Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regression Analysis and Panel Data - A Survival Guide to Using R Applied to Cross Sections, Time Series, and Panels

This paper discuss linear regression analysis applied on cross sections, on time-series, and on panel data. It also cover topics such as heteroscedastic errors, serially correlated errors with HC and HAC covariance matrices. For panel regressions it covers one- and two-way models, fixed effect, pooled and random effects model. The section on panel regressions also covers HC and HAC covariance matrices. Along with the discussion I implement the discussion in this paper using R on accounting and stock market data.
Entrepreneurial Orientation in Family and Non-Family Firms: Evidence from Bulgaria

Despite the importance and potential role of entrepreneurship for economies in Central and Eastern Europe, little attention has been devoted to identifying which factors contribute to the entrepreneurship in the region. The purpose of the present study is twofold. First, there is a comparison of entrepreneurial orientation in Bulgarian family and non-family firms. Second, there is an examination of which individual, organizational and environmental factors underlie differences in entrepreneurial orientation between family and non-family firms. The findings reveal that several organizational and environmental factors are conductive for pursuing entrepreneurship within family and non-family firms. Lower environmental dynamism, smaller firm size and the lack of foreign ownership account partially for lower entrepreneurial orientation in family firms. The paper provides a discussion of implications for practitioners and suggestions for future research.
Using 2-dimensional dispersal kernels to identify the dominant influences on larval dispersal on continental shelves

Pelagic larval dispersal is thought to be the main mechanism connecting many marine populations and is an important determinant both of an individual's success and a population's distri- bution and spatial structure. Thus, quantitative estimates of the retention or dispersion of larvae from spawning grounds is important for the determination of recruitment success in fisheries. Models can be used to study connectivity through a dispersal curve or dispersal kernel: the probability that a larva will settle at a given distance from its release location. We applied a 3-dimensional circulation model and a Lagrangian particle tracking model to the southeast US continental shelf to describe dispersal kernels in 2 dimensions. We used a fully orthogonal design to assess the importance of fac- tors that influence the dispersal kernel, including spawning time, spawning location, larval behavior (vertical position in the water column), larval duration, and turbulent dispersal. Our results indicate that adult behavior, in the form of spawning time and location, may be more important than larval behavior in determining larval dispersal on the inner- and mid-shelves in this region.
Causality Analysis between Inflation, Budget Deficit and Money Supply: Empirical Evidence from Bangladesh

Developing countries across the globe have always shared the misfortune of being unable to finance their proposed government expenditures using their public revenues. As a result, a budget deficit is a common feature of all underdeveloped nations, to which Bangladesh is no exception. Conventional economic notion asserts that rising gap between government’s expenditure and revenue creates pressure to enhance money supply in the economy which in turn may trigger the domestic rate of inflation. In addition, monetary policy tools are also referred to be ineffective in controlling domestic inflation. Thus, the objective of the paper is to identify the causal relationships between Inflation, money supply and budget deficit in the context of Bangladesh incorporating relevant data from 1980 to 2014. Granger Causality test and Vector Error-Correction Model approach was used to identify the long-run and short-run causalities between the variables. The results coincide with the conventional economic conjecture as a unidirectional causality is found to be running from budget deficit to inflation in the short-run while no causality is found between money supply and inflation in both the short-run and the long-run.
A comparison of the water use by heath vegetation at Frankston, Victoria, and Dark Island Soak, South Australia

Empirical water use equations for a perennial evergreen heath community, dominated by a relatively dense and uniform stand of Leptospermum myusinoides, growing on deep sand near Frankston, Victoria, are: 4-6 years after a fire: EE = 0.0245(P + S) - 0.441, 7-9 years after a fire: E/E = 0.0222(P + S) - 0.439, where E is the actual monthly evapotranspiration, E the monthly pan evaporation, P the monthly precipitation, and S the total soil water (extractable by oven-drying) stored in 6 metres of sand at the beginning of the month, all values being measured in centimetres. Both P and S contribute to a water store, partly unextractable, but most of it capable of being evaporated and transpired. The intercept on the abscissa indicates soil water normallv unextractable from the water store by the particular plant community-water normally unavailable to plants at values of soil water potential below - 15 bars, plus water potentially available but held in parts of the profile poorly explored by plant roots. Above this intercept the gradient indicates the rate of change of actual evapotranspiration, at any particular value of monthly pan evaporation, per unit change of extractable water (P + S). The equations were compared with that for a heath community dominated by numerous emergent bushes of Banksia ornata at Dark Island Soak, South Australia: 10-14 years after a fire: E/E = 0.0433(P + S) - 0.101, S being the total soil water stored in 2 metres of sand at the beginning of the month. No runoff and little drainage were observed at either site. Months when drainage was observed were omitted from the calculations. The gradient of the water use equation for Dark Island Soak is almost double that observed at Frankston. The presence of emergent bushes of Banksia ornata in the Dark Island heath may account for this marked difference. If so, this would explain the apparent ability of tall shrubs and small trees to invade heaths on deep sandy soil in south-eastern Victoria. The negligible effect of fertilizer on water use by the Frankston heath is reported in an Appendix.
Deposit Insurance and Design: Effects on Bank Lending During the Global Financial Crisis

