Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Excess sensitivity of consumption, liquidity constraints, and mandatory saving

Using Singapore mandatory saving system, it is examined whether liquidity constraint is a major reason for the excess-sensitivity of consumption to predictable income growth. Although the mandatory saving rate for employees could be a good measure for the financial condition of a liquidity-constrained consumer, it is found, through the nonlinear instrumental variable estimation, that consumption growth is not sensitive to changes in the mandatory saving rate for employees. This finding suggests that liquidity constraints would not be a major reason for the excess-sensitivity puzzle.
Price and Money‐Back Guarantees as Signals of Product Quality

Why is it so common for the seller to provide guarantees that say "Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" along with the sale of a product? Newly introduced goods and mail-ordered products are usually sold with such guarantees. In honoring money-back guarantees, why is it a common business practice to pay back exactly the purchase price rather than a portion of it? In this paper we study the informational role and optimality of the common business practice of money-back guarantees in a signaling model with quality uncertainty and risk-neutral buyers. We find that money-back guarantees and price together completely reveal a monopoly firm's private information about product quality, Moreover, the private information is revealed at no signaling cost. Furthermore, we show that in terms of the level of monetary compensation specified by a guarantee, price is the profit-maximizing level of monetary payback in case of product failure. Copyright 1996 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Stock Prices and the Supply of Information

The authors develop a model in which the dependence of the brokerage commission rate on share price provides an incentive for brokers to produce research reports on firms with low share prices. Stock splits, therefore, affect the attention paid to a firm by investment analysts. Managers with favorable private information about their firms have an incentive to split their firm's shares in order to reveal the information to investors. The authors find empirical evidence that is consistent with the major new prediction of the model that the number of analysts following a firm is inversely related to its share price. Copyright 1991 by American Finance Association.
Integrated lean TQM model for global sustainability and competitiveness

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore an integrated total quality management (TQM) model for global sustainability.Design/methodology/approach – It has been well‐recognised that Japanese firms compete in quality, cost and speed of delivery. Over the last century, the Japanese have formalised the technique and call it “5S” Practice. Through his research in Japan under the “Oshikawa Fellowship” of the Asian Productivity Organisation in 1988, the author has re‐defined the name as “the 5‐S” and developed the world's first 5‐S Audit Checklist. Recently, in the wake of the soaring oil prices, the author developed another Checklist on Lean 5‐S, aiming at minimising wastage of all kinds. Thus, the author adds another dimension to the Japanese competitiveness trio above – environment. Since 1993, the author has used the proprietary 5‐S Checklist for training and consultancy in no less than ten countries with over 100,000 persons from around 8,000 organisations worldwide. On the other hand, HKSAR takes .
Phosphorylation of Histone H 2 B at DNA Double-Strand Breaks

Posttranslational modifications of histone tails regulate numerous biological processes including transcription, DNA repair, and apoptosis. Although recent studies suggest that structural alterations in chromatin are critical for triggering the DNA damage response, very little is known about the nature of DNA damage-induced chromatin perturbations. Here we show that the serine 14 residue in the NH 2 -terminal tail of histone H2B is rapidly phosphorylated at sites of DNA double-strand breaks. At late time points after irradiation, the phosphorylated form of H2B, H2BSer14P , accumulates into irradiation-induced foci. H2BSer14P foci formation is not associated with the apoptotic phosphorylation of H2B but is strictly dependent on the phosphorylated isoform of H2AX. Our results broaden the spectrum of histone modifications that constitute the DNA damage “histone code” and suggest a model for the underlying chromatin structure within damage-induced foci.
Multisensor Image Fusion Using the Wavelet Transform

Abstract The goal of image fusion is to integrate complementary information from multisensor data such that the new images are more suitable for the purpose of human visual perception and computer-processing tasks such as segmentation, feature extraction, and object recognition. This paper presents an image fusion scheme which is based on the wavelet transform. The wavelet transforms of the input images are appropriately combined, and the new image is obtained by taking the inverse wavelet transform of the fused wavelet coefficients. An area-based maximum selection rule and a consistency verification step are used for feature selection. The proposed scheme performs better than the Laplacian pyramid-based methods due to the compactness, directional selectivity, and orthogonality of the wavelet transform. A performance measure using specially generated test images is suggested and is used in the evaluation of different fusion methods, and in comparing the merits of different wavelet transform kernels. Extensive experimental results including the fusion of multifocus images, Landsat and Spot images, Landsat and Seasat SAR images, IR and visible images, and MRI and PET images are presented in the paper.
Summarization of Articles using LexRank for Texts via Intermediate Embdedded Representations

