Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Machine Learning and Return Predictability Across Firms, Time and Portfolios

Previous research finds that machine learning methods predict short-term return variation in the cross-section of stocks, even when these methods do not impose strict economic restrictions. However, without such restrictions, the models' predictions fail to generalize in a number of important ways, such as predicting time-series variation in returns to the market portfolio and long-short characteristic sorted portfolios. I show that this shortfall can be remedied by imposing restrictions, that reflect findings in the financial economics literature, in the architectural design of a neural network model and provide recommendations for using machine learning methods in asset pricing. Additionally, I study return predictability over multiple future horizons, thus shedding light on the dynamics of intermediate and long-run conditional expected returns.
Optimierte Portfolioanalyse Heterogener Güter Und Einflüsse-Messung Auf Den Fyt-Zins Mit Hedonisch Algorithmierter Garm-Regression (Optimized Portfolio Analysis of Heterogeneous Assets and Influence Measurement on the FYT Interest Rate With Hedonically Algorithmic GARM Regression)

<b>German abstract:</b> GAUß und LEGENDRE entwickelten Ende des 18. Jahrhundert die Methode der kleinsten Quadratfehler und legten den Grundstein für Regression. MARKOWITZ untersuchte in den 1950er Jahren das Zusam-menwirken einzelner Güter im Portfolio und minimierte im Rahmen der Modernen Portfoliotheorie prio-risiert Risiko in Form der Volatilität zur erwarteten Rendite. SHARPE, LINTNER und MOSSIN etablierten in den 1960er Jahren das Capital Asset Pricing Modell. ROSS schrieb in den 1970er Jahren mit dem linea-ren Multifaktormodell Geschichte, das insbesondere FAMA, FRENCH und CARHART in den 1990er Jah-ren, zuletzt im Jahr 2015 mit dem 5-Faktor-Modell, konkretisierten. Da Volatilität nicht allein für Risiko steht, untersuche ich weitere Risikomerkmale: <br><br>(1) die ganzzeitliche Abweichung erwarteter gegenüber angebotenen Kapitalrückflüssen über die Investitionszeit sowie <br><br>(2) die Einflüsse-Intensität einzelner, als auch Gruppenvariablen auf Güter-Ebene auf Rendite der Kapitalgeber mit ‚Generalized Additive Related Modell‘ Regressionen. <br><br>Die Portfolioanalyse heterogener Güter zum Modell ‚Future Yield after Taxes‘ in modifizierter Form des Baldwin-Zinses optimiert robuste Allokation. <br><br><b>English abstract:</b> At the end of the 18th century GAUß and LEGENDRE developed the method of the smallest square errors and laid the foundation for regression. MARKOWITZ examined the interaction of individual assets in the portfolio in the 1950s and, within the Modern Portfolio Theory, minimized risk in form of volatility to the expected return. SHARPE, LINTNER and MOSSIN established the Capital Asset Pricing Model in the 1960s. ROSS made history in the 1970s with the linear multifactor model, which FAMA, FRENCH and CARHART concretized in the 1990s especially, last modified in 2015 with the 5-factor model. Since volatility does not stand for risk alone, I examine further risk characteristics: <br><br>(1) the full-time deviation of expected capital returns compared to the offered return of capital over the investment period, and <br><br>(2) the influence intensity of individual as well as group variables at assets level on the return of the investor with 'Generalized' Additive Related Model 'regressions. <br><br>The portfolio analysis of heterogeneous assets using the 'Future Yield after Taxes' model in a modified form of the Baldwin interest rate optimizes robust allocation.
Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles Using Silybum Marianum Seed Extract

Green synthesis of nanoparticles, as fundamental building blocks of nanotechnology, has recently attracted considerable attention. Silver nanoparticles have unique physiochemical, biological and environmental properties which make them useful in a wide range of applications. In the present paper we report our research results on biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles from silver precursor using milk-thistle plant (Silybum marianum) seed extract. The resulting synthesized Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs) were characterized with UV– visible spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Our measurements showed that S. marianum seed extract can mediate facile and eco-friendly biosynthesis of colloidal spherical silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) of size range 1–25 nm. The colloidal AgNPs were formed at room temperature and were observed to be highly stable even after 6 months.
Deep Eutectic Solvents: The Organic Reaction Medium of the Century

This microreview summarizes the use of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) and related melts in organic synthesis. Solvents of this type combine the great advantages of other proposed environmentally benign alternative solvents, such as low toxicity, high availability, low inflammability, high recyclability, low volatility, and low price, avoiding many disadvantages of the more modern media. The fact that many of the components of these mixtures come directly from nature assures their biodegradability and renewability. The classification and distribution of the reactions into different sections in this microreview, as well as the emphasis paid to their scope, easily allow a general reader to understand the actual state of the art and the great opportunities opened, not only for academic purposes but also for industry.
Ln3+ post-functionalized metal–organic frameworks for color tunable emission and highly sensitive sensing of toxic anions and small molecules

