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The stylized facts suggest a negative relationship between tax progres- sivity and the skill premium from the early 1960s until the early 1990s, and a positive one thereafter. They also generally imply rising tax progressivity, except for the 1980s. In this paper, we ask whether optimal tax policy is consistent with these observations, taking into account the demographic and technological factors that have also affected the skill premium. To this end, we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model in which the skill premium and the progressivity of the tax system are endogenously determined, with the latter being optimally chosen by a benevolent government. We find that optimal policy delivers both a progressive tax system and model predictions which are generally consistent, except for the 1980s, with the stylized facts relating to the skill premium and progressivity. To capture the patterns in the data over the 1980s requires that we adopt a government policy which is biased towards the interests of skilled agents. Thus, in addition to demo- graphic and technological factors, changes in the preferences of policy-makers appear to be a potentially important factor in determining the evolution of the observed skill premium.

It is widely accepted that speculative bubbles lead to prolonged deviations in the securities prices from their intrinsic values. Stock mispricing due to such deviations may not only lead to adverse wealth effects for the investors but also towards overall economic stability of the economy. However, it is not clear whether the level and magnitude of mispricing varies across economies for a particular economic event. The Technology bubble formation during the late Nineties, and its subsequent deflation during the early Twenties, provides an opportunity to examine the information transmission, adjustment and the extent of mispricing across different economies. This paper addresses these issues using Variance Decomposition and, Impulse Response methodology provided by Sims (1980) and Corrected Damodaran (1993) methodology. We find differences in price adjustment process in the two markets; for instance, we find that it takes a longer period for information adjustment in the Indian Technology equity market compared with US Technology equities. Also, Indian stocks on average overreact to information arrival where as US stocks on average underreact to information arrival. Interestingly, we find that the US and the Indian technology markets were not cointegrated over the observations period and that the US market led the Indian market in the price discovery process in all periods except during the bubble formation period. Finally, this paper reports specific aspects of firm characteristics-based portfolios in both markets. Overall we find that the US market has a faster recovery mechanism than the Indian market.

Uzbekistan has huge opportunities, offering a potential for a considerable economic development. Among the other sectors, agriculture plays a specific role in economic development because of its significant share in total employment and GDP. The aim of this paper is to analyze main sectoral changes in GDP (agricultural, industrial and services sector) that occurred during last two decades, and to investigate the relationship between GDP and agricultural growth in relation to the value added in agriculture. The special attention is devoted to the position of the agricultural sector that may positive influence to support economic development and food security in the region.The results indicate main trends in economic development and point that agriculture still dominates in terms of employment. Moreover, a significant reduction of agriculture’s share in GDP is to be expected in the future, while the shares of industry and services increase.

The Basel Accords, while extremely influential, are oftentimes too detailed and technical to be easily accessible to the nontechnical policymaker or interested scholar. This paper looks to fill that gap by detailing the origin, regulation, implementation, criticism, and results of both Basel I and Basel II. Findings of note include (1) the limited scope and general language of Basel I gives banks excessive leeway in their interpretation of its rules, and, in the end, allows financial institutions to take improper risks and hold unduly low capital reserves; (2) Basel II seeks to extend the breath and precision of Basel I, bringing in factors such as market and operational risk, market-based discipline and surveillance, and regulatory mandates, but is oftentimes excessively long and complex; (3) both Basel I and II effectively ignore the implications of their rules on emerging market banks; and that (4) although each accord states that its positions are not recommended for application in emerging market economies, the use of Basel I and II by most private and public organizations as truly international banking standards predicates the inclusion of emerging markets in each accord.

Federal States in India issue bonds to raise resources from the market to fund the developments in the States. Though sovereign, these States raise money through issuance of State Development Loans (SDL) at a rate which is typically 40-50bps higher than the rate at which the Government of India raises money from the market. Unlike Government of India, States generally do not have well defined issuance calendar and do not follow passive consolidation through reissuance. Many small issues dominate the market and secondary market for these securities is extremely illiquid. Trading in secondary market is concentrated in recently issued securities and very little liquidity exists in old securities. Given the structure, developing an SDL Index is challenging. Performance of the said index vis-a-vis the comparable securities is studied in this paper in order to understand the investibility of the SDL index.

