Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Competitive Priorities on the Operations Performance of Sugar Manufacturing Firms in Kenya

The stiff competition in Kenya’s sugar sector is competing away industry profits. As a result, these sugar firms find themselves in debts and losing money. To explore the critical factors of these sugar manufacturing firms, the study sought to assess the effect of competitive priorities on their operations performance. The specific objectives were to: assess the effect of cost on the performance; to explore the effect of delivery on the performance; determine the effect of flexibility on the performance; and to assess the effect of quality on the performance of sugar manufacturing firms in Kenya. The study hypotheses were statistically tested at α = 0.05. The study was hinged on both Strategic Contingency Theory as well as RBV, and adopted both descriptive survey and experimental research designs anchored on realism ontology, and used both quantitative and qualitative approach. The unit of analysis was sugar manufacturing plant, and targeted all the 12 licensed sugar manufacturing firms in Kenya. The respondents were sought through both purposive and simple random sampling strategies, and a sample of 165 respondents was generated. Structured questionnaires and semi-structured interview schedule were the main tools to collect primary data. A pilot study was done to test the validity and reliability of the survey tools. Data was processed and analyzed both descriptively and inferentially using Microsoft Excel 2010 and SPSS version 21. EFA, correlation analysis and regression analysis, correlation analysis were equally used, while qualitative data analysis was done through expert judgment, scenario mapping and critical thinking, presented using frequency distribution tables. The overall study results revealed that competitive priorities have a significant effect on performance. Based on the findings, the study concluded that the management of these sugar firms needs to identify appropriate critical factors on which to compete.
Using Structure Equation Model for Evaluating the Impact of Activity Based Costing towards Strategic Management Innovation and Performance of Firms in Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand

The purposes of this research are (1) investigating the impact of activity-based costing toward strategic management innovation, (2) investigating the impact of strategic management in contributing to competitive advantages, and (3) investigating the impact of competitive advantages toward firm performance. The data were collected from firms in industrial estate authority of Thailand, composed of 53 industrial estates, for a total of 4,969 firms. 2,064 questionnaires were returned to be analyzed and described with descriptive statistics. The outcome of structure equation model, which was used to test the hypothesis, appeared to go accordingly with the empirical data. It appears that the impact activity-based costing contributes positively toward strategic management in the area of planning reliability, motivating effectiveness, and directing and quality controlling improvement (β = 0.82, p&lt;0.01; β = 0.76, p&lt;0.05; β = 0.58, p&lt;0.05, respectively). In addition, these 3 areas of strategic management influences positively toward competitive advantages (β = 0.67, p&lt;0.01; β = 0.63, p&lt;0.01; β = 0.71, p&lt;0.05, respectively). Moreover, the competitive advantages also give out positive influence toward firm performance (β = 0.86, p&lt;0.01). These findings could contribute greatly as an empirical data for firms as an importance of activity-based costing in competitive advantage and firm performance through strategic management innovation.
The Macroeconomic Determinants of Economic Growth in Uganda (1990–2019)

The study was based on Macroeconomic Determinants of Economic Growth in Uganda using cointegration approach. The researcher used statistical software of Eviews 11 student version for the analysis of the macroeconomic variables affecting Uganda’s economic growth. The main objective of this study was to examine the major macroeconomic determinants of economic growth in Uganda between the periods 1990 and 2019 applying the Johansen method of cointegration. All the variables are integrated at first order except real effective exchange rate as a result the Johansen's cointegration approach was used. The study found out that foreign direct investment (% of GDP), inflation (consumer prices) and real interest rate had a positive effect on growth in real gross domestic product per capita while real effective exchange rate has a negative effect on per capita growth in gross domestic product. In the long run, real effective exchange rate and real interest rate are the significant determinants of growth in real gross domestic product per capita in Uganda. In the short run, inflation (consumer prices) and real interest rate turned to be statistically significant determinants of growth in real gross domestic product per capita. Based on the findings, the following policy recommendations are made:<br><br>The Bank of Uganda should make use of monetary policy to stimulate the economy through increased aggregate demand due to the positive relationship between inflation and gross domestic product per capita growth. Since there is a positive relationship between FDI and gross domestic product per capita growth, it is therefore recommendable that the government of Uganda continues to attract more international capital inflow through trade liberalization if it is to achieve its growth target of 8 percent growth rate per annum. However the most important policy implication from the findings of negative relationship between economic growth and exchange rate indicates that there is a need for exchange rate policy framework that compliments the existing inflation targeting regime in Uganda. Instead of completely liberalizing the exchange rate in the framework of inflation targeting strategy adopted, policymakers in Uganda have to prevent the upside movements in the exchange rate by taking into consideration its negative effect on economic growth.
Product of return and lagged shock, representativeness, dynamic overconfidence and return predictability

