of tax obligations.
The Effects of the Flipped Classroom Model on the Laboratory Self- Efficacy and Attitude of Higher Education Students

In class environments, the flipped classroom (FC) model has been found to increase students' attitudes, achievement, and motivation. However, the practical effects of the FC model in laboratory environments have not been introduced into the literature. Therefore, in this study, the effects of the FC model on the laboratory self-efficacy skills and attitudes of higher education students were investigated within the scope of the physics laboratory course. The data were purposively collected from a group of 84 first-year university students aged between 18-20, who were, then, sorted out into two groups: experimental and control. The sequential explanatory design model by Creswell was used, which is a subcategory of the mixed-methods design. While the FC model was applied to the experimental group, the traditional classroom model was used in the control group. In the data collection process, qualitative and quantitative data collection tools were used sequentially. The experimental results obtained at the end of a six-week study showed that the FC model significantly improved the laboratory self-efficacy and attitude towards the laboratory of higher education students. Therefore, the FC model was also found to have positive effects in laboratory environments.
The Management of Scar Ectopic: A Single-Center Experience

Purpose: This study aimed to highlight the clinical features, diagnosis, and different modalities of the treatment of cesarean scar pregnancy (CSP). Methods: This study was done in the tertiary referral hospital of India for one year. A total of 11 cases were enrolled prospectively. In each case, the diagnostic ultrasonography and measurement of baseline beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (β-HCG) levels were done. The treatment was given based on the hemodynamic status of the patient and desire for future fertility. Various treatment modalities used were medical, surgical, or interventional digital subtraction angiography to control hemorrhage. Also, in some cases, ultrasound-guided methotrexate was injected into the scar ectopic. Medically treated cases were followed up until their β-HCG levels became normal. Results: Out of 11 patients, six had a history of two cesarean sections in the past, four patients had a history of one cesarean section and one patient with a previous three low segments cesarean section (LSCS). Seven out of 11 patients underwent medical management with either methotrexate with potassium chloride (KCl) or methotrexate alone. The success of the medical management was monitored by serial β- HCG values. The mean time for the resolution of these 10 patients was 86.7 ± 53.6 days. Three patients underwent emergency uterine artery embolization due to uncontrolled bleeding and one patient required laparotomy. Conclusion: CSP is a life-threatening condition that can be diagnosed with the help of transvaginal ultrasonography. The treatment, however, depends on the hemodynamic status of the patient and desire for future fertility. Well-defined diagnostic criteria coupled with structured management and follow-up protocol can help in treating this challenging form of ectopic pregnancy.