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Marginal Impact (marginal + impact)
Selected AbstractsInternational Financial Rescues and Debtor-Country Moral Hazard,INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 3 2004Prasanna Gai This paper examines whether recent international policy initiatives to facilitate financial rescues in emerging market countries have influenced debtors' incentives to access official sector resources. The paper highlights a country's systemic importance as a key characteristic that drives access to official sector finance. It estimates the effect of these financial rescue initiatives on IMF programme participation using a pooled probit model. The safety net permitting exceptional access is shown to have a greater marginal impact on official sector resource usage, the more systemically important the debtor country. The results can be interpreted as offering some support for the presence of debtor-country moral hazard. [source] How work-place conditions, environmental toxicants and lifestyle affect male reproductive function,INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ANDROLOGY, Issue 5 2002Jens Peter Bonde Summary Major temporal and geographical shifts in male reproductive function is presently an issue worldwide. The hormonal disruption hypothesis has achieved considerable attention but epidemiological evidence in support of the theory is lacking. Several occupational hazards to male reproductive function are known but exposure prevalences are hardly sufficient to play a role for reduced sperm count in the general male population. Sedentary work may be an exception. Perhaps prolonged time in the sedentary position exhausts the testicular heat regulation. But so far studies addressing implications of the heat hypothesis in the general population are few. Neither change of sexual behaviour nor reduced period of sexual continence seems to be a likely explanation. Tobacco smoking and consumption of caffeine and alcoholic beverages in adulthood have a rather marginal impact on spermatogenesis and can hardly explain major shifts or regional differences in male reproductive health. However, prenatal effects following smoking during pregnancy might play a role because we have witnessed a smoking epidemic among fertile women in some countries during the second half of the twentieth century. Moreover, if genetic factors play more than a marginal role for testicular function and sperm count, pregnancy planning resulting in reduced family size during the past 100 years could possibly explain a decline in semen quality because the most fertile part of the population reproduce less while the subfertile probably continue to get a limited number of children. [source] Enterprise Risk Management: Theory and PracticeJOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 4 2006Brian W. Nocco The Chief Risk Officer of Nationwide Insurance teams up with a distinguished academic to discuss the benefits and challenges associated with the design and implementation of an enterprise risk management program. The authors begin by arguing that a carefully designed ERM program,one in which all material corporate risks are viewed and managed within a single framework,can be a source of long-run competitive advantage and value through its effects at both a "macro" or company-wide level and a "micro" or business-unit level. At the macro level, ERM enables senior management to identify, measure, and limit to acceptable levels the net exposures faced by the firm. By managing such exposures mainly with the idea of cushioning downside outcomes and protecting the firm's credit rating, ERM helps maintain the firm's access to capital and other resources necessary to implement its strategy and business plan. At the micro level, ERM adds value by ensuring that all material risks are "owned," and risk-return tradeoffs carefully evaluated, by operating managers and employees throughout the firm. To this end, business unit managers at Nationwide are required to provide information about major risks associated with all new capital projects,information that can then used by senior management to evaluate the marginal impact of the projects on the firm's total risk. And to encourage operating managers to focus on the risk-return tradeoffs in their own businesses, Nationwide's periodic performance evaluations of its business units attempt to refl ect their contributions to total risk by assigning risk-adjusted levels of "imputed" capital on which project managers are expected to earn adequate returns. The second, and by far the larger, part of the article provides an extensive guide to the process and major challenges that arise when implementing ERM, along with an account of Nationwide's approach to dealing with them. Among other issues, the authors discuss how a company should assess its risk "appetite," measure how much risk it is bearing, and decide which risks to retain and which to transfer to others. Consistent with the principle of comparative advantage it uses to guide such decisions, Nationwide attempts to limit "non-core" exposures, such as interest rate and equity risk, thereby enlarging the firm's capacity to bear the "information-intensive, insurance- specific" risks at the core of its business and competencies. [source] The Organization of Public Service ProvisionJOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 3 2004William Jack This paper addresses the question of how the responsibility for the delivery of social services, including health, education, and welfare programs, should be divided between state and central governments. We combine a random voting model and the incomplete contracts paradigm to formalize the trade-off between central and state responsibility for service delivery, and find that authority should rest with the party for whom the marginal impact of the service on re-election chances is greater. This in turn means that, other things equal, states with lower than average health, education, or welfare status should be given responsibility for service delivery, while authority in states with above average indicators should reside with the central government. Also, we show that there is no presumption that states that are given authority for service delivery should necessarily be granted expanded tax authority. [source] Fiscal Incentives, European Integration and the Location of Foreign Direct InvestmentTHE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 3 2002Florence Hubert Foreign direct investment in the European Economic Area (EEA) has grown rapidly in recent years. This paper tests for structural change in the geographical and industrial pattern of foreign direct investment in Europe using a panel data set on outward investment