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The pulp and paper industry converts roundwood and recycled fibre, collected from wastepaper into printing and writing papers, and other specialty grades of paper. The pulp and paper mills in Ontario have been facing extreme competitive pressures, which have affected their performance leading to several mill closures. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the relative performance of three types of Ontario's pulp and paper mills (using all fibre, only roundwood fibre, and only recycled fibre). This study uses bootstrap data envelopment analysis in analyzing and comparing the operational efficiency of the Ontario's pulp and paper mills, with 224 sample data observations over a period of 17 years. The results indicate low levels of overall technical and managerial efficiencies in the pulp and paper mills using recycled fibre. The results of the study highlight that the pulp and paper industry needs to divert their attention to streamlining the manufacturing processes, reducing costs, improving raw material usage, and making capital investments in the new and improved technology, in order to improve the operational efficiency and competitiveness of the Ontario's pulp and paper mills. The pulp and paper mills using recycled fibre require huge capital investments, especially for installing the latest de-inking technology. The results of this study provide policy makers with detailed performance analysis so that future input resources can be reallocated to improve the performance of the pulp and paper mills in Ontario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Till now, studies have determined the existence of process innovation using survey data; however, in this paper, we use secondary data to empirically establish its presence in low-tech industries. Our empirical approach consists of data envelopement analysis in the first step followed by regression analysis in the second step. We use a cross-sectional dataset, i.e., Annual Survey of Industries, 2017–2018 for our study. Our results suggest that among Indian low-tech firms, investment in computer equipment and software is the most popular strategy to trigger process innovation followed by investment in plant and machinery. We find that these factors have a greater impact on firms that export products and import inputs, than on firms that export products but do not import inputs. In other words, the export-import orientation of firms induces a differential impact of these factors on process innovation. One policy implication from the study is that government should encourage and incentivize low-tech firms to improve the capabilities of its labour force. This is the first paper in the Indian context that uses secondary data to empirically determine the existence of process innovation in low-tech industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings an empirical assessment of economies of scale in local government units in Croatia. Using cross-section OLS models, we found statistically significant U-shaped relationship between local per capita expenditures and population size, while controlling for various demographic, socio-economic and institutional factors. The choice of control variables in the paper is based on the existing empirical literature but also includes factors capturing the specificities of Croatian economy and local government institutional setup. Using estimated regression coefficients we calculated the optimal size of local units and showed that population size is below optimal in 72% of cities and 76% of municipalities (based on median results). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the topics for which manuscripts will be submitted to the periodical including hospital costing models and capital investment in healthcare technology along with information on manuscript submission and important dates.

Do intergovernmental transfers affect the multidimensional well-being of households? This paper investigates the relationship between intergovernmental transfers and household multidimensional well-being, using the revenue allocation by the federal government to sub-national or state governments in Nigeria. We follow Alkire & Foster to compute a multidimensional poverty index (MPI), which is the weighted sum of three broad dimensions of poverty – health, education, and living standards. We adopt an instrumental variable (IV) approach by using exogenous variation in oil windfalls as an instrument to mitigate the endogeneity concerns associated with using intergovernmental transfers in our analysis. We find that an increase in intergovernmental transfers leads to an improvement in household multidimensional well-being or a decline in the multidimensional poverty index. We identify recurrent and capital expenditures as some of the potential channels through which intergovernmental transfers affect the multidimensional well-being of households in Nigeria. The findings of this paper reinforce the growing evidence of the developmental impacts of intergovernmental transfers, especially in the context of developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between the structure of R&D fixed capital spending, measured as the ratio of the private sector to public sector R&D capital expenditure, and national total factor productivity. It employs South African data for the period 1965 to 2019. This study employs the non-linear distributed lag modelling framework to cater for non-linearities in the relationship. The findings, first, suggest that the ratio of private sector to public sector R&D capital spending has a positive effect on total factor productivity. Second, the structure of R&D capital spending has large asymmetric effects on national total factor productivity, with negative changes dominating positive changes. Negative changes in the structure of R&D capital spending negatively influence total factor productivity, but positive changes have positive effects. Both in the short run and the long run, cumulative multipliers indicate that negative changes in the structure of R&D capital spending dominate positive changes by a very large margin. The findings imply that the private sector must become more dominant than the public sector in R&D capital spending in the national system of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, using the most recent dataset, examines the government expenditure's effects on the economic growth of Nepal. In doing so, a particular focus is made on disaggregated government expenditures to identify the importance of sector-specific public expenditure. The methodology adopted in this paper considers the scenario of government budget constraints while allocating resources in specific sectors and attempts to find the elasticity of those expenditures in the country's economic growth. The