French Abstract: Le titre evoque l’interaction complexe entre globalisation, democratie et developpement, mesures respectivement par l’indice du KOF (Institut Economique Suisse), l’indice de Freedom House et le PIB par habitant relatif aux Etats Unis. L’approche revient a des estimations simultanees de ces trois variables pour 92 pays de 1970 a 2005. On commence par illustrer les effets de l’ouverture commerciale sur la transmission internationale des cycles economiques, puis on rappelle la tradition intellectuelle de l’interdependance entre pays de l’OCDE pour motiver l’interaction entre reformes, elections et marches financiers ainsi que les implications culturelles de la surveillance multilaterale. On interroge alors les donnees de panel sur l’existence d’une interaction entre globalisation et gouvernance « tous azimuts », en soulignant les specificites historiques et geographiques de pays en developpement. Finalement, ces specificites sont reprises pour illustrer la «differentialite» de la communaute des pays lusophones (CPLP), en suggerant la forme d’une lettre a la Reine sur la crise, utilisee par l’Academie Britannique en 2009. La conclusion est que, meme pour les pays dont l’indice de liberte se situe autour de la moyenne hors l’OCDE, globalisation et democratie peuvent interagir de facon a promouvoir, plutot qu’a menacer, la convergence internationale.English Abstract: The paper addresses the complex interaction between globalization, democracy and development, measured respectively by the KOF (Swiss Economic Institute) index, the Freedom House index and GDP per capita relative to the US. The approach follows from previous simultaneous estimates of the three variables for 92 countries between 1970 and 2005. The paper is organized in ten sections plus an introduction and a conclusion. Section 2 illustrates the effects of trade openness on the international transmission of business cycles. Section 3 uses the intellectual tradition of interdependence among OECD countries to motivate the interaction between reforms, elections and financial markets in section 4. Section 5 shows how culture matters for the efficiency of multilateral surveillance mechanisms. Section 6 questions the existence of interactions between globalization and governance across the board, using panel data in sections 7 and 8 to underline the historical and geographical specificities of developing countries. Section 9 brings historical and geographical factors to bear on the community of Portuguese-speaking countries (CPLP). An adaptation of the letter to the Queen on the crisis used by the British Academy in 2009 could be used to illustrate the « differentiality » of Portuguese-speaking countries. The conclusion is that, even for countries whose freedom index is around the non OECD mean, globalization and democracy can interact in such a way as to promote, rather than to threaten, international convergence. Additional material can be found in Democracy, Unlocked?, book of proceedings of the colloquium at the Royal Academy of Belgium, available at BAN under call number A13-004.

Automatic exchange of information (AEoI) for tax purposes has become the global standard for international tax cooperation in 2013. As a tool for containing offshore tax evasion, it has encountered opposition in the past and continues to be fraught with challenges. This paper recapitulates the rationale for AEoI, including estimates on the magnitudes of assets held offshore, with a specific focus on Turkish assets held in Germany (chapter 1). Subsequently, chapter 2 summarises the recent history and describes the processes and milestones until breakthrough for global AEoI in 2013. Chapter 3 then discusses three current challenges, including the de facto exclusion of developing countries; how to incentivise recalcitrant jurisdictions to participate, such as the USA; and issues around the implementation of the CRS, including OECD’s Global Forum of Transparency and Exchange of Information, the peer reviews and public statistics. Chapter 4 concludes.

Less than half of the people with migration background living in Germany possess foreign citizenship. Hence, using citizenship to analyze economic issues of immigration may be problematic for two reasons. On the one hand, a quite substantial share of persons with migration background is neglected in the group of interest, and, on the other hand, the reference group (native Germans) may be contaminated by effects from naturalized immigrants. This paper utilizes a wider definition covering all persons with migration background to analyze the earnings prospects. To shed light on differences to the common use of citizenship, estimates are presented in comparison to foreigner and German citizens. The results show that persons with migration background have similar earnings prospects to foreigners. Moreover, earnings prospects for native Germans do not differ much from those of German citizenship. Therefore, using citizenship to approximate natives and non-natives when analyzing earnings issues seems to be reasonable. A second question of the paper is whether degrees obtained in Germany lead to better earnings prospects compared to degrees obtained abroad for persons with migration background. Independently of gender and skill level, the estimates affirm higher earnings to educational attainment in Germany.

