Largest Explanatory Power Research Articles

Dispersal limitation shapes distance‐decay patterns of European spiders at the continental scale

AbstractAimTo assess the relative relevance of dispersal limitation and species sorting as drivers of spatial turnover between spider faunas of European territories.LocationContinental Europe.Time periodPresent.Major taxa studiedSpiders (Order Araneae).MethodsWe analysed how distance‐decay patterns differ between northern and southern Europe (broadly, territories covered vs. not covered by ice sheets during the last glacial maximum, respectively) in 15 spider families, using standardized distances to allow a direct comparison between parameters (i.e. slope and intercept) of climatic and spatial distance‐decay models. Thus, we assessed North–South differences in parameters of spatial and, independently, climatic distance‐decay models, and whether those differences are explained by family‐specific traits related to dispersal ability.ResultsClimatic and spatial distance‐decay patterns are very similar in northern Europe, where climatic and spatial distances are highly correlated. In contrast, slopes are steeper in spatial than in climatic distance‐decay curves in southern Europe, where climatic and spatial distances are decoupled. Moreover, family traits related to dispersal ability explained the North–South difference in spatial distance‐decay slopes, as well as the amount of nestedness‐resultant dissimilarity between southern and northern spider faunas.Main conclusionsOur results suggest that differences in beta diversity patterns between northern and southern Europe reflect the strength of dispersal limitation in spiders, which varies across families and leads to different degrees of disequilibrium with current climatic conditions depending on the taxon. Moreover, in the South of Europe, where spatial and climatic distances are uncorrelated, spatial distance‐decay models are steeper and have larger explanatory power than climatic distance‐decay models, which suggests that dispersal limitation is the main factor shaping current beta diversity patterns of European spiders at the continental scale.

Spring Phenology Outweighs Temperature for Controlling the Autumn Phenology in the Yellow River Basin

Recent research has revealed that the dynamics of autumn phenology play a decisive role in the inter-annual changes in the carbon cycle. However, to date, the shifts in autumn phenology (EGS) and the elements that govern it have not garnered unanimous acknowledgment. This paper focuses on the Yellow River Basin (YRB) ecosystem and systematically analyzes the dynamic characteristics of EGS and its multiple controls across the entire region and biomes from 1982 to 2015 based on the long-term GIMMS NDVI3g dataset. The results demonstrated that a trend toward a significant delay in EGS (p < 0.05) was detected and this delay was consistently observed across all biomes. By using the geographical detector model, the association between EGS and several main driving factors was quantified. The spring phenology (SGS) had the largest explanatory power among the interannual variations of EGS across the YRB, followed by preseason temperature. For different vegetation types, SGS and preseason precipitation were the dominant driving factors for the EGS in woody plants and grasslands, respectively, whereas the explanatory power for each driving factor on cultivated land was very weak. Furthermore, the EGS was controlled by drought at different timescales and the dominant timescales were concentrated in 1–3 accumulated months. Grasslands were more significantly influenced by drought than woody plants at the biome level. These findings validate the significance of SGS on the EGS in the YRB as well as highlight that both drought and SGS should be considered in autumn fall phenology models for improving the prediction accuracy under future climate change scenarios.

Inequalities by sex on remaining teeth in adults: A decomposition analysis.

To identify which social determinants of health explain the gap in the remaining teeth between men and women. A secondary analysis of data from the Chilean National Health Survey (CNHS) 2016-2017 was performed on the number of remaining teeth in adults. The explanatory variables were organized into structural and intermediate social determinants of health according to the WHO framework. The contribution of both groups and the contribution of each individual explanatory variable to the remaining teeth gap was estimated using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis. The predicted average number of remaining teeth for men was 23.4 and 21.0 for women, thus a mean difference of 2.4 teeth. 49.8% of the inequality between men and women was due to the different distribution (endowments) of the predictors in the model. Among them, structural determinants of health, namely education level (15.8%) and employment status (17.8%), contributed the most. Intermediate determinants had no relevant contribution to explain the gap. Results revealed that the difference in the mean number of remaining teeth between men and women was mainly explained by two structural determinants: education level and employment status. The lack of explanatory power of intermediate determinants and the large explanatory power of structural determinants means that tackling oral health inequity in Chile requires strong political commitment. The role of intersectoral and intersectional public policies to address gender inequalities in oral health in Chile is discussed.