results from the estimation employing Auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration for the data from 1981 to 2020 are threefold. First, both capital and current expenditures in aggregate forms are not the contributors to economic growth unlike our assumption that capital expenditure is more important than current expendtirue for economic grwoth. Second, spending more on education, either in the form of capital or current expenditure, would make a meaningful contribution to accelerating economic growth. Third, the public expenditure in the health sector should be very rational, focusing more on capital health expenditure rather than spending current health expenditure. Therefore, the primary policy recommendation from this study is that Nepal should invest more in education and health. Moreover, spending on education to expand the area with wider coverage and quality logistics and infrastructure are both important, while such expenditure in health is to be focused on solid health logistics and infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is motivated by the debate about the decline in the degree of capacity utilization in the US economy observed since the begin of the 2000s. Its purpose is to check if capacity utilization calculated by the Fed for the industrial sector can be tracked by a Supermultiplier model estimated with data for the whole economy. The model tracks well the actual series of induced investment share, induced investment and stock of capital of the whole economy, but not the degree of capacity utilization when compared with capacity utilization from the industry. We investigate the possible causes of this divergence. We show that (i) there are some discrepancies between the trend of the actual data on stock of capital and the productive capacity that is used to calculate the capacity utilization of the industrial sector, and (ii) since 2000, industrial production has been growing slower than GDP. This could help to explain the discrepancies between capacity utilization of the entire economy and of the industrial sector, suggesting that this demand shock suffered by the industrial sector, combined with a slow mechanism of adjustment of capacity to demand, is one possible explanation for the observed decline in utilization rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the social environment on foreign investment inflows in Serbia. It surveyed the largest 300 foreign investors over the period 2001–2019 and achieved a response rate of 29.3%. The obtained results show that the crime rate, skilled labor, and attitude toward foreigners are the most important for foreign investors in Serbia. The main contribution of this paper is that it represents a rare attempt to provide an empirical research on the attitudes of foreign investors, in the context of the transition economy in the region of Southeast Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although in recent years intangible assets are considered a basic factor of production, it is necessary to show that their mere possession will not always guarantee superior performance. Accordingly, based on the resource-based view of the firm and the intellectual capital-based view, this paper has a twofold purpose. First, it analyses the existing relationship between sustainable intangible capital and performance. Second, it analyses the role played by corporate social responsibility and strategic knowledge management as mediator capabilities in the relationship between sustainable intangible capital and performance. Three hypotheses are proposed and a quantitative methodology based on PLS on 120 Spanish hotels with three or more stars is used. The findings do not support the hypothesis that sustainable intangible capital directly influences hotel performance. However, the two mediating hypotheses are supported, showing that corporate social responsibility and strategic knowledge management act as mediators by creating the values, philosophy and necessary foundations for sustainable intangible capital to have a significant influence on hotel performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact of intangibles on firm-level productivity. Unlike previous studies we capture all dimensions of intangibles for both goods-producing and service industries. Based on data from the German part of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) for the period 2006 to 2018, our results show that intangible capital investment is equal in size to investment in tangible capital since the early 2000s. We find a highly significant and positive relationship between intangible capital and output, with elasticities in line with previous findings for other large EU economies. This positive impact of intangibles on the firm-level productivity is driven by non-R&D intangibles, notably software & databases, training and advertising & marketing. While this finding holds for both goods and service sectors, we find that non-R&D intangibles impact firm-level productivity more strongly in the services. Investment in R&D affects productivity only in the high-tech manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Together with the development of knowledge-based economy, investment in intangibles has been dramatically increasing. Although intangibles are widely recognized as primary value drivers for more firms, as evidence of many studies related to the value relevance or the market valuation of intangible investments, little is known in the literature about the cost of equity capital for financing intangible investments, especially in Vietnamese literature extent. This paper's aim is therefore to empirically investigate the association between a firm's cost of equity capital and intangible investments detailed by research and development investment, business combination investment and organizational capital investment. We investigate the above relationship through the sample of 120 Vietnamese-listed firms from 2013–2017. Regression result confirmed that both higher level of research and development investment and larger amount of accounting goodwill raise the firm's overall cost of equity capital since their characteristics of these investments are riskier and less liquid and has a higher level of information asymmetry. Our findings could suggest several implications for managers and shareholders in making their investment decisions. Once again, this study adds to the existing business valuation literature by providing additional evidence of the impact of research and development investment as well goodwill on accounting for equity capital valuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, we investigate the incentive equilibrium strategies of two neighboring regions facing transboundary industrial pollution under abatement investment and emission permits trading in a differential game setting. Our paper can be viewed as an extension of the work of Yeung [2007. Dynamically consistent cooperative solution in a differential game of transboundary industrial pollution. Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 134, 143–160] in the context of the transboundary industrial pollution. Compared with the work of Yeung [2007. Dynamically consistent cooperative solution in a differential game of transboundary industrial pollution. Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 134, 143–160], our research significant features (i) introduce the emission permits trading into the transboundary industrial pollution control;(ii) take into account the pollution abatement investment; (iii) examine the incentive equilibrium strategies of transboundary industrial pollution control; and (iv) design an allocation mechanism for regions' cooperative profits. Furthermore, we illustrate the results of the paper with a numerical example. The utility of this paper is how to make incentive equilibrium strategies in a situation where the neighboring regions facing transboundary industrial pollution under abatement investment and emission permits trading in a differential game setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy is one of the most important factors of growth, needed to power physical capital. This implies complementarity between these two factors, but in most theoretical papers, substitutability is assumed. In this paper, the main question is if complementarity between energy and physical capital hampers balanced growth or not. In order to answer this question, we consider the simple economic growth model with two sectors - output production and energy production - where energy is complementary to physical capital. Two forms of capital - physical and human - are distributed in this model between two sectors to maximise output. We consider the equilibrium state of this model, analyse comparative statics and derive necessary conditions for balanced growth. We also analyse some of the effects of technological progress. The analysis brings us to the conclusion that, in general, it leads to an increase in output, but that changes in technology of production have an ambiguous influence on output. We also derive explicit paths of growth for all macroeconomic variables. We find that, in general, if the obtained conditions are fulfilled then complementarity is not an obstacle to economic growth, subject to our assumptions which are quite standard in this kind of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parts kitting is a frequently adopted method to feed parts from a warehouse to an assembly line. While kitting allows minimisation of space occupation and Work In Process holding cost at the workstations, also simplifying materials flow and supporting manual assembly, it is penalised by high workforce cost for manual kits preparation. For this reason, automated kitting systems have been also proposed although their practical application is somewhat limited owing to the relevant capital investment and scarce performances of robotised kitting systems. Moreover, economic models allowing a quantitative comparison of manual and automated kitting systems are not yet available in the literature. As a contribution to fill this gap, in this paper a cost model useful to compare manual and automation-assisted parts retrieval and kitting systems is presented. The model can be used as a decision-making tool when planning and justifying kitting systems. The model includes capital investment, workforce, space occupation and quality costs. A case study as an application example is also included to demonstrate the model capabilities. Results show that automation-assisted kitting systems can be competitive in comparison to manual kitting and that break-even conditions can be also identified by the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews existing literature to identify issues, challenges, and best practices associated with shared-use freight and passenger rail corridors. Specifically, this paper will compare and contrast shared-corridor practices from an institutional perspective in the United States and the European Union. These two regions were chosen because of their shared social, political, technological, and economic ties, their historical mixes of private and state railroad operations, and because of the significant contemporary differences in the role of rail in these two regions. That mix of similarities and differences clarifies important commonalities specific to freight and passenger railroads that may be applicable in other times and places. Best practices include planning for: capital investment, long-term time horizons, measurable incremental improvements, regional multi-modality, and mutual benefits between freight and passenger operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of own-source revenues and intergovernmental grants on districts' infrastructure spending in Indonesia. As capacities to generate local revenue are lacking, intergovernmental transfer (IGT) became the main source of local capital spending. This paper uses econometric models to examine the determinants of infrastructure spending. By looking at institutions and economic structure, the study argues for the increasing importance of IGT for local capital spending and shows that specific allocation grants are crucial to ensure local infrastructure spending. This paper calls for a specifically district-tailored IGT fund to accelerate infrastructure development and reduce further regional disparities across Indonesia. This paper contributes to the literature by looking at the effect of IGT on infrastructure spending in different types of regions, including districts in Java, districts with municipality status and metropolitan districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the influence of the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policies on non-financial firms. It sheds light on non-financial firms' decisions regarding leverage, and on how the ECB's conventional and unconventional policies may have affected them. The paper also examines how these policies influenced non-financial firms' decisions on capital allocation – primarily capital spending and shareholder distribution (for example, dividends and share repurchases). We use an exhaustive and unique dataset comprised of income statements and balance sheets of leading non-financial firms operating in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The main results suggest that ECB's monetary policies have encouraged firms to raise their debt burden, especially after the global recession of 2008. Finally, the ECB's policies, especially after 2011, also seem to have led non-financial firms to allocate more resources not just to capital spending but to shareholder distribution