Motivated by the representativeness heuristic and dynamic overconfidence, we introduce a new proxy (product of return and lagged shock) for return predictability. We further propose a novel time-varying parameter moving average (MA) model, where time-varying MA coefficient is a linear function of past values of the standardized proxy. For monthly S&amp;P 500 stock returns, the proposed model significantly improves out-of-sample predictability, indicating that the proxy is helpful for return predictability. Our forecast also outperforms most of 14 traditional predictors in Welch and Goyal (2008). More importantly, we find that the proxy has a significant positive effect on time-varying MA coefficient, providing empirical evidence for the representativeness in aggregate stock market. Finally, the proxy with two positive shocks (good outcomes) has a much stronger positive effect on MA coefficient than that of two negative or opposite outcomes. Thus, the investors give a higher weight on the lagged shock in face of the proxy with two good outcomes, indicating the dynamic overconfidence (Daniel and Hirshleifer, 2015).
Equity Factor Timing With Kalman Filter

Extensive research literature has shown that equity factor premia is not constant over time. With the broad adoption of factor investing among active managers, to generate differentiated market views and returns, factor or style timing remains as one attractive means. We present an adaptive linear factor model to capture time-varying factor risk premia and discuss its application in equity portfolio investment. The model framework that allows time-varying factor returns can potentially capture more returns and allows an investor to understand the changes in cross-sectional factor returns. We estimate model coefficients through a Kalman filter model and discuss the results with an empirical example.
How Information Structure Impacts Aggregation of Information in Markets

We study information aggregation in financial markets. We introduce two new stability concepts: absolute stability (sensitivity of rational expectations equilibrium prices to signals (bits) that are lost or garbled), and relative stability (the difference between prices in the rational expectations and the corresponding private-information equilibria). The concepts are applied to two canonical settings of information aggregation, namely: (i) winner-take-all contracts, where a binary payment depends on the signals held by the majority of the agents; (ii) assets whose payoffs depend on the average of the signals across the agents. The former is unstable under both concepts, and hence, would lead rational agents to doubt the reliability of prices. The latter is robust, and hence, prices aggregate information more reliably. Experiments, designed to avoid any effect of risk attitudes, confirm the predictions. Through second-price auctions, we observe how participants trust prices less in the winner-take-all setting. Our findings have important implications for the design of prediction markets, for historical evidence on the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, and for recent experimental work on information aggregation.
Cultural Diversity in the Boardroom and Corporate Social Performance

We examine the impact of cultural diversity in corporate boards on a firm’s corporate social performance. Using a novel approach to identify a director’s cultural roots based on ancestry, we estimate the degree of cultural diversity at the board level. We find that board cultural diversity is positively associated with corporate social performance, consistent with the view that board cultural diversity enhances a firm’s ability to satisfy the needs of broader groups of stakeholders. The results are robust to addressing endogeneity concerns and the use of different culture frameworks. The positive relation between board cultural diversity and corporate social performance is particularly strong for firms that have higher needs for stakeholder management (i.e. firms that operate in industries with high visibility to consumers and in highly competitive industries) and for firms that have boards with strong positive diversity beliefs (captured using the board’s gender diversity, age diversity and independence).
Equal Tax for Equal Alcohol? Beverage Types and Antisocial and Unlawful Behaviours

Alcohol taxation is an important policy instrument for correcting for market failures associated with excessive alcohol consumption. This paper examines the beverage-specific negative externalities by providing empirical evidence linking ten alcohol beverage types to drink driving and hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviours when intoxicated, using data from six waves of an Australian recreational drug survey. We find regular strength beer and pre-mixed spirits in a can rank the highest in their links to negative behaviours, followed by mid-strength beer, cask wine, and bottled spirits. Conversely, drinking low strength beer or fortified wine reduces the probability for these risky and unlawful behaviours. Bottled wine is shown to be associated with an elevated chance for drink driving but a reduced chance for other negative behaviours. In contrast to the existing volumetric tax rates for per litre of alcohol, of all harmful beverage types, cask wine appears to be significantly under-taxed relative to its external costs to the society. We also note regular and mid strength beer are comparable to pre-mixed drinks in terms of external costs, and yet there is a significant disparity across their tax rates.
Factors Influencing the Use of the Balanced Scorecard: Evidence from a Regional Context