A facile strategy was put forward to fabricate highly luminescent metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) with tunable and white-light emission by incorporating lanthanide cations (Ln3+) into the channels of MIL-121 (Al(OH)(H2btec)·H2O) whose uncoordinated carboxyl groups can act as post-synthetic modification sites. The intense luminescence of Ln3+ doped MIL-121 indicates that the framework with rigid, permanently porous structure and non-coordinated carboxyl can serve as both a scaffold and an antenna for hosting and sensitizing the luminescence of Ln3+ cations. Moreover, a fine-tuning of the emitted color luminescence can be easily achieved by simply modulating the doping ratio or adjusting the excitation wavelength. Notably, the red–green–blue-based white light emitting Ln-MOFs can be realized by simultaneously doping Eu3+ and Tb3+ into the host framework. In addition, because of the excellent luminescence and the structural stability of Ln3+ functionalized MIL-121 (Ln3+@MIL-121) in water or solvents, the Eu3+@MIL-121 was developed as a luminescent probe for sensing of anions in aqueous solutions and small organic molecules. Luminescent studies reveal that Eu3+@MIL-121 not only display a high-sensitivity sensing function with respect to fluoride and dichromate ions but also exhibit significant solvent-dependent luminescent response to small-molecule pollutants, such as chloroform and acetone.
Taxation Compliance and Administrative Costs: An Overview

This chapter considers key aspects of that literature. It starts (in Section 2) by explaining what is usually meant by the term “operating costs” and discussing some of the conceptual issues that arise. It then reviews (in Section 3) the research that has taken place on this topic, including recent European Union research, and identifies (in Section 4) the key outcomes of that research. The following part (Section 5) explores some of the principal reasons for the high and regressive compliance costs that research has shown have been a feature of modern tax systems, and the final section begins to suggest some of the means through which the operating costs of the tax system can be addressed and, hopefully, reduced.
Inflation Risk and the Finance-Growth Nexus

This paper shows that the effect of inflation on asset prices and real aggregates depends on the financial intermediation sector. When firms finance using nominal long-term debt issued by financial intermediaries, unexpected changes in inflation lead to a wealth transfer across sectors. Higher inflation decreases firms' real liabilities and default risk, which helps reduce debt overhang. However, it hurts intermediaries' balance sheet, leading to a contraction in credit. We show theoretically that the ultimate effect of inflation depends on the tightness of financing constraints in the intermediation sector. We find strong empirical evidence consistent with these results. We also show that an inflation policy responding to both financial and real variables can help stabilize our economy.
Bkash vs. Bank-Led Option: Factors Influencing Customer's Preferences – Does it Warrant Voluntary-Insurance-Policy for Rapid-Growth Digital-Banking in Bangladesh-Economy?

In today’s technology-driven world-economy, banking-services have been modernized where customers compete for comparative time-saving-options. Bangladesh, a developing country, is no exception. Besides traditional banking, Agent-banking, bKash, Western-Union etc. serve new-way financial-services. But, in 21st-Century business-mentality era, many factors are unpredictable. Strict laws &amp; application can marginalize the magnitudes of Perceived-risk where developed countries are ahead of developing countries. But it does not guarantee risk-free digital-transaction where developing countries are vulnerable. It might have led a slower growth of digital-banking in countries like Bangladesh. Dealing with determinant Perceived-risk, current author proposed Voluntary-Insurance policy (Rahman, 2018) that deserves to be scrutinized. Using Factor Analysis and Hypothesis Testing on customers’ opinions helps identifying factors that have undermined the growth-trend of bank-led digital. Attributes “Phone call confirmation” has influenced customer’s preference using bKash. “No transaction fee” has influenced using bank-led digital. Addressing risk-factors, Voluntary-Insurance in place can ensure secured digital-banking that can enhance growth of usages digital-banking.
Technology Adoption Model of Electronic Public Administration Services in Croatia - Research Framework Proposition

