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Objective: The study aim was to review the economic evaluation literature of commercially available and effective nonsurgical weight‐loss interventions to investigate whether there is evidence to support claims of cost‐effectiveness (i.e., good value for money) or cost savings (i.e., a positive return on investment). Methods: Relevant databases were systematically reviewed to identify economic evaluations of commercially available weight‐loss products and services shown to result in clinically significant weight loss. Five weight‐loss medications (orlistat, liraglutide, naltrexone‐bupropion, semaglutide, and phentermine‐topiramate), two meal replacement programs (Jenny Craig, Optifast), and one behavioral intervention (Weight Watchers [WW]) that met inclusion criteria were identified. After screening, 32 relevant comparisons of cost‐effectiveness or cost savings across 20 studies were identified. Results: Ten of twenty pharmaceutical comparisons showed evidence of cost‐effectiveness based on established thresholds. Four of twelve nonpharmaceutical comparisons provided evidence of cost‐effectiveness, and five made claims of cost savings. However, methodological concerns cast doubt on the robustness of these claims. Conclusions: Evidence of cost‐effectiveness for commercially available, evidence‐based, nonsurgical weight‐loss interventions is mixed. There is no evidence for cost‐saving weight‐loss medications and only weak evidence for behavioral and weight‐loss interventions. Results provide a call to action to generate more robust evidence of the economic value proposition for these interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the article, "Incentives for Accruing Costs and Efficiency in Regulated Monopolies Subject to ROE Constraint," concerning implicit compensation contracts for executives in the electric utility industry. He states that the paper assumes that regulation of the electric utility industry is cost-plus pricing, which differs from traditional views of electric utilities as a natural monopoly. He mentions that if capital costs are sticky then there isn't an incentive to pad capital costs. He states that the paper shows that overcapitalization and padding of operating costs would lead to increased managerial compensation.

Theoretical analysis of mergers has a great deal of significance independent of the fact that, when markets are perfect and in equilibrium, incentives for further merger activities are, by definition, exhausted temporarily. Two originally separated gases in a closed container will get mixed up and reach an equilibrirum state after one removes the partition. But that is hardly any reason for neglecting the investigation of how and why they get mixed up. It is in light of this observation that an attempt is made in the present article to reexamine a purely financial rationale for merger, which has already attracted a lot of attention in the finance literature. By drastically simplifying our considerations, we are able to arrive at three general conclusions on the basis of structured models. First, co-insurance, one of the many things that take place in a merger, has a cost and benefit structure to an equity class that can in principle be delineated. The pure cost of co-insurance to an equity class, if perceived, consists of that part of the expected residue used to subsidize the loan class of the other firm at the pre-coinsurance rate when default occurs in the latter. The pure benefit of co-insurance to an equity class is made possible by the concessions, if any, in contractual loan rates of both firms following the co-insurance. It is argued that the source of this benefit is a far cry from that resulting from preferential tax treatment of the allegedly enlarged "debt capacity" (however defined) of the participating firms. Second, residue redistribution effect in a merger must not be ignored. The simple but essential point is that it, again largely a matter of perception, may be regarded as working for or against the interest of a particular equity class. To that extent, therefore, any conclusion based on co-insurance effect alone is weakened. Third, to dispose of the misplaced emphasis on statistical correlation of revenues, it is reasoned that the really... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article argues that in cost–benefit analysis government should adopt the opportunity cost of capital as represented by the alternative project rate of return as the social discount rate rather than the private or social time discount rate or a weighted cost of funds rate that reflects estimated proportions of investment and consumption foregone. The appropriate metric for the alternative project rate of return is average market return allowing for non‐diversifiable risk but not for diversifiable project risk. The article concludes that the appropriate social discount rate for Australia, for all sectors and states and territories, is approximately 6.5 per cent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conservation, as in most other subjects, there is a division of expenditure into problem identification, solution testing, and practice. However, research concentrates on problem identification rather than solution testing. We calculate the return on the investment of research (a PhD thesis) examining the effectiveness of conservation interventions for birds of prey in three European countries. We show that the economic return from investing in a PhD thesis could be substantial, in the order of hundreds of thousands euros over 10 years or a return on investment of between 292% and 326% over that period. We derived the values of return on investment by first setting a common biological target (the total number of raptor fledglings produced per year). We then compared overall costs in achieving such target via the wide implementation of the results from the thesis (i.e., allocating resources to the most effective intervention) versus a business as usual scenario. We identify other theses that also show considerable benefits in improving effectiveness. We suggest that further research examining effectiveness