The balanced scorecard (BSC) has received considerable attention, by companies and researchers, for its potentiality in mitigating the limitations of traditional management accounting tools and supporting the strategic management. Despite this interest, there is still little empirical evidence on the levels of BSC implementation and on the contextual factors influencing it. This study explores whether company size and type of industry affect the BSC use. A survey was conducted in a highly productive region, the Northeast Italy, and a quantitative analysis was carried out to assess the statistically significance of the association between size or industry and the BSC use. The results confirm prior studies showing that the BSC use is biased towards larger companies. However, this holds in every industry except in the manufacturing, where also small firms are prone to adopt it. A qualitative analysis integrates these results, highlighting possible motivations of the BSC use (or non-use).
Macroeconomic and Financial Market Analyses and Predictions Through Deep Learning

Since Hinton, Osindero, and Teh (2006) developed the fast learning algorithm, deep learning has been a set of powerful tools that has recently achieved impressive performance across a wide spectrum of industries as well as in academia. For the macroeconomic and financial variables, however, more elaborate approaches need to be taken due to the unique latent features of them. In this regards, we propose novel approaches to apply deep learning to the predictions of time series variables in those fields. Specifically, we suggest ensembles of neural networks and Bayesian learning to estimate the posterior distributions of the forecasting outcomes as the out-of-sample forecasts. Examples are provided with predictions of monthly custom clearance exports from Korea and daily Korean won-US dollar exchange rates. The prediction results show that deep learning approaches are prevail even with non-granular data sets which normally used for the conventional econometric models.
The Effects of Human Resource Practices on Organizational Commitment: A Case of Pakistan Tobacoo Industry

The research investigates the relationship between human resource management and organizational commitment in Pakistan Tobacco Industry. The data was collected with the help of questionnaire which was distributed to the respondents. The results were then analyzed with the help of Pearson correlation test. The test showed that all the variables in the study namely, training, teamwork and rewards has been positively affecting the dependent variable organizational commitment. A total of 80 questionnaires was taken into the study. In the end it was found out that human resource practices are a key area for tobacco industry to be successful in the long running of the business.
Exploring Relationship Between Personality, Creativity and Entrepreneurship: Empirical Evidence From an Agricultural Students Survey in Taiwan

The scarcity of young farmers is a severe structural problem encountered in small- scale agricultural countries. How to encourage agricultural students entering into farming career is becoming a political priority for agricultural policy. Previous studies suggested that a proactive entrepreneurship is regarded as an important driver for business expansion in rural areas. Agriculture-related social enterprises are seen as a crucial solution to the challenges faced and have gradually become part of mainstream business in rural areas. However, there is limited research available on individual traits and factors that affect students’ intentions to set-up agri-business with the pursuit of a social and/or environmental contribution. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of personality traits and creativity factors of university students on their social entrepreneurship. A survey was designed to measure social entrepreneurial intentions as dependent variable as well as personality traits and creative ability as explanatory variables. A face-to-face interview was conducted and targeted the students in two national universities and followed a systematic sampling scheme, during October and November 2017. A total of 585 respondents were obtained. A structural equation modelling was used to examine causal relationships among latent variables. The results show that social entrepreneurship is positively influenced by personality traits of agricultural students directly. However, creative ability does not have a direct impact on entrepreneurial intentions significantly. Our results reveal that the creativity is mediated by personality traits and affects social entrepreneurship intention indirectly. This study contributes to a better understanding of structural relationship between personality, creativity and social entrepreneurship by developing and testing a structure model. The main policy implication of this study can be inferred. In addition to professional creativity courses, we suggest that educators and policy makers with respect to entrepreneurship education need to pay more attention on the general education courses related to personality re-shaping. To enhance extraversion, emotional stability and openness of personality traits may serve agricultural students better to engage in social entrepreneurship after their graduation.
Banking Supervision and Risk-Adjusted Performance in the Host Country Environment