In the last few years we have witnessed the rapid development of electronic public administration services in the Republic of Croatia, while, at the same time, there are no clear indications what has an influence on the acceptance of such services. The purpose of this paper is the identification of factors that contribute to or hinder the adoption of electronic public administration services in the Republic of Croatia. The concept of electronic public administration services (eGovernment) is related to information technology that facilitates the process of information exchange, communication and transactions between state institutions, citizens and businesses. Although the eGovernment became available to everyone not everyone is using it. This research will try to give an answer to why is this so and what can be done to improve the acceptance of eGovernment. The research will help to detect factors that contribute to or hinder the adoption of eGovernment in Croatia and help to understand the impact of various characteristics such as demographics, security, and other, on the level of acceptance of eGovernment, the intended use of eGovernment services, and, finally, the actual use of these services. Some of the key questions here are whether the usefulness of available eGovernment services affects the intended use; whether the usability of ICT systems influences the intended use and whether perceived shortcomings affect the intended use of the eGoverment services. Primary research will be carried out by a structured questionnaire. The collected data will be statistically processed through quantitative econometric analysis that would confirm or deny the existence of a strong correlation between the above factors.
How to Lead to Sustainable and Successful IT Project Management? Propose 5Ps Guideline

Projects failure may negatively affect the whole implementing enterprise and there is empirical evidence that failure is a persistent trauma within project-oriented organizations. However, it is necessary to know why majority of IT projects fail and what the perceived success/failure factors are and to what extent the risk management concept is of central importance in every IT projects. This study aims to put spotlight on the importance of IT projects success/failure factors and IT project risk factors comprehensively according to literature review. Accordingly, it is proposed 5Ps (Presiding, People, Pragmatic, Process, and Performance) as preventative and proactive measures that IT project managers may consider in order to gain sustainable IT project management development processes. This research indicates how 5Ps consideration will lead to sustainable and successful IT project management.
Dynamic Pricing with Unknown Non-Parametric Demand and Limited Price Changes

Dynamic pricing with demand learning is a very common problem that retailers face. In this problem, the retailer aims to maximize cumulative revenue collected over a finite time horizon by balancing two objectives: learning demand and maximizing revenue. In their paper “Dynamic Pricing with Unknown Nonparametric Demand and Limited Price Changes,” Perakis and Singhvi study this problem when the retailer makes no parametric assumption on the demand and seeks to reduce the amount of price experimentation because of the potential costs associated with price changes. They construct a pricing policy that uses second order approximations of the unknown demand function and establish when the proposed policy achieves near-optimal rate of regret while making very limited price changes. They also perform extensive numerical experiments to show that their proposed policy substantially improves over existing methods in terms of the total price changes, with comparable performance on the cumulative regret metric.
Inflexible Prices and Information Frictions

Firms’ inflexibility in adjusting output prices suppresses the revelation of how inputcost shocks affect profits. We find output-price inflexibility exacerbates information asymmetry between firm insiders and outsiders, especially when information about input costs is less publicly available. Interestingly, during conference calls, analysts request more material information about inflexible-price firms’ production costs, and they are less likely to do so if the firm’s input cost is more transparent. Inflexible-price firms are more likely to follow a pecking order in financing choices, are associated with higher yield spread of bonds, and are more likely to engage in insider-trading activities. JEL classification: E12, E44, G28, G32, G33
Portfolio Optimization With a Guaranteed Minimum Maturity Benefit and Risk-Adjusted Fees

We study a portfolio optimization problem involving the loss averse policyholder of a variable annuity with a guaranteed minimum maturity benefit. This financial guarantee is financed via a fee withdrawn directly from the investment account, which impacts the net investment return. A fair pricing constraint is defined in terms of the risk-neutral value of the final contract payout. We propose a new fee structure that adjusts to the investment mix maximizing policyholder’s utility while keeping the contract fairly priced. We seek the investment strategy that maximizes the policyholder’s expected utility of terminal wealth after the application of a financial guarantee and subject to the fair pricing constraint. We assume that the policyholder’s risk attitude is relative to a reference level, risk-seeking towards losses and risk-averse towards gains. We solve the associated constrained stochastic control problem using a martingale approach and analyze the impact of the fee structure on the optimal investment strategies and payoff. Numerical results show that it is possible to find an optimal portfolio for a wide range of fees, while keeping the contract fairly priced.
Does Mixed Frequency Information Help To Forecast the Value at Risk of the Crude Oil Market?

We test the value at risk (VaR) forecasting accuracy of seven generalised autoregressive condition heteroskedasticity (GARCH)-mixed data sampling (MIDAS) models, which potentially provide superior forecast accuracy than traditional GARCH models by capturing different forms of mixed frequency information from the market. The main empirical results are as follows. First, most traditional GARCH models have difficulties forecasting the VaR of the crude oil market. Second, although GARCH-MIDAS models generally produce more accurate forecasts than the traditional GARCH models, some specific GARCH-MIDAS models have poor forecasting accuracies. Third, we find that the mixed frequency information on the demand side of the crude oil market is most helpful for forecasting the VaR. The model that integrates the world industrial production index (GARCH-MIDAS-IP) robustly demonstrates good forecasting performance.
Pricing Discrete European Barrier Options Using Lattice Random Walks