This paper was prepared as a CLE handout for a presentation for the Anne Arundel County Bar Association, and is in outline form. In brief, the paper deals with Hearsay Law: Both Civil and Criminal Cases, in Part 1, and The Confrontation Right after Crawford v. Washington: Criminal Cases, in Part 2. In more detail, Part 1 addresses the following: Generally, Evidence Not Offered as Substantive Evidence Cannot Be Hearsay; The Two Elements of “Out-of-Court” “Statement,” Making and Meeting Hearsay Objections; “TOMA?” or Nonhearsay?; Important Recent Maryland Decisions: Implied Assertions; Specific Exceptions. In more detail, Part 2 addresses the following: Texts of the U.S. and Maryland Clauses; Citations to U.S. Supreme Court and Maryland Court of Appeals Cases; When Does the Clause Apply?; How Can the Clause Be Satisfied?; How Does the Confrontation Clause Relate to the Hearsay Rule?; What If the Hearsay Evidence is Nontestimonial?; What Did Crawford and Davis Hold as to Whether a Statement is Testimonial or Nontestirnonial?; How Can We Analyze Whether Statements Outside the Holdings of Crawford and Davis are Testimonial?; How Did the Maryland Court of Appeals Interpret Crawford in Snowden?; What About “Business Records” of the State?; Dying Declarations; How Are Prosecutors and Domestic Violence Victim-Advocates Likely to Adapt to these Changes?; Forfeiture of Right to Object; Hypotheticals.

This paper proposes a simple maximum likelihood regression estimator that outperforms Least Squares in terms of efficiency and mean square error for a large number of skewed and/or heavy tailed error distributions.

The paper deals with arbitration of unresolved issues in mutual agreement cases as regulated by the new paragraph 5, Article 25 of the OECD Model Convention to avoid double taxation in respect to income taxes. After general introductory remarks on the arbitration method in international tax matters, the paper describes the evolution of international tax arbitration. The central part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of the procedure of the tax arbitration established by new Article 25(5) of the OECD Model Convention, which has the features of a a multi-tiered dispute resolution clause. The paper concludes with a discussion on the effectiveness of the tax treaty arbitration of Article 25(5) OECD Model Convention.

This paper discusses the use of EN ISO and EN ISO/IEC standards within the monitoring and reporting regulation and verification regulation. These regulations determine, as their titles might suggest, how (operators of) installations and aircraft operators must determine their emissions, how a verifier must verify emissions, and how verifiers must be accredited. These regulations make extensive use of reference to EN ISO and EN ISO/IEC standards, notably EN ISO/IEC 17011:2004, EN ISO 14065:2013, EN ISO/IEC 17025 and EN ISO 9001. The question arises if these references are in conformity with Article 297 TFEU. A comparative analysis is made with a recent discussion in Dutch jurisprudence and literature about the reference to private standards in Dutch national legislation.

'Zombie lending' occurs when a lender supports an otherwise insolvent borrower. Recent studies document that zombie lending to European firms has been widespread following the onset of the European sovereign debt crisis. This paper develops a quantitative model to study the impact of these lending practices on the dynamics and financial decisions of firms. In the model, firm liquidations and zombie lending arise endogenously. The model provides a good match to key euro-area firm statistics over the period 2011 to 2014. A key finding is that zombie lending has a substantial impact on borrowing costs, helping more low-productivity firms to survive. This, in turn, causes a drag on aggregate output, investment and productivity. These results suggest that zombie lending practices contributed to the lower output experienced by the euro area following the onset of the sovereign debt crisis.

In this paper, a non-parametric approach has been proposed for the construction of life table at the local level. The approach is based on the non-parametric modelling of the transition in age-specific probabilities of death at higher levels of administration and the relationship between the geometric mean of the age-specific probabilities of death and the probability of death in the first five years of life. The application of the approach has been demonstrated by constructing life tables for the districts of Andhra Pradesh, India using the data from the 2011 population census and the sample registration system.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, e-learning has become a required component of all educational institutions such as schools, colleges, and universities worldwide. The offline teaching process has been severely disrupted due to this unexpected event. E-learning is a powerful instructional tool that helps pupils achieve their full potential. This paper aims to investigate the E-learning process among semester 6 English department students of Moulay Ismail University in Meknes, Morocco who have experienced online learning as well as the challenges they faced. To find out the students’ perceptions towards e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, primary data has been collected from Moulay Ismail University in Meknes, Morocco (semester 6 students of the English department) through a Google forms survey questionnaire. The findings demonstrate that most students are dissatisfied with remote learning and believe it has negatively impacted their academic performance. The results lead us to the realization that a tremendous reform has to be made to the Moroccan educational system.

