Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Taxation on Capital and Recurrent Expenditure: Implications for Economic Growth in Nigeria

This paper seeks to find out the role of taxation on capital and recurrent expenditure and its implications for economic growth. Taxation as a source of revenue has remained a much-debated issue, and to take a position in the debate, this study's data were collected from CBN statistical bulletin covering the period 1998 to 2017. OLS in the form of single and multiple regression technique was adopted for analysis. It revealed that tax revenue has positive and significant relationship with capital and recurrent revenue. More, it was found that the ratio of taxation on capital and recurrent expenditure has positive relationship with GDP. In other words, an increment in taxation revenue will bring about corresponding increase in government capital and recurrent expenditure and economic growth in Nigeria. Based on the findings and conclusion, it is recommended that government see taxation as an important source of revenue. Government should also strengthen the electronic tax collection system to enhance effective mobilization of taxes.
Are Financially Constrained Firms More Prone to Financial Restatements?

We examine the association between firms’ financial constraints and potentially value- destroying financial restatements. How financial constraints affect managerial behavior has been labeled as a core issue in accounting and finance. Ex-ante, the nature of the relation between financial constraints and financial restatements is unclear and remains unexplored in the literature. We find that financially constrained firms are more prone to restate their financial statements. We examine two explanations for this relation. First, consistent with managerial opportunism, we find that among financially constrained firms, weaker firm performance, greater financial leverage, and greater informational complexity are associated with higher discretionary accruals and more restatements. Second, consistent with managerial signalling, we find that although firms with greater investment opportunities and financing needs have higher discretionary accruals, they are not associated with more restatements. These firms signal positive prospects through earnings management while avoiding GAAP violations that could trigger restatements. Finally, we find that a financial constraint measure based on textual analysis outperforms traditional metrics used in most prior research.
Development and characterization of lectin-functionalized vesicular constructs bearing amphotericin B for bio-film targeting

The long-term goal of this work will be to develop a topical formulation for oropharyngeal candidosis. Liposomes were prepared by the vesicle extrusion technique from mixtures of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine, cholesterol, and stearylamine incorporating a reactive phospholipid, the m-maleimidobenzoyl-N-hydroxysuccinimide ester derivative of dipalmitoylphosphatidylethanolamine, which was conjugated with the N-succinimidyl-S-acetylthioacetate derivatives of succinyl concanavalin A. Morphology of liposomes was studied by transmission electron microscopy and bio-film architecture using fluorescence microscopy. Lectinized vesicles were put into contact with bovine submaxillary mucin, to determine the in vitro activity and specificity. Targeting study was performed using 3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. The liposomes were found to have a diameter in the range of 360–450 and 390–510 nm for uncoated and coated formulations, respectively. The MTT assay showed a strong association of lectin-bearing liposomes with candidal bio-film. The results suggest that surface-modified liposomes can effectively target candidal bio-film in vitro.
Does Co-Authorship Lead to Higher Academic Productivity?

In recent decades, co-authorship and policies aimed at inducing academic collaboration have increased simultaneously. Assuming that intellectual collaboration is exogenously determined, prior studies find a negative relationship between co-authorship and productivity. I examine a panel data on economists publishing from 1970 to 1999 to test the causal effect of intellectual collaboration on intellectual output. As characteristics of the individual and her opportunity set are endogenously related to both collaboration and productivity, I instrument the amount of co-authorship by the common research interest between an author and her potential coauthors. After controlling for endogenous co-authorship formation, unobservable heterogeneity and time varying factors, the effect of intellectual collaboration on individual performance becomes positive. However, this effect varies significantly between high and low productive authors. These findings justify the existence of policies that stimulate intellectual collaboration.
Habitat Separation Between Sympatric Snake Populations

Quantitative data consisting of 14 structural habitat variables and 5 climatic variables were obtained from 505 telemetric relocations of 21 timber rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) and 20 northern copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix mokeson) in eastern Pennsylvania. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed that the habitats utilized by the two species differed significantly. The single discriminant function generated by a discriminant analysis was highly correlated with variables de- scribing structural features of the forest floor and canopy. A. c. mokeson utilized relatively open areas with higher rock density and less surface vegetation than did C. horridus. The discriminant function correctly classified 76% of the samples. The 24% overlap consisted largely of locations from gravid C. horridus whose habitat preference closely paralleled A. c. mokeson. Measurements of habitat overlap indicated that the separation of the two species along the habitat axis was theoretically sufficient for competitive avoidance. Although the observed species separation can be interpreted as reflecting interspecific competition, an alternate explanation based upon inherent physiological differences is also presented.
Forward-Looking Currency Betas