Climate and Management Practices Jointly Control Vegetation Phenology in Native and Introduced Prairie Pastures

Climate, human disturbances, and management practices jointly control the spatial and temporal patterns of land surface phenology. However, most studies solely focus on analyzing the climatic controls on the inter-annual variability and trends in vegetation phenology. Investigating the main and interacting effects of management practices and climate might be crucial in determining vegetation phenology and productivity. This study examined the impacts of climate and management practices on vegetation phenology and productivity in adjacent native and introduced prairie pastures, which have detailed long-term management records, by combining climate, management, and satellite remote sensing data (e.g., Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat). Modeled gross primary production (GPP) using vegetation photosynthesis model (VPM) was also included to investigate the dynamics of productivity. When comparing the impacts of the same management practices on different pastures, we used paired comparison, namely, comparing the native and introduced prairies side by side in the same year. The interactions of management practices and climate were investigated through comparing years with similar management but different climate (e.g., years with rainfall or not following baling events) in the same pasture. Results showed that air temperature (Ta) was an important factor in determining the start of the season (SOS) and the length of the season (LOS). Total rainfall (RF) during the annual growing season (AGS, derived from vegetation indices (VIs)) had the largest explanatory power (R2 = 0.53) in explaining the variations in the seasonal sums of VIs. The variations in GPP were better explained by RF (R2 = 0.43) than Ta (R2 = 0.14). Using the thermal growing season (March–October) or AGS climate factors did not show large differences in determining the relationships between phenology, GPP, and climate factors. Drought shortened the LOS and decreased GPP. In terms of management practices, grazing generally reduced the VIs and burning induced early greening-up and enhanced vegetation growth. Drought plus other management practices (e.g., grazing or baling) greatly affected vegetation phenology and suppressed GPP. The negative impacts (i.e., removal of biomass) of grazing on vegetation was compensated by enhanced vegetation growth after good RF. This study demonstrated that the interactions of climate and management practices could be positive (burning plus baling in a good RF year) or negative (grazing/baling plus drought), and can significantly affect vegetation phenology and production.

An empirical analysis of shopping basket similarities across consumers

ABSTRACT What makes shopping baskets similar or different across consumers and how much of shopping basket similarities is explained by similarities in observable characteristics, especially when a typical basket includes a few hundred products as a result of the consumer’s purchase decisions over tens of thousands of products? I attempt to answer these questions by expressing the entirety of households’ baskets as a vector of expenditure shares on various grocery products and computing pairwise cosine similarities. I find households’ shopping baskets vary greatly, with similarities in the demographic profiles and where they shop explaining only about 13%-16% of their similarities. The similarity in where households shop has the largest explanatory power, orders of magnitude larger than similarities in demographic profiles such as income and race. It underlines the importance of similarities in the products offered to households in explaining similarities in the products they ultimately purchase.

학생 수 기반 교육비 논리에 대한 비판적 검토

The purpose of this study is to critically review the logic of student-based budgeting raised by some. For this purpose, based on the school accounting data of elementary, middle, and general high schools in Gyeonggi-do, it was reviewed what kind of explanatory power the variables of the number of classes and students had for the amount of each policy project budget. As a result of the analysis, first, only the number of classes variable was found to be significant for the total amount of appropriation settlement. The number of classes explained the appropriation settlement of 83.2% of elementary school, 93.0% of middle school, and 59.5% of general high school. Second, the item that only the number of students was significantly explained in the expenditure settlement of each project is the student welfare/educational gap bridging policy project. This shows that the student-based education cost logic is most validly applied when directly linked to students, such as a meal budget. In other words, however, the logic of education expenses based on the number of students can be applied only when it has the characteristics of benefits linked to individuals among school education activities. Third, although there are some differences between basic educational activities and optional educational activities for each school level, the number of classes has basically a large explanatory power. However, considering that teachers' labor costs excluded from school accounting are being used for each class in actual educational activities, it can be seen that the scope for explaining basic educational activities through the number of students is only marginal compared to the analysis results. Based on the research results, it should be considered that the basic unit in which educational public goods are operated is the class. Therefore, it is suggested that it is reasonable and appropriate to continue the discussion on the cost involved based on the optimal class size and the optimal number of students that determine the optimal educational cost for class management in the future.

