Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How does the age structure affect regional productivity?

The article studies the effects of a changing age structure on regional productivity using lagged population structure to purge estimates of the influence of endogenous migration. It is shown that workers aged 50–60 years have a positive effect on regional productivity. Together with evidence from previous research showing that the effect of the same age group on unemployment is positive, the results support the notion that well-matched workers gives rise to both high productivity and high unemployment.
D-type cyclins activate division in the root apex to promote seed germination in Arabidopsis

Seeds provide survival and dispersal capabilities by protecting the dormant mature plant embryo. Germination and resumption of development under favourable conditions requires the reinitiation of cell growth and division through poorly understood processes. Here we show that four phases of cell division activation during germination in Arabidopsis are related to external morphological changes. Cell division initiates in the root apical meristem (RAM) before root protrusion, followed by sequential activation of cell division in the cotyledons, shoot apical meristem (SAM), and secondary meristems. Major changes in transcript levels of >2,000 genes precede root emergence, including expression peaks of six D-type (CYCD) and two A-type cyclins. Two further CYCDs are activated later with the SAM. Early activated CYCDs play key roles in regulating the extent of cell division, because loss-of-function alleles of early CYCDs display reduced division activation and consequential delayed root emergence. Conversely, elevation of early CYCDs increases cell cycle activation in the RAM and promotes embryonic root (radicle) protrusion, whereas a later-acting CYCD does not. These phenotypes, together with their overlapping expression domains, support a cumulative action of a subset of CYCDs in cell cycle reactivation, rather than a complete functional redundancy. This analysis reveals a phenotype associated with loss-of-function of a plant cyclin and demonstrates that D-type cyclins regulate cell cycle reentry during meristem activation to promote successful germination and early seedling growth.
From Theory to Policy: Reducing Harms Associated with the Weight-Centered Health Paradigm

This article provides an overview of harms associated with public policy promotion of the weight-centered health paradigm and suggests that a shift away from weight-centered health policies is required. Given the evidence about the negative health implications of weight-centric health policies, the objectives are to explore why public policy officials uncritically rely on and promote the weight-centered health paradigm and to propose policy alternatives. Based on findings from discourse analysis of “obesity”-related 1 policy documents, public health policy solutions to the weight-centered health paradigm are proposed and analyzed, drawing from ten key informant interviews with stakeholders working within the policy, academic, and medical contexts.
INSTABILITY OF THE U.S. MONEY DEMAND FUNCTION

This paper surveys the two major episodes of instability of the U.S. money demand function known respectively as "the mystery of missing money" and "the great velocity decline. " It also assesses the recent literature on open economy money demand models and their usefulness in explaining the puzzling behavior of money demand manifested shortly after the transition to floating exchange rates. Copyright 1991 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd
Analysis-based verification: a programmer-oriented approach to the assurance of mechanical program properties

There is a constant and insidious loss of design intent throughout the software lifecycle. Developers make design decisions but fail to record these decisions or their rationale. As a consequence, quality and maintainability of software suffer, since additional effort must be expended to recover—and verify—lost design intent prior to implementing even minor changes in the code. This is particularly challenging for concurrent code. Our vision is to capture and verify critical design intent through the use of fragmentary specifications supported by targeted verification tools that can function alongside debugging and testing tools in the practitioner's toolkit for software quality and maintainability. This thesis advances the idea of focused analysis-based verification as a scalable and adoptable approach to the verification of mechanical program properties. The main contribution of the research is the development of the concept of sound combined analyses, through which results of diverse low-level program analyses can be combined in a sound way to yield results of interest to software developers. The contribution includes the underlying logic of combined analysis, the design of the user experience and tool engineering approach, and field validation on diverse commercial and open source code bases. Building on prior work in semantic program analysis, this approach enables sound tool-supported verification of nontrivial narrowly-focused mechanical properties about programs with respect to explicit models of design intent. These models are typically expressed as code annotations, and can be used even when adopted late in the software lifecycle for real-world systems. In addition to providing a sound approach to combining fragmentary analysis results, the logic can support abductive inference of additional fragments of design intent. The proposed fragments that are deemed valid by the software developer can then be verified for consistency with code using an automated tool. The soundness of the logic for combined analysis is proved using an intuitionistic natural deduction calculus and other techniques. We validate our approach through the 9 field trials of a prototype tool that verifies properties related to multithreading and race conditions on a diverse sample of commercial, open source, and government code. In the majority of the field trials, this validation process included direct use of the prototype tool by disinterested professional developers and demonstrated that the tool performs useful verification and bug finding on full-scale production code.
CSR among Canadian mass tour operators: good awareness but little action

