Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sur l'hypothèse de rationalité en théorie macro-économique.

Résumé Il ne s'agit plus aujourd'hui de justifier l'hypothèse mais d'examiner comment elle est employée et doit être éventuellement amendée. La rationalité, toujours accompagnée de suppositions secondaires, s'avère inexacte. Face à ce constat, les macro-économistes dans leur majorité sont prêts en principe à modifier leurs hypothèses s'ils voient comment le faire de façon utile et réaliste. Une telle atti­tude est scientifiquement correcte. Jusqu'à présent, elle ne conduit pas à recom­mander un changement de paradigme mais à trouver des solutions pragmatiques aux inexactitudes. Pour ces solutions, comme pour le traitement essentiel de l'agrégation, les enseignements de l'observation doivent être pris en compte dès la première élaboration du modèle.
Explaining External Support for Insurgent Groups

Abstract Many rebel organizations receive significant assistance from external governments, yet the reasons why some rebels attract foreign support while others do not is poorly understood. We analyze factors determining external support for insurgent groups from a principal-agent perspective. We focus on both the supply side, that is, when states are willing to support insurgent groups in other states, and the demand side, that is, when groups are willing to accept such support, with the conditions that this may entail. We test our hypotheses using new disaggregated data on insurgent groups and foreign support. Our results indicate that external rebel support is influenced by characteristics of the rebel group as well as linkages between rebel groups and actors in other countries. More specifically, we find that external support is more likely for moderately strong groups where support is more likely to be offered and accepted, in the presence of transnational constituencies, international rivalries, and when the government receives foreign support.
Benefits of Extending Collaborative Educational Cloud with IoT

Malopolska Educational Cloud (MEC) is a unique undertaking in terms of employing simultaneously a variety of modern and closely integrated ICT (cloud computing, social media, and multimedia) to support unusual collaboration scenarios involving high schools and universities. The environment leverages technologies designed for enterprises, which are suitable in terms of scalability, but do not perfectly address the specifics of MEC environment. Therefore, in this paper we focus on the application of Internet of Things (IoT) approach that would both improve education and streamline organization. From the variety of educational activities implemented in MEC, our area of focus is multi-party audiovisual collaboration during online classes. The scale and geographic scattering of participants makes this particular activity technically challenging and, at the same time, promising when considering application of IoT approach. In our opinion, extension of existing MEC infrastructure with IoT-compatible appliances could result in better organization of the collaboration and improve involvement of students in the educational process
The “sustainable tourist”: Values, attitudes, and personality traits

This paper reports the results of two exploratory studies (overall N=532) which aimed at drawing the profile of the “sustainable tourist” (a person committed to respect the sustainability principles when on holiday) in terms of personal values, attitudes, and personality traits, following an environmental psychology approach. More specifically, study 1 explored the role of attitudes toward sustainable tourism, affinity toward (social and environmental) diversity, and personal values, while study 2 assessed the role of the Big Five personality traits in the prediction of preferences for sustainable and unsustainable tourist activities. Results indicate that biospheric values, positive attitudes toward sustainable tourism, and higher levels of affinity toward diversity are able to predict more sustainable tourism choices while personality traits seemed to play a more indirect and complex role.
The Control of Externalities in the Transport Sector: An Applied General Equilibrium Model *

The paper uses an applied general equilibrium model, calibrated to the situation in Belgium in 1990, to evaluate the efficiency effects of small policy changes in the presence of externalities. The model incorporates three types of externalities: congestion, which has a feedback effect on the behaviour of the economic agents, air pollution and accidents. Balanced budget incidence analysis shows that the ranking of tax instruments in terms of their marginal cost of public funds (MCF) changes significantly when the effect of the reform on the externalities is taken into account. The effects of the changes in congestion and air pollution are the most important. Secondly, differential incidence exercises make a link with the double dividend literature.
Ecomomics aspects of quality and organizational performance – a study in Setúbal care homes for elderly persons

This study presents some recent developments in quality management practices at social area organizations initiated in the ‘Grandfather Plan’, a project launched in 2001 by the Labour and Economy Department of the Portuguese government, which aimed at increasing the quality of Social Answers. In the first phase, a quality management system was designed based on ISO 9001:2000. The managers were trained and application was carried out on a sample of 25 ‘Homes for the Elderly’ spread over the country. In the second phase, 12 institutions in Setúbal, by their own initiative, decided to implement a quality program. Bearing in mind people and management motivation, short-term solutions and results, a Processes approach was developed, setting indicators, and improving procedures and practices. We are interested in investigating the relationships between the economics aspects of quality and the organizational performance. For this purpose, by a semi-structured questionnaire was designed, supported by the EFQM assessment criteria model, enhancing management by process, and we conducted eight in-depth interviews with quality managers of the above institutions. A content analysis with data in the form of interviews and observations was performed. The results of this study highlight the close association between quality practices and organizational performance and suggest that investments in quality should indeed result in better performance and gains. The organizations with the best quality practices are more productive, quality managers present a wider set of abilities and the predominant role of correction is being replaced by prevention.
Haematopoeitic cell transplantation for Fanconi anaemia – when and how?

Allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) remains the only treatment that can correct the haematological manifestations in patients with Fanconi anaemia. Over the last two decades, sequential changes to the approach to HCT have resulted in reduced regimen‐related toxicity, superior engraftment and less graft‐versus‐host disease (GVHD), resulting in improved survival. The two pivotal changes that most influenced these improvements were the addition of fludarabine to the preparative regimen to augment engraftment, and the use of T cell depletion to reduce GVHD. With these improved HCT outcomes, indications for HCT are quite consistent regardless of donor source. Emphasis is now being placed on developing HCT regimens that will improve quality of life by reducing late effects, particularly the risk of malignancy, sterility and endocrinopathies. This paper will review the unique challenges of HCT in FA patients, with particular emphasis on the timing and approach to HCT.
Cancer risk among 43000 Norwegian nurses.

OBJECTIVES This study evaluated the influence of occupational exposure on cancer risk among female Norwegian nurses. METHODS A historical prospective cohort study was performed. The cohort was established from the Norwegian Board of Health's registry of nurses and included women who graduated from a nursing school before 1985. The cohort (N=43 316) was linked to the Cancer Registry of Norway. The observed number of cases was compared with the expected number on the basis of national rates. Time since first employment, period of first employment, and duration of employment were used as indicators of exposure. Poisson regression analyses were used for internal comparisons, adjusting for age, period, and fertility. RESULTS The nurses were followed over 1473931 person-years. During the follow-up (1953-2002), 6193 cancer cases were observed. The standardized incidence ratio (SIR) for all cancers combined was close to unity. Significantly lower risks were found for cancers with a known association with alcohol and tobacco consumption and sexual activity. A significantly increased risk was found for breast cancer (SIR 1.14, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.09-1.19), ovarian cancer (SIR 1.14, 95% CI 1.04-1.25), malignant melanoma (SIR 1.15, 95% CI 1.04-1.28), and borderline significant risk appeared for other skin cancer (SIR 1.12, 95% CI 0.98-1.29). A positive trend for increasing time since first exposure was found for breast cancer and malignant melanoma. CONCLUSIONS The results indicate an association between working as a nurse and an increased risk of breast cancer and malignant melanoma. Decreased risks, found for several cancers, indicate favorable lifestyle habits among nurses.
International Journal of Computer Mathematics

Rough set theory (RS), introduced by Zdzislaw Pawlak in the early 1980s, is a methodology that concerned with the classiﬁcatory analysis of imprecise, uncertain or incomplete information or knowledge expressed in terms of data acquired from experiences or observations. It has the ability to distinguish between object and reason about the objects in the universe in which objects are perceived through the information that is available about them through the values for a predetermined set of attribute. The main advantage of RS is that it requires no additional information to the data represented in table. On the other hand, Supervised Neural Network learns by abstracting a mapping function from the training data for classiﬁcation purposes. However the drawback of using a supervised neural network is that a large amount of training data must be provided for it to obtain an accurate mapping function. The problem is further aggravated if the data are in the continuous form (real values). Thus, in this paper we overcome the problem by transforming the training data in the continuous form into discrete values using Rough Sets theory and Boolean Reasoning technique. Here, global shape features are chosen to represent the logo images. The invariant features representing logo images are obtained by using the Geometric Invariant Moment Technique (Hu, 1962). The classiﬁcation results prove that discretization using Rough Sets and Boolean Reasoning can reduce the training cycle and signiﬁcantly increase the accuracy of the classiﬁcation of logo images.
Do Employees Feel Comfortable Blowing the Whistle When Their Supervisors Practice Transformational Leadership?

