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This paper investigates whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance influences the demand for high‐quality audits in terms of audit effort measured by audit fee. Using a sample of listed firms from 20 developed countries across three regions, namely United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and Europe (EU) over the period 2002–2016 and different measures of CSR performance (environmental and social), we find that socially responsible firms demand high‐quality audits from external auditors. Further analysis shows that this result is robust to the use of alternate samples, country and firm level governance systems, and endogeneity concerns. Taken together, these findings suggest that socially responsible attributes of being ethical, honest, trustworthy, and transparent while reporting financial results motivate firms to demand high‐quality audits in order to preserve their reputation or socially responsible image. The main implication of our findings is that the stakeholders may place greater confidence in the financial reports of socially responsible firms as they are likely to demand high‐quality audits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the change in the contribution of intangible assets to economic growth in Russia after applying the Corrado, Hulten and Sichel (2005) approach to estimate an extended list of intangible assets. As a result, intangible assets contribution increased from 0.05 p.p to 0.15 p.p of 3.28 percent of growth in Russia in the period 2004–2014. These estimates show that the inclusion of the expanded list of intangible assets increases growth and redistributes production growth between capital accumulation and the growth of multifactor productivity towards capital accumulation, and between the accumulation of tangible capital and intangible capital towards intangible capital. The results differ from European countries, where intangible assets formed 9 percent of growth in 2004–2014. Comparing the structure of intangible assets in Russia and in Europe and the US, we conclude that in Russia, the highest contribution to the growth of intangible assets is due to intellectual property, while in developed countries, the contributions are distributed more evenly across different types of intangible assets under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A taskforce established by Medical Education asks readers to engage in discussion about how the journal and field can do better to ensure that health professional education publishing is inclusive of diverse knowledge and perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Review of Policy Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyses the influence of agglomeration and spatial sorting on wages in Brazilian cities. The empirical strategy is based on a two‐step estimation. The first step estimates a wage equation with the observed characteristics of workers and firms and location effects. The second step decomposes the location effects into employment density and fixed effects of firm and worker. We estimate an urban wage premium for a developing country with the simultaneous inclusion of worker and firm fixed effects, instrumental variables, and nighttime lights. We find agglomeration effects of 4.3–5.7%, which are larger than those obtained for developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a classification of the monetary policy frameworks (MPFs) of 19 MENA countries from 1974 to 2017. It identifies the key trends in the region and contrasts them with the trends among three other groups: advanced countries, emerging countries and Latin American countries. It considers likely reasons for the MPF choices of MENA governments and notes the economic performance associated in the region and elsewhere with different MPFs. It examines how these MPF choices relate to trends in central bank independence and transparency, and in democracy and governance. Finally, it brings these elements together in an argument that a move to democracy in the MENA countries could open the way to monetary policy frameworks that would offer improved economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hitherto, the path‐dependent understanding of regional diversification in Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) has drawn largely on insights into industrialized countries. However, in the past few decades several regions in the Global South have undergone rapid structural transformations despite starting out with unfavourable regional asset bases. This raises the question as to whether the strong emphasis on endogenous capabilities in EEG also provides a sound theoretical framework for explaining these tremendous diversification dynamics. This paper therefore aims to re‐evaluate the wider validity of the path‐dependent conceptualization of regional diversification in the context of a lower‐middle income economy. To this end, we analyse the diversification of Vietnamese regions between 2006 and 2015. In order to take into account context‐specific conditions that characterize Vietnam's economy, we add the role of foreign‐owned firms and state‐owned enterprises to the conceptualization of regional diversification processes. While the role of relatedness holds true for Vietnam, the presence of foreign‐owned firms allowed Vietnamese regions to break away from path dependency and diversify to unrelated industries. The findings highlight that only by adapting the analysis to context‐specific conditions are we able to understand how regional diversification takes place across different settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we extend the work of Buncic and Gisler, International Journal of Forecasting, 2016, 32, 1317–1339 and investigate that whether US‐based stock volatility information and crude oil volatility information have predictability for forecasting the realized volatility (RV) of global equity markets from both in‐ and out‐of‐sample perspectives in a changing world. The HAR‐RV model is our benchmark model. We utilize two popular shrinkage methods of the elastic net