			Home About us Contact

Poor Data (poor + data)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Chemistry	50%

Selected Abstracts

Determinants and effects of foreign direct investment: evidence from German firm-level data*

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 41 2005
Claudia M. Buch
SUMMARY FDI Firm-level evidence Foreign direct investment is an essential aspect of ,globalization' yet its empirical determinants are not well understood. What we do know is based either on poor data for a wide range of nations, or good data for the US and Swedish cases. In this paper, we provide evidence on the determinants of the activities of German multinational firms by using a newly available firm-level data set from the Deutsche Bundesbank. The specific goal of this paper is to demonstrate the relative role of country-level and firm-level determinants of foreign direct investment. We focus on three main questions: First, what are the main driving forces of German firms' multinational activities? Second, is there evidence that sector-level and firm-level factors shape internationalization patterns? Third, is there evidence of agglomeration effects in the foreign activities of German firms? We find that the market access motive for internationalization dominates. Firms move abroad mainly to gain better access to large foreign markets. Cost-saving motives, however, are important for some manufacturing sectors. Our results strongly suggest that firm-level heterogeneity has an important influence on internationalization patterns , as stressed by recent models of international trade. We also find positive agglomeration effects for the activities of German firms that stem from the number of other German firms that are active on a given foreign market. In terms of lessons for economic policy, our results show that lowering barriers to the integration of markets and encouraging the formation of human capital can promote the activities of multinational firms. However, our results related to the heterogeneity of firms and agglomeration tendencies show that it might be difficult to fine-tune policies directed at the exploitation of synergies and at the creation of clusters of foreign firms. , Claudia M. Buch, Jörn Kleinert, Alexander Lipponer and Farid Toubal [source]

Defying the curse of ignorance: perspectives in insect macroecology and conservation biogeography

INSECT CONSERVATION AND DIVERSITY, Issue 3 2010
JOSE ALEXANDRE FELIZOLA DINIZ-FILHO
Abstract., 1. Despite the abundance, richness and ecological importance of insects, distribution patterns remain unknown for most groups, and this creates serious difficulties for the evaluation of macroecological patterns and the underlying drivers. Although the problem is real, we provide an optimistic perspective on insect macroecology and conservation biogeography. 2. Although data for macroecological analysis of insects are not as complete as for many other organisms (e.g., mammals and birds), at least for some insect groups they are equivalent to what existed 10 or 20 years ago for the charismatic megafauna, so initiatives to compile data for broad-scale analyses are feasible. 3. The primary constraint for studies in insect macroecology and conservation biogeography is not (only) poor data; part of the problem arises from a lack of knowledge on how macroecological patterns and processes can be analysed and interpreted. 4. Finally, we present an overview of recent papers using insects as model organisms in macroecology, including richness and diversity gradients, ecogeographical rules, inter-specific relationships, conservation planning and modelling species distributions. Although our list is not exhaustive, it may be useful as guidelines for future research and encourage ICD readers to develop analyses for other insect groups. [source]

Using the t -distribution to improve the absolute structure assignment with likelihood calculations

JOURNAL OF APPLIED CRYSTALLOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2010
Rob W. W. Hooft
The previously described method for absolute structure determination [Hooft, Straver & Spek (2008). J. Appl. Cryst.41, 96,103] assumes a Gaussian error distribution. The method is now extended to make it robust against poor data with large systematic errors with the introduction of the Student t -distribution. It is shown that this modification makes very little difference for good data but dramatically improves results for data with a non-Gaussian error distribution. [source]

Pattern-recognition methods to identify secondary structure within X-ray crystallographic electron-density maps

ACTA CRYSTALLOGRAPHICA SECTION D, Issue 3 2002
Thomas Oldfield
The interpretation of macromolecular crystallographic electron-density maps is a difficult and traditionally a manual step in the determination of a protein structure. The visualization of information within an electron-density map can be extremely arduous owing to the amount and complexity of information present. The ability to see the overall fold and structure of the molecule is usually lost among all the detail, particularly with larger structures. This paper describes a novel method of analysis of electron density in real space that can determine the secondary structure of a protein within minutes without any user intervention. The method is able to work with poor data as well as good data at resolutions down to 3.5,Å and is integral to the functionality of QUANTA. This article describes the methodology of the pattern recognition and its use with a number of sets of experimental data. [source]