Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamics of Global Credit Markets

Dynamics of credit markets impact almost all participants in financial markets. Yet, despite rapidly growing international credit markets, we know little about the dynamics of global credit markets, as most studies focus on the US. Here, I propose a new distance-to-default model, empirically modified to account for geographic differences and other credit market complexities, that accurately prices credit securities in global credit markets including the US, shedding new light on the controversial credit-spread-puzzle debate. In particular, I find that the credit-spread-puzzle is not a global phenomenon. Additionally, I buttress model predictions, that excess return sensitivity, credit and equity market segmentation and the credit security payoff structure are all functions of credit securities’ credit quality themselves, with empirical evidence, providing new insights on the intricate relationship between both providers of capital, with profound implications for market practitioners, regulators and researchers alike.
Architecture of the Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis, Araucariaceae), a Unique Combination of Model and Reiteration

The Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis W.G. Jones, K.D. Hill & J.M. Allen) is shown to possess a unique architecture. The model is notdescribed by any of the 23 basic models previously described (Bell 1991), butcan be described by a modified Cook model whereby growth is rhythmic ratherthan continuous. This differs from all other extant members of Araucariaceae,which conform to the models of either Rauh or Massart. The branching andcoppicing habits can both be interpreted as adaptive reiterations. Both thearchitectural model and the two types of adaptive reiteration are advanced orautapomorphic conditions in the Wollemi pine.
Further development of a computer model for simulating pest life cycles

Modifications to the PETE computer model developed at the University of Michigan, USA are described. These include: routines to allow use of non-linear relationships between temperature and rate of development or progress of diapause, as alternatives to temperature sums; thresholds for ecdysis to mimic synchronisation observed in natural populations; adult activity levels and oviposition optionally controlled by temperature, sunshine and rainfall; calculation of day length and temperature at the time of the daily peak of adult activity; obligatory diapause; photoperiodic induction of facultative diapause and preliminary ideas on simulation of microclimate. Validation is discussed particularly in relation to simulating the life cycle of the Colorado beetle. Les modifications apportees au modele informatique PETE, mis au point a l'Universite du Michigan (USA), sont decriles. Elles comprennent: 1) des methodes pour utiliser des relations non lineaires entre la temperature et le taux de croissance ou le cours de la diapause plutot que les sommes de temperatures; 2) des seuils pour l'ecdysis entrainant une synchronisation observee dans des populations naturelles; 3) les niveaux d'activite des adultes et l'oviposition eventuellement controles par la temperature, l'ensoleillement et les precipitations; 4) le calcul de la longueur du jour et de la temperature au moment du pic journalier d'activite des adultes; 5) la diapause obligatoire; 6) l'induction photoperiodique d'une diapause facultative et des elements preliminaires sur la simulation du microclimat. La valeur du modele est discutee, en particulier dans le cas de la simulation du cycle biologique du doryphore.
Blockholder Voting

By introducing a shareholder with many votes (a blockholder) to a standard model of voting, we uncover several striking results. First, if a blockholder is unbiased, she may not vote with all of her shares. This is efficient, as it prevents her vote from drowning out the information provided by other votes. Second, if this blockholder can announce her vote before the vote takes place, other shareholders may ignore their information and vote with the blockholder to support her superior information. Third, if the blockholder is biased, some shareholders will try to counter the blockholder's vote. The results are robust to allowing for information acquisition and trade. This suggests that regulations discouraging or prohibiting abstention, strategic behavior, and/or coordination may reduce efficiency.
What Is the Expected Return on the Market?

I derive a lower bound on the equity premium in terms of a volatility index, SVIX, that can be calculated from index option prices. The bound implies that the equity premium is extremely volatile and that it rose above 20% at the height of the crisis in 2008. The time-series average of the lower bound is about 5%, suggesting that the bound may be approximately tight. I run predictive regressions and find that this hypothesis is not rejected by the data, so I use the SVIX index as a proxy for the equity premium and argue that the high equity premia available at times of stress largely reflect high expected returns over the very short run. I also provide a measure of the probability of a market crash, and introduce simple variance swaps, tradable contracts based on SVIX that are robust alternatives to variance swaps.
Adjuatment of Inputs and Measurement of Technical Efficiency: A Dynamic Panal Data Analysis of the Egyptian Maufacturing Sectors

