Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Outcomes after Temporary Abdominal Closure for Trauma Patients: Experiences from Songklanagarind Trauma Center

Objective: Temporary abdominal closure is an acceptable method in the modern care of trauma patients but the optimal technique and strategic care remains unclear. We examine our experiences with these severly injured patients. Material and Method: A retrospective study was made of all adult (age ≥15 years) trauma patients who experienced of temporary abdominal closure from January 2007 to December 2008 at Songklanagarind Hospital, a level I trauma center. Data were retrieved from the trauma registry and medical records. Results: Forty-three patients met the inclusion criteria. The mean age was 35 years and the average injury severity score was 29. Damage control surgery was the most common situation requiring temporary closure and usually managed with the vacuum pack technique. The average duration of an open abdomen was four days. Primary fascial closure was accomplished in 17 patients (40%). The accepted ventral hernia approach was applied in 13 patients (30%). One patient developed an enteroatmospheric fistula. Thirty patients (70%) survived until discharge. Conclusion: Most trauma patients requiring temporary abdominal closure survive and subsequent primary fascial closure is achieved in nearly half of them. Early abdominal wall closure reduces fistula formation. The major long-term morbidity is a giant ventral hernia.
Old-Age Income Security and Tourism Demand: A Quasi-Experimental Study

A growing number of countries have introduced noncontributory pension to guarantee a minimum income for disadvantaged seniors. The current state of knowledge does not inform us how this change has impacted senior tourism demand and industry. Additional pension income may relax budget constraints and provide an opportunity to fulfill a desired level of tourism. For disadvantaged elderly, however, its impact on tourism choice is not clear because of consumption needs for other necessities and limited mobility. This study examines a recent social pension reform in South Korea to study the impact of old-age income security on tourism demand. We find that a doubling of public pension benefits is associated with an average of 23–59.5% increase in travel frequency and 52–96% rise in travel spending among benefit-eligible seniors. These results suggest that pension reforms aiming to improve old-age income security will have a positive influence on the tourism and hospitality industry.
Knowledge Management Issues in India: A Public Sector Perspective

ABSTRACT This study presents a new body of empirical evidence supporting knowledge management initiatives from the public sector, in the context of India. The Study examines the impact of KM on public administration. The findings represent the opinions of public servants representing 450 valid responses in a survey conducted at Bangalore. Smart-PLS and Amos statistical tools were employed to estimate a partial least square based on the SEM technique. The results suggest that organizational learning, knowledge sharing, innovation, social identification, and technology infrastructure are strong determinants of KM initiatives and could enhance individual and organizational performance. By extension, the study highlights the relevance of KM in management sciences, human resource, strategic management, leadership, organizational culture, and behavior. Nonetheless, the study variables satisfactorily explained KM at a higher reliability. However, organizational learning and knowledge sharing could be improved to address the increasing knowledge inequality in the public sector.
Antiwhaling Groups in Japan: Their Historical Lack of Development and Relationship With National Identity

This article reviews the history of antiwhaling groups in Japan from a politicocultural perspective, examining how the connection between whaling and national identity has significantly constrained their development. It is interesting to note that this connection, or “framing,” in terms of social movement theory, was not an invention of the prowhaling camp. It was rather induced and facilitated by Western activists’ protests, which have been unwelcome in Japanese political culture, making the antiwhaling cause come across as “foreign. ” In fact, Japanese antiwhaling groups have attempted to counter-frame this by distinguishing themselves from Western activists, emphasizing moderate strategies, limiting their opposition to large-scale modern whaling, and allowing small-scale coastal whaling with a view to detaching the issue from national claims. However, they have not been successful due to prominent foreign protests. This study also suggests the key role of national identity in the success or failure of environmental activism.
Farmer direct selling: the role of regional factors

ABSTRACT This paper studies the factors affecting the decision of farmers to sell their products directly to consumers using micro-data on the entire farm population in Italy. The empirical setting of the analysis reflects a focus on the geographical determinants of farmers’ choices as the model is estimated by adopting a multilevel approach and also including spatially lagged variables. The results support the idea that the diffusion of direct sale is a localized process of social innovation, based on knowledge sharing among actors. Policy design should consider the nature of this process in supporting more sustainable forms of supply chain.
Essay on the economics of corruption