and lasso to solve the overfitting problem. In addition, we establish the HAR‐RV‐AVERAGE model by an easy combination approach. Our empirical results indicate that the HAR‐RV‐AVERAGE model exhibits the best prediction performance in predicting the RV of most indices and developed countries equity markets benefit the most from the inclusion of US‐based crude oil and equity market volatility information, while emerging country stock markets benefit the least, especially for Asian equity indices. Alternative out‐of‐sample periods and alternative volatility estimator confirm the robustness of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By incorporating the environment into the Harris- Todaro model, this paper examines how introduction of an import tariff on manufactured goods affects urban unemployment and the environment in a less-developed country. In the Harris- Todaro model, introduction of an import tariff increases urban unemployment when there is no environmental pollution. In contrast, this paper shows that introduction of a tariff may decrease unemployment if the environment is incorporated into the model. Moreover, it is shown that introduction of a tariff improves the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries today have become more active participants in regional trade agreements. This raises questions about how the benefits of integration are distributed, and the extent to which lower‐income countries are able to capture development gains. Historically, such impacts have been difficult to identify with precision. This paper seeks to address this gap by empirically analysing the impact of regional integration on development, particularly the effects on growth and welfare. Using both bilateral and regional integration measures, we show that the ability to capture gains from integration varies across developing country regional groups, with developing Asia benefiting on par with developed countries. The findings in the paper indicate that trade and trade policy play an important role in reducing inequality and poverty in developing countries. It also shows that regionalism can function as a channel to make multilateralism a more adept way of addressing national challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of sustainable consumption and production in the international agenda has been growing, both because of unsustainable patterns of consumption and production in industrialized countries and because it appears to be a means for meeting the essential needs of developing countries. Adapting Fernand Braudel's model of the three layers of the economy (everyday life, market economy and global capitalism) to the current situation, this paper advocates for differentiated policies, which cannot be limited to those based on the dominant model of a rational legal system dealing with rational consumers. The cultural and collective dimensions of consumption, the social role of conspicuous consumption, the consumption of ecological services outside formal markets, the diversity of approaches to knowledge and rationality, all plead for an overarching approach and diversified policy tools. The paper underlines the need for global regulation processes which involve all stakeholders by focusing on two examples: the international task force on sustainable tourism, and the ISO 26000 standard on social responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent paper by Ruge-Murcia (2004) on asymmetric central bank objectives provides a new perspective on the policy roots of inflation in developed economies. More precisely, the paper demonstrates that if the distribution of the supply shocks is normal, then the reduced-form solution for inflation implies a positive (or negative) relation between average inflation and the variance of shocks. We argue that the evidence offered in support of this hypothesis suffers from lack of identification because Phillips curve nonlinearity combined with quadratic central bank preferences yield the same reduced-form solution for inflation. If so, estimating reduced form for inflation will not be able to discriminate between these models. Yet they have quite different implications for policy. Other, structural, evidence is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Present information systems studies focus on technology from developed countries. Little is known about the development and implementation of indigenous technology in the developing world. This paper investigates China's experience of developing and deploying wireless local-area network (WLAN) standards. First, drawing upon actor-network theory, I interpret WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) standardization as a process of the actor-network formation. Specifically, different actors were enrolled into two counter-networks, namely the defensive network and the challenging network. These actors and the two counter-networks struggled to dominate the interest inscriptions in the strategy of WLAN standardization. China's WAPI initiative failed because it could not establish a strong defensive network. Furthermore, I analyse the social, institutional and technological elements that determined the process of WAPI standardization. This case study demonstrates that counter-network is a useful concept to analyse the mechanism of actor-network formation. My analytical model in which the macro contexts are connected with the micro network dynamics can be drawn upon by other actor-network studies on technology design and implementation. Practical implications for developing countries to develop the indigenous technologies have been given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the fundamental causes of long-run economic performance, differences in ‘institutions’ have received considerable attention in recent years. At the same time, a large body of theoretical and empirical work shows that financial development can have a big effect on economic performance. This raises the more fundamental question as to why some countries have developed financial markets while others do not. