Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Goodness-of-Fit Test for Event Forecasting and its Application to Credit Default Models

We develop a new goodness-of-fit test for validating the performance of probability forecasts. Our test statistic is particularly powerful under sparseness and dependence in the observed data. To build our test statistic, we start from a formal definition of calibrated forecasts, which we operationalize by introducing two components. The first component tests the level of the estimated probabilities. The second component validates the shape, measuring the differentiation between high and low robability events. After constructing test statistics for both level and shape, we provide a global goodness-of-fit statistic, which is asymptotically x^2 distributed. In a simulation exercise, we find that our approach is correctly sized and more powerful than alternative statistics. In particular, our shape statistic is significantly more powerful than the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Under independence our global test has significantly greater power than the popular Hosmer and Lemeshow's x^2 test. Moreover, even under dependence our global test remains correctly sized and consistent. As a timely and important empirical application of our method, we study the validation of a forecasting model for credit default events.
Do Pension Plans Strategically Use Regulatory Freedom?

We use a historical experiment to test whether U.S. corporate defined benefit pension plans strategically use regulatory freedom to lower the reported value of pension liabilities, and hence required cash contributions. For some years, pension plans were required to estimate two liabilities - one with mandated discount rates and mortality assumptions, and another where these could be chosen freely. Using a sample of 11,963 plans, we find that the regulated liability exceeds the unregulated measure by 10 percent and the difference further increases for underfunded pension plans. Moreover, underfunded plans tend to assume lower life expectancy and substantially higher discount rates. The effect persists both in the cross-section of plans and over time and it serves to reduce cash contributions. Finally, we show that credit risk is unlikely to explain the finding. Instead, it seems that plans use regulatory leeway as a simple cash management tool.
Chocolate Scents and Product Sales: A Randomized Controlled Trial in a Canadian Bookstore and Café

We present a replication and extension of a 10-day randomized controlled trial on the effects of chocolate scent on purchasing behavior in a bookstore. We report the results of a 31-day trial in an environment that includes both a bookstore and a café. The purpose of our study is to examine the generalizability of the original finding to a setting common to bookstores, in which products of the same domain as the chocolate scent — here, coffee and food items — are also offered for sale. In the first section, we introduce the study of store atmospherics and highlight the importance (and dearth) of replication in this area. In the next section, we describe the original study and discuss the theory behind an effect of ambient scent on product sales, and the role of scent-product congruity. In the third section we describe the materials and methods of our extension study. In the fourth section, we present the results of our study, and in the final section we discuss the findings. We find no evidence that chocolate scent affects sales in this setting, either in total or disaggregated by product type. Our findings suggest that contextual factors and the choices available to customers may moderate the effects of chocolate scent on purchasing behavior.
Does the Effect of Revealed Private Information on Initial Public Offering (IPO) First Trading Day Return Differ by IPO Market Heat?

By IPO market regime, I decompose the effect of revealed private information on the initial return of IPOs (initial public offerings) into adjusted and unadjusted private information and find (i) investment banks partially adjust the offer price in return for revealed private information in all but the non‐hot IPO market; (ii) the economic importance of private information associated with IPOs (and hence agency costs) is procyclical; and (iii) industry information spillovers between IPOs occur only in the hot and very‐hot IPO markets.
Factors Affecting Transfer of On-The-Job Training at workplaces in Pakistan

Purpose: This research is focused on examining the factors that influence transfer (effectiveness) of On-The-Job training at workplaces in Pakistan. The study identifies the factors that affect transfer of OJT training included independent variables such as motivation to learn, Perceived Organizational Support and Training Design and their impact on employees’ performance i.e. Transfer of Training. Methodology: The study adopted quantitative research and data was collected through well-structured questionnaire. The sample of 200 participants were selected throughout Pakistan using convenience sampling technique. Smart PLS software was used to analyse the data through descriptive statistics, structural equation modelling and Confirmatory factor analysis. Findings: The result revealed that there is a strong and significant impact of motivation to learn and training design on transfer of OJT training at workplaces in Pakistan. However, the results do not show any significant impact of Perceived Organizational Support in organizations on transfer of OJT training. Conclusions: This shows that even though, if the organization support is not present, the motivation to learn new things and to implement it to the workplace and effectively designed training programs can overcome the issues. Practical Implications: Organizations can use the result in favour of their organizational effectiveness, to consistently design effective training programs, and to consistently motivate their employees and to improve support and guidance by top management in the organizations.
Short-Term and Long-Term Performance Persistence: A Comparative Study of UK Investment Trusts

