Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimisation et contrôle de la transition dynamique de percolation au sein de matériaux nanostructurés

L'ajout de charges carbonees au sein de matrices polymeres permet la mise en œuvre de composites aux proprietes electriques optimisees. La conductivite de ces materiaux depend en grande partie de l'organisation des charges dans la matrice, notamment de la presence de reseaux percolants. L'objectif du present travail est de comprendre les mecanismes de structuration des nanotubes de carbone au sein de differents milieux. L'architecture de ces reseaux de charges a principalement ete revelee par le biais de mesures electriques et dielectriques. L'originalite de nos travaux reside dans l'utilisation de matrices liquides, notamment des huiles de silicone, a? n de s'affranchir des contraintes presentes dans les plastiques d'une part, et de simpli? er les processus de mise en œuvre d'autre part. Nos travaux revelent une agregation des charges au cours du temps, plus connue sous le nom de percolation dynamique. La conductivite de ces materiaux a ensuite ete modelisee en fonction du temps et du taux de charge a partir de l'equation statique de Kirkpatrick. L'application d'un champ electrique a permis une augmentation de la conductivite ainsi qu'une diminution du seuil de percolation. En? n, une etude des parametres intrinseques de la matrice a revele une forte in? uence de la viscosite et de la tension de surface sur la dispersion et la vitesse d'agregation des nanotubes de carbone.
Intellectual Capital Reporting between a Developed and Developing Nation.

Purpose - This paper examines the patterns of intellectual capital reporting (ICR) of large listed firms in a developing nation, Sri Lanka. The aim of this study is to highlight the differences in ICR practice between developing and developed nations. Design/Methodology/Approach - The paper begins by examining each of the top 30 firms by market capitalization listed on the Colombo stock exchange in 1998/1999 and 1999/2000. Using the content analysis method, it reviews the annual reports of these firms to determine the types of intellectual capital (IC) items reported in Sri Lanka. It then compares these findings with a similar study undertaken in Australia during the same period (Guthrie and Petty, 2000). Findings - ICR differences were identified between Sri Lankan and Australian firms, and it is argued that that these differences can be attributed to economic, social and political factors. The paper highlights the need for a uniform ICR definition and a reporting framework that provides comparative and consistent reporting under the auspices of a regulatory body. Practical Implications - This study highlights important policy issues for Australia, Sri Lanka and other nations. These issues are even more pertinent in the light of the gradual international adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), formulated by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Originality/Value - Most papers on intellectual capital reporting have focused on firms in developed countries. This study offers insights into comparative reporting practices between a developed and a developing country.
Project Appraisal in the Reformed EU ETS: Looking for Shortcuts

The European Union’s Emissions Trading System, EU ETS, has been reformed, shifting the system from a fixed-cap system into a system with an endogenous supply of permits. This paper discusses how to handle the scheme in project appraisal. The focus is on a few relatively straightforward empirical approaches that can be used to approximate how the path of the endogenous supply of permits is affected by an exogenous change in emissions. A particularly surprising feature of the reformed scheme is that an exogenous increase in emissions could cause a reduction in total emissions, a kind of Green Paradox. In addition, overlapping national policies as well as the Paris Agreement to combat climate change that entered into force on 4 November 2016 could neutralize any exogenous impact of the project, reintroducing the ‘waterbed’ so that the project is evaluated as if it sorted under a fixed-cap system. The paper proposes a couple of shortcuts that hopefully simplify economic evaluations of projects affecting the supply of permits. For convenient reference, the paper also lays out the mechanics of the reformed system.
Convolutional Neural Network for Stock Price Prediction Using Transfer Learning

The goal of this paper is to build a trading algorithm by applying image recognition neural network - Convolutional Neural Network(CNN) - to the 2D technical candle stick charts. First, this paper shows a research survey of the previous paper. Second, this paper explains the basic theory of CNN model and how it can works on chart images. Next, this project performs an experimental study of CNN on S&amp;P 500 index from January 1, 1985 to June 30, 2020. The CNN model structure used in this paper is transferred from inception v3 with three additional layers, and the technical indicators used in the input chart image are simple moving average (25 days). The label data used in the model are categorical - either up, flat, or down. The model has 50% accuracy on the test set when conducting three-days ahead forecast, which is higher than the simple momentum strategy and contrarian strategy, indicating its high alpha generating potential. One-day ahead forecast and five-days ahead forecast have lower accuracy than the three-days forecast. This means you might have the best performance when you close your position at T + 3.
INTERNET OF THINGS: ITS EMERGENCE, CONCEPT AND SERVICES

