Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
General Equilibrium Oligopoly and Ownership Structure

We develop a tractable general equilibrium framework in which firms are large and have market power with respect to both products and labor, and in which a firm's decisions are affected by its ownership structure. We characterize the Cournot–Walras equilibrium of an economy where each firm maximizes a share‐weighted average of shareholder utilities—rendering the equilibrium independent of price normalization. In a one‐sector economy, if returns to scale are non‐increasing, then an increase in “effective” market concentration (which accounts for common ownership) leads to declines in employment, real wages, and the labor share. Yet when there are multiple sectors, due to an intersectoral pecuniary externality, an increase in common ownership could stimulate the economy when the elasticity of labor supply is high relative to the elasticity of substitution in product markets. We characterize for which ownership structures the monopolistically competitive limit or an oligopolistic one is attained as the number of sectors in the economy increases. When firms have heterogeneous constant returns to scale technologies, we find that an increase in common ownership leads to markets that are more concentrated.
The Agency Component of Credit Spread

Lack of shareholders' commitment about debt and investment policies increases the cost of debt by a quantity that we refer to as the agency (credit) spread. The agency spread increases with the number of periods for which debt holders are exposed to policies that decrease the value of debt: from 10 basis points or equivalently 5.4% of the average credit spread at one year horizon to 44 basis points and 27%, respectively, at fifty years horizon. At short horizons, small firms with valuable growth options have larger agency spreads. At longer horizons, conversion of options into assets in place and the leverage ratchet effect invert the relationship and deliver higher agency costs for large firms, delivering a non-trivial term structure of the agency credit spread.
Inheritance of seedling resistance to stripe rust (Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici) in ‘Otane’ and ‘Tiritea’ wheat ( Triticum aestivum)

Abstract Two spring wheat (Triticum aestivum) cultivars, ‘Tiritea’ and ‘Otane’, were crossed and the reactions of the F1‐derived double haploid (DH) population to the stripe rust pathogen (Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici) at the seedling stage were examined in glasshouse and field experiments. Both parental cultivars were susceptible to stripe rust pathotype 106E139A+, buttransgressive segregation in the DH progenies indicated that both parents possess resistance genes. The distribution of DH lines fitted a trigenic ratio with epistatic gene action. In a proposed model, resistant DH lines were produced when all three loci involved were homozygous recessive, moderately resistant DH lines were produced when the t gene was homozygous recessive with at least one recessive allele at either the B or the C locus, and susceptible DH lines were produced when either t, b, or c were present alone or had a dominant gene at the B and the C loci. The susceptible phenotype of all F1 progenies indicated that the resistance factors segregated were all recessive. The susceptible reaction of both cultivars could be attributed to the presence of genes that may suppress the expression of resistance genes when they coexist in the parents. The use of these cultivars as parents in different wheat breeding strategies is briefly discussed.
Morphological analysis of the Grevillea ilicifolia complex (Proteaceae) and recognition of taxa

A morphological study of herbarium and field-collected specimens, using phenetic techniques of agglomerative classification, ordination and minimum spanning trees, and covering the geographic range of the Holly Grevillea, G. ilicifolia (R.Br.) R.Br. sensu lato, has resulted in the recognition of three species and four subspecies. The taxa are based on leaf form, noted by previous authors to be highly variable between populations. The taxa recognised here are G. ilicifolia, G. ilicifolia subsp. ilicifolia (typical, kite-shaped leaf form), G. ilicifolia subsp. lobata (F.Muell.) T.L. Downing comb. et stat. nov. (oak-shaped leaf form), G. dilatata (R.Br.) T.L. Downing comb. et stat. nov. (fan-shaped leaf form), G. angustiloba (F.Muell.) T.L. Downing comb. et stat. nov., G. angustiloba subsp. angustiloba (narrow-lobed leaf form) and G. angustiloba subsp. wirregaensis T.L. Downing subsp. nov. (very narrow-lobed leaf form). The rank of subspecies is used where there are some intermediate plants between forms. Grevillea ilicifolia subsp. ilicifolia is the most widespread taxon and occurs in South Australia, western Victoria and in two localities in New South Wales. Grevillea angustiloba subsp. wirregaensis has the most restricted range, occurring in semi-arid regions near Wirrega in South Australia. Grevillea dilatata is largely endemic to Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
STUDIES ON BIONOMICS OF LIPOSCELIS ENTOMOPHILA (PSOCOPTERA:LIPOSCELIDIDAE) INFESTING STORED PRODUCTS *

