Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
For a Better GLOBE. METR: A Minimum Effective Tax Rate for Multinationals

An initiative is needed to break the logjam in the international negotiations to reform taxation of multinational enterprises (MNEs). The primary agreed goal of the project on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) was to better align MNEs’ taxable profits with the location of real economic activity. The more recent phase of the process has established that this entails starting from each MNE’s global consolidated profits and applying formulaic methods to ensure that those profits are taxed by at least one, and only one country. It has also become clear that countries wishing to defend their corporate tax base should ensure that MNEs’ global profits are subject to a minimum effective tax rate, to end both profit shifting and tax competition. <br><br>We propose a modified version of the proposal for a global anti-base erosion tax (the GloBE) that would integrate its two main components to provide a balanced allocation of taxing rights to the home and host countries of MNEs. This could command the wide basis of support needed for rapid adoption by a coalition of willing countries, allowing immediate action for a sharp reduction of the revenue losses caused by the current rules. <br><br>Our methodology for a minimum effective tax rate (METR) could be applied to MNEs by any countries that choose to do so, whether they are home to MNEs, host of MNEs, or both. Building on the GloBE, the METR would be compatible with existing tax treaties, but being non-discriminatory it also complies with other international obligations. Although it could be introduced unilaterally, interested countries, supported by regional groupings and international organisations, should develop mutually agreed rules for application of the METR. Integrating many elements of the current proposals and aligning with the identified direction of travel, the METR both attacks immediate concerns and contributes to the momentum for a more comprehensive multilateral agreement. <br>
Risk Identification Questionnaire for Detecting Unintended Bias in the Machine Learning Development Lifecycle

Unintended biases in machine learning (ML) models have the potential to introduce undue discrimination and exacerbate social inequalities. The research community has proposed various technical and qualitative methods intended to assist practitioners in assessing these biases. While frameworks for identifying the risks of harm due to unintended biases have been proposed, they have not yet been operationalised into practical tools to assist industry practitioners. In this paper, we link prior work on bias assessment methods to phases of a standard organisational risk management process (RMP), noting a gap in measures for helping practitioners identify bias- related risks. Targeting this gap, we introduce a bias identification methodology and questionnaire, illustrating its application through a real-world, practitioner-led use case. We validate the need and usefulness of the questionnaire through a survey of industry practitioners, which provides insights into their practical requirements and preferences. Our results indicate that such a questionnaire is helpful for proactively uncovering unexpected bias concerns, particularly where it is easy to integrate into existing processes, and facilitates communication with non-technical stakeholders. Ultimately, the effective end-to-end management of ML risks requires a more targeted identification of potential harm and its sources, so that appropriate mitigation strategies can be formulated. Towards this, our questionnaire provides a practical means to assist practitioners in identifying bias-related risks.
Respect, Iterative Admissibility, and Equilibrium Refinements

I develop a theory of “interspection” for finite extensive-form games of perfect recall. This theory addresses the question of how sufficiently sophisticated players will behave in games if sub-optimal actions are interpreted by other players as evidence of a player’s lower sophistication level, rather than inconsequential one-time trembling mistakes. I show that interspection theory has several attractive features. In particular, under interspection theory, normal-form analysis of games is sufficient: extensive-form games can be equivalently analyzed in the corresponding normal forms. Also, under interspection theory, any player’s behavior is admissible: players do not select weakly dominated strategies. I introduce the notion of interspected rationalizability and provide an axiomatic characterization of environments to which it applies. I also introduce the notion of interspected equilibrium, prove its existence, and discuss its properties.
CEO Letters and Impression Management in Indonesia: Loss Firms vs. Profit Firms

CEO letters are considered as important accounting narratives. Investors, both non-professional and professional, often use CEO letters as a basis for investment decisions. We conducted content analysis of CEO letters. About 32 samples of loss firms and 32 samples of comparable profit firms listed in Indonesian Stock Exchange in 2010–2014 have been used in this study. We found that the contents of CEO letters are biased. Managers stress good news and downplay bad news. Managers attribute good news to themselves but credit bad news to external circumstances. Biased CEO letters can affect investors’ judgement and decisions. Hence, regulator body can regulate the contents of CEO letters and ask independent third parties to review CEO letters before they are released to public.
An Empirical Examination of Clustering at Bahrain Bourse (BHB)

