Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intergenerational transfers and social class: Inter-vivos transfers as means of status reproduction?*

Research on social stratification and the transmission of inequality has largely disregarded the role of inter-vivos transfers to adult children. At the same time, the role of social class has been neglected in the literature on intergenerational transfers. In an attempt to link the two research strands, the article assesses the association between occupational social class and parental transfer behaviour. Estimation results from a tobit censored regression model on the basis of data from SHARE show substantial class differences in financial transfers. Existing theories on intergenerational transfers are largely unable to account for this finding. Even after income and wealth are controlled for, service-class parents transfer more resources to their adult children than do working-class parents. We explain the observed class effects in parental transfer behaviour by rethinking inter-vivos transfers as a means of status reproduction.
Robustly Ranking Mechanisms

For a mechanism designer with an objective such as welfare we propose a method for robustly ranking mechanisms. The method is based on eliminating weakly dominated strategies only, and thus does not require any assumptions about agents' beliefs about each other except full support. We illustrate the usefulness of this method in two examples: bilateral trading and voting. In both examples we show that there are mechanisms that are ranked by our method above dominant strategy mechanisms. These examples question the literature's focus on dominant strategy mechanisms in cases when such mechanisms yield undesirable outcomes.
Globalisation, Pass-Through and the Optimal Policy Response to Exchange Rates

In this paper we examine how monetary policy should respond to nominal exchange rates in a New Keynesian open economy model that allows for a non-trivial role for sterilised intervention. The paper develops the argument against the backdrop of the evolving policy-making environment of Asian economies. Sterilised intervention can be a potent tool that offers policymakers an additional degree of freedom in maximising global welfare. We show that the gains to sterilised intervention are greater when goods market integration is low and exchange rate pass-through is high. However, increased financial internationalisation reduces the effectiveness of sterilised intervention, as the international policy trilemma becomes more relevant. Unsterilised intervention may also have a role to play, although the potential welfare gains from this are generally smaller. Most central banks in Asia have actively used sterilised foreign exchange intervention as a policy tool to smooth exchange rates. But, over time, declining exchange rate pass-through and the increasing international integration of financial and goods markets will tend to reduce the efficacy of sterilised intervention. Given the limited effectiveness of unsterilised intervention, our model implies that the role of exchange rate movements in the optimal setting of monetary policy in Asia is decreasing.
Econ 8747: Industrial Organization Theory Fall 2010

Course Description: Industrial organization studies the functioning of markets. It is concerned with business behavior and strategy, as well as their implications for economic efficiency. It also studies the role of public policies in promoting efficiency. The course will cover selected topics in industrial organization theory. Recommended textbooks include: (1) The Theory of Industrial Organization by Jean Tirole, MIT Press, and (2) Industrial Organization: Contemporary Theory and Practice by Pepall, Richards, and Norman, 4 edition. A good source for references is the Handbook of Industrial Organization, Vol. 1, 2, and 3. HIO3 (2007, Mark Armstrong and Robert Porter edits) surveys the major developments in IO since Tirole.
Familia: unifying interfaces, type classes, and family polymorphism

Parametric polymorphism and inheritance are both important, extensively explored language mechanisms for providing code reuse and extensibility. But harmoniously integrating these apparently distinct mechanisms—and powerful recent forms of them, including type classes and family polymorphism—in a single language remains an elusive goal. In this paper, we show that a deep unification can be achieved by generalizing the semantics of interfaces and classes. The payoff is a significant increase in expressive power with little increase in programmer-visible complexity. Salient features of the new programming language include retroactive constraint modeling, underpinning both object-oriented programming and generic programming, and module-level inheritance with further-binding, allowing family polymorphism to be deployed at large scale. The resulting mechanism is syntactically light, and the more advanced features are transparent to the novice programmer. We describe the design of a programming language that incorporates this mechanism; using a core calculus, we show that the type system is sound. We demonstrate that this language is highly expressive by illustrating how to use it to implement highly extensible software and by showing that it can not only concisely model state-of-the-art features for code reuse, but also go beyond them.
Advertising as Information: Matching Products to Buyers

We consider communication of quality via cheap talk and dissipative advertising expenditures, when consumers have heterogeneous tastes for quality, and price information must be acquired through costly search. For search goods, cheap talk communicates quality when fixed costs are roughly constant across quality levels, while if fixed costs vary greatly with quality, then firms having the higher fixed-cost quality level use dissipative advertising. For experience goods, quality can be communicated by cheap talk in a range where low-quality firms have greater fixed costs, and low-quality firms use dissipative advertising if their fixed costs are greater still. Copyright 1993 by MIT Press.
Costly Adjustment under Rational Expectations: A Generalization