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an exploratory case study of mass mainstream tour operators in the Canadian market and evaluate their awareness level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. The research aims to address the structure and ownership of mass Canadian tour operators, how it may influence the adoption of CSR practices, key issues and concerns and awareness level and participation of CSR practices. Although the Canadian outbound leisure mass market is relatively small compared with that of the UK, Canadian travelers are a significant source of tourism to Mexico and the Caribbean islands such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic.Design/methodology/approach – Canadian mass tour operators were contacted through interviews and questionnaires to assess the structure and ownership of mass Canadian tour operators, how it may influence the adoption of CSR practices, key issues and concerns and awareness level and participation of CSR practices. Existing responsible tourism p.
Equality investment strategy evaluation during the financial crisis: Using TOPSIS approach

During the financial crisis time, fear has taken over the mood of investors. There are so many uncertainties during a crisis. This time, the financial crisis came with a credit crunch. At such time, the contrarian investors were looking for better investment objectives which may increase profits in the future by mean reversion effect. But how can they be confident that the chosen investment objectives can survive the credit crunch or the crisis. The study addressed a case of a Taiwanese bank selecting an appropriate combination of equalities by Markowitz’s Mean-Variance Method in portfolio management to deal with market risk in the crisis. The Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution method (TOPSIS) was also used to deal with credit risk during the credit crunch in this financial crisis. In setting the criteria weight setting and selecting the best strategy, the opinions of experts were fully considered - from bank counselors in academia and the members of the bank asset and liability management committee who are management from the Loan, Business, and Risk management departments, who are all experienced in their professional fields. This study proved that financial institutions could use TOPSIS in-group decision in the investment sector. Keyword: Financial crisis, Markowitz, Mean-variance, TOPSIS.
Enhancement of the natural organic matter removal from drinking water by nanofiltration

Abstract Finnish surface waters are abundant in natural organic matter. Natural organic matter can be removed from drinking water in a water treatment process by coagulation and filtration. The standard treatment operations are not able to remove the smallest molar mass fraction of organic matter and the intermediate molar mass matter is only partly removed. The removal of residual natural organic matter from drinking water by nanofiltration was evalueted in this study. Three different nanofiltration membranes were compared in filtering six pre‐treated surface waters. The total organic carbon content of the feed waters varied from 2.0 to 4.2 mg 1‐1. Other water quality parameters measured were conductivity, alkalinity, hardness, UV‐absorbance, SUVA, E2/E3 value and molecular size distribution by high‐performance size‐exclusion chromatography. The natural organic matter removal efficiencies of the membranes were good and varied between 100% and 49%, and between 85% and 47% according to molecular size distribution and total organic carbon measurements, respectively. Removal of different molecular size fractions varied from 100% to 56%, 100% to 54% and 88% to 19%, regarding high molar mass, intermediate molar mass and low molar mass organic matter, respectively. The Desal‐5 DL membrane produced the highest natural organic matter removals.
The Post‐1990 Brazilian Trade Liberalisation and the Performance of Large Manufacturing Firms: Productivity, Market Share and Profits

This paper analyses the effects of the 1990 Brazilian trade liberalization on the total factor productivity, market share and profits of a sample of 349 large manufacturing firms. A panel data production function analysis for the period 1986/94 indicates very large total factor productivity gains in the period to 1994, which were accompanied by large falls in market shares and profits. The explanation advanced is that the shock of trade liberalization to profits was so great that firms were stimulated to improve their efficiency dramatically.
Planners as Market Actors: Rethinking State–Market Relations in Land and Property

This paper challenges the dichotomous distinction between planning and the market promoted by mainstream economists, by arguing that markets should be seen as socially constructed not given. Drawing on recent developments in institutional and behavioural economics, it contends that what is required is not for planners to become market actors, but rather to realise they are already “market actors” intricately involved in framing and re-framing property markets. By highlighting planners’ potential to re-make, rather than merely accept, market conditions, the paper calls for state–market relations in land and property to be accorded a central place within the new spatial planning.
Revisiting the Mitra-Wan Tree Farm

The tree-farm model of T. Mitra and H. Wan (1985) contains novelties: a continuum of optimal cycles appear for small discounting and the cyclicality survives perturbations. To isolate the source of novelties, the author studies the simplest case: trees live naturally for two periods. This model specializes the general theory of multisector development under four conditions. It becomes a Ramsey type model, augmented by a cross-vintage constraint: the present acreage under trees, age n, must not be less than the acreage under trees age n + 1, one period hence. Novelties emerge when this constraint bounds the graph of the state-to-control correspondence. Copyright 1994 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.
Impact of Micro and Macroeconomic Variables on Emerging Stock Market Return: A Case on Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE)