Quantifying the relative contribution of driving factors to the transformation of bauxite residue into a plant growth substrate

The vast stock and increasing amount of bauxite residue with high alkalinity, low nutrient and poor structure poses a significant challenge to plant growth. Although additives have been recognized to have obvious effects on the transformation of bauxite residue to a soil-like media for plant growth, a clear understanding of the quantitative contribution of physicochemical properties to plant growth is missing. This study aimed to discuss the portrayed role and contributions of additives mediated alkalinity, nutrient, and aggregates component in the significant factors of aggregate structure formation and corresponding plants seed germination in bauxite residue. The regulation of pH and total alkalinity in bauxite residue depends on inorganic additives, while for ESP and nutrients, nitrohumic acid and vinegar residue are better than inorganic and citric acid. The silt-clay fraction and microaggregate increased from 35.1% and 25.6% to 40.8% and 31.9% within citric acid addition, respectively, while macroaggregate increased from 39.2% to 49.9% within nitrohumic acid application, indicating citric acid may be more involved in the formation of the fundamental building units of organo-mineral associations in bauxite residue, while nitrohumic acid and vinegar residue may play an important role in continuous aggregation of small particles. For aggregates component, calcium in silt-clay fraction had the largest explanatory power in aggregate stability and germination rate (R2 = 65.6%), followed by Al in 0.25–2 mm size fraction (R2 = 11.1%), while organic complex Fe oxides and Mg in microaggregate explained little variance (R2 = 3.89% and R2 = 1.25%), demonstrating Ca, Fe, and Mg contributed greatly to the formation of microaggregate, while Si and Al contributed greatly to the formation of large aggregate. Besides the dominant role of aggregates component, aggregate stability related to mean weight diameter, large macroaggregates, fractal dimension, and silt-clay fraction plays a more critical role in seed germination.

Effects of climate changes on net primary productivity variation in the marsh area of the Sanjiang Plain

The Sanjiang Plain includes the largest freshwater marsh in China, playing an important role in regional carbon cycle. As an important indicator of carbon cycle, the net primary productivity (NPP) is a crucial index for estimating the carbon storage of marshy wetlands. Investigating the association between climate factors and NPP variation quantitatively is of great significance for estimating carbon sequestration of marsh. Based on NPP data and climatic data from 1954 to 2014, the spatiotemporal change of NPP in marsh area was analyzed and its association with climate factors was investigated in the Sanjiang Plain in this study. The results indicated that the NPP showed an increase trend in the marsh area of the Sanjiang Plain in the past six decades. Temperate growth made the largest contribution to the NPP increase among the main climate factors in the last six decades, followed by CO2concentration. Solar Radiation had the largest explanatory power on the spatial distribution of NPP among three climate factors before 1985. After 1985, temperature played an important role in leading the NPP distribution. Results also showed that the explanatory power of interactions between climate factors was stronger than that of single factor. Our results highlight the asymmetric effects of interactions between climate factors on marsh vegetation, which should be adequately considered in estimating carbon sequestration in marsh area in the Sanjiang Plain.

Quantitative discrimination of the influences of climate change and human activity on rocky desertification based on a novel feature space model

Abstract Under the stress of the global change, rocky desertification has become a serious environmental problem in the Karst Mountain area. At present, few remote sensing monitoring research works on rocky desertification based on feature space model have been conducted and reported. In this study, the Albedo-LST feature space remote sensing monitoring index based on point-point model has been proposed, and subsequently the spatio–temporal evolution pattern and driving mechanism of rocky desertification in Dafang district from 1986 to 2019 were analyzed. The results show that: (1) The point-point Albedo-LST feature space model of rocky desertification has good applicability with the overall accuracy of 90.79%; (2) From 1986 to 2019, the rocky desertification in Dafang district first showed an increasing trend (1986–2005) and then a decreasing trend (2005–2019); (3) The comprehensive evolution frequency of rocky desertification during 2001–2005 was the largest with 7.51% a−1, which was related to the implementation of the Grain for Green Project; (4) The single factor with the largest contribution rates to rocky desertification are land use type, landform, and temperature. The interactive factors with the largest explanatory power are temperature ∩ land use type and landform ∩ land use type. The research results can provide decision support for the prevention and control of rocky desertification in Southwest China.

