bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Inflation, its volatility and the inflation-growth tradeoff in India
Authors: Jha Raghbendra , Kulkarni Varsha S. 
Published: July 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to amend the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) model to include inflation volatility. It provides results on the determinants of inflation volatility and expected inflation volatility for ordinary least squares and autoregressive distributed lags (1,1) models and for change in inflation volatility and change in expected inflation volatility using error correction mechanism (ECM) models. Output gap affects change in expected inflation volatility alone (in the ECM model) and not in the other models. Major determinants of inflation volatility and expected inflation volatility are identified. To the best of the authors knowledge this is the first paper to augment the NKPC to include inflation volatility.

Design/methodology/approach
– Recent analysis has indicated the importance of inflation volatility for the monetary transmission mechanism in India (Kapur and Behera, 2012). In the analysis of such monetary policy mechanisms the NKPC has proved to be a useful tool. Thus Patra and Ray (2010) for India and Brissimis and Magginas (2008) for the USA find considerable support for the standard NKPC. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize and integrate these two models by extending the standard NKPC framework to include inflation volatility and test its significance for the case of India.

Findings
– In the case of inflation volatility output gap, lagged output gap and lagged inflation volatility are all insignificant. The level of inflation has a negative significant impact whereas the level of expected inflation has a positive and significant impact. In the case of expected inflation volatility lagged output gap has a negative and significant impact, the price level has a positive and significant impact whereas expected price has a negative and weakly significant impact. ECM reveals change in inflation variability falls significantly with lagged inflation volatility and lagged inflation and less significantly with change in expected inflation. It rises with lagged expected inflation although the coefficient is only weakly significant. Lagged output gap and change in output gap are insignificant.

Originality/value
– This paper makes two original contributions. First, it extends the New Keynesian framework to include inflation volatility. Second, it estimates this model for India. To the best of the authors knowledge this is the first paper to make these contributions.
Explaining management accounting practices and strategy in Thailand
Authors: Nimtrakoon Sirinuch , Tayles Michael 
Published: July 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to report the level of adoption and benefit obtained from a range of management accounting practices (MAPs) in Thai organizations and analyze to these by reference to various strategic typologies.Design/methodology/approach– Contingency theory, proposing a fit between MAPs and a comprehensive set of strategic typologies is used. Factor analysis, cluster analysis, and Kruskal-Wallis one-way ANOVA is applied to analyze the data and test the hypotheses.Findings– It was observed that firms pursuing differentiation/prospector/entrepreneurial/build strategies significantly report higher benefit from contemporary MAPs. Firms with a cost leadership strategy were, as expected, found to obtain higher benefit from traditional MAPs. Contrary to expectations, entrepreneurial firms reported higher benefit from traditional MAPs than conservative firms.Research limitations/implications– Like all survey work this relies on questionnaire responses of individual organization members. A selection approach was adopted so no direct relationship with organization performance was investigated.Practical implications– Although use of the full range of MAPs is reported there is still reliance on traditional MAPs. Hence further exposure of businesses and practitioners to contemporary techniques is recommended in training, professional development, and interactions with international partners.Originality/value– The paper provides insight into MAPs in Thailand, an emerging economy and one with limited published academic research in management accounting. It incorporates four strategic typologies which previously have been mainly used individually in MA research.
The impact of income smoothing on earnings quality in emerging markets
Authors: Shubita Moade Fawzi 
Published: July 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to assess the practice of income smoothing in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) emerging markets; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar. Then, to examine the impact of income smoothing on the earnings quality to decide whether income smoothing can serve as either a tool to enhance earnings quality or a tool for opportunistic behavior. Audit quality and corporate governance as additional factors are considered in this study.Design/methodology/approach– The study methodology measures income smoothing behavior based on the coefficient of variation method. Earnings quality is measured as an outcome of the explained variations in stock returns by earnings based on the efficient market hypothesis. Audit quality is measured based on brand as higher quality assigned to auditor from any of the Big 4, while the corporate governance is addressed based on the extent of governmental ownership. The initial study sample comprises 55 companies over a ten year period, from 1999 to 2008; the final sample represents approximately 64 percent of the industrial sector that have public data during the study.Findings– The results suggest that income smoothing behavior in the GCC markets has many variations in practice. Income smoothing, on average, improves earnings quality in three countries out of four, but not significantly for the whole sample based on earnings level. The earnings changes model demonstrated a positive and significant impact of income smoothing on earnings quality. Audit quality and earnings quality have a positive relationship within the region, and companies dominated by the government perform well in accordance with the earnings-return model.Research limitations/implications– The study is limited to the industrial sector of the GCC.Practical implications– The study opens the door to future applications to other sectors within the GCC, same sectors and other sectors for Middle East countries and other emerging markets.Social implications– The study may foster a better understanding of accounting practices in the GCC and Middle East. The study reveals variations in different aspects among GCC countries, this matter should be considered in separate studies across different areas.Originality/value– The study makes an original contribution to being the first to explore this topic in the GCC. Additionally, this study shows that the GCC markets have different characteristics in the practice and impact of income smoothing on earnings’ quality. Further, audit quality and corporate governance was investigated for each country and for the region, in addition to the interaction between these factors with the income smoothing and earnings quality.
Board involvement in corporate performance: evidence from a developing country
Authors: Wijethilake Chaminda , Ekanayake Athula , Perera Sujatha 
Published: July 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the understanding of the relationship between board involvement and corporate performance within the context of developing countries.Design/methodology/approach– A number of aspects related to board involvement, including board’s shareholdings, frequency of board meetings, availability of independent board committees, board size, CEO duality, and CEO is being a promoter, were examined in order to explore their influence on corporate performance measured in terms of earnings per share. The study mainly draws on agency theory, and is supplemented by resource dependence and stewardship theories. Multiple regression analysis is utilized to analyze the data gathered from a sample of 212 publicly listed companies in 20 industries in the Colombo Stock Exchange in Sri Lanka.Findings– Among the aspects of board involvement considered, board’s shareholdings, board meetings frequency, independent committees, and CEO duality showed a positive influence on corporate performance. However, two other aspects, namely CEO being a promoter, and the size of corporate boards showed a negative effect. The findings also suggest that the use of multiple theories, rather than depending on a single theory, is more effective in understanding the relationships examined in this study. Further, the study highlights the need to be cautious in utilizing the theories that are more applicable to matured western economies when analyzing issues relating to developing countries.Originality/value– This study makes an original contribution to corporate governance literature by examining the relationship between board involvement and corporate performance in a developing country, namely Sri Lanka. The study also adds to the existing literature by utilizing multiple theories to examine the issue under investigation.
Applying a Systematic Review to Land Use Land Cover Change in Northern Upland Vietnam: The Missing Case of the Borderlands
Authors: PHAM THI‐THANH‐HIEN , TURNER SARAH , TRINCSI KATE 
Published: July 2015