Purpose Audit rotation (AR) is a key policy initiative implemented in global jurisdictions to deal with concerns about audit quality. Auditing financial reports involves communicating attested value-relevant company information to investors, and hence audit quality plays a role in the quality of financial reporting information. This paper aims to investigate whether AR affects the degree of information asymmetry (IS) between investors. It further aims to examine whether voluntary AR results in less asymmetric information compared to mandatory AR. Additionally, it examines whether political connections moderate the association between AR and IS. Design/methodology/approach The authors use data from publicly traded banks across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for the period 2010–2018. The authors include several variables to control for corporate governance and other firm-specific characteristics by using country-year fixed-effects regression model. Findings The authors find higher IS for banks that periodically rotate auditor, while banks voluntarily choose to rotate auditors obtain high-quality audits, which results in higher trading volume and lower stock return volatility, hence lower IS. The results suggest that when banks voluntarily choose to rotate auditors, investors perceive these banks as more committed to obtaining high-quality audits relative to mandatory AR. Providing higher quality audits enhances the credibility of reported information and thus reduce the level of IS. Moreover, IS following AR is higher for politically connected banks than for similar but politically unconnected banks. Finally, investors perceive voluntary AR as a disciplining tool, which mitigates IS. This mitigating role is not affected by bank political connectedness. Research limitations/implications This study has limitations as the definition of AR could be interpreted as binary or too narrow, and hence it may not be appropriate to generalize findings to different contexts. Nonetheless, this study casts light on a new perspective to reconcile the existing mixed evidence on the influence of AR on IS and the moderating role of political connections. A further limitation is that because of data unavailability, the authors were unable to use other proxies (e.g. bid-ask spreads and analyst forecast dispersion) of IS. Practical implications The present findings provide insight to regulators, policymakers and standard setters on the potential adverse effect of political connections on the role of AR in mitigating IS. The results underscore the importance of voluntary AR, and suggest that regulators, policymakers and standard setters encourage firms to rotate their auditors periodically. Originality/value This study provides evidence in a setting that is unique at the economic, social and regulatory levels. Prior literature is lacking and has been centered on developed countries or focusing on single-country specifications. The data set of this study is unique and allows us to examine the interplay between political influence that arises through ownership and management roles of influential members of state.

Introduction:The median nerve is commonly formed by the fusion of two roots, i.e., the lateral root arises from the lateral cord and the medial root from the medial cord. These roots embrace the axillary artery (third part) and then unite with each other slightly below the level of pectoralis minor, just anterior or anterolateral to the axillary artery. It is associated with different variations like origin from more than two roots, splitting of the nerve and abnormal connections with neighbouring nerves like musculocutaneous or ulnar nerve. Objectives:To explore the different anatomical variations in the formation of the median nerve in the North Indian population. Material and methods:We studied different variations in the formation of the median nerve during routine dissection classes of the upper limb which was for the undergraduate medical students at the Department of Anatomy of Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, Bihar, India. The present study was conducted on a total of 84 upper limbs, of 42 formalin-preserved cadavers, of which 28 belonged to males and 14 to females. Results:We observed several variations in the formation of the median nerve. Three roots contributed to the formation of the median nerve in 25% of male subjects, among which the third root arose from the lateral cord of the brachial plexus in 16.07% of cases, and from the musculocutaneous nerve in 8.93% of cases. In females, three roots were found in 21.42% of cases, among which the root arose from the lateral cord of the brachial plexus in 14.28% of cases and from the musculocutaneous nerve in 7.14% of cases. Four roots were found in 5.36% of male cases, while in females they were found in 7.14% of cases. The formation of the median nerve occurred in the arm in 11.91% of cases (8.33% belonging to males and 3.58% to females), while in the axilla, it is formed anterior to the axillary artery in 4.76% of cases (3.57% belonging to males and 1.19% to females), medial to the axillary artery in 2.38% of cases (1.19% were found in both male and female cadavers). We also observed an abnormal connection between the median nerve and musculocutaneous nerve in two upper extremities (2.38% of cases) in one male and one female cadaver and one upper extremity of a female cadaver (1.19% of cases) in which the median nerve is present lateral to the brachial artery at the level of the cubital fossa. Conclusion:The knowledge about variations in the formation of the median nerve is relevant to both anatomists and surgeons. It is useful during different surgical procedures around the axilla and also helps in reducing the failure rate of nerve blocks around the infraclavicular part of the brachial plexus during surgeries involving this area.