In present days, one can observe the penetration of digital technologies in both business and everyday life. This trend opens up new opportunities for individual companies and entire industries. This digital transformation allows companies to more accurately predict changes in the market and make decisions based on collected, processed and analyzed information about the various components of entrepreneurial activity. One of the incarnations of digital transformation is the concept of the Internet of things. This article discusses the concept of IoT, factors that contributed to its emergence, its services and a well-defined architecture for its deployment.
La comunicación estratégica desde el mercadeo en instituciones educativas (Strategic Communication Based on Marketing at Educational Institutions)

<b>Spanish Abstract:</b> La gestión administrativa y académica de las organizaciones educativas ha evolucionado en la comprensión de aspectos comunicacionales que generen relacionamiento. Este estudio compara las tendencias entre las prácticas comunicacionales y las estrategias de mercadeo utilizadas en las Instituciones de Educación Superior (IES) del sector privado en Medellín-Antioquia. Para el análisis se hizo una revisión de literatura clasificada en dos fases: la primera, a partir de algunas bases de datos académicas; y la segunda, desde el análisis de las plataformas digitales de las instituciones en estudio. Los resultados arrojaron que se requieren habilidades comunicacionales que faciliten el acercamiento de las colectividades y rompan las barreras de la distancia, por lo que es importante desarrollar estrategias de mercadeo que estén vinculadas a la planeación organizacional para una acertada toma de decisiones. Se concluyó que las acciones de mercadeo desde la comunicación deben ser más estratégicas e intencionales en los diferenciales del portafolio de las instituciones y, al mismo tiempo, la oferta debe ajustarse a las necesidades del sector productivo y de la sociedad para ser competitivos. <br><br><b>English Abstract:</b> The administrative and academic management of educational organizations has made progress in the understanding of certain communicational aspects that produce engagement. This study compares trends in communication practices and marketing strategies used by several private higher education institutions (HEIs) in Medellín, Colombia. For this analysis, we conducted a literature review divided into two stages: first, we used some academic databases; and, second, we analyzed the digital platforms of the institutions studied here. The results indicate that these organizations require communication skills that enable them to have a close contact with their audience and break the barriers of distance. Therefore, they should develop marketing strategies connected to their organizational plans for adequate decision-making. We conclude that their marketing communication actions should be more strategic and stress differentiating factors in their academic programs. Likewise, their programs should be adjusted to the needs of the productive sector and society in order to be competitive.
CSR: The Total Social Responsibility of Business Organizations

Corporate social responsibility is not a new subject now in India. With regard to corporate social responsibility India has secured a prominent place in the world corporate ladder. Social responsibility of business highlights moral obligation of business towards social development. In recent years, CSR has gained growing recognition as a new and emerging form of governance in business. CSR encourages open and transparent business practices that are based on ethical values and respect for employees, communities and the environment. The wider aim of CSR is to create higher standards of living while preserving the profitability of the corporation for people both within and outside the corporation. The paper looks to critically understand the nature of corporate social responsibility in India. Corporate social responsibility practices in India sets a pragmatic level of grassroots growth through coalition and partnerships with sustainable progress approaches. It further tends to reveal about the determinants, areas, motives, levels and cost-benefit analysis of CSR. The determinants that have lead to the increasing awareness among corporate organizations for CSR are globalization and the associated growth in competition, increased size and influence of companies, retrenchment or repositioning of government and its roles, war for talent, companies competing for expertise, growth of global civil society activism, and increased importance of intangible assets. The major areas of social responsibility that apply to business firms and other types of organization are ecology and environment, consumerism, community needs, corporate giving support for education, minorities and disabled personal, labor relation, stakeholder relation and economic activities. In spite of a real awakening, lack of understanding, inadequately trained personnel, non availability of specific and authentic data and lack of information on the type of corporate social responsibility activities have acted as barriers to know the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility activities in India. The total social responsibility of corporate entails the concurrent fulfillment of the firms’ economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities.
Bond Yield Curve Convexity Trading

Bond Yield curve is an important indicator of the borrowing costs and lending returns, is also one of the most observed indicator by traders in fixed income trading desk among investment banks. The shape of the yield curve can be normal, flat or inverted. In most cases, bond yield curve is concavely shaped. There are theories to explain the economical meaning for a normal, flat or inverted yield curve. However, there is a lack of explanation for the concave shape of the yield curve. We in this article try to provide an explanation by constructing arbitrage portfolio under the assumption that the yield curve moves in parallel. We can show that under this assumption, zero coupon bond yield curve should be concavely shaped. We will also reach the same conclusion for swap curves. In this process, we also discover some interesting properties which were never discussed in the literature.
Exclusivity of Groups in Contests