This paper investigates the impact of changes in selected microeconomic and macroeconomic variables on stock returns at Dhaka Stock Exchange. A Multivariate Regression Model computed on Standard OLS Formula has been used to estimate the relationship. Based on regression coefficient, it was found that inflation and foreign remittance have negative influence and industrial production index; market P/Es and monthly percent average growth in market capitalization have positive influence on stock returns. All the independent variables can jointly explain 44.48 percent variation in DSE all share price index. No unidirectional Granger Causality is found between stock prices and all the predictor variables under study except one unidirectional causal relation from stock price and market P/Es. In a nut shell, lack of Granger causality between stock price and selected micro and macro variables ultimately reveals the evidence of informationally inefficient market.
Technological Discontinuities and the Nature of Competition

We revisit the Schumpeterian model of competition driven by the perennial gale of creative destruction. Not every innovation must necessarily lead to the destruction of incumbent firms. In many high-technology industries we observe a symbiotic coexistence between new entrant and incumbent firms. This phenomenon warrants more attention. We build upon the innovation and strategic alliance literature to develop the notion of ’complementary innovation. ’ We advance propositions with respect to the following questions: What impact will a complementary innovation have on firm entry, interfirm cooperation, and the nature of competition? Based on the propositions advanced, we develop a cyclical model of industry dynamics initiated by a complementary innovation. The propositions and the cyclical model of industry dynamics are illustrated in a case study of the biopharmaceutical industry.
Discretion in Financial Reporting: The Voluntary Adoption of Fair Value Accounting for Employee Stock Options

This paper investigates the market reaction to announcements by firms of their decision to adopt the fair value provisions of SFAS No. 123 in accounting for their employee stock option (ESO) expense. Additionally, this paper examines ESO usage and expense of adopting firms and compares the impact of the expense on profitability measures for adopting firms relative to a matched set of control firms. We find a positive and significant abnormal return in the three days around the adoption announcements, suggesting that the decision to expense using the fair value method is value relevant. The positive abnormal announcement returns are mainly attributable to the earlier announcements, consistent with early announcements serving as a credible signal of a commitment to transparency in financial reporting. We find evidence that in the three years prior to the announcement year, adopting firms report significantly higher earnings than control firms yet fail to earn higher market returns, suggesting that adopters .
High quality nutrition in childhood, body size and wages in early adulthood: evidence from guatemalan workers

Establishing a causal relationship between health and productivity is not straightforward. On one hand, as income grows, people invest in better diets. On the other, a healthier worker is likely to be more productive. This paper focuses on the effect of body size, height and body mass index as indicators of nutrition, upon wages. Data comes from a longitudinal study conducted in Guatemala during 1969-77 and followed-up in 2002-04. Body size elasticity increases when unobserved heterogeneity is considered although evidence is stronger for males. Additionally, estimated elasticity shows some degree of heterogeneity at different quantiles of the conditional wage distribution.
Economic Reform Foundation's President Shangquan Gao on organizational reform and sustainable business development

Executive Overview Shangquan Gao is president of the Chinese Economic Reform Foundation as well as president of the Research Association of Chinese Economic Systems Reform. He is the former deputy minister of the State Commission for Economic Systems Reform and the former director of the Office of Economic Systems Reform Programs of the State Council. He is one of the major economists on economic systems reform in China, and specializes in the areas of economic systems reform and development and the market economy in China. His major publications include Two Decades of Reform in China, The Second Revolution, and China's Economic Reform. In this interview. Professor Gao gives an overview of the main approaches and measures for strengthening the management systems in Chinese state-owned enterprises.
Effect of Recombinant Human Bone Morphogenetic Protein‐2 on Fracture Healing in a Goat Tibial Fracture Model

