This research examines the duration effect and interaction effect of advertising and performance in the mutual fund industry. And we examine these effects by using the method of ordinary least squares to know how advertising and performance influence the fund investors¡¦ investment strategies. Our empirical study of the mutual fund industry shows that there is a duration effect between advertising and fund inflows, and this effect lags two periods. We also find that the interaction effect of advertising and performance is significant, with no significant effect for advertising. This result refers that there is a complement relationship between advertising and performance. Furthermore, it indicates that advertising likes a catalyst to convey the information about fund performance in attracting investors, and the performance is a major factor to construct advertising reliability.

This study focused on measuring courteous behavior on the University of Texas at Austin (UT) students on campus. This behavior was measured through analyzing various factors involved when a person opened the door for another. The goal was to determine which factors would significantly affect the probability that a person would hold a door for another. Three UT buildings with no automatic doors were selected (RLM, FAC and GRE), and 200 pairs of students at each location were observed to see whether they would open doors for others. These subjects were not disturbed during the data collection process. For each observation, the door holding conditions, genders, position (whether it was the one who opened the door or the recipient of this courteous gesture, abbreviated as recipient), distance between the person opening the door and the recipient, and the number of recipients were recorded. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the probability of people opening the doors for others was significantly affected by gender, position, distance between the person opening the door and the recipient, the number of recipients, and the interaction term between gender and position. The study revealed that men had a slightly higher propensity of opening the doors for the recipients. The odds for men were a multiplicative factor of 1.09 of that for women on average, holding all other factors constant. However, women had much higher probability of having doors held open for them. The odds for men were a multiplicative factor of 0.55 of that for women on average, holding all other factors constant. In terms of the distance between the person opening the door and the recipient, for each meter increase in distance, the odds that the door would be held open would decrease by a multiplicative factor of 0.40 on average. Additionally, for each increase in number of recipients, the odds that the door would be held open would increase by a multiplicative factor of 1.32 on average. / text

Rule induction is a popular technique for knowledge acquisition and data mining. Many techniques, such as ID3, C4.5, CART (tree induction tecniques) and Artificial Neural Networks have been developed and widely used. However, most techniques are either based on categorical or numerical mechanisms to assess the importance of different input variables, which may not produce the optimal rule when a mixture of variables exists. In 1992, Liang proposed a composite approach called CRIS that use different method to analyze different types of data in inducing rules for binary classification. Yang conducted a follow-up research to extend the original algorithm to multiple categories. However, both methods do not take variable interaction into consideration. The purpose of this research is to extend previous approach and extend by including second-order interaction. We also take into consideration the kurtosis and skewness of data for numerical variables. For categorical data, we also adopt ID3 algorithm to handle classes with low representation in the sample. In order to evaluate this technique, we develop a prototype CRIS 3.0 and compare with existing techniques, including multi-category-CRIS, CART and C4.5 as benchmark. The results show that CRIS 3.0 has the highest probability of producing the highest prediction accuracy.

Although several scholars have argued that the spouses failure to adjust is one of the main reasons expatriate employees return prematurely from international assignments, research about spouse adjustment is scarce, and existing research about the phenomenon was conducted almost two decades ago. Therefore, our research was conducted in order to empirically examine theoretical variables that historically relate to host country adjustment of the spouse in order to see if these variables are still valid today. The present study focused on personality, family characteristics and anticipatory and in-country adjustment variables of the intercultural adjustment of expatriate spouses. Among a sample of 105 expatriate spouses it was shown that the variables measuring time in host-country, positive pre-move opinion held by the spouse, living conditions at least equal to home, cultural novelty, personality traits, and family cohesion were significant moderators of the adjustment to the new country of the spouse. We could also show that the adjustment of the spouse affects the adjustment of the expatriate, thus increasing the relevance for companies to aim more attention to the spouse well-being. An area for future research could be to investigate more closely if there is different effectiveness of different types of training.

Interaction and marginal effects are often an important concern, especially when variables are allowed to interact in a nonlinear model. In a linear model, the interaction term, representing the interaction effect, is the impact of a variable on the marginal effect of another variable. In a nonlinear model, however, the marginal effect of the interaction term is different from the interaction effect. This report provides a general derivation of both effects in a nonlinear model and a linear model to clearly illustrate the difference. These differences are then demonstrated with empirical data. The empirical study shows that the corrected interaction effect in an ordered logit or probit model is substantially different from the incorrect interaction effect produced by the margins command in Stata. Based on the correct formulas, this report verifies that the interaction effect is not the same as the marginal effect of the interaction term. Moreover, we must be careful when interpreting the nonlinear models with interaction terms in Stata or any other statistical software package. / text