Conventional wisdom holds that corruption is a major obstacle to economic development. A significant number of empirical studies find corruption detrimental to growth, thus regarding corruption like sand in the ‘wheels of the economy’. However, though such a conclusion is widespread in textbooks, alternative claims have at the same time found that corruption can be beneficial in circumstances where governance is badly malfunctioning (‘grease’ the wheels hypothesis). To check the validity of the ‘grease’ hypothesis, the study develops a non-linear growth model over a study period of 2006–2014. Country-level data from 99 countries worldwide are used. The empirical results show that governance indicators have a negative effect on the real GDP per capita growth. However, the conclusions as to the effect of corruption on the growth of the economy are mixed. When the level of political instability, violence and terrorism is high, corruption reduces economic growth. Notably, corruption seems to exacerbate the negative effects of such bad governance on growth. On the other hand, the findings surprisingly indicate that corruption has a positive effect on growth when the quality of public administration is poor with strong political pressure and inefficient public policies. The same conclusion holds when the private sector regulatory framework is deficient, or when the quality of rule of law is poor. In those cases, corruption actually reduces the respective costs of poor governance for economic growth.
Environmentally-specific servant leadership and green creativity among tourism employees: dual mediation paths

Abstract Eco-initiatives from tourism employees can contribute to the green sustainability of tour companies as well as destinations. Nonetheless, mechanisms underlying employee green creativity in the tourism industry have been less explored. Our study aims to examine if environmentally-specific servant leadership can foster green creativity among tourism employees via dual mediation paths of green crafting and green role identity. A two-wave survey process was implemented to garner data from employees and their managers from tour operators based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Results revealed the effect of environmentally-specific servant leadership on employee green creativity through green role identity, green-related resource and challenge seeking behaviors, but not through green task demand reducing behavior. The direct effect of green role identity and its interaction effect with environmentally-specific servant leadership were found significant for green-related resource and challenge seeking behaviors, but not for green task demand reducing behavior. This study advances our understanding of mechanisms underlying employee green creativity especially in the tourism context as well as extends research on the leadership-creativity nexus.
A Prediction-Based Hierarchical Delay Compensation (PHDC) Technique Enhanced by Increment Autoregression Prediction for Wide-Area Control Systems

In a wide-area control system (WACS) of power systems, delays will affect the control performance. Dealing with randomly distributed delays besides achieving desired control performance via the WACS control strategy will make the control strategy design more challenging. Moreover, delays from the centralized controller to actuators in WACS are unknown for the controller when calculating the control strategy. A prediction-based hierarchical delay compensation (PHDC) technique enhanced by an increment autoregressive prediction (IAR) algorithm is proposed in this paper to solve these problems. With PHDC, the WACS inputs and outputs are approximated by IAR and thus available in real time for the control strategy by taking advantage of the WACS synchronization mechanism. Meanwhile, the IAR algorithm is proposed with characteristic analysis by which IAR is proved to be an enhancement to PHDC. The combination of PHDC and IAR thus achieves the ideal compensation performance. A Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) hardware-in-the-loop simulation of a wide-area damping control system in an actual power grid is carried out to verify the performance of PHDC under the actual conditions and extreme conditions, respectively. The results demonstrate that PHDC compensates the randomly distributed delay effectively as well as mitigates the packet congestion and packet loss.
Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart

If you can't trust those in charge, who can you trust? From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn't the age of distrust--far from it. In this revolutionary book, world-renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history--with fundamental consequences for everyone. A new world order is emerging: we might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their homes to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of "distributed trust," a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules of an all-too-human relationship. If we are to benefit from this radical shift, we must understand the mechanics of how trust is built, managed, lost, and repaired in the digital age. In the first book to explain this new world, Botsman provides a detailed map of this uncharted landscape--and explores what's next for humanity.
Improving Data Quality in Face-to-Face Survey Research

ABSTRACT Data quality in survey research remains a paramount concern for those studying mass political behavior. Because surveys are conducted in increasingly diverse contexts around the world, ensuring that best practices are followed becomes ever more important to the field of political science. Bringing together insights from surveys conducted in more than 80 countries worldwide, this article highlights common challenges faced in survey research and outlines steps that researchers can take to improve the quality of survey data. Importantly, the article demonstrates that with the investment of the necessary time and resources, it is possible to carry out high-quality survey research even in challenging environments in which survey research is not well established.
Business Against Markets: Employer Resistance to Collective Bargaining Liberalization During the Eurozone Crisis