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical research on this issue and shows that one of the channels whereby better institutions may have an effect on economic development is through the consolidation of larger and better financial markets. An issue that is left aside in this paper relates to what regulations and policies lead to better functioning capital markets. At some level, one can think of regulations and policies as particular types of institutions. Nonetheless, institutional problems are deeper causes leading to poor economic performance; bad policies might simply be part of the channels through which they influence performance. Thus, addressing the question of what determines the emergence of ‘good’ institutions – i.e. institutions that promote financial development – seems particularly important. Recent research providing some answers to this question is also reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine whether during the 1997 East Asian crisis there was any contagion from the four largest economies in the region (Thailand. Indonesia. Korea and Malaysia) to a number of developed countries (Japan, UK, Germany and France). Following Forbes and Rigobon, we test for contagion as a significant positive shift in the correlation between asset returns, taking into account heteroscedasticity and endogeneity bias. Furthermore, we improve on earlier empirical studies by carrying out a full sample lest of the stability of the system that relies on more plausible (over) identifying restrictions. The estimation results provide some evidence of contagion, in particular from Japan (the main international lender in the region), which drastically cut its credit lines to the other Asian countries in 1997. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID‐19 is generating clinical challenges, lifestyle changes, economic consequences. The pandemic imposes to familiarize with concepts as prevention, vulnerability and resilience. Methods: We analysed and reviewed the most relevant papers in the MEDLINE database on syndemic, noncommunicable diseases, pandemic, climate changes, pollution, resilience, vulnerability, health costs, COVID‐19. Results: We discuss that comprehensive strategies must face multifactorial consequences since the pandemic becomes syndemic due to interactions with noncommunicable diseases, climate changes and iniquities. The lockdown experience, on the other hand, demonstrates that it is rapidly possible to reverse epidemiologic trends and to reduce pollution. The worst outcome is evident in eight highly industrialized nations, where 12% of the world population experienced about one‐third of all COVID‐19‐deaths worldwide. Thus, a great economic power has not been fully protective, and a change of policy is obviously needed to avoid irreversible consequences. Conclusions: We are accumulating unhealthy populations living in unhealthy environments and generating unhealthy offspring. The winning policy should tackle structural inequities through a syndemic approach, to protect vulnerable populations from present and future harms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of cross‐border e‐commerce on China's import growth, using the promulgation of cross‐border e‐commerce‐related policies since 2012 as a quasi‐natural experiment and using the 'Cross‐border E‐commerce Retail Import Commodity List' to identify cross‐border e‐commerce industries. Our difference‐in‐difference results show that cross‐border e‐commerce has significantly boosted China's import growth. Dynamic effects show that while China's imports were low prior to 2012, cross‐border e‐commerce has increased China's imports significantly since 2012, verifying the validity of our baseline results. Placebo tests and a series of robustness checks further confirm the validity and robustness of the baseline results. Further analysis reveals that cross‐border e‐commerce has mainly promoted imports from developed countries, and primarily facilitated imports of clothing, food and daily necessities. Mechanism analysis shows that cross‐border e‐commerce not only stimulated both the intensive and extensive margins in import growth, but also reduced cultural distances and increased China's imports from countries with larger cultural distances substantially. However, geographical and institutional distances still matter and exhibit significantly negative effects on China's cross‐border e‐commerce imports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceptions of social mobility vary across countries. However, past studies have mostly focused on populations in Western developed countries. Little is known about perceptions of social mobility in non‐Western developing countries. The current paper focuses on Chinese perceptions of social mobility using a large‐scale nationally representative sample. We found that, overall, Chinese believed in upward social mobility. Moreover, different patterns of perceptions of social mobility were identified, which suggest that respondents experienced either upward or downward social mobility in the past, but all of them thought that they can move up in the future. Perceptions of social mobility were also linked to important sociodemographic and economic factors. We discuss these findings in relation to the Chinese economic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The design of health insurance, and the role out-of-pocket (OOP) payments play in it, is a key policy issue as rising health costs have encouraged greater cost-sharing measures. This paper compares the percentage of Americans spending large amounts OOP to meet their health needs with percentages in eight other developed countries. By disaggregating by age and income, the paper focuses on the poor and elderly populations within each.Data Source: The study uses nationally representative household survey data made available through the Luxembourg Income Study. It includes nations with high, medium, and low levels of OOP spending.Study Design: Households have high medical spending when their OOP expenditures exceed a threshold share of income. I calculate the share of each nation's population, as well as subpopulations within it, with high