Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Earnings, Consumption and Lifecycle Choices

We discuss recent developments in the literature that studies how the dynamics of earnings and wages affect consumption choices over the life cycle. We start by analyzing the theoretical impact of income changes on consumption - highlighting the role of persistence, information, size and insurability of changes in economic resources. We next examine the empirical contributions, distinguishing between papers that use only income data and those that use both income and consumption data. The latter do this for two purposes. First, one can make explicit assumptions about the structure of credit and insurance markets and identify the income process or the information set of the individuals. Second, one can assume that the income process or the amount of information that consumers have are known and tests the implications of the theory. In general there is an identification issue that is only recently being addressed, with better data or better "experiments". We conclude with a discussion of the literature that endogenize people's earnings and therefore change the nature of risk faced by households.
Demographic changes and household income in urban China: 1988–2002

This article documents the major demographic changes during recent years in urban China using the China Household Income Project (CHIP) 1988, 1995 and 2002 data. It also presents the changing levels and compositions of household income in urban China, and examines the impact of the changing demographics on household income. Findings indicate that urban residents have become older and more educated. Individuals are more likely to be employed in the private sector, retired or unemployed as the market economic reforms have progressed. At the household level, household size has been decreasing, with fewer children and higher number of older persons, while the proportions of nuclear families with only one child as well as couples without children have been increasing. Meanwhile, household per capita income has been rising continuously over the years. Several important demographic characteristics have been significantly associated with household income levels. Households whose heads were older, with higher education levels, Communist Party members or retired, and households composed of couples without children have tended to receive higher income across all three study years. In addition, households with larger sizes, particularly more children, with unemployed heads and three-generation families with more than one child have tended to receive lower income. More public benefits should be provided to the less advantaged, such as families with more children, older persons without pensions or other subsidies, those with lower education levels and the unemployed, to meet their needs and improve their economic well-being.
Female policymakers and educational expenditures: cross-country evidence

This paper investigates the influence of women in politics on decision-making using public educational expenditures as the outcome of interest. The results suggest that an increase in the share of female legislators by one percentage point increases the ratio of educational expenditures to GDP by 0.038 percentage points. I then consider some different contexts, under which the influence of female legislators may be affected. The effect of female legislators on educational policies is robust in the different contexts considered, but the magnitude may change revealing perhaps that the distribution of female legislators depends on the context. Moreover, this study supports the hypothesis that the identity of the legislator matters for policy. To determine whether female legislators have causal impact on education, this paper uses electoral rules as the instrument for the proportion of female legislators. The results are encouraging, and are very likely to provide causal evidence of female legislators on educational expenditures.
Inégalités sociales dans le renoncement aux soins de santé et dans leur utilisation

Cette recherche se focalise sur l? analyse des inegalites sociales associees a l? acces et a l? utilisation des services de soins medicaux et hospitaliers au Luxembourg. Les donnees utilisees proviennent des enquetes PSELL3/EU-SILC realisees chaque annee sur un echantillon representatif de la population luxembourgeoise vivant en menage prive. Des indicateurs d? acces aux soins (ou de renoncement aux soins) et d? utilisation des services de sante sont definis et les principales mesures d? inegalite considerees sont le ratio des taux, la difference des taux, l? indice de disparite et l? indice de concentration relatif. Les inegalites sociales de non recours aux soins medicaux et dentaires sont moderees au Luxembourg, les raisons financieres ne representent pas la premiere cause de renoncement aux soins. Les inegalites sociales dans l? utilisation des services de sante sont finalement quasi inexistantes pour les consultations de medecins generalistes et tres faibles pour les consultations de medecins specialistes. Elles sont un peu plus elevees pour l? utilisation des services de medecins ? dentistes et pour les soins hospitaliers. Au cours de la periode 2003-2008, les changements intervenus en matiere de non recours aux soins sont plus prononces au niveau des personnes ayant renonce a consulter un medecin ? dentiste. La part des cas de non recours aux soins pour des raisons financieres a globalement augmente, tant pour les soins medicaux que pour les soins dentaires. L? evolution des inegalites en matiere de renoncement aux soins medicaux et dentaires est contrastee en fonction du facteur socioeconomique retenu. La mesure des inegalites sociales de l? utilisation des soins de sante a travers les cinq types de prestataires de soins (dieteticiens, medecins-dentistes, medecins generalistes, medecins specialistes et hopitaux) montre que celles-ci sont d? ampleur differente selon le sexe, l? âge et le type de prestataire de soins
Disentangling the Coefficient of Relative Risk Aversion from the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution: An Irrelevance Result

For homothetic time and state separable preferences, the coefficient of relative risk aversion is equal to the reciprocal of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. This paper shows that, when the growth rate of consumption is independent and identically distributed, asset pricing models based upon preferences in which the coefficient of relative risk aversion and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution are no longer linked do not have more explanatory power. Further, in these stochastic environments, estimates of the coefficient of relative risk aversion in the standard preferences are measures of the true coefficient of relative risk aversion and not the elasticity of intertemporal substitutions. These results are fairly accurate descriptions of economies calibrated using United States annual data. Copyright 1990 by American Finance Association.
Synchronization of GABAergic interneuronal network in CA3 subfield of neonatal rat hippocampal slices.

