Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Market Power in a System of Tradeable CO2, Quotas

This paper examines the connection between market power and the size of efficiency loss in a market for tradeable CO2 permits. Countries, not firms, are the players in the market. A situation is analyzed where some of the, participants have market power, i.e., they can influence the price of a CO2 quota. Each country with market power decides how many quotas to buy or sell, given the other market power countries' sales or purchases of quotas, and the behavior of countries without market power. The latter countries act as price takers. The market equilibrium is compared to a cost effective market situation in order to quantify the efficiency loss resulting from market power.
Modeling of dynamic trap density increase for aging simulation of any MOSFET circuits

A compact aging model for circuit simulation has been developed by considering all possible trapped carriers within MOSFETs. The hot carrier effect and the N(P)BTI effect are modeled by integrating the substrate current as well as the oxide field change due to the trapped carriers. Additionally, the carriers trapped within the highly resistive drift region are included for high-voltage (HV)-MOSFET modeling. The aging model considers the dynamic trap-density increase as a function of circuit-operation time with dynamically varying stress conditions for each individual MOSFET. A self-consistent solution is obtained by iteratively solving the Poisson equation including the trap density. The model is verified to be applicable for any type of MOSFETs covering advanced technologies as well as HV-MOSFETs.
The impact of competition associated with charter schools and inter-district school choice policies on educators and schools

This study uses survey data to examine how teachers and school administrators in traditional public schools in Michigan (USA) perceive the impact of charter schools and inter-district school choice policies on themselves and their schools. The authors utilise two competing economics perspectives to examine these questions: the neoclassical economics (NCE) perspective and the institutional and behavioural economics (IBE) perspective. The findings do not support the assumption of the NCE perspective that educators will respond to charter schools and inter-district choice programmes by improving school quality (by, for example, making improvements in their teaching or leadership practices, academic programmes, extra-curricular activities, or relationships with parents; or increasing teacher collaboration with colleagues).
Maternity Leave and the Evidence for Compensating Wage Differentials in Australia

Using data from Wave I of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, 2001, in this paper I investigate the value of the maternity leave provisions available to Australian women. The theory of compensating wage differentials informs the model used to estimate the shadow price of eligibility for both paid and unpaid maternity leave benefits. The results suggest a negative wage differential may exist in Australia such that employed women eligible for maternity leave receive a lower rate of pay than those ineligible, all other things being equal. The policy implications of the results are discussed.
Career management practices in India: an empirical study

This paper examines and discusses the developments in the field of career management, bringing in the international perspective. In particular, the paper explores career management practices in 108 Indian organizations. A factor analysis procedure suggested five groups of practices: formal planning, formal active management, developmental, career stages and assessment. These are found to be associated with certain organizational and cultural characteristics. The research has both theoretical and practical implications.
Jobless Recoveries and Gender Biased Technological Change

The strong positive correlation between output and employment is probably one of the most widely accepted stylized facts about business cycles. However, the recoveries following the 1991-92, 2001, and 2007-09 recessions all turned out to be exceptions to this widely accepted pattern. These episodes are generally referred to as "jobless recoveries" since output growth was accompanied by slow employment growth or even continued employment decline in the aftermath of the recession. In this paper, we propose a new explanation for the onset of jobless recoveries, linking it to the behavior of female labor force participation and gender-biased technological change.
Internal Managerial Promotions: Insider Incentives and CEO Succession

We identify and compare firms that promote a single executive (successor-incentive) and companies that conduct tournaments (tournament-incentive) among inside managers to succeed the CEO. Successor-incentive firms give more pay-for-performance compensation to the designated successor, are more likely in firms or industries where firm-specific human capital is more important to the CEO position and where the supply of potential outside CEO replacements is limited. In addition, these firms are associated with lower CEO turnover sensitivity to firm performance. Restricting firms that are suited for a successor-incentive promotion to a tournament-incentive promotion is associated with lower firm valuation.
Estimates for the Structural Deficit in Switzerland, 2002 to 2007

The new Swiss budget rule or “debt brake” is based on the idea or rather the aim that the structural deficit should be zero.1 Therefore, the size of the structural deficit is of special importance for the conduct of fiscal policy under the debt brake. In 2003, it was estimated that there is a structural deficit in the order of CHF 3.5 billion, which represents about 7% of central government expenditure or under 1% of GDP. In comparison to the European Union deficit rule (Maastricht criteria) of 3% of GDP, this is of course a small number. However, this excludes the social security accounts, which are not included in the federal financial accounts in Switzerland. In addition, under the regime of the debt brake, the adjustment of a structural deficit has in principle to be immediate, which can be quite painful even for relatively small deficits. The adjustment can also be delayed, but this requires special provisions either through the law or through a decision of parliament to overrule the debt brake for extraordinary circumstances. The latter has to be supported by a qualified majority of both chambers of parliament.
Managerialism, information technology and health reform in New Zealand

