Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Direct calibration and comparison of agent-based herding models of financial markets

The present paper aims to test a new model comparison methodology by calibrating and comparing three agent-based models of financial markets on the daily returns of 18 indices. The models chosen for this empirical application are the herding model of Gilli & Winker, its asymmetric version by Alfarano, Lux & Wagner and the more recent model by Franke & Westerhoff, which all share a common lineage to the herding model introduced by Kirman (1993). In addition, standard ARCH processes are included for each financial series to provide a benchmark for the explanatory power of the models. The methodology provides a clear and consistent ranking of the three models. More importantly, it also reveals that the best performing model, Franke & Westerhoff, is generally not distinguishable from an ARCH-type process, suggesting their explanatory power on the data is similar.
Mandatory IFRS Adoption and Institutional Investment Decisions

ABSTRACT: We examine whether the mandatory introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards leads to an increase in institutional investor demand for equities. Using a large ownership database covering all types of institutional investors from around the world, we find that institutional holdings increase for mandatory IFRS adopters. Changes in holdings are concentrated around first-time annual reporting events. Second, we document that the positive IFRS effects on institutional holdings are concentrated among investors whose orientation and styles suggest they are most likely to benefit from higher quality financial statements, including active, value, and growth investors. These results are consistent with holdings changes being associated with the financial reporting regime change. Finally, we show that increased institutional holdings are concentrated in countries in which enforcement and reporting incentives are strongest, and where the differences between local GAAP and IFRS are relativel.
Advanced Psychotherapy Training: Psychotherapy Scholars’ Track, and the Apprenticeship Model

BackgroundGuided by ACGME’s requirements, psychiatric residency training in psychotherapy currently focuses on teaching school-specific forms of psychotherapy (i.e., cognitive-behavioral, supportive, and psychodynamic psychotherapy). On the basis of a literature review of common factors affecting psychotherapy outcomes and experience with empirically supported and traditional psychotherapies, the authors aimed to develop an advanced contemporary and pragmatic approach to psychotherapy training for eight residents (two per PGY year) enrolled in a specialized Psychotherapy Scholars’ Track within an adult general-residency program.MethodsThe authors developed core principles and clinical practices, and drafted year-by-year educational goals and objectives to teach the psychotherapy scholars. Based on experiential learning principles, we also developed an individualized form of psychotherapy training, which we call “The Apprenticeship Model. ”ResultsThe Psychotherapy Scholars’ Track, and “Apprenticeship Model” of training are now in their third year. To date, authors report that scholars are highly satisfied with the structure and curriculum in the track. Trainees appreciate the protected time for self-directed study, mentored scholarship, and psychotherapy rotations. Patients and the Psychotherapy Scholars experience the “Apprenticeship Model” of psychotherapy training as authentic and compatible with their needs and resources.ConclusionsThe Psychotherapy Scholars’ Track developed and piloted in our general psychiatry residency is based on common factors, empirically-supported treatments, and use of experiential learning principles. Whether the Psychotherapy Scholars’ Track and “Apprenticeship Model” will ultimately increase residents’ psychotherapy skills and positively affect their ability to sustain postgraduate psychotherapy practice in varied settings requires long-term evaluation. The developers welcome empirical testing of the comparative effectiveness of this psychotherapy teaching approach relative to others.
Socially Responsible Investment and Corporate Social and Environmental Reporting in the UK: An Exploratory Study

Abstract This exploratory study examines the relations between corporate social and environmental reporting (CSR) and the socially responsible investment (SRI) sector. The evidence presented, based upon the informed opinions of 14 experts within the SRI field, suggests that the field of CSR is on the verge of a major change towards a substantial and sustained improvement in quality and quantity. The SRI sector is undergoing radical changes. A wider social movement has already led to exponential growth, as more people become concerned with how their money is invested. Moreover, the Pensions Review has widened this concern to institutional investment. Representing 35% of the stock market, the potential impact of this regulation is anticipated to be significant. One possible outcome could be a marked increase in the size and power of the SRI sector, improving their ability to successfully influence corporate behaviour. Success is likely to increase further as corporations begin to see a business case, as well as, or as opposed to a moral case, for acting in a more responsible manner. The Turnbull report on the combined codes of corporate governance is a significant factor influencing this. For the first time, reputational risk, and hence how companies manage environmental, ethical and social reputations, is on the core corporate governance agenda. A more powerful outcome would be an increased interest from mainstream fund managers in SRI modes of corporate assessment. Preliminary evidence suggests that this will create a greater demand for CSR, and greater legitimacy of CSR within the accounting orthodoxy.
Heldonic Price Modelswith Spatial Effects: Aan Application to the Housing Market of Belo Horizonte , Brazil