The purpose of this paper is to construct a dynamic stochastic production frontier incorporating the sluggish adjustment of inputs, to measure the speed of adjustment of output, and to compare the technical efficiency estimates from this dynamic model to those from a static model. By assuming instantaneous adjustment of all inputs, a static model may underestimate technical efficiency of a production unit in the short-run. However, in this paper I show that under the assumption of similar adjustment speed for all inputs, a linear partial adjustment scheme for output characterizes the dynamic production frontier. The dynamic frontier with time-invariant technical efficiency is estimated using the system GMM (generalized method of moments) estimator. Applying the model and estimation method on a panel dataset spanning nine years of data on private manufacturing establishments in Egypt, I find that 1) the speed of adjustment of output is significantly lower than unity, 2) the static model underestimates technical efficiency by 4.5 percentage points on average, and 3) the ranking of production units based on their technical efficiency measures changes when the lagged adjustment process of inputs is taken into account.
Passive Aggressive Portfolio Selection with Neural Network Ensembles

In this paper, we design a new portfolio selection system named Passive Aggressive Neural Network Ensembles (PANNE). PANNE integrates an Adaboost improved BP Neural Network price pattern recognition strategy with Passive Aggressive Online Learning algorithm. In order to make the intelligent system more robust, we consider an autocorrelation filter that can be applied to initial stock screening. Within the algorithmic system, we propose 8 strategies in total to elaborate the predictive information from various facets. From intensive data experiments, the autocorrelation filtered PANNE strategy exceeds all other strategies in terms of its annual return that is more than 30% over 15 years and Sharpe Ratio 1.32. Other than this, three other strategies yield over 20% annually and all with Sharpe ratio higher than 1.0. In addition, left tail scenario and sensitivities over different variates have been thoroughly analyzed to provide better insights and interpretations regarding the strategies’ performance and persistence. As further discussed, this new comprehensive and robust PANNE portfolio selection system can be incorporated with various prevailing financial anomalies making it a highly attractive and promising tool for industrial application.
Why Civil Service Reforms do not Work

Public sector reform (PSR) efforts in developing countries have been less than successful in the past. Motivated by budgetary considerations, they have focused on downsizing and procedural changes without radically altering the outmoded incentive system, which, in many countries, is now characterised by declining real wages, wage compression, and a non-merit promotion and reward system. Using results from the incentives literature, this paper argues that, for a reform effort to succeed, public sector human resource management (HRM) will have to be reformed at an early stage to establish productivity incentives in the public sector. These will include introducing substantial autonomy to organisations in their work, incentive schemes, and HRM along the lines of the now well-accepted concept of central bank independence. Past PSR efforts have also attempted to conduct a unified reform effort led centrally by the ministry of finance. A continuous process like PSR - spread out over a considerable period and involving many different people and organisations - might need to build in decentralisation, local leadership and local incentives, and HRM. PSR must be based on the recognition that people are at the heart of public service. As a result, managing human resources must be at the centre of any effort. The people who are at the center of this change can either be its architects and beneficiaries or its losers and therefore opponents of change. Design and implementation of reforms must, therefore, be sensitive to this important fact. It is essential that the reform is led by individuals at the organisation level who understand the vision as well as process of change. Governments must empower such leadership to guide, initiate, innovate, and manage change.
Policy Document on Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Higher Quality Accredited Institutions

This specific Policy document ensures of which the teaching, learning in addition to assessment methods are upwards to the amount of typically the course and are ideal to the attainment involving objectives and intended understanding outcomes of the program and the course. The particular policy requires that school members use recent in addition to variety of teaching, mastering methods and assessment methods. Higher Quality Accredited Institutions will continue to further more improve the standard involving teaching and learning via recognition, sharing and moving of good practices to be able to inspire the learners to be able to achieve their potentials throughout a multicultural environment in addition to in turn, improve accomplishment, retention and learners pleasure.
How Smart is Smart Money? A Two-Sided Matching Model of Venture Capital

I find that companies funded by more experienced VCs are more likely to go public. This follows both from the direct influence of more experienced VCs and from sorting in the market, which leads experienced VCs to invest in better companies. Sorting creates an endogeneity problem, but a structural model based on a two-sided matching model is able to exploit the characteristics of the other agents in the market to separately identify and estimate influence and sorting. Both effects are found to be significant, with sorting almost twice as important as influence for the difference in IPO rates. Copyright 2007 by The American Finance Association.
Effects of storage time and exogenous xylanase supplementation of new season wheats on the performance of young male pigs

