A 14-item Mediterranean diet assessment tool and obesity indexes among high-risk subjects: the PREDIMED trial

Objective: Independently of total caloric intake, a better quality of the diet (for example, conformity to the Mediterranean diet) is associated with lower obesity risk. It is unclear whether a brief dietary assessment tool, instead of full-length comprehensive methods, can also capture this association. In addition to reduced costs, a brief tool has the interesting advantage of allowing immediate feedback to participants in interventional studies. Another relevant question is which individual items of such a brief tool are responsible for this association. We examined these associations using a 14-item tool of adherence to the Mediterranean diet as exposure and body mass index, waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) as outcomes. Design: Cross-sectional assessment of all participants in the"PREvención con DIeta MEDiterránea" (PREDIMED) trial. Subjects: 7,447 participants (55-80 years, 57% women) free of cardiovascular disease, but with either type 2 diabetes or $3 cardiovascular risk factors. Trained dietitians used both a validated 14-item questionnaire and a full-length validated 137-item food frequency questionnaire to assess dietary habits. Trained nurses measured weight, height and waist circumference. Results: Strong inverse linear associations between the 14-item tool and all adiposity indexes were found. For a two-point increment in the 14-item score, the multivariable-adjusted differences in WHtR were 20.0066 (95% confidence interval,- 0.0088 to 20.0049) for women and-0.0059 (-0.0079 to-0.0038) for men. The multivariable-adjusted odds ratio for a WHtR.0.6 in participants scoring $10 points versus #7 points was 0.68 (0.57 to 0.80) for women and 0.66 (0.54 to 0.80) for men. High consumption of nuts and low consumption of sweetened/carbonated beverages presented the strongest inverse associations with abdominal obesity. Conclusions: A brief 14-item tool was able to capture a strong monotonic inverse association between adherence to a good quality dietary pattern (Mediterranean diet) and obesity indexes in a population of adults at high cardiovascular risk.

Anàlisi de la gestió de fons d’inversió de renda variable en el període 2009-2013

La crisi financera que es va originar l’any 2007 va tenir uns efectes devastadors a tots els àmbits de l’economia. El mercat hipotecari es va desplomar i l’accés al crèdit es va restringir a la majoria de la població. Els efectes que va tenir la crisi sobre aquests mercats han estat analitzats i estudiats repetidament en diverses assignatures. Però el que es vol observar amb la realització d’aquest treball són els efectes que va provocar la crisi econòmica sobre un altre àmbit del mercat financer, el mercat de fons d’estalvi i més concretament, en el de fons d’inversió. Aquest treball vol analitzar si els mercats espanyol i europeu de fons d’inversió ha patit els efectes de la crisi econòmica i si ha estat així, en quin grau s’han vist afectats. Aquests mercats venen regits per experts professionals en la matèria i la rendibilitat d’aquests actius vindrà determinada per la gestió que aquests facin. Per poder mesurar si la seva gestió aconsegueix millorar els resultats que podríem obtenir invertint en el mercat, utilitzarem uns índexs financers anomenats mesures de performance. Dins el ventall disponible de fons d’inversió, ens centrarem en el mercat de renda variable ja que és el que presenta major variabilitat i està més sotmès a possibles canvis en el mercat. En concret s’analitzaran els resultats de la gestió del mercat de fons d’inversió de renda variable durant els anys posteriors a la crisi fins a l’actualitat tant al mercat espanyol com al mercat europeu per diferents categories de fons.

Incumbent audit firm-provided tax services and the clients with low financial reporting quality

This study investigates whether incumbent audit firm-provided tax services enhance or impair the likelihood of acknowledging client companies’ low financial reporting quality. In particular, we examine the association between tax-related fees and the likelihood of timely restatements, and internal control weakness disclosures among a sample of US companies that all have misstatements in financial information. The empirical findings indicate that companies paying higher tax-related fees are less likely to disclose SOX 404 internal control weakness disclosures, implying that underlying control problems are unacknowledged when incumbent audit firm provided tax-related fees are higher. However, the findings suggest that just providing both audit and tax-related services does not have an impact on audit quality per se, but rather it is the magnitude of the tax-related fees in particular that counts. We also find some evidence suggesting that companies paying higher tax-related fees have higher likelihood of restatement lags, whereas companies paying smaller tax-related fees to their audit firm restate financial statements in a timelier manner. Overall, the findings suggest that audit scrutiny of client companies with low quality financial reporting is weaker when the magnitude of tax-related fees is higher.

