Public and private mitigation for natural disasters in Japan

An increasing number of studies analyze the relationship between natural disaster damage and income levels, but they do not consider the distinction between public and private disaster mitigation. This paper empirically distinguishes these two types of mitigation using Japanese prefectural panel data from 1975 to 2007. Our results show that public mitigation rather than private mitigation has contributed to mitigating the total damage resulting from natural disasters. Our estimation of cost-benefit ratios for each prefecture confirms that the mitigation efforts of urban prefectures are less effective than those of rural prefectures in focusing on both large and frequent/small disasters. Hence, urban prefectures need to reassess their public mitigation measures. Furthermore, to lessen the damage resulting from extreme catastrophes, policy makers are required to invest in improved mitigation infrastructures when faced with a high probability of disasters.

Econometric models of Finnish non-industrial private forest owners' timber supply and timber stock

This dissertation examines the short- and long-run impacts of timber prices and other factors affecting NIPF owners' timber harvesting and timber stocking decisions. The utility-based Faustmann model provides testable hypotheses of the exogenous variables retained in the timber supply analysis. The timber stock function, derived from a two-period biomass harvesting model, is estimated using a two-step GMM estimator based on balanced panel data from 1983 to 1991. Timber supply functions are estimated using a Tobit model adjusted for heteroscedasticity and nonnormality of errors based on panel data from 1994 to 1998. Results show that if specification analysis of the Tobit model is ignored, inconsistency and biasedness can have a marked effect on parameter estimates. The empirical results show that owner's age is the single most important factor determining timber stock; timber price is the single most important factor in harvesting decision. The results of the timber supply estimations can be interpreted using utility-based Faustmann model of a forest owner who values a growing timber in situ.

Metsänomistajakunnan rakenteen ennustaminen

The general change in the population structure and its impacts on the forest ownership structure were investigated in the thesis. The research assumed that the structural change in society has an effect on the outlook of the non-industrial private forest ownership. The changes in the structure of society were mainly restricted to population, education and occupation structures. The migration of the rural population into cities was also taken into consideration. The structural changes both in society and the non-industrial private forest ownership were examined as phenomena and their development directions were investigated since the middle of the 1970s. It could be established that the changes in the structures were mainly of the same kind in society as in forest owner structure. The clearest similarities between the changes in population and forest owner structure could be found in an increased mean age, a decrease in the 18 to 39 age bracket, those without a degree and in the farmers' shares. Furthermore it could be stated that migration into cities had taken place among both the forest owners and the general population. The main part of the research was concentrated on estimating regression models that explain the non-industrial private forest ownership change by the structural change in the population. A panel data was gathered from population statistics and previous forest ownership research information. The panel contained the years 1990 and 1999. With the assistance of the panel data it was possible to estimate regression and fixed effects' models that explained the structural changes in the non-industrial private forest ownership by evolution in the whole population. In the use of the estimated models authorities' forecasts considering the population were exploited. Only a few of the estimated models were statistically significant. This could be explained due to lack of a larger panel data. In addition the structural change of the non-industrial forest ownership was forecasted by trends.

Components of productivity growth in Finnish agriculture

The objective was to measure productivity growth and its components in Finnish agriculture, especially in dairy farming. The objective was also to compare different methods and models - both parametric (stochastic frontier analysis) and non-parametric (data envelopment analysis) - in estimating the components of productivity growth and the sensitivity of results with respect to different approaches. The parametric approach was also applied in the investigation of various aspects of heterogeneity. A common feature of the first three of five articles is that they concentrate empirically on technical change, technical efficiency change and the scale effect, mainly on the basis of the decompositions of Malmquist productivity index. The last two articles explore an intermediate route between the Fisher and Malmquist productivity indices and develop a detailed but meaningful decomposition for the Fisher index, including also empirical applications. Distance functions play a central role in the decomposition of Malmquist and Fisher productivity indices. Three panel data sets from 1990s have been applied in the study. The common feature of all data used is that they cover the periods before and after Finnish EU accession. Another common feature is that the analysis mainly concentrates on dairy farms or their roughage production systems. Productivity growth on Finnish dairy farms was relatively slow in the 1990s: approximately one percent per year, independent of the method used. Despite considerable annual variation, productivity growth seems to have accelerated towards the end of the period. There was a slowdown in the mid-1990s at the time of EU accession. No clear immediate effects of EU accession with respect to technical efficiency could be observed. Technical change has been the main contributor to productivity growth on dairy farms. However, average technical efficiency often showed a declining trend, meaning that the deviations from the best practice frontier are increasing over time. This suggests different paths of adjustment at the farm level. However, different methods to some extent provide different results, especially for the sub-components of productivity growth. In most analyses on dairy farms the scale effect on productivity growth was minor. A positive scale effect would be important for improving the competitiveness of Finnish agriculture through increasing farm size. This small effect may also be related to the structure of agriculture and to the allocation of investments to specific groups of farms during the research period. The result may also indicate that the utilization of scale economies faces special constraints in Finnish conditions. However, the analysis of a sample of all types of farms suggested a more considerable scale effect than the analysis on dairy farms.