OOP expenditures.Principal Findings: The United States is not alone in exposing large numbers of citizens to high OOP expenses. In six of the other eight countries, one-quarter or more of low-income citizens devoted at least 5 percent of their income to OOP expenses, and in all but two countries, more than 1 in 10 elderly citizens had high medical expenses.Conclusions: For some populations in the sample nations, health insurance does not provide adequate financial protection and likely contributes to inequities in health care delivery and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on various school drug education and prevention programs for students in the U.S. The author cites that drug education is an important component in the drug prevention strategies of almost all developed countries due to the concern of the public regarding alcohol and drug use among young people. The author adds that the programs should include harm minimization strategies for those who choose to use alcohol and other drugs.

Copyright of Family Process is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While in many advanced countries the increasing import competition from China on employment is a major concern for policymakers and the general public, its impact of Chinese import competition could be different across countries, depending upon the volume and the composition of the products. This paper examines the impact of the China shock on employment in six advanced countries. We find that the import penetration of final goods from China has negative effects on manufacturing employment in these countries, whereas the import penetration of intermediate inputs from and the exports to China could have positive effects. Moreover, such positive effects could offset or even outweigh the negative effects in some countries. These results together suggest that a careful interpretation is needed when evaluating the external validity of the China shock that is obtained in one country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Disparities exist for head and neck cancer (HNC) patients between those in developed countries and low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs). To improve HNC care globally, collaborations between the United States and LMICs have been established. Our objectives are: (1) define trends of collaborative HNC publications among LMICs and the United States and (2) assess the global distribution of these publications by region. Methods: A Scopus search identified all HNC research publications during 2009 to 2018. These were then categorized by type (basic vs. clinical) and by global regions. Results: Five thousand one hundred and seventy collaborative publications were identified, of which 41% were basic science and 59% clinical. The highest rate of collaborative publications for both basic science and clinical papers was seen in the East Asia/Pacific region. Conclusions: The number of collaborative research publications per year in HNC is increasing across the globe, at varying rates in different global regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks whether financial integration leads to a more efficient allocation of capital within economies. I build a model of a small economy with an investment and a consumption goods sector. Financial frictions impede capital from allocating optimally between the two sectors. Capital account opening has positive allocation effects if the economy is financially less developed than the rest of the world, but negative effects otherwise. I test the model predictions on a sample of 113 countries, using the relative price of consumption and investment goods as a measure of allocation efficiency. I find that international capital flows indeed have adverse effects in highly developed countries, whereas there is less evidence of positive effects in low‐development countries. Overall, financial integration leads to more similar capital allocations across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been intense debate on the effects of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on global trade, triggered by Rose's article (2004) suggesting that the WTO/GATT did not promote world trade at all. In addition, Subramanian and Wei (2007) pointed out a series of asymmetries in trade liberalization led by international organizations. In this paper, we estimate the WTO impact on new members considering both total and disaggregated trade flows from 1995 to 2014 using the gravitational model and Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator. The sample includes bilateral imports from 133 countries in the primary, textile, and industrial sectors. This article provides strong evidence that the WTO has promoted new member trade, but weakly and unevenly between developed and developing countries and across sectors examined. Developed countries continued to benefit most from the increase in world trade promoted by the WTO, but more recent liberalization has also brought gains in exports to the group of the least developed countries (LDCs). Furthermore, the gains, although small, are concentrated in primary products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The steady growth of international trade in intermediate goods and services has made the relationship between trade and the international division of labour more complex. For 39 countries, the author decomposes the employment effects of international trade into five components, namely, the labour content of - or employment generated by - (1) exports; (2) imports; (3) the import content of exports; (4) the export content of imports; and (5) the third-country import content of imports. He shows that in 2009, trade in intermediate goods accounted for some 88 million jobs - 14 per cent of all jobs generated by international trade - while the import content of exports accounted for 44 million jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates gender unemployment dynamics in 10 advances economies applying a recent methodology on widely available Labour Force Surveys data. We calculate the job finding and separation rates for each gender and use