Recent health reform in New Zealand has transformed public hospitals and related health services into Crown Health Enterprises (CHEs), which have a statutory objective to operate as successful and efficient businesses. Examines managerialist interpretations of a proposed executive information system (EIS) at one CHE. Arguably, the use of computerized information systems signals managerial competence and rationality, and there was an implicit assumption among senior CHE managers that “business‐like” and “efficient” management required the use of information technology. In the end, in the context of continuing organizational restructuring, the EIS was never implemented.
What a Difference Immigration Policy Makes: A Comparison of PISA Scores in Europe and Traditional Countries of Immigration

Abstract The purpose of this article is to evaluate the importance of different immigration policies associated with corresponding migration backgrounds, command of national languages and intergenerational mobility, for the PISA school performance of teenagers living in European countries (France, Finland, Germany, United Kingdom and Sweden) and traditional countries of immigration (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US). Econometric results show that the influence of the socioeconomic background of parents differs strongly across nations, with the highest impact found for Germany, the UK and US, whereas intergenerational transmission of educational attainment is less likely in Scandinavian countries and in Canada. Moreover, for all countries our estimations imply that for students with a migration background a key for catching up is the language spoken at home. We conclude that educational policy should focus on integration of immigrant children in schools and preschools, with particular emphasis on language skills at the early stage of childhood.
MSARI: multiple sequence alignments for statistical detection of RNA secondary structure.

We present a highly accurate method for identifying genes with conserved RNA secondary structure by searching multiple sequence alignments of a large set of candidate orthologs for correlated arrangements of reverse-complementary regions. This approach is growing increasingly feasible as the genomes of ever more organisms are sequenced. A program called msari implements this method and is significantly more accurate than existing methods in the context of automatically generated alignments, making it particularly applicable to high-throughput scans. In our tests, it discerned clustalw-generated multiple sequence alignments of signal recognition particle or RNaseP orthologs from controls with 89.1% sensitivity at 97.5% specificity and with 74.4% sensitivity with no false positives in 494 controls. We used msari to conduct a comprehensive scan for secondary structure in mRNAs of coding genes, and we found many genes with known mRNA secondary structure and compelling evidence for secondary structure in other genes. msari uses a method for coping with sequence redundancy that is likely to have applications in a large set of other comparison-based search methods. The program is available for download from http://theory.csail. mit.edu/MSARi.
Factors influencing guests’ hotel quality appraisals

The aim of this paper is to analyse the factors influencing the service quality appraisals left by hotel guests on Tripadvisor website. First we hypothesise that price and hotel-star category are the main determinants of ex ante expectations, and that they negatively affect the ex post quality appraisal. This is because the higher the expectations are, the lower the probability is that the hotel achieved the expected quality. Second we measure other determinants of objective quality, such as the age of facilities and offered services. Third we study the island effect, i.e., whether the hotels located in the Balearic and Canary Islands obtain higher evaluations than hotels on continental Europe. The results confirm that the price and the hotel star category negatively affect quality assessments. Furthermore, the age of facilities affects the assessments negatively Finally there appears to be no island effect in terms of quality assessment. The findings suggests that ex ante expectations are essential factors in the ex post evaluation.
Nonparametric Regression Techniques in Economics

This introduction to nonparametric regression emphasizes techniques that might be most accessible and useful to the applied economist. The paper begins with a brief overview of the class of models under study and central theoretical issues such as the curse of dimensionality, the bias-variance trade-off and rates of convergence. The paper then focuses on kernel and nonparametric least squares estimation of the nonparametric regression model, and optimal differencing estimation of the partial linear model. Constrained estimation and hypothesis testing is also discussed. Empirical examples include returns to scale in electricity distribution and hedonic pricing of housing attributes.
Rewriting school textbooks as a tool of understanding and stability

Recent conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia have strengthened the image of the Balkans as a major risk area for Europe and/or for world peace. Although other Southeast European countries avoided being driven into major ethnic conflicts during the 1990s, the overall picture is that of a region where economic backwardness and ethnic prejudices combine in making it vulnerable to nationalist manipulation and instrumentalization. And, as in Western Europe after the two world wars, scholars and political analysts could easily notice that the potential for conflict has been enhanced by the ethno-centric education received by people in school. From the whole educational framework, the blame is often placed mainly on the textbooks used in teaching history and geography. Or, as Wolfgang Höpken has put it, 'textbooks often are held responsible for everything which goes wrong in a society . Nationalism, xenophobia, antisemitism, violence all this time and again is declared among others to be the result of "bad" textbooks'(Höpken 1997: 67). Of course, textbooks are not alone responsible for the way people think, but they certainly share at least a significant part of this responsibility. Therefore, improving textbooks would be a significant step in setting up a more stable and peaceful Southeastern Europe.
Enron-Era Disclosure of Off-Balance Sheet Entities

