Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aborted stock repurchases and earnings quality

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to try to identify the motivation of firms that announce share repurchase but do not follow it up with the actual purchase. The authors conjecture that the long-term earnings quality of such firms is low, which makes them poor candidates for actual stock repurchase. Their intention is to mimic actual repurchasers and their motivation appears to be just to get a bounce in their stock price normally associated with such announcements. Design/methodology/approach - – The authors use probit analysis to ascertain whether earnings quality can predict the subsequent repurchase behavior of firms that announce share repurchase. As Gong Findings - – The results show that non-carry-through firms have lower earnings quality than carry-through firms in the pre-announcement period in all of the metrics the authors use to measure earnings quality. In the post-announcement period, the earnings quality of the non-carry-through firms declines still further and the difference in the quality becomes more pronounced. The results of probit regression show that lower earnings quality increases the likelihood of becoming a non-carry-through company. Research limitations/implications - – The finding has interesting implications for investment management as investors can differentiate non-carry-through firms from carry-through repurchasers by examining the firm's earnings quality. Originality/value - – The analysis shows that poor long-term earnings quality increases the chance of not carrying through on the repurchase announcement. The authors also find that the poor earnings quality of non-carry-through firms limits their ability to manage earnings downward prior to the repurchase announcement.
On the predictability of firm performance via simple time-series and econometric models: evidence from UK SMEs

This article examines the predictive accuracy of simple time-series and econometric models on forecasting firm performance in terms of sales turnover. Evidence from Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the United Kingdom are presented. The study identifies operational rules under which the class of simple econometric regression models is more accurate than simple time-series forecasting alternatives, thus more appropriate to back-up multiple investment decisions.
Social Network Analysis of Price Dispersion in Fishing Quota Lease Markets

ABSTRACT We present a novel technique for analyzing price dispersion in non-centralized quota lease markets where pairwise negotiations determine price and price information from past transactions is not generally available. The technique does not require fishing cost or ex-vessel price data and employs social network analysis metrics (namely degree centrality and constraint) to measure access to information and network position for buyers and sellers. Our method is applied to the Gulf of Mexico red snapper quota lease market and finds that certain quota lease traders with larger information-sharing networks or stronger network positions have greater negotiating power. Also, average quota lease prices varied by region even though there are no geographic trading restrictions. Results indicate social networks are correlated with price dispersion and inefficiencies in the trading markets that can undermine the success of catch share programs that seek to improve fishery profits and reduce overcapacity. JEL Code: Q22.
Entwicklung eines Software-Prototyps zur automatischen Erstellung nutzerspezifischer ETL-Dokumentation: Ein Fallbeispiel für gestaltungsorientierte, problemzentrierte Forschung

Die Durchfuhrung von rigoroser und relevanter gestaltungsorientierter Forschung (engl. Design Science Research, DSR) gewinnt in der Wirtschaftsinformatik international an Akzeptanz und Bedeutung. Der vorliegende Beitrag verfolgt das Ziel, das Verstandnis von DSR in der Wirtschaftsinformatik zu scharfen und DSR-Erfahrungen mit der Community zu teilen. Dafur wird ein Fallbeispiel, das ein umfangreiches, mit DSR durchgefuhrtes Forschungsprojekt zum Gegenstand hat, detailliert beschrieben und anschliesend kritisch diskutiert.
Uncertainty, Information, and Hedonic Pricing

The application of the hedonic pricing technique to estimating consumer values of avoiding or incurring the risk of loss from natural hazards has recently appeared in the literature (e.g., Brookshire et al. 1985; MacDonald, Murdoch, and White 1987). The probabilistic nature of the hazards evaluated in these studies raise new questions regarding the interpretation of the hedonic prices estimated. We present a hedonic price model that accounts for information level and uncertainty when valuing nonmarket goods. A simple set of rules are derived for analyzing hedonic prices for probabilistic nonmarket goods.
Presidentialism and Political Parties in Indonesia: Why are All Parties Not Presidentialized?