Classifying the firms listed at stock exchanges basing on their similar characteristics can be put away one of the major challenges on investors’ behalf in information-rich stock markets. In this paper, we discuss and examine whether the firms listed at Bahrain Bourse (BHB) can be grouped based on the mean and standard deviations of daily returns within the context of Ward’s method under the hierarchical clustering techniques over the period of January 2010 and August 2012. Findings indicate that the firms can be grouped into three main clusters.
Degree Granting Corporate Universities: Another Look

Purpose: Corporate universities have existed for a long time to disseminate corporate knowledge. Several such corporations have partnered with academic institutions to teach. An even fewer number of corporations started in-house full-length degree programs and this article discusses its aspects. <br><br>Methodology: A systematic review of qualitative and quantitative research examined degree granting corporate universities. A configurative analysis and thematic synthesis were conducted of mixed methods case studies. <br><br>Findings: There are many reasons for corporations to establish degree granting corporate universities. The reasons for past failures do not have the same validity as they once did. <br><br>Research limitations: There have been less than two dozen degree granting corporate universities and even fewer are written about in the literature. This research may be biased towards only those cases published in the literature. Not all studies around the topic may have been included in this study. <br><br>Practical implications: Corporations and employees both can significantly benefit by establishing the scholastic activity of corporate learning within the corporation, which grants formal degrees. <br><br>Originality/value: Modern factors were considered that may impact decisions about degree granting corporate universities. <br>
Improving Green Product Innovation through Green Market Orientation under Environmental Dynamism: A Moderating Model

Green product innovation has been used as a strategic tool to increase sustainability in response to the rising concerns regarding the adverse effect of business activities on the environment. Finding ways to increase green product innovations is an urgent issue faced by many managers. This study proposes a conceptual framework to study a company's green product innovation by investigating the role of green market orientation and identify the three components in improving it. Moreover, environmental dynamism in market and technology is investigated regarding the moderation effect in shaping the relationship between green market orientation and green product innovation. The conceptual framework is tested empirically by using the data collected from 231 companies in China. This study makes contributions to the literature in finding ways to improve green product innovation by building proper organizational culture, green market orientation under certain environmental dynamism. This finding is also useful for real-world practitioners in finding practical ways to increase green product innovation to achieve competitive advantage.
Do Family Structure and Functioning Matter for Ethical and Other Values?

Because family and the beliefs and values of people are important aspects of economic institutions, family structure and functioning might affect the values of family members. Four specific types of values are relevant to economic performance: ethical values, moral values, democratic values, and egalitarian values. Data from the U.S. wave of the World Values Survey are used to determine if there is a correlation between values and the structure and functioning of families. Generally, traditional family structures—married households—and households with a high level of family functioning have higher ethical and moral values than other household structures and households with weak levels of family functioning. However, the relationship between family and democratic and egalitarian values of individuals is more nuanced. The findings point to the continuing importance of the family as an economic institution in society.
Volatility Spillover Effect in Indian Stock Market

The study aims to empirically examine the transmission of volatility from global stock markets to Indian stock market. The study is based on time series data comprising of daily closing stock market indices from National Stock Exchange (NSE), India and major foreign stock exchange of the three countries one each from America, Europe and Asia making the highest portfolio investment in Indian stock market. The study period covers 11 years from 1st January, 2005 to 31st December, 2015 comprising a total of 2731 observations. The Indian stock index used is CNX Nifty 50 and the foreign indices are S &amp; P 500 from USA, FTSE 100 from UK, and Nikkei 225 from Japan. The results reveal that the Indian stock market return is co-integrated with market returns of US, UK and Japanese stock markets. Therefore, the return and hence volatility of Indian stock market is associated with global markets which depicts that it is getting integrated with global financial markets. The results provide empirical evidence for volatility transmission or volatility spillover in the Indian stock market from global markets. There exists inbound volatility transmission from US market to Indian stock market. The Indian and UK stock market have bi-directional volatility transmission. However, there exists presence of only outbound volatility transmission from Indian stock market to Japanese stock market. The volatility transmission from global markets to India is rapid with the spillover effect existing for up to three days only.
On Term Structure of Yield Rates. 3. The Duffie – Kan One-Factor Model