AbstractAs Vietnam embraces the market economy, and a number of state policies promote reforestation and rural market integration, land use and land cover (LULC) changes are occurring in the country's northern uplands in increasingly complex and fragmented ways. Yet understandings of the degree and consequences of LULC changes in this diverse agro‐ecological region are incomplete. We conduct a systematic literature review of research reported in academic articles tracing and analysing LULC change in Vietnam's northern regions. We find that these studies have tended to take place away from the most mountainous, northern borderlands. The studies nonetheless highlight a diversity of land use land cover changes caused by numerous causes, making the distinction of overall trends difficult. To complement and extend this body of research, we introduce recent LULC change research we have completed in the mountainous border districts of Lào Cai province, on the Sino‐Vietnamese border. The heterogeneity of causes of LULC change in both the review articles and our case study points to the importance of adapting land use policies to local agro‐ecological and socio‐economic conditions and ethnic diversity, taking into account state–farmer relations, household livelihood decision‐making, and policy implementation at the commune and district levels.
Occupancy models for data with false positive and false negative errors and heterogeneity across sites and surveys
Authors: Ferguson Paige F.B. , Conroy Michael J. , Hepinstall‐Cymerman Jeffrey 
Published: July 2015

Summary

False positive detections, such as species misidentifications, occur in ecological data, although many models do not account for them. Consequently, these models are expected to generate biased inference.

The main challenge in an analysis of data with false positives is to distinguish false positive and false negative processes while modelling realistic levels of heterogeneity in occupancy and detection probabilities without restrictive assumptions about parameter spaces.

Building on previous attempts to account for false positive and false negative detections in occupancy models, we present hierarchical Bayesian models that utilize a subset of data with either confirmed detections of a species’ presence (CP model) or both confirmed presences and confirmed absences (CACP model). We demonstrate that our models overcome the challenges associated with false positive data by evaluating model performance in Monte Carlo simulations of a variety of scenarios. Our models also have the ability to improve inference by incorporating previous knowledge through informative priors.