This paper investigates how explicit deposit insurance (EDI) scheme in place influence bank lending during the global financial crisis. Earlier studies reveal tightened overall corporate lending, even lesser amount to foreign borrowers (a “flight home” effect) charging higher interest rates during the 2007-2009 crisis. We report that banks in countries with EDI are associated with smaller reductions (increases) in lending (spreads) and quicker post-crisis recovery. These effects are more pronounced for banks heavily relying on deposit funding. Evidence also reveals that more generous or credible deposit insurance designs are associated with stronger stabilization effects on bank lending during the crisis.
Causes and Management of Loan Delinquency in Savings and Loans Companies in Ghana

This study is about finding out the causes and management of loan delinquency in the savings and Loans (S&amp;L) companies in Ghana. Seven (7) S&amp;L companies with 254 respondents were sampled for the study. It was found from the study that, among the three main types of risks faced by banking institutions, credit risk was most prevalent in the day to day operations of the S&amp;L companies in Ghana. It was again found that multiple borrowing was the highest cause of loan delinquency bedevilling the S&amp;L companies. Further the findings indicated that provisioning for bad debt affects S&amp;L companies most as a result of loan delinquency. Also, making use of the credit referencing bureaus was the most effective way of preventing loan delinquency. It has therefore been recommended that, the Central Bank of Ghana (BoG) should make it mandatory for all loan granting institutions to sign up and furnish the credit reference bureaus with details of all their disbursed loans for easy referencing.
Ours, Not Yours: Property-Rights, Poaching and Deterrence in Common-Pool Resources

Governments often allocate property rights to protect common-pool resources (CPR) from over-harvesting and poaching, but it is not clear if one method of allocating property rights is better than another. We use a laboratory experiment to determine whether earned or assigned property rights improve decentralized management and defense of a CPR. In our treatment, subjects competed in a real-effort task to earn the property right to a CPR. In our control, the property right was randomly allocated. We also vary the property-right holders’ ("insiders'') ability to use punishment to deter non-holders ("outsiders'') who could poach the CPR. How property rights were allocated had little effect on insiders' harvest levels, but the allocation method did have a significant effect on CPR defense. We find that insiders who earned the property right were more likely to defend the CPR and impose significantly more deterrence, leading to a significant reducing in extreme poaching. However, lower levels of poaching often went unpunished under both earned and assigned rights. Our results suggest that earned property rights improve coordination to deter extreme poaching relative to assigned property rights. At the same time, we corroborate previous findings on the limited ability of decentralized groups to coordinate deterrence, suggesting that alternative approaches to protecting CPRs from poachers should be explored.
The Relationship between IBRD Loans & IDA Credits and GNI in Turkey and Comparison with Different Countries

Lack of global funds due to 2009 global financial crisis necessitates foreign loans for emerging countries. Emerging countries with insufficient domestic savings often apply to external debts to achieve the desired economic growth rate. Especially with the end of the WW2, the World Bank began to give loans and credits to emerging countries for their economic development. The World Bank provides credits and loans to emerging countries through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Development Association (IDA). The fact that emerging countries' external borrowing for economic development made the relationship between external debt and economic growth important. The question of controversy is whether these external debts really increase the level of economic development in the country. This paper aims to analyze the relationship between IBRD Loans &amp; IDA Credits and Gross National Income for Turkey for the period between 1987 and 2017. Johansen (1990) cointegration test is employed to investigate the long-term relationship between the variables. Granger (1969) causality test is used to test the direction of the relationship. The paper also compares the link between the two variables regarding developing/emerging countries and low income countries using Pedroni (1999) and Westerlund (2007) panel cointegration test - allowing for structural breaks - analysis for the period 1987-2017. According to the findings obtained in Turkey, there is a short-term and long-term relationship between these two variables. This relationship is positive both in the short term and long term. Also, a unidirectional causality from the loans and credits to GNI was determined. In the panel data studies conducted, a negative long-term relationship in emerging countries and unidirectional causality from loans and credits to GNI was determined. On the other hand, according to panel data results, no short or long term relationship was found in low-income countries. Therefore, there is no causality between variables in the low income countries.
Characterizing Optimal Allocations in Quantile-Based Risk Sharing