The existing literature of performance persistence of UK investment trusts is limited. We are going to use a sample of 210 UK investment trusts to test performance persistence in different time periods. Berk and Green (2004) suggests that performance persistence and managerial skill are limited if the assumptions of perfect capital markets and decreasing returns to scale in fund management hold. We sort funds into rank portfolios based on past performance. When funds are sorted into deciles portfolios, the statistical test that is used is Spearman rank correlation coefficient. Funds during the third year show a negative and statistically significant correlation coefficient, which is an evidence of weak performance persistence of funds that showed negative and bad performance during the short-term of the first three years.
Analytics in Post-Grant Patent Review: Possibilities and Challenges (Preliminary Report)

Recent analysis of litigation outcomes suggests that nearly half of the patents litigated to judgment were held invalid. Commonly available patent search software is predominantly keyword based and takes a “one-size-fits-all” approach leaving much to be desired from a practitioner’s perspective. We discuss opportunities for using text mining and information retrieval in the domain of patent litigation. We focus on post-grant inter partes review process, where a company can challenge the validity of an issued patent in order, for example, to protect its product from being viewed as infringing on the patent in question. We discuss both possibilities and obstacles to assistance with such a challenge using a text analytic solution. A range of issues need to be overcome for semantic search and analytic solutions to be of value, ranging from text normalization, support for semantic and faceted search, to predictive analytics. In this context, we evaluate our novel and top performing semantic search solution. For experiments, we use data from the database USPTO Final Decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Our experiments and analysis point to limitations of generic semantic search and text analysis tools. We conclude by presenting some research ideas that might help overcome these deficiencies, such as interactive, semantic search, support for a multistage approach that distinguishes between a divergent and convergent mode of operation and textual entailment.
Recovery of the Endangered giant otter Pteronura brasiliensis on the Yavarí-Mirín and Yavarí Rivers: a success story for CITES

Abstract The giant otter Pteronura brasiliensis was hunted almost to extinction in the Peruvian Amazon during a period of professional trade in wild animal skins during 1920–1973. In 1973 the Department of Agriculture of Peru (INRENA) prohibited commercial hunting in the Peruvian Amazon, and the giant otter was included in Appendix I of CITES. From 1973 to 2004 giant otter populations experienced a slow recovery in numerous rivers of the Peruvian Amazon. Here, we report the population growth of the giant otter on the Yavarí-Mirín and Yavarí Rivers in north-east Peru. The first evaluations of giant otter populations in these rivers, in which no individuals were sighted, were in 1992–1993. During surveys in 1996 and 1997 two individuals were sighted. In 2001, 19 individuals were sighted and in 2003 and 2004, 41 individuals were observed. This increase demonstrates a slow recovery and shows that the population has not yet reached its carrying capacity. The prohibition of international trade in otter skins by CITES, supported by INRENA, helped the population recover and was important in the conservation of this species.
Reverse genetics and the study of dengue virus

Dengue virus infection causes the most important arthropod-borne disease of humans. Currently, there are no dengue vaccines or antiviral therapies in clinical use, although their development is a global health priority. Using a technique known as ‘reverse genetics’, the dengue virus RNA genome can be manipulated, either by the introduction of specific mutations or the deletion and/or substitution of entire genes. This has led to the production of novel recombinant viruses that have potential as vaccines and the production of noninfectious viral subgenomes (termed replicons) useful for drug screening. Reverse genetics is also an invaluable tool for studying the role of dengue virus RNA elements and proteins in replication and pathogenesis. This review describes the contribution of reverse genetics to dengue virus research to date, highlighting the potential use of this technology in the development of effective control measures against dengue in the future.
Earthly Reward to the Religious: Religiosity and the Cost of Public and Private Debt

We document that a firm’s culture — specifically, its religiosity — affects its cost of debt. Firms in higher-religiosity counties have higher credit ratings and lower debt costs. The impact of religiosity is stronger for firms with greater information asymmetry and during recessions. Further, religiosity has additional explanatory power for the cost of bank loans (but not the cost of public bonds) beyond its impact through ratings. This supports the argument that banks have superior abilities in pricing soft information, such as corporate culture. Finally, the impact of religiosity is stronger when the lender is a small bank.
Molecular Authentication of Acanthopanacis Cortex by Multiplex-PCR Analysis Tools