Although public organization literature is replete with studies examining whistleblowing, scholars have generally neglected the connection between leadership styles and whistleblowing. Furthermore, no study was found that examined the relationship between whistleblowing and the most often studied leadership style, transformational leadership. This article fills this void in the literature by examining the relationship between transformational leadership and whistleblowing in government agencies. After controlling for employee commitment and several power-dependency factors, the results revealed that employees were more comfortable blowing the whistle when they perceived organizational leaders and managers were practicing transformational leadership than when they perceived they were not. In fact, transformational leadership was the most important predictor. Employees were also most comfortable when they exhibited high levels of commitment and job satisfaction. On the other hand, minority employees were less at ease reporting wrong-doing to their supervisors than Caucasian employees. The implications of these results are thoroughly discussed in the article.
An examination of Professor Shaikh's proposal to tame Harrodian instability

This note reconsiders a recent proposal by A. Shaikh to tame Harrodian instability (Metroeconomica 2009), where besides the utilization gap investment depends on the expected growth of demand. His stability result has, however, been criticized as not credible. The crucial point is that Shaikh's continuous-time treatment does not distinguish between forward and backward derivatives. In order to check whether or not this poses a problem, several slight modifications of the model in continuous and discrete time are formulated and investigated for their stability. Roughly speaking, it is found that unless one assumes (myopic) perfect foresight, the destabilizing Harrodian mechanism continues to be effective.
Modelling stock price behaviour: The Kernel approach

The efficient market hypothesis asserts that financial markets are always efficient and therefore cannot be predicted in order to make abnormal returns. This paper investigates the predictability of stock prices in more efficient and developed markets (U.S and U.K) using two econometric methods namely, the random walk and the non-parametric methods. Based on the out-of-sample predicted mean square error, and the resampled confidence interval and volatility we found that both U.S and U.K stock prices are predictable with more accuracy when a nonparametric method is used.
Can Omitted Risk Factors Explain the January Effect? A Stochastic Dominance Approach

Abstract This paper provides a direct test of the hypothesis that large January returns can be attributed to omitted risk factors. Data from 1926–1991 show that the January return in the smallest decile of NYSE firms dominates the January returns for all other deciles by the first-order stochastic dominance. Similarly, January returns in all deciles (with the exception of ninth and tenth deciles) dominate non-January returns by first-, second-, or third-order stochastic dominance. The presence of stochastic dominance by January returns suggests that the omitted risk factors are not likely to explain the January effect.
How Confucius Does Things with Words : Two Hermeneutic Paradigms in the Analects and Its

This essay attempts to discover patterns of communicative and hermeneutic practices in the Analects, as well as in the commentary tradition, known as jingxue (classicism). The Analects contains at least two distinctive paradigms showing different ways of interpreting speech: One is Confucius’s pragmatic approach, which emphasizes the intention and purpose of the speaker, and the other is Gongxi Hua’s approach, which focuses on the literal meaning of the speech. Examples of each paradigm can be found in the long history of the exegeses of the Analects. Commentaries by two groups of scholars are discussed: those whose approach is similar to that of Confucius (Sima Qian, Zheng Xuan, Mouzi, Huang Kan, Cheng Yi, and Zhu Xi) and those whose approach is similar to that of Gongxi Hua (Xianqiu Meng, Han Fei, Wing-tsit Chan, Ya Hanzhang, and Wang Yousan).
Dualism and growth in transition economies: a two-sector model with efficient and subsidised enterprises

We develop a growth model distinguishing between a private sector that generates learning-by-doing and technological spillovers and a sector of technologically obsolete and subsidised state-owned enterprises. This distinction allows us to trace the inescapable dual-economy stage of development observed in transition economies. While in some of them this stage was rather brief, laggard reformers continue to display this pattern. The model predicts that the larger the initial fraction of the workforce employed in the obsolete sector and the stronger the politico-ideological hostility towards reform, the lower will be the speed of convergence to the income level of the most advanced countries.
The Impact of Work–Family Programs on the Relationship between Gender Diversity and Performance

Work–family programs signal an employer's perspective on gender diversity to employees, and can influence whether the effects of diversity on performance are positive or negative. This article tests the interactive effects of nonmanagement gender diversity and work–family programs on productivity, and management gender diversity and work–family programs on financial performance. The predictions were tested in 198 Australian publicly listed organizations using primary (survey) and secondary (publicly available) data based on a two-year time lag between diversity and performance. The findings indicate that nonmanagement gender diversity leads to higher productivity in organizations with many work–family programs, and management gender diversity leads to lower financial performance in organizations with few work–family programs. The results suggest different business cases at nonmanagement and management levels for the adoption of work–family programs in gender-diverse organizations
Managing volatility: Fiscal policy, debt management and oil revenues in the Republic of Congo