This paper uses both standard and spatial autoregressive hedonic price models (HPM) to analyze sample data from the housing market of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Among the spatial econometric tools used are diagnostic tests for the detection of spatial dependence and heterogeneity, which provide the means to identify adjacency effects in the determination of housing prices. The study tests also a number of alternative functional forms for both the standard and the spatial HPM using the Box-Cox transformation of the variables analyzed. The results show that spillover (adjacency) are an important source of price variation in the housing market analyzed, and the doublelog specification provides the best fit in describing the relationship between housing prices and attributes.
Entrepreneurship And Economic Growth: An Empirical Analysis

This study examines the impact of entrepreneurship on economic growth by using a new variable based on patent data to proxy for productive entrepreneurship. Data on self-employment is used as an alternative proxy. The study considers 22 OECD countries and finds a positive relationship between the proposed measure of productive entrepreneurship — degree of innovativeness of different nations — and economic growth, while the alternative measure, based on self-employment, appears to be negatively correlated with economic growth. A battery of econometric specifications and techniques backs the findings.
Evaluating the Behavioral Performance of Alternative Logit Models: An Application to Corporate Takeovers Research

Econometric models involving a discrete outcome dependent variable abound in the finance and accounting literatures. However, much of the literature to date utilises a basic or standard logit model. Capitalising on recent developments in the discrete choice literature, we examine three advanced (or non-IID) logit models, namely: nested logit, mixed logit and latent class MNL. Using an illustration from corporate takeovers research, we compare the explanatory and predictive performance of each class of advanced model relative to the standard model. We find that in all cases the more advanced logit model structures, which correct for the highly restrictive IID and IIA conditions, provide significantly greater explanatory power than standard logit. Mixed logit and latent class MNL models exhibited the highest overall predictive accuracy on a holdout sample, while the standard logit model performed the worst. Moreover, the analysis of marginal effects of all models indicates that use of advanced models can lead to more insightful and behaviourally meaningful interpretations of the role and influence of explanatory variables and parameter estimates in model estimation. The results of this paper have implications for the use of more optimal logit structures in future research and practice. Copyright 2007 The Authors Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Bion’s Ego Psychology: Implications for an Intersubjective View of Psychic Structure

Of all Freud’s writings, Bion was most deeply influenced by “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” (1911), and the author asserts that much of Bion’s major theoretical thinking may be seen as an elaboration of this paper. Bion’s introduction of the concept of alpha function, which “may be regarded as a structure” (Bion 1962, p. 26), constitutes what the author calls “Bion’s ego psychology. ” A clinical implication of Bion’s ego psychology is a focus upon the unconscious interaction between the analyst’s and the patient’s communicating alpha functions. Clinical material from the analysis of an adolescent is offered to illustrate the author’s points.
The Relationship Between Communication Apprehension and Satisfaction with Information among Lodging Revenue Managers

This study assessed the relationship between communication apprehension (CA) in various work situations a revenue manager would face and job satisfaction and organization commitment. The confirmatory factor analysis shows that the second-order four-factor of CA was found to fit the data best. The structural model was tested with 241 lodging revenue managers, using the structural equation modeling technique. The results indicate a negative relationship between CA and specific satisfaction variables. Revenue managers with a high satisfaction of information also demonstrated greater organizational commitment.
Customer Orientation or Competitor Orientation

This study of hotels representing thirty-seven brands from fifty-six countries uncovers the market conditions under which investing resources in specific market strategies leads to higher performance. Specifically, the authors identified, for the first time in an international context, the circumstances under which customer orientation (acquisition, satisfaction, and retention of customers) alone has a higher payoff or when simply investing resources on competitor orientation (monitoring, managing, and outflanking competitors) alone is the better strategy. An additional interesting twist, not shown before to the authors' knowledge, is that in the cases where a customer-based strategy has a higher payoff, focusing on competitors diminishes performance. Similarly, in a market where competitor-based strategy has a higher payoff, a customer focus lowers performance.
A Comparison of the Acute Stress Reactions between the Han and Tibetan Ethnic Groups in Responding to Devastating Earthquakes

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether there were differences in the acute stress reaction (ASR) between the Tibetan and the Han ethnic groups after experiencing devastating earthquakes. Methods: One hundred twelve Han survivors of the Wenchuan earthquake and 112 Tibetan survivors of the Yushu earthquake were rated using the PTSD Checklist-Civilian (PCL-C) according to their trauma experiences, ages, genders, severity levels of injuries, and medical services received. Results: Injured Tibetans had lower scores across symptom clusters of avoidance, numbing, and the total score of PCL-C as compared to Hans. Among Tibetans, severe ASR was associated with a higher education level and earthquake experience, whereas only earthquake experience was associated with severe ASR among injured Hans. Conclusion: Cultural factors may play significant roles in the acute stress reaction of survivors with different cultural backgrounds following an earthquake.
I-vector based physical task stress detection with different fusion strategies