I analyse a group contest in which groups decide over two dimensions of membership-exclusivity: whether a member is allowed to join the group at all, and whether this member is allowed to join another group as well. If the prize is mostly private, group leaders do not oﬀer membership in equilibrium. If the prize is mostly public or the elasticity of marginal eﬀort cost high, they oﬀer exclusive membership. Membership commitment, membership fees, and the introduction of a third group all lead to the emergence of equilibria with endogenous non-exclusive membership. A contest designer interested in maximising eﬀort would like to prohibit non-exclusive membership and allow exclusive membership only if groups are more eﬀective than singletons.
Corporate Debt and Unconventional Monetary Policy: The Risk-taking Channel with Bond and Loan Contracts

We investigate the effects of unconventional monetary policies on corporate debt through the risk-taking channel using corporate bond and syndicated loan contracts from 2000 to 2016 in Japan. In this period, the policy rate remained fixed near the zero bound. Using the daily changes in the yield curve on monetary policy meeting days, we identify one call rate shock and two unconventional monetary policy shocks that do not affect short-term rates. We find that QE shocks, which lower all medium-to-long-term rates, increase the maturity of debt contracts, especially for syndicated loans. In addition, such QE shocks decrease the size of corporate bonds with short maturity. On the other hand, QQE shocks, which raise medium-term rates and lower long-term rates, and decrease the size of loans and corporate bonds with longer maturity. These effects imply the existence of the risk-taking channel of unconventional monetary policy: it stimulates investment in longer-maturity assets and decreases investment in assets with lower yields. Our findings show that unconventional policies affect debt contracts even in an extremely low interest rate environment.
Option Surface Econometrics with Applications

At each maturity a discrete return distribution is inferred from option prices. Option pricing models imply a comparable theoretical distribution. As both the transformed data and the option pricing model deliver points on a simplex, the data is statistically modeled by a Dirichlet distribution with expected values given by the option pricing model. The resulting setup allows for maximum likelihood estimation of option pricing model parameters with standard errors enabling the test of hypotheses. Hypothesis testing is illustrated by testing for risk neutral return distributions being consistent with Brownian motion with drift time changed by a subordinator. Models mixing processes of independent increments with processes related to solution of Ornstein Uhlenbeck (OU) equations are tested for the presence of the OU component. OU equations are a form of perpetual motion processes continuously responding to their past changes. The tests support the rejection of Brownian subordination and the presence of a perpetual motion component.
Relationship Between Threshold Level of Inflation and Economic Growth in Bangladesh: A Multivariate Quadratic Regression Analysis

The main objective of this study is to empirically examine the relationship between inflation and economic growth in Bangladesh and to investigate the ongoing possible threshold effect. This study draws on diverse tables and charts, correlation matrices, pair-wise Granger Causality tests, ADRL (General to Specific Approach) test, and a quadratic regression equation estimated by OLS using time series annual data covering the sample period from 1980 to 2017. The results demonstrate that the relationship between inflation and GDP growth is non-linear with a subsistence of a breakpoint, which means the inverted U-shape curve. Moreover, the Granger Causality shows that economic growth does granger cause inflation. The empirical result indicates that when the inflation level reaches the threshold level at 7.84 percent then the economic growth is in peak position. This study proposed that the Bangladesh Bank should maintain the precautious and growth-friendly monetary policy structure by keeping inflation targeting below 7.84 percent, or else the growth might be held back.
State Dependence of Fiscal Multipliers: The Source of Fluctuations Matters

We develop a general theory of state-dependent fiscal multipliers in a framework featuring interaction between two empirically relevant goods market frictions: idle productive capacity and unsatisfied demand. Our key novel finding is that the source of economic fluctuations determines the cyclicality of fiscal multipliers. Policies that stimulate aggregate demand, such as government spending and consumption tax cuts, have multipliers that are large in demand driven recessions, but small and possibly negative in supply-driven downturns. On the other hand, policies that boost aggregate supply, such as cuts in taxes on labor income and firms’ payroll and sales, are ineffective in demand driven recessions, but powerful if the downturn is driven by supply factors. Spending austerity, implemented by a reduction in government consumption, can be the policy with the largest multiplier in severe supply-side recessions and demand-driven booms, provided elasticities of labor demand and supply are sufficiently low. We obtain model free empirical support for our theoretical predictions by using a novel econometric specification that allows us to estimate spending and tax cut multipliers in recessionary and expansionary episodes, conditional on those being either demand- or supply-driven.
Disclosure of Internal Control Weaknesses and Auditors' Litigation Risk