I propose a model-free method to derive forward-looking betas to currency portfolios from cross-pair currency options. Using the dollar factor --- an equal-weighted basket of foreign currencies against the U.S. dollar --- as the systematic factor, I find that these option-implied betas are significantly better predictors of realized betas and currency excess returns compared to traditional rolling window betas. Constructing portfolios based on option-implied betas leads to a significantly positive relation between ex-ante betas and ex-post portfolio returns, whereas there is an insignificant relation when rolling window betas are used.
Patterns of evolutionary transformation in the humerus of moles (Talpidae, Mammalia): a character analysis

Twenty-eight humeral characters were coded based on examination of osteological specimens representing 11 extant talpid genera (13 spp.) as well as two shrews and a hedgehog as outgroups. The characters were mapped onto four alternative talpid phylogenies, resulting in tree lengths ranging from 66 to 74 steps. The humerus provides a complex of characteristics that in many cases are congruent with characters from other data sets. Seven character transformations characterize the base of the talpid tree, resulting in the humerus showing the following conditions in that node: lateral edge to center of head is positioned in line with lateral edge of shaft, long axis of head at oblique angle to long axis of shaft, floor of bicipital groove is displaced medially by pectoral crest near proximal end of humerus, teres tubercle is separate from medial epicondyle, lesser tuberosity is in line with proximal edge of head or superior to head, pectoral crest forms single curved process and entepicondylar foramen is absent. When the monophyly of Neurotrichus with Urotrichus is assumed, the following derived conditions support that clade: lateral end of the lateral epicondyle has a proximally directed hook and there is a deep groove between head of humerus and greater tuberosity. A high scalopine ridge supports a clade of Scalopus and Scapanus. Several other transformations support clades that had been proposed based by previous morphological and/or molecular studies.
The inheritance in wheat of crossability with rye

1. By the use of intervarietal chromosome substitution lines, the poor crossability with rye ( S. cereale , 2 n = 14) of the wheat ( T. aestivum , 2 n = 42) variety Hope was shown to be determined by chromosomes 5A and 5B. The genes Kr 1 and Kr 2 , which are responsbile for poor crossability (Lein, 1943), are probably located on chromosomes 5B and 5A respectively. 2. Crossability is actively inhibited by the dominant alleles, Kr 1 and Kr 2 , of Hope and is apparently not enhanced by the recessive alleles, kr 1 and kr 2 , of the readily crossable variety Chinese Spring. 3. The inhibition of crossability with rye conferred evolutionary and agricultural advantage upon wheat by preventing the production of sterile wheat-rye hybrids which could be regarded as weeds generated from within the crop.
Does Taxing Business Owners Affect Employees? Evidence from a Change in the Top Marginal Tax Rate

Debates about the taxation of business owners often center on the distributional impacts of these taxes, particularly the degree to which they affect workers. Drawing on a new linked owner-firm-worker dataset created from U.S. administrative tax records, I analyze how an increase in the top marginal tax rate faced by business owners affected the earnings of their employees. I use panel difference-in-differences methods to compare the earnings of workers in similar firms, but whose owners were differentially exposed to the tax increase. I estimate that 11 to 18 cents per dollar of new business income tax liability was passed through to employee earnings. I find no change in employment in response to the tax increase. The responses were generally associated with lower earnings growth, not changes in workforce composition. The burden was not borne equally by all workers. Essentially all of the workers’ share of the burden was borne by those in the top 30% of the earnings distribution, highlighting that the ultimate distributional effects of the policy depend not only on the share of the burden borne by workers, but on the shares borne by different types of workers. Further, since the owners bore the majority of the burden, the policy resulted in a decrease in after-tax earnings inequality between top-bracket owners and lower-bracket workers. I discuss the implications of the findings for the mediating labor market mechanisms and for welfare analyses of income taxation using a marginal value of public funds framework.
The Effect of Earnings Disclosures on Stock Prices in Developed Economies

This study aims to evaluate the usefulness and relevance of accounting earnings disclosures, as the key determinant for share price changes. The main objective is to examine whether earnings response coefficient (ERC) behavior could explain more fully the share price changes, as to the reason why the share price change is not equal to the amount of announced earnings. The study is done with data sets from four developed countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) group (i.e., Japan, the United Kingdom (UK), Sweden, and Switzerland) for the period 2001-2014. Two measures of abnormal returns are regressed against the size of the announced earnings. The first regression uses measures from individual events. The second regression uses a new measure; that is, from portfolios made out of all observations sorted by size of earnings into ten portfolios for each country. The portfolio method used was aimed at controlling possible idiosyncratic-errors-in-variables problem using individual event measures. The results using individual-event measures resulted in reasonable ERC sizes with high R2 explanatory power, a little higher than those reported in prior studies on other countries. Importantly, portfolio-based ERCs are close to the magnitude of the earnings in some tests, which supports the famous value relevance theory in accounting. This finding is new to this literature. <br><br>
International Contagion and Loan Supply after Lehman