as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the impact of fiscal policy on non-oil GDP in Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, over the annual period 1989–2018. We employed various cointegration methods within the framework of the augmented production function and estimated that government current and capital expenditure, in addition to non-oil labour and capital, have statistically significant positive effects on non-oil GDP. We tested whether the recent oil price decline and the implemented economic reforms caused a break in the relationship that non-oil GDP establishes with the mentioned variables and found that there was no break in either the long-run or the short-run relationship. The study concluded with some policy insights that could be useful for fiscal authorities to promote non-oil economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high level of information asymmetry is characterizing for venture capital investments making new information about entrepreneurial companies especially valuable for a venture capitalist's valuation process. This paper uses text classification and text mining methodology to extract structured data about capital allocation plans in a unique sample of 1,550 European funding rounds that serves as proxy for the private informational updates shared with investors by entrepreneurs. We show that venture capitalists incorporate the content and specificity of information into their valuation process. Further, results confirm that the value of new information is dependent on the prevailing level of information asymmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of a single round of debt renegotiation on investment and financing decisions. We produce an analytical proof for the widely-used assertion that optimal renegotiation time is common default time. We show that debt renegotiation accelerates investment and increases the investment option value by around 15%. Renegotiation surplus increases with project risk but decreases with sunk cost. Investment option value has an inverted U-shaped link with debtholders' bargaining power. If tax rate is moderate, optimal leverage with renegotiation is greater than that without renegotiation but if it is sufficiently high, the opposite holds true. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the sustainability of student debt in the US. For this purpose, I build a neo-Kaleckian model in which households can borrow to either consume or invest in human capital. Next, I calibrate the model using US data to simulate the economic effects of specific policies such as student loan forgiveness. To my knowledge, this is the first study that considers household borrowing for two different purposes, consumption and human capital accumulation, in a demand-led macro-modeling framework. The main findings are that (i) household debt is sustainable in the long run (i.e., the debt servicing is compatible with the long-term economic growth) for a consumption level greater than 90% of household income; (ii) new borrowing boosts short-term economic activity while having ambiguous long-term effects because of its outcomes to household indebtedness and debt servicing; and (iii) student loan cancelation has only short-run economic effects, whereas reducing loan interest rates and changing the eligibility criterion for student loan forgiveness result in long-term effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper derives the empirical estimation model from the endogenous economic growth theory, and tries to provide an effective and reasonable answer to the question 'how trade affects high-quality development through spillovers' from the perspective of spatial interdependence. Based on the data of 69 countries from 2000 to 2015, it is confirmed that there is an obvious spatial correlation between neighboring countries' TFP, the TFP of geographical and economic neighboring countries shows 'competition effect', while the TFP of cultural neighboring countries shows 'first spillover effect, then competition effect'. The R&D capital investment has no spatial effect on TFP of geographically or economically neighboring countries, but it has a significant 'spillover effect' on TFP of culturally neighboring countries. Technology spillovers caused by international trade are not only an important factor for countries to promote TFP, but also the core driving force to achieve high-quality development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I investigate what effect school capital investments have on housing values and household location choice in the context of the Tiebout model. This research identifies an exogenous variation in school capital investments by exploiting the lottery allocation of entitlement to an interest-free construction bond among districts in California. Although the lottery is exogenous, additional non-lottery allocation complicates identification. This paper develops an empirical model based on sample selection methods in order to create a counterfactual state in which additional non-lottery allocation would not have existed. I find that receiving the interest-free construction bond increases school capital expenditure and housing values at the district level. I view the increase in housing values as the capitalization of school capital investments. I find little evidence for the effect of the interest-free construction bond on household sorting and student's academic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies some of the important factors that influence the financial sustainability of regional governments. Data from all of Spain's regional governments show that unemployment, immigrant population, dependent population, structure of revenues and expenditures, and the source of debt had impacts on financial sustainability. IMPACT This paper will help policy-makers and managers in regional and local governments to improve the management of risk and opportunities, as well as to prevent or resolve sustainability problems. The paper provides lessons, based on the Spanish experience, for politicians and practitioners to improve the management of regional governments' financial sustainability. The authors stress the need to estimate the longer term financial effects of a migrant population and the unemployed; to analyse the long-term financial impact of subsidies from other levels of government; to monitor proportionality between awarding grants and making capital investments; and to look at ways of increasing a regional government's contribution to its own revenue (for example through fees, taxes and rates). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of labour protection laws on tax planning and capital investment. Exploiting a major reform that introduced firing costs in Italy for firms with fewer than 15 employees but left firing costs unchanged for larger firms combined with matched employer-employee data, I show that the rise in firing costs led small firms to increase tax avoidance and capital investment relative to larger firms. Robustness and placebo tests suggest that the results are causal. Overall, the findings indicate that tax avoidance allows small firms to generate internal funds to substitute labour for capital when employment protection becomes stronger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia, like many other housing systems in Western Europe and the US, increasingly relies on private financing arrangements for social housing. It is spending more than ever before on demand side assistance, yet both the production of dedicated social housing and housing affordability are declining. From the perspective of needs-based social infrastructure, this paper presents the outcomes of research into the development of a more productive investment pathway. Multi-criteria evaluation and financial modelling compares and assesses the cost to government of five investment scenarios involving a range of debt, efficient financing and capital investment strategies. This research finds that, while current governments tend to favour private financing and facility lease arrangements, paying down private financing during operations is the least cost effective means for governments to subsidise social housing. Capital grant funding and land valuation policies are more cost effective in the medium and long term but require more active government involvement in needs based planning, strategic investment and regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theoretically examines the effect of an expansionary monetary policy on export quality and its ramifications on the aggregate employment of the unskilled workers in a competitive general equilibrium framework of a small open economy. Monetary policies are often pursued by the central bank of an economy to manage exchange rate fluctuations under a managed float regime, which may have adverse consequences for export-quality choices and thereby for export growth given the growing preference of buyers in richer nations for higher qualities of imports. Under optimal allocation of wealth over a portfolio of cash, domestic assets and foreign assets, we show that an increase in the domestic money supply affects the choice of export-quality through larger investment, capital formation and consequent endowment effect and through changes in the nominal exchange rate. Under less price-elastic demand for a non-traded good, export quality is upgraded when quality upgrading is relatively capital (than skill) intensive. The expansionary monetary policy may raise aggregate employment of unskilled workers due to larger investment and capital formation, but may lower it through changes in the quality of the export good. The overall effect is thus ambiguous. A larger initial size of bequests has a similar effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water distribution networks (WDNs) require large capital investment and ongoing operational costs, resulting in their optimisation being a highly researched field. Despite the benefits tanks bring to networks, most optimisation models omit them as decision variables due to the complexity they can introduce to heuristic approaches. This paper addresses the least-cost optimisation of WDN design and operation through the development and application of the Small-network Configurator for Optimising Pump Energy consumption (SCOPE). The SCOPE algorithm incorporates pipes, pumps and tanks as decision variables and solves the optimisation problem through an iterative approach that pairs EPANET simulation results with subsequent hydraulic calculations to converge on the pumping and storage configuration which yields the lowest energy consumption. The SCOPE output can then be used to seed further optimisation techniques. This approach has been tested on the synthetic Nametown and real-life Dili networks and demonstrated annual cost savings of 10% and 25%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using longitudinal data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this paper employed a set of techniques to investigate the mechanism through which participation in structured extracurricular activities affects students' academic performance. The main findings are as follows: (1) high SES students were more likely to participate in extracurricular activities than low SES children. (2) Students' social relationships in school, including supportive friendships and teacher praise, are positively associated with academic performance. (3) Participation in extracurricular activities had no direct impact on eighth grade students' academic performance or any indirect effects by structuring students' social relationships in school. Our findings suggest that extracurricular participation does not contribute to students' academic performance in a context characterised by a high-stakes testing system such as that of China. In such a context, engagement in extracurricular activities, as a way to accumulate cultural capital, may facilitate individuals' future socioeconomic success on condition that their educational success is foreseeable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and corporate intellectual capital (IC) investment. The empirical results, which are based on a wide range of econometric tests, demonstrate a negative impact of EPU on IC investment, thus lending support to the notion that EPU hinders corporate IC investment. The analysis also indicates that the negative impact of EPU on IC investment varies cross-sectionally. It is prominent only in large firms and financially constrained firms, suggesting such firms reduce or delay IC investment during heightened EPU periods. EPU does not significantly affect the IC investment in small firms and firms with less financial constraints. Our findings are broadly consistent with existing studies in the literature and remain qualitatively unchanged after a battery of robustness and endogeneity tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem services arising from the restoration of natural capital are now increasingly recognised as environmental opportunities and monetised, with international climate negotiations focussing on the need for investment into natural capital, and the finance sector pledging to invest. The finance sector has called for decision-grade, asset level data about nature projects in order to facilitate their reporting to investors. This paper offers a case study of novel digital data collection methods used to establish a baseline of faunal biodiversity in a Scottish nature-restoration project on the Bunloit estate which has secured private natural capital investment. Digital camera traps, acoustic sensors with eDNA samples and apps