The scandal that followed Enron's failure to disclose billions of dollars of debt held by off‐balance‐sheet entities (OBSEs) prompted investor interest in these entities and motivated auditors to request more accounting guidance. The SEC responded by issuing Financial Release No. 61 (FR‐61) to remind managers to follow SEC guidance for disclosures on liquidity and capital resources in the Management's Discussion and Analysis section of the annual report. FR‐61 identifies disclosure objectives but does not require specific disclosures. We study how the OBSE‐related disclosures of companies that sponsored OBSEs before Enron changed after Enron/FR‐61. We find that while OBSEs were widely used by S&P 500 firms before Enron/FR‐61, a majority of these firms either did not disclose their OBSEs or, if they did, provided little useful information. After Enron/FR‐61, OBSE disclosure levels increased significantly but not uniformly across firms. The pattern of increases suggests that FR‐61 reduced regulatory uncerta.
An employment targeting framework for central bank policy in South Africa

This paper presents an employment targeting (ET) framework as an alternative to an inflation targeting monetary policy framework for South Africa. The framework incorporates some of the advantages normally claimed for a targeting framework – namely, enhancing transparency and accountability – while focusing the goals of monetary policy more directly on critical macroeconomic problems facing the South African economy, namely, employment, subject, of course, to an inflation constraint. Re‐orienting monetary policy toward generating employment will require that monetary policy re‐develop and utilize a multiplicity of monetary policy and credit tools, including tools for credit allocation and capital management. The paper presents a VAR based simulation model for South Africa that shows that more expansionary monetary policy can contribute to faster economic growth without seriously exacerbating inflation or exchange rate instability.
CIVIL WAR AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR INDEPENDENCE: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

This paper uses a similar theoretical approach to that in the modern literature on the propagation of civil wars to assess the causes of the American Revolution. Economic causes are weighed relative to political causes as a contribution to the more than 200-year inconclusive debate among historians as to why the Americans rebelled. The key question investigated is whether the economic benefit of leaving the Empire was great enough to warrant bearing the expected cost of war with Great Britain? The main finding is “no”, and that political grievances must have played the predominant role in sparking the American Revolution.
Switching Field Distribution of CoPtCr-SiO$_2$Perpendicular Recording Media Obtained by Subtracting Thermal Agitation of Magnetization

The effect of thermal agitations on the switching field distribution (SFD) of CoPtCr-SiO<sub>2</sub> perpendicular media was investigated, and the "intrinsic" SFD caused by variations in the grain-to-grain switching field was determined. DC demagnetizing (DCD) magnetization curves and minor DCD (M-DCD) magnetization curves were measured at applied field-sweep rates of ~10 Oe/s and ~10<sup>8</sup> Oe/s. We estimated the SFD from the difference between the DCD and M-DCD curves, and defined them as DeltaH<sub>r</sub>/H<sub>r</sub> (at ~10 Oe/s) and DeltaH<sub>r</sub> <sup>P</sup>/H<sub>r</sub> <sup>P</sup> (at ~10<sup>8</sup> Oe/s). The values of DeltaH<sub>r</sub>/H<sub>r</sub> were much larger than those of DeltaH<sub>r</sub> <sup>P</sup>/H<sub>r </sub> <sup>P</sup>. Moreover, DeltaH<sub>r</sub>/H<sub>r</sub> increased faster than DeltaH<sub>r</sub> <sup>P</sup>/H<sub>r</sub> <sup>P</sup> as the thickness decreased, suggesting that the SFD measured at vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) time scales is significantly influenced by thermal agitation. The intrinsic SFD estimated using a series of media with various film thicknesses was about 0.14, which was 55%-75% of DeltaH<sub>r</sub>/H<sub>r</sub> for 8-16-nm-thick media. An analysis of the temperature dependence of DeltaH<sub>r</sub>/H<sub>r</sub> supported this conclusion. It is concluded that the SFD measured at VSM time scales is significantly influenced by thermal agitation of the magnetization, and the intrinsic SFD is likely to be nearly half that measured at VSM time scales
(Position Paper) WS-ECA: An ECA Rule Description Language for Ubiquitous Services Computing

computing network comprises a variety of distributed service devices. Today Web services technology enables the heterogeneous devices to provide their own services and interact with each other via well-defined Internet protocol. Nevertheless, service devices in ubiquitous environments require more event- driven, autonomous interaction beyond rather passive service- oriented architecture of the present time. This paper presents an ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rule description language in an attempt to support capability for autonomous interactions among service-oriented devices in ubiquitous computing network. Specifically, the proposed WS-ECA is an XML-based ECA rule description language for web service-enabled devices. The rules are embedded in distributed devices which invoke appropriate services in the network if the rules are triggered by some internal or external events. The presented ECA-based device coordination approach is expected to facilitate seamless inter-operation among the web service-enabled devices in the emerging ubiquitous computing environment.
A study of Willingness To Pay by users of electricity available from biomass gasifer