This paper analyzes whether the "presidentialization of political parties" is occurring in newly democratizing Indonesia, as argued by Samuels and Shugart (2010). In Indonesia not all parties are becoming presidentialized. Parties are presidentialized when they have a solid organizational structure and have the potential to win presidential elections. Parties established by a presidential candidate need not face an incentive incompatibility between their executive and legislative branches, since the party leader is not the "agent" but the "principal". On the other hand, small and medium-sized parties, which have few prospects of winning presidential elections, are not actively involved in the election process, therefore party organization is not presidentialized. As the local level, where the head of government has been directly elected by the people since 2005 in Indonesia, the presidentialization of political parties has begun to take place.
Of ITIMs, ITAMs, and ITAMis: revisiting immunoglobulin Fc receptor signaling

Receptors for immunoglobulin Fc regions play multiple critical roles in the immune system, mediating functions as diverse as phagocytosis, triggering degranulation of basophils and mast cells, promoting immunoglobulin class switching, and preventing excessive activation. Transmembrane signaling associated with these functions is mediated primarily by two amino acid sequence motifs, ITAMs (immunoreceptor tyrosine‐based activation motifs) and ITIMs (immunoreceptor tyrosine‐based inhibition motifs) that act as the receptors’ interface with activating and inhibitory signaling pathways, respectively. While ITAMs mobilize activating tyrosine kinases and their consorts, ITIMs mobilize opposing tyrosine and inositol‐lipid phosphatases. In this review, we will discuss our current understanding of signaling by these receptors/motifs and their sometimes blurred lines of function.
Attitude toward immunization and risk perception of measles, rubella, mumps, varicella, and pertussis in health care workers working in 6 hospitals of Florence, Italy 2011

Background: Health care workers (HCWs) are at risk of infection and transmission of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases. In recent years cases of measles or varicella in health care workers were observed with increasing frequency. The aim of our study was to investigate attitude toward immunization and risk perception of measles, rubella, mumps, varicella, and pertussis in HCWs working in 6 hospitals of Florence (Italy). Methods: A cross-sectional survey among the physicians, nurses, midwives, and nursing assistants working in selected departments was performed trough a self-administered, anonymous questionnaire. Overall, 600 questionnaires were sent and 436 HCWs’ completed forms were included into the study (Participation rate: 72.7%). Data were analyzed with STATA 11.0® and odds ratio (OR) were calculated in a multivariate analysis. Results: Among all respondents 74.9% were females. The average age was nearly 43-years-old (42.9 – SD 8.95). The majority of participants (58.6%) were nurses, 21.3% physicians, 12.9% nursing assistants, and 7.2% were midwives. Among those HCWs reporting no history of disease, 52.8% (95% CI: 42.0–63.3%) declared to have been immunized for measles, 46.9% for rubella (95% CI: 39.0–54.9%), 21.6% for mumps (95% CI: 15.1–29.4%), 14.9% for varicella (95% CI: 7.4–25.7%), and 14.5% for pertussis (95% CI: 10.0–20.0%). When considering potentially susceptible HCWs (without history of disease or vaccination and without serological confirmation), less than a half of them feel at risk for the concerned diseases and only less than 30% would undergo immunization. One of the main reasons of the relatively low coverage was indeed lack of active offer of vaccines. Conclusion: Attitudes toward immunization observed in this study are generally positive for preventing some infectious diseases (i.e., measles and rubella), but relatively poor for others (i.e., varicella). More information should be made available to HCWs on the benefits of vaccination and efforts to encourage vaccination uptake should be performed. Educational program on the risk of being infected working in a hospital should be implemented in order to increase the risk perception toward infectious diseases among HCWs.
A Benchmark Profile of Economics Departments in 15 Private Universities