were used to create digital maps to ensure annual survey replication, and citizen scientist engagement. The results were classified by both professional ecologists and citizen scientists. We discuss how the digital data gathered through traps, apps and maps in the case study can be qualified as decision-grade data, according to the Taskforce for Nature-based Financial Disclosure's specification. We conclude that decision-grade biodiversity data may be produced by practitioners, with limited resources, and make recommendations for data collection and governance methods to ensure nature restoration projects generate decision-grade data for ecosystem services markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the links between adverse events, depression, and decision-making in Nigeria. It investigates how events such as conflicts, shocks, and deaths of family members can affect short-term mental health, as well as longer-term decisions on economic activities and human capital investments. First, the findings show that exposure to conflict has the largest and strongest relationship with depression, associated with a 21-26 percentage point increase in the probability of depressive symptomatology. Second, depression is associated with lower labour force participation, child educational investment, and annual per capita income, holding constant covariates such as exposure to adverse events. People with depressive symptoms are 8 percentage points less likely to work. In addition, parents exhibiting depressive symptoms spend 18% less on their children's education. These findings show the links between adverse events and important outcomes such as labour and education through mental health. As such, policymakers must consider both the direct and indirect effects that adverse events – particularly conflicts – and depression can have on welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main challenges facing transit agencies is offering reliable service with minimum number of interruptions and ensuing delays. Although this issue has recently emerged as a top priority in many cities to ensure sustainable social and environmental progress, there has been little research effort to investigate issues surrounding service disruption. As a response to this gap, this study aims at understanding the impact of outdoor track segments (or open-air sectors) of the metro system and weather conditions on the number of service interruptions and the magnitude of resulting delays at the stop level. The study uses detailed metro system interruption data collected in 2013 by the TTC, the public transit provider in the City of Toronto, Canada. Descriptive statistics and statistical models are developed for the purpose of the study. The empirical investigation reveals that outdoor tracks have a statistically significant association with metro system's service interruptions. Longer outdoor track distances are linked to both higher frequencies and delays of service interruptions. Weather conditions, in terms of the amount of snow on the ground and rainfall interactions with outdoor tracks, have also a significant association with the frequency and duration of service interruptions. The paper results provide policy makers and planners with useful policy-relevant information related to the impact of outdoor tracks and weather conditions on the metro system interruptions that could be used to support higher capital investments when planning rail transit systems to achieve the system resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to broaden the scope of analysis of the contemporary global land rush by examining crop booms not only outside, but inside China; and investment flows not only from China, but also within and into China. It does so by examining the eucalyptus and sugarcane sectors in southern China, which have witnessed investment booms during the past decade, with capital being infused by both domestic capital and foreign capital, including Finnish, Indonesian, and Thai companies. Our argument addresses three key issues: (a) explaining why foreign and domestic companies enter into a multitude of lease and grower contracts involving holders of micro-plots, (b) revisiting the notion of extra-economic coercion, and (c) a critique of thinking about flows of large-scale investments centred primarily on nationality. These issues are central in current debates in the land grabs literature, and our study offers a different perspective from dominant narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When designing a new large manufacturing system with high throughput, the corporation should weigh several factors: the capital investment cost, the system's responsiveness to future varying market demand, the production losses due to disruptive events, and the product quality. These performance metrics depend heavily on the system configuration. In this paper, typical configurations of large-volume manufacturing systems for mechanical products are compared from cost, responsiveness and product quality perspectives. In addition to traditional serial lines and pure parallel systems, we also discuss two practical configurations - parallel serial lines, and reconfigurable manufacturing systems. The results offer managerial insights for selecting the system configuration that creates the maximum economic value over the lifetime of the system, and fits the corporation needs and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of international labor migration on human capital investment in both hosting and sending countries using an integrated theoretical framework. We develop a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium human capital investment model with international labor mobility, in which both decisions to migrate and to invest in skill acquisition are endogenous. We show that the human capital formation process in the countries of origin is very sensitive to migration policies implemented by hosting countries. Our findings show that human capital accumulation in the sending country is encouraged by the possibility of emigration to higher labor productivity countries, supporting the recent view of the 'brain gain' hypothesis. Productivity shocks hitting the hosting country reduce the human capital investment by natives but increase the human capital investment in the sending country when migration is allowed. Finally, we find that migration increases world human capital, increasing the stock of human capital in both hosting and sending countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper departs from a reflection of how my time as a doctoral student in the late nineties with the lean construction group at U.C. Berkeley influenced my (ongoing) research journey. I first recall how those early years led to my core empirical and theoretical interests on the management of 