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Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are a broad challenge for decision-makers. NCDs account for seven out of every 10 deaths globally, with 42 percent occurring prematurely in individuals under age 70. Despite their heavy toll, NCDs are underfunded, with only around two percent of global funding dedicated to the disease set. Country governments are responsible for funding targeted actions to reduce the NCD burden, but among other priorities, many have yet to invest in the health-system interventions and policy measures that can reduce the burden. This article examines “investment cases” as a potential mechanism for catalyzing attention to—and funding for—NCDs. In Jamaica, using the UN inter-agency OneHealth Tool, we conducted an economic analysis to estimate the return-on-investment from scaling up strategic clinical interventions, and from implementing or intensifying policy measures that target NCD risk factors. In addition, we conducted an institutional and context (ICA) analysis, interviewing stakeholders across sectors to take stock of promising policy pathways (e.g., areas of general consensus, political appetite and opportunity) as well as challenges to implementation. The economic analysis found that scaling up clinical interventions that target CVD, diabetes, and mental health disorders, and policy measures that target tobacco and alcohol use, would save over 6,600 lives between 2017–2032, and avert JMD 81.3 billion (USD 640 million) in direct and indirect economic costs that result from mortality and morbidity linked to NCDs. The ICA uncovered government economic growth targets and social priorities that would be aided by increased attention to NCDs, and it linked these targets and priorities to the economic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uniting diverse stakeholders through communication, education or building a collaborative ‘common vision’ for biodiversity management is a recommended approach for enabling effective conservation in regions with multiple uses. However, socially focused strategies such as building a collaborative vision can require sharing scarce resources (time and financial resources) with the on-ground management actions needed to achieve conservation outcomes. Here we adapt current prioritisation tools to predict the likely return on the financial investment of building a stakeholder-led vision along with a portfolio of on-ground management strategies. Our approach brings together and analyses expert knowledge to estimate the cost-effectiveness of a common vision strategy and on-ground management strategies, before any investments in these strategies are made. We test our approach in an intensively-used Australian biodiversity hotspot with 179 threatened or at-risk species. Experts predicted that an effective stakeholder vision for the region would have a relatively low cost and would significantly increase the feasibility of on-ground management strategies. As a result, our analysis indicates that a common vision is likely to be a cost-effective investment, increasing the expected persistence of threatened species in the region by 9 to 52%, depending upon the strategies implemented. Our approach can provide the maximum budget that is worth investing in building a common vision or another socially focused strategy for building support for on-ground conservation actions. The approach can assist with decisions about whether and how to allocate scarce resources amongst social and ecological actions for biodiversity conservation in other regions worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I aim to explore the effect of good governance on equity returns, and empirically investigate if governance at the country level has asset pricing implications and contributes to the idiosyncrasy of price jumps. Jumps are found to be far less systematic than the smooth (non-jump) component of country price indexes. Hence, if jumps are more idiosyncratic, governance should primarily affect the jump risk component. This is good news for international investors, because diversification provides insurance against jumps. Relying on an equilibrium asset-pricing model in an economy under jump diffusion, I decompose the moments of the returns of international stock markets into a diffusive (systematic) risk and a (idiosyncratic) jump risk part. For a balanced panel of 52 countries, my results suggest that governance is an important determinant of (idiosyncratic) jump risk. Stock markets in poorly governed countries are characterized by higher volatility and more negative return asymmetry, primarily driven by the higher jump risk. Regulatory quality, the government effectiveness and the control of corruption appear to be most important. Results are robust to the inclusion of various controls for other country- or market-specific characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) co-sponsored by UNICEF, UNDP, World Bank and WHO has been supporting research capacity strengthening in low- and middle-income countries for over 40 years. In order to assess and continuously optimize its capacity strengthening approaches, an evaluation of the influence of TDR training grants on research career development was undertaken. The assessment was part of a larger evaluation conducted by the European Science Foundation. A comprehensive survey questionnaire was developed and sent to a group of 117 trainees supported by TDR who had completed their degree (masters or PhD) between 2000 and 2012; of these, seventy seven (77) responded. Most of the respondents (80%) rated TDR support as a very important factor that influenced their professional career achievements. The “brain drain” phenomenon towards high-income countries was particularly low amongst TDR grantees: the rate of return to their region of origin upon completion of their degree was 96%. A vast majority of respondents are still working in research (89%), with 81% of respondents having participated in multidisciplinary research activities; women engaged in multidisciplinary collaboration to a higher extent than men. However, only a minority of all have engaged in intersectoral collaboration, an aspect that would require further study. The post-degree career choices made by the respondents were strongly influenced by academic considerations. At the time of the survey, 92% of all respondents hold full-time positions, mainly in the public sector. Almost 25% of the respondents reported that they had influenced policy and practice changes. Some of the challenges and opportunities faced by trainees at various stages of their research career have been identified. Modalities to overcome these will require further investigation. The survey evidenced how TDR’s research capacity grant programmes made a difference on researchers’ career development and on south-south collaborations, by strengthening and localizing research capacity in lower income regions, and also showed there is more that needs to be done. The factors involved, challenges and lessons learnt may help donors and policy makers improve their future interventions with regard to designing capacity strengthening programmes and setting funding priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 5-minute high frequency data from the Chinese stock market, we employ a non-parametric method to estimate Fama-French portfolio realized jumps and investigate whether the estimated positive, negative and sign realized jumps could forecast or explain the cross-sectional stock returns. The Fama-MacBeth regression results show that not only have the realized jump components and the continuous volatility been compensated with risk premium, but also that the negative jump risk, the positive jump risk and the sign jump risk, to some extent, could explain the return of the stock portfolios. Therefore, we should pay high attention to the downside tail risk and the upside tail risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sorghum and millet grow in some of the most heterogeneous and austere agroecologies around the world. These crops are amongst the top five cereal sources of food and feed. Yet, few studies document the impact of sorghum and millet genetic enhancement. The Internal Rate of Return (ROR) is one of the most popular metrics used to measure the economic return on investment on agricultural research and development (R&D). This study conducted a meta-analysis of 59 sorghum and millet ROR estimates obtained from 25 sources published between 1958 and 2015. The average rate of return to sorghum and millet R&D investment is between 54–76 percent per year. All studies computed social rather than private RORs because the technologies were developed using public funds originating from host country National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) and international organizations such as the INTSORMIL CRSP, ICRISAT and others. Nearly three quarter of the studies focused only on sorghum (72 percent) and around one tenth of the studies (8 percent) on millet. Regression models analyzed the determinants of variation in the reported RORs. Results show that ex-ante type and self-evaluated type of analyses are positively and significantly associated with the ROR estimates. Compared to estimates conducted by a university, results from international institutions and other mixed organizations provided significantly smaller estimates. Estimates conducted at national level also are significantly lower than those conducted at sub-national levels. The ROR is higher for studies conducted in the United States and for those conducted more recently. The study also reconstructed modified internal rate of return (MIRR) for a sub-sample of the reported RORs following recent methods from the literature. These results show that the MIRR estimates are significantly smaller than the reported ROR estimates. Both results indicate that investment in sorghum and millet research generates high social rates of return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the stylized facts, correlation and interaction between volatility and returns at the 5-minute frequency for gold, silver, platinum and palladium from May 2000 to April 2015. We study the full sample period, as well as three subsamples to determine how high-frequency data of precious metals have developed over time. We find that over the full sample, the number of trades has increased substantially over time for each precious metal, while the bid-ask spread has narrowed over time, indicating an increase in liquidity and price efficiency. We also find strong evidence of periodicity in returns, volatility, volume and bid-ask spread. Returns and volume both experience strong intraday periodicity linked to the opening and closing of major markets around the world while the bid-ask spread is at its lowest when European markets are open. We also show a bilateral Granger causality between returns and volatility of each precious metal, which holds for the vast majority subsamples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an agent-based model we examine the dynamics of stock price fluctuations and their rates of return in an artificial financial market composed of fundamentalist and chartist agents with and without confidence. We find that chartist agents who are confident generate higher price and rate of return volatilities than those who are not. We also find that kurtosis and skewness are lower in our simulation study of agents who are not confident. We show that the stock price and confidence index—both generated by our model—are cointegrated and that stock price affects confidence index but confidence index does not affect stock price. We next compare the results of our model with the S&P 500 index and its respective stock market confidence index using cointegration and Granger tests. As in our model, we find that stock prices drive their respective confidence indices, but that the opposite relationship, i.e., the assumption that confidence indices drive stock prices, is not significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An irrigated agricultural landscape experiencing groundwater overdraft generates economic returns and a suite of ecosystem services (in particular, groundwater supply, greenhouse gases reduction, and surface water quality). Alternative land cover choices indicate tradeoffs among the value of ecosystem services created and the economic returns. These tradeoffs are explored using efficiency frontiers that determine the least value in ecosystem services that must be given up to generate additional economic returns. Agricultural producers may switch to irrigation with surface water using on-farm reservoirs and tail water recovery systems in response to groundwater overdraft, and this has consequences for the bundle of ecosystem service values and economic returns achievable from the landscape. Planning that accounts for both ecosystem service value and economic returns can achieve more value for society, as does the adoption of reservoirs though lowering the costs of irrigation, increasing groundwater levels, and reducing fuel combustion and associated GHG emissions from groundwater pumping. Sensitivity analyses of per unit value of ecosystem services, crop prices, and the groundwater and water purification model parameters indicate tradeoff among ecosystems service values, such as the use of a high-end social cost of carbon ultimately lowers groundwater supply and water purification value by more than 15%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how major earthquakes affected the returns and volatility of aggregate stock market indices in thirty-five financial markets over the last twenty years. Results show that global financial markets are resilient to shocks caused by earthquakes even if these are domestic. Our analysis reveals that, in a few instances, some macroeconomic variables and earthquake characteristics (gross domestic product per capita, trade openness, bilateral trade flows, earthquake magnitude, a tsunami indicator, distance to the epicenter, and number of fatalities) mediate the impact of earthquakes on stock market returns, resulting in a zero net effect. However, the influence of these variables is market-specific, indicating no systematic pattern across global capital markets. Results also demonstrate that stock market volatility is unaffected by earthquakes, except for Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]