Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inventory Management with Trade Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from Chinese Exporters

This paper empirically investigates how exporting firms manage their inventory stocks in response to an exogenous trade policy uncertainty shock. Using firm-level data on inventory and exports over the period around China’s WTO accession, we show that a reduction in trade policy uncertainty significantly increases exporting firms’ inventory holdings. We also find that the reduction in trade policy uncertainty increases the frequency and the average volume of export transactions.
The Relationship between the United States and Vietnam Stock Markets

This paper uses the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity - Autogressive Moving Average (GARCH-ARMA) and the Exponentially General Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity- Autogressive Moving Average (EGARCH-ARMA) models to examine the relationship between United States and Vietnam stock markets. The paper analyzes 1,483 daily observations from 2003-2009. The study finds that the U.S. market has a positive and significant influence on the Vietnam market. Specifically, the S&P 500 Index has a positive and strong significant influence to the VN-Index return in recent years. However, there is no evidence of a volatility effect of the S&P 500 Index on the VN-Index. To support the initial findings, the study performs robustness tests to examine the effect of Dow Jones Index on the VN-Index return and shows similar results. Not only do these findings provide additional evidence that Vietnam is a viable market economy but also indicates that fund managers’ should consider movement of the U.S. stock market before making Vietnam investment decisions.
How Does the Evolution of R&D Tax Incentives Schemes Impact Their Effectiveness? Evidence From a Meta-Analysis

A growing interest in R&amp;D tax incentive policies has given rise to a large number of evaluations, which provide contrasting results about their effectiveness. Our meta- analysis aims to explain the heterogeneity found in the R&amp;D tax incentive evaluations by the features of tax incentives. We document that on average R&amp;D tax incentives stimulate R&amp;D expenditures across two streams of empirical studies. However, this averaged effect is moderated by the underpinning features of tax incentives. Our samples evidence that the estimations linked to incremental bases and related to targeted rules towards SMEs drive the positive results found in the literature. Introducing a cap or a pre-approval process does not decrease the effectiveness of R&amp;D tax incentives, allowing governments to monitor the indirect support needed to stimulate private R&amp;D expenditures. Our results highlight the importance of setting up a clear and stable tax incentives framework. Sources of uncertainty regarding the timespan, the amount of the financial returns from tax claims but also the main criteria to apply are likely to decrease their effectiveness in the short run.
Beyond Numbers and Financials: Accounting and Corporate Sustainability

With the evolution of industrialization and the expansion of corporations, there has been much concern about the protection of “others” interest when taking business decisions. Others include the environment, different stakeholders, future generations and the corporation itself as an abstract entity. Consequently, the powerful impact of this evolution has made the Corporate Sustainability (CS) an issue that should be considered either instrumentally to achieve the objectives of owners or normatively as a part of the organization’s goals. In this paper, we summarize the key aspects of sustainability that are embedded in the accounting research and practice. We firstly look at the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), including Environmental Accounting (EA), as a vital starting point for the CS research in Accounting. Then, we illustrate the contribution of Accounting to CS through the enhancement of governance systems, the encouragement of a long-term outlook, ensuring the reliability of financial reports and promoting the ethical and professional behavior aspects of accounting practitioners. We conclude the paper with some recommendations for future research and accounting education which may emphasize the understanding of accounting in the context of CS.
Three Decades of Global Institutional Investment in Real Estate

Alternative assets represent an increasing share of pension fund assets, and real estate is a cornerstone of that allocation. This paper investigates the trends in pension fund real estate investments over the last three decades, both in private and in public real estate, focusing on the performance of the asset class for the ultimate asset owners. The development of pension fund allocations to real estate differs across regions, with allocations increasing in Canada, stationary in the U.S., and shrinking in Europe. Just over 10% of the real estate exposure is through publicly listed vehicles. Within the real estate portfolio, the authors observe a continuing increase in the use of external fund managers. Investment costs are stationary, with pension funds in the U.S. structurally paying more to their external private real estate managers than their peers in Canada and Europe. Costs relating to public real estate are more equal across regions. In terms of performance, the authors observe rather stable total returns for both private and listed real estate over the last three decades, contrasting volatile performance of private equity and infrastructure. Intermediated investment management for private real estate is costly, leading to disproportionately lower net returns.
Taxes and Business Philanthropy in Armenia