Effective text summarization has the potential to allow people to process more information. To further this goal, we present multiple extractive baselines on the NYT dataset, which is a large dataset that immediately yields real-life applications. These baselines combine state-of-the-art techniques from many different sources and provide a solid starting point for further work using this hitherto untapped
Development of Medical Countermeasures to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus

Preclinical development of and research on potential Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) medical countermeasures remain preliminary; advancements are needed before most countermeasures are ready to be tested in human clinical trials. Research priorities include standardization of animal models and virus stocks for studying disease pathogenesis and efficacy of medical countermeasures; development of MERS-CoV diagnostics; improved access to nonhuman primates to support preclinical research; studies to better understand and control MERS-CoV disease, including vaccination studies in camels; and development of a standardized clinical trial protocol. Partnering with clinical trial networks in affected countries to evaluate safety and efficacy of investigational therapeutics will strengthen efforts to identify successful medical countermeasures.
AN APPROACH TO THE VALUATION OF UNCERTAIN INCOME STREAMS

IN THE LAST DECADE substantial advances have been made in the theory of the valuation of assets under uncertainty, such work being based mainly on what has come to be known as the Capital Asset Pricing Model,' which itself grew out of the static theory of portfolio selection originally due to Markowitz [1959]. More recently the theory of portfolio selection has been extended under certain assumptions to-the problem of an individual planning his investment and consumption under uncertainty over a multi-period horizon.2 As yet, however, the theory of the market valuation of individual assets has not paralleled this development, and remains almost entirely within a one-period context. Exceptions of this generalization are the work of Black and Scholes [1971] on warrant valuation, and an unpublished paper by Black [1969], recently brought to the author's attention, which, drawing on some earlier work by Treynor, anticipates in a more general context part of the theoretical development presented here. Other efforts to apply modern capital market theory to multi-period asset valuation and investment decisions include thework of Tuttle and Litzenberger [1968] and that of Stapleton [1971], both of which differ in significant respects from the approach adopted here. The Tuttle and Litzenberger paper, which derives appropriate criteria for optimal corporate investment decisions, takes as given the effects on a firm's market risk' of adopting a particular investment project. The paper therefore leaves open the questions both of the determinants of this risk effect, and of the way in which the risk of projects is to be assessed. The model presented here is more complete, in that investment decision criteria are developed assuming only that the decision-maker has information on the conditional distributions of the project's cash flows. Stapleton, on the other hand, while purporting to develop a theory of stock valuation using a multi-period portfolio model,4 actually employs a singleperiod certainty-equivalent approach in which it is assumed that the joint probability distribution of all the future dividend payments on a share can be reduced to a probability distribution on the present values at the end of one
Examining the Factors Influencing Environmental Innovations

Technological innovation is a key factor for achieving a better environmental performance of firms and the economy as a whole, to the extent that it helps to increase the material/energy efficiency of production processes and to reduce emission/effluents associated to outputs. Environmental innovation may spur from exogenous driving forces, like policy intervention, and/or from endogenous factors associated to firm market and management strategies. Despite the crucial importance of research in this field, empirical evidence at firm microeconomic level, for various reasons, is still scarce. Microeconomic-based analysis is needed in order to assess what forces are lying behind environmental innovation at the level of the firm, where innovative practices emerge and are adopted. The paper exploits information deriving from two surveys conducted on a sample of manufacturing firms in Emilia Romagna region -Northern Italy- in 2002 and 2004, located in a district-intense local production system. New evidence is provided by testing a set of hypotheses, concerning the influence of: (i) firm structural variables; (ii) environmental RD (iii) environmental policy pressure and regulatory costs; (iv) past firm performances; (v) networking activities, (vi) other non-environmental techno-organizational innovations and (vii) quality/nature of industrial relations. We estimate input and output-based environmental innovation reduced form specifications in order to test the set of hypotheses. The applied investigation shows that environmental innovation drivers, both at input and output level, are found within exogenous factors and endogenous elements concerning the firm and its activities/strategies within and outside its natural boundaries. In the present case study, the usual structural characteristics of the firm and performances appear to matter less than R&D, induced costs, networking, organisational flatness and innovative oriented industrial relations. Environmental Policies and environmental voluntary auditing schemes exert some relevant direct and indirect effects on innovation, although evidence is mixed and further research is particularly needed. Although this new empirical evidence is focussing on a specific industrial territory, we provide food for discussion on firm environmental innovation strategies, and research suggestions for further empirical work.
The power of single equation tests for cointegration