1. Cell‐attached and whole‐cell recordings from interneurons localized in the stratum radiatum of the CA3 subfield (SR‐CA3) of neonatal (postnatal days 2‐5) rat hippocampal slices were performed to study their activity during the generation of GABAergic giant depolarizing potentials (GDPs) in CA3 pyramidal cells. 2. Dual recordings revealed that during the generation of GDPs in CA3 pyramidal cells, the interneurons fire bursts of spikes, on average 4.5 +/‐ 1.4 spikes per burst (cell‐attached mode). There bursts were induced by periodical large inward currents (interneuronal GDPs) recorded in whole‐cell mode. 3. Interneuronal GDPs revealed typical features of polysynaptic neuronal network‐driven events: they were blocked by TTX and by high divalent cation medium and they could be evoked in an all‐or‐none manner by electrical stimulation in different regions of the hippocampus. The network elements required for the generation of GDPs are present in local CA3 circuits since spontaneous GDPs were present in the isolated CA3 subfield of the hippocampal slice. 4. Interneuronal GDPs were mediated by GABAA and glutamate receptors, since: (i) their reversal potential strongly depended on [Cl‐]i; (ii) at the reversal potential of GABAA postsynaptic currents an inward component of GDPs was composed of events with the same kinetics as alpha‐amino‐3‐hydroxy‐5‐methylisoxazole‐4‐propionate (AMPA) receptor‐mediated EPSCs; and (iii) once GABAA receptors were blocked intracellularly by dialysis with F(‐)‐MgATP‐free solution, the remaining component of interneuronal GDPs reversed near 0 mV and rectified at membrane potentials more negative than ‐20 mV, suggesting an important contribution of NMDA receptors in addition to AMPA receptors. 5. In cell‐attached recordings from interneurons, electrical stimulation in the stratum radiatum evoked a burst of spikes that corresponded to evoked GDPs. Pharmacological study of this response revealed that excitation of SR‐CA3 interneurons during GDPs is determined by the co‐operative depolarizing actions mediated by GABAA and glutamate (AMPA and NMDA) receptors. Interestingly, after blockade of AMPA receptors, GABAA receptor‐mediated depolarization enabled the activation of NMDA receptors presumably via attenuation of their voltage‐dependent magnesium block. 6. It is concluded that synchronous activation of SR‐CA3 interneurons during generation of GDPs is mediated synaptically and is determined by the co‐operation of (i) excitatory GABAergic connections between interneurons and (ii) glutamatergic connections to interneurons originating presumably from the pyramidal cells.
Effects of magnetic field direction on treeing behavior of silicone rubber

Research is undertaken in this paper to clarify the effect of magnetic field (MF) direction on electrical tree propagation in silicone rubber (SiR). Needle-plate electrode is employed in the experiment. To avoid magnetic field stress on the needle electrode, this paper choose silver needles as the needle electrode, and previously placed in style. The dimension of sample is 10 mm × 10 mm × 20 mm. The distance between needle-plate electrode is 2 mm. Both repetitive pulse voltage and AC voltage is employed in the experiment. To study the effect of MF direction on the growth of electrical tree, the morphology of the electrical tree is observed from the direction of the MF and perpendicular to the MF, respectively. And the fractal dimension of the electrical tree under pulse voltage is analyzed. Obtained results show that under AC voltage, the tree morphology from two directions are similar with the increase of the magnetic flux density (MFD). Under pulse voltage, the increase of MFD can promote the growth of electrical tree in two directions. The promoting effect of the MF on the electric tree is stronger in the direction of the MF than that perpendicular to the MF.
Recognizing and Discovering Activities of Daily Living in Smart Environments