The majority of countries around the world provide tax incentives for business philanthropy. However, little is known about the responsiveness of businesses to this tax treatment. This paper expands on this scant literature by focusing on the Armenian tax system which provides incentives for business philanthropy. The support takes the form of a deduction capped at a fraction of business receipts. This generates a kink beyond which the marginal tax subsidy drops to zero. Using administrative panel data for the years 2007 through 2017, we find strong evidence of bunching by Armenian firms at the kink, with a sizeable tax elasticity of giving at the intensive margin. The evidence on bunching is robust to whether firms have been audited, and to whether any tax deficiencies are observed. This suggests that the observed response is likely to be real rather than being driven by reporting responses.
Portfolio Management for Insurers and Pension Funds and COVID-19: Targeting Volatility for Equity, Balanced and Target-Date Funds with Leverage Constraints

Insurers and pension funds face the challenges of historically low-interest rates and high volatility in equity markets, that have been accentuated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent advances in equity portfolio management with a target volatility have been shown to deliver improved on average risk-adjusted return, after transaction costs. This paper studies these targeted volatility portfolios in applications to equity, balanced, and target-date funds with varying constraints on leverage. Conservative leverage constraints are particularly relevant to pension funds and insurance companies, with more aggressive leverage levels appropriate for alternative investments. We show substantial improvements in fund performance for differing leverage levels, and of most interest to insurers and pension funds, we show that the highest Sharpe ratios and smallest drawdowns are in targeted volatility-balanced portfolios with equity and bond allocations. Furthermore, we demonstrate the outperformance of targeted volatility portfolios during major stock market crashes, including the crash from the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the Role of Projected FDI Inflows in Shaping Institutions: The Longer-Term Plan for Post-Pandemic Investment Reboot

Capital inflows have a strong presence that influences destination countries' development of institutions, which can in turn help resuscitate a stopped economy and re-attract capital that was lost during crises such as the recent public health crisis While the previous literature emphasizes the mechanism that foreign investors press or even threaten the local government for change, this paper explores empirically whether institutional improvement can be achieved through the channel that host countries voluntarily reform institutions in anticipation of potential investments predicted by the exogenous geographical and cultural characteristics of the recipient countries Given that countries with better institutional quality can accumulate larger FDI stocks, we still find that the need for more FDI, in contrast to FPI and debt, gives higher incentives to host countries to strategically improve their institutions before seeking capital overseas Moreover, the predicted FDI exerts more prominent impacts on institutions on constraining elite than those involved in launching a business, enforcing contracts, and protecting properties The results imply that a long-run plan for upgrading elite constraint institutions is crucial for a post-pandemic FDI reboot
A Sparse Enhanced Indexation Model with L 1/2 Norm and Its Alternating Quadratic Penalty Method

Optimal investment strategies for enhanced indexation problems have attracted considerable attentions over the last decades in the field of fund management. In this paper, a featured difference from the existing literature is that our main concern of the investigation is the development of a sparse enhanced indexation model to describe the process of assets selection by introducing a sparse L1/2 regularization instead of binary variables, which is expected to avoid the over-fitting and promote a better out-of-sample performance for the resulting tracking portfolio to some extent. An Alternating Quadratic Penalty (AQP) method is proposed to solve the corresponding nonconvex optimization problem, into which the Block Coordinate Descent (BCD) algorithm is integrated to solve a sequence of penalty subproblems. Under some suitable assumptions, we establish that any accumulation point of the sequence generated by the AQP method is a KKT point of the proposed model. Computational results on five typical data sets are reported to verify the efficiency of the proposed AQP method, including the superiority of the sparse L1/2 model with the AQP method over one cardinality constrained quadratic programming model with one of its solution methods in terms of computational costs, out-of-sample performances, and the consistency between in-sample and out-of-sample performances of the resulting tracking portfolios.
Relation between Auditors’ Risk-Preparedness and Audit Adjustments: Evidence from Professional Risk Fund and Professional Indemnity Insurance