them to construct the steady-state unemployment gap as well as two counterfactual gender unemployment gaps: one generated by differences only in job finding rates and the other by differences only in separation rates. We find that in all countries the gender unemployment gap attributed to differences in the job finding rate is lower than the gap attributed to differences in the separation rate, suggesting that gender differences in the separation rate are the major factor behind the gender unemployment gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breastfeeding provides optimal nutrition for the healthy growth of infants and is associated with reduced risks of infectious diseases, child and adult obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic diseases. Migration has been shown to influence breastfeeding especially among migrants from low-and-middle-income countries. This mixed-methods systematic review aimed to identify, synthesise, and appraise the international literature on the breastfeeding knowledge and experiences of African immigrant mothers residing in high-income countries. MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase, PsychINFO, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge databases were searched from their inception to February 2019. Grey literature, reference, and citation searches were carried out and relevant journals hand-searched. Data extraction and quality assessment were independently carried out by two reviewers. An integrated mixed-methods approach adopting elements of framework synthesis was used to synthesise findings. The initial searches recovered 8,841 papers, and 35 studies were included in the review. Five concepts emerged from the data: (a) breastfeeding practices, showing that 90% of African mothers initiated breastfeeding; (b) knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes, which were mostly positive but included a desire for bigger babies; (c) influence of socio-demographic, economic, and cultural factors, leading to early supplementation; (d) support system influencing breastfeeding rates and duration; and (e) perception of health professionals who struggled to offer support due to culture and language barriers. African immigrant mothers were positive about breastfeeding and willing to adopt best practice but faced challenges with cultural beliefs and lifestyle changes after migration. African mothers may benefit from more tailored support and information to improve exclusive breastfeeding rates., (© 2020 The Authors. Maternal & Child Nutrition published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

This paper proposes an empirically grounded framework for examining the preparedness and recovery phases of disaster management activities and processes pertaining to predictable disasters within a developed country. The two‐stage framework provides a single model composed of important preparedness and recovery initiatives, as well as activities and processes derived from empirical data collected for case studies from Australia: the ‘Black Saturday’ bushfires in the state of Victoria in February 2009; and Cyclone Larry in March 2006. The framework enables a variety of analyses, including the generation of insights into disaster management preparedness and recovery in the context of events in wealthy developed countries. The paper combines two empirical examples, a series of bushfires and a severe tropical cyclone, to enhance understanding of, and to contribute to better, disaster preparedness and recovery in the future. The paper contributes to the growing literature on disasters, preparedness, recovery and associated logistics, and other issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Of a total of 2,976 double tax agreements (DTAs), some 60% are signed between a developing and a developed economy. As DTAs shift taxing rights from capital‐importing to capital‐exporting countries, the latter inherently benefit more from the agreements. In this paper, we argue that capital exporters use foreign aid to incite capital importers into signing DTAs. We demonstrate in a theoretical model that in a deal, one country does not trump the other, but that the deal must be mutually beneficial. In the case of an asymmetric DTA, this requires compensation from the capital‐exporting country to the capital‐importing country. Examining DTAs that are signed between donor and recipient countries between 1991 and 2012, and using a fixed effects Poisson model, we find that bilateral foreign aid commitments increase by 22% in the year of the signature of a DTA. Evaluated at the sample mean, this translates into around US$ six million additional aid commitments in a DTA signatory year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine whether or not the Great Recession had a temporary or permanent effect on output growth volatility after years of low macroeconomic volatility since the early eighties. Based on break detection methods applied to a set of advanced countries, our empirical results do not give evidence to the end of the Great Moderation period but rather that the Great Recession is characterized by a dramatic short‐lived effect on the output growth but not on its volatility. We show that neglecting the breaks both in mean and in variance can have large effects on output volatility modeling based on GARCH specifications. (JEL E32, C22, O40) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bautechnik is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the relationship between macroeconomic instability, as measured by the variance of inflation and output, and income inequality. We develop a panel data set consisting of 61 developed and developing economies for 1990–2019. Our results highlight a positive relationship between past inflation variance and subsequent inequality. We find that this relationship is nonexistent in developed countries but is strong for developing economies. Developing countries that have adopted an inflation targeting (IT) regime are insulated from the regressive effect of inflation volatility. From the point of view of achieving an even income distribution, IT may