Abstract During the spring of 1999, the authors completed a benchmarking survey of 15 economics departments in private universities as part of a strategic planning exercise. All are selective medium-sized institutions that experience roughly the same types of market pressures and compete for the same types of students. The authors report the information gleaned from the survey concerning such items as departmental resources, teaching loads, class sizes, departmental research expectations, and weights given to research, teaching, and service in salary determination and promotion. The authors believe that their results and methods might be useful to other economics departments engaging in bench-marking exercises.
Delay-Lock-Loop-Based Inductorless and Electrolytic Capacitorless Pseudo-Sine-Current Controller in LED Lighting Systems

Light-emitting diode lighting system with the proposed pseudo-sine-current controller removes most of the external passive components, which include inductor, electrolytic capacitor, freewheel diode, blocking diode, and the bleeding circuit for Triac dimming control, for low cost and small volume. Delay-lock loop control can ensure the in-phase operation of ac input voltage and current for high power factor (PF) and low total harmonic distortion (THD). In addition, redundant power loss in Triac dimming control is eliminated to get a high efficiency of 85%. Furthermore, a high PF of 0.997 and a low THD of 7.74% are also achieved owing to in-phase line voltage and current.
Techniques and Complications of TandemHeart Ventricular Assist Device Insertion During Cardiac Procedures

Patients with heart failure and profound cardiogenic shock, who are unresponsive to vasopressors and intra-aortic balloon pump insertion, have few options except for mechanical cardiac support with a ventricular assist device. The TandemHeart is a new assist device that may be percutaneously or surgically inserted. We review techniques for percutaneous and intraoperative placement of the TandemHeart, including detailed descriptions of its insertion. Additionally, we present the most common complications associated with the percutaneous or operative approaches and suggest ways to avoid these complications. Whether placed percutaneously or surgically, the TandemHeart can provide adequate hemodynamic support for heart failure patients. If the device is placed by surgeons in the operating room, there must be strict adherence to protocols and de-airing techniques. Complications may occur with either insertion technique, so knowledge of the most common types of complications and their prevention is necessary.
Residential demand estimation for bundled fixed-line and wireless mobile broadband services

This article is the first investigation of residential Internet markets in Thailand, in particular Bangkok. Bangkok is an interesting market to study as it is Thailand’s most populous province, and supports an advanced economy. The study offers a comprehensive discussion of the process to obtain cross-price elasticity estimates when Internet services are bundled. Interestingly, the empirical results reveal positive cross-price effects, i.e. Internet alternatives are viewed as substitutes by respondents in this market. This finding is plausible as the services differ essentially in their model of delivery.
Partnerships in specialty care: exploring rural haemophilia provider resource needs.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine whether rural providers have adequate preparation for safe and effective haemophilia care. DESIGN This qualitative study proceeded in two phases: focus group (phase I) and telephone (phase II) interviews. SETTING Five Canadian rural hospitals served by one urban haemophilia treatment centre and providing service to at least one haemophilia family. PARTICIPANTS Phase I: focus groups of rural health professionals (site 1: n = 5; site 2: n = 6), including nursing, medicine and lab technology. Phase II: telephone interviews with nine participants from nursing, medicine, lab technology, social work and physiotherapy across three sites. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Qualitative content analysis yielded categorical themes for specialty care resource requirements in a rural context. RESULTS Resource needs reflected five main categories: communication network, subjective knowledge, team roles, objective knowledge and partnerships (C-STOP). CONCLUSIONS The five C-STOP categories require resources and alignment of urban specialist, rural provider and family expertise. Specialty clinic efforts promoting self-care are incomplete without matched resources for rural providers.
Predicting the Growth and Filtering of At-risk Housing: Structure Ageing, Poverty and Redlining

