Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Belief Elicitation with Binary Outcomes: A Comparison of Quadratic and Binarized Scoring Rules

It is becoming increasingly common for researchers to elicit individuals’ beliefs in controlled experiments to understand the underlying motivations of decision makers. We evaluate the performance of the quadratic scoring rule (QSR) and the binarized scoring rule (BSR) in an environment where subjects report probabilistic beliefs over binary outcomes when the probabilities are objectively known to them. We find that reported beliefs are less accurate under the QSR than the BSR at the aggregate level. Consistent with theoretical predictions, risk-averse subjects tend to distort their reported beliefs under the QSR.
Do CEOs Use the Media for Reputation Management?

This study aims to investigate whether CEOs use the media as a strategic tool to manage and enhance reputation. This is pursued by examining the tendency of CEOs to provide interviews to the financial press as a reaction to past, present, and future events that influence their reputation. <br>The tendency of CEOs to give press interviews is examined as a function of a set of proxies that are used for gauging CEOs’ reputations: CEO tenure, press coverage, being a CEO appointed from inside/outside of the ﬁrm, and ﬁrm performance during CEO tenure. <br><br>The results of this paper reveal that the timing of CEOs’ decisions to give interviews is not random and provides evidence that is consistent with the notion that CEOs use the media as a strategic tool to manage and enhance reputation. <br><br>The author shows that interviews tend to follow positive firm performance, and tend to precede extremely negative firm performance. This behavior is more pronounced for CEOs with lower initial reputation. In addition, low future performance motivates CEOs to give more interviews in advance, which could be an attempt to influence investors' expectations. <br><br>The paper sheds new light on the selective usage of the media for shaping public perceptions. This study has practical value for both regulators and investors by virtue of analyzing information that is provided via the media.
Obsolescence

Does it always pay to install high-quality capital? Or could it possibly be more profitable to make investments that do not last too long? In this Paper we ponder the optimal rate of depreciation of physical capital, first in the Solow model and then in a model of endogenous growth with learning-by-doing. Optimal durability and depreciation, including obsolescence, are attained when the marginal benefit of increasing durability - and thus reducing the need for future replacement investment - is equal to the marginal cost, which is the additional cost of investing due to the higher quality of capital. The optimality conditions are set out as golden rules for the quality, or durability, of capital. They entail that the higher the rate of population growth or technological progress, the larger the marginal cost of investing in durability and the lower the optimal level of durability; hence, the higher the optimal rate of depreciation. We then use a customer-market model to derive the privately optimal level of durability, and find that there is nothing in the model that ensures the socially optimal level of durability and depreciation.
Effects of Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae on mortality, fecundity and egg fertility of Tetranychus evansi

Abstract: The susceptibility of various developmental stages of Tetranychus evansi Baker & Pritchard (eggs, larvae, protonymphs, deutonymphs and adults) to the entomopathogenic fungi Metarhizium anisopliae (Metschnikoff) Sorokin and Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin was evaluated under laboratory conditions. Three concentrations (3.0 × 106, 1.0 × 107 and 1.0 × 108 conidia/ml) of both fungi were used for each stage. The effect of fungal infection on fecundity and egg fertility was also investigated using both fungal species. Deutonymphs that survived the infection and developed into adult females were allowed to oviposit. Adults and deutonymphs were more susceptible to fungal infection than larval and protonymphal stages at all the concentrations. Nevertheless, the concentration level influenced the mortality of the different mite stages. Eggs were also susceptible to fungal infection and mortality was dose‐dependent. Fungus‐treated female mites laid fewer eggs than the controls but there was no significant difference in egg hatchability between the treatments.
The Contribution of Stock Repurchases to the Value of Firm and Cash Holdings Around the World

Using corporate payout data from 33 economies around the world, this study investigates the relations among stock repurchases, dividends and firm value (as well as cash value) under different investor protection environments. We find that stock repurchases contribute more to firm value in countries with strong investor protection than in countries with weak investor protection, and that dividends contribute more to firm value than stock repurchases in countries with weak investor protection. More specifically, we report that dividends contribute approximately 60% more to firm value than stock repurchases in countries with weak investor protection. Furthermore, the marginal value of cash increases with the proportion of stock repurchase in total payouts (the sum of dividends and repurchases) in countries with strong investor protection, while it declines with the stock repurchase proportion in weak investor protection countries. In countries with poor protection, the marginal value of cash for a firm that makes 100% of its payouts via repurchases is 12 cents lower than that for a firm that distributes 100% of its payouts via dividends. Overall, our findings highlight that cash dividends are more effective than stock repurchases in mitigating agency problems of free cash flow in countries with poor investor protection.
Trading Credit (Subsidies) for Votes: The Effect of Local Politics on Small Business Lending