Abstract Unlike classic risk sharing problems based on expected utilities or convex risk measures, quantile-based risk sharing problems exhibit two special features. First, quantile-based risk measures (such as the Value-at-Risk) are often not convex, and second, they ignore some part of the distribution of the risk. These features create technical challenges in establishing a full characterization of optimal allocations, a question left unanswered in the literature. In this paper, we address the issues on the existence and the characterization of (Pareto-)optimal allocations in risk sharing problems for the Range-Value-at-Risk family. It turns out that negative dependence, mutual exclusivity in particular, plays an important role in the optimal allocations, in contrast to positive dependence appearing in classic risk sharing problems. As a by-product of our main finding, we obtain some results on the optimization of the Value-at-Risk (VaR) and the Expected Shortfall, as well as a new result on the inf-convolution of VaR and a general distortion risk measure.
Tree seedling growth and survival in a Malaysian rain forest.

Growth and survival of tree seedlings were observed in lowland, evergreen, tropical rain forest in Pantai Aceh Forest Reserve, Penang, Peninsular Malaysia. Four natural gaps and two closed-canopy sites were used. In each site twenty 1 m2 plots were laid out at random and all the seedlings in them were identified, tagged, mapped, and measured for height and basal stem diameter, and the number of leaves were counted. After six months four of the sites were revisited, and after 16 months they were all revisited. Hemispherical canopy photographs were taken to calculate diffuse and direct site factors. At the start of the observations 1287 seedlings of 116 species were tagged. Over 16 months 251 (19.5%) seedlings died. Mortality was inversely correlated with seedling height. Potential direct radiation had no affect on seedling mortality. For the five common species the mortalities were: Shorea multiflora 6.2 percent, Hopea pedicellata 6.8 percent, Shorea curtisii 13.4 percent, Hopea beccariana 14.1 percent and Gluta curtisii 22.7 percent. The mortality of recruits from seed was: Shorea multiflora 19.0 percent, Shorea curtisii 29.1 percent and Gluta curtisii 29.5 percent. The seedlings grew very little over the 16 months. Height growth was greater in gap sites. There was a significant relationship between direct site factor and plot maximum height growth (r, = 0.399, P < 0.01) but its predictive value was poor (r2 = 0. 188). Gluta curtisii was the only species to show a significant relationship between direct site factor and height growth. Shorea multiflora and Gluta curtisii showed a significantly greater rate of height growth in the plots with above-median direct site factor compared to plots with below-median values. Shorea multiflora is a
When Does Management Develop? External Linkages, Structured Practices, and Productivity in Chinese Firms

This study presents evidence that structured management practices and their relationship to productivity can vary with a firm's external institutional linkages. Combining ideas from new institutionalism with the empirical management literature, we formulate propositions of how external linkages could affect the development and utility of structured management practices. We test these propositions in a representative sample of 390 manufacturing firms in China, where state linkages, proxied by controlling ownership, stabilize operating conditions for a subset of government-owned firms in the country's authoritarian capitalist system. Specifically, we find that measures of structured management practices increase with the strength of linkages to the state, with state-owned firms scoring higher than domestic private firms. We further show that, on average, a firm's overall management practice score is positively and significantly related to total factor productivity (TFP) in state-owned firms, but the correlation is no different from zero in both domestic and foreign private firms. We hypothesize that in China state linkages may lengthen decision horizons and enable firms to benefit from introducing management practices for both instrumental and symbolic reasons.
Microbial respiration and production in the Delaware Estuary

