Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Entrepreneurship and the Policy Environment

This paper uses a spatial panel approach to examine the effect of the government-policy environment on the level of entrepreneurship. Specifically, we investigate whether marginal income tax rates and bankruptcy exemptions influence rates of entrepreneurship. Whereas previous work in the literature finds that both policies are positively related to entrepreneurship, we find non-monotonic relationships: a U-shaped relationship between marginal tax rates and entrepreneurship and an S-shaped relationship between bankruptcy exemptions and entrepreneurship.
Why Has the Labor-Force Participation Rate of Israel Men Fallen?

This study presents three complementary approaches exploring the main factors behind the steep decline in the participation rate of Israeli men in the past three decades. Two factors stand out in explaining the decline in participation rate: increases in the share of Orthodox Jews along with stronger dissociation of that group from the labor market and unfavorable labor market conditions for poorly educated people and especially for persons with disabilities.
Social crisis and social policy in Queensland: patterns of control

This article seeks to locate within its political economy the forms and patterns of care and control that developed in Queensland. It is argued that the State government sought to manage the social tensions that resulted from economic transition of the 70s and 80s through coercive methods and most notably through the criminal justice system. This argument is developed through an analysis of Queensland's use of the legal system, its pattern of social services and its law and order expenditures in comparison to other States. The changing patterns in Queensland's summary courts are consistent with the drift to coercion which identified in the analysis of the State's response to its social and economic difficulties.
Monetary Policy and the Taylor Principle in Open Economies

Nowadays, central banks mostly conduct monetary policy by setting nominal interest rates. A widely held view is that central banks can stabilize inflation if they follow the Taylor principle, which requires raising the nominal interest rate more than one-for-one in response to higher inflation. Is this also correct in an economy open to international trade? Exchange rate changes triggered by interest rate policy might interfere with inflation stabilization if they alter import prices. The paper shows that this destabilizing effect can prevail if (a) the central bank uses consumer (rather than producer) prices as its inflation indicator or directly reacts to currency depreciation, and (b) if it bases interest rate decisions on expected future inflation. Thus, if the central bank looks at current inflation rates and ignores exchange rate changes, Taylor-style interest rate setting policies are advisable in open economies as well. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Convenient credit and consumer protection – a critical review of the responses of Labour and Coalition governments

This article highlights how the overreliance on access to ‘convenient credit’ in the United Kingdom has illustrated the inherent low levels of consumer protection afforded to consumers by the Consumer Credit Act. Furthermore, this has also been fuelled by the deregulation of the consumer credit market in the 1980s and 1990s by the Conservative government and by the promotion of ‘convenient credit’ by the Labour government. The article comments on legislative measures initiatives designed to counter the problems associated with access to convenient credit and to improve the level of protection afforded to consumers.
Do Client‐Prepared Internal Control Documentation and Business Process Flowcharts Help or Hinder an Auditor's Ability to Identify Missing Controls?

SUMMARY: The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which client‐prepared internal control documentation and business process flowcharts affect auditors' ability to detect missing internal controls. A total of 395 experienced auditors participated in a two (internal control matrix: blank or client‐prepared) by two (business process flowchart: absent or present) between‐participants experiment. The research findings indicate that auditors who were supplied with a blank internal control matrix and a business process flowchart identified significantly more missing controls relative to the three other treatment conditions, among which there were no differences in the number of identified missing controls. The results indicate that when auditors are evaluating the effectiveness of a client's internal control system for a significant business process, they should be provided with a flowchart of the business process under examination and complete their internal control design evaluation before reading.
Sensemaking in Expatriation - a Theoretical Basis

Contemporary thinking and research into expatriation has fallen into two clusters, a macro-, strategic level and a micro-, practice level. Some theoretical tension exists between the clusters and calls for the re- framing of understanding gained from the theoretical basis of past acculturation studies to address global management in volatile business environments. This paper explores the theoretical concept of sensemaking in expatriation. Two sensemaking elements, Sense of Coherence and Socio-cultural brokerage are introduced as potentially contributing to expatriation responses together with the implications of sensemaking theory for research and practice in the management of overseas assignments.
Executive Insights: Marketing Strategy in Emerging Markets: The Case of China