be consistent with better equity and efficiency outcomes simultaneously. The main findings are robust to a rich set of controls, alternative measures of volatility and inequality, various subsample checks, and dynamic panel specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on firm productivity recognizes the important role played by firm innovation activities on firm productivity in developed countries. However, the literature for developing and emerging economies is scarce and far from conclusive. The aim of this paper is to study the innovation- productivity link (distinguishing between process and product innovations) for manufacturing at the firm level for four Latin American countries (two classified as upper-middle income countries by the World Bank--Argentina and Mexico-- and two as lower-middle income--Colombia and Peru). We aim testing whether the level of development is a mediating factor in the innovation-productivity link. The data used have been drawn from theWorld Bank panel enterprise surveys, for 2006 and 2010. First, we estimate total factor productivity (TFP) and, second, we use the estimated TFP as a regressor or as dependent variable, in two models for testing self-selection of the most productive firms into innovation or the existence of returns to innovation in terms of productivity. Our results confirm the mediating role of the level of development in the innovation-productivity link: both the self-selection and the returns-to-innovation hypotheses work only for the upper-middle income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on income distribution and fertility change, with reference to Nancy Birdsall's article "Analytical Approaches to the Relationship of Population Growth and Development." Bridshall evaluated the evidence regarding the interactions of population growth and economic development. The policy issue in question is an important one, and the evidence regarding it deserves scrutiny and discussion. The criticisms presented in this particular review, however, are based on misunderstanding of the hypothesis and misinterpretation of the original research. Nancy Birdsall's first criticism is that income distribution data are notoriously poor. Although this is true, it merely increases confidence in the finding that there is a strong association with fertility rates. Birdsall's comment that ordinary least-squares regression estimates lead to biased results by ignoring the simultaneous effect of high fertility on the degree of income inequality does not mention the finding of the paper she has reviewed that the direction of the bias is toward zero. Simultaneous equation techniques applied to the same body of data in all instances lead to estimates implying a larger impact of income distribution on fertility.

The aim of this paper is to review publications discussing the declining prevalence of dental caries in the industrialized countries during the past decades, focusing on some main conferences addressing this issue. Has there been a real decline in the prevalence of dental caries? Several excellent papers and reviews have been published, and there is a general agreement that a marked reduction in caries prevalence has occurred among children in most of the developed countries in recent decades. This fact has stimulated much debate and attempts to identify the most likely explanations for this change. The conclusion made from this review is that the various authors believe that the use of fluoride in various forms has contributed most significantly to the decline in dental caries prevalence. A number of other factors must, however, also he taken into consideration, and such factors have been extensively discussed in the various publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a panel data covering more than 100 countries worldwide, we have estimated a dynamic panel model to investigate the relationship between financial development and manufacturing industries' growth. More specifically, we have estimated the effect that institutional quality might have in this relationship in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). The results show that lower quality institutions in SSA are a hindrance to the role financial development plays in the growth of the manufacturing industrial sector, as compared with developed countries. These findings are robust when a quantile regression model is used. Furthermore, the results confirm that the relationship between per capita GDP and industrialization is nonlinear. Finally, in SSA, the abundance of natural resources has an adverse effect on the manufacturing industrial value added, providing more evidence for the Dutch disease hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We empirically examine Friedman's hypothesis that floating exchange rates facilitate current account adjustments. The main innovation in the empirical analysis is to control for the sample selection bias. We provide robust evidence that current account persistence decreases with the flexibility of nominal exchange rate regimes and is significantly higher under hard pegs than under floating for industrial countries. The economic driving force of this finding is that the channel of the exchange rate adjustment mechanism dominates in affecting the real exchange rate persistence relative to its shock channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs the bibliometric analysis approach to examine research on ethical decision‐making (EDM) of accountants from 1987 to 2022. The study specifically examines the developments in EDM research and evaluates the intellectual structure of the research field. Employing citation, co‐authorship, co‐occurrence and bibliographic coupling analyses, bibliometric data on 908 publications from the Scopus database was analysed. The results indicate that there has been a significant increase in the rate of publication on EDM of accountants following the spate of ethical breaches in the early 2000s. Further, we find that a large proportion of EDM in accounting research originates from developed countries like USA, Australia and UK. Our cluster analysis suggests that two