This note provides a generalization of the standard adjustment cost-rational expectations model due to Sargent (1978), which, in addition to the cost of changing the level of the decision variable, also allows for the cost of altering the "speed" with which decisions are changed. It establishes the existence of a unique stable solution for this more general model, derives an explicit solution for the underlying decision problem, and provides a necessary order condition for identification of the structural parameters. The note also contains an application of the model to the determination of employment in the U.K. coal industry over the 1956-83 period. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.
A scheme for preventing denial of service attacks on wireless sensor networks

The rapid consumer adoption of high-speed internet connections has lead to the unprecedented interconnection of home networks. Consequently, the number of domestic home automation networks offering internet connectivity has increased. These home automation networks are increasingly comprised of resource limited wireless sensor networks (WSN). This creates the potential for malicious users from across the internet to attack these resource-limited WSN. One such threat is that of a denial of service (DoS) attack. Due to the resource-limited nature of WSN, a DoS attack may disrupt communications on the WSN or block remote access to the WSN. The existing DoS defence approaches are generic approaches aimed at processing and filtering all internet traffic to remove suspected DoS attack traffic. However, these approaches are not capable of filtering out all attack traffic, instead a small amount of attack traffic reaches the attackers intended victim. This small level of attack traffic poses a significant threat to the limited resources of WSN. This paper reviews the design and implementation of a novel defence strategy designed to work alongside existing DoS counter measures to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings.
Towards an autonomous flying robot for inspections in open and constrained spaces

A Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) capable of navigating in outdoor environments by means of proprioceptive data fusion techniques as well as in indoor and particularly in constrained spaces is here presented. The aim of this system is to inspect failures or procedures correctness inside dangerous areas where human presence should be avoided for long or short time periods. This solution has been oriented toward the specific context of visual inspection of industrial area and it has been tested in a laboratory testbed. In this paper we present hardware and software development of a MAV that can reliably navigate both in outdoor and indoor scenarios making it possible to autonomously change the working location.
Interaction between Interferon Consensus Sequence-binding Protein and COP9/Signalosome Subunit CSN2 (Trip15)

Interferon consensus sequence-binding protein (ICSBP) is a member of the interferon regulatory factors (IRF) that has a pivotal role in mediating resistance to pathogenic infections in mice and in promoting the differentiation of myeloid cells. ICSBP exerts some of its transcriptional activities via association with other factors that enable its binding to a variety of promoters containing DNA composite elements. These interactions are mediated through a specific COOH-terminal domain termed IAD (IRF association domain). To gain a broader insight of the capacity of ICSBP to interact with other factors, yeast two-hybrid screens were performed using ICSBP-IAD as a bait against a B-cell cDNA library. Trip15 was identified as a specific interacting factor with ICSBP in yeast cells, which was also confirmed by in vitro glutathioneS-transferase pull-down assays and by coimmunoprecipitation studies in COS7 cells. Trip15 was recently identified as a component of the COP9/signalosome (CSN) complex composed of eight evolutionary conserved subunits and thus termed CSN2. This complex has a role in cell-signaling processes, which is manifested by its associated novel kinase activity and by the involvement of its subunits in regulating multiple cell-signaling pathways and cell-cycle progression. We show that in vitroassociation of ICSBP with the CSN leads to phosphorylation of ICSBP at a unique serine residue within its IAD. The phosphorylated residue is essential for efficient association with IRF-1 and thus for the repressor activity of ICSBP exerted on IRF-1. This suggests that the CSN has a role in integrating incoming signals that affect the transcriptional activity of ICSBP.
Using a dedicated lung-marker system for localization of pulmonary nodules before thoracoscopic surgery.

OBJECTIVE Our aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of a commercially available dedicated lung-marker system for localization of pulmonary nodules before video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Guidewires were positioned under CT fluoroscopy guidance in 16 patients (11 men, five women; age range, 39-79 years; mean age, 60.4 years). We measured the size of the targeted nodule, its distance to the closest pleural surface, the angle between the introducer needle and the chest wall, and the time for performance of the procedure in each patient. Note was made of any complications after guidewire placement. RESULTS In the 16 patients, the average nodule size was 6.7 mm (range, 3-12 mm), the average distance to the pleural surface was 10.6 mm (range, 3-22 mm), and the average pleural puncture angle was 59 degrees (range, 25-78 degrees). The marking procedure was completed within an average of 9.5 min (range, 7-15 min). Small pneumothoraces occurred in five (31.3%) of 16 patients. In 15 (93.8%) of 16 patients, thoracoscopic resection of the targeted nodule was successful; in one patient with dyspnea (6.3%), inaccurate localization resulting in an open thoracotomy occurred because an intervening fissure was not visualized. Dislodgement of the guidewire into the pleural space occurred in one patient (6.3%). CONCLUSION The dedicated lung-marker system is a fast and effective method for localization of pulmonary nodules before thoracoscopic resection.
A novel algorithm based on fractal texture analysis to classifyplant species in forest eco-system