Using proprietary information about Chinese audit firms’ Professional Risk Fund (PRF) and Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII) and their publicly traded clients’ audit adjustments, we examine whether and how audit firms’ PRF and PII relate to audit adjustments. We find that audit firms’ PRF and PII have opposite effects on the probability of making audit adjustments to clients’ profits and the magnitude of the audit adjustments. In particular, audit firms with larger PRF provisions exhibit a higher probability and magnitude of audit adjustments, whereas audit firms that hold more PII exhibit a lower probability and magnitude of audit adjustments. Our findings are robust to multiple approaches for addressing potential endogeneity, including using a changes model, a fixed-effects model, and a difference-in-differences specification. The results call into question the use of one-size-fits-all regulations regarding specific risk-shielding methods.
The art of conversation: the expanded audit report

The new generation of expanded audit reports includes disclosures about significant matters in a company’s financial reporting and its audit. These disclosures are a landmark change in auditors’ responsibility to provide information to the public. I examine expanded reports in various jurisdictions, why they became mandatory, what the evidence from their implementation is, and whether they have fulfilled the expectations of regulators and other stakeholders. Expanded reports are intended to increase the information content and usefulness of audit opinions, to increase external monitoring of auditors and management, and to foster a more open conversation between auditors and users of financial reporting. However, existing regulatory requirements, conflicting auditors’ incentives to provide new information, and evidence from the expanded reports’ implementation call into question whether these objectives have been met. It is my hope that expanded reports are only a first step towards enhanced auditor reporting.
Ionizing Irradiations Impact on Structural Parameters of Chromium (III) - Silicates Base Mica

New family of free-fluoride synthetic clay was synthesized via solution route. All starting solutions were made by applying carbon tetra-chloride (CCl4) as a solvent. The selected sample of synthetic free fluoride–Na-4-mica was having the general formula (Na4Mg6M4Si4O22.nH2O) where M = Cr3+ was exposure to two different E¤-irradiation doses 1st dose = 1.5 MR/h and 2nd dose = 3 MR/h at 25 cm distance. Structural parameters such as lattice constants, volume and phase quality were monitoring carefully by using both of XRD and SEM evaluating grain size of the mica bulk. Structural investigations proved that Cr-clay exhibits monoclinic phase accompanied with structure quality in comparison with both of Bi-and Al-clays.
The Role of Related Strategic Alliances Before M&As

Based on M&amp;A deals by companies from the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, I analyze the role of different types of prior ties between companies. I distinguish related alliances into direct and indirect alliances. Related alliances provide access to more information and can reduce transaction costs. The reduction of such costs can lead to a more successful target selection and a more efficient transaction process of the M&amp;A deal because the time from announcement to completion can be reduced. This effect can be explained by trust-building, better access to private information, and certification through related alliances. However, in contrast to other studies, I do not find statistically significant evidence that supports the hypothesis that alliances increase the post-M&amp;A performance and that alliances are associated with higher announcement returns.
The Rise and Fall of India’s Relative Investment Price: A Tale of Policy Error and Reform

India’s relative price of investment rose 44% from 1981 to 1991 and fell 26% from 1991 to 2006. We build a simple DGE model calibrated to Indian data in order to explore the impact of capital import substitution policies and their reform post-1991, in accounting for this rise and fall. Our model delivers a 23% rise before reform and a 31% fall thereafter. GDP per effective labor was 3% lower in 1991 compared to 1981 due to import restrictions on capital goods. Their removal and a 71 percentage point reduction in tariff rates raised GDP per effective labor permanently by 20%.
Board Directors under CEO's Social Pressure: Misreporting, Misreading, and Dissent Risk

Using a parsimonious setup, we shed light on two channels through which a small amount of social pressure exerted by a CEO on board directors may increase the company value even in the absence of the classic tradeoff between the board's monitoring and advising tasks. First, the pressure reduces reporting bias that arises when the CEO's proposals submitted to the board are constrained by previously released public company reports (e.g., earnings reports). Second, the CEO's pressure increases the riskiness of directors' dissent, which motivates their information acquisition. If the pressure is sufficiently small, positive effects on reporting bias and information acquisition offset negative effects of having directors' decisions that are more biased. This setup provides novel implications regarding tolerance for a CEO's social ties especially in firms with high outsider monitoring costs, CEO-chairman duality, and differences between insiders and connected outsiders. We also propose testable empirical implications for links between board characteristics, executives' social networks, and earnings management.
Economic Operation of Cement: A Case of Gautam Buddha Airport Upgrading Component Project