Assessing fiscal sustainability - i.e. considering whether or not a country can maintain its current fiscal policies without running into solvency problems and possible default - requires projections on a government's future revenue stream, expenditures and contingent liabilities within a macroeconomic framework. Such an exercise is always subject to uncertainty. In commodity-rich countries dependent upon resource revenues, this is intensified by unpredictable and volatile commodity prices. The paper applies a framework for fiscal sustainability and managing uncertainty to Congo. Congo is rapidly building up its production and export capacity and can expect to be a substantial energy producer for several decades to come. Its major challenge is how to manage the hump shaped nature of its oil windfall and how to ensure fiscal sustainability when the oil windfall is gone. The paper analyzes explicitly the effects of uncertainty through stochastic analysis allowing for Value-at-Risk assessments. Furthermore, using an active debt feedback rule, the paper provides an example of how fiscal policy can be used to actively manage debt, in this particular case to reduce its volatility. Such a fiscal policy rule, leading to tightening fiscal policy whenever negative debt shocks occur, can greatly reduce the variance of future debt outcomes and thereby lower the riskiness of the economic environment in Congo without on average increasing the expected burden of fiscal policy.
Framing Fracking: Which Frames Are Heard in English Planning and Environmental Policy and Practice?

Fracking in England has been the subject of significant controversy and has sparked not only public protest but also an associated framing war with differing social constructions of the technology adopted by different sides. This article explores the frames and counter-frames which have been employed by both the anti-fracking movement and by government and the oil and gas industry. It then considers the way in which the English planning and regulatory permitting systems have provided space for these frames within the relevant machinery for public participation. The article thus enables one to see which frames have been allowed a voice and which have been excluded.
Newborn and Preschool Predictors of Second-Grade Reading Scores

This study examined how the development of foundation skills in speech perception, language, short-term memory, and family demographics and activities in the home environment influence the development of reading skills. Data from 96 children participating in a longitudinal research project were used. It was hypothesized that measures of specific foundation skills in the preschool period and measures of family demographics and home environment could be used to identify children's reading abilities. As expected, most of the foundation skills were found to be related to and predictive of reading scores. Event-related potential (ERP) measures of speech perception, which have previously been found to be predictive of reading abilities, and measures of family and home activities and language measures were related to reading scores. Verbal short-term memory scores contributed little to the prediction of reading scores. These variables influenced the results whether they were used to discriminate reading groups or to predict a continuum of reading scores, but there were large differences in the amount of variance accounted for. More variance was accounted for in the group analyses than in the continuum analyses.
An Analysis on the Neoliberal Transformation Created by Flexible Work in Public Schools

This research was carried out to reveal effects of flexible work of teachers on the relationship among educational stakeholders and teacher performance. A semi-structured interview form including 5 questions was used to collect data from Teachers working in 6 different schools at different grades. It was found out that flexible work of teachers had clear negative effects on relationship among educational stakeholders and teacher performance.
Enhancing firm competitiveness in fast track through total productive maintenance

Competitiveness is a major challenge before a company. Simply stated competitiveness of a firm refers to firstly management of capabilities to exploit its resources, competencies and knowledge and secondly to manage change with the overall objectives of adapting better and faster than competition. Superior manufacturing performance of a firm leads to competitiveness. Business environment in the last decade has changed radically in India. With the advent of WTO regime of globalisation and liberalised trade, the heavily protected Indian industry has had to face competition both from within as well as established companies practicing world-class techniques. This paper provides an analysis of how National Engineering Industries (NEI), a medium-sized company in India, has reacted to a changing market environment and transformed itself to remain competitive following a focused approach in implementing total productive maintenance.
Requirement for macrophages or for macrophage‐ or T cell‐derived factors in the mitogenic stimulation of murine B lymphocytes by lipopolysaccharides

Splenic B cells from a variety of mouse strains could be depleted of accessory cells by removal of large cells through velocity sedimentation, followed by adherence to plastic and by passage over Sephadex G‐10. Such accessory cell removal abolished the reactivity of the splenic B cells to the mitogen lipopolysaccharide (LPS), as measured by their capacity to polyclonally proliferate and mature to IgM‐secreting cells. Accessory cells from different sources, such as peritoneal exudate cells, irradiated spleen cells, cells of the macrophage line P388 D1 and macrophages from a single colony grown from bone marrow precursors in semi‐solid media in the presence of colony‐stimulating factor all reconstituted LPS reactivity of the accessory cell‐depleted B cells. Limiting dilutions of the cells of a single macrophage colony indicated that as little as 30 to 1000 macrophages can reconstitute the polyclonal response of 3 × 104 B cells to LPS. Not only activated macrophages, but also activated long‐term helper T cell lines and T cell hybridomas, produced supernatant factors which could also restore responsiveness of depleted B cells to LPS.