Plants are one of the most fundamental and important species on earth. Forest eco-system has been an important source of various economically and socially significant plant species which are very difficult to be properly detected and identified. An automated image based species identification technique will be highly helpful, since it is a tedious job to collect and identify the samples manually in dense forests. In this study, we implement aaccuracy under normal conditions. However, keeping in mind the various natural and non-natural hindrances and noises, this study also dealt with the analysis of influence of those factors. The factors like fogginess of the surrounding, brightness of the picture and resolution of the camera used to take the picture did not have much influence on the % accuracy of the results. These factors affected the accuracy only at extreme ranges, whereas, the other tested factors like salt and pepper noise and digital zooming would influence the accuracy in a specific level even under a narrow range. On the whole, this method proved to be highly selectable for species identification of plants in forest eco-system than any other image processing method in practice fractal texture analysis using multi-level decomposition for identification of leaf species. Fresh leaves of 9 different dominative species of South Indian forests have been considered for study. The various images of the leaf samples of these plants were analyzed using a novel improved algorithm based on fractal texture analysis. The results showed that all the plants were identified with 98%.
Detection and risk assessment of adenoviruses in swimming pool water

Aims: The role of swimming pool water as a source of human adenovirus (HAd) infection has previously been demonstrated. In this study, the risk of infection of HAds detected in a survey of swimming pool water from two indoor and one outdoor swimming pools over a period of 1 year was assessed.
Severity versus Frequency of Acts of Terrorism: Which Has a Larger Impact on Tourism Demand?

The results of a study conducted on the impact of acts of terrorism on tourism demand in Israel during the period of May 1991 to May 2001 confirmed the hypothesis that the frequency of acts of terrorism had caused a larger decline in international tourist arrivals than the severity of these acts. The implications of this study are that in cases similar to Israel, tourist destinations can recover from even severe acts of terrorism, as long as the terrorist acts are not repeated. However, when acts of terrorism—whether of high or low severity—occur at high frequency and regular intervals, tourism demand will constantly decrease, and eventually the destination’s tourism industry will come to a standstill.
Are Local and Organic Claims Complements or Substitutes? A Consumer Preferences Study for Eggs

type="main" xml:id="jage12036-abs-0001"> This paper provides an analysis of consumer preferences for product claims, specifically about origin and production methods. In particular, it addresses two important questions: i) whether consumers are willing to pay a premium for food products carrying these claims; and ii) whether local and organic claims are complements or substitutes. A choice experiment designed to estimate two-way interactions was undertaken in Spain for eggs. The findings show first, that consumers are willing to pay a positive premium price for an enhanced method of production (that of barn, free-range and/or organic instead of cage produced eggs) as well as for the proximity of production (local, regional and national over imported). Second, the findings show that consumer preferences for the claims are heterogeneous with two consumer segments being identified: “origin preference”, the larger segment, and the “production method preference”. Results show that organic and local claims were complements for the larger first segment but that free-range and local/regional claims were substitutes for the second smaller segment. These results provide the marketing chains with insights applicable for pricing strategies.
Applying dynamic data collection to improve dry electrode system performance for a P300-based brain–computer interface

Objective. Dry electrodes have an advantage over gel-based ‘wet’ electrodes by providing quicker set-up time for electroencephalography recording; however, the potentially poorer contact can result in noisier recordings. We examine the impact that this may have on brain–computer interface communication and potential approaches for mitigation. Approach. We present a performance comparison of wet and dry electrodes for use with the P300 speller system in both healthy participants and participants with communication disabilities (ALS and PLS), and investigate the potential for a data-driven dynamic data collection algorithm to compensate for the lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in dry systems. Main results. Performance results from sixteen healthy participants obtained in the standard static data collection environment demonstrate a substantial loss in accuracy with the dry system. Using a dynamic stopping algorithm, performance may have been improved by collecting more data in the dry system for ten healthy participants and eight participants with communication disabilities; however, the algorithm did not fully compensate for the lower SNR of the dry system. An analysis of the wet and dry system recordings revealed that delta and theta frequency band power (0.1–4 Hz and 4–8 Hz, respectively) are consistently higher in dry system recordings across participants, indicating that transient and drift artifacts may be an issue for dry systems. Significance. Using dry electrodes is desirable for reduced set-up time; however, this study demonstrates that online performance is significantly poorer than for wet electrodes for users with and without disabilities. We test a new application of dynamic stopping algorithms to compensate for poorer SNR. Dynamic stopping improved dry system performance; however, further signal processing efforts are likely necessary for full mitigation.
Grammatical gender processing in Italian and Spanish bilinguals

