Show us the money: Oil revenues, undisclosed allocations and accountability in budgets of the GCC States

This paper traces the historical evolution of the transparency, independence and accountability of public revenues and expenditures in each of the GCC countries. Beginning with the discovery of oil in 1932, specific focus is placed on that part of oil revenues that are treated as undisclosed allocations, including military expenditures, overseas transfers and royal allowances. It argues that with the exception of Kuwait, there is strong evidence to suggest that significant amount of oil revenues are undeclared, which go either into private hands or into undisclosed government transactions

Informal institutions and managers’ earnings management choices: evidence from IFRS-adopting countries

In this study, we investigate the role of informal institutions (religiosity and culture) in determining managers’ choices of earnings management methods (accruals vs. real activities), after controlling for formal institutions (investor protection, enforcement quality and equity market development). Using an ethical perspective, we find that managers tend to choose an earnings management strategy that meets the prevailing social (informal) norms of the environment where the firm is headquartered. Specifically, our analysis shows that firms domiciled in countries with strong religious adherence and highpower- distance cultures prefer to manage their earnings ‘upwards’ through real activities rather than accruals. Overall, our results suggest that informal institutions determine managers’ earnings management choices at least as strongly as formal institutions do. It would therefore be misleading to analyze managers’ choices in managing earnings solely from the formal rules perspective without considering the role of informal constraints or vice versa

The impact of national culture and institutions on goodwill-impairment practices across IFRS-adopting nations

This thesis investigates the factors that influence the magnitude of goodwill impairment losses as well as the value relevance of these losses using a sample of 2,466 companies, drawn from 17 countries in which IFRSs have been made mandatory for all their domestic listed companies. The study period is 2007-2013 and includes 14,898 firm-year observations. The results obtained from the Tobit regression analysis involving variables drawn from agency/positive accounting theory, Hofstede’s theory of culture, as well as different theoretical institutional models, reveal that goodwill-impairment amounts are not only driven by economic factors and managerial reporting incentives, but also by country-specific factors, such as cultural and institutional variables. The results also confirm that the strength of the equity market is still the single most influential factor contributing not only to differences in accounting practices but above all, to differences in institutional quality between countries. The results of a K-means cluster analysis reveal that there are two groups of countries, corresponding to strong equity-outsider and weaker equity-outsider clusters. By comparing the relative associations between goodwill-impairment amounts and economic factors and managerial reporting incentives across these two institutional clusters, estimation results reveal that firms in the strong equity-outsider cluster have recorded goodwill-impairment losses that are, on the one hand, strongly associated with economic factors, and on the other hand, weakly associated with managerial reporting incentives. Further analysis also showed that while results for the pooled sample did not indicate that goodwill impairment losses were value relevant this was not the case for firms in the strong equity-outsider cluster, which have recorded impairment losses that are, on average, more relevant and more timely than those recorded by firms in the weaker equity-outsider cluster

Abnormal inventory and performance in manufacturing companies: evidence from the trade credit channel

This paper examines the value of abnormal inventory and the channels through which firms decrease abnormally high inventory or increase abnormally low inventory for a sample of 976 United Kingdom (UK) manufacturing firms over the period from 2006 to 2015. Using GMM regressions, the results show that (i) an optimal inventory policy exists; and (ii) firms that are able to converge at this optimal inventory level byeither decreasing abnormally high inventory or increasing abnormally low inventory to improve operational and stock performance. Importantly, the results show that trade receivables and trade payables are the channels through which firms achieve efficient inventory management

