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This study investigates whether municipal corruption has influenced the impact of the Brazilian conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Família by comparing the Human Development Index (HDI) in 2000 and 2010. The decentralized implementation of Bolsa Família is modeled as a principal-agent problem between the federal government and local municipalities, where the federal government has utilized va
Initial public offerings take place under varying market conditions, where periods of high listing activity often coincide with high initial returns and increased uncertainty. At the same time, prior research shows that firms going public tend to underperform the market in the long run. This study examines the extent to which firm-specific fundamentals can explain long-term performance following a
This thesis investigates whether volatility in the U.S. and the European equity markets influences each other and whether sush cross-market effects improve volatility forecasting. Using the S&P 500 and STOXX Europe 600 as representative indices, the study models volatility dynamis with Heterogeneous Autoregressive (HAR) framework and an extended specification that allowa for spillover effects
This thesis examines whether more generous unemployment insurance is associated with greater household portfolio risk-taking in Europe by reducing background income risk. Using a largely balanced panel of European countries, the analysis measures household risk-taking as the share of household financial assets held in equity and investment fund shares. Unemployment insurance generosity is proxied
The thesis investigates how changes in weekly working hours for full time employees influence the structure of employment - and more precisely the distribution between full-time and part-time positions. Although policy discussions on shorter workweeks often center around productivity and the total employment level, less attention has been paid to how such reforms reshape working time arrangements
This thesis examines exchange-rate pass-through (ERPT) to food inflation in Ghana with a focus on domestic transmission channels. Using monthly data, it estimates dynamic reduced-form equations for food inflation and for a set of producer,logistics, transport, and energy-related cost measures. The results show that exchange-rate depreciation passes through meaningfully to food inflation over sever
Background: Fragrance allergens are a leading cause of contact allergy (CA). Linalool, common in cosmetics and household products, forms sensitising hydroperoxides (Lin-OOH) upon air exposure. Lin-OOH is linked to a high prevalence (3.9%–11.7%) of positive patch test results, but often gives rise to doubtful or irritant reactions. Objectives: To reassess patch test concentrations of Lin-OOH, deter
Electrospinning is a versatile technique for manufacturing micro-nano diameter fibers and has been used extensively for tissue engineering in vivo and advanced cell culture in vitro. Standard means of seeding cells onto such substrates typically offer no control over cell distribution, yielding dispersed, heterogeneous and low concentrations of cells. In this article, we investigate the viability
Background: Severe COVID-19 frequently involves multi-organ dysfunction, including acute kidney injury (AKI), which affects up to 85% of critically ill patients. While both direct viral infection and systemic effects are implicated, the role of renal microthrombosis remains poorly defined in COVID-19 and AKI. Angiopoietin-2, a pro-inflammatory cytokine, and cleaved thrombomodulin is elevated in pl
High-energy hadronic collisions generate environments characterized by temperatures above 100 MeV (refs. 1,2), about 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the Sun. At present, it is therefore unclear how light (anti)nuclei with mass number A of a few units, such as the deuteron, 3He or 4He, each bound by only a few MeV, can emerge from these collisions3,4. Here, the ALICE Collaboration reports t
Ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions produce a state of hot and dense strongly interacting QCD matter called quark-gluon plasma (QGP). On an event-by-event basis, the volume of the QGP in ultracentral collisions is mostly constant, while its total entropy can vary significantly due to quantum fluctuations, leading to variations in the temperature of the system. Exploiting this unique feature of
The intense photon fluxes from relativistic nuclei provide an opportunity to study photonuclear interactions in ultraperipheral collisions. In particular, it allows for the investigations of excited, light-flavour vector mesons. The measurement of coherently photoproduced π+π−π+π− final states in ultraperipheral Pb–Pb collisions at sNN=5.02 TeV is presented for the first time. The cross section, d
Correlations among conserved quantum numbers, such as the net-electric charge, the net-baryon, and the net-strangeness in heavy-ion collisions, are crucial for exploring the QCD phase diagram. In this paper, these correlations are investigated using net-proton number (as a proxy for the net-baryon), net-kaon number (for the net-strangeness), and net-charged particle number in Pb-Pb collisions at =
Interfaces between magnetic and non-magnetic materials play a crucial role in various magnetic heterostructures. The emergence of 2D van der Waals (vdW) magnets has introduced new opportunities for exploring proximity effects in vdW heterostructures. While the influence of magnetic layers on nearby non-magnetic materials has been widely studied, it remains unclear whether non-magnetic substrates c
Heavy-flavor quarks produced in proton-proton (pp) collisions provide a unique opportunity to investigate the evolution of quark-initiated parton showers from initial hard scatterings to final-state hadrons. By examining jets that contain heavy-flavor hadrons, this study explores the effects of both perturbative and nonperturbative QCD on jet formation and structure. The angular differences betwee
Introduction: HIV guidelines recommend switching from a three-drug regimen (3DR) to dolutegravir + lamivudine (DTG+3TC) for eligible individuals. This retrospective national cohort study used Swedish InfCareHIV registry data to evaluate long-term outcomes of adults with HIV RNA <50 copies/ml who switched to DTG+3TC or a guideline-recommended 3DR between July 2019 and May 2023 in routine clinical c
The pathophysiology underlying various manifestations of cerebral small-vessel disease (cSVD) remains poorly understood. Using high-throughput proteomics, we identified common and distinct proteomic signatures of white matter lesions (WMLs), microbleeds, infarcts and their subtypes, measured in 1,670 living patients. Across all cSVD manifestations, markers of extracellular matrix dysregulation and
Light chain monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (LC-MGUS) is an asymptomatic precursor of multiple myeloma (MM) and related disorders defined by abnormal free light chain (FLC) testing. Recently, revised FLC reference intervals were proposed by the iStopMM study group. We evaluated their performance in a large population-based cohort. MGUS cases were identified from the Danish Lymph
Correlations between event-by-event fluctuations of anisotropic flow harmonics are measured in Pb-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV, as recorded by the ALICE detector at the LHC. This study presents correlations up to the hexagonal flow harmonic v6, which was measured for the first time. The magnitudes of these higher-order correlations are found to vary as a fu