Small businesses are championed by politicians seeking votes. We study how the competitiveness of congressional elections affects small business loan subsidies. To identify the causal impact of electoral competitiveness, we examine politically-motivated congressional redistricting (“gerrymandering”) and exploit the discontinuity in post-redistricting electoral competitiveness between districts where the redistricting party narrowly won and lost the pre-redistricting election. Using our novel regression discontinuity design, we find that districts with more vulnerable congressional representatives receive larger Small Business Administration (SBA) loan guarantees and lower interest rates on SBA loans. This increased lending is accompanied by higher rates of employment growth, particularly in the manufacturing sector, and greater concentrations of labor and capital in a smaller number of establishments. Overall, our findings indicate that local politics affect the allocation of government-subsidized credit, and that larger businesses and politically-important industries capture larger shares of the resulting gains.
Access of Firms to Public Procurement in Russia in the 2000s: Before and After Radical Reform of Regulation

This paper considers the consequences of public procurement reform in Russia in 2005-2006. We show that before the reform, manufacturing firms with government stakes, old firms and larger firms had advantages in access to government orders. In 2009 large firms retain their advantages in access to government orders. Estimated scales of 'kickback' in 2009 were virtually the same as in 2005. Active restructuring of the enterprises had no influence on the enterprises' access to government orders. We discuss the reasons for this failure of the radical reform of public procurement in Russia, and provide some policy implications.
Automatability and Capital Structure

This paper examines the relation between a firm’s exposure to automation technologies and its capital structure decision. We show that the automation threat has a positive impact on a firm’s leverage. We explore two effects of automation threat on leverage: first, automation threat compresses the wage premium demanded by workers from the use of financial leverage, which allows firms to increase financial leverage; second, automation threat makes the labor market protection less effective and increases firms’ operating leverage, which allows firms to increase financial leverage. Our empirical findings support both effects. Furthermore, we also tackle the endogeneity of a firm’s capital structure decision by instrumenting a firm’s exposure to automation technology advancement using the robotics adoption in European countries. We show that our results are not driven by any endogeneity concerns. We contribute to the literature of labor economics and finance by making the first attempt to understand how the supply of automation technologies affect corporate capital structure. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3571489 1 “The threat is stronger than the execution. ” by Aron Nimzowitsch in 1927
PROGRESS IN THE FABRICATION OF ARTIFICIAL MICROSTRUCTURES FOR X‐RAY IMAGING AND SPECTROSCOPY *

At MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, and at the Microstructures Laboratory on the MIT campus, we are developing techniques for fabricating artificial microstructures and pursuing a broad range of applications of such microstructures. Our primary interest is in structures having minimum feature sizes below one micrometer. The fabrication of artificial microstructures involves a number of techniques including electron beam lithography, holographic lithography, x-ray lithography, aqueous chemical etching, ion bombardment etching, etching with reactive gases, electroplating, and liftoff. We seek to develop, characterize, and control these and other techniques in order to provide a comprehensive technology that will enable us and other researchers to pursue a broad range of applications of artificial microstructures. ' The broadness of these applications is not generally appreciated. TABLE 1 gives a partial listing. Most of the current research and development work in artificial microstructures is being done on devices and recording and information storage. In the future, other applications, especially graphoepitaxg4 and the organization and manipulation of organic molecules, may receive substantially increased attention. This conference is primarily concerned with x-ray imaging and spectroscopy. These applications require gratings, zone plates, multilayer films, and other high precision artificial microstructures having spatial periods well below one micrometer. In this paper, we summarize recent progress at Lincoln Laboratory in fabricat-
SYNTHETIC MODIFICATION OF THE ESCHERICHIA COLI CHROMOSOME : ENHANCING THE BIOCATALYTIC CONVERSION OF GLUCOSE INTO AROMATIC CHEMICALS

The yield of l-phenylalanine, racemic phenyllactic acid, and prephenic acid synthesized from glucose has been doubled and contamination of these aromatic end products by biosynthetic intermediates drastically reduced. These improvements resulted from increasing the in vivo catalytic activity of specific enzymes in the common pathway of aromatic amino acid biosynthesis by chromosomal modification of Escherichia coli. The centerpiece of these changes was the synthesis of a multigene cassette carrying aroA (encoding EPSP synthase), aroC (encoding chorismate synthase), and aroB (encoding DHQ synthase). Chromosomal insertion of the synthesized multigene cassette into E. coli KAD29B, a strain having a mutation in the tyrR locus which relieves transcriptional repression of aroL (encoding shikimate kinase), resulted in biocatalysts KAD1D and KAD11D. Improved catalytic activities of individual common pathway enzymes have previously been accomplished with extrachromosomal plasmids encoding the appropriate loci. By .
Credit Expansion and Inflation Expectations — Evidence From Post 2007-08 Financial Crisis In The US