<b>English Abstract</b>: Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, local lending to French firms by foreign banks experienced a noticeable decline. We use the methodology proposed by Gan (2007) and Khwaja and Mian (2008) to control for borrower heterogeneity and identify the existence of a loan supply shock. We modify the usual specifications to eliminate or limit selection biases. These modifications make it possible to extend the methodology to cases in which the results differ for the intensive margin and the two sides (exits and entries) of the extensive margin. The decrease in lending by foreign banks remains significant after controlling for domestic banking factors, state intervention and aggregate demand for loans. The conclusion therefore is that the cause of this decline is international financial contagion. <b>French Abstract</b>: Après la faillite de Lehman Brothers, les banques étrangères établies en France ont réduit leurs crédits aux entreprises. Afin de contrôler l’impact de l’hétérogénéité des emprunteurs et d’identifier un effet d’offre de crédit, nous utilisons la méthodologie proposée par Gan (2007) and Khwaja and Mian (2008). Nous modifions les spécifications habituelles afin d’éliminer ou limiter les biais de sélection. La baisse des crédits accordés par les banques étrangères reste significative après prise en compte des facteurs bancaires internes, des mesures de soutien public et de la demande globale de crédit. Elle reflète donc une contagion financière internationale.
Countercyclical Stockholders' Consumption Risk and Tests of Conditional CCAPM

Heterogeneous-agents asset pricing theories imply that stockholders' consumption has the first-order effect on equity premium. Motivated by these theories, we evaluate the performance of the conditional CCAPM in explaining time-variation in market returns and cross-sectional variation in portfolio returns. At the market level, we show that the conditional stockholders' consumption risk has strong predictive power for market returns with 39% in-sample and 19% out-of-sample R-squared for the three-year horizon, outperforming a broad set of alternative predictors. At the portfolio-level, stockholders' consumption risk explains 40% of the cross-sectional average returns. Stockholders' consumption risk also partially explains the value, size, profitability, investment, and long-term reversal premia. We provide an explanation for why stockholders' consumption risk reverses the findings in the literature using aggregate consumption risk: stockholders' consumption risk varies in the opposite direction to aggregate consumption risk, but in the same direction with the equity premium and value premium. This article also demonstrates that time-variation in both the price and amount of risk should be considered in testing the CCAPM.
THE EFFECT OF LEARNING ON THE MAKE/BUY DECISION

By including the effects of learning over time on both the production of components and their integration into complete products, we develop an engineering‐based model of outsourcing. This model provides an alternative explanation for much of what other outsourcing theories predict, as well as making several new predictions. In particular, we show that outsourcing decisions can create a path‐dependent outsourcing trap in which a firm experiences higher long‐run costs after an immediate cost benefit. We also describe conditions under which outsourcing a small fraction of component production may dominate either complete insourcing or complete outsourcing. Finally, we show that, with discounting, there is a convex, curvilinear relationship between the optimal outsourcing fraction and the rate of technological change.
Monetary Policy, Firms' Extensive Margin and Productivity

This paper explores a macroeconomic notion of zombification by analyzing whether monetary policy affects productivity via firms' extensive margin. Using a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms, we show that monetary policy lowers productivity if it raises corporate profitability: a rise in profitability allows low-productivity incumbents to remain and unproductive new firms to enter the market. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that U.S. expansionary monetary policy raises corporate profits, reduces firm exit and increases entry. However, we do not find broad-based evidence of expansionary monetary policy reducing productivity; if at all, this effect appears to be limited to small firms. We conclude that zombification induced by monetary policy is either associated with quantitatively limited productivity effects or mutually offsetting with other productivity channels.
On the Inflation Risks Embedded in Sovereign Bond Yields

