Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Competition for Talent and Cyclical Malpractice in Corporate Governance

I present a model to rationalize the pro-cyclical nature of executive compensation and malpractice. The model features a principal-agent setting where effort and misreporting incentives are at conflict, and investors compete for managerial talent. In equilibrium, governance standards decrease, and bonuses increase in the level of managerial talent. An increase in industry profitability, a reduction in the market rate of return, and an increase in top managerial talent increase aggregate output, malpractice, and incentive compensation. Extensions of the model generate endogenous episodes of "bonus cultures" based on short-term performance measures. Embedded into a dynamic general equilibrium with household savings and endogenous rates of return, the model reproduces the build-up of malpractice during booms and their reduction in worse states of the economy.
CEO Social Media Presence and Insider Trading Behavior

Prior research finds that online social media usage may lower self-control and encourage indulgent behavior. We find that corporate CEOs show similar tendencies: CEOs with online social media presence are more likely to succumb to lower self-control and abuse their information advantage to profit from unethical opportunistic inside trades. Specifically, social media presence strongly predicts the incidence, intensity, and profitability of CEO insider trading activity. Our results only reside in buys (not in sells), especially opportunistic buys which likely contain more material non-public information.
Robustness, Infomation-Processing Constraints, and the Current Account in Small Open Economies

We examine the effects of two types of informational frictions, robustness (RB) and finite information-processing capacity (called rational inattention or RI) on the current account, in an otherwise standard intertemporal current account (ICA) model. We show that the interaction of RB and RI has the potential to improve the model’s predictions on the joint dynamics of the current account and income: (i) the contemporaneous correlation between the current account and income, (ii) the volatility and persistence of the current account in small open emerging and developed economies. In addition, we show that the two informational frictions could also better explain consumption dynamics in small open economies: the impulse responses of consumption to income shocks and the relative volatility of consumption growth to income growth. Calibrated versions using detection probabilities fit the data better along these dimensions than the standard model does.
The Impact of Fertility on Mothers’ Labour Supply in Australia: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size

This paper estimates the impact of fertility on mothers’ labour supply in Australia, using exogenous variation in family size generated by twin births and the gender mix of siblings. Results show that having more than one child decreases labour market participation by 15.5 percentage points and hours worked by around 6 hours per week. Having more than two children reduces labour market participation by between 12 and 20 percentage points and hours worked by between 3 and 8 hours a week, depending on the instrument used. Interestingly, fathers also reduce both their labour market participation (by 10 percentage points) and their number of hours worked per week (by 4 hours) when having more than one child. Compared with the results obtained with the same methodology for other countries, the effects for Australia are large, which partly reflects the constraints on public childcare and the lack of a national paid parental leave scheme prior to 2011.
Board Diversity and Manipulative Accounting Practice among Listed Conglomerates in Nigeria

One of the main characteristics of an effective Board of Directors (BOD) is its membership diversity. Well-managed diversity on the BOD is expected to enhance a board’s capacity and effectiveness to monitor the opportunistic behaviour of managers, which more often than not motivates them to among other things engage in manipulative accounting practice. This paper examines the effect of board diversity on manipulative accounting practice among listed conglomerates in Nigeria for the period 2007 – 2014. The paper hypothesises that foreign directors, board gender, non-executive directors and board competence have no significant effect on manipulative accounting practice among the firms. It utilises panel data extracted from the financial statements of the six (6) conglomerates listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) as at December 2014. The result of the robust fixed effects model reveals that foreign directors and non-executive directors have significant negative influence on manipulative accounting of the firms. The analysis further shows that board gender and board competence have no significant effect on manipulative accounting practice among the firms. This implies that an increase in the number of foreign directors and non-executive directors will reduce the opportunistic tendencies of management as their presence plays a crucial role in reducing manipulative accounting activities of the firms. In line with the result, the paper recommends that management of listed conglomerates in Nigeria should increase the number of foreign and non-executive director to average of 44% and 47% respectively. This is because at these respective percentages, foreign and non-executive directors have significant negative effect on manipulative accounting. Also, shareholders of listed conglomerates in Nigeria need not to bother about the number of females and competent directors on their board whenever they are to decide on how to curtail manipulative accounting practice.
Organic farming of dairy goats in the Veneto region: feeding management and milk quality