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are considered to have important regulatory roles in skeletal embryogenesis and bone healing. Recombinant human BMPs (rhBMPs) have been shown to heal critical size defects and promote spinal fusion. We studied the effects of rhBMP‐2 in an absorbable collagen sponge (ACS) on bone healing in a large animal tibial fracture model. Bilateral closed tibial fractures were created in 16 skeletally mature goats and reduced and stabilized using external fixation. In each animal, one tibia received the study device (0.86 mg of rhBMP‐2/ACS or buffer/ACS), and the contralateral fracture served as control. The device was implanted as a folded onlay or wrapped circumferentially around the fracture. Six weeks following fracture, the animals were sacrificed and the tibiae harvested for torsional testing and histomorphologic evaluation. Radiographs indicated increased callus at 3 weeks in the rhBMP‐2/ACS treated tibiae. At 6 weeks, the rhBMP‐2/ACS wrapped fractures had superior radiographic healing scores compared with buffer groups and controls. The rhBMP‐2/ACS produced a significant increase in torsional toughness (p = 0.02), and trends of increased torsional strength and stiffness (p = 0.09) compared with fracture controls. The device placed in a wrapped fashion around the fracture produced significantly tougher callus (p = 0.02) compared with the onlay application. Total callus new bone volume was significantly increased (p = 0.02) in the rhBMP‐2/ACS fractures compared with buffer groups and controls regardless of the method of device application. The rhBMP‐2/ACS did not alter the timing of onset of periosteal/endosteal callus formation compared with controls. Neither the mineral apposition rates nor bone formation rates were affected by rhBMP‐2/ACS treatment. The increased callus volume associated with rhBMP‐2 treatment produced only moderate increases in strength and stiffness.
Explaining Smart Growth Applications: Lessons Learned from the US Capital Region

The counties of the US Capital Region represent unique case studies of urban areas that face tremendous development pressures resulting from their proximity to Washington, DC. They cross two states: Maryland with a statewide smart growth programme and Virginia without such a programme. This unique location raises two questions: do statewide smart growth programmes lead counties to adopt smart growth policies? ; and what are the local factors contributing to county decisions to apply these policies? Case study analysis was applied to examine these questions in the Capital Region based on three sources of evidence: state and county regulations and plans; interviews with county planners; and secondary data. The analysis indicates that state mandates shape county land use planning. While statewide incentive programmes/policies help Maryland’s counties to preserve their farmlands, they seem insufficient to change sprawling development patterns. County applications of smart growth policies are mainly driven by local needs and priorities.
Education of Students of Economics for e-Society

This paper presents the way of use of information technology in education of economists, particularly at Faculty of Economics – University of Mostar and course named Accounting Information Systems. It shows how IT could reshape the educational landscape by transforming the content and modes of acquisition of learning as well as how the implementation of IT is inseparable from the process of curriculum development and implementation of problem-based learning.
"THERE'S SOME GOOD KARMA UP IN HERE":A CASE STUDY OF WHITE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP IN AN URBAN CONTEXT

As educators work to improve achievement within the current policy environment of accountability and "subgroups," their attention has been drawn to considerations of race, culture, and learning in schools. Yet few school leaders have the preparation or knowledge to assist teacher learning about these issues. Theories of culturally relevant pedagogy focus on how teachers can teach subject matter in a culturally appropriate manner, and previous scholarship has considered culturally relevant pedagogy in relation to teaching and learning. This inquiry examines it in relation to leadership content knowledge. Critical race theory offers a lens through which to examine the relationship of beliefs and knowledge when considering race and racism in the American educational system and for further situating an examination of school leadership and cultural competency. The research questions I address are: 1. What kind of perspective toward students is held by educators in the school? How do these perspectives connect with teaching, learning, and leadership? 2. How is culturally relevant pedagogy represented in the schools? How do school leaders foster or hinder CRP in their schools? 3. In which contexts and events in the practice of school leadership do issues of race, culture, and learning surface? How are the issues mediated by the principal and other school leaders? This case study of three White principals reveals that they faced many issues of race, culture, and learning, yet tended to be colorblind and colormute. Even when they identified issues, they were reluctant to address them or without resources, thus ignoring situations that could have served as sites of teacher learning. Several White teachers held dynamic and nuanced asset perspectives toward children of color. New teachers in particular learn a "repertoire of racialized and 'cultural' comparisons" (Pollock, 2001) as a key component of belonging to their community, a repertoire that knowledgeable school leaders could begin to disrupt through efforts to assist teacher learning and development toward an asset perspective. In addition, several teachers were trying to implement features of culturally relevant pedagogy, and one or two were seeking knowledge about issues of race and racism. An assistant principal who was African American assisted teacher learning about students' funds of knowledge. Nevertheless, these efforts were not supported by the broader professional community or White school leadership. This study may be useful to policy makers and professors of education in encouraging a reexamination of requirements for leadership preparation which currently lack an emphasis on culturally relevant leadership content knowledge or social justice. Leadership content knowledge that includes knowledge of culturally relevant pedagogy, particularly critical consciousness that problematized colorblind ideologies, could play a significant role in deepening teacher understanding of the relationship of race and culture to teaching and learning, and thus, in instructional improvement.