Using canonical regression analysis, the paper examines the associations between housing conditions, race, poverty and vintage structure age in Cleveland, Ohio's east and west sides. It is found that African-Americans are concentrated in the oldest at-risk housing stocks on Cleveland's east side, but chronic poverty rather than quality deficiency is most associated with their presence. On the west side, the oldest housing stock is experiencing the most deterioration, but a linkage between race and at-risk vintage units is not established; rather, chronic poverty is directly associated with age depreciation. Lastly, in examining the effects of housing conditions, race and mortgage lending, it is found that credit access has little to do with race; rather, housing conditions and the age-depreciation process most affect credit receipt and operate independently of race.
Does remote ischaemic preconditioning with postconditioning improve clinical outcomes of patients undergoing cardiac surgery? Remote Ischaemic Preconditioning with Postconditioning Outcome Trial.

AIMS The aim of this study was to evaluate whether remote ischaemic preconditioning (RIPC) combined with remote ischaemic postconditioning (RIPostC) improves the clinical outcomes of patients undergoing cardiac surgery. METHODS AND RESULTS From June 2009 to November 2010, 1280 patients who underwent elective cardiac surgery were randomized into the RIPC with RIPostC group or the control group in the morning of the surgery. In the RIPC with RIPostC group, four cycles of 5-min ischaemia and 5-min reperfusion were administered twice to the upper limb-before cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) or coronary anastomoses for RIPC and after CPB or coronary anastomoses for RIPostC. The primary endpoint was the composite of major adverse outcomes, including death, myocardial infarction, arrhythmia, stroke, coma, renal failure or dysfunction, respiratory failure, cardiogenic shock, gastrointestinal complication, and multiorgan failure. Remote ischaemic preconditioning with RIPostC did not reduce the composite outcome compared with the control group (38.0 vs. 38.1%, respectively; P = 0.998) and there was no difference in each major adverse outcome. The intensive care unit and hospital stays were not different between the two groups. However, in the off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery subgroup, multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that RIPC with RIPostC was related to increased composite outcome (odds ratio: 1.54; 95% confidence interval: 1.02-2.30; P = 0.038). CONCLUSION Remote ischaemic preconditioning with RIPostC by transient upper limb ischaemia did not improve clinical outcome in patients who underwent cardiac surgery.
Coalition Formation in International Environmental Agreements and the Role of Institutions

The aim of this paper is to discuss the role played by international institutions in achieving effective International Environmental Agreements. We emphasise the strategic nature of environmental negotiations and use a game theoretic model of coalitional bargaining to illustrate the main issues. We argue that international institutions can intervene in the framing of the strategic interactions between countries (i.e. setting the rules of the negotiation game) and can influence the actual agreement reached when different outcomes of the negotiation game can be equilibria.
A Structured Sparse Subspace Learning Algorithm for Anomaly Detection in UAV Flight Data

Health status monitoring of flight-critical sensors is crucial to the flight safety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). While many flight data anomaly detection algorithms have been proposed, most do not consider data source information and cannot identify which data sources contribute most to the anomaly, hindering proper fault mitigation. To address this challenge, a structured sparse subspace learning (SSL) anomaly detection (SSSLAD) algorithm, which reformulates anomaly detection as a structured SSL problem, is proposed. A structured norm is imposed on the projection coefficients matrix to achieve structured sparsity and help identify anomaly sources. Utilizing an efficient optimization method based on Nesterov’s method and a subspace tracking approach considering temporal dependence, the computation is efficient. Experiments on real UAV flight data sets illustrate that the proposed SSSLAD algorithm can accurately and quickly detect and identify anomalous sources in flight data, outperforming state of art algorithms, both in terms of accuracy and speed.
Prediction of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus With Alternative Definitions of the Metabolic Syndrome: The Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study