Identifying human activities is a key task for the development of advanced and effective ubiquitous applications in fields like Ambient Assisted Living. Depending on the availability of labeled data, recognition methods can be categorized as either supervised or unsupervised. Designing a comprehensive activity recognition system that works on a real-world setting is extremely challenging because of the difficulty for computers to process the complex nature of the human behaviors. In the first part of this thesis we present a novel supervised approach to improve the activity recognition performance based on sequential pattern mining. The method searches for patterns characterizing time segments during which the same activity is performed. A probabilistic model is learned to represent the distribution of pattern matches along sequences, trying to maximize the coverage of an activity segment by a pattern match. The model is integrated in a segmental labeling algorithm and applied to novel sequences. Experimental evaluations show that the pattern-based segmental labeling algorithm allows improving results over sequential and segmental labeling algorithms in most of the cases. An analysis of the discovered patterns highlights non-trivial interactions spanning over a signifcant time horizon. In addition, we show that pattern usage allows incorporating long-range dependencies between distant time instants without incurring in substantial increase in computational complexity of inference. In the second part of the thesis we propose an unsupervised activity discovery framework that aims at identifying activities within data streams in the absence of data annotation. The process starts with dividing the full sensor stream into segments by identifying differences in sensor activations characterizing potential activity changes. Then, extracted segments are clustered in order to find groups of similar segments each representing a candidate activity. Lastly, parameters of a sequential labeling algorithm are estimated using segment clusters found in the previous step and the learned model is used to smooth the initial segmentation. We present experimental evaluation for two real world datasets. The results obtained show that our segmentation approaches perform almost as good as the true segmentation and that activities are discovered with a high accuracy in most of the cases. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model by comparing it with a technique using substantial domain knowledge. Our ongoing work is presented at the end of the section, in which we combine pattern-based method introduced in the first part of the thesis with the activity discovery framework. The results of the preliminary experiments indicate that the combined method is better in discovering similar activities than the base framework.
The island factor as a growth booster for nations: a mental advantage econometrically revealed

Purpose – This paper aims to postulate that countries which are either geographical or cultural islands, (defined as countries that are surrounded by neighboring countries that do not speak the same language), tend to experience higher rates of economic growth, all other things being equal.Design/methodology/approach – Using historical macroeconomic data for a large number of countries and statistical growth regressions that include island dummy variables as explanatory variables, this paper shows that there is econometric evidence supporting the theory of the island factor.Findings – The findings highlight the importance of a cohesive society with a strong sense of identity while being economically open to global competitive forces. This island mindset acts as a catalyst for enhanced economic growth.Originality/value – To the best of the authors' knowledge, the island factor is a new and untested hypothesis. Moreover, the paper contributes to the literature on cultural diversity and growth by showing tha.
IMF Working Paper Monetary and Capital Markets Bank Efficiency amid Foreign Entry : Evidence from the Central American Region Prepared

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper investigates the efficiency of domestic and foreign banks in the Central American region during 2002-07. Using two main empirical approaches, Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Analysis, the paper finds that foreign banks are not necessarily more efficient than their domestic counterparts. If anything, the regional banks that were acquired by global banks in a wave of acquisitions during 2005-07 can keep up with the local institutions. The efficiency of these acquired banks, however, is shown to have dropped during the acquisition year, recovering only slightly thereafter. Finally, it is important to account for the environment in which banks operate, as country-, sectorand firm-specific characteristics are found to have a considerable influence on bank efficiency. JEL Classification Numbers: D24, G21
Three Models of Strategy 1

Researchers and practitioners have used the term strategy freely – researchers have even measured it – for over two decades. Those who refer to strategy generally believe that they are all working with the same mental model. No controversy surrounds the question of its existence; no debate has arisen regarding the nature of its anchoring concept. Yet virtually everyone writing on strategy agrees that no consensus on its definition exists (Bourgeois, 1980; Gluck, Kaufman, & Walleck, 1982; Glueck, 1980; Hatten, 1979; Hofer & Schendel, 1978; Lenz, 1980b; Rumelt, 1979; Spender, 1979; Steiner, 1979). Hambrick (1983) suggested that this lack of consistency is due to two factors. First, he pointed out, strategy is multidimensional. Second, strategy must be situational and, accordingly, it will vary by industry. The literature affirms Hambrick’s assessment that strategy is not only multidimensional and situational but that such characteristics are likely to make any consensus on definition difficult. Strategy also suffers from another, more fundamental problem; that is, the term strategy has been referring to three distinguishable mental models, rather than the single model that most discussions assume. Beyond reflecting various authors’ semantic preferences, the multiple definitions reflect three distinct, and in some ways conflicting, views on strategy. This paper seeks to analyze the ways strategy has been defined and operationalized in previous
The neonatal levels of TSB, NSE and CK-BB in autism spectrum disorder from Southern China