Abstract This paper deals with the biological characteristics of the psocid Liposcelis entomophila (Enderlein) on a diet composed of whole wheat flour and yeast (10: 1) under different temperatures (17.5–35C) and relative humidities (50%‐90% RH). The results showed that at 75% RH development time from egg to adult varied from 71. 9 d at 20% to 21.7 d at 35C. At 28C it varied from 23.0 d at 90% RH to 34.4 d at 60% RH. The development threshold and the effective accumulated temperature for entire immature stages were estimated at 15. 7C and 460. 7 day‐degree, respectively. The survival rate from egg to adult was 64. 5% at 27. 5C while at 20C and 35C it was only 32.1% and 37. 0%, respectively. At 28C the survival rate ranged from 31. 2% at 60% RH to 67.8% at 80% RH. L. entomophila could not survive at any humidity at 17. 5C and below 50% RH. The average longevity of adult ranged from 32.4 d at 35C and 64.4 d at 20C. At 75% RH the mean egg production varied from 27.1 at 27. 5 C and 13. 9 at 20C and the greatest fecundity occurred at 90% RH with 28C. The optimal ranges of temperature and humidity for L. entomophila population growth were 27. 5–30C and 80%—90% RH. The distribution and the reason for its serious infestation in China are discussed.
Media Tone Goes Viral: Global Evidence from the Currency Market

Using several million news and social media articles related to currencies, we examine the role of media tone in predicting the exchange rate returns of 12 developed and 24 emerging markets from 1998 to 2016. The text-based currency Media tone is a strong positive predictor of currency excess returns beyond fundamentals of one to three months ahead and six months cumulatively, with the average in-sample and out-of-sample R^2s of 4.45% and 9.03% in the US. The one-month predictability is observed in four other developed markets and 18 emerging market currencies, with the latter showing a stronger pattern. This predictability encompasses previous month currency returns, currency factors, macro fundamentals, and market sentiment and is stronger for currencies that are freely floating, less liquid, difficult to value, costly to arbitrage, and which have high interest rates. The effect is channeled through expectation errors and driven by the forecasting component rather than risk. The predictability of Media tone is driven by non-mainstream financial media.
Breeding ecology of the African Spoonbill Platalea alba in the Free State, South Africa

Kopij, G. 1997. Breeding ecology of the African Spoonbill Platalea alba in the Free State, South Africa. Ostrich 68 (2–4): 77–79. The breeding ecology of the African Spoonbill is surprisingly little known. In the Free State, the number of nesting African Spoonbills appears to have declined; 120 nests in 11 colonies were located in 1972–1973, compared to 32 nests in four colonies in 1993–1996 (though this later survey may have missed a few small colonies). In 1976–1977, a colony with 15 active spoonbill nests was monitored for an entire breeding season. Mean clutch size was 2.6 (n = 15); 56% of eggs hatched; 91% of hatched eggs resulted in fledglings; and chicks fledged from 53% of nests. The main food of spoonbill chicks was frogs, mainly Rana angolensis and Xenopus laevis, and aquatic invertebrates.
Payout Policy