by German companies in the EEA since 1980. There is evidence of significant structural change since 1990, with nearly all locations and industries seeing a higher level of cross,border investment than might have been expected. We also investigate the scope for national governments to affect location choice through the use of fiscal instruments such as corporation taxes, investment in infrastructure and other forms of development grants and subsidies. The findings are mixed. Some measures, such as tax competitiveness, appear important but are sensitive to the specification of the model. However, the level of government fixed investment expenditure relative to that in other economies is found to have a significant positive impact, particularly in locations with less need for EU structural funds. Although the direct marginal impact appears relatively small, an additional finding of significant agglomeration forces suggests that fiscal policies could still have a permanent influence on the location of economic activities. [source] Productivity growth and the returns from public investment in R&D in Australian broadacre agricultureAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2007John Mullen Investment in R&D has long been regarded as an important source of productivity growth in Australian agriculture. Perhaps because research lags are long, current investment in R&D is monitored closely. Investment in R&D has been flat while productivity growth has remained strong, relative both to other sectors of the Australian economy and to the agricultural sectors of other countries. Such productivity growth, at a time when the decline in terms of trade facing Australian farmers has slowed, may have enhanced the competitiveness of Australian agriculture. The econometric results presented here suggest no evidence of a decline in the returns from research from the 15 to 40 per cent per annum range estimated by Mullen and Cox. In fact the marginal impact of research increases with research over the range of investment levels experienced from 1953 to 2000, a finding which lends support to the view that there is underinvestment in agricultural research. These results were obtained from econometric models which maintain strong assumptions about how investments in research and extension translate into changes in TFP. Hence some caution in interpreting the results is warranted. [source] Radiotherapy for extranodal, marginal zone, B-cell lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue originating in the ocular adnexaCANCER, Issue 4 2003A multiinstitutional, retrospective review of 50 patients Abstract BACKGROUND Due to the small number of patients and differences in the pathologic classification in most radiotherapy series, information regarding the adequacy of tumor control in patients with ocular-adnexal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT lymphoma) is limited. METHODS A multiinstitutional, retrospective study was performed on 50 patients with Stage IE ocular-adnexal MALT lymphoma who were treated with radiotherapy between 1989 and 1999. The impact of patient characteristics and other variables on tumor control was analyzed. RESULTS Responses to radiotherapy include a complete response (CR) in 26 patients, a partial response (PR) in 20 patients, and no change in 4 patients. Forty-nine of 50 patients obtained tumor control in the ocular adnexa at 24 months. Overall, 6 patients exhibited disease recurrence at 4,97 months. Three patients developed recurrence in the ocular adnexa. Two patients had isolated extranodal failure involving the oral floor and the submandibular gland, and one patient experienced failure in the neck lymph node. The initial tumor response had a marginal impact on the development of recurrence. None of the 26 patients who achieved a CR experienced ocular-adnexal recurrence. All three patients who experienced local treatment failure belonged to the initial PR group. In total, five of six patients who developed recurrent disease had obtained a PR after initial radiotherapy. Age, gender, tumor location, and dose of radiotherapy did not influence the development of recurrence. There was only one death due to lymphoma. The 5-year overall survival rate was 91% with a median follow-up of 46 months. CONCLUSIONS Radiotherapy offers excellent local control with a prolonged clinical course for patients with MALT lymphoma in the ocular adnexa. The initial response to radiotherapy marginally influenced the probability of recurrence. Cancer 2003;98:865,71. © 2003 American Cancer Society. DOI 10.1002/cncr.11539 [source] Multilateral Trade and Agricultural Policy Reforms in Sugar MarketsJOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2006Amani Elobeid Q18; F10 Abstract We analyse the impact of trade liberalisation, removal of production subsidies and elimination of consumption distortions in world sugar markets using a partial-equilibrium international sugar model calibrated on 2002 market data and current policies. The removal of trade distortions alone induces a 27% price increase while the removal of all trade and production distortions induces a 48% increase in 2011/2012 relative to the baseline. Aggregate trade expands moderately, but location of production and trade patterns change substantially. Protectionist Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (the EU, Japan, the US) experience an import expansion or export reduction and a significant contraction of production in unfettered markets. Competitive producers in both OECD countries (Australia) and non-OECD countries (Brazil, Cuba), and even some protected producers (Indonesia, Turkey), expand production when all distortions are removed. Consumption distortions have marginal impacts on world markets and the location of production. We discuss the significance of these results in the context of mounting pressures to increase market access in highly protected OECD countries and the impact on non-OECD countries. [source] The Economic Impact of Climate ChangePERSPEKTIVEN DER WIRTSCHAFTSPOLITIK, Issue 2010Richard S. J. Tol Different methods have been used to estimate the impact of climate change on human welfare. Studies agree that there are positive and negative impacts. In the short term, positive impacts may dominate, but these are largely sunk. In the longer term, there are net negative impacts. Poorer people tend to be more vulnerable to climate change. There is a trade-off between development policy and climate policy. Estimated aggregate impacts are not very large, but they are uncertain and incomplete. Estimates of the marginal impacts suggest that greenhouse gas emissions should be taxed, and that the emission reduction targets announced by politicians are probably too ambitious. [source] |