'megaprojects' - the project-based, multi-party contexts that are set up by one or more organisational actors with the aim of developing capital-intensive, long-lived infrastructure resources. I also analyse the challenges that I faced in the pursuit of a theoretical perspective with power to predict and explain empirical regularities on megaproject behaviour, and thus capable of illuminating the pervasiveness of major cost and schedule slippages as well as scope creep. As well as this, I discuss how the discovery of Elinor Ostrom's commons governance theory was a watershed in my research journey. Then, drawing from organisational governance literature, I introduce and illustrate a model of the evolution of the governance structure of a megaproject over the project life cycle. I harness this model to draw inferences on megaproject organisational boundaries, on megaproject behaviour, and on how megaprojects create both economic and social value. Further, after conceptualising a megaproject as a purposeful interorganizational form of organising capital production, I discuss feedback loops and contingency variables that affect the gap between intended and realised project behaviour. I conclude with a discussion on how to leverage an organisational perspective of megaprojects to realise the potential of capital investment in new infrastructure to create value, as well as to engender trust in megaprojects, and thus mend their fractured relationship with society. Each era's theories and prevailing arguments, in part, reflect the preoccupations of the times and coevolve with them1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the case of the Mainland Chinese film industry, this paper argues that the competing features that attract commercial capital investment and drive state centralization create a molecular structure of national film investment, or the division of investment in the film industry into several interdependent centers. A combination of regulations, institutions, the built environment and access to capital leads to a distributed investment of strategic assets linked by bonds of complementarity. Beijing dominates in the area of state-supported production. Shanghai outperforms other cities in terms of foreign direct investment. Qingdao has attracted domestic Chinese private investment and entrepreneurship. Unlike the capital agglomeration seen in countries like the United States where film investment is driven centrally by financial considerations, the Chinese national film industry is strategically divided into several centers that rely more dominantly on political or financial resources. While this paper focuses on China, understanding the molecular structure of the Chinese film industry helps us understand both developed and developing countries that are characterized by robust state oversight and strong commercial media sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the exogenous shock- Thailand military coup on May 22, 2014-as a natural experiment to test the impact of military political connections on the value of Thai's listed firms. Results show that the military coup will bring significant benefits to the share price of listed firms with military political connections. Moreover, the DID estimations show that the military rule can significantly increase the Tobin's Q of military political affiliates after the military coup. The main influential mechanism is that, after the military is in power, the listed firms will hire personnel with military background to enter the management. This move will bring long-term financing convenience to the military politically connected firms and enable them to use more funds to capital investment and R & D activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optimal capital growth strategy or Kelly strategy has many desirable properties, such as maximizing the asymptotic long-run growth of capital. However, it is aggressive and can have the considerable short-run risk of losing much of the invested wealth. In this paper, we provide a method to obtain the maximum growth while staying above a specified downside wealth threshold with high probability, where shortfalls below the threshold are penalized with a convex function of shortfall. The financial market is characterized by regimes, where the dynamics of the stochastic regime process is Markovian. Within a regime, the asset prices are lognormal. With the additional model features of regimes and downside risk control, the optimal strategy has a modified Kelly format. The modification requires the assignment of weights to each regime, with the weights incorporating the risk control. The multi-asset problem is reduced to determining the regime weights and the fraction of investment capital allocated to risky assets. The estimation risk is controlled by regime switching and the decision risk is controlled by the downside threshold. The methods are applied to the problem of investing in select sector exchange-traded funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remittances play an important role in human capital development in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly when it comes to helping families to pay for their children's education, access health care and alleviate poverty. However, many countries on the continent lack the financial systems to efficiently facilitate the inflows of remittances and allow them to be used to their greatest potential such as investment in education. The education of children is particularly essential if Saharan Africa is to achieve sustainable development goal number four which aims to ensure inclusive and quality education for all by 2030. This paper examines the impact of remittances on human capital development from 1996–2016 in sub-Saharan Africa and further explores the role financial development in this established nexus. The empirical results revealed that remittances positively influence human capital investment, but when interacted with financial development and regressed on human capital investment, we found remittances impact to be more pronounced and statistically influence human capital. This study recommends that policymakers develop proactive policies that facilitate the inflows of remittances. Our policy suggestions are based on the fact that remittance recipients in SSA countries do not have adequate funds to invest in human capital because of weak financial systems. Financial market reform is therefore paramount for attracting greater remittances into SSA countries which, in turn, could be harnessed to ease credit constraints and allow for greater investment into human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short-run income shocks can negatively impact school attendance when children are pulled out in order to work, either based on the need for greater income during negative