We survey the literature on payout policy, with a particular emphasis on developments in the last two decades. Of the traditional motives of why firms pay out (agency, signaling, and taxes), the cross-sectional empirical evidence is most persuasive in favor of agency considerations. Studies centered on the May 2003 dividend tax cut confirm that differences in the taxation of dividends and capital gains have only a second-order impact on setting payout policy. None of the three traditional explanations can account for secular changes in how payouts are made over the last 30 years, during which repurchases have replaced dividends as the prime vehicle for corporate payouts. Other payout motives such as changes in compensation practices and management incentives are better able to explain the observed variation in payout patterns over time than the traditional motives. The most recent evidence suggests that further insights can be gained from viewing payout decisions as an integral part of a firm’s larger financial ecosystem, with important implications for financing, investment, and risk management.
Macroeconomic Determinants of Cyclical Variations in Value, Size and Momentum Premiums in the UK

The paper examines the asymmetries in size, value and momentum premiums over the economic cycles in the UK and their macroeconomic determinants. Using Markov switching approach we find clear evidence of cyclical variations of the three premiums, most noticeably variations in size premium. We associate Markov switching regime 1 with economic upturn and regime 2 with economic downturn. The macroeconomic indicators prompting such cyclicality the most are growth in industrial production, term structure, credit spread and money supply. Using forecast returns from our model and a trading strategy that alternates between size/style/momentum portfolios and risk-free rate, we show that exploiting cyclicality in premiums proves particularly profitable for portfolios featuring small cap stocks in recessions.
Private Firms’ Incentives to Manage Earnings: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment

We examine the behavior of a large sample of private firms before and after the elimination of an inflation adjustment system in Colombia in 2007. We show that firms avoid reporting small losses by exercising considerable discretion in their use of inflation adjustments, and find that this discretion is greater for firms that rely more on bank financing. Furthermore, we show that firms that manage earnings to report small positive profits are able to issue more bank debt the year following the reporting. After the law change, firms resort to other means to report positive earnings. In particular, the use of non-operating revenues increases, driven at least in part by higher use of real activities through asset sales. Finally, we evaluate the performance of model-based earning management measures commonly used in the literature. We highlight the potential difficulties in relying solely on these conventional measures where “normal” reporting has to be modeled in order to estimate “abnormal” behavior.
Does the Stock Market Predict Macro-Variables?

Movements in the stock market should reflect expectations regarding future economic conditions and lead the macroeconomy. However, evidence for stock returns providing such predictive power is mixed. We argue this arises as stock returns are noisy and consider the predictive ability of derived expected returns, as well as, the price-earnings ratio, VIX and the stock/bond return correlation. Results reveal that expected stock returns and the stock/bond return correlation exhibit predictive power for output and consumption growth and inflation at monthly and quarterly frequencies. The VIX has predictive power at the monthly frequency for consumption growth and inflation, while the price-earnings ratio predicts the shape of the future term structure. Results reveal that higher current expected returns are consistent with to higher future output and consumption growth, while greater risk results in lower future economic activity. The results are robust to considerations of structural breaks and alternative variables. Further, expected returns provides a noticeably more accurate recession prediction than realised returns. Thus, while stock returns are a weak predictor, expected returns and alternative proxies for stock market risk do reveal predictive power. Such information provides a leading role indicator for the macroeconomy and reveals links between financial markets and the economy.
The Effect of Feedback Content and Timing on Self-Other Gap in Risk-Taking

Previous experiments on delegated decision making find seemingly contradictory results: some experiments find that people take greater risks when they decide for others than for themselves, while other experiments find the opposite. My experiment reconciles the mixed results by showing that the self-other gap in risk taking behavior depends on the content and the timing of feedback. In a choice between two binary lotteries, subjects either learn the outcome of only the chosen lottery or the outcome for both the chosen and the unchosen lottery. Feedback is provided immediately after each decision or after a sequence of ten decisions. When subjects receive an immediate feedback on the outcome of both the chosen and the unchosen options, they make a risky shift. That is, subjects take greater risks for others than for themselves. If I alter either the timing or the content of feedback, the risky shift disappears. If I alter both the timing and the content of feedback so that the feedback is given at the end, only on the outcome of the chosen option, a risky shift is found again.I present a theoretical model and analyze how subjects? risk taking behavior evolves as they make more decisions.
Optimal Taxation with Homeownership and Wealth Inequality