To help mitigate the escalating prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) and alleviate society of its associated morbidity and economic burden on health care, it is crucial to understand its aetiology. Both genetic and the environmental risk factors are known to be involved. Healthy diets have been proven to reduce the risk of T2D in primary prevention trials, however, which components and exact mechanisms are involved is not fully understood, in particular, the role of macronutrient intake. Body weight, glycaemic markers and T2D are all to some extent genetically regulated. There may also be genetic influences on how people digest, absorb or metabolise macronutrients. This poses the possibility that the interplay between genes and our diet may help us unravel T2D’s aetiology. The aim of this PhD was to investigate gene-diet interactions on the risk of incident T2D, focusing primarily on macronutrient intake as the dietary factor. First, I systematically evaluated the current evidence before taking a step-wise approach (hypothesis driven to hypothesis-free) to interrogate gene-macronutrient interactions. This identified 13 publications, with 8 unique interactions reported between macronutrients (carbohydrate, fat, saturated fat, dietary fibre, and glycaemic load derived from self-report of dietary intake and circulating n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids) and genetic variants in or near TCF7L2, GIPR, CAV2 and PEPD (p < 0.05) on T2D. All studies were observational with moderate to serious risk of bias and limitations that included lack of adequate adjustment for confounders, lack of reported replication and insufficient correction for multiple testing. Second, these reported interactions did not replicate in a large European multi-centre prospective T2D case-cohort study called EPIC-InterAct. We concluded that the heterogeneity between our results and those published could be explained by methodological differences in dietary measurement, population under study, study design and analysis but also by the possibility of spurious interactions. Third, given the paucity of gene-macronutrient interaction research using genetic risk scores (GRS), we examined the interaction between three GRS (for BMI (97 SNPs), insulin resistance (53 SNPs) and T2D (48 SNPs)) and macronutrient intake (quantity and quality indicators) in EPIC-InterAct. We did not identify any statistically significant interactions that passed multiple testing corrections (p≥0.20, with a p value threshold for rejecting the null hypothesis of 0.0015 (based on 0.05/33 tests)). We also examined 15 foods and beverages identified as being associated with T2D, and no significant interactions were detected. Lastly, we applied a hypothesis-free method to examine gene-macronutrient interactions and T2D risk by using a genome-environment-wide-interaction-study. Preliminary findings showed no significant interactions for total carbohydrate, protein, saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat and cereal fibre intake on T2D. In conclusion, the consistently null findings in this thesis using a range of statistical approaches to examine interactions between genetic variants and macronutrient intake on the risk of developing T2D have two key implications. One, based on the specific interactions examined, this research does not confirm evidence for gene-diet interactions in the aetiology of T2D and two, this research suggests that the association between macronutrient intake and the risk of developing T2D does not differ by genotype.

Very few empirical studies have attempted to study the impact of foreign direct investment and its interaction with human capital on poverty alleviation in developing countries. This paper attempts to fill this gap and contribute to the literature on FDI, human capital and poverty by not only disentangling the effects of FDI on poverty but also examining this effect in the presence of human capital.

This dissertation investigates three questions: First, what conditions make dissident collective action such as protest, revolt, rebellion, or civil war more likely to happen in a country? Second, what conditions make citizens more likely to join in dissident collective action? Third, does Internet use play a role in dissident collective action, and if so, why? I argue that motives and resources are necessary rather than sufficient conditions for dissident collective action. I develop an analytical framework integrating motives and resources. Specifically, I theorize that state repression is an important motive, and that civil society is critical in providing resources. Four statistical analyses are conducted to test the hypotheses. Using aggregate level data on countries over time, I find that civil war is more likely to occur in countries where both state repression and civil society are strong. Moreover, the effect of civil society on civil war onset increases as the repression level rises. at the individual level using 2008 Latin American Public Opinion Project surveys from 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries, I find individuals more likely to join in protest when they experience both more repression and greater civic engagement. Moreover, civic engagement’s effect on protest participation increases as people experience more repression. I further find that Internet use constitutes a kind of civic engagement and has effects similar to voluntary group involvement. the effect of Internet use on protest participation decreases as a person’s civic engagement increases. Finally, an individual is more likely to join in protest when experiencing more repression and using the Internet more frequently. Moreover, the effect of Internet use on protest participation increases as a person experiences more repression.

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Deliberate firesetting is a dangerous behavior that is associated with considerable costs annually. It has been estimated that young people under the age of 18 are responsible for a large proportion of all firesetting incidents. Moreover, firesetting has been linked to serious antisocial and aggressive behaviors and behavioral difficulties among juveniles and has been found to predict later delinquency, which makes this an important area to study. Some previous studies have found support for the importance of factors akin to self-control, e.g., impulsivity, for juvenile firesetting. This study applied an aspect of situational action theory (SAT), where self-control is viewed as part of crime propensity, but of lesser importance than morality, to the study of juvenile firesetting for the first time. Analyzing self-report data from two waves of the longitudinal Malmö Individual and Neighbourhood Development Study (MINDS), this study examines a key proposition of situational action theory, namely that morality is more important than self-control and that self-control is relevant in the explanation of crime (firesetting) only for individuals with lower levels of morality. The results indicate support for this proposition.