A series of experiments was conducted to investigate the influence of new season wheats on pig growth performance. Experiments were carried out on 10 different wheats at the time of harvest and 10 mo post-harvest. At harvest wheat, at a 65% level in the steam-pelleted diets, influenced (P < 0.01) feed intake and daily gain over a 21-d trial. Thus, feed intake and daily gain of pigs offered the lowest and highest quality wheats varied by 47 and 48%, respectively. There was, however, no effect on feed conversion ratio (FCR), even though dry matter (DM) digestibility and digestible energy (DE) values of different wheats differed significantly (P < 0.01 and P < 0.01, respectively). The non-starch carbohydrate (NSC) level of the wheats was measured as the sum of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) and free sugars. The NSC level of the wheats negatively affected feed intake (r2 = -0.556: P < 0.01) and daily gain (r2 = -0.574: P < 0.01). After 10 mo of storage, the feed intake and daily gain of the pigs fed the sam.
Factors Influencing Store Selection for Supply with Fast-Moving Consumer Goods

The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion on factors that influence store selection for supply with fast-moving consumer goods. We have surveyed 90 households in the Republic of Kosovo. We have decided to undertake this research seeing in one hand ‘competitive struggle’ which is being developed among the largest retail chains of fast-moving consumer goods, and, on the other hand, the created ‘situation’ for traditional stores as a result of the expansion of these retailers. This study also aims to highlight factors that consumers consider in order to improve the performance of these businesses. We have proposed that the opening of hypermarkets in Kosovo has affected negatively on traditional stores’ turnover. We have also proposed that the most influential factors in customers in the selection of stores where they will be supplied with fast-moving consumer goods are the rich store offering, good customer service and good staff behaviour. We have also proposed that the factors affecting the selection of hypermarket/store for supplying are closely related to the factors that affect customer dissatisfaction that leads to the change of hypermarket/store. The results of this empirical study are consistent with the hypothesis set out in the paper.
Path Data in Marketing: An Integrative Framework and Prospectus for Model-Building

Many datasets, from different and seemingly unrelated marketing domains, all involve "paths" - records of consumers' movements in a spatial configuration. Path data contain valuable information for marketing researchers because they describe how consumers interact with their environment and make dynamic choices. As data collection technologies improve and researchers continue to ask deeper questions about consumers' motivations and behaviors, path datasets will become more common, and play a more central role in marketing research. To guide future research in this area, we review the previous literature, propose a formal definition of paths, and derive a unifying framework that allows us to classify different kinds of paths. We identify and discuss two primary dimensions (characteristics of the spatial configuration and the agent) as well as six underlying sub-dimensions. Based on this framework, we cover a range of important operational issues that should be taken into account as researchers begin to build formal models of path-related phenomena. We close with a brief look into the future of path-based models, and a call for researchers to address some of these emerging issues.
Modelling Energy Spot Prices by Volatility Modulated Lévy-Driven Volterra Processes

This paper introduces the class of volatility modulated Lévy-driven Volterra (VMLV) processes and their important subclass of Lévy semistationary (LSS) processes as a new framework for modelling energy spot prices. The main modelling idea consists of four principles: First, deseasonalised spot prices can be modelled directly in stationarity. Second, stochastic volatility is regarded as a key factor for modelling energy spot prices. Third, the model allows for the possibility of jumps and extreme spikes and, lastly, it features great flexibility in terms of modelling the autocorrelation structure and the Samuelson effect. We provide a detailed analysis of the probabilistic properties of VMLV processes and show how they can capture many stylised facts of energy markets. Further, we derive forward prices based on our new spot price models and discuss option pricing. An empirical example based on electricity spot prices from the European Energy Exchange confirms the practical relevance of our new modelling framework.
Do Individual Investors Understand How Social Media Advice Influences Their Investment Decisions?

Individual investors increasingly rely on investment advice from social media platforms. Even advice with little, if any, predictive value appears to influence investor decisions. Our study reports the results of two experiments that help explain why investors rely on such advice. We find that some investors rely on advice with low predictive value because they believe that the advice is informative. However, other investors who rely on the advice are unaware of its influence on their investment decisions. Specifically, we find that sentiment-only social media advice influences investment decisions even among investors who believe that the advice should not and does not affect their decisions. Further, we find that investors rely equally on advice that conveys only sentiment and advice that conveys information about firm fundamentals, despite these same investors indicating that they should and did rely more on fundamentals-related advice. Our research suggests that regulators’ approach of asking investors to evaluate the credibility of the source is inadequate. To avoid being influenced by low quality information, investors need to avoid it entirely.
Marker-assisted backcrossing for simultaneous introgression of two genes