Intellectual property rights have changed the market value and direction of artistic innovation throughout art history, in particular when new creations built on the art of predecessors. In this paper, we test how changes in legal frameworks and litigation risks affected market value and commercial trade around artistic reuses in the figurative arts and the ‘Appropriation Art’ movement in particular. Appropriation artists borrow images from different sources and incorporate them into new, derivative works of art. By doing so, they risk infringing copyright but also put auction trade and artwork availability at litigation risk as liability can extend to market intermediaries, such as auction houses, museums, or galleries. Using a differences-in-differences model and large-scale online data, we investigate the causal impact of the prominent Cariou v. Prince U.S. higher court decision on intermediary trade and the availability of artworks on sale in the Appropriation Art. As an exogenous shock, this decision changed the perceived litigation risk for market intermediaries around what constitutes fair use. Following the court decision, we find a temporary decline in the total number of global auctions in the Appropriation Art, a lower sales probability of these artworks, and a relocation of related auctions to non-U.S. houses.

The globalisation of the legal profession and the interrelationship of the legal world are among the significant factors behind the rise of comparative law nowadays, although multiple academic discussions remain open about it (Part I). As an academic discipline that analyses legal diversity worldwide to promote legal knowledge, legal advancement and legal harmonisation, comparative law should not be confused with other areas of law such as private international law (Part II). Thus, the object of comparative law is the study of legal phenomena in various legal environments, bearing in mind that national legal systems are unique according to their historical, political and social circumstances but at the same time shaped by shared legal traditions and thus classifiable among legal families (Part III). Although several methodologies have traditionally been observed, including the mainstream functional method, nowadays a combined methodology of different analyses and approaches is preferred to perform comprehensively comparative law (Part IV). Consequently, a holistic definition for comparative law as an academic discipline and as a legal horizon for the new generation of legal professionals is ultimately suggested in this working paper (Part V).

Wealth is often more unequally distributed than income, and there are considerable differences across countries. In this paper, we argue that wealth inequality helps explain cross-national variation in support for (and the size of) the welfare state because assets serve as private insurance. When wealth, particularly liquid assets, is unequally distributed across the income spectrum and high-income groups hold most assets, strong reinforcing preferences in favor of or against social policies result in antagonistic welfare politics and less government spending. When assets are more equitably distributed across the income spectrum, cross-cutting preferences emerge as more people support either insurance or redistribution. Welfare politics is consensual and facilitates a broader welfare coalition and more government spending. We analyze original cross-national survey data from nine OECD countries and provide evidence in support of our argument. Our findings suggest that wealth inequality reshapes the role of income in structuring welfare politics.

This paper presents a method to compute the finite and infinite geometric series with binomial coefficients. This idea can enable the scientific researchers to solve the real-world problems. &nbsp

This paper presents a technique to calculate the factorials for non-negative real numbers. This is also applicable for the coefficients of geometric series. &nbsp

This paper investigates the existence of contrarian profits and their sources for the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). The empirical analysis decomposes contrarian profits to sources due to common factor reactions, overreaction to firm-specific information, and profits not related to the previous two terms, as suggested by Jegadeesh and Titman (1995). Furthermore, in view of recent evidence that common stock returns are related to firm characteristics such as size and book-to-market equity, the paper decomposes contrarian profits to sources due to factors derived from the Fama and French (1993, 1996) three-factor model. For the empirical testing, size-sorted sub-samples that are rebalanced annually are employed, and in addition, adjustments for thin and infrequent trading are made to the data. The results indicate that serial correlation is present in equity returns and that it leads to significant short-run contrarian profits that persist even after we adjust for market frictions. Consistent with findings for the US market, contrarian profits decline as one moves from small stocks to large stocks, but only when market frictions are considered. Furthermore, the contribution to contrarian profits due to the overreaction to the firm-specific component appears larger than the underreaction to the common factors.

Do healthcare providers pick their patients? This paper uses patient-level administrative data on skilled nursing facilities in California to estimate a structural model of selective admission practices in the nursing home industry. I exploit within-facility covariation between occupancy and admitted patient characteristics to distinguish admission patterns attributable to selective admission practices from those attributable to heterogeneous patient preferences. In spite of anti-discrimination laws, I find strong evidence of selective admission practices that disproportionately harm Medicaid-eligible patients with lengthy anticipated stays. Counterfactual simulations show that enforcing a prohibition on selective admissions would increase access for these residents at the cost of crowding out short-stay non-Medicaid patients from their preferred facilities. I simulate two additional policies intended to mitigate selective admissions: raising the Medicaid reimbursement rate and expanding capacity. I find the latter to be less costly and more effective than the former.

