Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why Mass Media Matter to Planning Research: The Case of Megaprojects

This article asks how planning scholarship may effectively gain impact in planning practice through media exposure. In liberal democracies, the public sphere is dominated by mass media. Therefore, working with such media is a prerequisite for effective public impact of planning research. Using the example of megaproject planning, it is illustrated how so-called “phronetic planning research”, which explicitly incorporates in its methodology active and strategic collaboration with media, may be helpful in generating change in planning practice via the public sphere. Main lessons learned are as follows: (1) working with mass media is an extremely cost-effective way to increase the impact of planning scholarship on practice; (2) recent developments in information technology and social media have made impact via mass media even more effective; (3) research on “tension points”, that is, points of potential conflict, are particularly interesting to media and the public, and are especially likely to generate change in practice; and (4) tension points bite back; planning researchers should be prepared for, but not afraid of this. Listed as "Most Read" article on the journal's homepage. Listed on SSRN's Top Ten Download List for Social Media Issues. Listed on SSRN's Top Ten Download List for Rhetoric and the Media.
How Does Debt Composition Influence Credit Risk?

How do different types of debt influence firm credit risk? This paper sheds new light on this issue by decomposing the leverage ratio into market debt, bank debt, and trade credit leverage ratios by balance sheet account type classification; and short-term debt and long-term debt leverage ratios by debt maturity classification. The pecking order theory (Myers &amp; Majluf, 1984) suggests that these debt types differ in terms of the information asymmetry. Therefore, their effects on credit risk might be distinct. We find that debt to financial markets (commercial papers, bonds, etc.) is more positively correlated with the next period's CDS spread than other debt types. CDS spread also reacts positively to bank debt leverage and responds positively to trade credit leverage only for firms in competitive sectors. With regard to maturity classification, the CDS market attributes more credit risk to long-term debt than short-term debt. We also document that the CDS market tracks firms’ accounts receivable. Our findings are also robust when we control for the credit quality of firms via credit ratings.
Institutional Investor Legal Origins and Corporate GHG Emissions Disclosure Quality

Disclosure of corporate environmental performance has become a critical element of firms’ overall ethical behavior. We examine how foreign institutional ownership and its legal origin affect the quality of carbon disclosure. Using a large sample of firms from thirty-six countries, we find that foreign institutional ownership from civil law countries tends to improve the quality of a firm’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reporting. This is borne out by emissions verification levels and Carbon Disclosure Project scores. The relationship appears causal, and is not affected by selection bias. The effect is stronger in firms from common law countries, i.e., when the gap between firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards and investors’ CSR targets is potentially larger, and in less international firms, suggesting that foreign investors substitute for lower levels of internationalization. Additional analyses also indicate that firms with better GHG emissions reporting quality receive higher valuations.
Do Investors Respond to CEO Facial Expressions of Anger During Television Interviews?

Televised media interviews with public company CEOs occur nearly every trading day. During these interviews, investors observe visual cues in addition to hearing the verbal information managers disclose. Building on findings in the psychology and communications literature, we ask whether investors learn from CEO facial expressions. Using a sample of 959 interviews on CNBC from 2014-2018, we focus on CEO expressions of anger, an emotion generally associated with negative outcomes. We find that CEOs are more likely to show facial expressions of anger when the CEO is more expressive generally, when the journalist shows an angry facial expression, and when recent stock returns are lower. We also find that investors respond negatively to CEO facial expressions of anger and that CEO anger can nullify the benefits of a positive message from journalists.
Modelling of Changes in Ship’s Operational Condition During Transportation of Oversized and Heavy Cargo

The object of research is the operational condition of the ship and its changes that occur in the process of transportation of oversized and heavy cargo under the influence of multiple accidental events. A significant problem is the negative impact of the system of factors on seaworthiness and technical condition of the ship, the integrity of the cargo. Therefore, ensuring the safety of the ship, its functional reliability as a technical object is among the priorities which are extremely relevant in the process of transportation of oversized and heavy cargo. <br><br>In the course of the research the identification of the basic conditions of the surveyed ship in the process of operation was carried out. The ship in the process of transportation is defined as an aggregate of two objects – «ship – cargo». The decomposition of the stated condition into two variants «in norm» and «having problems», with three components: «seaworthiness of the ship», «technical condition of the ship», and «cargo and lashing systems». Six main operational conditions of the ship in the process of transportation of oversized and heavy cargo were established. The model of changes in the operational condition of the ship during the transportation of oversized and heavy cargo has been developed. This model enables to establish the relationship between these conditions, which are identified and formalized in the form of a single-ordered Markov process model. The process is considered as a process with a discrete time and the presence of a rotational condition with the absence of the property of ergodicity. Experimental investigations were carried out for various initial conditions and the most probable changes in the operational condition of the ship were determined for a specified number of hourly periods. <br><br>The proposed process model enables experimental investigations for various initial conditions and identification of the most probable changes in the ship’s operational condition through a specified number of hours. It allows to estimate risks and make decisions on support of ship’s operational condition during transportation of oversized and heavy cargo as a theoretical basis.
Financial Analysts’ Forecasts Have Improved Significantly in the Post-Reg FD Period