Potential contributions of MRI and blood‐based biomarkers for cognitive status classification based on cognitive performance examinations

AbstractBackgroundThe global burden of dementia is growing from 50 million people in 2020 to 150 million in 2050 (World Health Organization). Health researchers often use national survey studies to understand the social and population dynamics of dementia. Many of these studies have relied on classification algorithms based on cognitive performance exams such as the MMSE and MOCA. However, researchers are concerned about misclassification leading to incorrect conclusions about dementia in the population. This study assesses how the addition of MRI markers, along with blood‐based biomarkers, would improve cognitive status classification based on cognitive performance exams.MethodWe use the data from the Alzheimer’s Disease and Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) to assess whether MRI measures (whole brain volume, hippocampal volume, and ventricle volume) along with plasma Aß and P‐Tau improve cognitive status classification accuracy, net of MMSE scores. To assess improvements, nested multinomial logistic regression equations adjusting for sex, age, and APOE alleles are used. In total, we have total of 1,442 respondents.ResultsWe found marginal improvements in cognitive status classification when structural MRI measures and blood‐based biomarkers were included compared to only MMSE scores. The R2 for model with only MMSE (0.401) increased when both structural MRIs, and plasma Aß and P‐Tau were added (0.445, an approximately 10% improvement). Furthermore, while structural MRI measures and blood‐based biomarkers alone did explain a modest amout of variability in dementia status classification (R2 of .182 and 142, respectively), models with MMSE scores alone had by far the largest explanatory power at .401.ConclusionWhile MRI markers and blood‐based biomarkers may lead to novel insight in understanding how brain pathology leads to cognitive impairment, their application to improving cognitive status classification in survey research may be more limited. Our findings do not show large improvements in cognitive status classification when including them in our predictive models of cognitive status classification. Additionally, the marginal improvement may not justify the costs associated with data collection in large nationally representative datasets.

Spatiotemporal Evolution and Determinant Factors of the Intra-Regional Trade Community Structures of the Indian Ocean Region

The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has become one of the main economic forces globally, and countries within the IOR have attempted to promote their intra-regional trade. This study investigates the spatiotemporal evolution of the community structures of the intra-regional trade and the impact of determinant factors on the formation of trade community structures of the IOR from 1996 to 2017 using the methods of social network analysis. Trade communities are groups of countries with measurably denser intra-trade ties but with extra-trade ties that are measurably sparser among different communities. The results show that the extent of trade integration and the trade community structures of the IOR changed from strengthening between 1996 and 2014 to weakening between 2015 and 2017. The largest explanatory power of the formation of the IOR trade community structures was the IOR countries’ economic size, indicating that market remained the strongest driver. The second-largest explanatory power was geographical proximity, suggesting that countries within the IOR engaged in intra-regional trade still tended to select geographically proximate trading partners. The third- and the fourth-largest were common civilization and regional organizational memberships, respectively. This indicates that sharing a common civilization and constructing intra-regional institutional arrangements (especially open trade policies) helped the countries within the IOR strengthen their trade communities.

Determinants of Sustainability Reporting in the Present Institutional Context: The Case of Port Managing Bodies

Research on the practice of sustainability reporting that is specifically focused on the approach applied by port authorities (or port managing bodies—PMBs) and based on surveys as a data collection method, is very limited. Most research consists of single-case studies, only partly covers the different dimensions related to the implementation of sustainability reporting, or is based on content analysis. This paper offers a multidimensional approach of the concept of sustainability reporting based on a global survey yielding 97 complete and valid answers of PMBs. A binomial logistic regression has been conducted to identify those organizational characteristics, whether or not under the control of the PMB, that have the largest explanatory power when it comes to the adoption of the practice of sustainability reporting. The research results present new variables compared to the findings of previous studies, such as proximity to a city, the history of data gathering, and the presence of environmental/social certifications. Furthermore, this paper also investigates how these organizational characteristics are interlinked with external, contextual forces by making use of Institutional Theory. By combining organizational characteristics with information on the institutional environment in which the PMB operates, a more complete image is obtained. The results of this analysis show that myriad different institutional pressures are in play when it comes to having influence over the decision making of PMBs with regard to the adoption of sustainability reporting. Furthermore, several prominent associations between one of the isomorphisms and certain organizational characteristics can be observed.