Larks' adaptation and breeding success in Kuwait State

This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of the protection measures currently in place to conserve the natural environment in Kuwait State. Comparison of protection effectiveness was based on the measurements of ecological habitat quality and biodiversity. In order to achieve this, 2 protected areas (SAANR and Kabd) and 2 comparable unprotected areas (B-SAANR and R-Kabd) were studied. In addition, an arable land area, the Pivot farm, was also studied. I examined the floral and avifaunal richness in these five areas. Distribution and abundance of members of the lark family Alaudidae, and the crested lark Galerida cristata in particular, were measured as a key habitat indicator. I also investigated the importance of water provison for wildlife. The diurnal use of a water hole and behaviour of crested larks during foraging and shading was observed. The challenge that larks face to cope with the high temperature during the breeding seasons was also examined. The assessment of the vegetation identified the plant species richness as an index of habitat types, and this was examined in relation to human activity factors (e.g. grazing, camping, etc). Two-Way Indicator Species Analysis (TWINSPAN) showed three sample-groups of vegetation types (labelled A, B and C), a Haloxylon community (C); a sub-community (B: indicated by Helianthemum) of the Stipa community type; and a sub-community (A: indicated by Plantago and Schismus) of the mixed Stipa - Cyperus community type. Vegetation is a powerful indicator of land degradation in Kuwait. Richness of plant species was correlated negatively with land degradation. Lark species were used as indicators to measure the benefit of the current conservation measures. There was a significant difference between lark density and species richness in protected, non-protected and arable lands. Density of larks was very low in non-protected areas, being about one individual km-2 (Figure 3.3). An obvious conclusion from the results was the important role of protected areas in conservation context. As an example larks' species abundance and density in SAANR were remarkably higher than B-SAANR (Figure 3.9 and 3.10). Furthermore, all other larks' species were absent in B-SAANR area in both breeding and non-breeding seasons. This study showed the important role that a water hole can play in attracting wildlife in desert areas and in influencing several aspects of behaviour. Overall 96 animal species used the Talha water hole in SAANR, Kuwait throughout 2009. Talha water hole became an essential spot for attraction of most wildlife in the SAANR, especially in summer. There may of course be cost associated with gathering in one place, such as at a water hole. Gregarious birds optimize vigilant attentiveness according to their group size. My study on the behavior of crested larks during winter and summer seasons in Kuwait revealed the presence of relationships between vigilance behaviours (head up, crest up and closed eye) verses group size. The study showed there are strong linkages between these behaviours and flock size. I found also a correlation between sitting individuals and having their crest up during shading. In addition, these vigilance behaviours were affected by the density of flocks. Hence, distance between foragers influences their social vigilance. The breeding survey showed that larks face environmental challenges to breed in Kuwait. Absence of nests in unprotected areas B-SAANR and R-Kabd were correlated with their poor vegetation cover. Signs of larks breeding such as courtship display, protecting a territory or presence of nest were seen in the protected areas SAANR and Kabd. In SAANR, at least one of those signs was seen for greater hoopoe larks, crested larks and bar-tailed larks. In Kabd, juveniles of the black-crowned sparrow lark were seen. Arable lands can play an important role for resident breeding species, especially in annual seasons that are characterised by a shortage of rainfall. For example, crested larks and doves were attracted to the Pivot farm. Territories and nests of crested larks were identified in alfalfa and barley crops. The Pivot farm possess potential characteristics that are absent in open areas and in protected areas. Crested larks were found mostly nesting in arable lands to compensate for poor habitat quality, low vegetation cover and rainfall shortages in protected areas. The effect of macro and microhabitat nest site selections on larks and doves thermoregulation was examined to determine the favourable position of the nest. Position and site location showed a remarkable effect on nest temperature. Further more, nest temperatures varied between different habitats and vegetation cover. The Pivot farm presents a good alternative habitat for crested larks to breed until mid-June. To further study adaptations to warm weathers, I examined egg shell structure. A comparison of components of egg shell morphology reveals the presence of morphological and structural differences both between sibling species, and within the same species, collected at different latitudes. Two sibling species, crested larks Galerida cristata (from Kuwait) and skylarks Alauda arvensis (from the United Kingdom) have different egg volume, shell pigmentation and colour, thickness and water loss through the shell. The other sibling dove species showed difference in eggshell thickness between arid and temperate zones. Within the same species, the house sparrow Passer domesticus, variation in eggshell thickness was also found between birds from Kuwait and the United Kingdom. The eggshells of house sparrows were thinner in Kuwaiti samples than in those collected in the United Kingdom. Moreover, within the United Kingdom there was also a similar latitudinal trend, with Scottish shell samples being thicker and those from further south in the UK being thinner. There was however little difference in water loss. In addition, average length and width of laughing dove eggs varied between South Africa and Kuwait samples. Hence, they differ in egg volume. These results suggest local adaptation in egg shell structure. Egg shell thickness increased at higher latitudes in both the sibling species, and in the within species, comparisons. This suggests that latitude, presumably via the effects of environmental temperature, can influence optimal eggshell structure, since the pattern was similar across the lark species compared with the within species variation in the sparrows. My data also reveal some variations among the eggshell characteristic of larks in response to temperature and latitude. This study reveals the challenge that larks face to breed in Kuwait. To breed, a suitable secure habitat is essential. Habitat degradation was a remarkable in most non protected areas in Kuwait. Recommendations for conservation measures in Kuwait are discussed