The time structure of interest rates plays a key role at the bond pricing. Therefore its properties interest many financial analysts. However in the available literature usually there is a schematic description of these properties. Attempt of the detailed description of all possible forms of time structure for a class of affine models of interest rates as for these models it is possible to write down decisions in the closed form here becomes. As the basic the model of Duffie – Kan (DK) with any bottom border for risk free (spot) interest rate is accepted. Results for widely known models CIR and Vasiček turn out as special cases. For one-factor model of affine yield of Duffie – Kan analytical representations of yield curves and forward curves are found and their properties when the duration measure of risk free rates as a time variable is used are investigated. It is shown that for all variety of parameters exist only four possible kinds of yield curves. For small terms to maturity a bond yield is defined, basically, current level of risk free rates while for very long terms to maturity the yield is defined by a stationary expectation of risk free rates. In this connection it would be possible to expect that influence of current level of risk free rates on yield with time increase will damp. However, it is not so. It has appeared that current level of risk free rates essentially influences on sight of entire yield curve and a forward curve. Let's notice also that yield curve and a forward curve start from one point and at increase in term to maturity converge to the same limit that differs from usually accepted point of view that these curves diverge when the term to maturity increase.
Are Liquid or Illiquid Stocks More Easily Manipulated? The Impact of Manipulator Aggressiveness

Limit order markets are a common method for trading stocks based on the use of a limit order book to represent buy and sell orders. The issue of market manipulation is a fundamental concern both in terms of market integrity and the ability to detect manipulation cases by market authorities. This paper describes a computational limit order book model where market participants are characterised as liquidity traders, technical traders and manipulators. We simulate this limit order book behaviour and stocks of varying liquidity to determine in which of these stocks a simple pump-and-dump manipulation is easier, more profitable, and more easily detected. Here we show that it is difficult for manipulators to move the price in either very liquid or very illiquid stocks. However, more aggressive manipulators make larger profits in liquid stocks than do less aggressive manipulators, and less aggressive manipulators make more profits in illiquid stocks than do more aggressive manipulators. In addition, we show that aggressive manipulation in liquid stocks is the most profitable. Positive results using the Hurst exponent for the detection of potential manipulation are shown, and a number of future directions in the fields of stock market modelling and manipulation are proposed.
Assessing Firms’ Environmental, Social and Governance Performance (ESGP) and Its Effect on Financial Performance: Evidence from Pakistan

In the recent past, the knowledge of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among practitioners, scholars, and researchers has grown tremendously. Scholars have been trying to find out whether the tradeoff among Corporate Social Performance and Corporate Financial Performance is unavoidable or the association remains positive as well as rewarding for the businesses. This study aims to empirically investigate whether Financial Performance (FINP) of firms is associated with their Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance (ESGP) scores in Pakistan. The study has used the overall ESG and its three constituents (Environmental, Social and Governance) disclosure scores for the ESGP measure and to measure financial performance three accounting ratios were considered, one reflects the market position of firm (i.e. Tobin‘s Q) and the other two measure the business profitability in relation to the firm‘s total assets (i.e. Return on Assets) commonly known as ROA and equity (i.e. Return on Equity) commonly known as ROE. Regression analysis is used to analyze the effects of ESG Performance on firms’ Financial Performance, using cross-sectional data, the sample includes listed companies on the PSX100 index for the year 2018 with a sample size of the 95 companies. The data was hand-collected by the annual reports and publications of the firms. Results indicated that ESG has a significant positive effect on ROA, but not on Tobin Q which remained insignificant for ESG and its dimensions. Among its components, GS and SS also seem to have a significant and positive effect. Among, the control variables, Debt has a negative impact, whereas size seems to have a positive effect on ROA. Most of the variables remained insignificant with regards to Tobin Q Hence, the findings indicate a partial significant association between ESGP and Financial Performance.
Pricing Carbon in the Aviation Sector: Supply Effects of the European Emissions Trading System

We examine the causal impact of carbon pricing on aviation supply exploiting a policy change in the European Emissions Trading system (EU ETS). Our econometric approach is based on a matched differences-in-differences strategy. We find that low-cost airlines end up supplying 7% fewer seats than the counterfactual. When we restrict the estimation to routes on which intermodal competition may exist, the reduction in seats is 23% greater than the counterfactual and the change is persistent in time. Finally, network airlines are found to increase the average size of their aircrafts as a result of the EU ETS.
Leader Mindfulness and Employee Performance, and Wellbeing in Pakistani Firms: The Role of Interpersonal Justice, and Employee Stress, and LMX Quality