The paucity of data on respiration has hampered efforts to understand the relationships between respiration and microbial biomass production and the impact of respiration on oxygen con- centrations and net community production. The goal of this study was to estimate total and bacterial respiration in the water column of the Delaware Estuary where primary and bacterial production has been examined extensively in the past. We found that respiration often exceeded in situ primary production at several sites in the estuary and in different seasons, and that net oxygen production consequently was negative, especially at an upstream station in the Delaware River where oxygen concentrations are often below saturation. Respiration by heterotrophic bacteria accounted for about 50% of total respiration and correlated significantly with 14 C primary production, but there was no significant correlation between bacterial production (thymidine and leucine incorporation) and primary production. A simple budget was used to explore relationships among production, respira- tion and input of terrestrial carbon. These calculations revealed that some values, e.g. high bacterial production relative to primary production along with low bacterial respiration relative to total res- piration, were not consistent with common estimates of bacterial growth efficiency, although non- steady-state conditions should not be ignored. However, other values of bacterial respiration (50% of total) and production (bacterial production:primary production ratio equal to about 0.8) in the Delaware River were consistent with high growth efficiencies (30%) of bacteria using a large input of terrestrial organic material. This input may explain why heterotrophic bacteria appear to have a larger impact than primary production on net oxygen saturation in the Delaware Estuary.
Attention Please!

We study the impact of manipulating the attention of a decision‐maker who learns sequentially about a number of items before making a choice. Under natural assumptions on the decision‐maker's strategy, directing attention toward one item increases its likelihood of being chosen regardless of its value. This result applies when the decision‐maker can reject all items in favor of an outside option with known value; if no outside option is available, the direction of the effect of manipulation depends on the value of the item. A similar result applies to manipulation of choices in bandit problems.
Plant Growth Regulatory Effects of Chicken Litter Extract

ABSTRACT Chicken litter is often used in organic farming as a source of plant food, and to improve soil organic matter and microbial populations. Both positive and negative effects of such an amendment have been reported. Because of the complex interactions involving soil, plant, and microbial populations in the most common test systems, it is difficult to attribute the observed plant responses to any one component of the test system affected by chicken litter. We have therefore conducted studies on the chicken litter extracts in a soil-less system to ascertain whether chicken litter affects plants simply by providing plant nutrients or if it also affects plants through plant growth regulatory substances. Since chicken litter is generally rich in available ammonium nitrogen, we studied the effects of chicken litter extract on ammonium induced rise in putrescine levels in oat leaves. Our results showed increases in putrescine levels in oat leaves floating on ammonium sulfate solution (0.033%) but not in leaves floating on chicken litter extract containing equivalent amount of ammonium nitrogen. Mixing chicken litter extract with the ammonium sulfate inhibited the ammonium induced rise in putrescine levels thus supporting the hypothesis that regulatory substances in chicken litter extract affect plant growth. In addition, our experiments showed that chicken litter extracts inhibited root growth in cowpeas that could not be attributed to the levels of ammonium nitrogen present in the extract. In fact, emerging roots of young cowpea seedlings exhibited an anti-geotropic response more akin to hormonal effects than a nutritional phenomenon.
Modelling terrestrial interactions and shelter use in great crested newts (Triturus cristatus)

The great crested newt (Triturus cristatus) is a pond-breeding salamander with a prolonged aquatic phase and a period of activity in the terrestrial environment prior to hibernation. Individuals use ground-covering objects and burrows as shelters from predators and unfavourable conditions. We investigated how interactions and spacing patterns were formed in staged experiments where paired newts were exposed to an arena with two shelters. Shelter use was predominant in all sets of great crested newts, irrespective of sex and size. Males and females differed in their shelter-use response. Females were more prone to reside in shelters when meeting other females than when meeting males, whereas males appeared indifferent to the sex of another individual. The social interaction was uniform for all combinations, with a 2:1 relation between the numbers of pairs sharing shelters vs. positioned in different shelters, instead of a random 1:1 distribution. Thus, the differences in shelter sharing could be attributed to the predominance of shelter use for females when meeting other females. We suggest that this behaviour, when females respond to the presence of another female, is a form of resource protection. Although sex effects were clearly noted, we could not demonstrate that size-related characteristics affected the outcome of any social interactions.
What Determines the Quality of Economic Institutions? Cross-Country Evidence

This paper looks at the determinants of the quality of economic institutions such as rule of law and control of corruption in a large sample of countries. The analysis pays particular attention to the quality of democratic institutions as a potential determinant. Both types of institutions – economic and democratic – are closely linked but the relationship appears to be U-shaped rather than linear. Economic institutions tend to be better in countries that are more open to trade, investment and financial flows and do not have significant natural resource endowments. Finally, history and geography play an important role in shaping a country’s economic institutions. Overall, the findings suggest that economic openness and commodity wealth may help non-democratic countries achieve improvements in some economic institutions. At the same time, the impact of commodity wealth on deeper economic institutions such as control of corruption remains negative.