Home  About us  Contact
 

Lower Burden (lower + burden)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting60%
Medical Sciences40%

Selected Abstracts

The International Quotidian Dialysis Registry: Annual report 2005

HEMODIALYSIS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2005
Gihad Nesrallah
Abstract The International Quotidian Dialysis Registry was designed to collect data describing treatments, characteristics, and outcomes of patients treated with quotidian hemodialysis (HD) worldwide. In July 2004, North American centers were first invited to enroll patients. By March 1, 2005, a total of 70 nocturnal and 8 short-daily HD patients from three Canadian and two US centers were enrolled. As recruitment continues, projected enrollment for 2005 may exceed 200 patients from North America alone. Preliminary analyses indicate that the current registry cohort is younger (mean age, 49.5 ± 1.6 years) and carries a lower burden of comorbidity than the overall North American HD population. The low event rate expected in this cohort underlines the need for a large sample size if an appropriately powered survival study is to be undertaken. Increasing recruitment in the United States by including HD centers owned or managed by large dialysis organizations, and beginning overseas collaborations to include Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and South America will be the primary areas of focus for 2005. [source]

Ownership Concentration in Privatized Firms: The Role of Disclosure Standards, Auditor Choice, and Auditing Infrastructure

JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 5 2006
OMRANE GUEDHAMI
ABSTRACT We rely on a unique data set to estimate the impact of disclosure standards and auditor-related characteristics on ownership concentration in 190 privatized firms from 31 countries. Accounting transparency can help alleviate the agency conflict between minority investors and controlling shareholders, which is evident in the extent of ownership concentration, since the expropriation of corporate resources hinges on these private benefits remaining hidden. After controlling for other country-level and firm-level determinants, we find weak (no) evidence that extensive disclosure standards (auditor choice) reduce ownership concentration. In contrast, we report strong, robust evidence that ownership concentration is lower in countries with securities laws that specify a lower burden of proof in civil and criminal litigation against auditors, consistent with Ball's [2001] predictions. Collectively, our research implies that minority investors worldwide value legal institutions that discipline auditors in the event of financial reporting failure over both the presence of a Big 5 auditor and better disclosure standards. Re-estimating our regressions on a broad sample of western European public firms provides similar evidence on all of our predictions. [source]

Natural resource-collection work and children's schooling in Malawi

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2-3 2004
Flora J. Nankhuni
Abstract This paper presents results of research that investigates if long hours of work spent by children in fuel wood and water-collection activities, i. e., natural resource-collection work, influence the likelihood that a child aged 6,14 attends school. Potential endogeneity of resource-collection work hours is corrected for, using two-stage conditional maximum likelihood estimation. Data from the 1997,1998 Malawi Integrated Household Survey (IHS) conducted by the Malawi National Statistics Office (NSO) in conjunction with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) are used. The study finds that Malawian children are significantly involved in resource-collection work and their likelihood of attending school decreases with increases in hours allocated to this work. The study further shows that girls spend more hours on resource-collection work and are more likely to be attending school while burdened by this work. Consequently, girls may find it difficult to progress well in school. However, girls are not necessarily less likely to be attending school. Results further show that presence of more women in a household is associated with a lower burden of resource-collection work on children and a higher probability of children's school attendance. Finally, the research shows that children from the most environmentally degraded districts of central and southern Malawi are less likely to attend school and relatively fewer of them have progressed to secondary school compared to those-from districts in the north. [source]

Prosperity, Depression and Modern Capitalism

KYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 3 2006
Keith Cowling
SUMMARY Prominent figures in our profession have quite recently offered clear cut views on the present distribution of prosperity and depression among the advanced industrial countries, see for example, Lucas (2003), Prescott (2002): prosperity is identified with the United States, depression with Western Europe, and they relate this to the lower burden of taxation in the United States. The gap in the chosen level of performance (output per capita) is very large, about 30%, and the remedy is clear: cut taxes in Europe. But Europe is different from America: for deep historical, cultural reasons, but partly because the pressures to consume are different. There can be no easy inference about relative prosperity: the market investment of modern capitalism can drive people towards longer hours of work and away from their underlying (meta) preferences. [source]

Quality of life of husbands of women with breast cancer

PSYCHO-ONCOLOGY, Issue 2 2006
Christina D. Wagner
Abstract The life-threatening nature of breast cancer, along with the side effects of treatment, place great strain on patients and their families. Husbands may be especially vulnerable as the main source of support to patients. The present study compared the quality of life (QOL) of husbands of patients with breast cancer (HBC; n=79) to spouses of healthy wives (n=79). Additionally, associations between QOL and caregiver burden, social support, and coping were examined. HBC scored lower on general health, vitality, role-emotional, and mental health subscales of the Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) SF-36 than comparison group participants. No differences were found between groups on the physical functioning, role-physical, bodily pain, or social functioning subscales. Higher QOL in HBC was associated with less caregiver burden as evidenced by lower burden on the Illness Impact Form, lower use of emotion-focused coping on the Ways of Coping Questionnaire, and higher social support on the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List. Wife illness characteristics such as stage of disease and time since diagnosis were not related to QOL in husbands. These findings illuminate the need to support HBC, whose QOL suffers during the breast cancer experience. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]