Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EBITDA and Managers’ Investment and Leverage Choices

EBITDA is a commonly-used performance measure for (1) valuation, (2) debt contracting, and (3) executive compensation. The widespread use of EBITDA by stakeholders may induce managers to focus their attention on EBITDA. Since EBITDA excludes various expenses, managers who fixate on EBITDA may underweight the excluded expenses when determining their firms’ investments in capital and leverage levels. I find that managers who fixate on EBITDA over-invest in capital and over-lever their firm relative to their industry peers. These results are robust to alternative proxies for managers’ focus on EBITDA and alternative specifications. I also find that firms whose managers focus on EBITDA have weaker operating performance, which is attributed to higher depreciation expense. My primary proxy for managers’ focus on EBITDA is whether they choose to disclose EBITDA in annual earnings announcements. I find that the use of EBITDA in setting executive compensation, the prevalence of EBITDA estimates by analysts, and the use of EBITDA-based covenants in firms’ debt contracts are all positively associated with the propensity to disclose EBITDA in earnings announcements. I find weaker evidence of opportunistic motives explaining EBITDA disclosure. These results are consistent with managers disclosing EBITDA to portray to investors that it is a metric they seek to maximize. Overall, this study suggests that while EBITDA is a widely-used metric, there is a systematic cost to using this measure—it provides managers incentives to over-invest in capital and to acquire excessive debt.
SIZE DEPENDENCE OF GROWTH RATE, RESPIRATORY ELECTRON TRANSPORT SYSTEM ACTIVITY, AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION IN MARINE DIATOMS IN THE LABORATORY 1

The dependence of growth, electron transport system activity and chemical composition on the size of diatoms was examined during the exponential phase of growth. The six different marine centric species compared ranged in volume from 7.7 μm3 to 62 × 105μm3. A size dependence was observed for growth, 14C uptake, respiration and the productivity index (14C/chl a). Although the size dependence of all parameters was similar, the results indicate that on a carbon basis, growth efficiency decreases with increasing size. The C/N and C/chl a ratios were not size dependent. The importance of the surface area to cell volume ratio, and the importance of carbon per unit volume in determining the observed size dependence are discussed.
THE ACTION OF ENDO-β-1,3-GLUCANASES ON BARLEY AND MALT β-GLUCANS

The β-glucan extracted from ungerminated barley with water at 40 °C has a much lower specific viscosity than the corresponding material isolated from a wort prepared at 65 °C from a two-day germinated barley malt. Both glucans are similar in that they are polymers of β-D-glucose, with approximately 74% of the linkages in the β-1,4 configuration and 26% in the β-1,3 configuration. However, the two glucans are not hydrolysed to the same extent either by a partially purified bacterial endo-β-1,3-glucanase or by a homogeneous endo-β-1,3-glucanase from malted barley. The malt glucan is readily hydrolysed, causing a rapid decrease in specific viscosity but with no measurable increase in reducing power, whereas barley glucan undergoes only limited hydrolysis under similar conditions. Thus, different β-glucan preparations from barley or malt may be identical in the proportion of β-1,3 to β-1,4-linkages but the overall arrangement of linkages, and hence susceptibility to enzyme attack, differs according to the source and the method of extraction of the glucan. The molecular weights of both β-glucan preparations and the products of their enzyme hydrolysis have been determined by agarose gel permeation chromatography. A simple model which illustrates the underlying structural relationships of the β-glucans from barley and malt is suggested.
Firm Efforts to Improve Employee Quality and Corporate Investment Efficiency

We examine the effect of firm efforts to improve employee quality via human resource practices on investment efficiency. Employees at all levels of an organization, and executives, play a significant role for efficient corporate investment. Thus, human resource practices that improve employee quality should be associated with efficient corporate investment. However, the outcome of such practices can be controversial, as they are often ineffective, costly, have dis-synergies and deprive other types of investments of funding, which could lead to deviations from optimal investment. Using US firms for the period 2002-2016, our findings reveal that human resource practices are negatively associated with investment efficiency, inducing both over- and under-investment. Results are driven mainly by practices with a more direct cash cost, and are more pronounced with respect to investments in R&amp;D and acquisitions. Overall, our findings are consistent with HR practices targeted at improving employee quality not aligning employees’ and shareholders’ interests, with consequences for investment efficiency.
The Dynamic Effects of State-Dependent Labor Adjustment Cost: Evidence from Brazil’s FGTS Policy