Abstract Background" Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a serious neurodevelopmental disorder that impairs a child’s ability to communicate with others. It also includes restricted repetitive behaviors, interests and activities. Symptoms manifest before the age of 3. In the previous studies, we found structural abnormalities of the temporal lobe cortex. High spine densities were most commonly found in ASD subjects with lower levels of cognitive functioning. In the present study, we retrospectively analyzed medical records in relation to the neonatal levels of total serum bilirubin (TSB), neuron-specific enolase (NSE), creatine kinase brain band isoenzyme (CK-BB), and neonatal behavior in ASD patients from Southern China. Methods: A total of 80 patients with ASD (ASD group) were screened for this retrospective study. Among them, 34 were low-functioning ASD (L-ASD group) and 46 were high-functioning ASD (H-ASD group). Identification of the ASD cases was confirmed with a Revised Autism Diagnostic Inventory. For comparison with ASD cases, 80 normal neonates (control group) were selected from the same period. Biochemical parameters, including TSB, NSE and CK-BB in the neonatal period and medical records on neonatal behavior were collected. Results: The levels of serum TSB, NSE and CK-BB in the ASD group were significantly higher when compared with those from the control group (P < 0.01, or P < 0.05). The amounts of serum TSB, NSE and CK-BB in the L-ASD group were significantly higher when compared with those in the H-ASD group (P < 0.01, or P < 0.05). The Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) scores in the ASD group were significantly lower than that in the control group (P < 0.05). Likewise, the NBAS scores in the L-ASD group were significantly lower than that in the H-ASD group (P < 0.05). There was no association between serum TSB, NSE, CK-BB and NBAS scores (P > 0.05) in the ASD group. Conclusions: The neonatal levels of TSB, NSE and CK-BB in ASD from Southern China were significantly higher than those of healthy controls. These findings need to be investigated thoroughly by future studies with large sample.
Percutaneous coronary intervention with drug‐eluting stent implantation vs. minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass (MIDCAB) in patients with left anterior descending coronary artery stenosis

The aim of this study was to assess the effects of percutaneous coronary intervention with drug‐eluting stents (DESs) versus minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass (MIDCAB) surgery in the management of patients with proximal left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery stenosis. Until recent years, despite the advantages of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) with bare metal stent implantation, such as shorter hospital stays and recovery time, MIDCAB showed better results with regard to the need for repeated intervention in the target vessel than PTCA with proximal LAD lesions. Symptomatic patients (n = 189) were randomly assigned to DES group (n = 119) and MIDCAB group (n = 70). Patients with an isolated high‐grade lesion (stenosis of ≥ 70% of the luminal diameter) in the proximal LAD coronary artery (from the ostium to the first diagonal branch) were included in this study. During the 6‐month follow‐up period, 1.7% (n = 2) in the DES group needed repeated revascularization procedures for target lesion revascularization compared with 5.9% (n = 4) in the MIDCAB group (P = 0.196). The rates of death and myocardial infarction were similar in both groups [DES 0.0% (n = 0) vs. MIDCAB 2.9% (n = 2), P = 0.135; DES 1.7% (n = 2) vs. MIDCAB 2.9% (n = 2), P = 0.627; respectively] during 6 months of follow‐up. In‐hospital length of stay was significantly shorter in the DES group compared with the MIDCAB group (5.8 ± 2.1 days vs. 8.9 ± 2.6 days; P = 0.001). DES implantation and MIDCAB surgery showed similar rates of myocardial infarction, the need for repeated revascularization, and death during 6 months of follow‐up. However, DES implantation resulted in lower average number of hospital stays and similar postoperative complications. Catheter Cardiovasc Interv 2005;64:75–81. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Troponin: the biomarker of choice for the detection of cardiac injury

It has been known for 50 years that transaminase activity increases in patients with acute myocardial infarction. With the development of creatine kinase (CK), biomarkers of cardiac injury began to take a major role in the diagnosis and management of patients with acute cardiovascular disease. In 2000 the European Society of Cardiology and the American College of Cardiology recognized the pivotal role of biomarkers and made elevations in their levels the “cornerstone” of diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction. At that time, they also acknowledged that cardiac troponin I and T had supplanted CK-MB as the analytes of choice for diagnosis. In this review, we discuss the science underlying the use of troponin biomarkers, how to interpret troponin values properly and how to apply these measurements to patients who present with possible cardiovascular disease.
AN EMPIRICAL COMPARISON OF THE MANAGERIAL DEVELOPMENT OF FAMILY AND NON-FAMILY SMEs FROM AUSTRALIA'S MANUFACTURING SECTOR

This study utilises data derived from the responses of 871 manufacturing SMEs between 1995/96 and 1997/98. The firms were segmented according to McMahon's (2001) taxonomy of low, moderate and high growth SMEs and then divided into family and non-family businesses. The study then empirically compares seven characteristics of managerial development across the two groups. The findings indicate there are significant differences in the managerial development of family and non-family businesses. In general, family businesses have more working proprietors, partners or directors; major decision-makers with less tertiary qualifications and are slower to adopt some management practices as they grow. Similarities include the size of their management teams, the practices of comparing performance and budget forecasting, and the evolution process itself. From a methodological perspective the findings indicate that the context of firms sampled needs to be controlled if meaningful comparisons are to be made.