would be cost-effective in improving practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fences that exclude alien invasive species are used to reduce predation pressure on reintroduced threatened wildlife. Planning these continuously managed systems of reserves raises an important extension of the Single Large or Several Small (SLOSS) reserve planning framework: the added complexity of ongoing management. We investigate the long-term costefficiency of a single large or two small predator exclusion fences in the arid Australian context of reintroducing bilbies Macrotis lagotis, and we highlight the broader significance of our results with sensitivity analysis. A single fence more frequently results in a much larger net cost than two smaller fences. We find that the cost-efficiency of two fences is robust to strong demographic and environmental uncertainty, which can help managers to mitigate the risk of incurring high costs over the entire life of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation practitioners, faced with managing multiple threats to biodiversity and limited funding, must prioritize investment in different management actions. From an economic perspective, it is routine practice to invest where the highest rate of return is expected. This return-on-investment (ROI) thinking can also benefit species conservation, and researchers are developing sophisticated approaches to support decision-making for costeffective conservation. However, applied use of these approaches is limited. Managers may be wary of ''black-box'' algorithms or complex methods that are difficult to explain to funding agencies. As an alternative, we demonstrate the use of a basic ROI analysis for determining where to invest in cost-effective management to address threats to species. This method can be applied using basic geographic information system and spreadsheet calculations. We illustrate the approach in a management action prioritization for a biodiverse region of eastern Australia. We use ROI to prioritize management actions for two threats to a suite of threatened species: habitat degradation by cattle grazing, and predation by invasive red foxes (Vulpes vulpes). We show how decisions based on cost-effective threat management depend upon how expected benefits to species are defined and how benefits and costs co-vary. By considering a combination of species richness, restricted habitats, species vulnerability, and costs of management actions, small investments can result in greater expected benefit compared with management decisions that consider only species richness. Furthermore, a landscape management strategy that implements multiple actions is more efficient than managing only for one threat, or more traditional approaches that don't consider ROI. Our approach provides transparent and logical decision support for prioritizing different actions intended to abate threats associated with multiple species; it is of use when managers need a justifiable and repeatable approach to investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In general, conservation seeks to prevent further habitat loss but in many cases there is a need to reverse habitat degradation. Restoration of habitat is necessary to achieve biodiversity conservation goals but often it is a costly and time-intensive process. Prioritization of where and when habitat is restored can help to ensure the cost-effective delivery of desired outcomes. We develop a restoration prioritization decision support tool to identify the combination of restoration sites and the schedule for their implementation most likely to deliver the greatest utility for a fixed budget and operational constraints. We use a case study to apply our prioritization approach in order to illustrate the data that can be employed to parameterise the analysis and the outputs that are able to inform restoration planning. We compare restoration schedules under alternative utility functions to demonstrate trade-offs associated with different objectives, assumptions and preferences for particular outcomes. Our prioritization approach is spatially and temporally explicit and accounts for the costs and benefits of restoration, the likelihood of restoration success, the probability of stochastic events, feedbacks, time lags and spatial connectivity. Through collaboration with restoration practitioners we derive quantitative and spatially explicit data on each site requiring restoration. We determine the relative priority for restoring each site and develop a restoration schedule over 20 years. Our results showed that after 20 years a little over a half of the sites requiring restoration are likely be successfully restored, while the total expenditure at our site will be c. US$13·7 million - almost the entire budget of $14 million. Synthesis and applications. Our restoration prioritization approach provides a schedule for where and when restoration should occur, and also provides operational guidance and support for cost-effective restoration planning such as informing the likely total cost of restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To properly align incentives using equity-linked compensation, the firm's managers must be exposed to firm-specific risks, but this concentrated exposure prevents optimal portfolio diversification. Because undiversified managers are exposed to the firm's total risk, but rewarded (through expected returns)for only the systematic portion of that risk, managers will value stock or option-based compensation at less than its market value. This paper derives a method to measure this deadweight cost, which empirically can be quite large: managers at the average NYSE firm who have their entire wealth invested in the firm value their options at 70% of their market value, while undiversified managers at rapidly growing, entrepreneurially-based firms, such as Internet-based firms, value their option-based compensation at only 53% of its cost to the firm. These estimates prompt questions of whether compensation plans in such firms are weighted too heavily towards incentive-alignment to be cost effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]