Electricity form grid to rural consumers has not been available users. Throughout the day electricity outages have been very common to users. Also due to dispersal of villages the state electricity boards (SEBSs) have not been able to collect their dues in times. Also rampant power theft has also been responsible for poor quality of power mainly due to theft and outages. Thus the SEBs had preferred to keep their infrastructures as it is pays little attention for development. Recently government of India has engaged “last smile service providers” in villages through franchisee system for collection of revenue and for providing electricity throughout the day. But it has been on experimental stage thus the only alternative to villagers has been to take the help of standalone devices. Among stand alone devices biomass gasification has been a major source of electricity to villagers. But the per unit cost of production of electricity has been higher than grid electricity in view of this it would be relevant to know the whether the villagers would be able to pay higher price for electricity. To arrive at this the study had used Willingness To Pay method (WTP). The biomass based power generation system has been functioning for over 8 years (1999–2007) in Baharbari village of Bihar India consists of a population of 2500 people, Electricity from gasifier has been used for lighting household, pumping for irrigation, connected with few microenterprise and occasionally in some marriage party.
Spatio-temporal Dynamics and Mechanisms of Stress Granule Assembly

Stress granules (SGs) are non-membranous cytoplasmic aggregates of mRNAs and related proteins, assembled in response to environmental stresses such as heat shock, hypoxia, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, chemicals (e.g. arsenite), and viral infections. SGs are hypothesized as a loci of mRNA triage and/or maintenance of proper translation capacity ratio to the pool of mRNAs. In brain ischemia, hippocampal CA3 neurons, which are resilient to ischemia, assemble SGs. In contrast, CA1 neurons, which are vulnerable to ischemia, do not assemble SGs. These results suggest a critical role SG plays in regards to cell fate decisions. Thus SG assembly along with its dynamics should determine the cell fate. However, the process that exactly determines the SG assembly dynamics is largely unknown. In this paper, analyses of experimental data and computer simulations were used to approach this problem. SGs were assembled as a result of applying arsenite to HeLa cells. The number of SGs increased after a short latent period, reached a maximum, then decreased during the application of arsenite. At the same time, the size of SGs grew larger and became localized at the perinuclear region. A minimal mathematical model was constructed, and stochastic simulations were run to test the modeling. Since SGs are discrete entities as there are only several tens of them in a cell, commonly used deterministic simulations could not be employed. The stochastic simulations replicated observed dynamics of SG assembly. In addition, these stochastic simulations predicted a gamma distribution relative to the size of SGs. This same distribution was also found in our experimental data suggesting the existence of multiple fusion steps in the SG assembly. Furthermore, we found that the initial steps in the SG assembly process and microtubules were critical to the dynamics. Thus our experiments and stochastic simulations presented a possible mechanism regulating SG assembly.
Sequential Entry and Entry-Deterring Strategies in Spatial Competition

THE purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach to the analysis of location and spatial competition. The approach is designed to take account of two location features that have not been examined together in previous analyses. The first is the fact that location of plants is usually a sequential process taking place over time. The contrasting assumption, which is implicit in much location theory, is that all plants enter and locate simultaneously. The second is that most plants involve capital goods, which once located cannot be easily transported to new locations in subsequent competitive moves. Traditional location theory sees no such obstacle to the mobility of plants. A consequence of the immobility of located plants is that the firm in making its location decision must take a long view. Specifically it must take into account the likely location pattern of subsequent entrants. The firm locates so as to secure a market area for itself in the longer term. As a result firms will space themselves out over the market without the clustering which is a feature of other analyses. We shall approach the problem via the Hotelling (1929) analysis of location of plants in a linear market. The Hotelling article and subsequent analyses are summarized very briefly in Section 1. In Section 2 we spell out in more detail the assumptions that we are making. Section 3 presents some simple analysis of cases. Finally in Section 4 we will suggest some possible applications and extensions of the analysis. The emphasis throughout is on explanation of location behaviour. We will not consider the normative implications of the models.