Background— In addition to predicting cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality, the metabolic syndrome is strongly associated with the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM), itself an important risk factor for CVD. Our objective was to compare the ability of various metabolic syndrome criteria (including those recently proposed by the International Diabetes Federation), markers of insulin resistance (IR) and inflammation, and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) in the prediction of DM and to determine whether various proposed modifications to the National Cholesterol Education program (NCEP) metabolic syndrome definition improved predictive ability. Methods and Results— We examined 822 subjects in the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study aged 40 to 69 years who were nondiabetic at baseline. After 5.2 years, 148 individuals had developed DM. IGT, metabolic syndrome definitions, and IR markers all significantly predicted DM, with odds ratios ranging from 3.4 to 5.4 (all P<0.001), although there were no significant differences in the areas under the receiver operator characteristic (AROC) curves between the definitions. Modifying or requiring obesity, glucose, or IR components in NCEP-defined metabolic syndrome did not significantly alter the predictive ability of the definition under AROC curve criteria (all P>0.05). Similarly, although IR and inflammation variables were significantly associated with incident DM when included in multivariate models with NCEP-defined metabolic syndrome (all P<0.01), expanding the definition by adding these variables as components did not significantly alter the predictive ability of the definition under AROC curve criteria (all P>0.05). Conclusions— The International Diabetes Federation and NCEP metabolic syndrome definitions predicted DM at least as well as the World Health Organization definition, despite not requiring the use of oral glucose tolerance testing or measures of IR or microalbuminuria. Modifications or additions to the NCEP metabolic syndrome definition had limited impact on the prediction of DM.
Capital Inflows and the Real Exchange Rate: Can Financial Development Cure the Dutch Disease?

This paper argues that, in improving the efficient allocation of resources, financial sector development could dampen the appreciation effect of capital inflows. Using dynamic panel data techniques, the paper finds that the exchange rate appreciation effect of FDI inflows is indeed attenuated when financial and capital markets are larger and more active. The main implication of these results is that one of the main dangers associated with large capital inflows in emerging markets - the destabilization of macroeconomic management due to a sizeable appreciation of the real exchange rate - can be mitigated partly by developing a deep financial sector.
On the Allocation of New Lines in a Competitive Transit Network with Uncertain Demand and Scale Economies

This article, from a special issue on the modeling and optimization of transportation systems, offers a model for investigating the allocation of new lines in a competitive transit network in which transit operations are subject to demand uncertainty as well as scale economies. Scale economies imply that the operating cost of each operator per unit of transit line decreases with the number of lines operated. The proposed model considers the interactions among three types of players: transit authority, transit operators, and transit passengers. In the model, the transit authority aims to maximize the total social welfare for a given confidence level (or probabilistic guarantee) by optimizing the allocation of new lines to bidding operators. For a given allocation scheme, each of the operators determines the associated frequencies and fares to maximize its own profit at a certain confidence level while accounting for the responses of transit passengers to their strategies. The authors formulate the proposed line allocation model as a robust 0–1 integer programming problem that can be solved by an implicit enumeration algorithm. They present a numerical example to illustrate the effects on the transit system of the allocation of new lines, the scale economies, the level of variation in passenger demand, and the risk attitude of transit operators toward uncertainty. The authors conclude that their model is a useful tool for modeling competitive transit services and for evaluating transit policies at the strategic level.
Fast algorithms to search for the rational solutions of linear differential equations with polynomial coefficients

Many computer algebra algorithms are based on constructing some polynomials and rational functions. Constructing a polynomial often involves finding the bound for its degree and use of the unknown coefficient method. For constructing rational functions cme expands the given functions in partial fractions and from these expansions obtains some hypothesis on the expansion of the function to be found. Thk function itself may be constructed by the uncoefficient method (the numerator of partial fraction plays the role of the unknowns). However the algebraic equation system obtained by the unknown coefficient method may be huge and nonlinear besides. To expand the given rational function one has to factorize the denominator and address the problem of operating with extensions of the constant field. Therefore in designing the algorithms one should “improve upon the pure theoretical considerations. Thk paper is concerned with some way:s for such an improvement with regard to solving the linear ordinary differential equations of the form