Marker-assisted selection is used to accelerate recovery of the recurrent parent genome (RPG) in backcross programs. Our objectives were to compare various selection strategies and breeding plans for the simultaneous introgression of two genes with respect to the RPG recovered and the number of marker data points (MDP) required. Computer simulations were performed with a published genetic map in maize (Zea mays L.) consisting of 80 markers and assuming selection for dominant target genes on the basis of phenotypic evaluation. For unlinked as well as for linked target genes, a shortening of the backcross program from six to three generations resulted from applying marker-assisted background selection. In breeding programs with three backcross generations, the least MDP were required when (i) applying selection strategies consisting of three or four selection steps on the basis of presence of the target genes and selection indices calculated from the marker genotype, (ii) increasing the population size from early to advanced generations, and (iii) merging the target genes in an early generation. These principles can be used for optimizing the design of marker-assisted backcross programs for the simultaneous introgression of two genes.
Can Forward Guidance Influence Market Expectations? - Text Mining Approach

The forward guidance provided by central banks is regarded as an essential new monetary policy tool which influences market expectations under the recent low interest rates. This research investigates whether U.S. forward guidance shapes market expectations by using the assets’ price formation after the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings. The forward guidance is communicated to market participants and released on the official Federal Reserve Board (FRB) website through textual data or the press conferences by Chair of the FRB. Therefore, when we evaluate the forward guidance, we apply the text mining framework which is developing rapidly. In this paper, we evaluate the statements and minutes that the FRB released after the FOMC meetings, using an improved version of the text mining model based on previous researches, such as Hansen and McMahon(2016) and Jagadeesh and Wu(2015). As a result of this improvement, the model which is designed specifically for FOMC analysis has a higher explanatory power to the macroeconomic statistics. Next, we investigate the relationship between the forward guidance evaluated by our text mining model and the assets’ price formation based on Schmeling and Wagner(2016). We show the forward guidance influences the assets’ price formation (market expectation), in agreement with the transmission mechanism of the forward guidance shown in the previous studies. Especially, the forward guidance on employment and inflation that is so important as to be called dual mandate in monetary policy in the United States has been found to have a significant influence on investors’ behavior.
Molecular species boundaries in the phreatoicidean genus Amphisopus (Isopoda : Amphisopidae) and evidence for a new freshwater isopod species from Western Australia

Abstract. The freshwater isopod genus Amphisopus is one of only two phreatoicidean genera in Western Australia with wide distributions and containing multiple described species. Two species (Amphisopus annectans and A. lintoni) are known from the south-western part of the state. With recent sampling extending the known range of Amphisopus and the recorded possibility of an undescribed species, this study aimed to examine genetic species boundaries and to detect additional species diversity. Isopods were sampled from across the range, and genetic structure was examined using mtDNA sequence data from a COI fragment and data from ten polymorphic allozyme loci. While allozyme data supported the clear separation of the known species, phylogenetic analyses presented three divergent monophyletic, geographically restricted clades occurring in the western, eastern and central parts of the Amphisopus distribution. These corresponded to A. annectans, A. lintoni and an undescribed species, respectively. The latter’s status was supported by its phylogenetic position relative to the known species and by the extent of differentiation observed among other phreatoicidean taxa. As with other taxa from the region, divergence times among these three species supported aridity in the Miocene–Pliocene as a driver of diversification, and suggested the existence of wetter refugial areas in south-western Australia.
The Asymmetric Impact of Investor Sentiment on Commodities Returns and Volatility

We investigate the effects of investor sentiment on returns and volatility of eight different commodities. Our findings suggest that sentiment has a predictive power on return and volatility of the commodities. Fundamentally, commodities return and volatility are positively associated with the sentiment. Furthermore, the empirical evidence suggests that the sentiment has a significant asymmetrical impact on volatilities such that negative sentiment has a significantly greater impact on volatility than does positive sentiment.
Do Board Interlocks Increase Innovation? Evidence from a Corporate Governance Reform in India

We examine the effect of board interlocks on patenting and R&D spending for publicly traded companies in India. We exploit a corporate governance reform to address the endogeneity of board interlocks through exogenous changes mandated by the reform requiring a subset of firms to adjust their board structure. We rely on two difference-in-differences frameworks, comparing firms affected by the reform to unaffected firms as well as comparing within the set of firms that did not have to adjust their board structure those that still experienced an exogenous increase of their network size as a result of the reform to those that did not experience a change in their network size. We find that board interlocks have significant positive effects on both R&D and patenting. The evidence suggests that the impact on R&D is induced by information transmission through interlocks. The effect on patenting is driven by firms extending patent protection by patenting inventions abroad that they have already patented in India.