We describe an example application of the CP model to quantify the relationship between songbird occupancy and residential development, plus we provide instructions for ecologists to use the CACP and CP models in their own research.

Monte Carlo simulation results indicated that, when data contained false positive detections, the CACP and CP models generated more accurate and precise posterior probability distributions than a model that assumed data did not have false positive errors. For the scenarios we expect to be most generally applicable, those with heterogeneity in occupancy and detection, the CACP and CP models generated essentially unbiased posterior occupancy probabilities. The CACP model with vague priors generated unbiased posterior distributions for covariate coefficients. The CP model generated unbiased posterior distributions for covariate coefficients with vague or informative priors, depending on the function relating covariates to occupancy probabilities. We conclude that the CACP and CP models generate accurate inference in situations with false positive data for which previous models were not suitable.
Association between cytokine levels, verbal memory and hippocampus volume in psychotic disorders and healthy controls
Authors: Hoseth E. Z. , Westlye L. T. , Hope S. , Dieset I. , Aukrust P. , Melle I. , Haukvik U. K. , Agartz I. , Ueland T. , Ueland T. , Andreassen O. A. 
Published: July 2015

ObjectiveWe investigated whether elevated plasma levels of immune markers were associated with verbal memory and hippocampal subfield volumes in patients with severe mental illnesses and in healthy controls.MethodIn total, 230 patients with a broad DSM‐IV schizophrenia spectrum illness or bipolar disorder and 236 healthy controls were recruited. Memory was assessed using the Wechsler Memory Scale‐Third Edition (WMS‐III) Logical Memory immediate and delayed recall, and the California Verbal Learning Test summed recall over learning list (CVLT learning) and delayed free recall. We measured plasma levels of soluble tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (sTNF‐R1), interleukin‐1 receptor antagonist, interleukin‐6, von Willebrand factor, osteoprotegerin, high‐sensitivity C‐reactive protein and sCD40 ligand. Hippocampal subfield estimates were obtained using FreeSurfer.ResultsWe found a moderate negative association between sTNF‐R1 and performance on verbal memory learning and recall tests as measured by the WMS‐III Logical Memory after controlling for age, sex and diagnosis. We observed no interaction effect of diagnosis and sTNF‐R1 on memory scores. We also found a nominally significant positive association between CVLT learning and hippocampal volumes.ConclusionThe findings suggest a role for immune involvement in memory independent of severe mental disorders and may support the ‘bigger is better’ hypothesis of hippocampal subfield volumes.
Student activity and profile datasets from an online video‐based collaborative learning experience
Authors: Martín Estefanía , Gértrudix Manuel , Urquiza‐Fuentes Jaime , Haya Pablo A. 
Published: July 2015

AbstractThis paper describes two datasets extracted from a video‐based educational experience using a social and collaborative platform. The length of the trial was 3 months. It involved 111 students from two different courses. Twenty‐nine came from Computer Engineering (CE) course and 82 from Media and Communication (M&C) course. They were organised into nine interdisciplinary groups. Each group included three or four CE students and eight or nine M&C students. An additional group filmed the making of. This group has only M&C students. Four teachers supervised the trial. The total number of meaningful events was 2984.
Cell lineage visualisation
Authors: Pretorius A. J. , Khan I. A. , Errington R. J. 
Published: July 2015

AbstractCell lineages describe the developmental history of Cell populations and are produced by combining time‐lapse imaging and image processing. Biomedical researchers study Cell lineages to understand fundamental processes such as Cell differentiation and the pharmacodynamic action of anticancer agents. Yet, the interpretation of Cell lineages is hindered by their complexity and insufficient capacity for visual analysis. We present a novel approach for interactive visualisation of Cell lineages. Based on an understanding of Cellular biology and live‐Cell imaging methodology, we identify three requirements: multimodality (Cell lineages combine spatial, temporal, and other properties), symmetry (related to lineage branching structure), and synchrony (related to temporal alignment of Cellular events). We address these by combining visual summaries of the spatiotemporal behaviour of an arbitrary number of lineages, including variation from average behaviour, with node‐link representations that emphasise the presence or absence of symmetry and synchrony. We illustrate the merit of our approach by presenting a real‐world case study where the cytotoxic action of the anticancer drug topotecan was determined.
Adaptive Recommendations for Enhanced Non‐linear Exploration of Annotated 3D Objects
Authors: Rodriguez M. Balsa , Agus M. , Marton F. , Gobbetti E. 
Published: July 2015