This paper describes a dataset capturing insider trading activity at publicly traded companies. Investors and investment analysts demand this information because executives, directors and large shareholders are expected to have more intimate knowledge of their company’s prospects than outsiders. Insider stock sales and purchases may reveal information about the firm’s business not disclosed in financial statements. They may also convey new information predictive of stock price movements if insiders can better interpret public information about the firm. Since mid-2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission has made these insider trading reports available to the public in a structured format; however, most academic papers use proprietary commercial databases instead of regulatory filings directly. This makes replication challenging as the data manipulation and aggregation processes are opaque and historical records could be altered by the database provider over time. To overcome these limitations, the presented dataset is created from original regulatory filings; it is updated daily and includes all information reported by insiders without alteration.

This paper presents a benchmarking suite designed for the evaluation and comparison of time series databases for high-frequency data, with a focus on financial applications. The proposed suite comprises of four specialized databases: ClickHouse, InfluxDB, kdb+ and TimescaleDB. The results from the suite demonstrate that kdb+ has the highest performance amongst the tested databases, while also highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each of the databases. The benchmarking suite was designed to provide an objective measure of the performance of these databases as well as to compare their capabilities for different types of data. This provides valuable insights into the suitability of different time series databases for different use cases and provides benchmarks that can be used to inform system design decisions., Comment: 29 pages, 9 tables, 11 figures

While gender differences in labor force participation and wages have been studied extensively, gender gaps in cognitive skills among adults are not yet well understood. Using the PIAAC dataset, this paper presents novel findings on cognitive skill distributions by gender across 34 countries. Despite increasing educational equality, inequalities in numeracy skills favoring men compared to women are pervasive. These skill differences account for a sizable part of the gender wage gap. Furthermore, there are larger disadvantages for women at the top of the wage distribution, which are complemented by lower returns to skills compared to men. We also find that these numeracy-wage patterns are especially pronounced for parents and for those with the highest degree in a non-STEM field of study.

Learning a second language is challenging, but mastering pronunciation is even more difficult. Researchers continuously seek new ways to improve students’ English abilities, such as listening and speaking, while ignoring the importance of pronunciation. After conducting a literature review, this article investigates the impact of corpora and two instructional methods on improving students’ pronunciation. The paper addresses how to teach pronunciation effectively in the context of English as a second language. According to the review, corpus resources, critical listening, and shadowing can all be used independently to enhance students’ proficiency in second language learning. Hence, an innovative Corpus-based Critical Listening and Shadowing model has been devised as an aid in the teaching of pronunciation by providing more specific suggestions for teachers and students, with the expectation that students will perform better once they have been taught pronunciation using the methodology. The current study’s findings have pedagogical and methodological implications for pronunciation teaching, learning and research. The implications and future directions of the innovative Corpus-based Critical Listening and Shadowing model are also discussed.

Box-jacking as a tunnelling method has gained popularity in recent years for locating underground utilities and infrastructure. Nevertheless, the employment of this technique still poses challenges, particularly in predicting the jacking force of long drives. Accurate prediction of jacking force is highly desirable for anomaly detection, avoiding thrust overload limits, and protecting the box culverts and launch shafts from damage. However, such a prediction entails accounting for numerous factors, including site geology, lubricated overcut, work stoppages, deviations in alignment, and the driving style of the tunnel boring machine. In this paper, technical details of a Japan box-jacking project totalling over 220 m in length are discussed, with a focus on elucidating the relationship between tunnelling parameters and jacking force. Then, calculating approaches for forecasting jacking force during curved box-jacking are introduced. The modified Box-soil-lubricant contact model based on the analysis of tunnelling parameters is adopted for this purpose which can improve the accuracy of forecasts. Forecasts determined by the proposed approach are appraised through comparisons to predictions obtained using the PBK method currently utilized in industry. The results show that the proposed approach provides better forecasts of the monitored field data and highlight the significance of interpreting field data as a valuable tool for assimilating the experience with box-jacking in various ground conditions.