The post 2007-08 crisis US stabilization policy had considerable impacts in eliminating the deflationary pressures and credit crunch that persisted in the then US economy when the conventional monetary policy resulted in a zero lower bound. The quantitative easing (QE) program of the Fed had eased the credit constraints in the US economy. Existence of both short-run and long-run causality between credit expansion and inflation expectations in the aftermath of the crisis are observed. In that sense, our results contest the view that private households considered QE as a temporary policy and therefore, it failed to contribute towards the improvement in inflation expectations. The low Federal fund rate didn’t increase loan issuance in the commercial banking sector. Neither did it improve inflation expectations in the US. Therefore, it seems that the lower Federal rate had limited its role only to the decreased real interest rates. <br><br>The fiscal stimulus of Obama administration had resulted in worsened budget deficit; but also improved inflation expectations in the US. The US crude oil price was found cointegrated with inflation expectations since the emergence of the crisis. Actual inflation has traditionally been one of the major determinants of inflation expectations. However, we found otherwise in the case of US in the aftermath of the crisis. The giant financial crisis seems to have affected the interlinkage between the two.
Product Market Competition and the Value of Diversification

I examine how industry concentration affects the value of diversification and explore the strategic value of agency problems for conglomerates that operate mainly in concentrated industries (concentrated conglomerates). I find that concentrated conglomerates have higher diversification values. Consistent with agency theories, agency problems, on average, cause greater diversification discount. In contrast, agency problems in concentrated conglomerates create strategic advantage and lead to higher valuations consistent with the notion that these conglomerates can credibly commit to their industries. Using tariff reductions as competitive shocks, I show that concentrated conglomerates experience significant valuation decline and respond aggressively to threats in less-competitive industries.
Equilibrium Informed Trading with Relative Performance Measurement

This paper analyzes the informative trading of professional money managers within a rational expectations equilibrium model in which managers care about their performance relative to their peer group. We find that the existence of uninformed managers causes informed managers with relative performance concerns to trade less informatively, engendering less informative prices. When managers are differentially informed, they need to forecast the average performance based on private signals and each manager may place more weight on the private signal if the signal provides good information about the average performance. The price aggregates those signals and thus becomes more informative.
Unspanned Stochastic Volatility from an Empirical and Practical Perspective

This paper is concerned with resolving the empirical unspanned stochastic volatility (USV) question from a hedging point of view. We hedge caps that trade in the Johannesburg swap market, as well as caps simulated from two benchmarks models, which each have a USV and non-USV version. We find that the hedging results are not directly informative vis-a-vis the presence of USV, and using our simulated data, we show that the hedging results found in previous papers are compatible with both USV and non-USV models. We develop a two-tier regression test that isolates hedging errors relating to volatility, and, with substantial support from the simulation experiments, find strong evidence that USV is present in our dataset.
The Real Impact of FinTech: Evidence from Mobile Payment Technology

We utilize the introduction of a mobile payment technology by the largest bank in Singapore in 2017 to study how mobile payment technology reshapes economic activities and stimulates business creation. After the introduction, business-to-consumer industries witnessed a higher growth rate of business creation by 8.9% per month relative to business-to-business industries, with the effect driven by small firms and more pronounced among industries with a higher cost of cash handling. Underlying this pattern is a strong adoption of mobile payment and a large decline in ATM cash withdrawals during the post-shock period, as well as closure of ATM machines by the bank. The reduced transaction cost also allows consumers to increase their spending capacity, which further fosters business growth. Interestingly, part of the increased consumer demand is captured by credit card spending, which associates with more credit card opening and higher credit limit provision by the bank. We develop a model to rationalize the responses and extend the empirical evidence to understand the key structural parameters that drive the effects of mobile payment technology.
Leading Indicators of Financial Crises – A Case Study of Brazil