It is common for subjects to produce speech while performing a physical task where speech technology may be used. Variabilities are introduced to speech since physical task can influence human speech production. These variabilities degrade the performance of most speech systems. It is vital to detect speech under physical stress variabilities for subsequent algorithm processsing. This study presents a method for detecting physical task stress from speech. Inspired by the fact that i-vectors can generally model total factors from speech, a state-of-the-art ivector framework is investigated with MFCCs and our previously formulated TEO-CB-Auto-Env features for neutral/physical task stress detection. Since MFCCs are derived from a linear speech production model and TEO-CB-Auto-Env features employ a nonlinear operator, these two features are believed to have complementary effects on physical task stress detection. Two alternative fusion strategies (feature-level and score-level fusion) are investigated to validate this hypothesis. Experiments over the UT-Scope Physical Corpus demonstrate that a relative accuracy gain of 2.68% is obtained when fusing different feature based i-vectors. An additional relative performance boost with of 6.52% in accuracy is achieved using score level fusion.
Extent and intensity of investment with multiple capital goods

Overall investment is the product of the number of capital goods for which triggering has occurred (the extensive or reductive margin) and the depth of investment per capital good (intensive margin). Based on a longitudinal plant-level data and using dynamic panel techniques we investigated the validity of the hypothesis that the intensity of investment increases as its extent increases. Our results indicate a strong linkage between the extent and intensity of investment decisions, finding which holds both for positive and negative investment decisions. This linkage suggests that the decision on how many capital types to initiate investment is closely connected to the decision regarding the depth of investment expenditures. Moreover, the intensity–extent derivative remains positive but its magnitude decreases with plant size, providing indirect evidence for higher complementarity between capital types for smaller plants.
4-(Methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-Pyridyl)-1-Butanol and its Glucuronides in the Urine of Infants Exposed to Environmental Tobacco Smoke

Biomarkers of carcinogen uptake could provide important information pertinent to the question of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in childhood and cancer development later in life. Previous studies have focused on exposures before birth and during childhood, but carcinogen uptake from ETS in infants has not been reported. Exposures in infants could be higher than in children or adults because of their proximity to parents who smoke. Therefore, we quantified 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanol and its glucuronides (total NNAL) in the urine of 144 infants, ages 3 to 12 months, who lived in homes with parents who smoked. Total NNAL is an accepted biomarker of uptake of the tobacco-specific carcinogen 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone. Cotinine and its glucuronide (total cotinine) and nicotine and its glucuronide (total nicotine) were also quantified. Total NNAL was detectable in 67 of 144 infants (46.5%). Mean levels of total NNAL in the 144 infants were 0.083 ± 0.200 pmol/mL, whereas those of total cotinine and total nicotine were 0.133 ± 0.190 and 0.069 ± 0.102 nmol/mL, respectively. The number of cigarettes smoked per week in the home or car by any family member when the infant was present was significantly higher (P < 0.0001) when NNAL was detected than when it was not (76.0 ± 88.1 versus 27.1 ± 38.2). The mean level of NNAL detected in the urine of these infants was higher than in most other field studies of ETS exposure. The results of this study show substantial uptake of 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone in infants exposed to ETS and support the concept that persistent ETS exposure in childhood could be related to cancer later in life. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(5):988–92)
A Model of Consumer Goods Characteristics

This paper derives and tests two hypotheses concerning characteristics of purchased consumer goods. One hypothesis states retail price paid is a weighted linear combination of a product's yields of characteristics, each weight being a marginal implicit price of a characteristic. The second hypothesis expresses consumer demand for a product as a function of income, product prices, and product's yields of characteristics. Statistical results are consistent with the hypotheses. One model used in this paper is the consumer goods counterpart to the model used by Ladd and Martin in studying prices and demands for input characteristics.
Just One of the ‘PIIGS’ or a European Outlier? Studying Irish Emigration from a Comparative Perspective