Purpose: Right mindfulness entails a focus on present-moment events and actions that are directed by ethical principles. How this mindfulness works in an organization to affect employees’ performance in Pakistani corporate environment is still an open question. In this study, we examine the impact of leader mindfulness and employee performance and wellbeing with the mediating role of interpersonal justice, employee stress, and LMX (Leader-member exchange) quality. Employee performance is further measured as in role and extra-role performance. For this, we modified Reb et. al. (2019) framework, to include wellbeing and apply to firms working in the corporate sector of Pakistan. <br><br>Design/Methodology/Approach: Data was collected using a close-ended questionnaire from 100 departments/ units working in different businesses, and analyzed using factor analysis, structured equation modeling in Smart PLS. <br><br>Findings: The findings of the study show that there is no significant impact of the leader mindfulness on employee in-role, extra-role performance, and employee wellbeing (dependent variables) with interpersonal justice, employee stress, and LMX quality as mediators. But so far as the impact of variables is individually concerned, it’s been observed that employee stress does not have a significant impact on employee in-role performance, extra-role performance and employee wellbeing but employee stress has a significant impact on LMX quality. LMX quality has a significant impact on employee extra-role performance and employee wellbeing but no significant impact of LMX quality on employee in-role performance has been observed. Leader mindfulness doesn’t have any significant impact on employee in-role or extra-role performance, employee wellbeing, employee stress, LMX quality, and interpersonal justice whereas interpersonal justice has a significant impact on employee extra-role performance, employee wellbeing, and LMX quality but not on employee in-role performance. <br><br>Practical implications: The findings suggest that since employee stress has an impact on LMX quality, so a leader must lead its team in such a way that they do not feel burdened and stressful for it is going to have a negative impact on the way leader and member communications and ultimately on employee extra-role performance and wellbeing which will hence lower down the productivity of the organization. Interpersonal justice also has a significant impact on employee wellbeing and extra-role performance, so it must be made sure that employees are treated in a fair way, so they will feel satisfied and work effectively and efficiently. <br><br>Originality/Value: This is the first study that measured the effect of leader mindfulness on employee performance in Pakistan. <br>
Decomposing the Asset Pricing Anomalies: Evidence from China

This paper introduces a functional principal component analysis (FPCA) to decompose China’s A-share portfolio returns on time-series and cross-section simultaneously. The results show that the first empirical functional principal component (EFPC) stands for the market factor and the others for an anomaly. The second and third ones reveal the cross-sectional linear and convex patterns, and the joint of them dominates the asset pricing anomalies. Furthermore, the EFPCs illustrate much more information than the portfolio-based approach, and we can use them to explain the debates about some anomalies.
Corporate Social Responsibility and Labor Investment Efficiency

Using a large dataset of U.S. firms and covering the period 2004-2017, we investigate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) influence on a firm’s employment decisions. In doing so, panel data regression is employed with the aim of exploring the effects of CSR on abnormal net hiring. Our main findings indicate that CSR hardly affects abnormal net hiring in the form of over-investment (i.e., over-hiring and under-firing). However, CSR appears to be a pervasive determinant of under-investment, particularly in what concerns under-hiring. The effect of CSR on labor under-investment appears to be centered in firms exhibiting extreme positive CSR performance, i.e., firms ranked in the fifth quintile of CSR scores in a given year. Notably, our results reveal greater sensitivity of under-investment to CSR performance in firms exhibiting lower financial constraints and lower financial slack. Industries with high-skilled employees and low substitutability between labor and capital also exhibit a greater impact of CSR performance on under-investment. Our interpretation of the results is that lower flexibility in employment decisions makes CSR firms more prone to under-hiring.
Chemical Interactions of Actinide Ions with Groundwater Colloids in Gorleben Aquifer Systems

Chemical interactions of actinide ions with natural aquatic colloids in Gorleben aquifer systems have been investigated, particularly with selected groundwaters rich in humic substances. Actinides studied are trivalent Am and Cm, tetravalent Th and pentavalent Np. The naturally occuring uranium is carefully analysed, as for its distribution between colloids and aqueous phase, to ascertain the behaviour of the hexavalent uranyl ions in the systems under investigation. The actinide ions of M(III), M(IV) and M(VI) are found to be strongly sorbed on the aquatic colloids rich in humic substances (termed humic colloids) and thus generate actinide pseudocolloids. The sorption and desorption of the actinide ions onto and from the aquatic colloids are reversible with respect to the pH variation. The neptunyl ion shows negligible sorption. The interaction process of Cm(III) is speciated at different pH by time resolved laser fluorescence spectroscopy (TRLFS). The húmate or fulvate complexation is found as a predominant reaction process for the generation of actinide pseudocolloids in the aquifer systems under investigation.