This paper designs a numerical procedure to price discrete European barrier options in Black-Scholes model. The pricing problem is divided into a series of initial value problems, one for each monitoring time. Each initial value problem is solved by replacing the driving Brownian motion by a lattice random walk. Some results from the theory of Besov spaces show that the convergence rate of lattice methods for initial value problems depends on two factors, namely the smoothness of the initial value (or the value function) and the moments for the increments of the lattice random walk. This fact is used to obtain an efficient method to price discrete European barrier options. Numerical examples and comparisons with other methods are carried out to show that the proposed method yields fast and accurate results.
Glass Half Full or Half Empty? Activists, Short Sellers, and Disagreement

We study events in which activist hedge funds and short sellers target the same stock, using unique European data on activism and mandatory disclosures of large short positions. We find that the presence of large short sellers positively influences activists' targeting decisions (especially when investor disagreement is high) and their success and profitability. Hedge fund activism is associated with a reduction in short interest but it does not affect the likelihood of a large short position. Our results suggest that corporate managers become more receptive to activists' demands after they face pressure from large short sellers.
Aggregate Equity Fund Flows and the Stock Market

We document the first empirical evidence on aggregate equity fund flows determinants for the European fund industry. Changes in the long-term interest rate, market returns and fund performance are significant determinants. Furthermore, we profoundly analyze the interrelationship between aggregate flows and equity markets. Contrary to U.S. evidence, we fail to find a significant contemporaneous relationship. Based on extended Granger causality tests we confirm that fund flows have no information content for the stock market. In contrast, market returns Granger cause equity fund flows. Finally, we find that the effect of return shocks die out within the first 12 months.
Alfa- Bismuth(III)oxide catalyzed Biginelli reactions using experimentally designed optimized condition

Received 13 November 2015 Accepted 27 December 2015 Available online 20 January 2015 α-Bi2O3 was synthesized via a hydrothermal method at 180 °C for 12 h in 1 (S1) and 2 (S2) M KOH aqueous solutions, using Bi(NO3)3·5H2O as raw material. The synthesized material was characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) technique. The XRPD results indicated that by using 1M KOH aqueous solution, α-Bi2O3 was obtained with small fractions of β-Bi2O3, while 2M KOH solution resulted in pure α-Bi2O3. The α-Bi2O3 wascrystallized in a monoclinic crystal structure with space group of P21/c. The size and morphology of the synthesized material was studied by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). The FE-SEM images showed that the obtained material had multigonal structures in micron dimensions. The synthesized material was tested as catalyst in Biginelli reactions and excellent performance was achieved in the optimized conditions. Experimental design was used to obtain optimized reaction conditions. Also, the optical properties of the obtained material were studied by ultraviolet visible (UV-Vis) diffuse reflectance spectrum (DRS).
What is visible across the visual field?

Abstract It is sometimes claimed that because the resolution and sensitivity of visual perception are better in the fovea than in the periphery, peripheral vision cannot support the same kinds of colour and sharpness percepts as foveal vision. The fact that a scene nevertheless seems colourful and sharp throughout the visual field then poses a puzzle. In this study, I use a detailed model of human spatial vision to estimate the visibility of certain properties of natural scenes, including aspects of colourfulness, sharpness, and blurriness, across the visual field. The model is constructed to reproduce basic aspects of human contrast and colour sensitivity over a range of retinal eccentricities. I apply the model to colourful, complex natural scene images, and estimate the degree to which colour and edge information are present in the model’s representation of the scenes. I find that, aside from the intrinsic drift in the spatial scale of the representation, there are not large qualitative differences between foveal and peripheral representations of ‘colourfulness’ and ‘sharpness’.
Roles of Narrative in Civic Crowdfunded Project: Linguistic Style, Message Substance, and Crowdfunding Success

We explore how linguistic style and message substance influence persuasion in civic crowdfunding marketplaces in which written narrative pitch become a vital communication to attract private contributions to public goods and services. Very few empirical studies investigated differential effects of language style and message substance on funding performance of crowdfunding campaigns. We draw upon the dual process of persuasion as a theoretical base to identify a comprehensive set of linguistic style and message substance and to examine the role of such features in an emerging civic crowdfunding market. Drawing on elaboration likelihood model (ELM), we operationalize the linguistic style of the narrative pitch as language power and message substance as issue-relevant argument quality. In this study, we examine how characteristics of both style and message are related to the outcome of civic crowdfunded projects. Our results show that funding outcomes can be improved with psychological language dimensions (i.e., positive affective and perceptual language). However, extensive use of social language does not help project creators to increase their chance of funding performance; but instead, such language reduces the likelihood of project success. Additionally, message substance or issue-relevant information such as money and risk language influences funding outcome.