The return of high levels of emigration has become one of the most debated and sensitive social topics in Ireland in recent years. But Irish emigration continues to be discussed in the singular rather than the plural. This paper compares Irish emigration to other Eurozone states that also encountered serious economic difficulties following the onset of the global financial crisis to highlight international trends and specify national differences. All of the ‘PIIGS’ experienced increased emigration after the crisis. Yet Irish citizens left in much greater numbers per capita than their Eurozone counterparts, with only Portugal bearing any similarities. This was because Irish emigrants possessed valuable transnational human, cultural and social capital that enabled them to access liberal labour markets outside the Eurozone. They possessed skills desired by attractive destination states; they spoke the same language and shared similar cultural traits as their hosts; and they were able to call upon recently renewed Irish networks to further facilitate their move abroad.
Pennsylvania Farm-to-School Programs and the Articulation of Local Context

The proliferation of farm to school (FTS) programming in US schools emerges out of a convergence of recent trends facing agricultural producers and food consumers and as such represents part of a broader effort to relocalize food systems and build new connections between schools, producers, and communities. This mixed method study examines the current forms, organization, and policy needs of FTS programming in the state of Pennsylvania. We find that rather than representing a more or less uniform set of practices, in both scale and content FTS programming varies widely across school districts depending on district needs, resources, and the salient local issues that act as catalysts for FTS (e.g., nutrition, obesity prevention, strong community identification with local agriculture, and/or local economic development). Our findings suggest that FTS might therefore best be understood and promoted as a flexible range of locally embedded strategies that schools might use to address specific community and school needs.
Exploring corporate social responsibility initiatives in South Africa : the case of the TISO Foundation in Johannesburg.

iii List of Abbreviations . v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Introduction . 1 1.2 Background on CSR initiatives of Tiso. 1 1.3 Statement of the Problem and Rationale for the Study . 2 1.3 Research methodology . 4 1.4 Research Questions . 4 1.5 Aims and Objectives . 4 1.5. 1 Primary Aim. 4 1.5. 2 Secondary Objectives . 4 1.6 Organisation of the Research Report . 5 CHAPTER 2: A REVIEW OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY . 6 2.1 The Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility . 6 2.2 A General overview of Corporate Social Responsibility . 8 2.3 CSR in South Africa and the Emerging Models . 11 2.4 CSR Initiatives and the Development Agenda of South Africa . 16 Figure 1.1 . 18 2.5 Challenges of CSR Initiatives in South Africa . 19 2.6 Beneficiary Participation in CSR Initiatives . 23 Figure 2.1: Types of participation . 24 2.7 Conclusion . 26
Peptide vaccines incorporating a ‘promiscuous’ T‐cell epitope bypass certain haplotype restricted immune responses and provide broad spectrum immunogenicity

An ideal peptide vaccine should contain both B‐ and T‐cell epitopes. Recognition of antigen by B cells is highly dependent on the three‐dimensional conformation of the antigen whereas T cells recognize antigen only after it has been processed to release a peptide fragment which is bound to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecule. However, T cells provide ‘help’ to B cells displaying the same processed, MHC‐restricted from of the antigen, demonstrating that the T‐cell response to a protein antigen is under genetic control. Thus, strategies for co‐inclusion of T cell ‘helper’ epitopes with the B‐cell determinant elicit immune responses that are in most cases genetically restricted to only one or a few alleles of the MHC with limited activity across divergent MHC class II haplotypes. This genetically restricted T cell stimulatory activity of peptides is a serious obstacle and consequently such constructs would be of limited practical value as a vaccine targeted to a majority of an outbred population. In the study described here, we have engineered tow peptides to encompass the sequences from the universally immunogenic tetanus toxoid (TT) epitope and the contraceptive vaccine candidate lactate dehydrogenase C4 (LDH‐C4). We demonstrate the feasibility of using ‘promiscuous’ T‐Cell epitopes colinearly constructed with a defined B‐cell epitope to induce high titer antipeptide IgG antibodies specific for native protein antigen LDH‐C4 in several inbred strains of mice, outbred mice and rabbits. There appears to be a strong correlation between the capacity for the hybrid peptides to be stimulatory for the corresponding T cells in C57BL/6 (H‐2b) and C3H/HeJ (H‐2k) mice and their ability to be immunogenic. This correlation, however, appears to break down in H‐2d strains of mice since no antibodies were detected in BALB/c and barely detectable levels of antibodies in B10.D2 although activated T cells were detectable. Conversely, high titers of antipeptide antibodies are elicited in some strains (B10.BR) (H‐2k); C57BL/10 (H‐2k) without detectable IL‐2 responses. Finally, we show that a determinant which was previously restricted to H‐2k can be rendered immunogenic in H‐2b with the ‘promiscuous’ TT epitope. Thus, certain haplotype‐restricted immune responses can be bypassed, setting forth the ground work for the design of a universal vaccine by broadening the effective response in a larger number of individuals typically of the genetically diverse outbred human population.