Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global value chains and policy practice: The making of linkages in the Ivorian cashew industry

The global value chain framework has gained increasing prominence as a policy tool for resource-based industrialization. Focusing on synergies between the commodity-producing and related manufacturing and service sectors, value chain interventions assume that buyer-supplier linkages facilitate the upgrading of local industries. This study investigates these synergistic assumptions in the context of the Ivorian cashew industry. The Ivorian case exemplifies how the value chain concept, with its associated focus on local-global linkages, has placed collaboration with foreign lead firms at the heart of the industrial policy agenda. While these collective arrangements are crucial for negotiating inter-firm relationships along global value chains, this study finds little evidence that they have initiated upgrading for local industries. Instead, the emergence of foreign buyers as strategic partners for policy-makers has created opportunities for these lead actors to reinforce their dominant position, stemming from access to finance and technology.
Spatial analysis of urban material stock with clustering algorithms: A Northern European case study

A large share of construction material stock (MS) accumulates in urban built environments. To attain a more sustainable use of resources, knowledge about the spatial distribution of urban MS is needed. In this article, an innovative spatial analysis approach to urban MS is proposed. Within this scope, MS indicators are defined at neighborhood level and clustered with k‐mean algorithms. The MS is estimated bottom‐up with (a) material‐intensity coefficients and (b) spatial data for three built environment components: buildings, road transportation, and pipes, using seven material categories. The city of Gothenburg, Sweden is used as a case study. Moreover, being the first case study in Northern Europe, the results are explored through various aspects (material composition, age distribution, material density), and, finally, contrasted on a per capita basis with other studies worldwide.
Reliability Assessment of a Base Transceiver Station Using 2-Parameter Weibull Distribution Method

About 80% interruptions of cellular network availability occur due to power outage on BTS stations and reliability analysis of these systems is yet to receive exhaustive studies. Most network providers solely depend on generating power on their BTS sites using diesel generators since the grid power is least reliable, but the frequency of power outages from the diesel generators is alarming, hence, the need to analyse the reliability of these generators and their maintenance routine in relation to the site availability. In this study, the reliability of a Base Transceiver Station (BTS) is assessed by analysis of data obtained within a period of six months from four BTS sites used as case study using 2-parameter Weibull failure distribution method. The failure times of each BTS site were rank-ordered and the estimates of Weibull parameters θ and β were obtained from Weibull least-squares plots. The Weibull plots for the four BTS sites had a good index of fit which shows that a strong linear relationship exists. The value of the shape parameter (β) was found to be between the range of 1< β < 3 for all the BTS sites studied. This means that the probability density function is skewed and the failure rate of the BTS sites is increasing. The reliability of each BTS site was successfully computed. The reliability of the four BTS sites was found to be increasing as their values of scale parameter, θ increases. From the results obtained, BTS site RV0144 had the highest reliability while BTS site RV0248 had the lowest reliability.
Strategic Activism in an Uncertain World

Abstract We model private politics in the presence of two-sided incomplete information. An interest group (IG) threatens to inform consumers about a firm’s damaging technology should the firm not adopt a clean technology. The IG does not know how costly adopting the clean technology is and the firm does not know how much the IG cares about the damages. In equilibrium an IG who cares a lot signals its type to the firm and the firm is more inclined to adopt the clean technology if it receives such a signal. However, impasses can occur: the firm does not adopt the clean technology despite the fact that the IG has signaled that it cares a lot and threatens to inform a large fraction of the consumer population. The IG never informs all consumers: as soon as a certain fraction of the consumers is informed by the IG the firm reduces its price and thereby reveals to the remaining consumers that it is employing a damaging technology. The IG’s actions increase consumer well-being, but decrease total welfare unless the cost of adopting the clean technology is likely to be low. Yet, since the IG is inclined to target firms with this property, a regulator might want to delegate information provision to the IG.
How Much Did Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption Cost Bob Gibson?

Major League Baseball was granted an exemption to antitrust laws in 1922 by the Supreme Court. This exemption led to the creation of a monopsonistic labor market that prevented baseball players from fielding offers from other organizations once that player signed with any Major League Baseball team. Economic theory predicts that such a market would reduce a worker’s wage below a worker’s marginal revenue product. The question this study seeks to address is how much wage depression existed before the introduction of free agency in baseball in 1976. Specifically, we will examine the Hall-of-Fame career of Bob Gibson, a career that ended in 1975. Our examination will not only explore the standard approach economists have used to answer this question for more than forty years but also a simpler approach that gives a more realistic answer to the question.
The cost-effectiveness of public charter schools in Texas

