The Impacts of Environmental Cues and Browsing Experience on Impulse Buying on Social Shopping Website

Based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) paradigm, this study develops a model to theorize how environmental cues on social shopping website affect impulse buying behavior from the perspective of browsing experience. Social shopping websites bring a novel online browsing experience for customers. However, how browsing experience on this platform affect customers impulsively have received insufficient academic attention. The results reveal that the unique factors of social shopping website, namely the quality of user-generated content and social presence are critical for facilitating customers’ browsing experiences. The results also show that both utilitarian browsing and hedonic browsing experience have a positive impact on customers’ urge to buy impulsively. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed

UK fiscal policy sustainability, 1955–2006

We test for fiscal policy sustainability in the UK for the period 1955-2006. We find evidence of sustainability with three structural breaks, respectively occurring in the early 1970s, early 1980s and late 1990s. UK fiscal policy has been sustainable throughout the sample period except from 1973-1981 when a non-Ricardian regime applied. For the remaining periods correction of fiscal disequilibrium occurs through adjustments in public revenue rather than expenditure. Finally, we find evidence of non-linear fiscal adjustment, with UK authorities not reacting to relatively small deficits; but correcting exceedingly large deficits and any temporary surpluses relatively fast

Role of Danmu Function in User Experience and Engagement: A Double-edged Sword

Digital video sites currently seek new ways to build a platform to encourage user engagement and enable users to connect with one another through multiple means and channels. The widespread introduction of danmu technology has aroused concerns of academia. However, comparatively little work has been done to explicate the role of danmu function and research progress has been falling behind practical interest. In this study, we seek to investigate user experience and engagement to understand the double-side effect of danmu technology. Using S-O-R framework, we propose that danmu features, namely proximity and coherence, play essential roles in creating augmentation experience of para-social interaction and degradation experience of goal impediment and information overload. Additionally, we investigate user experience to understand user engagement in the danmu-enabled situation. We suggest that para-social interaction will elicit increased user engagement; yet goal impediment and information overload will lead to less user engagement

Fiscal policy sustainability and inflation in the UK: an empirical investigation

This thesis collects three interrelated chapters of empirical work, which are connected to each other in the sense of testing UK fiscal policy. The first chapter investigates whether the UK fiscal policy was consistent with an intertemporal budget constraint for a long period of time from 1955 to 2006. I find evidence of sustainability with three structural breaks, respectively occurring in the early 1970s, early 1980s and late 1990s. UK fiscal policy has been sustainable throughout the sample period except from 1973-1981 when a non-Ricardian regime applied. For the remaining periods correction of fiscal disequilibrium occurs through adjustments in public revenue rather than expenditure. Finally, I find evidence of non-linear fiscal adjustment, with UK authorities not reacting to relatively small deficits but correcting exceedingly large deficits and any temporary surpluses relatively fast. The second chapter investigates whether the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level can deliver a reasonable explanation for UK inflation in the 1970s, a period in which the government greatly increased public spending without raising taxes and money growth was entirely endogenous. The implied model of inflation is tested in two ways: for its trend using cointegration analysis and for its dynamics using the method of indirect inference. I find that it is not rejected. I also find that the model's errors indicate omitted dynamics which merit further research. Finally, when the model is extended to the data for the output gap and interest rates it is rejected for these further two variables. With a normalised Mahalanobis Distance of 5.1 overall and 3.3 for the data variances, this rejection is not so catastrophic that some re-specification could not possibly repair the model. But, perhaps not surprisingly, it indicates that the rather simple set-up of the model, while well able to capture the wide fluctuations of inflation in this unusual policy environment, cannot capture the behaviour of output and interest rates

PD-L1 aptamer-functionalized degradable hafnium oxide nanoparticles for near infrared-II diagnostic imaging and radiosensitization

Immune checkpoint blockade is now recognized as a paradigm-shifting cancer therapeutic strategy, whereas there remains difficulty in accurately predicting immunotherapy efficacy by PD-L1 expression. In addition, radiotherapy for cancer patients faces the problem of insufficient dose of radiotherapy at the tumor site while which have been not tolerated by normal tissues. In this study, we created PD-L1 aptamer-anchored spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) with a shell made of PD-L1 aptamer and indocyanine green (ICG) embedded in a mesoporous hafnium oxide nanoparticle core (Hf@ICG-Apt). Upon low pH irradiation in the tumor sites, the nano-system enabled the release of ICG in the high PD-L1 expression tumor to develop a high tumor-to-background ratio of 7.97 ± 0.76 and enhanced the ICG tumor retention to more than 48 h. Moreover, Hf@ICG-Apt improved radiation therapy (RT) when combined with radiation. Notably, Hf@ICG-Apt showed scarcely any systemic toxicity in vivo. Overall, this research offered a novel approach for applying reliable monitoring of PD-L1 expression and localization and robust RT sensitization against cancer with good biosafety

Can the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level explain UK inflation in the 1970s?

We investigate whether the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level can explain UK inflation in the 1970s. We find that fiscal policy was non-Ricardian and money growth entirely endogenous in this period. The implied model of inflation is tested in two ways: for its trend using cointegration analysis and for its dynamics using the method of indirect inference. We find that it is not rejected. We also find that the model's errors indicate omitted dynamics which merit further research

UK fiscal policy sustainability, 1955–2006

We test for fiscal policy sustainability in the UK for the period 1955-2006. We find evidence of sustainability with three structural breaks, respectively occurring in the early 1970s, early 1980s and late 1990s. UK fiscal policy has been sustainable throughout the sample period except from 1973-1981 when a non-Ricardian regime applied. For the remaining periods correction of fiscal disequilibrium occurs through adjustments in public revenue rather than expenditure. Finally, we find evidence of non-linear fiscal adjustment, with UK authorities not reacting to relatively small deficits; but correcting exceedingly large deficits and any temporary surpluses relatively fast

Genome-wide association analysis of secondary imaging phenotypes from the Alzheimer's disease neuroimaging initiative study

The aim of this paper is to systematically evaluate a biased sampling issue associated with genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) of imaging phenotypes for most imaging genetic studies, including the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). Specifically, the original sampling scheme of these imaging genetic studies is primarily the retrospective case-control design, whereas most existing statistical analyses of these studies ignore such sampling scheme by directly correlating imaging phenotypes (called the secondary traits) with genotype. Although it has been well documented in genetic epidemiology that ignoring the case-control sampling scheme can produce highly biased estimates, and subsequently lead to misleading results and suspicious associations, such findings are not well documented in imaging genetics. We use extensive simulations and a large-scale imaging genetic data analysis of the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimag-ing Initiative (ADNI) data to evaluate the effects of the case-control sampling scheme on GWAS results based on some standard statistical methods, such as linear regression methods, while comparing it with several advanced statistical methods that appropriately adjust for the case-control sampling scheme

The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level: identification and testing for the UK in the 1970s

We investigate whether the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) can explain UK inflation in the 1970s. We confront the identification problem involved by setting up the FTPL as a structural model for the episode and pitting it against an alternative Orthodox model; the models have a reduced form that is common in form but, because each model is over-identified, numerically distinct. We use indirect inference to test which model could be generating the VECM approximation to the reduced form that we estimate on the data for the episode. Neither model is rejected, though the Orthodox model outperforms the FTPL. But the best account of the period assumes that expectations were a probability-weighted combination of the two regimes