Emergence and development of a financial cluster: the evolution of Andorra’s banking deposits in the long-term, 1931-2007

This paper explores the origins of Andorra’s financial cluster. It shows that the free movement of currency, the protection of infant industry, and geographical concentration lie at the foundation of the cluster’s competitive advantage. Drawing on a new set of data, the paper also provides for the first time an estimate of the total deposits held by Andorra’s banks between 1931 and 2007. Based on this new information, the paper reaches the conclusion that the development of the cluster went through four distinct phases in which large companies, acting as leaders, played an important role in enhancing the cluster’s business capabilities.

Fair value versus historic cost-valuation for biological assets: Implications for the quality of financial information

[spa] Este trabajo realiza un estudio empírico sobre los efectos, que se señalan en las discusiones teóricas, de la utilización del valor razonable (VR) frente al coste histórico (CH), utilizando dos muestras de explotaciones agrícolas, una de las cuales valora sus activos biológicos a CH y la otra a VR. No se encontraron diferencias significativas en los beneficios e ingresos entre ambas muestras, ni siquiera en sus volatilidades. Tampoco se encontraron diferencias significativas en rentabilidad, manipulación contable, ni en el poder de ambos criterios de valoración para predecir los flujos de tesorería. Por el contrario, la mayor parte de los tests realizados revelan un mayor poder de los beneficios calculados bajo el VR para la predicción de los beneficios futuros, respecto de cuando son calculados bajo el CH. El estudio proporciona también evidencia empírica de prácticas contables defectuosas de CH en el sector agrícola, concluyendo que el VR puede representar un criterio de valoración interesante para un sector, como el agrícola, caracterizado por el predominio de pequeñas explotaciones familiares.

Fair value versus historic cost-valuation for biological assets: Implications for the quality of financial information

[spa] Este trabajo realiza un estudio empírico sobre los efectos, que se señalan en las discusiones teóricas, de la utilización del valor razonable (VR) frente al coste histórico (CH), utilizando dos muestras de explotaciones agrícolas, una de las cuales valora sus activos biológicos a CH y la otra a VR. No se encontraron diferencias significativas en los beneficios e ingresos entre ambas muestras, ni siquiera en sus volatilidades. Tampoco se encontraron diferencias significativas en rentabilidad, manipulación contable, ni en el poder de ambos criterios de valoración para predecir los flujos de tesorería. Por el contrario, la mayor parte de los tests realizados revelan un mayor poder de los beneficios calculados bajo el VR para la predicción de los beneficios futuros, respecto de cuando son calculados bajo el CH. El estudio proporciona también evidencia empírica de prácticas contables defectuosas de CH en el sector agrícola, concluyendo que el VR puede representar un criterio de valoración interesante para un sector, como el agrícola, caracterizado por el predominio de pequeñas explotaciones familiares.

Fair value versus historical cost-based valuation for biological assets: Predictability of financial information

There is an intense debate on the convenience of moving from historical cost (HC) toward the fair value (FV) principle. The debate and academic research is usually concerned with financial instruments, but the IAS 41 requirement of fair valuation for biological assets brings it into the agricultural domain. This paper performs an empirical study with a sample of Spanish farms valuing biological assets at HC and a sample applying FV, finding no significant differences between both valuation methods to assess future cash flows. However, most tests reveal more predictive power of future earnings under fair valuation of biological assets, which is not explained by differences in volatility of earnings and profitability. The study also evidences the existence of flawed HC accounting practices for biological assets in agriculture, which suggests scarce information content of this valuation method in the predominant small business units existing in the agricultural sector in advanced Western countries

Fiscal policy and interest rates: the role of financial and economic integration

It is commonly believed that a fiscal expansion raises interest rates. However, these crowding out effects of deficits have been found to be small or non-existent. One explanation is that financial integration offsets interest rate differentials on globalised bond markets. This paper measures the degree of integration of government bond markets, using spatial modelling techniques to take this spillover on financial markets into account. Our main finding is that the crowding out effect on domestic interest rates is significant, but is reduced by spillover across borders. This spillover is important in major crises or in periods of coordinated policy actions. This result is generally robust to various measures of cross-country linkages. We find spillover to be much stronger among EU countries.