Reducing the amount of private information in corporate disclosures does not necessarily reduce the accuracy of analysts’ forecasts. This paper applies model-based earnings forecasts as a benchmark that is immune from disclosure of private information and evaluates the relative performance of analysts’ forecasts of earnings against the benchmark. It finds that the I/B/E/S consensus forecasts in general outperform the benchmark forecasts in the post-Reg FD period, while they underperform the benchmark in the pre-Reg FD period. It seems that Reg FD is a watershed. The difference-in-difference analysis confirms that the accuracy of analysts’ consensus forecasts of earnings has improved significantly following the passage of Reg FD.
Does Firm's Environmental Footprint Mitigate the Market Reaction to COVID-19 Uncertainty?

This paper investigates how firms with high environmental performance have reacted to the feverish stock market movements caused by the COVID-19 uncertainty. Our analysis focuses on a sample of 3,869 non-financial listed companies from 21 advanced economies. We find that high environmentally sustainable practices are associated with lower market performance during the COVID-19 crisis, especially when the pandemic began to spread globally. This relation is explained by the stronger contractions in earnings and cash flows forecasts. The cost structure of firms that have already implemented environmental initiatives makes them more exposed to the unexpected global demand shock. Overall, our findings suggest that, in the short-term, periods of high uncertainty and feverish market movements negatively affect environmentally-friendly firms.
Spirulina protects against tacrolimus-induced hepatic and renal toxicity in rats: A biochemical and histological study

Tacrolimus is a powerful immunosuppressive agent with hepatotoxic and nephrotoxic effects. It has a protective role against many toxicants. This study was conducted to evaluate the possible protective role of spirulina against tacrolimus induced hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity. Forty adult male albino rats divided into 4 groups. Group I, control group, Group II, spirulina group (received spirulina 500 mg/Kg body weight (bw)/day orally), Group III, tacrolimus group (received tacrolimus 12 mg/kg bw/day orally); and Group VI, prophylactic group (orally administered spirulina for 3 days before and 28 days concurrently with tacrolimus in the same previous doses). Tacrolimus induced adverse effects on both liver and kidney functions and structure that was manifested by elevated hepatic transaminases, total and direct bilirubin, albumin, blood urea nitrogen, serum creatinine and creatinine clearance. There was a significant decrease in serum total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and hepatic and renal total thiol molecules (TTM), with a significant increase in serum malondialdehyde in tacrolimus group. Histopathologically, tacrolimus induced swelling and granulation of hepatocytes, congestion of blood sinusoids and degeneration of bile ductiles, glomerular hypertrophy and segmentation, swelling, degeneration and hyalinosis of renal tubules. Spirulina pre- and co-treatment significantly improved these deleterious effects. This was accompanied by partial restoration of the expression of PCNA near to the normal level observed in control rats. Moreover, spirulina treatment did not alter the trough blood tacrolimus levels or tacrolimus-induced immunosuppression. Further studies are warranted to evaluate whether transplant patients on tacrolimus treatment may benefit from the protective effects of spirulina. Key words: Antioxidant, malondialdehyde (MDA), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), tacrolimus, total thiol molecules (TTM), proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), spirulina.
Non-Oil Trade and Income Inequality in Nigeria

The paper examines the income inequality effects of non-oil trade in Nigeria during the period from 1981 to 2015. In doing this, the effects of non-oil export and non-oil imports on income inequality are examined using the DOLS estimator. The effects of other relevant variables which serve as control variables are also investigated. The study finds that income inequality is significantly reduced by increase in non-oil exports, financial development and economic development. It also finds that the effect of non-oil import on income inequality is not significant. Foreign direct Investment (FDI) is found to have contributed significantly to inequitable distribution of income in the country. Based on the empirical evidence, to reduce income inequality in the country, the paper recommends that the non-oil sectors of the economy should be developed through increased investment to enhance quality and volume of non-oil output and exports. It also recommends intensification of efforts by the government to develop the financial sector and the entire economy, relying while less on FDI which tends to be concentrated in the oil sector of the economy.
Antecedents of Shared Value Creation in Social Enterprise: Evidence from Educational Sector of Pakistan