Abstract The relationship between the quality of goat milk and the feeding management in organic farms located in the Veneto Region was evaluated. Five organic dairy goat farms with Alpine and Saanen breeds were considered. Samples of bulk milk and feeds were collected monthly and analysed for chemical composition. Milk fatty acids profile was also determined. All data were submitted by ANCOVA analysis using breed (B), time of sampling (ST) and B x ST as fixed effects and dry matter intake(DMI), dietary concentrations of crude protein (CPc), NDF (NDFc), starch (starchc), and use of grazing as linear covariates. Milk urea N was positively affected by DMI (r=3.64; P<0.05) and negatively by starchc (r=-5.91; P<0.05) and total bacterial count increased significantly (P<0.05) with the increase of CPc and starchc. DMI affected positivelythe milk fatty acid (FA) profile by increasing of PUFA (P<0.01), n-3 (P<0.001) and n-6 (P<0.05) acids and decreasing of SFA (P<0.05) levels in milk. Opposite effects on FA profile were observed by CPc, NDFc and starchc. The use of grazing only caused a significant increase (P<0.05) in the content of CLA in milk.
Genome organization and phylogenetic tree analysis of Garlic virus E, a new member of genus Allexivirus

The complete sequence of an Allexivirus isolated from garlic plants in Yuhang City, Zhejiang Province, China had been determined. The single-strand, positive RNA genome was 8451 nucleotides in length excluding poly(A) tail. The genome organization of this virus was similar to that of the other Allexiviruses but only with 62.8%–64.8% nucleotide acid identities. The amino acid sequences of proteins encoded by ORF1-6 shared 67.6%–78.5%, 55.4%–66.2%, 56.7%–66.4%,40.3%–55.6%,66.3%–79.7%and 52.2%–68.8% identities with those of the others respectively. The homology range between it and the other Allexiviruses was similar to that between the other distinct species in this genus. A more comprehensive comparison using all available CP amino acid sequences showed that it shared only 63.9%–79.8% amino acids identical with the others. Therefore, it had been considered as a new member of the genus, named as garlic virus E (GarV-E). Phylogenetic analysis confirmed GarV-E as a distinct member and the correct names and classification of some members of genus Allexivirus were also discussed.
Estimation of Dynamic Latent Variable Models Using Simulated Nonparametric Moments

Given a model that can be simulated, conditional moments at a trial parameter value can be calculated with high accuracy by applying kernel smoothing methods to a long simulation. With such conditional moments in hand, standard method of moments techniques can be used to estimate the parameter. Because conditional moments are calculated using kernel smoothing rather than simple averaging, it is not necessary that the model be simulable subject to the conditioning information that is used to define the moment conditions. For this reason, the proposed estimator is applicable to general dynamic latent variable models. It is shown that as the number of simulations diverges, the estimator is consistent and a higher-order expansion reveals the stochastic difference between the infeasible GMM estimator based on the same moment conditions and the simulated version. In particular, we show how to adjust standard errors to account for the simulations. Monte Carlo results show how the estimator may be applied to a range of dynamic latent variable (DLV) models, and that it performs well in comparison to several other estimators that have been proposed for DLV models.
Screening, isolation and selection of cellulolytic fungi from oil palm empty fruit bunch fibre.

Screening and isolation of cellulolytic fungi was done using compost of oil palm empty fruit bunch conducted at a local factory located in Sri Ulu Langat, Dengkil, Selangor, Malaysia. This research was aimed to isolate of cellulolytic fungi with over production of cellulase components. Ten isolated fungi had shown the ability to degrade cellulose base on decolorization of CMC selective agar using Grams iodine as color indicator and cellulase production in shake flask fermentation. Aspergillus (R4) was selected as over producer of cellulase enzyme among ten isolated fungi. The Aspergillus (R4) with highest clearing zone on CMC agar (50 mm) and cellulolytic activity (CMCase 3.05, FPase 0.61 and β-glucosidase 1.75 U mL-1) was identified as Aspergillus terrus. We identified Aspergillus terrues as highly cellulolytic in producing cellulase activity. Identification of over producers of cellulase enzymes can help industries exploits of this enzyme.
Learning About Ambiguous Long-Term Prospects

This paper investigates whether and when ambiguity afflicting the long-term prospects of a market fades away in a nonexchangeable environment (time-varying short-term prospects). Two types of ambiguity are considered: static (multiple priors) and dynamic (multiple laws of motion). In the absence of dynamic ambiguity, likelihood-based learning resolves the static ambiguity. In the presence of dynamic ambiguity, on the other hand, likelihood-based learning fails. In this case, the static ambiguity fades away if the agent incorporates into the objective criteria (likelihood) her subjective criteria (penalty proportional to the Kullback-Leibler divergence).
Are Bank Credit Standards Affected by the Business Cycle?: Evidence From the Euro Area