I compare per pupil revenues, expenditures, and performance levels in public charter schools to district-run public schools in Texas for the 2017-18 school year. After controlling for several school and student characteristics, I find that public charter schools are funded around $1,700 (15 percent) less, and spend around $3,700 (28 percent) less, per pupil than district-run public schools. Public charter schools demonstrate cost-effectiveness advantages between 8 and 42 percent, depending on the model employed, over district-run public schools in Texas. I also find evidence to suggest per pupil spending is positively related to state testing outcomes for public charter schools, but not for district-run public schools.
Effect of Board Characteristics on the Value Relevance of Segment Earnings

Botosan and Stanford (2005) examine the manager’s motive to withhold segment disclosures using US data and find evidence suggesting the motivation to be a desire to protect profits in less competitive industries. Managerial opportunism could be constrained by the board of directors on whom the Companies and Allied Matters Act, 2004 imposes the resposibility of preparing the financial statements. The purpose of this study therefore is to investigate the extent to which board characteristics influence the value relevance of segment earnings. This study is motivated by the fact that prior studies using data from Europe and the US markets investigate the value relevance of segment disclosures without paying special consideration of the role of the board in the reporting process. Furthermore, there is paucity of empirical studies based on data from the Nigerian market. Indeed, Nigerian studies focus on determinants of segment disclosures (Ibrahim & Jaafar, 2013; Ibrahim, 2014; Otonkue, Esang, & Edu, 2009). Abstract: The paper investigated the effect of board characteristics on the value relevance of segment earnings of Nigerian listed deposit money banks. The characteristics examined were board size, board independence and frequency of board meetings. The study adopted ex post facto research design and derived the data from the annual reports of the listed deposit money banks for the period 2012 to 2016. It formulated and tested nine hypotheses using ordinary least square method of multiple regressions. The results of the test of hypothesis revealed that board size enhanced the value relevance of Segment 1 earnings. It also showed that board independence improved the value relevance of Segment 1 earnings and Segment 2 earnings. The result further showed that board size did not strengthen the value relevance of Segment 2 earnings and Segment 3 earnings. Similarly frequency of board meetings did not improve the value relevance of Segment 1 earnings, Segment 2 earnings and Segment 3 earnings. Board independence did not enhance the value relevance of Segment 3 earnings. This result that board characteristics did not enhance the value relevance could be because the directors are not truly independent in mind and appearance. It is recommended that shareholders conduct due diligence on prospective board members.
Hyperspectral Image Acquisition and Calibration with Application to Skin Detection Systems

Hyperspectral imaging provides access to characteristic material spectra in a way not possible with standard trichromatic imaging, although relatively little has been done to exploit these data outside of remote sensing applications. In our efforts to build a hyperspectral skin detection system, several new problems were identified that had not previously been adequately addressed, suggesting that routine use of spectral imaging techniques in terrestrial (earth-based) applications is non-trivial. Previously inconsequential artefacts, such as shadowing, become extremely significant when imposing the requirement for quantitative data. A large part of this research project has been the development of methods to enable accurate and reliable processing of hyperspectral images in the terrestrial setting. Unlike broadband trichromatic cameras, imaging spectrometers are inherently susceptible to chromatic aberration given their operational spectral range and narrowband resolution. We developed an imaging spectrometer that produced optimally focused images at each wavelength band. Additionally, the near infrared (NIR) Liquid Crystal Tuneable Filter (LCTF) used on this device was found to contain extraneous transmission sidelobes at a subset of tuneable wavelengths, rendering measurements at these wavelengths highly inaccurate. We present a novel and effective method to recover accurate material reflectance using inverse methods. Further to these equipment idiosyncrasies, shadowing and illumination variations, which present significant challenges, but are often expediently ignored. A revised linear mixture model (LMM) was developed to account for these variations and a collection of techniques capable of removing these artefacts are presented. The efficacy and utility of these techniques are demonstrated on real-world hyperspectral data. Finally, a database of hyperspectral human skin images was constructed to assist the development of skin detection techniques, and the challenges faced during its construction are discussed. Preliminary analysis of these data has tied specific skin regions (e.g. nose, ears, lips and knees) to distinct endmembers and reflectance histogram modes, and that the commonly-used Gaussian random process model does not sufficiently characterise this spatial heterogeneity of skin. While a successful method for skin detection was not established, the practical tools provided by this research make significant contributions towards realising this goal.
The motives for Japanese foreign direct investment in the Southeastern United States