The most recent recessions in Brazil pose a challenge for current business cycle models due to a key piece of legislation that causes labor to adjust in unconventional ways. We propose a two-sector model that resembles the formal and informal sectors in Brazil. While the formal sector is subject to a termination penalty inspired by said legislation, the informal sector makes labor decisions in a frictionless environment. Our model accurately predicts that recessions preceded by long expansions impact labor levels more severely than downturns following shorter economic booms. Importantly, the state dependence property of our legislative adjustment cost allows us to replicate the delay between the beginning of an economic downturn and the trough in the formal-sector labor level, a unique feature observed after the 2014-2016 depression in Brazil.
Short-term effects of handling and permanently marking gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus) on recapture rates and behavior

Limited evidence in the literature suggests that the assumption of equal catchability in mark-recapture studies of turtles may be invalid. These papers suggest that turtles may alter their behavior to avoid recapture following initial handling. If turtles are less likely to be recaptured following initial capture and handling, then population models estimating demographic characteristics and population sizes from mark-recapture data may be invalid (e.g., overestimating population size). Because conservation and management decisions are largely based on population sizes and trends, it is essential to investigate whether marking animals has any effect on behavior. We tested the effects of handling and permanently marking gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus) at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida from 20-22 July 2003 to determine if short-term activity and recapture rates were affected. We used two distinct groups of tortoises: one group was handled (captured, measured, marked) and the other was not handled, but was marked with paint from a distance of 2.2 m. Although the behavior of handled and non-handled animals was distinct, we found no differences in recapture rates or time to recapture between the groups. We suggest that handled gopher tortoises are as likely to be recaptured as tortoises that have not been handled, although more subtle or long-term effects cannot be ruled out.
The Dynamics of Group Fission

We present and test a simple model of a process by which a cohesive collection of individuals splits apart. We propose that, faced with a possible splintering issue, the natural cohesion mechanism that would typically unite the group and allow for a consistent set of decisions on an issue instead serves to drive the group apart, creating factions. Notably, this “divisive effect” is proportionally larger than the original divisiveness of the issue itself; we propose that this amplification effect is the mechanism by which group fission may be understood in various settings. We find the functional forms of this effect in the case of a well-mixed population, and explore several important extensions to the model, including structured populations on networks. Finally, we discuss the model in the context of published data on political partisanship.
Credit Cycles Revisited

Credit and business cycles play an important role in economic research, especially for central banks and supervisors. We reexamine a very useful dynamic model proposed by Kiyotaki and Moore (1997) of an economy with an endogenous credit limit. They claim that a small temporary shock generates large and persistent deviations from the steady state due to a positive feedback loop and the endogenous credit constraint. We mathematically show that contrary to common belief the model does not show amplification and persistence is visible only for a few parameter settings. Kiyotaki and Moore have linearized the model despite higher order terms being more important, rendering the Taylor expansion invalid. Further, we show that spillover effects in an economy with two distinct sectors are small. The strong amplification present in the original results, which supposedly is due to the large inter-temporal or dynamic multiplier effect, is spurious. The dynamic multiplier effect is of similar size than the static effect and in all cases numerically small.
Regulating Advertising Quantity: Is This Policy Efficient?

There is a long debate whether TV advertising time should be restricted (as in the EU and UK nowadays) or be left unregulated (as in the US since 1982). This paper exploits a novel dataset of per hour data on 12 major TV broadcasters in France to investigate the efficiency of regulation using an empirical two-sided market model. I first estimate the demand function of TV viewers and advertisers, in order to account for the two-sidedness of the market in the supply decision of TV stations. I then identify the shadow prices of regulation based on the observed regulatory constraints. Finally, I conduct counterfactual simulations to calibrate the regulation’s impact on viewers and advertisers. The results suggest that deregulating the market would increase the market advertising level by 4%, reduce the number of views per advert by 2%, and increase the average advertising cost per view by 0.5%. Accordingly, deregulation could increase the TV broadcasters’ net advertising revenue by 7%, but reduce the surplus of advertisers, and possibly damage the surplus of TV viewers if the broadcasters do not commit to improving the program quality.
Deriving Time Discounting Correction Factors for TTO Tariffs

The Time Tradeoff (TTO) method is a popular method for valuing health state utilities and is frequently used in economic evaluations. However, this method produces utilities that are distorted by several biases. One important bias entails the failure to incorporate time discounting. This paper aims to measure time discounting for health outcomes in a sample representative for the general population. In particular, we estimate TTO scores alongside time discounting in order to derive a set of correction factors that can be employed to correct raw TTO scores for the downward bias caused by time discounting. We find substantial positive correction factors, which are increasing with the severity of the health state. Furthermore, higher discounting is found when using more severe health states in the discounting elicitation task. More research is needed to further develop discount rate elicitation procedures and test their validity, especially in general public samples. Moreover, future research should investigate the correction of TTO score for other biases as well, such as loss aversion, and to develop a criterion to test the external validity of TTO scores.
Protection of cowpea, Vigna unguiculata L. (Walp.) with Newbouldia laevis (Seem.) extracts against infestation by Callosobruchus maculatus (Fabricius)