The financial crisis has the power to influence the economy which can have significant negative impact on potential output of the economy. Many studies have been done to find leading indicators which can be monitored to predict the possibility of financial crisis. This paper examined some potential indicators which can be used to predict Brazil’s financial crisis. The motivation was that, Brazil played a unique role since the last decade. It showed high development and constant growth and did not face as many crises as the developed economies. Moreover, it was the last to be affected in the recent crisis and first to be recovered. Instead of investigating indicators with specific relevance to the Brazil’s financial crisis, frequently supported variables by literatures have been selected to investigate further. This paper found real interest rate, current account, money supply and inflation significant which can be used to predict the possibility of financial crisis in Brazil.
Radiosensitivity in plants I. Determination of LD-50 in cultivated plants (Preliminary report)

Dry dormant seeds of 43 species were exposed to various doses of gamma radiation from a cobalt-60 source. The seeds were sown 5 to 10 days after irradiation. Radiosensitivity was determined on the basis of germination rate, survival rate of seedlings at one month, and the survival rate and growth of mature plants. Data are tabulated. (C.H.)
Skin Wound Healing: Some Biochemical Parameters in Guinea‐pig

Abstract— Hairs were removed from the dorsal skin of guinea‐pigs and 5–6 wounds (7 × 7 mm) were surgically induced by totally removing the epidermal and part of the dermal surface. They were then allowed to heal. The newly formed wound tissues were dissected at different times during the process and analysed by biochemical and histological methods. Hydroxyproline, proteins, DNA and semicarbazide‐sensitive amine oxidase (SSAO) were measured, as were [14C]leucine and [3H]thymidine incorporation in some samples. The peroxidase‐like activity of plasma albumin and the histology of wounds stained with haematoxylin‐eosin were also studied. It was shown that SSAO enzymes, which are present in normal guinea‐pig skin and have a high affinity for benzylamine are localized in fibroblasts. During skin healing in the newly formed tissue there was an increase in protein content which reached a maximum after 4–6 days; DNA content also increased. The rate of incorporation of [3H]thymidine and [14C]leucine paralleled DNA and protein content, respectively. The content of hydroxyproline had greatly decreased with respect to that in normal skin after 2–10 days. SSAO activity increased much less than DNA after 4 days whereas after 10–11 days it increased more than DNA, thus indicating that at this time it was probably produced by fibroblasts. No significant increase in the peroxidase‐like activity of albumin was observed 4, 8 or 11 days after surgery. Treatment of the animals with methylprednisolone acetate (20 mg kg−1, i.m.) two days before surgery decreased the rate of skin healing but did not alter the level of albumin peroxidase activity of the plasma. Histology showed that in the animals treated with this drug the re‐epithelialization was slower and after 11 days the wound appeared similar in appearance to the 8‐day control wounds. In the methylprednisolone‐treated animals a positive correlation was observed between the DNA content of regenerating tissue and the hydroxyproline content, whereas a negative correlation was observed in the control wounds. This correlation was in full agreement with the histological observation which showed an increased amount of cytogen collagen in the wounds of the treated animals. The simultaneous study of the biochemical parameters (DNA, proteins, SSAO, hydroxyproline) appears to be a good method for differentiating the pharmacological effects on the different cells which are responsible for wound healing.
Capital Risk: Precautionary and Excess Saving

Precautionary saving typically refers to the additional investment in a risk free asset when exogenous labor income is risky versus certain. When risky income results endogenously from the investment in a risky asset, the meaning and characterization of precautionary saving change and far less is known about this case. Capital risk is important for macro and finance models as risk often arises from the variability in asset returns, and precautionary saving plays a key role in interpreting the results. We assume KPS (Kreps-Porteus-Selden) preferences with additively separable time preferences and HARA (hyperbolic absolute risk aversion) risk preferences. Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for saving to increase when investment is in a portfolio of risky and risk free assets versus just a risk free asset. Time preferences play an essential role whereas the frequently referenced risk preference property prudence is irrelevant. In macrofinance analyses, the equilibrium risk free rate is often shown to be less in the presence versus absence of capital risk and this is interpreted as reflecting a precautionary motive. However, this interpretation is not in consonance with the corresponding partial equilibrium demand analysis.
Do Lenders Still Monitor When They Can Securitize Loans?

We examine how securitization markets affect the role of banks as monitors in corporate lending. We find that banks active in securitization impose looser covenants on borrowers at origination. After origination, these borrowers take on substantially more risk than borrowers of non-securitization-active banks. We use borrowers’ geographic locations to instrument for borrower-lender matching to distinguish the effect of securitization on the banks’ ex-post monitoring from its effect on ex-ante screening. We further investigate direct evidence of banks’ monitoring role by examining their actions following covenant violations, and find that securitization-active lenders are more likely to grant waivers without changing loan terms. Our results suggest that banks exert less effort on ex-post monitoring when they can securitize loans.