The purpose of this study is to investigate the link between bank credit standards (CS hereafter) and business cycle fluctuations. This is the first empirical study which attempts to examine whether business cycle affects bank CS. We use quarterly survey-data on CS taken from the Bank Lending Survey from 2003Q1 to 2016Q1, for 14 Euro-area countries. We find that business cycle and GDP growth trend exert a negative influence on CS, and thus business cycle and trend are two major drivers of the tightening or easing of the CS. We also find that the two components (cyclical and trend) of the real GDP decomposition affect in a symmetric way CS. Moreover, symmetry of impacts was found between the CS and the business cycle and trend for large vs. small firms. Our findings could be helpful for both the European bank regulatory authorities and for the banks’ loan officers when they are designing macro-prudential policies.
Comparison of methods to account for autocorrelation in correlation analyses of fish data

Autocorrelation in fish recruitment and environmental data can complicate statistical inference in correlation analyses. To address this problem, researchers often either adjust hypothesis testing procedures (e.g., adjust degrees of freedom) to account for autocorrelation or remove the autocorrelation using prewhitening or first-differencing before analysis. However, the effectiveness of methods that adjust hypothesis testing procedures has not yet been fully explored quantitatively. We therefore compared several adjustment methods via Monte Carlo simulation and found that a modified version of these methods kept Type I error rates near . In contrast, methods that remove autocorrelation control Type I error rates well but may in some circumstances increase Type II error rates (probability of failing to detect some environmental effect) and hence reduce statistical power, in comparison with adjusting the test procedure. Specifically, our Monte Carlo simulations show that prewhitening and especially first-d.
Rationalizing the Ostriches: Prior-Dependent Information Attitudes and Prior-Dependent Utility Theory

Empirical evidence shows that non-instrumental information attitudes are generally prior-dependent. However, Eliaz and Spiegler (2006) show that that such an anomalous information attitude cannot be captured by “expected utility-based models” and a potential way to fix this problem is replacing them by prior-dependent utility. This paper provides a systematic analysis of the prior-dependent utility approach as the explanation of prior-dependent information attitudes. First, the axiomatic system of this type of utility functions is studied, and I show that the representation theorem can be derived from extending the lottery-dependent utility theory (Schmidt, 2001) to the setting of temporal lotteries. Second, an alternative way to prior-dependent utility maximization is provided, where the decision maker chooses the prior belief and the temporal structure of information in a separate and sequential manner. Based on this interpretation, an anticipatory emotion-based explanation to the “ostrich effect”, one of the most common pattern of prior-dependent information attitude, is introduced.
How Does Uncertainty Influence Target Capital Structure?

Abstract This study investigates how uncertainty affects firms’ target capital structure using a panel data set of U.S. public manufacturers between 2003 and 2018 and finds that high-uncertainty firms have 10.1 (8.1) percentage points lower mean book (market) targets than low-uncertainty firms. This study also shows that the uncertainty effect on leverage targets is greater than the impact of firm size, market-to-book ratio, assets tangibility, R&D intensity, and industry median leverage, making uncertainty the most critical among all time-varying determinants of leverage targets. Further, this study finds that heightened uncertainty decreases debt tax shields, increases potential financial distress costs, and exacerbates debtholder–shareholder conflicts, thereby leading to a lower optimal or target leverage ratio.
Population biology of Korean pomfret pampus echinogaster (Basilewsky, 1855) (Perciformes: Stromateidae) on the western coast of Korea, yellow sea

Abstract Investigations were made on population biology of Pampus echinogaster (Basilewsky, 1855) in the coastal areas of Korea, Yellow Sea, between August 2005 and July 2006. Population structure was not significantly different between male and females. Monthly variation of gonadosomatic index (GSI) of both sexes defined spawning period extending from March through July. A similar pattern was also observed in change at maturity stages. For males and females GSI was positively correlated with hepatosomatic index (HSI). Fecundity, ranging from 41,250 to 103,610 eggs, was related to body size, indicating that body size is the useful determinant of fecundity. The sexual maturity (L50) was estimated as 14.98 cm TL for males and 19.32 cm TL for females. Parameters of growth estimated by the modified von Bertalanffy growth function model showed that the values of U and K for combined data were 39.12 cm TL and 0.65 yr1. The growth performance index of this study (2.75) was higher than that of the previous study (2.45). This difference could be attributed to sampling method. The recruitment patterns indicated one normally distributed group. Percentage of the recruitment was 51.04% in the spawning season and the highest in August (19.78%).
Abnormal Returns of Soccer Teams: Reassessing the Informational Value of Betting Odds

We analyse the links between soccer match results, betting odds and stock returns of all listed European soccer teams. Using an event-study approach, we measure positive (negative) abnormal returns following wins (ties and losses). Additionally, we analyse the role, which we find to be non-significant, of betting odds in shaping market reactions to unexpected results. We propose an alternative econometric approach, using seemingly unrelated regressions models, to take into account the problem of overlapping events. Abnormal returns following unexpected results are then found to be statistically significant, and to magnify the positive (negative) effects of wins (losses).
Austerity Plan Announcements and the Impact on the Employees' Wellbeing