In recent research, Kanioura and Turner (2005) have proposed an F-test for cointegration based upon the joint significance of the level terms in an error correction model. In the present study, the analysis of this test is extended via comparison with the GLS-based cointegration test of Perron and Rodriguez (mimeo, 2001). The simulation evidence presented indicates that for the data generation process considered by Kanioura and Turner, the F-test possesses greater power than both the Engle-Granger and the GLS-based cointegration tests. An empirical examination of the relationship between UK non-durable consumers' expenditure and disposable income illustrates the findings of the simulation analysis, with the F-test alone able to reject the null of no cointegration between the series.
Detection of Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Using the Animal Fluency Test: The DECIDE Study

Objectives: To evaluate the performance of a one-minute screening test measured against a validated 10-minute screening test for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in detecting CI in patients aged ≥ 65 years with two or more vascular risk factors (VRF). Methods: Patients (n=1523) aged 65 years or older without documented CI symptoms or dementia with two or more VRF participated in this study set in Canadian primary care practice. Baseline data was collected, followed by the 1-minute animal fluency (AF) test and the 10-minute Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Physicians (n=122) completed case reports during patient interviews and reported their diagnostic impression. AF test sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy in predicting a positive MoCA was assessed. Results: Study sample mean age was 79.7 years, 55% were female, 97.6% were Caucasian and 75% had ≤ 12 years of education. The AF test and MoCA detected CI in 52 and 56 percent of the study population, respectively. The AF test demonstrated sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy in predicting a positive MoCA of 67 percent each. Physicians diagnostic impression of MCI was reported for 37% of patients, and of dementia for 6%. Conclusion: In an elderly population with at least two VRF, using AF can be useful in detecting previously unknown symptoms of CI or dementia. Screening for CI in this high risk population is warranted to assist physician recognition of early CI. The short AF administration time favours its incorporation into clinical practice.
Empirical Analysis of Occupational Hierarchies

Using data on U.S. engineers and the position of engineering jobs within firms, this paper estimates a model of hierarchies within firms. The model extends Rosen's (1982) model of recursive production to two skills and multiple hierarchy levels. The model generates an empirical model that is nested within a general Roy (1951) model of self-selection. Maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the production technology and the skill-experience profiles are estimated. The results suggest that approximately two-thirds of changes in employment shares across hierarchy levels across time are explained by demographic shifts in the stock of engineering skills. Most of the returns to experience and to assignment to higher hierarchy levels within firms are caused by skill accumulation and self-selection rather than technological differences across hierarchy levels.
Banks' Great Bailout of 2008-2009

This paper examines government policies aimed at rescuing banks from the effects of the financial crisis of 2007-2009. To delimit the scope of the analysis, we concentrate on the fiscal side of interventions and ignore, by design, the monetary policy reaction to the crisis. The policy response to the subprime crisis started in earnest after Lehman’s failure in mid September 2008, accelerated after February 2009, and has become very large by September 2009. Governments have relied on a portfolio of intervention tools, but the biggest commitments and outlays have been in the form of debt and asset guarantees, while purchases of bad assets have been very limited. We employ event study methodology to estimate the benefits of government interventions on banks and their shareholders. Announcements directed at the banking system as a whole (general) and at specific banks (specific) were priced by the markets as cumulative abnormal rates of return over the selected window periods. General announcements tend to be associated with positive cumulative abnormal returns and specific announcements with negative ones. Our results are also sensitive to the information environment. Specific announcements tend to exert a positive impact on rates of return in the pre-crisis sub-period, when announcements are few and markets have relative confidence in the “normal” information flow. The opposite takes place in the turbulent crisis sub-period when announcements are frequent and markets mistrust the “normal” information flow. These results appear consistent with the observed reluctance of individual institutions to come forth with requests for public assistance.
SCID and Wild-Type Mice Nonhairpin Coding Ends in Thymocytes of Variable Diversity Joining Recombination:

Initiation of V(D)J recombination results in broken DNA molecules with blunt recombination signal ends and covalently sealed (hairpin) coding ends. In SCID mice, coding joint formation is severely impaired and hairpin coding ends accumulate as a result of a deﬁciency in the catalytic subunit of DNA-dependent protein kinase, an enzyme involved in the repair of DNA double-strand breaks. In this study, we report that not all SCID coding ends are hairpinned. We have detected open J (cid:1) 1 and D (cid:1) 2 coding ends at the TCR (cid:1) locus in SCID thymocytes. Approximately 25% of 5 (cid:1) D (cid:1) 2 coding ends were found to be open. Large deletions and abnormally long P nucleotide additions typical of SCID D (cid:1) 2-J (cid:1) 1 coding joints were not observed. Most J (cid:1) 1 and D (cid:1) 2 coding ends exhibited 3 (cid:1) overhangs, but at least 20% had unique 5 (cid:1) overhangs not previously detected in vivo. We suggest that the SCID DNA-dependent protein kinase deﬁciency not only reduces the efﬁciency of hairpin opening, but also may affect the speciﬁcity of hairpin nicking, as well as the efﬁciency of joining open coding ends. The Journal of Immunology, 2002, 169: 3094–3104.
Exploring Trends in Labor Informality in Latin America, 1990-2010