Purpose Whereas the USA is still the largest investment destination for Japanese companies, Japan also accounts as the second largest source of investment in the country. The purpose of this paper is to, empirically, examine the detailed motives of Japanese affiliates when investing in the Southeastern USA, adding to previous research at the national level. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a qualitative approach based on the interviews of long-term Japanese investors in the manufacturing and wholesale trade industries in the Southeastern USA and applies text analysis to identify their motives. Findings The results show that Japanese firms engage in market- and efficiency-seeking foreign direct investment (FDI), and still apply a classic sequence of gradual and incremental market commitments. Market size and growth rate, reducing transaction or transportation costs, and integration within local value chains are the most important to them, whereas competition, creating an export base, lowering tax and accessing skilled labor are of little concern. Practical implications The goal of Japanese FDI in the USA is no longer to bypass tariffs but is still part of a complex industrial network of relations which drives further investment. This result can inform policy makers at the state level about the factors that can drive additional foreign investment, such as the establishment of industrial clusters. Originality/value This study offers current insights into the motives of Japanese FDI in two industries.
Does Cheap Talk Affect Market Outcomes? Evidence from Ebay

We study cheap talk by firms and responses by their consumers, focusing on unverifiable promises of charitable donations on eBay during 2005–2006. Cheap talk listings have lower sales probabilities but sell at higher prices when successful. The negative relationship between cheap talk and sales is concentrated in the months following Hurricane Katrina, a time when verifiable and unverifiable charity listings increased dramatically. Finally, we show that cheap talk sellers have lower quality ratings than those making verifiable donations. Our results suggest that buyers ( justifiably) avoid cheap talk listings when credible quality signals are available, thus limiting the extent of cheap talk. (JEL D12, D82, D83, L15, L31, M31)
BLTRCNN-Based 3-D Articulatory Movement Prediction: Learning Articulatory Synchronicity From Both Text and Audio Inputs

Predicting articulatory movements from audio or text has diverse applications, such as speech visualization. Various approaches have been proposed to solve the acoustic-articulatory mapping problem. However, their precision is not high enough with only acoustic features available. Recently, deep neural network (DNN) has brought tremendous success in various fields, like speech recognition and image processing. To increase the accuracy, we propose a new network architecture for articulatory movement prediction with both text and audio inputs, called a bottleneck long-term recurrent convolutional neural network (BLTRCNN). To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time to predict articulatory movements based on DNN by fusing text and audio inputs. Our BLTRCNN consists of two networks. The first is the bottleneck network, generating a compact bottleneck features of text information for each frame independently. The second, including convolutional neural network, long short-term memory and skip connection, is called the long-term recurrent convolutional neural network (LTRCNN). LTRCNN is used for articulatory movement prediction when bottleneck features, acoustic features, and text features are integrated as inputs together. Experiments show that the proposed BLTRCNN achieves the state-of-the-art root-mean-square error (RMSE) 0.528 mm and the correlation coefficient 0.961. Moreover, we also demonstrate how text information complements acoustic features in this prediction task.
Causes of climate change over the historical record

This review addresses the causes of observed climate variations across the industrial period, from 1750 to present. It focuses on long-term changes, both in response to external forcing and to climate variability in the ocean and atmosphere. A synthesis of results from attribution studies based on palaeoclimatic reconstructions covering the recent few centuries to the 20th century, and instrumental data shows how greenhouse gases began to cause warming since the beginning of industrialization, causing trends that are attributable to greenhouse gases by 1900 in proxy-based temperature reconstructions. Their influence increased over time, dominating recent trends. However, other forcings have caused substantial deviations from this emerging greenhouse warming trend: volcanic eruptions have caused strong cooling following a period of unusually heavy activity, such as in the early 19th century; or warming during periods of low activity, such as in the early-to-mid 20th century. Anthropogenic aerosol forcing most likely masked some global greenhouse warming over the 20th century, especially since the accelerated increase in sulphate aerosol emissions starting around 1950. Based on modelling and attribution studies, aerosol forcing has also influenced regional temperatures, caused long-term changes in monsoons and imprinted on Atlantic variability. Multi-decadal variations in atmospheric modes can also cause long-term climate variability, as apparent for the example of the North Atlantic Oscillation, and have influenced Atlantic ocean variability. Long-term precipitation changes are more difficult to attribute to external forcing due to spatial sparseness of data and noisiness of precipitation changes, but the observed pattern of precipitation response to warming from station data supports climate model simulated changes and with it, predictions. The long-term warming has also led to significant differences in daily variability as, for example, visible in long European station data. Extreme events over the historical record provide valuable samples of possible extreme events and their mechanisms.
Climate exceeded human management as the dominant control of fire at the regional scale in California’s Sierra Nevada