Capitalistic aspirations in corporations have resulted in adverse social and environmental impacts from their operations in different parts of the world. The race of higher returns is also causing similar problems are social enterprises like educational institutions. In this context, creating shared value would enhance their financial as well as social performance. This study aims to explore how economic and social performance contributes to creating shared value among social enterprises. Moreover, how social innovation complements the effect of economic and social value on shared value creation. For this, we applied Sadick et. al. (2018) framework in the context of the educational sector of Pakistan. Data from 242 respondents belonging from 70 social enterprises were collected by means of a close-ended questionnaire. The social organizations included both private, public, and not for profit organizations from the educational sector of Pakistan. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structured equation modeling. The results reveal that economic value has a significant positive influence the social value. Moreover, both economic and social values along with social innovation contribute positively and significantly in creating shared value. However, no complementarities effect of social innovation in explaining the effect of both economic and social value on shared value creation.
The Implied Equity Term Structure

We propose a new methodology to estimate the equity term structure, based on the cross-section of stock prices and the implied cost of capital approach. Specifically, instead of focusing on the realized returns of maturity-specific dividend assets, we imply the term structure of expected returns based on the observed market prices and projected firm-level cash flows. Using US data for 1976-2019, we find an unconditionally upward sloping term structure of risk premia with rich cross-sectional patterns. Namely, large and growth firms exhibit an upward sloping term structure, whereas the smallest and value firms mostly have a downward sloping term structure. We also detect that the slope of the term structure changes from negative to positive in the late 1990s for the largest firms, as well as that the slope tends to flatten out or even invert in recessions. Thus, using a direct measure of ex-ante returns, we are able to provide new evidence on the debated properties of the equity term structure.
Debt Maturity and the Cost of Capital

A new expression is derived in which the cost of capital is an explicit function of debt maturity structure and the underlying real asset cash flow stream. In special cases the cost of capital expression reduces to the standard weighted average cost of capital, but generally the standard formulation is invalid. Reliance on a correctly specified cost of capital expression has implications for capital budgeting and capital market studies.
Effect of Humanism on Religiosity with the Mediatory Role of Ethics and Spirituality

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to explore why some people are more religious. More importantly, is it due to external factors like culture and values, or some innate factors like humanism is influencing it. We also tried to explain how innate values like humanism make people more religious. For this, we proposed a theoretical framework conceptualizing the effect of spirituality and ethics in humanism religiosity nexus. We propose Humanism factors such as Self-sacrifice, attraction to public participation, and compassion, affect religiosity directly as well through increasing the ethical values. Moreover, humanism along with ethical values make an individual more spiritual. This is reflected in the feelings of belief in god, search for meaning, and feeling of security. This spiritual enlightenment would enforce correspondent religious beliefs and worship. It also influences other factors of religiosity like emotional involvement and mutual disclosure of affairs. Hence, this paper is to examine the impact of humanism on religiosity keeping spirituality and ethics as a mediating variable. All sub variable has studied individually to understand the different aspects of these variable and combined effect of all sub-variables is focused to meet the accuracy level from all aspects. <br><br>Design\methodology – A well-structured framework is developed, and PLS-SEM is used to generate results by using SmartPLS3. Data is collected through the primary data collection technique based on questionnaires is conducted. 1000 questionnaires were distributed out of which 356 responses were received. All the respondents were leaders of different well-performing organizations of Pakistan including managers, assistant managers, directors, assistant directors’ CEOs, and team leaders. <br><br>Findings – The result showed that human factors like attraction to public participation (APP), and Self-sacrifice seems to affect ethical values. Ethics would in turn increase spiritual factors of the search for meaning and feeling of security. Spiritual factors like belief in God seems to positively affect all three dimensions of religiosity. The feeling of security also impacts emotional involvement positively, whereas the search for meaning has a significant and positive effect on mutual disclosure of affairs. All humanism factors also seem to affect the spiritual factor of search positively and significantly. Compassion along with APP also seems to enforce belief in God, similarly, APP along with self-sacrifice seems to increase the feeling of security. Ethics also seems to influence religious factors like emotional involvement, and mutual disclosure of affairs directly and positively. However, humanism factors like compassion and Self-sacrifice seem to have a negative but significant impact on belief and worship, and emotional involvement respectively. <br>
Enfranchising the crowd: Nominee account equity crowdfunding