Quantifying the contribution of phyllosilicate mineralogy to aggregate stability in the East Asian monsoon region

Aggregate stability strongly influences soil function and has been a key indicator of soil quality and susceptibility to erosion. Although clay mineralogy has been recognized to have substantial effects on aggregate stability, little quantitative information is available on the specific contribution of various phyllosilicates in clay fraction. This study aimed to quantify the individual and combined effects of phyllosilicate minerals and their interaction with other soil properties on aggregate stability and breakdown mechanisms. A wide range of soil types in heavy textures from quaternary sediments were sampled under three land uses (forest, grass and arable) and at different genetic horizons along the mid-temperate to tropical climate gradient in the East Asian monsoon region. Soil aggregate stability against slaking (MWDFW), mechanical breakdown (MWDWS) and differential swelling (MWDSW) was determined, as well as phyllosilicate mineralogy by X-ray diffraction and a series of soil properties related to porosity, texture, organic matter, sesquioxides, and exchangeable cations. Aggregate stability generally exhibited a unimodal geographic trend (MWDSW in 1.85 ~ 3.49 mm, MWDWS in 0.76 ~ 3.22 mm and MWDFW in 0.14 ~ 2.74 mm), which became more remarkable with increased disruptive forces (coefficient of variation in 9 ~ 59%). Correspondingly, the dominant mechanisms of aggregate breakdown shifted from both slaking and mechanical breakdown to only slaking with increased soil weathering. The profile variation of aggregate stability and the land use effect differed with soil type and disruptive force. For phyllosilicate mineralogy, vermiculite had the largest explanatory power in aggregate stability (R2 = 54%, p < 0.001), followed by kaolilite and 1.4 nm intergrade mineral (R2 = 28 ~ 32%, p < 0.01), while illite explained little variance (R2 = 6%, p > 0.05), demonstrating the more prominent role of phyllosilicate mineralogy than other soil properties (R2 < 43%) in aggregate stabilization. Besides the dominant effect of vermiculite, soil organic carbon, exchangeable sodium and calcium exerted a complimentary effect (R2 = 12%). Collectively, aggregate stability is predominantly influenced by phyllosilicate mineralogy (especially swelling minerals) at the regional scale and by soil organic matter and exchangeable cations at the soil pedon scale.

Product Market Threats: Implications for Future Profitability and its Use by Market Participants

This study establishes the informational value of a firm’s product market competition, a measure derived from narrative disclosures in 10-K filings. Consistent with economic theory predicting faster mean reversion in earnings, we find that product market fluidity has large explanatory power for future profitability: higher fluidity (i.e., more competitive product market threats) is negatively associated with future earnings. However, capital market participants do not fully use this information leading to predictable future stock returns and sell-side analyst forecast errors. A trading strategy exploiting this information is associated with abnormal future returns and enhances other prominent size and book-to-market strategies. The findings are more consistent with mispricing than risk-based explanations: the results remain after adjusting for risk factors and cluster around subsequent earnings announcements. In addition, future analyst forecast errors and stock returns are directionally consistent with delayed information processing (mispricing). Overall, our findings suggest that qualitative disclosures can convey valuable information to capital market participants and play a meaningful role in fundamental analysis.

Contributions of Ecosystem Services to Human Well-Being in Puerto Rico.