A novel factorization for the sum of two single-pair matrices is established as product of lower-triangular, tridiagonal, and upper-triangular matrices, leading to semi-closed-form formulas for tridiagonal matrix inversion. Subsequent factorizations are established, leading to semi-closed-form formulas for the inverse sum of two single-pair matrices. An application to derive the symbolic inverse of a particular Gram matrix is presented., Comment: Working paper, 21 pages

This paper investigates the informational content of online reviews. For the case of hotels, we model how the length of the stay shapes the variance of review scores. Grounded on violations of temporal monotonicity, errors in recall and hedonic adaptation theories, we first present a characterization of how the consumption span affects the non-deterministic component of consumer satisfaction. Next, we conduct an empirical analysis using more than 525,000 individual reviews from Booking.com in 5 major European cities. Under a heteroskedastic framework, we document that individual ratings’ volatility decreases with the length of the stay. This implies that online ratings from short stayers (short consumption episodes) are noisy signals of the underlying hotel quality. Furthermore, we show that greater volatility in hotel ratings translates into a lower share of useful reviews for subsequent consumers. Our findings offer relevant insights for platform design operators about the sources of ratings’ volatility and how this affects social learning.

This paper reviews literature pertaining to the development of data science as a discipline, current issues with data bias and ethics, and the role that the discipline of information science may play in addressing these concerns. Information science research and researchers have much to offer for data science, owing to their background as transdisciplinary scholars who apply human-centered and social-behavioral perspectives to issues within natural science disciplines. Information science researchers have already contributed to a humanistic approach to data ethics within the literature and an emphasis on data science within information schools all but ensures that this literature will continue to grow in coming decades. This review article serves as a reference for the history, current progress, and potential future directions of data ethics research within the corpus of information science literature.

Hate speech is a contextual phenomenon. What offends or inflames in one context may differ from what incites violence in a different time, place, and cultural landscape. Theories of hate speech, especially Susan Benesch’s concept of “dangerous speech” (hateful speech that incites violence), have focused on the factors that cut across these paradigms. However, the existing scholarship is narrowly focused on situations of mass violence or societal unrest in America or Europe. This paper discusses how online hate speech may operate differently in a postcolonial context. While hate speech impacts all societies, the global South—Africa in particular—has been sorely understudied. I posit that in postcolonial circumstances, the interaction of multiple cultural contexts and social meanings form concurrent layers of interpretation that are often inaccessible to outsiders. This study expands the concept of online harms by examining the political, social, and cultural dimensions of data-intensive technologies. The paper’s theories are informed by fieldwork that local partners and I conducted in Kasese, Uganda in 2019–2020, focusing on social unrest and lethal violence in the region following the 2016 elections. The research, completed with assistance from the Berkeley Human Rights Clinic, included examining the background and circumstances of the conflict; investigating social media’s role in the conflict; designing a curriculum around hate speech and disinformation for Ugandan audiences; creating a community-sourced lexicon of hateful terms; and incorporating community-based feedback on proposed strategies for mitigating hate speech and disinformation. I begin this with a literature review of legal theory around hate speech, with a particular focus on Africa, and then turn to the legal context around hate speech and social media use in Uganda, examining how the social media landscape fueled past conflicts. Then I explain my Kasese fieldwork and the study’s methodology, before describing initial results. I follow with a discussion of applications to industry, specifically how hate speech is defined and treated by Meta’s Facebook, the dominant social media provider in Kasese. It progresses to a discussion of the implications of the study results and legal and policy recommendations for technology companies stemming from these findings. Importantly, I apply the research findings to expand existing scholarship by proposing a new sixth “hallmark of dangerous speech” to augment Benesch’s paradigm. Adding “calls for geographic exclusion” as a new qualifier for dangerous speech stems from the particular characteristics embodied by postcolonial hate speech. Examples from the Kasese study illustrate how this phenomenon upends platforms’ expectations of hate speech—which may not consider “Coca-Cola bottle” to be an epithet. The application of this new hallmark will create a more inclusive understanding of hate speech in localized contexts. This paper’s conclusions and questions may challenge platforms that must address hate speech and content moderation at a global scope and scale. It will examine the prevalence and role of social media platforms in Africa, and how these platforms have provided resources and engagement with civil society in these regions.

China dominates the global solar photovoltaic (PV) value chain, while 15 years ago the demand and supply were located in few Western economies. In this process, the PV industry has seen a booming demand, drastic price decreases along the supply chain, and fierce competition among surviving companies. This paper seeks to understand how this spatial shift has occurred and its drivers, with a specific focus on the role of intangible assets and intellectual property.