In contrast to research showing that private litigation discourages audit clients from disclosing internal control weaknesses, we find that auditors’ litigation concerns have a countervailing effect. Our empirical results show that adverse internal control opinions reduces the likelihood of auditors being implicated in lawsuits against their clients, which suggests that disclosing internal control weaknesses can protect auditors from litigation. Consistent with the notion that such litigation protection in turn encourages auditors to issue adverse internal control opinions, we find that both new and incumbent auditors are more likely to issue adverse internal control opinions for clients with higher ex ante litigation risk. Moreover, for restating firms that eventually acknowledge the existence of internal control weaknesses, ex ante litigation risk is positively associated with earlier adverse internal control opinions. Overall, our evidence suggests that litigation threat provides an incentive rather than a disincentive for auditors to issue adverse internal control opinions in a timely fashion. As both new and incumbent auditors have such incentives, auditors’ litigation concerns suppress clients’ opportunistic internal control opinion shopping.
Approximations for the Lead Time Variance: A Forecasting and Inventory Evaluation

Safety stock is necessary for firms in order to manage the uncertainty of demand. A key component in its determination is the estimation of the variance of the forecast error over lead time. Given the multitude of demand processes that lack analytical expressions of the variance of forecast error, an approximation is needed. It is common to resort to finding the one-step ahead forecast errors variance and scaling it by the lead time. However, this approximation is flawed for many processes as it overlooks the autocorrelations that arise between forecasts made at different lead times. This research addresses the issue of these correlations first by demonstrating their existence for some fundamental demand processes, and second by showing through an inventory simulation the inadequacy of the approximation. We propose to monitor the empirical variance of the lead time errors, instead of estimating the point forecast error variance and extending it over the lead time interval. The simulation findings indicate that this approach provides superior results to other approximations in terms of cycle-service level. Given its lack of assumptions and computational simplicity, it can be easily implemented in any software, making it appealing to both practitioners and academics.
Local Political-Turnover-Induced Uncertainty and Bond Market Pricing

Using political turnovers in mayoral appointments at the prefecture-city level in China, we show that investors in the municipal corporate bond market price their concerns for rising local political uncertainty into bonds and relocate capital toward other corporate bonds issued by local firms. Municipal/non-municipal corporate bond issue spreads increase (decrease) by 8.9 (14) basis points before the expected political turnover of mayors and reverse afterwards. The effect is more prominent for bonds issued in cities with investors who have a strong local preference, suggesting investors switch from MCBs to local non-MCBs in their bond holdings. The pricing effect is also stronger for bonds issued in regions with more developed financial markets and bonds with lower credit ratings. Lastly, bond market participants only price in the political risk induced by the turnovers of politician with direct involvement in local economic activities.
The Relation between the Readability of Accounting Footnotes Information and the Company Value of the Appraisal Reports of Public Tender Offer in Brazil

We studied the relation between the Accounting footnotes readability and company value, using five metrics to measure readability: word, sentence, and paragraph lengths, numbers of graphic elements and pages. To obtain the company value, we used appraisal reports of public tender offer to acquire shares from the last nine years, which got to a 90 Brazilian company sample. The methods analyzed were: discounted cash flow, market price of shares after the public tender offer announcement, multiples, and equity book value. The results showed a high correlation between the sentence length and all four valuation methods, while the OLS multiple regression showed a relation between the footnote readability component that included word and sentence lengths and company valuation by DCF and equity methods. The other indexes showed no relation to the company value, except when we use the share price before the announcement as a control variable, then, it becomes significant for the equity method.
The Use of Technical Indicators in the Trading of Second-Hand Dry Bulk Ships

Sale and purchase of second-hand vessels is a key source of profits for the dry bulk shipping companies, and profitability of such trading is dependent on timing decisions. Using a sample of ship prices from June 1986 to June 2014, this study applies technical indicators to identify optimal trading timing for dry bulkers. The simulated results indicate that, deducting financing costs and without accounting for ship operating income, the strategy based on technical indicators still outperforms the buy-and-hold strategy. However, the vessel sale and purchase market is relative illiquid, resulting in a relatively adverse impact on smaller vessels. Given a serious liquidity shortage in the market, only larger vessels can produce positive profits. This result shows that the use of technical indicators helps determine trading timing for second-hand vessels, particularly for the capesize vessel, possibly due to the higher price volatility and lower market efficiency in the market.