The Chinese market's attractiveness to international marketers has recently received a significant boost as a result of the country's admission into the World Trade Organization. Membership in the World Trade Organization requires trade barriers to be reduced and new sectors of the economy to be opened to foreign firms according to a predesignated timetable, which in turn will make this most populous country a promising market for marketers. Despite these positive developments, acquiring reliable information and, in particular, the understanding of the market presents big challenges to the development of a viable Chinese marketing strategy. In this article, the authors explore barriers to information acquisition in China and focus on the need to understand crucial dimensions of the operating environment with respect to internal protectionism, relationship development, the diversity of the market, and competitive contexts.
Institutional Racism within the Print Media: A Content Analysis of Sports Illustrated's Media Coverage of Black NFL Head Coaches

Abstract The purpose of the present study is to investigate the prevalence of institutional racism in the coverage of African American and Caucasian National Football League (NFL) head coaches who have appeared in Sports Illustrated from 1998 through 2004; the resultant impact on interscholastic athletics and student athletes will be explored. This study applies institutional racism and framing theories to determine to what degree, if any, differences occur between African American and Caucasian NFL head coaches in terms of cover photographs, subheads, kickers, editorials/opinions, and sport blurbs in Sports Illustrated.
Why Do Markets Move Together? An Investigation of U.S.-Japan Stock Return Comovements

This article explores the fundamental factors that affect cross-country stock return correlations. Using transactions data from 1988 to 1992, the authors construct overnight and intraday returns for a portfolio of Japanese stocks using their NYSE-traded American depository receipts and a matched-sample portfolio of U.S. stocks. They find that U.S. macroeconomic announcements, shocks to the yen/dollar foreign exchange rate and Treasury bill returns, and industry effects have no measurable influence on U.S. and Japanese return correlations. However, large shocks to broad-based market indices (Nikkei Stock Average and Standard and Poor's 500 Stock Index) positively impact both the magnitude and persistence of the return correlations. Copyright 1996 by American Finance Association.
Governance Systems in Family SMEs: The Substitution Effects between Family Councils and Corporate Governance Mechanisms

The main objective of this paper is to explore the role of family councils vis‐à‐vis corporate governance mechanisms. Particularly, the paper explores whether family councils perform only their distinctive family governance role or if they also substitute for the roles performed by corporate governance control mechanisms. Based on a sample of 243 talian family s, our research findings show that the family council partially substitutes the shareholders' meeting and the board of directors in playing their respective corporate governance roles of ownership and monitoring. These findings are interpreted in the light of both agency and relational perspectives.
Conditions for the transformation of eco‐tourism into sustainable tourism

In recognizing that the term ‘eco-tourism’ has been interpreted in a number of different ways, and at times in ways which add to the profits of tour operators without any real regard to environmental protection, this paper seeks to define a set of conditions which could help a tourist destination to be managed in a way which is consistent with sustainable development. Here, tourism as a source of economic development, the protection of the environment and culture, and the maintenance of social cohesion at the local level are all seen as important tools. It is suggested that tourism development at the destination needs to be managed appropriately with emphasis placed on local action involving a number of different stakeholders. From discussions of these issues, ten conditions for the development of a more sustainable form of tourism are proposed. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Mitochondrial intermembrane junctional complexes and their role in cell death

A mitochondrial complex comprising the voltage‐dependent anion channel (outer membrane), the adenine nucleotide translocase (inner membrane) and cyclophilin‐D (matrix) assembles at contact sites between the inner and outer membranes. Under pathological conditions associated with ischaemia and reperfusion the junctional complex ‘deforms’ into the permeability transition (PT) pore, which can open transiently, allowing free permeation of low Mr solutes across the inner membrane. This may be a critical step in the pathogenesis of lethal cell injury in ischaemia and reperfusion. Moreover, it is argued, the degree of pore opening may be an important determinant of the relative extent of apoptosis and necrosis under these conditions. In addition, mitochondria are the major sites of action of Bax and other apoptotic regulatory proteins of the Bcl‐2 family. These proteins control a mitochondrial amplificatory loop in the apoptotic signalling pathway in which cytochrome c and other apoptogenic proteins of the mitochondrial intermembrane space are released into the cytosol. There are indications that the junctional complex, or components of it, may also mediate the action of Bax, but in a way that does not involve PT pore formation.
Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid, a histone deacetylase inhibitor, ameliorates motor deficits in a mouse model of Huntington's disease

Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited, progressive neurological disorder that is caused by a CAG/polyglutamine repeat expansion and for which there is no effective therapy. Recent evidence indicates that transcriptional dysregulation may contribute to the molecular pathogenesis of this disease. Supporting this view, administration of histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors has been shown to rescue lethality and photoreceptor neurodegeneration in a Drosophila model of polyglutamine disease. To further explore the therapeutic potential of HDAC inhibitors, we have conducted preclinical trials with suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), a potent HDAC inhibitor, in the R6/2 HD mouse model. We show that SAHA crosses the blood–brain barrier and increases histone acetylation in the brain. We found that SAHA could be administered orally in drinking water when complexed with cyclodextrins. SAHA dramatically improved the motor impairment in R6/2 mice, clearly validating the pursuit of this class of compounds as HD therapeutics.
Neubewertung des informellen Sektors und Unternehmertums in Sub-Sahara-Afrika

Small-scale economic activities in the informal sector usually account for an important share of production in developing countries. Classical theories of structural change and economic growth assume that the modern sector would sooner or later absorb the workers employed in the informal sector. This has happened in some developing economies, but often not to the extent expected. This is a motivation to challenge some common assumptions and views on the informal entrepreneurial sector. We argue that the typical informal enterprise should not be considered a subsistence enterprise. We justify this in particular with the very high marginal returns to capital that can be earned in these enterprises. These high returns remain however unexploited due to a number of economic, institutional and social constraints. While institutional and credit constraints have been stressed in the literature, risk and social constraints have not, but play, as we show, an equally important role. Kleinunternehmerische Aktivitaten im informellen Sektor leisten ublicherweise einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Produktion in Entwicklungslandern. Klassische Theorien des strukturellen Wandels und okonomischen Wachstums nehmen an, dass der moderne Sektor diejenigen, die im informellen Sektor beschaftigt sind, fruher oder spater absorbieren wurde. Dies geschah in manchen Landern, aber nicht im erwarteten Ausmas. Dies sollte Anlass sein, einige allgemein akzeptierte Annahmen und Sichtweisen uber den informellen Sektor zu uberdenken. Wir argumentieren, dass das typische informelle Unternehmen nicht als Subsistenzunternehmung betrachtet werden sollte. Wir begrunden dies insbesondere mit den allgemein sehr hohen Grenzertragen des Kapitals, die in diesen Unternehmen verdient weren konnen. Aufgrund von okonomischen, institutionellen und sozialen Beschrankungen, denen diese Unternehmen gegenuber stehen, werden diese hohen Ertrage allerdings nicht realisiert. Wahrend institutionelle und Kreditrestriktionen bereits viel in der Literatur diskutiert werden, ist dies weniger der Fall fur Risiko und soziale Hindernisse. Diese spielen aber, wie wir zeigen, eine ebenso wichtige Rolle.
The Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing - Promises and Outcomes in the Wake of the Great Recession

This study focuses on the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing which was implemented in response to the financial crisis of 2007-8 and the subsequent Great Recession. The policy was intended to stimulate investment, fight deflation and boost household and business net worth to achieve the mandated aims of low unemploy-ment and low, stable inflation. The policy involves trillions of dollars of liquidity gen-erated and distributed by the Federal Reserve via purchases of Treasury securities, mortgage-backed securities and agency debt. This analysis of QE presents a critical review of existing theoretical and empirical literature and an exploratory data analysis in an attempt to answer the question of whether the Fed achieved its aims with the policy and what other impacts it may have had on the U.S. economy. The findings show that QE, despite being useful to calm initial market panic, did not have a strong impact on the real economy and is not a sus-tainable solution to bring the U.S. economy to stability and growth.
Uncertainty in property valuation – The nature and relevance of uncertainty and how it might be measured and reported

There will always be a degree of uncertainty in any valuation, but it should be incumbent upon the valuer to report “abnormal uncertainty”. This arises when some particular condition of the market or the property leads to the valuer being unable to value with the confidence of accuracy which might normally be expected. Abnormal uncertainty now features in the RICS Appraisal and Valuation Manual and later in this paper we consider how the valuer might identify and measure the degree of abnormal uncertainty. But this paper is predominantly concerned with “normal uncertainty”, which hereafter we will term only as “uncertainty”. The thesis of this paper is that uncertainty is a real and universal phenomenon in valuation. The sources of uncertainty are rational and can be identified. They can be described in a practical manner, and, above all, the process of identification and description will greatly assist many clients, and will improve the content and the credibility of the valuer’s work. Common professional standards and methods should be developed for measuring and expressing valuation uncertainty (Recommendation 34, Mallinson Report, RICS, 1994).
Valuation of Biodiversity Effects from Reduced Pesticide Use