Ecosystem services, including availability of greenspace, clean air, and clean water, can have benefits to human well-being, but their relative importance compared to economic or social services is often overlooked. In Puerto Rico, for example, improving community well-being, including economic and cultural opportunities, human health, and safety, are often overarching goals of environmental management decisions, but the degree to which improvements in ecological condition and provision of ecosystem services could impact local communities is complicated by wide variation in social and economic conditions. This study quantifies and maps neighborhood-scale indicators of human well-being and ecosystem services for Puerto Rico to better understand the degree to which ecosystem services provisioning, alongside co-occurring social and economic services, explains variability in a number of indicators of human well-being. In Puerto Rico, variability in indicators of human well-being were predominately explained by economic services related to accumulating income and personal savings, and social services, including availability of family services, healthcare services, and access to communication technology. Despite the large explanatory power of economic and social services, however, the analysis detected that substantial portions of well-being, in particular education and human health, could be explained by variability in ecosystem services over space and time, especially availability of greenspace. Linking ecosystem services to multivariate elements of human well-being can serve to complement more traditional community planning or environmental management efforts by helping identify potential unintended consequences or overlooked benefits of decisions.

ICAPM and the Accruals Anomaly

We propose new multifactor models to explain the accruals anomaly. Our baseline model represents an application of Merton’s ICAPM in which the key factors represent (innovations on) the term and small-value spreads. The model shows large explanatory power for cross-sectional risking premia associated with three accruals portfolio groups. A scaled version of the model shows better performance, suggesting that accruals risk premia are related with the business cycle. Both models compare favorably with popular multifactor models used in the literature, and also perform well in pricing other important anomalies. The risk price estimates of the hedging factors are consistent with the ICAPM framework.

What Determines China’s Stock Prices? A CCAPM Horse Race

This paper studies China’s stock prices in the framework of consumption-based capital asset pricing models (CCAPM). Using China’s quarterly stock market data from 1991 to 2019, we estimate and compare four versions of CCAPM: the classical CCAPM, CCAPM with housing service consumption, with habit formation, and with both. We find habit formation affects stock returns only if housing service consumption is considered. Further, although every model is consistent with data to certain extent, the models with habit formation perform substantially better. In particular, the model with both habit formation and housing service consumption fits the data best and has the largest explanatory power on risk premium. The findings imply that habit formation is an important determinant of China’s stock prices, and its impact is mostly via the channel of housing service consumption.

The Non-U.S. Bank Demand for U.S. Dollar Assets

The USD asset share of non-U.S. banks captures the demand for dollars by these investors. An instrumental variable strategy identifies a causal link from the USD asset share to the USD exchange rate. Cross-sectional asset pricing tests show that the USD asset share is a highly significant pricing factor for carry trade strategies. The USD asset share forecasts the dollar with economically large magnitude, high statistical significance, and large explanatory power, both in sample and out of sample, pointing towards time varying risk premia. It takes 2-5 years for exchange rate risk premia to normalize in response to demand shocks.

Cultural creative economy and urban competitiveness: How one matters to the other

ABSTRACT This article has built a two-way analytical framework to investigate the interrelationship between the cultural creative economy (CCE) and urban competitiveness. Through operationalizing urban competitiveness into urban economic performance, urban development capacity, and urban attractiveness, this article reviews different CCE-based urban development strategies. The empirical results indicate that CCE development is related to all three aspects of urban competitiveness variables, while human capital has the largest explanatory power on both the cultural creative occupations’ concentration and cultural creative industries (CCI) output. The sectoral structure (arts, media, and design) matters in the analysis, implying that scholars should further focus on sub-CCIs in the future research. The variables have different extents of influence on the occupational concentration and industrial output data, which implies that these two different approaches should be considered distinctly.

On the origins of entrepreneurship: Evidence from sibling correlations

Despite the consensus that entrepreneurship runs in the family, we lack evidence regarding the total importance of family and community background, as well as the relative importance of different background influences that affect entrepreneurship. We draw on human capital formation theories to argue that families and communities provide a salient context for the development of individual entrepreneurial skills and preferences, beyond the existing focus on parental entrepreneurship. We posit that early influences are more important than later influences and propose a hierarchy of family influences, whereby genes have the largest explanatory power, followed by parental entrepreneurship, neighborhoods, and parental resources, and finally by parental immigration, family structure, and sibling peers. Finally, we argue that the higher human and financial capital intensity of incorporated relative to unincorporated entrepreneurship predictably alters the hierarchy of family influences, as does gender. Sibling correlations estimated on Swedish register data confirm our hypotheses.