Financial stress transmission in EMU sovereign bond market volatility: a connectedness analysis

This paper measures the connectedness in EMU sovereign market volatility between April 1999 and January 2014, in order to monitor stress transmission and to identify episodes of intensive spillovers from one country to the others. To this end, we first perform a static and dynamic analysis to measure the total volatility connectedness in the entire period (the system-wide approach) using a framework recently proposed by Diebold and Yılmaz (2014). Second, we make use of a dynamic analysis to evaluate the net directional connectedness for each country and apply panel model techniques to investigate its determinants. Finally, to gain further insights, we examine the timevarying behaviour of net pair-wise directional connectedness at different stages of the recent sovereign debt crisis.

Extending the roughness of the data via transitive closures of similarity indexes

One main assumption in the theory of rough sets applied to information tables is that the elements that exhibit the same information are indiscernible (similar) and form blocks that can be understood as elementary granules of knowledge about the universe. We propose a variant of this concept defining a measure of similarity between the elements of the universe in order to consider that two objects can be indiscernible even though they do not share all the attribute values because the knowledge is partial or uncertain. The set of similarities define a matrix of a fuzzy relation satisfying reflexivity and symmetry but transitivity thus a partition of the universe is not attained. This problem can be solved calculating its transitive closure what ensure a partition for each level belonging to the unit interval [0,1]. This procedure allows generalizing the theory of rough sets depending on the minimum level of similarity accepted. This new point of view increases the rough character of the data because increases the set of indiscernible objects. Finally, we apply our results to a not real application to be capable to remark the differences and the improvements between this methodology and the classical one

Model for interevent times with long tails and multifractality in human communications: An application to financial trading

Social, technological, and economic time series are divided by events which are usually assumed to be random, albeit with some hierarchical structure. It is well known that the interevent statistics observed in these contexts differs from the Poissonian profile by being long-tailed distributed with resting and active periods interwoven. Understanding mechanisms generating consistent statistics has therefore become a central issue. The approach we present is taken from the continuous-time random-walk formalism and represents an analytical alternative to models of nontrivial priority that have been recently proposed. Our analysis also goes one step further by looking at the multifractal structure of the interevent times of human decisions. We here analyze the intertransaction time intervals of several financial markets. We observe that empirical data describe a subtle multifractal behavior. Our model explains this structure by taking the pausing-time density in the form of a superstatistics where the integral kernel quantifies the heterogeneous nature of the executed tasks. A stretched exponential kernel provides a multifractal profile valid for a certain limited range. A suggested heuristic analytical profile is capable of covering a broader region.

A Comparison of the Environmental Impact of Different AOPs: Risk Indexes

Today, environmental impact associated with pollution treatment is a matter of great concern. A method is proposed for evaluating environmental risk associated with Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) applied to wastewater treatment. The method is based on the type of pollution (wastewater, solids, air or soil) and on materials and energy consumption. An Environmental Risk Index (E), constructed from numerical criteria provided, is presented for environmental comparison of processes and/or operations. The Operation Environmental Risk Index (EOi) for each of the unit operations involved in the process and the Aspects Environmental Risk Index (EAj) for process conditions were also estimated. Relative indexes were calculated to evaluate the risk of each operation (E/NOP) or aspect (E/NAS) involved in the process, and the percentage of the maximum achievable for each operation and aspect was found. A practical application of the method is presented for two AOPs: photo-Fenton and heterogeneous photocatalysis with suspended TiO2 in Solarbox. The results report the environmental risks associated with each process, so that AOPs tested and the operations involved with them can be compared.