Abstract This study deals with the effects on biodiversity of pesticide-free buffer zones along field margins. Using choice modeling, the majority of respondents to a survey on pesticide use in the environment are willing to accept an increase in the price of bread if the survival of partridge chicks and the number of wild plants increase. The study identifies the need for further empirical work with respect to methodological validation, price estimation, and the use of survey results in policy analysis. In particular, the environmental effects of pesticide use are complex and, therefore, present difficult challenges when presenting information to lay people. Forty-one percent of respondents changed their responses regarding willingness to pay more for bread when references to pesticide use were introduced in the questionnaire. This indicates that scenarios depicting changes in pesticide use can be difficult to present to lay people in an economically rational and well-defined context. Thus, in the study of valuation related to changes in pesticide use, much attention should be devoted to the design and definition of the context. Furthermore, the effects of providing different background information, e.g., with or without the mention of pesticides, should be tested.
Quota-Based Compensation Plans for Multiterritory Heterogeneous Salesforces

We compare quota-based salesforce compensation plans with the BLSS plan, i.e., the optimal curvilinear agency-theory-based compensation plans proposed in Basu, Lal, Srinivasan and Staelin (Basu, A. K., R. Lal, V. Srinivasan, R. Staelin. 1985. Salesforce compensation plans: An agency theoretic perspective. Marketing Sci. 4(Fall) 267--291. ). A quota plan pays a fixed salary which is supplemented by commission income that is a prespecified fraction of the dollar sales that exceed the quota. For a salesforce comprised of multiple salespersons/territories, we consider a basic quota plan where the commission rate and salary remain the same across salespersons; however, quotas vary across salespersons/territories. Compared to the BLSS plan that is individually tailored to each salesperson/territory, the basic quota plan's total nonoptimality in profit has two components: (i) a shapeinduced nonoptimality arising from the fact that the quota-based plan does not have the same optimal shape as the curvilinear BLSS plan, and (ii) a heterogeneity-induced nonoptimality arising from the fact that the salary and commission rate in the basic quota plan are constrained to be the same across the salesforce. Our numerical experiments indicate that the total nonoptimality is merely about 1% for the parametric scenarios studied. The basic quota plan is simpler to implement than the BLSS plan. Furthermore, changes in business conditions in a territory, or the transfer of a salesperson from one territory to another, can be accommodated by changing only the quota, without having to change the salary and the commission rate structure. Such advantages, together with our result that the nonoptimality is slight, suggest that quota-based plans offer considerable potential as a salesforce compensation scheme.
Fiscal Transparency: Concepts, Measurement and UK Practice

Greater fiscal transparency is seen by its advocates as a means of improving economic governance arrangements in ways which, by promoting fiscal stability, will in turn improve the functioning of the government sector and facilitate improvements in the economic environment for the private sector. ‘Fiscal transparency’ is much acclaimed by policy-makers, not only in the UK Treasury but also by the IMF and OECD. Fiscal transparency can have substance or can just be voguish incantation. This article explores the meaning of fiscal transparency, by examining its structure and evaluating criteria for assessing the degree of fiscal transparency attached to particular sets of circumstances. It explores the link between transparency and accountability, developing the distinction between event and process transparency. Consideration is given to the trade-off between the value of sunlight (to employ an analogy) and the danger of over-exposure. The performance of the United Kingdom against emerging international best practice is examined, with regard to both public expenditure and taxation. By international standards, UK fiscal transparency is high. Nevertheless, there is a major gap between UK rhetoric and practice, indicating a divergence between nominal and effective transparency. This is evidenced by: frequent changes in public expenditure definitions; the non-publication of important analyses; the location of certain liabilities ‘off-balance sheet’; and a lack of candour about tax policy.
Workers in Food Distribution: Global Commodity Chains and Lean Logistics

This paper examines warehouse workers' experiences of the labour process and employment relations in an ambient food distribution depot governed by a labour management system described as lean logistics. Lean logistics is seen by the sector as an aid to, and necessary development of, the globalisation of the sector's supply chain (global commodity chain). The focus is on how the restructuring of work as a result of lean logistics and the consequent imposition of a supermarket Taylorist work culture led to the demise of an industrial workplace culture and a dramatic deterioration in pay and working conditions. The latter included an increase in the scope and intensity of management control of labour.