AbstractWe introduce a novel approach for letting casual viewers explore detailed 3D models integrated with structured spatially associated descriptive information organized in a graph. Each node associates a subset of the 3D surface seen from a particular viewpoint to the related descriptive annotation, together with its author‐defined importance. Graph edges describe, instead, the strength of the dependency relation between information nodes, allowing content authors to describe the preferred order of presentation of information. At run‐time, users navigate inside the 3D scene using a camera controller, while adaptively receiving unobtrusive guidance towards interesting viewpoints and history‐ and location‐dependent suggestions on important information, which is adaptively presented using 2D overlays displayed over the 3D scene. The capabilities of our approach are demonstrated in a real‐world cultural heritage application involving the public presentation of sculptural complex on a large projection‐based display. A user study has been performed in order to validate our approach.
Visual Analytics for Exploring Local Impact of Air Traffic
Authors: Buchmüller J. , Janetzko H. , Andrienko G. , Andrienko N. , Fuchs G. , Keim D. A. 
Published: July 2015

AbstractThe environmental and noise impact of airports often causes extensive political discussion which in some cases even lead to transnational tensions. Analyzing local approach and departure patterns around an airport is difficult since it depends on a variety of complex variables like weather, local and general regulations and many more. Yet, understanding these movements and the expected amount of flights during arrival and departure is of great interest to both casual and expert users, as planes have a higher impact on the areas beneath during these phases. We present a Visual Analytics framework that enables users to develop an understanding of local flight behavior through visual exploration of historical data and interactive manipulation of prediction models with direct feedback, as well as a classification quality visualization using a random noise metaphor. We showcase our approach using real world data from the Zurich International Airport region, where aircraft noise has led to an ongoing conflict between Germany and Switzerland. The use cases, findings and expert feedback demonstrate how our approach helps in understanding the situation and to substantiate the otherwise often subjective discourse on the topic.
Efficient Contrast Effect Compensation with Personalized Perception Models
Authors: Mittelstädt Sebastian , Keim Daniel A. 
Published: July 2015

AbstractColor is one of the most effective visual variables and is frequently used to encode metric quantities. Contrast effects are considered harmful in data visualizations since they significantly bias our perception of colors. For instance, a gray patch appears brighter on a black background than on a white background. Accordingly, the perception of color‐encoded data items depends on the surround in the rendered visualization. A method that compensates for contrast effects has been presented previously, which significantly improves the users’ accuracy in reading and comparing color encoded data. The method utilizes established perception models to compensate for contrast effects, assuming an average human observer. In this paper, we provide experiments that show a significant difference in the perception of users. We introduce methods to personalize contrast effect compensation and show that this outperforms the original method with a user study. We, further, overcome the major limitation of the original method, which is a runtime of several minutes. With the use of efficient optimization and surrogate models, we are able to reduce runtime to milliseconds, making the method applicable in interactive visualizations.
An Exploratory Study of Data Sketching for Visual Representation
Authors: Walny J. , Huron S. , Carpendale S. 
Published: July 2015

AbstractHand‐drawn sketching on napkins or whiteboards is a common, accessible method for generating visual representations. This practice is shared by experts and non‐experts and is probably one of the faster and more expressive ways to draft a visual representation of data. In order to better understand the types of and variations in what people produce when sketching data, we conducted a qualitative study. We asked people with varying degrees of visualization expertise, from novices to experts, to manually sketch representations of a small, easily understandable dataset using pencils and paper and to report on what they learned or found interesting about the data. From this study, we extract a data sketching representation continuum from numeracy to abstraction; a data report spectrum from individual data items to speculative data hypothesis; and show the correspondence between the representation types and the data reports from our results set. From these observations we discuss the participants’ representations in relation to their data reports, indicating implications for design and potentially fruitful directions for research.
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TRAINING IN THE PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SECTORS: EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM AND THE UNITED STATES
Authors: Méndez Fabio , Sepúlveda Facundo 
Published: July 2015

AbstractFormal training programs are one of the main channels through which workers become more productive and experience wage growth. So far, however, most of the results on the effects of employer‐provided training come from studying the training received by private sector workers only. We extend the literature by identifying and comparing the effects of private‐employer‐provided and public‐employer‐provided training in the United States and the United Kingdom. We address this question using two independent data sets from the British Household Panels Surveys and the American National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1979. (JEL J24, J31, J40)