Adversarial Conversational Shaping for Intelligent Agents

The recent emergence of deep learning methods has enabled the research community to achieve state-of-the art results in several domains including natural language processing. However, the current robocall system remains unstable and inaccurate: text generator and chat-bots can be tedious and misunderstand human-like dialogue. In this work, we study the performance of two models able to enhance an intelligent conversational agent through adversarial conversational shaping: a generative adversarial network with policy gradient (GANPG) and a generative adversarial network with reward for every generation step (REGS) based on the REGS model presented in Li et al. [18] . This model is able to assign rewards to both partially and fully generated text sequences. We discuss performance with different training details : seq2seq [ 36] and transformers [37 ] in a reinforcement learning framework

Advances in honeycomb layered oxides: Part I -- Syntheses and Characterisations of Pnictogen- and Chalcogen-Based Honeycomb Layered Oxides

Advancements in nanotechnology continue to unearth material vistas that presage a new age of revolutionary functionalities replete with unparalleled physical properties and avant-garde chemical capabilities that promise sweeping paradigm shifts in energy, environment, telecommunications and potentially healthcare. At the upper echelons of this realm, the pnictogen and chalcogen class of honeycomb layered oxides have emerged with fascinating crystal chemistry and exotic electromagnetic and topological phenomena that muster multifaceted concepts spanning from materials science to condensed matter physics and potential applications in electrochemistry, quantum mechanics and electronics. In a bid to shed light on the mechanisms governing these biomimetic nanostructures, this review highlights the significant milestones and breakthroughs that have augmented their current knowledgebase of theory, properties and utilities. Herein, we elucidate the vast promising crystal chemistry space against the backdrop of known synthesis and characterisation techniques employed in the development and optimisation of this class of materials. Further, we highlight key theoretical models that have reinvigorated the exploration and characterisation of honeycomb layered oxides within this class and are poised to redefine the frontiers of material research and their applications. We conclude by envisaging future research directions where fascinating physicochemical, topological and electromagnetic properties could be lurking and where valiant efforts ought to be inclined, particularly in the prospective realisation of exotic material compositional space as well as their utility as testing grounds for emergent two-dimensional (2D) topological quantum gravity and conformal field theories.Comment: 107 pages, 48 figures, 14 tables, Typographical errors correcte

The impact of international diversification on credit scores: Evidence from the UK

Despite the great deal of previous research into international diversification, we know little about the impact of international diversification on firms’ credit scores. Drawing upon the resource-based view and transaction cost economics, we examine the relationship between international diversification and credit scores by using a large sample of 6,557 UK firms between 2016 and 2017. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between international diversification and firms’ credit scores, indicating that the effect of international diversification on credit scores is initially positive but becomes negative with over-diversification. In addition, we find that R&D intensity positively moderates the relationship between international diversification and credit score, implying that the credit scores of highly diversified firms improve as they increase their investment in R&D. Further analysis suggests that a firm’s credit score becomes less dependent on international diversification for large firms, firms in concentrated industries, firms in the manufacturing sector, and firms distant from key metropolitan areas, such as London

Probabilistic Relational Supervised Topic Modelling using Word Embeddings

The increasing pace of change in languages affects many applications and algorithms for text processing. Researchers in Natural Language Processing (NLP) have been striving for more generalized solutions that can cope with continuous change. This is even more challenging when applied on short text emanating from social media. Furthermore, increasingly social media have been casting a major influence on both the development and the use of language. Our work is motivated by the need to develop NLP techniques that can cope with short informal text as used in social media alongside the massive proliferation of textual data uploaded daily on social media. In this paper, we describe a novel approach for Short Text Topic Modelling using word embeddings and taking into account any informality of words in the social media text with the aim of addressing the challenge of reducing noise in messy text. We present a new algorithm derived from the Term Frequency -Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF), named Term Frequency - Inverse Context Term Frequency (TF-ICTF). TF-ICTF relies on a probabilistic relation between words and context with respect to time. Our experimental work shows promising results against other state-of-the-art methods