Employer organizations have been presented as strong promoters of the liberalization of industrial relations in Europe. This article, in contrast, argues that the preferences of employers vis-à-vis liberalization are heterogeneous and documents how employer organizations in Spain, Italy, and Portugal have resisted state-led reforms to liberalize collective bargaining during the Euro crisis. It shows that the dominance of small firms in the economies of these countries make employer organizations supportive of selective aspects of sectoral bargaining and state regulation. Encompassing sectoral bargaining is important for small firms for three reasons: it limits industrial conflict, reduces transaction costs related to wage-bargaining, and ensures that member firms are not undercut by rivals offering lower wages and employment conditions. Furthermore, the maintenance of sectoral bargaining and its extension to whole sectors by the state is a matter of survival for employer organizations. The article presents rationales for employer opposition to liberalization that differ from the varieties of capitalism approach.
The Analysis of Poverty Trap on Smallholder Dairy Farms in Pangalengan Area

Dairy farming is dominated by smallholder producers in Pangalengan area. The characteristics of poverty trap are lack of capital, low productivity, low income, low savings and investment. Therefore, the purposes of this research were: 1) to find out the ability of smallholder farmers to increase the family income; 2) to analyze which factors influence on the existence of keeping dairy cows in small scale; and 3) to know the efforts of smallholder producers release from poverty trap. The research method used a survey method with quantitative and qualitative approaches. Number of respondents that chosen in study location were 100 respondents. The ordinary least square (OLS) is used to analyze the factors that affect the keeping dairy cows in small scale. The results showed that: 1) small scale dairy farms (one to three heads) have not been able to meet the needs of family life; 2) factors that influenced on the ownership of dairy cows in small scale those are cows asset, dairy farming income, cow productivity, and non-formal education; 3) the efforts of smallholder farmers to quit from poverty trap must increase number of cows, productivity, earnings, and improve non-formal education in the form of training and guidance.
Female Executives in the Service Sector: The Case of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Spain

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and women are important agents for economic and social development. This study attempts to understand how the economic crisis has affected the behavior of SMEs with high female participation in the decision-making process. To that end, the quantitative research focused on a sample of 425 small and medium-sized enterprises in Spain relying on a questionnaire-based survey. The results of the empirical study offer new evidence on the effects of the recession on decision-making female-dominated bodies in organizations and illustrate the importance of corporate governance issues. In addition, the research provides greater knowledge of female entrepreneurs in a country severely affected by the global economic crisis. Several recommendations are proposed to provide a theoretical basis for governments to reduce glass ceiling and promote women’s empowerment policies.
The Determinants of International Migration: Unbundling the Role of Economic, Political, and Social Institutions

International migrants may relocate because of economic, political and social factors in their origin or destination countries. Using global bilateral migration flows from 103 countries over the period 1990–2000, we explore whether emigrants self‐select based on economic, political and social institutions. Our study adds social dimension as a potential determinant of migration and separates the pull and push effects of political, economic and social institutions. Our results indicate that economic, political and social institutions are significant pull factors of migration; economic freedom has the most substantial pull effect followed by the political institutions; social institutions have the weakest pull effect on migration. Moreover, economic and social institutions are significant push factors of migration, while political institutions do not show any push effect. Furthermore, educated migrants are more sensitive to the destination economic, political and social institutions than less‐educated migrants, and less‐educated migrants are more sensitive to the social institutions at the origin.
Twenty‐First‐Century Trade Governance: Findings from the Commonwealth Countries

This paper focuses on twenty‐first‐century‐trade governance patterns within the Commonwealth (CW) countries. It uses an augmented gravity model to examine the role of governance in influencing trade and investment flows, and whether enhanced trade governance within the CW countries could potentially foster trade gains, on a both intra‐ and extra‐CW basis. Results show a 10% reduction in the costs incurred for a good to exit a country can increase intra‐CW exports by 5%. Second, contract enforcement is more efficient among CW members, and requires 20% less time compared to the world average. Third, every 1 percentage point improvement in government effectiveness triggers an increase in exports from CW, at 3.4%, compared to the rest of the world, at 2.4%. Finally, trade between CW members is three times higher when they belong to an existing regional trade agreement. (JEL F10, 011, F13)
Does the level of public spending influence the success of fiscal consolidations