This study investigates the impact of austerity plan announcements on employees’ wellbeing. We exploit the unexpected announcement of a drastic wage cut (25%) related to public sector employees in Romania. Using data from the Eurobarometer Surveys and the European Quality of Life Survey, we employ a difference-in-difference research design combined with matching, based on entropy balancing, to identify the causal effects. Our results reveal that the mere announcement of austerity measures leads to an overall drop in life satisfaction among those working in the public sector. We also show that men, and especially married individuals, are most affected by the substantial wage cut announcement. Contrary to previous research, we find that public sector employees with higher levels of education are more likely to be affected by this policy communication compared to those with only secondary or primary levels of education.
Does Revenue Momentum Drive or Ride Earnings or Price Momentum?

This paper examines the profits of revenue, earnings, and price momentum strategies in an attempt to understand investor reactions when facing multiple information of firm performance in various scenarios. We first offer evidence that there is no dominating momentum strategy among the revenue, earnings, and price momentums, suggesting that revenue surprises, earnings surprises, and prior returns each carry some exclusive unpriced information content. We next show that the profits of momentum driven by firm fundamental performance information (revenue or earnings) depend upon the accompanying firm market performance information (price), and vice versa. The robust monotonicity in multivariate momentum returns is consistent with the argument that the market does not only underestimate the individual information but also the joint implications of multiple information on firm performance, particularly when they point in the same direction. A three-way combined momentum strategy may offer monthly return as high as 1.44%. The information conveyed by revenue surprises and earnings surprises combined account for about 19% of price momentum effects, which finding adds to the large literature on tracing the sources of price momentum.
Online Assortment Optimization with High-Dimensional Data

In this research, we consider an online assortment optimization problem, where a decision-maker needs to sequentially offer assortments to users instantaneously upon their arrivals and users select products from offered assortments according to the contextual multinomial logit choice model. We propose a computationally efficient Lasso-RP-MNL algorithm for the online assortment optimization problem under the cardinality constraint in high-dimensional settings. The Lasso-RP-MNL algorithm combines the Lasso and random projection as dimension reduction techniques to alleviate the computational complexity and improve the learning and estimation accuracy under high-dimensional data with limited samples. For each arriving user, the Lasso-RP-MNL algorithm constructs an upper-confidence bound for each individual product's attraction parameter, based on which the optimistic assortment can be identified by solving a reformulated linear programming problem. We demonstrate that for the feature dimension $d$ and the sample size dimension $T$, the expected cumulative regret under the Lasso-RP-MNL algorithm is upper bounded by $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(\sqrt{T}\log d)$ asymptotically, where $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}$ suppresses the logarithmic dependence on $T$. Furthermore, we show that even when available samples are extremely limited, the Lasso-RP-MNL algorithm continues to perform well with a regret upper bound of $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}( T^{\frac{2}{3}}\log d)$. Finally, through synthetic-data-based experiments and a high-dimensional XianYu assortment recommendation experiment, we show that the Lasso-RP-MNL algorithm is computationally efficient and outperforms other benchmarks in terms of the expected cumulative regret. <br>
Organizational Form and Access to Capital: The Role of Regulatory Interventions

We examine the impact of a regulation that requires only disclosure of ownership information and no real change of firm fundamentals, on a firm’s access to capital. As a first of its kind corporate governance regulation across the globe, Clause 35 of the Securities Exchange Board of India required firms to classify shareholders into insiders and outsiders only, with no other structural changes. Using a large sample of publicly traded firms in India, a market characterized by weak enforcement and concentrated ownership, we find that prior to the regulation and as expected from literature, group-affiliated firms exhibited better access to capital (lower investment-cash flow sensitivity) than standalone firms. However, this reverses after the regulation, i.e., group-affiliated firms face more financial constraints (higher investment-cash flow sensitivity). This increase in sensitivity is restricted to only group firms with higher insider ownership, especially for firms which have no compensating mechanisms (weaker governance/monitoring) or perform poorly in the future. In essence, we find that regulation exclusively requiring information disclosure has been effective in reallocating capital more efficiently to firms with fewer agency problems.
Overall Financial Inclusion Across 55 Countries: 12 Financial Inclusion Enabling Variables

The present study aims to evaluate the role of 12 financial inclusion enabling environment variables towards the overall financial inclusion across 55 countries. To examine the impact of each extracted factor on overall financial inclusion, factorial regression analysis was carried out and to highlight the impact of each individual variable on overall financial inclusion, the linear multiple regression model has been used. The empirical results show that the majority of the predictor variables studied has a significant positive effect on overall financial inclusion.