Evaluation of protectant ability of Newbouldia laevis (Seem.) extracts against infestation by Callosobruchus maculatus in cowpea, Vigna unguiculata L. (Walp.) was carried out in the laboratory at ambient temperature of 28 ± 2 °C and 70 ± 5% relative humidity. Extracts from wood ash, leaf, stem and root bark were tested at different concentrations of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5%. One hundred per cent mortality of adult beetles was achieved at all concentrations within 72 h of treatment with extracts except in wood ash at 1% concentration, but they were significantly different (p < 0.05) from the controls. All the extracts were still able to cause high beetle mortality after one, two and three months of cowpea storage at high concentrations (4 and 5%) except wood ash, although there was a slight decrease in mortality during the period of storage. All the extracts significantly (p < 0.05) reduced oviposition and adult emergence of C. maculatus when compared with the controls although the reduction was higher at 5% concentration than others. Adult beetle emergence was completely prevented at higher concentrations (4 and 5%) except in wood ash. Both oviposition and adult emergence increased during the months of storage probably because of the slight reduction in the effectiveness of the extracts. The root bark extract was much more effective in reducing oviposition and adult emergence than others throughout the period of storage. The plant extracts of N. laevis was able to protect the cowpea seeds from damage and prevent weight loss. Cowpea seed damage and weight loss was significantly more (p < 0.05) in the controls than other for the three-month duration probably because of the more adult emergence. The extracts from N. laevis did not adversely affect the germination of the protected seeds and seed germination ranged from 86.7 to 100%. It has been shown in this study that the extracts of N. laevis were effective against C. maculatus in cowpea although the root bark extract seemed to be the most effective while the wood ash extract was least effective. Their effectiveness, however, slightly decreased during the period of storage. N. laevis could be incorporated into pest management of stored cowpeas since the products are ecologically safe.
When Choices are Mistakes

Using a laboratory experiment, we identify whether decision makers consider it a mistake to violate canonical choice axioms. To do this, we incentivize subjects to report which of several axioms they want their decisions to satisfy. Then, subjects make lottery choices which might conflict with their stated axiom preferences. We give them the opportunity to re-evaluate their decisions when lotteries conflict with desired axioms. We find that a majority of individuals want to follow the canonical axioms and revise their lottery choices to be consistent with them. We interpret this to mean that many axiom violations we observed were mistakes.
International Trade, Welfare and the Theory of General Equilibrium

General equilibrium model of international trade has profoundly impacted various sub-disciplines of economics such as development economics, public economics, and environmental economics, among many others. These models continue to inspire younger generations of researchers and are used as essential tools for evaluation of policies. It began with the celebrated contribution of Ronald W. Jones in the Journal of Political Economy in 1965. In 2015, a group of scholars, both senior and young, gathered at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, to celebrate 50 years of publication of the article. The event engaged with discussions on a host of contemporary topics in international trade theory and policy highlighting the use of a general equilibrium framework. Central ideas and themes that emerged from these discussions are presented in this volume as cohesive and comprehensive chapters to celebrate a landmark and to record the influence of the idea of general equilibrium in theory and policy. Given that the core theory has ramified along various dimensions, the topics studied in this volume are naturally diverse.
Isolation and characterization of polymorphic microsatellite loci in the field vole, Microtus agrestis, and their cross-utility in the common vole, Microtus arvalis

We developed nine polymorphic microsatellite loci for the field vole, Microtus agrestis. The number of alleles ranged from five to 15 and observed heterozygosities ranged from 0.40 to 1.00. We also tested the microsatellite loci for amplification and polymorphism in the congeneric species Microtus arvalis. Five of the nine loci were successfully analysed in this species. The microsatellite markers will be employed in studies of reproductive success and fine-scale spatial genetic structure.
'Vettes and Lemons on Ebay