The purpose of this paper is to study the compensation for inflation risks priced in sovereign bond yields. And we do so by modelling the time-varying dynamics of asset returns and inflation, and then estimating the cost of hedging inflation risks from the perspective of a well diversified portfolio. This allows to disentangle the time-varying compensation for expected and unexpected inflation shocks embedded in sovereign bond yields; and provides estimates of the real risk-free rate. We show that nominal sovereign bond yields for Germany, France, Japan and the United States, reflect, over the more recent years, a low real risk-free rate, as well as low levels of compensation for both expected and unexpected inflation. The simultaneous occurrence of these low contributions is novel, and not encountered previously in our sample. We also find that inflation risks are not necessarily reduced with the inclusion of real estate assets in the minimum variance portfolio. Our analysis also prompts us to suggest that the financial advantage of issuing inflation-linked sovereign debt, and namely saving on the embedded inflation risk premium of issuing nominal debt, appears to be eroded by the liquidity premium charged by investors for holding the less attractive inflation-linked debt asset.
Molecular characterisation and pathogenicity of Phaeoacremonium spp. associated with esca disease of grapevine in Northern Iran

Esca is a very important and destructive disease of grapevine in many grapevine producing countries. Several groups of fungi have been reported from grapevines with esca disease symptoms; however, Phaeoacremonium species are the main hyphomycete fungi involved in this disease. In recent years, esca disease symptoms with consequent decline disease have frequently been observed in vineyards of north-western Iran. Nevertheless, the involvement of Phaeoacremonium spp. with esca disease symptoms in this region remains unknown. During 2008–2010 growing seasons, wood samples were collected from vines showing typical esca disease symptoms such as interveinal leaf chlorosis with subsequent necrosis and various types of internal wood deterioration in north-western parts of Iran. A total of 44 Phaeoacremonium-like hyphomycetes were recovered from sampled materials. Fungal isolates were subjected to tentative morphological identification and were further characterised by using sequenced data from ITS-rDNA and β-tublin gene. Phylogeny inferred using sequence data from ITS-rDNA region and β-tublin gene revealed that Phaeoacremonium aleophilum and P. mortoniae together with Sarocladium strictum (syn. Acremonium strictum) are associated with esca disease symptoms in this region. The pathogenicity of Phaeoacremonium spp. and Sarocladium strictum were verified by the inoculation of cutting root and stems under greenhouse conditions. Isolates of P. aleophilum and P. mortoniae were the most virulent based on the length of vascular necrosis on woody stems that followed by Sarocladium strictum. This is first study on the pathogenicity of Sarocladium strictum on grapevine worldwide and the first report on the occurrence of P. mortoniae on grapevines in north-western Iran.
The Evolving Relation Between Dividends and Flexible Payouts: A Different Evolution

We study payout by U.K. listed companies during 1993-2018. Regular dividends remain the dominant channel, but flexible payouts (special dividends and repurchases) have grown, and they make total payout more responsive to earnings. Flexible payouts are used to augment regular dividends: few companies pay out by flexible means only, and tests indicate that they augment rather than replace regular dividends. Comparison with U.S. evidence shows that U.K. companies make greater use of dividends (including specials) in relation to repurchases, and have a greater willingness to change regular dividend per share.
Public Value Assessment of E-Policing Initiatives in Kenya: A Strategy Towards the Realization of a Citizen Centered Police Service

The security agencies in Kenya have responded positively to information technology and invested substantially in implementing e-policing systems. However, evidence from existing literature reveals a blurred link between e-policing implementation and police performance. The paper therefore aims at investigating the significant antecedents that influence citizens perceptions on e-Policing systems based on the public value creation and DeLone and McLean IS Success model. The study applied quantitative research approach and combined both convenient and snowballing sampling techniques. A sample consisting 347 respondents from Nairobi County participated in the study. The data collected was subjected to both descriptive and inferential statistics using regression and structural equation modelling. Findings from the study revealed system quality and service quality as significantly influencing both citizen’s satisfaction as well trust in e-Policing. Information quality however revealed a significant but negative relationship on citizens’ satisfaction as well as insignificant influence on citizens’ trust in e-policing. Citizen satisfaction as well as trust in e-policing was revealed as significant in influencing the net benefits as well as perceptions on public safety derived from e-Policing initiatives. Furthermore, the mediating role of trust in e-policing on the relationship between the three quality constructs and net benefits as well as citizens’ perceptions on public safety was validated by the model with citizen satisfaction revealing no mediating effect on both outcome variables. The study has both practical and theoretical implications.
Income Fluctuations and Firm Choice

Abstract How households shift spending across firms in response to income fluctuations is an important source of firm risk. Using transaction-level data, we study how households interact with the universe of retailers following income changes. We find that income increases within and across households result in substitution toward retailers in a category that are higher quality; smaller; more profitable; and have higher labor intensity, research and development (R&D) intensity, and equity betas. Although not all shifts are economically large, they do not average out across retailers. Thus, retailer choice has implications for key financial and macroeconomic outcomes, such as aggregate profitability and labor demand.