We consider optimal taxation in a model with wealth-poor and wealth-rich households, where wealth derives from business capital and homeownership, and investigate the consequences on these tax rates of a rising wealth inequality at steady state. The optimal tax structure includes some taxation of labor, zero taxation of financial and business capital, a housing wealth tax on the wealth-rich households and a housing subsidy on the wealth-poor households. When wealth inequality increases, the optimal balance between labor and housing wealth taxes depends on the source of the increasing wealth.
Market Anticipation of Fed Policy Changes and the Term Structure of Interest Rates

The Federal Reserve adjusts the target federal funds rate discretely, causing discontinuity in short-term interest rates. However, unlike random Poisson jumps, these adjustments are well anticipated by the market. Within the affine term structure framework, we incorporate an anticipated jump component with known arrival times, but random jump size. We find that doing so improves the model performance in capturing the term structure behavior. When we examine anticipated jump components for the term structure in other economies, we find that it is present in the euro term structure, but absent from Japanese interest rates.
Evaluation of the pathogenicity of Fusarium graminearum and Fusarium pseudograminearum on soybean seedlings under controlled conditions

Fusarium graminearum, the cause of fusarium head blight of small-grain cereals and of gibberella ear rot of corn, has recently been reported to attack soybean, causing root rot and pod blight. A morphologically similar species, Fusarium pseudograminearum, is also an important pathogen of the roots and crown of cereals, but its pathogenicity against soybean has not been tested yet. Pathogenicity tests were conducted under controlled conditions to compare aggressiveness within and between isolates of F. graminearum and F. pseudograminearum in causing root rot of soybean. In each experiment, agar plugs (2 mm in diameter) from 7-day-old fungal cultures were placed on the primary root at the VE (vegetative emergence) growth stage. Twenty seedlings of each of three soybean cultivars were inoculated separately with six isolates each of the two Fusarium spp. All isolates caused visible infection 10 d after inoculation, but F. graminearum isolates were significantly more aggressive than those of F. pseudograminearum. The two species caused average disease severities of 2.3 and 1.1, reduced shoot lengths by 28.9% and 6.9%, and reduced plant dry masses by 12.8% and 7.9%, respectively. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were found among cultivars for all parameters and among isolates of F. graminearum in disease severity and shoot length, but there were no significant cultivar × isolate interactions. Further research is needed to verify, in soybean, genotypic difference and possible resistance to the two species.
The role of ethylene and cell wall modifying enzymes in raspberry (Rubus idaeus) fruit ripening

This study focuses on four raspberry (Rubus idaeus) genotypes from two different genetic backgrounds: cvs Glen Prosen and Glen Clova, bred at the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI) and genotypes bred at Horticulture Research International (HRI), East Malling (EM), EM 4997 and EM 5007. The ripe fruit of each genotype pair were characterised subjectively by raspberry breeders as relatively firm or soft, respectively. Different stages of fruit development from each genotype were used to quantify fruit firmness, rates of ethylene evolution and ripening rate. Penetrometry data confirmed suspected firmness differences. Firmness correlated with rates of ethylene evolution. Rates of ethylene production also correlated with receptacle size. Storage of green fruits in 20 μl l -1 ethylene reduced fruit firmness, enhanced respiration rate and colour (anthocyanin) development and stimulated the development of cell wall hydrolase activities. However, during natural ripening in the field, fruit respiration rate declined, which indicates a non-climacteric ripening pattern. In drupelets, the activities of polygalacturonase (PG), pectin methylesterase (PME), Cx-cellulase (Cx) and β-galactosidase (β-gal.) increased substantially as ripening progressed. More detailed studies with ripe fruit of cv. Glen Clova indicated major isoforms of PG at pIs 3.3, 8.6 and 10.1; of PME at pIs 7.2, 8.5, 8.7, 8.8; of Cx at pI 2.4; and of β-gal. at pIs 6.3 and 6.7.
Poverty and Perseverance: How Soon Do the Poor Give Up?