We explored whether the grammatical gender of the native language (L1) affects the production of words in a second language (L2). Evidence from previous studies is contrasting. In the present investigation, Italian–Spanish bilinguals were instructed to name pictures in L2 (Experiments 1 and 2) or to translate words from L1 to L2 (Experiment 3), producing either the bare noun or the noun phrase (article + noun). Half of the nouns had the same gender in the two languages, while the other half had a different gender. In all experiments, responses were faster in the gender-congruent than in the gender-incongruent condition, irrespective of task (L2 picture naming or forward word translation) and syntactic type (bare noun and noun phrase). We propose that in the bilingual system, parallel to the semantic route, a direct lexical, nonsemantic route connects the languages and that the native language interacts at the level of grammatical gender with the lexical representations of the response language.
Original Issue High Yield Bonds: Aging Analyses of Defaults, Exchanges, and Calls

This paper presents an aging analysis of 741 high yield bonds and finds default, exchange, and call percentages substantially higher than reported in earlier studies. By December 31, 1988, cumulative defaults are 34 percent for bonds issued in 1977 and 1978 and range from 19 to 27 percent for issue years 1979–1983 and from 3 to 9 percent for issue years 1984–1986. Exchanges are also a significant factor although they often are followed by default. Moreover, a significant percentage of high yield debt, 26–47 percent for 1977–1982, has been called. By December 31, 1988, approximately one third of the bonds issued in 1977–1982 has defaulted or been exchanged, and an additional one third had been called. On average, only 28 percent of these issues are still outstanding. There is no evidence that early results for more recent issue years differ markedly from issue years 1977 to 1982.
The Role of Options in the Resolution of Agency Problems: A Reply

PROFESSORS FARMER AND WINTER'S [2] assessment of our paper [3] is incorrect and results from a serious misinterpretation of our results, which were derived in the context of the Jensen-Meckling [4] framework. In their paper, Farmer and Winter depart from the well-known framework of Jensen and Meckling in two respects. First, they assume risk neutrality on the part of the agent. It is well known that this assumption is sufficient to make possible a first-best solution to the agent-principal problem. Alternatively, in our paper, we assumed that the agent can sufficiently span the capital market so as to neutralize suboptimal portfolio diversification. Given this, risk can be shared arbitrarily and then shifted as desired, by either the agent or the principal, to the capital market. Second and more important, they assume that the perquisite decision is made after the realization of uncertainty. Given this assumption, it is not surprising that, in each revealed state, the manager's perquisite decision will not be identical to the no-external-financing case unless the cost (to the manager) of perquisites is also identical. This will obviously be true only if the manager raises external capital with riskless debt. In our paper we did not make this important departure from the framework of Jensen and Meckling. Instead, we retained their assumption that decisions relating to perk consumption are made at the beginning of the period before the state of nature is revealed. At the beginning of the period, the manager trades off gains in utility associated with consuming perks against losses in the beginning-of-period market value of his or her security holdings. In our solution the terminal value of the payoffs to the package of securities offered to outsiders is stochastic, but the beginning-of-period market value of this package does not change with managerial perk consumption. Because of this, the beginning-ofperiod market value of the package of securities retained by the owner-manager fluctuates dollar for dollar with perquisite consumption. The authors misinterpret our solution to imply that the insider portfolio value fluctuates dollar for dollar, at the margin, for every revealed state. We thought that this point was clearly made in the paper. We apologize for any confusion and refer anyone who remains unconvinced to pp. 101 and 102 of our book [1] for an example that clearly indicates that we can simultaneously resolve the perk consumption problem and the risk incentive problem with a package of securities that is not spanned by riskless debt. The riskless debt
The Effect of Civil Society on Global Problems and Sustainable Democracy

Bu calisma kuresel sorunlarin cozumunde sivil toplumun etkisini tartismakta ve demokratik sistemi surdurmedeki onemini aciklamayi amaclamistir. Calisma kapsaminda yasanan sorunlarin kureselligi ve kuresel cozumlerin insanligin kazandigi degerler uzerindeki etkileri aciklanacaktir. Demokratik sistemi surdurmede kuresel yonetisim ve sivil toplumun etkileri aciklanmaya calisilacaktir.