Standard Fama-French-Carhart models define ‘winners’ as funds that generate the highest excess returns given the factor risks involved; however, they do not provide information on whether such winners are outperforming their prospectus benchmark or their peer group. In addition, existing literature relying on these models, by and large, does not find evidence of persistence in performance. In this paper, we propose a two-stage procedure that allows investors to select ‘true’ winners(losers) which generate the highest factor-risk-adjusted performance relative to the benchmark and the peer group simultaneously. Utilizing both adjustments at the same time results in a strong predictive ability, leading to a selection of funds that persist in performance. Our true winner funds have statistically significant superior benchmark-adjusted alphas, peer group adjusted alphas and Sharpe ratios one year ahead, which are significantly different from those generated by the true loser funds. The results are robust to extended investment horizon, and alpha estimation method, and they are not driven by outliers, size of fund-sorts, or any particular period within our sample.

Following the hype around OpenAI's ChatGPT conversational agent, the last straw in the recent development of Large Language Models (LLMs) that demonstrate emergent unprecedented zero-shot capabilities, we audit the latest OpenAI's GPT-3.5 model, `gpt-3.5-turbo', the first available ChatGPT model, in the LexGLUE benchmark in a zero-shot fashion providing examples in a templated instruction-following format. The results indicate that ChatGPT achieves an average micro-F1 score of 47.6% across LexGLUE tasks, surpassing the baseline guessing rates. Notably, the model performs exceptionally well in some datasets, achieving micro-F1 scores of 62.8% and 70.2% in the ECtHR B and LEDGAR datasets, respectively. The code base and model predictions are available for review on https://github.com/coastalcph/zeroshot_lexglue., Comment: Working paper

This paper develops a structural model to evaluate contingent capital notes (CCN) of Basel III under alternative regulatory closure rules. Our dynamic model has a fixed default barrier and at specific discrete time points an additional higher default barrier depending on the closure threshold. The closed-form expressions of CCN and subordinated debts (SD) in the simple Merton model are presented to understand the convex relationship between the price and capital ratio trigger of CCN and to examine the effects of closure rules on CCN and SD through their derivatives’ properties. Our numerical results in the more general model show that a lax closure rule increases the price of SD and distorts the risk information of issuing banks, but not so for CCN. The policy implications are that CCN are more effective than SD in terms of enhancing market discipline because the price/yield information of CCN is more sensitive to the issuing bank’s risk than SD and will not be distorted by regulatory closure rules.

This paper presents a technique to compute the binomial coefficients with real numbers. This technique is used as application in computing and mathematical sciences. &nbsp

This paper proves that E=mc^2 or mass-energy equation in a simple way.

This paper presents a method to solve the algebraic equations taken away from two distinct combinatorics geometric series. This idea can enable the scientific researchers to solve the real life problems. &nbsp

Wisdom is a concept that has deep roots in the history of our culture. Its meaning can be more easily grasped through examples, stories, mimetic rapprochements and reflections than through definitions. In terms of method this paper attempts to capture the essence of wisdom by describing some of its key characteristics without, however, trying to define exactly what wisdom is. A common scientific approach to phenomena is to attempt to define them precisely, and this could not possibly do justice to the complexity of wisdom, which has so many dimensions to it that it eludes definition. In this paper I propose therefore to sketch out a number of important characteristics, in order to try and grasp the complex phenomenon of wisdom without placing limitations on it in any way by defining it.

Although coworkers are spending an increasing share of their working time interacting with one another, little is known about how the coordination of hours among heterogenous coworkers affects pay, productivity and labor supply. In this paper, we use new linked employer-employee dataon hours worked in Denmark to first document evidence of positive correlations between wages, productivity and the degree of hours coordination - measured as the dispersion of hours - within firms. We then estimate labor supply elasticities by exploiting changes made to the personal income tax schedule in 2010. We find that hours coordination is associated with attenuated labor supply elasticity and spillovers on coworkers not directly affected by the tax change. These spillovers led to a 15% increase in the marginal excess burden from the 2010 tax reform, and if ignored, they induce substantial downward bias in estimates of the labor supply elasticity. We explain these findings in a framework in which differently productive firms choose whether to coordinate hours in exchange for productivity gains, leading more productive firms to select into coordinating hours and to pay compensating wage differentials.