The cost of cement is very crucial for the effective construction of any project. The aim of the paper is to assess the economic operation of cement used for Gautam Buddha Airport Upgrading Component construction projects. The economic operation of cement in terms of their quality, consumption, and cost ensuring the strength requirements by concrete is done. Tests for magnesia oxide, insoluble residue, setting time, and compressive strength were operated. Compressive strength test was conducted on cement mortar cubes (1:3) and on concrete cubes developed by the design mix at the laboratory at 7 and 28 days. On the basis of the design mix, the cost difference among these brands for those sites is evaluated. Purposive sampling technique was applied to conduct the interview of project managers of each site and lab technician of Multi lab. Magnesia oxide, insoluble buildup, setting time, and compressive quality properties were discovered to be distinctive as guaranteed by the producer in their concrete endorsements. Furthermore, the results of the design mix showed that different quantity of cement is required depending upon the brand for M25 concrete. The average mean of compressive strength of concretes casted at the field of Admin Building, International Terminal Building and Crass Fire Rescue Building sites for M25 were 28.952 N/mm2, 29.032 N/mm2 &amp; 27.924 N/mm2 respectively. Based on quality, content, and rate analysis, 53-grade cement is cost effective. So further grading of Ordinary Portland Cement needs to be specified along with strict inspection of cement for assuring quality. The cement produces must be assured to conform to the stated standard.
Pop-Up AD – Hit Or Miss?

Advertising techniques have changed with time and so the way of doing business. Promotional tactics and marketing strategies altered customer’s behavior and perception of buying. This research is based in Karachi, researched about consumer buying behavior, consumer perception at pop up advertisement and retention of the consumer on the appearance of pop up ads. Final results are depicted through path coefficient, total effect, and outer loading. Furthermore, R square, F square, and reliability and validity are also used in PLS. Online questionnaires were conducted on 153 populations falling under the age group of 15-55 living in Karachi, Pakistan. Descriptive analysis was done by using smart PLS software. The purpose of this research is to find out the effectiveness of Popup ads and their positive or negative impact on the business and behavior of consumers. Variables of consumer buying behavior, perception, and retention are related to each other. And are affecting overall pop-up advertising. Consumer buying behavior and perception of consumer is negative regarding pop up ads. Pop up ads are obstruction and serves as a blockage in the work of individual.
The PEPP Contribution to the Capital Markets Union (CMU)

The EU has several ‘pension problems, for example ageing, poor portability and the lack of consumer protection. Furthermore, the EU internal market for pensions is not sufficiently developed. This not only prevents, for example, a cost-efficient pension build-up of an employee working abroad, but the differences among national rule also restrict a local pension participant in choosing a pension fund established abroad. <br><br>All these problems have been recently pointed out in the new action plan to achieve the Capital Markets Union. The European Commission in fact deems the introduction and adoption of the PEPP as integral part of a truly single market for capital across the EU. <br><br>The PEPP can help break down these barriers as well as contribute to a high level of consumer protection, for example via limiting the costs and providing detailed information requirements. This article contains a description on the PEPP and its consumer protection elements, potential uses and its Level 2 measures.
Collectivism, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Innovation, and other Antecedents of Externally Financed Growth in Pakistani Firms

To foster firm growth, it is now established that access to finance through well-functioning capital markets is a necessary pre-requisite. Moreover, other factors like formal institutions embedded in the legal environment and framework also condition financial constraints at the macro level. Similarly, informal institutional structures like culture, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Innovation can also interact at the firm level, and serve as a constraint to the use of external finance in firms’ growth strategies. Internal factors affecting willingness are sometimes more important drivers as compared to external factors that enhance capabilities. This paper explored the role of these internal factors like Collectivism, Innovation, leadership, entrepreneurship, customer orientation, level of employee development, communication strategies, that serve as informal institutional frameworks that condition self-imposed external financial constrain in firms’ growth strategies. To establish empirical validity, data was gathered from 150 companies ranging from small to midsize organizations based in Karachi. Data were collected by conducting a survey using a close-ended questionnaire and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structured equation modeling. The results suggested that communication strategies, level of employee development, entrepreneurship, and Innovation have a positive and significant effect on Externally Financed Growth. Interestingly, leadership affects growth negatively. The finding implies that firms' ability to overcome financial constraints is significantly affected by internal factors along with financial development.