Labor informality is a pervasive characteristic of the labor markets in Latin America, and a central issue in the public policy debate. This paper discusses the concept of labor informality and implements alternative definitions using microdata from around 300 national household surveys in all Latin American countries. The analysis covers two decades: while labor informality, defined as lack of social protection related to employment, remained with few changes in the 1990s, there is a discernible downward pattern during the 2000s in most countries. These movements reveal a counter-cyclical behavior of labor informality, that may be linked to segmentation in the labor market.
Of Probits and Participation: The Use of Mixed Methods in Quantitative Impact Evaluation

Nonie is a network of networks for impact evaluation comprised of the DAC Evaluation Network, The United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG), the Evaluation Cooperation Group (ECG), and a fourth network drawn from the development evaluation associations (AfrEA, IOCE, IDEAS, ReLAC, and IPEN). Its purpose is to foster a program of impact evaluation activities based on a common understanding of the meaning of impact evaluation and approaches to conducting impact evaluation. To this end a task team has been constituted and tasked with the following activities: 1. Preparation of impact evaluation guidelines 2. Agreeing collaborative arrangements for undertaking impact evaluation, leading to initiation of the program 3. Developing a platform of resources to support impact evaluation by member organizations
Laboratory Rearing System for Ischnura senegalensis (Insecta: Odonata) Enables Detailed Description of Larval Development and Morphogenesis in Dragonfly

In an attempt to establish an experimental dragonfly model, we developed a laboratory rearing system for the blue-tailed damselfly, Ischnura senegalensis. Adoption of multi-well plastic plates as rearing containers enabled mass-rearing of isolated larvae without cannibalism and convenient microscopic monitoring of individual larvae. Feeding Artemia brine shrimps to younger larvae and Tubifex worms for older larvae resulted in low mortality, synchronized ecdysis, and normal development of the larvae. We continuously monitored the development of 118 larvae every day, of which 49 individuals (41.5%) reached adulthood. The adult insects were fed with Drosophila flies in wet plastic cages, attained reproductive maturity in a week, copulated, laid fertilized eggs, and produced progeny. The final larval instar varied from 9th to 12th, with the 11th instar (56.5%) and the 12th instar (24.2%) constituting the majority. From the 1st instar to the penultimate instar, the duration of each instar was relatively short, mainly ranging from three to 11 days. Afterwards, the duration of each instar was prolonged, reaching 7–25 days for the penultimate instar and 14–28 days for the final instar. Some larvae of final, penultimate and younger instars were subjected to continuous and close morphological examinations, which enabled developmental staging of larvae based on size, shape, and angle of compound eyes and other morphological traits. This laboratory rearing system may facilitate the understanding of physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms underlying metamorphosis, hormonal control, morphogenesis, body color polymorphism, and other biological features of dragonflies.
Does Increased Price Competition Reduce Entry of New Pharmaceutical Products

In October 2002, a substitution reform was introduced in the Swedish pharmaceuticals market. In this paper, the effects of increased price competition due to the reform on the entry of new pharmaceutical products were studied. The results show that the reform did affect the entry behavior of generic manufacturers as they became more prone to enter new package sizes into the market after the reform, but also that there is considerable heterogeneity in entry behavior between different ATC-code groups for both brand name and generic products.
Strategic environmental assessment: one concept, multiple definitions

The literature indicates that there are numerous definitions of strategic environmental assessment (SEA), but none of which has achieved full recognition on the part of researchers and practitioners. This study aims to compile a set of definitions that represents the amplitude of the subject matter to, on this basis, assess the conceptual evolution of SEA and to characterise the vision of the scientific community on this issue. The definitions (a total of 106) show that SEA is an evolving concept. The terms 'policies, plans and programmes', 'environmental', 'decision' and 'assess' may be considered the best descriptors of SEA. It was found that SEA maintains a strong bond with its role of impact assessment, characteristic of the first phase of its conceptual evolution. The preponderant perception of the scientific community about the definition of SEA is presented, an element that could serve as a blueprint for future discussions on the subject.