shocks or the increased opportunity cost of child time during positive shocks. This paper proxies for income shocks using fluctuations in local rainfall and evaluates its impact on child schooling, labour force participation, and domestic work. We then investigate whether conditional cash transfers are able to protect school attendance during these temporary shocks. Using data on Brazil's Bolsa Família programme along with municipal-level rainfall data, we find that positive rainfall shocks cause children to increase the likelihood of paid labour but Bolsa partially mitigates these effects, though less so among boys and older children. Furthermore, we find evidence that even when children do not drop out of school during these shocks, Bolsa may not fully maintain their intensity of school attendance and shocks may hinder academic progress. These results suggest that higher wages cause children to substitute time away from schooling, but that Bolsa acts as a partial safety net that stabilises human capital investments during short-run shocks and may help produce larger long-run benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the spillover effects of R&D investments made by foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) and domestic firms on their export activities, using a manufacturing firm-level panel dataset from South Korea. The theoretical framework predicts two conflicting spillover effects: positive technology spillovers and negative market rivalry spillovers. Thus, the net spillover effect is determined by the relative degree of the two conflicting spillovers. The empirical results show that negative intra-industry spillovers exist from the R&D of foreign MNEs on the export performance of firms, which implies that, in general, negative market rivalry spillovers dominate positive technology spillovers. However, notably, in the case of firms equipped with absorptive capacity, the negative spillovers can be alleviated; firms can gain positive spillovers by muting negative ones. Firms without absorptive capacity cannot avoid such negative effects. This paper shows that absorptive capacity is vital in capturing positive spillovers as firms build competency by accumulating their own know-how and improving their ability to capture better external technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of fiscal decentralization on economic growth are analyzed. A theoretical framework is developed that builds on the relationships between government size and growth and between decentralization and government size. The framework is tested empirically on a panel of 25 European countries observed between 1995 and 2015. The econometric results show that the relationship between expenditure decentralization and growth is bell shaped. The paper also focuses on expenditure composition. In this respect, the relationship between investment decentralization and growth is an inverted bell-shaped curve: there is a critical mass of decentralized investments beyond which it is possible to enhance growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the potential impact of Brexit on UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Using a major longitudinal survey of UK SMEs, the analysis suggests that Brexit-related concerns are escalating. Larger, export- and import-oriented SMEs are most concerned, as are those located in major urban and peripheral locations. Among SMEs with growth-related plans, many firms are scaling back on capital investment, innovation and (especially) exports. An appraisal of existing policy frameworks suggests that the devolved administrations seem better equipped to enact interventions in order to alleviate any negative effects arising from Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how firms react to tax incentives in a formula apportionment (FA) tax regime. Under FA, the profits of all consolidated entities of a business group are summed and then allocated according to a formula based on FA factors. We hypothesize that firms may change the allocation of real production factors and/or manipulate the FA factor through tax avoidance strategies. Analyzing FA tax effects of the German local business tax with payroll expense as the exclusive FA factor, we find empirical evidence consistent with both hypotheses. Regarding the allocation of production factors, we observe significant tax effects on labor input at the intensive margin but not on labor input at the extensive margin. In addition, we find evidence of an indirect FA spillover effect on capital investment. Our findings on tax avoidance proxies are consistent with tax-induced manipulations of payroll expense as an FA factor to save tax payments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we construct a composite social well-being index to investigate disparities between 30 African countries. We do this because previous inequality studies relied on income measures; however, when it comes to Africa, specifically, income is not an adequate measure to capture well-being. Furthermore, we apply the recentered influence function (RIF) method to regress the variance of social well-being on likely influencing factors. Lastly, we use the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique to investigate the gap between countries with higher, and those with lower levels of social well-being. The results indicate that there are high levels of inequality; however, the inequality in social well-being is less stark than in income. Factors that are significantly related to inequality are employment, gender equality, exports, CO2 emissions, population density, public protests, capital investment, and internet access. The gap that exists between higher and lower social well-being countries is mainly due to the endowment effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how wage payments and fixed asset investments are determined, and their interrelationship, under China's imperfect financial and labor markets. We collect aggregate data on wages, the financial market, and fixed asset investments from several statistical yearbooks. The main results are as follows: (1) borrowing constraints hinder wage payments, but this phenomenon is not observed in the state-owned and foreign-funded units; (2) in the nonstate-owned sector, there is a strong reliance on internal reserves that is not observed in the state-owned units, suggesting that the nonstate-owned sector is treated differently in the financial market; and (3) in the state-owned units, wage growth has a positive correlation with fixed asset investments, whereas in the nonstate-owned sector, this relationship is not observed. This implies that in the nonstate-owned sector, the underpayment of wages may be used as a survival strategy to conduct business under financial constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]