Acanthopanacis Cortex has been used for oriental medicinal purposes in Asian countries especially in Korea and China. In the Korean Pharmacopeia, the cortexes of the dried roots, stems and branches of all species in Eleutherococcus and Eleutherococcus sessiliflorus are known as ‘Ogapi’. Mostly the cortexes of E. gracilistylus roots and E.senticosus roots were used as ‘Ogapi’ in China and Japan, respectively. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine and compare the molecular authentication of Korean ‘Ogapi’ by using the ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region. The ITS region has the highest possibility of effective and successful identification for the widest variety of molecular authentication. The ITS region was targeted for molecular analysis with Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) specific for morphologically similar to E. gracilistylus, E. senticosus, E. sessiliflorus from their adulterant, moreover, E. sieboldianus were detected within sequence data. Thus, based on these SNP sites, specific primers were designed and multiplex PCR analysis were conducted for molecular authentication of four plants (E. gracilistylus, E. senticosus, E. sessiliflorus, and E. sieboldianus). The findings of results indicated that ITS region might be established multiplex-PCR analysis systems and hence were proved to be an effective tools for molecular evaluation and comparison of ‘Ogapi’ with other plants.
Public and Private Provision of Clean Air: Evidence from Housing Prices and Air Quality in China

We explore the dynamic interaction between housing prices and air quality in a growing economy with changing preferences using panel vector auto-regression. Using Chinese data, we document robust evidence that better air quality is rewarded by the market with higher housing prices and that faster housing price growth in turn contributes to further air quality improvements. The positive impact of housing price growth on air quality is stronger for more developed areas such as eastern China, first-tier cities, and housing markets that grow faster than the median. From a time-series perspective, the contribution of housing prices to air quality improvements has been more pronounced since the Global Financial Crisis, when landscape architecture and energy efficiency gained prominence in real estate development. Further analysis reveals that higher housing price growth improves air quality by motivating public and private investment in environmental protection and enhancement that subsequently leads to better air quality.
Low-Latency Trading

We define low-latency activity as strategies that respond to market events in the millisecond environment, the hallmark of proprietary trading by high-frequency trading firms. We propose a new measure of low-latency activity that can be constructed from publicly-available NASDAQ data to investigate the impact of high-frequency trading on the market environment. Our measure is highly correlated with NASDAQ-constructed estimates of high-frequency trading, but it can be computed from data that are more widely-available. We use this measure to study how low-latency activity affects market quality both during normal market conditions and during a period of declining prices and heightened economic uncertainty. Our conclusion is that increased low-latency activity improves traditional market quality measures — lowering short-term volatility, decreasing spreads, and increasing displayed depth in the limit order book. Of particular importance is that our findings suggest that increased low-latency activity need not work to the detriment of long-term investors in the current market structure for U.S. equities.
The Australian freshwater amphipods Austrochiltonia australis and Austrochiltonia subtenuis (Amphipoda : Talitroidea : Chiltoniidae) confirmed and two new cryptic Tasmanian species revealed using a combined molecular and morphological approach

Given the complex nature of freshwater catchment divides and emerging evidence of high levels of genetic diversity, there is great potential for cryptic species to exist among Australian freshwater amphipod groups. Among the chiltoniid amphipods, two congeneric species, Austrochiltonia australis (Sayce, 1901) and A. subtenuis (Sayce, 1902), have been widely recorded across southern Australia yet are poorly known and contentiously defined. A large fragment of the mitochondrial DNA cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene was examined and morphological diversity among populations assessed across the reported geographic range of the two putative species. The results confirmed A. australis and A. subtenuis as morphological and molecular species. In addition, two previously undetected and cryptic species from Tasmania are recognised – sister species to A. subtenuis and A. australis. Working conclusions provide evidence towards a more comprehensive systematic revision of the Chiltoniidae and present species information relevant to conservation and management efforts of Australian river systems. A key is presented to the chiltoniid amphipods of southern Australia.
Inflation Relationship with the Economic Growth of the World Economy