The nominee approach to equity crowdfunding pools all crowd investors into one (nominee) account where typically the platform acts as the legal owner but the crowd retains beneficial ownership. The platform plays an active digital corporate governance role that simultaneously enfranchises crowd investors with voting and ownership rights but removes the administrative burden on startups of having to deal with several hundred shareholders. Through an inter-platform and intra-platform analysis of a large sample of 1,018 initial equity crowdfunding campaigns, this paper assesses both the short-term and the long-term impact of nominee versus direct ownership. It finds that nominee initial campaigns are on average more successful than direct ownership campaigns in that they are more likely to succeed, raise more funds, attract overfunding and enjoy greater long run success in terms of successful seasoned equity crowdfunded offerings, numbers of such offerings, and probability of survival. These results hold inter-platform between the two main UK equity crowdfunding platforms (Seedrs and Crowdcube) as well as intra-platform, using the post-2015 quasi-natural experiment when the nominee approach became an option for startups raising capital on Crowdcube.
Currency Carry Trades and Global Funding Risk

We measure funding constraints in international currency markets by deviations in the covered interest rate parity. Our measure of funding risk is the standard deviation of the magnitude of the funding constraints. This funding risk measure appears to be driven by conditions in the financial sector in the low interest rate, so called carry trade short countries, oil price volatility, as well as by the actions of the main central banks. Although funding risk has been present throughout our sample, it becomes only relevant in currency carry trading after 2008, suggesting that investors’ funding constraints start binding at that time. We document evidence that since 2008 funding risk has affected the magnitude of currency carry trading activity, carry trade returns, correlation between carry long and short currencies, relative equity returns in carry trade long vs. short countries, and the economies of carry trade long countries measured through changes in industrial production. We develop a theory of currency markets under funding constraints that has several testable implications. For instance, as funding constraints start to bind, our theory predicts that both the investment and funding currencies drop relative to a safe asset. This result is observable also in our empirical analysis, when we proxy for the safe asset with gold. In line with theory, funding risk forecasts currency crashes in the carry trade long and short countries.
Gambling Preferences for Loser Stocks

I discover that investors' preferences for gambling mainly involve stocks that have performed poorly in the past three months, as lottery-like stocks with poor performance are much more likely to generate large payoffs than those with good performance (61.53% vs. 40.17%). Furthermore, lotto investors tend to believe that lottery-like stocks with poor performance may have a vigorous rebound shortly, while those with good performance may be less likely to produce a highly positive return given their high prices. Therefore, lottery-like stocks with poor performance have a highly effective lottery-like look, and thus they attract lotto investors. On the other hand, loser stocks without lottery-like features may continue to perform poorly. Overly optimistic (pessimistic) beliefs about stocks with (without) lottery-like features result in a pronounced lottery premium among loser stocks.
Why Do Directors Join Poorly Performing Firms?

Abstract Prior research has suggested that sitting on the board of a poorly performing firm (PPF) can be undesirable to directors. Still, almost 60% of such firms are able to appoint new directors following director departures. Contrary to a quality matching explanation, we do not find that only poorly performing directors join these firms. Upon joining PPFs, directors are more likely to fill leadership positions without necessarily receiving higher pay. These directors subsequently receive career benefits, especially those who are relatively junior in the pool. As such, the evidence is consistent with the leadership positions providing a certification effect.
Capital Flows: the Role of Fund Manager Portfolio Reallocation

Global open-ended mutual funds are an increasingly important source of capital for emerging market economies (EMEs). Mutual funds, however, have a greater propensity than other overseas investors to change their holdings of EME bonds following changes in macroeconomic conditions. This paper considers why. We use a novel methodology – underpinned by data on individual security holdings – to distinguish between the two reasons why a fund's holdings of EME bonds might change: (i) the amount invested in the fund changes and (ii) the fund manager changes its portfolio allocations. We find that funds' responsiveness to changes in global macroeconomic conditions - "push factors'' - is explained by investor flow decisions. Conversely, funds' responsiveness to changes in local macroeconomic conditions – "pull factors'' – is explained by manager reallocation decisions. We also identify other institutional factors which impact reallocation decisions: changes in their leverage, changes to their benchmark, and changes in risk appetite (funds reallocate towards safer EMEs when global risk increases).
Empirical Asset Pricing With Many Assets and Short Time Series

We construct tracking portfolios consisting of a large number of assets for macroeconomic factors using the L_2-boosting algorithm. We use these tracking portfolios as instruments to estimate factor risk prices. The same learning algorithm also provides the weights of a mean-variance efficient portfolio. With this additional input we compute the Hansen-Jagannathan distance to compare how alternative models fit the cross-section. We apply the method to 900 portfolio return series in the Kenneth French data library. While macro factors fail to explain most cross-sectional variation, we find that both consumption and inflation risk are priced.