main research streams have evolved over the period. Prior to 2012, researchers in this field mainly focused on individual level issues, particularly, on the determinants of the EDM process of individuals. Research, post 2012, however, has focused on firm‐level EDM issues including organisational ethics, culture, and corporate governance. The study further discusses the themes in detail andproposes a future research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internationalization of science has prompted major science funding agencies to seek to further international cooperation in basic research through the use of outposts based outside of the agency's home country. While these offices are all international in scope, the strategies and utilization of these offices vary. This paper begins by outlining the motivations and theoretical framework for international offices, drawing specifically from a proximity theory of relationships. Subsequently the paper presents a typology of activities that fall under the rubric of international engagement in science. We will then critically examine the international offices of four leading basic research funding agencies and attempt to characterize and describe the distinct models that these agencies employ. Building from the models of organization, the paper closes with a discussion of the impacts of these overseas offices as well as other policy implications from the use of different engagement strategies in fostering international collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence shows that most foreign direct investment (FDI) flows from developed to developed countries (North-North) in skilled labor-intensive industries. This paper builds a model that incorporates labor training into the proximity-concentration tradeoffs to analyze the entry mode of multinationals to a foreign country. Production requires both skilled labor and unskilled labor. A multinational pursuing FDI needs to provide training to some workers in the host country to equip them with skills that are specific to the production of the firm. Labor training and skill specificity lead to contract friction. It is shown that in skilled labor-intensive industries, FDI increases along with the economic development level of the host country, whereas in unskilled labor-intensive industries, the reverse is true. This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the empirical findings on the prevalence of North-North FDI in skilled labor-industries and North-South FDI in unskilled labor-intensive industries [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT By using data on 21 industrial countries from 1984 to 2006 and a large number of controls, this paper studies the unemployment effects of one major characteristic of the financial system: its level of sophistication, that is, the variety of financial institutions and instruments available to the economy. The paper finds that a higher level of sophistication is likely to reduce unemployment among the total labour force as well as among high-skilled workers. The magnitude of both effects appears to be modest. By contrast, financial system sophistication does not appear to affect unemployment among low-skilled workers. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The present article raised the pressing issue of population aging in Russia and investigated the challenges this phenomenon poses to the social security system. As modern studies show, this challenge is typical for both developing and developed countries. The paper intended to propose ways of reforming the pension system of the Russian Federation to ensure its independence from the state budget. Methods: The provided suggestions were based on the analysis of the current demographic problems in Russia, review of the dynamics of its population age composition, consideration of the most popular strategies for reforming pension systems in developed countries, and the specific features of the Russian labor market. Results: Currently, for Russian Federation, the population over the working age grew by 11.6%, and number of the working‐age people and those under the working‐age decreased by 9.3% and 5.6%, respectively. The inverse dependency ratio ranged from 2.2 to 1.7 in 2019 to the level of 1.78 for 10 years. As a result, it was noted that ignoring the issue of population aging can lead to a decrease in state budget stability and adversely impact the country's economic prosperity. Conclusion: The novelty of the research lies in selection of the main problems of reforming country budgets in connection with the increase in the number of elderly people and changes in the dynamics of pension contributions in connection with the growing expectations of the population. Among other things, the article also highlighted the presence of additional difficulties that may accompany the implementation of the proposed measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the link between the emigration of entrepreneurs and the emergence of economic development traps, which has not received much attention in the existing literature. We develop a theoretical model, where the economy is divided into a traditional and a modern sector. Entrepreneurs establish firms in the modern sector to produce varieties of differentiated goods. Positive spillover effects exist in the modern sector. We show that the emigration of entrepreneurs can cause economic development traps, where the productivity of the modern sector remains low, and more importantly, the economy is stuck in the traditional structure. In the typical case, the development traps exhibit strong history dependence. Under certain conditions, regardless of the initial endowment of entrepreneurs, economic development traps are unavoidable. By examining the effect of government policy intervention to correct the market failure arising from spillover effects, our study also provides a theoretical foundation for government policies used by some developed countries to attract foreign entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burnout and related concepts such as resilience, wellness, and taking care