The study was carried out in Feb, 2020. The major objective was to see the relationship of inflation with economic growth in the world economy. Total 42 articles were downloaded from the net and were read 10 to 20 times each article and draw the conclusion. The result indicates that different variables such as import price, demand of goods, production of goods, fiscal policy, and monetary policy and deficit budget affect the inflation positively and negatively in the world. Latter on high inflation affect the economic growth negatively while it was also noted that below 3 to 7 percent inflation is beneficial for the economic growth of a country because with this growth the world producers produce more production which later on fit other machinery and solve the problem of the unemployment. So inflation, economic growth and unemployment also correlated with one another and affect one another for economic growth of the country. Less inflation is beneficial for economic growth in the world while higher inflation is dangerous for economic growth of the world. Therefore each country of the world try to keep their inflation at below the thresh hold level at their country for increasing their economic growth. Inflation is positively related with the employment in the short run while latter on in the long run negatively. So the inflation example is as blood pressure is in the human being. So hyper inflation affects the economic growth negatively, while below the threshold it affects positively. When the policy maker of the world makes the policy, they see to all sectors of the economy and formulate the policy for the future. The major objective is how to increase the economic growth of the country for their countries prosperity. The developed countries of the world make good policy for their economic growth uplifting while the developing failed in good policy preparation due to lack of fund and deficit budget and dependency on the IMF and World Bank. On the basis of problems the study recommended that to appoint a talented and experience person as a governor for their countries banks in the world to properly manage the funds of their countries and make best policy for their utilization for high economic growth. The in and out of the country should be controlled and also keep eye on every items because everything supply increase and decrease affect the inflation positively and negatively in the world. Highly focus on the inflation flow in the country and keep eye on the factors which affect the inflation in the long and short run. Budget should be kept always balance and never depend on the other country fund because it will make the country slave and they their selves make this country for their own benefit and also they interfere in their country business. Mostly increase the development budget at their countries and squeeze the non developmental budget at their countries because it play great role in the inflation and unemployment control and economic growth enhancement.
Publicizing Arbitrage: Impact of Mandatory Disclosures

What is the impact of greater publicity in the shorting market on informational efficiency? To answer this, we exploit rule amendments in U.S. securities markets which increased the frequency of public disclosure of short interest. Theoretically, greater public disclosure can improve or deteriorate informational efficiency. We find that with more frequent disclosure, short-sellers’ private information is incorporated into prices faster, improving informational efficiency. We also document significant market reactions to short interest announcements, suggesting investor learning, and furthermore, reductions in short-sellers’ horizon risk and holding periods.
Effects of Declining Bank Health on Borrowers’ Earnings Management Activity: Evidence from the European Sovereign Debt Crisis

This study investigates whether the deterioration of a bank’s financial health affects its borrowers’ earnings management activity. To examine this issue, we consider the setting of the European sovereign debt crisis as a shock to the health of certain European banks that were severely affected and significantly decreased their lending volume during the crisis. This setting represents an exogenous shock to German non-financial firms because these firms were not directly affected by the crisis. We use a difference-in-differences research design, and firms with lending relationships with non-exposed banks are used as controls. Using various discretionary accrual measures and a timely loss recognition concept to evaluate earnings management, we find mixed evidence. Our investigation of discretionary accruals reveals that during the European sovereign debt crisis, exposed banks’ borrowers do not engage in more or less earnings management than other borrowers. However, we find significant evidence that exposed banks’ borrowers are more likely to report losses in a timelier manner. Overall, our results provide new insights into the indirect consequences of the sovereign debt crisis for firms’ earnings management.
The Impact of Initial Margin on Derivatives Pricing with an Application of Machine Learning

In this paper we consider the impact of bilateral initial margin on derivatives pricing. We first introduce the background of bilateral initial margin. Then, we focus on how initial margin effects counterparty credit exposures, capital requirements and funding costs. Nowadays, besides risk-neutral valuation principles, these components are included when pricing derivatives through so-called valuation adjustments (xVAs). Based on this, we present an approach which incorporates initial margin into existing xVA frameworks. Then, we give an overview of the most common methods for calculating future initial margin. Moreover, we present a regression model which is based on machine learning methods. Finally, we show some numerical results for a cross currency swap, an fx option and a Bermudan swaption including a scenario analysis. Here, it turns out that it is much more important to consider margin agreement, regulatory or non-modellable parameters in detail than implementing a most accurate dynamic initial margin model.