Using bid data from 8,000 new and used Chevrolet Corvettes sold on eBay, this paper empirically tests Akerlof's (1970) hypothesis that the used car market is characterized by low quality and informational problems. The hypothesis states that the used market has a higher proportion of low quality cars than the new market and buyers account for the difference by discounting their value for a used car relative to a new car. This is tested by comparing bids on new and late model used 'Vettes. The paper finds little evidence of a premium for new 'Vettes. The paper also considers a natural generalization of Akerlof's (1970) model which allows potential bidders to have different and incomplete private information about the quality of the used car. One implication is that a rational bidder will bid late in the auction in order to reduce the likelihood of other bidders observing her private information. A second implication is that a rational bidder will discount her bid in order to reduce the likelihood of winning the auction because her private information is incorrect (the winner's curse). We test the first implication by comparing bid times on new and used cars and by comparing bid times on newer and older used cars. Akerlof (1970) suggests that the quality and informational problems will be larger with used cars relative to new cars, and other empirical work suggests that quality and informational problems are larger for older used cars relative to newer used cars. Therefore, we expect to find more late bidding on used cars relative to new cars and older used cars relative to newer used cars. If anything, we find that the opposite is true for 'Vettes. To test the second implication we compare bidding on used 'Vettes for auctions with different numbers of expected bidders. Recent theory suggests that bidders facing a winner's curse problem will bid less as the number of expected potential bidders increase. Our analysis suggests bidders bid slightly more in auctions with a higher number of expected bidders. Overall, for used Chevrolet Corvettes sold on eBay there is little empirical support for the hypothesis presented in Akerlof (1970). It is not clear, however, whether these results generalize to other cars sold on eBay or cars sold in the off-line used market.
Time-Varying Skew in VIX Derivatives Pricing

This paper proposes a new reduced-form model for the pricing of VIX derivatives that includes an independent stochastic jump intensity factor and cojumps in the level and variance of VIX, while allowing the mean of VIX variance to be time varying. I fit the model to daily prices of futures and European options from April 2007 through December 2017. The empirical results indicate that the model significantly outperforms all other nested models and improves on benchmark by 21.6% in sample and 31.2% out of sample. The model more accurately portrays the tail behavior of VIX risk-neutral distribution for both short and long maturities, as it better captures the time-varying skew found to be largely independent of the level of the VIX smile. This paper was accepted by Kay Giesecke, finance.
A Project-Level Analysis of Value Creation in Firms

This paper analyzes value-creation in firms at the project level. We present evidence that managers facing short-termist incentives set a lower threshold for accepting projects. Using novel data on new client and product announcements in both the U.S. and international markets, we find that the market responds less positively to a new project announcement when the firm’s managers have incentives to focus on short-term stock price performance. Furthermore, textual analysis of project announcements show that firms with short-termist CEOs use more vague and generically positive language when introducing new projects to the marketplace.
It’s Human Capital Again: The Centrality of Higher Education in Explaining GDP per Employee

This paper analyzes the transition of countries between educational levels in the period 1970-2010 in order to assess the contribution of human capital to the increase of GDP per employee. Using a sample of 41 countries that includes both developing and developed economies, we show that the transition from primary or no schooling, to significant levels of higher education is a crucial factor in explaining growth. By using a panel cointegration framework and a simulation that quantifies the contribution of education to the increase in GDP per employee we show that escalating the educational ladder can make the difference between remaining a developing economy and becoming a developed one. According to our analysis the reform implemented by Asian Tigers, which implied a transition from primary and secondary education to tertiary education, allowed these countries to reach the level that prevails in developed economies. In terms of GDP per employee, this pattern dominates the one performed by developing countries, where educational reform was based on a transition from analphabetism or primary school to secondary education.
Competitive Strategies in Green Business - A Case Study on Aegis Logistics Ltd.

Aegis Logistics Limited was incorporated in 1956 and its shares have been listed on theBombay Stock Exchange since 1978 and traded on the National Stock Exchange. AegisGroup plays a key role in India’s downstream oil and gas sector, and its flagship company,Aegis Logistic Limited, is India’s leading oil, gas, and chemical logistics company.Competition is a basic issue for every organization. Logistic companies also facing the samepressure of competition. In order to deal with the challenging business atmosphere, allprivate organizations seek new ways of business development. For logistic companies,environmental issues are highly important. Therefore, green policies have become a strategyfor them. Competitive levels of private companies may be affected by green policies as aresult of regulations regarding environmental concerns. Logistics may improve efficiencyand effectiveness such as using reusable containers and boxes instead of the paper cartonmay reduce waste and optimize product packaging; building a green warehouse lead toreduce the overall operating cost while using the hybrid engine in trucks may reduce carbonemissions and consume less gas. In today’s highly competitive environment, green logisticsissues are gaining high attention. Since it is an important part of supply chain managementand plays an important role in the improvement of a transport system. Logistics facilitates ingetting products and services as and when they are needed and desired to the customer. Itserves as a major enabler of the growth of trade and commerce in an economy because it ishelpful in economic transactions. In this paper, we studied and analysed the competitivestrategies followed in the green business Logistics industry and how it affects the greenbusiness environment of the company by considering the case of Aegis Logistics Limited.