Perseverance as a non-cognitive skill is determinative for achievement. Poverty, however, can impair this crucial skill. This results in a vicious loop that hinders the climb out of poverty. While literature surrounding the psychological consequences of poverty has been growing, evidence for the effect of poverty on perseverance is still generally scarce. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of poverty on perseverance. To this end, I conducted an experiment with a difference-in-differences design. I primed adolescents in the treatment condition with poverty-related dejection and measured their perseverance on a real-effort task. Results confirm that relatively poor participants reminded of the economic condition in their life have a remarkably lower persistence and consequently are less successful in fulfilling the task compared to their well-off counterparts. This study suggests poverty as being one of the possible underlying causes that deteriorate perseverance in effort-demanding situations. One channel that drives these results can operate through the negative affective state caused by poverty, which creates motivational deficits, diminishes self-regulation, and thus results in less effort.
The Prospects for Foreign Debt Sustainability in Post-Completion Point Countries: Implications of the HIPC-MDRI Framework

The Enhanced HIPC Initiative was launched in 1999 to reduce the NPV of poor country foreign debt to a sustainable threshold of 150 percent of their exports. This paper applies a simple growth-with-debt model to sixteen post-completion point HIPCs to assess whether or not goal will be met by 2015. Our somewhat optimistic base case projections suggest that participation in the current Enhanced HIPC-MDRI initiative will only reduce the NPVs of their external debt as a whole to 176 percent of exports by this date. Sensitivity tests which expose these countries to adverse exogenous shocks help draw attention to policies that could ensure that unsustainable debt levels are not again accumulated by the world's poorest countries.
Board Network Centrality and Corporate Social Responsibility

The previous business literature mainly investigates the effects of board network on the financial performance of firms. In this paper, we contribute to the literature by examining its impact on firm non-financial performance. We find that firms with central or well-connected boards of directors invest more in corporate social responsibility (CSR). We show that this impact is stronger for firms with strong corporate governance, high institutional ownership, or high public awareness. Moreover, this positive effect is also more pronounced for firms that need high commitment of stakeholders to success, such as firms with larger investments in research and development (R&D) or those in more competitive industries. These findings are consistent with the view that well-connected boards are positively associated with better monitoring and advising.
Public Good Provision with Participation Costs

Esteban and Ray (2001) develop a model with an increasing marginal cost of contribution and overturn the Olson hypothesis that large groups are unable to provide themselves with a rival public good. Pecorino and Temimi (2008) consider fixed, but avoidable, participation costs in this framework. They conclude that public good provision must fall to zero in a large group if the degree of rivalry is sufficiently high, because the individual payoff goes to zero at the interior equilibrium. Thus, individuals prefer a corner solution of zero contributions to incurring the fixed participation cost. However, when the degree of rivalry is sufficiently low, they conclude that provision of the public good will rise without bound. We show that this latter conclusion is incorrect, and that any degree of rivalry will lead to a total breakdown in public good provision in a sufficiently large group. Not including the fixed participation cost, the difference in the payoff to an individual when she contributes to the public good and when she does not contribute goes to zero in a large group. Thus, in a sufficiently large group, she will not be willing to incur the participation costs. The same result also applies to the Morgan (2000) lottery mechanism.
Exposure to fenitrothion causes malfunctions of Spodoptera exigua Hübn. (Lep., Noctuidae) eggs

A long‐term exposition of Spodoptera exigua (Hübner) larvae to fenitrothion caused abnormalities in egg structure. When examined under a scanning electron microscope, the eggs revealed diminutions and cracks around the micropylar and aeropylar region. The damage was proportional to the concentration of the insecticide. The observed changes may be one of the reasons for the decreased survival of populations exposed to fenitrothion.