The societal impacts of recent, severe fires in California highlight the need to understand the long-term effectiveness of human fire management. The relative influences of local management and climate at centennial timescales are controversial and poorly understood. This is the case in California’s Sierra Nevada, an actively managed area with a rich history of Native American fire use. We analyzed charcoal preserved in lake sediments from Yosemite National Park and spanning the last 1400 years to reconstruct local and regional area burned. Warm and dry climates promoted burning at both local and regional scales. However, at local scales fire management by Native Americans before 850 and between ca. 1350 and 1600 CE and, subsequently, Yosemite park managers from ca. 1900 to 1970 CE, decoupled fire extent dictated by regional climate scenarios. Climate acts as a top-down, broader scale control of fire, but human management serves a bottom-up, local control. Regional area burned peaked during the Medieval Climate Anomaly and declined during the last millennium, as climate became cooler and wetter and Native American burning declined. This trend was accentuated by 20th century fire suppression policies, which led to a minimum in burned area relative to the last 1400 years. In light of projected anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and predicted climate changes in California, our data indicate that although active management can mitigate local fire activity, broader regional burning may become more spatially extensive than has been observed in the last century.
Application of Cognitive Load Theory in Accounting Education

The field of accounting education has recently adopted cognitive load theory (CLT), which originated in educational psychology. There are several empirical studies inspired by CLT which have demonstrated the practical implications of this theory. Although some articles have addressed the relationship of CLT and accounting education, none have considered the integration of the design principles and provide practical guidelines accounting educators may follow. Three techniques are described, by which educators may do so: (a) minimising instructional procedures that splits the attention of students, (b) tailoring instruction to levels of accounting students' expertise, and (c) minimising problem-solving exercises and utilising more worked examples. A detailed examination of these 3 techniques indicates that they assist students’ understanding of accounting. These techniques are not applicable to all accounting learners but are more appropriate to accounting students learning a specific topic for the first time than to expert learners (e.g., final year students who have been introduced to the accounting topic). All 3 guidelines are based on the importance CLT places on the human cognitive architecture, particularly our knowledge of working and long-term memory, schema construction and automation, and the different types of cognitive load affecting the students to absorb and retain information.
Carbon leakage in aviation policy

ABSTRACT The inherently global, connected nature of aviation means that carbon leakage from aviation policy does not necessarily behave similarly to leakage from other sectors. We model carbon leakage from a range of aviation policy test cases applied to a specific country (the United Kingdom), motivated by a desire to reduce aviation CO2 faster than achievable by currently-planned global mitigation efforts in pursuit of a year-2050 net zero CO2 target. We find that there are two main components to leakage: one related to passenger behaviour, which tends to result in emissions reductions outside the policy area (negative leakage), and one related to airline behaviour, which tends to result in emissions increases outside the policy area (positive leakage). The overall leakage impact of a policy, and whether it is positive or negative, depends on the balance of these two components and the geographic scope used, and varies for different policy types. In our simulations, carbon pricing-type policies were associated with leakage of between +50 and −150% depending on what is assumed about scope and the values of uncertain parameters. Mandatory biofuel use was associated with positive leakage of around 0–40%, and changes in airport landing costs to promote more fuel-efficient aircraft were associated with positive leakage of 50–150%. Key policy insights Carbon leakage in aviation policy arises from airline responses (typically positive leakage) and passenger responses (typically negative leakage). Depending on the geographical scope, policy type and values for uncertain parameters, leakage may be between around −150 to +150%. Of the policies investigated in this study, leakage was typically most negative for carbon pricing and most positive for environmental landing charges. Absolute values of leakage are smallest where policies are considered on the basis of all arriving and departing flights.
Working it out together: a suggested model for vacation-related decision-making in couples

ABSTRACT Choices we make are oftentimes shaped by people we are in a relationship with. Surprisingly, most tourism research assumes that the decision-maker is a single individual who is not influenced by their significant others. To fill in this gap, this study investigated how couples make complex vacation-related choices, and which decision reaching strategies they practice. By means of in-depth interviews with nine Norwegian couples, we examined which interpersonal factors affect decisions couples make together. Using grounded theory we developed a conceptual model of couple decision-making, which illustrates mechanisms within couple decision-making. The model suggests that certain subcategories of relationship attributes, interpersonal communication, and process involvement influence whether a couple uses democratic or monocratic decision-reaching strategies. The model we introduce has incorporated concepts that, at present, have received little or no attention in relation to complex decisions, in particular the vacation-related ones. We suggest six propositions for future research, and implications for vacation-related businesses and group decision-making are discussed.