of healthcare professionals have become increasingly prevalent in the medical literature. Most of the work in this area comes from high‐income countries, with the remainder from upper‐middle‐income countries, and very little from lower‐middle‐income or low‐income countries. Sub‐Saharan Africa is particularly poorly represented in this body of literature. Anglo‐American concepts are often applied to different jurisdictions without consideration of cultural and societal differences. However, anesthesia providers in this region have unique challenges, with both the highest burden of "surgical" disease in the world and the least resources, both in terms of human resources for health and in terms of essential drugs and equipment. The effect of burnout on healthcare systems is also likely to be very different with the current human resources for the health crisis in East and Central Africa. According to the Joint Learning Initiative Managing for Performance framework, the three essential factors for building a workforce to effectively support a healthcare system are coverage, competence, and motivation. Current efforts to build capacity in anesthesia in East and Southern Africa focus largely on coverage and competence, but neglect motivation at the risk of failing to support a sustainable workforce. In this paper, we include a review of the relevant literature, as well as draw from personal experience living and working in East and Southern Africa, to describe the unique issues surrounding burnout, resilience, and wellness in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pregnant women with type 1 diabetes, a low but sufficient, intake of carbohydrates is important to aim for near normal glycemic control. However, knowledge about the carbohydrate intake in this group is limited. To assess the average quantity and quality of carbohydrate intake in pregnant women with type 1diabetes compared to healthy pregnant women and current dietary reference intakes. A narrative literature search was performed in PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library and by using a snow‐ball search technique to identify papers published on studies conducted in industrialized countries within the last 20 years. Intakes of carbohydrate were assessed qualitatively in relation to the Dietary Reference Intakes recommended by the American Diabetes Association and quantitatively as mean intake of dietary fiber. Five observational studies including 810 pregnant women with type 1 diabetes and 15 observational studies with a total of 118,246 healthy pregnant women were identified. The mean total carbohydrate intake was within the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range (45%–64% of energy intake) in both groups. In pregnant women with type 1 diabetes, the average total intake was 218 ± 19 g/day, which was 20% (53 g/day) lower than in healthy pregnant women. Mean intake of dietary fiber in women with diabetes was lower than the recommended adequate intake for healthy women. With the limitations of pronounced heterogeneity across the included studies, pregnant women with type 1 diabetes reported a mean total carbohydrate intake, which was lower than in healthy pregnant women but still within the recommended range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By integrating the two areas of competition–performance and environment–performance, this research explores if competition matters in the relationship between environmental practices and interest margins in the market. A panel of 458 banks from 74 countries for the period of 2006–2016 is used, and the sample is further divided into developed and developing countries. This paper uses the system Generalized Method of Moments estimator to tackle potential omitted variable bias, endogeneity, and simultaneity issues. Without competition, environmental practices only affect banks in developing countries; however, the results show a significant impact for the full sample, including developed countries, when the competition is taken into consideration, suggesting that competition might play a role in the relationship of environmental practices and interest margins. In the full sample, competition impacts the relationship negatively after a moderate level of competition is reached in the market. The environmental practices in developing countries are prone to competition in the market. In developed countries, the competition is found to be lightly positively moderating the impact of environmental practices on interest margins. Based on these findings, it is recommended that developing countries should have a low or moderate level of competition to encourage environmental practices. For developed countries, however, high competition should be preferred to encourage banks to consider environmental practices as one of their core business strategies. These findings are found robust to different statistical estimators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a formal growth model in an open economy environment that captures dual labour market characteristics. The mechanism involves economic growth driven by capital accumulation in a country with a Lewisian labour market leading to increasing labour participation at a near constant wage. The model shows that surplus labour plays a critical role in explaining different economic growth paths and structural changes in both developing and developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of international trade and financial networks on the current account balances. The network centrality measures are computed based on the structure and volume of trade and financial flows among the countries. A more central position in the international trade network improves the current account balance in developed countries but has no impact on the current account in developing countries. A more central position in the international financial network improves the current account balance in developed and developing countries. Besides, the impact of the international financial network on the current account has become stronger over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]