Fiscal consolidations are a popular theme, especially after the last financial and economic crisis. Scholars and policymakers have been studying what tends to influence the decision to perform a fiscal consolidation, but also which factors influence its duration, intensity and success. This dissertation aims to close a gap in the literature regarding what is the role of the level of public spending in the success of fiscal consolidations through reviewing the existing literature but also through an empirical research to support and complement this analysis, in order to contribute to the theoretical framework regarding fiscal consolidations and allow for future research on related and consequent questions. Existing literature on the composition of fiscal consolidations, the optimum government size and fiscal rules suggest that the level of public spending might have an impact on the success of fiscal consolidations. To complement this analysis, a probit model is applied to a data panel set on the 1995-2017 period of the 28 member states of the European Union at the time of investigation. The main conclusions suggest that the level of public spending before a fiscal consolidation has a positive impact on the chances of success of that fiscal consolidation, i.e. the higher the level of public spending in the year before a fiscal consolidation, the higher the probability of the fiscal consolidation being successful, everything else remaining the same, which may be in accordance with the literature finding that expenditure based fiscal consolidations are more likely to achieve success.
A Study on Millennial Purchase Intention of Green Products in India: Applying Extended Theory of Planned Behavior Model

ABSTRACT This study proposed an extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) model to analyze the green product purchase intention of a millennial cohort in India. Established on recommended goodness-of-fit indices, an extended TPB model was developed. Data were collected using a stratified random sampling technique, and structural equation modeling was used for testing hypotheses. The study found perceived environmental responsibility and environmental concern dimensions underpinning the TPB framework. One of the novel findings of the study indicated perceived environmental responsibility as a major predictor of subjective norm toward millennial green product purchase intention. Finally, managerial implications and a future research scope were discussed.
How Do Private Transfers Respond to Public Transfers? Evolutionary Evidence from Thailand

Private inter&#8208;household transfers and public transfers can change along with changes in social and economic conditions. However, most previous studies have examined their relationship from static perspectives. This study contributes new evidence by investigating the dynamic relationship between public transfers and private inter&#8208;household transfers over the past three decades using a Thailand data set. The results from econometric analysis show that there is no crowding&#8208;out effect of public transfers on private inter&#8208;household transfers for the country as a whole as well as for urban and rural households separately; instead, inter&#8208;household private transfers increase along with public transfers.
Value by Design?

Although academics and practitioners frequently refer in their work to equity value investing, no consensus exists as to what this style exactly encompasses. For a wide range of 3,168 alternative implementations (design choices) of what could all constitute value portfolios, the authors document the impact of parameter pertubations on risk-adjusted returns. The observed dispersion in Sharpe ratios allows the authors to identify the hierarchy of design choices and to better assess the degrees of freedom consumed within the strategy development process. The authors can therefore derive critical t-values that adjust for overfitting. This will prove to be useful in research governance and strategy selection. TOPICS: Style investing, statistical methods Key Findings • Design choices create large variations in risk-adjusted returns. Characterizing factor investing as (scientific or smart) betas with no alpha underestimates the importance of skillfull choices. • Among design choices, signal definition is most important in explaining risk–return differences. However, even inferior signals can lead to significant performance gains when combined with selected portfolio construction choices, indicating the potential for data mining. • Investment firms with credible research governance need more awareness of the many degrees of freedom their research teams consume daily. The statistical literature on multiple hypothesis testing can provide those tools.
Engaging perceived value towards political marketing mix for head of region voting decision

This study aims to determine and analyze the role of perceived value in influencing political marketing mix on voting decision for Head of Region in the Election of Governor and Deputy Governor of Banten in 2017. The population of this study involves people who have the rights to vote in Banten and are kept on the permanent voter list. Sample of this study consists of 664 respondents, in which most of the respondents include casual workers, outsourcing, casual daily laborers, housewives, and workers who do not need special skills. The proportional random sampling technique was utilized in determining the number of respondents. SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) was conducted by applying WarpPLS 6.0. The results of the study indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between political marketing mix and perceived value concerning the voting decision, as demonstrated by positive and significant effect on perceived value. The findings confirmed that political marketing mix influenced the decision to elect a Head of Region mediated by perceived value. To improve the decision to vote, the researchers believe/suggest that providing attention to political products such as branding of political candidates, is thus deemed necessary.