We study the effect of the banking supervision in institutional settings of foreign-bank dominated financial systems of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in post-crisis period 2012-2018. For a dataset of 450 banks from 20 economies of the region, we use a mediation-moderation analysis framework to establish a relationship between regulatory scrutiny, supervisory activities and a bank risk-adjusted economic performance. We find that a higher intensity of supervision monitoring activities, especially by the centralized form of supervision, contributes to the decline of the bank's riskiness in case of larger size banks while not affecting their economic performance. The regulatory power and capital regulation stringency indicate a positive effect on the risk-adjusted performance for capital constrained banks, but moderately decrease the economic benefit for larger banks. In light of the ongoing debate on the architecture of supervision in the region, the findings highlight the potential area of attention for regulators and policymakers and thus, contribute to the designing of effective supervision mechanism.
Repairing Trust Between Individuals and Groups: The Effectiveness of Apologies in Interpersonal and Intergroup Contexts

Transgressions and injustice are an inevitable part of social life, both in interactions between individuals and between groups. But whereas conflict between individuals typically impacts only few, conflict between groups can be harmful to many – as is illustrated by disputes between nations, political parties, and social groups. For this reason, it is crucial to understand how such transgressions can be restored. In interpersonal contexts, there is considerable evidence that apologies can restore transgressions and enable victims and perpetrators to reconcile. It is unknown, however, to what extent their remedial effectiveness may translate to conflicts between groups. The present research illuminates this question. In an experimental study (N = 272), we compared the effectiveness of apologies for restoring trust after transgressions between individuals or groups. Results revealed that both in interpersonal and intergroup contexts, apologies significantly increased trust. However, their impact was greater in interpersonal interactions (where they fully restored trust to its pre-transgression level) than in intergroup interactions (where they failed to fully restore trust). Furthermore, the effectiveness of apologies was shaped by their emotional content. In disputes between individuals, only apologies with secondary emotions fully restored trust. Conversely, in disputes between groups, neither apologies with primary emotions nor those with secondary emotions fully restored trust. This was explained by greater skepticism of apologies in intergroup contexts, particularly of apologies with secondary emotions. These findings underline that intergroup interactions are more competitive and distrusting than interpersonal interactions, and suggest that more extensive remedies may be required to reduce intergroup tensions.
Is Trading Indicator Performance Robust? Evidence from Scenario Building

This paper challenges widely applied trading indicators with regard to their ability to generate a robust performance. In this study, we use a semiparametric scenario building approach to simulate artificial price series based on characteristics of the observed price. In addition to testing the trading indicators on the observed price series and holding back some observed data for proforma out-of-sample testing, our price simulations provide a back testing environment to test trading strategies on artificially created prices. This provides an additional performance assessment by allowing us to test the trading indicators for robustness on a large set of artificially created price series with similar characteristics to the observed price series. We ﬁnd that many trading indicators deliver robust results for certain performance metrics but are unable to deliver robust results and improvements across all reported performance metrics. In addition, most trading strategies inﬂuence the statistical moments of the return distribution. While they improve the skewness – and thereby increase the number of positive returns – in most cases, they also increase the kurtosis, introducing undesired additional observations in the tails of the return distributions. <br>
Reexamining the Relation Between Audit and Non-Audit Fees: Dealing with Weak Instruments in Two-Stage Least Squares Estimation

We introduce some new econometric tests and techniques for identifying and overcoming the problem of weak instruments in the context of joint provision of audit and non-audit fees. We use this context because identifying appropriate instruments is difficult due to the lack of theoretical guidance as well as the difficulty in intuitively identifying instruments that satisfy the econometric requirements. We introduce a battery of empirical tests based on recent developments in econometrics to test for the appropriateness of the instruments. We then illustrate two approaches of using instruments from existing data: the size-industry average portfolio approach and the synthetic instrument approach. While the approach using synthetic instruments side-steps issues of identifying proxies with desirable properties, it requires some stringent assumptions that cannot be directly tested. However, as a methodological alternative, this approach can be used for robustness tests. We find that when the instruments are not weak, audit and non-audit fees are positively associated. This relationship holds for audit and tax-related non-audit fees as well. Overall, the evidence suggests the existence of economies of scope benefits from the joint supply of audit and non-audit services. Methodologically, we illustrate the importance of testing the appropriateness of the instruments utilized when accounting for endogeneity.