On the contribution of information and communication technology to productivity growth in Australia

This paper revisits the so-called ‘ICT-productivity paradox’ from a long-run perspective by using annual Australian data for 1965–2013. It provides estimates of long-run and short-run elasticities of labour productivity with respect to ICT capital deepening, and explores the nature of long-run causality among productivity growth and ICT and non-ICT capital deepening. The estimates of long-run elasticities are derived by employing both time-series and panel data econometric techniques. The empirical results provide strong confirmatory evidence of the long-run impact of ICT capital deepening on labour productivity in Australia.

Essays on Banking Crises

This thesis aims at finding the role of deposit insurance scheme and central bank (CB) in keeping the banking system safe. The thesis also studies the factors associated with long-lasting banking crises. The first essay analyzes the effect of using explicit deposit insurance scheme (EDIS), instead of using implicit deposit insurance scheme (IDIS), on banking crises. The panel data for the period of 1980-2003 includes all countries for which the data on EDIS or IDIS exist. 70% of the countries in the sample are less developed countries (LDCs). About 55% of the countries adopting EDIS also come from LDCs. The major finding is that the using of EDIS increases the crisis probability at a strong significance level. This probability is greater if the EDIS is inefficiently designed allowing higher scope of moral hazard problem. Specifically, the probability is greater if the EDIS provides higher coverage to deposits and if it is less powerful from the legal point of view. This study also finds that the less developed a country is to handle EDIS, the higher the chance of banking crisis. Once the underdevelopment of an economy handling the EDIS is controlled, the EDIS separately is no longer a significant factor of banking crises. The second essay aims at determining whether a country s powerful CB can lessen the instability of the banking sector by minimizing the likelihood of a banking crisis. The data used include indicators of the CB s autonomy for a set of countries over the period of 1980-89. The study finds that in aggregate a more powerful CB lessens the probability of banking crisis. When the CB s authority is disentangled with respect to its responsibilities, the study finds that the longer tenure of CB s chief executive officer and the greater power of CB in assigning interest rate on government loans are necessary for reducing the probability of banking crisis. The study also finds that the probability of crisis reduces more if an autonomous CB can perform its duties in a country with stronger law and order tradition. The costs of long-lasting banking crises are high because both the depositors and the investors lose confidence in the banking system. For a rapid recovery of a crisis, the government very often undertakes one or more crisis resolution policy (CRP) measures. The third essay examines the CRP and other explanatory variables correlated with the durations of banking crises. The major finding is that the CRP measure allowing the regulation forbearance to keep the insolvent banks operative and the public debt relief program are respectively strongly and weakly significant to increase the durations of crises. Some other explanatory variables, which were found by previous studies to be related with the probability of crises to occur, are also correlated with the durations of crises.

Financial liberalization and sectoral reallocation of capital in South Africa

We examine the impact of financial reforms on efficient reallocation of capital within and between sectors in South Africa using firm-level panel data for the period 1991–2008. The measure of efficient allocation of capital is based on the Tobin’s Q. We find that financial reforms are associated with improvements in within-sector, but not between-sector allocation of capital. These results imply that for South Africa to unleash the potential for take-off that is often associated with reallocation of resources from the primitive to modern sectors, reforms that focus beyond the financial sector are necessary. While more research is necessary to determine what would fully constitute such additional reforms, our analysis shows that reforms that improve the quality of economic institutions may be a step in the right the direction.

Sustainability and Mission Drift in Microfinance

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) are constrained by double bottom-lines: meeting social obligations (the first bottom-line) and obtaining financial self-sufficiency (the second bottom-line). The proponents of the first bottom-line, however, are increasingly concerned that there is a trade-off between these two bottom-lines—i.e., getting hold of financial self-sufficiency may lead MFIs to drift away from their original social mission of serving the very poor, commonly known as mission drift in microfinance which is still a controversial issue. This study aims at addressing the concerns for mission drift in microfinance in a performance analysis framework. Chapter 1 deals with theoretical background, motivation and objectives of the topic. Then the study explores the validity of three major and related present-day concerns. Chapter 2 explores the impact of profitability on outreach-quality in MFIs, commonly known as mission drift, using a unique panel database that contains 4-9 years’ observations from 253 MFIs in 69 countries. Chapter 3 introduces factor analysis, a multivariate tool, in the process of analysing mission drift in microfinance and the exercise in this chapter demonstrates how the statistical tool of factor analysis can be utilised to examine this conjecture. In order to explore why some microfinance institutions (MFIs) perform better than others, Chapter 4 looks at factors which have an impact on several performance indicators of MFIs—profitability or sustainability, repayment status and cost indicators—based on quality-data on 353 institutions in 77 countries. The study also demonstrates whether such mission drift can be avoided while having self-sustainability. In Chapter 5 we examine the impact of capital and financing structure on the performance of microfinance institutions where estimations with instruments have been performed using a panel dataset of 782 MFIs in 92 countries for the period 2000-2007. Finally, Chapter 6 concludes the study by summarising the results from the previous chapters and suggesting some directions for future studies.

Determinants of Profit Sharing in the Finnish Sector

This study investigates the role of factors that determine individual employee’s and firms participation in profit sharing schemes. Using a large panel data of Finnish employees for the period 1996-2000 we analyse individual and workplace characteristics that make firms employ profit sharing schemes and workers susceptible of receiving profit sharing bonuses. In particular two links between profit sharing schemes and workers performance have been analysed. First, in looking at profit sharing as an incentive device the results show a positive link between firm size and monitoring costs. Second, we find that younger individuals with higher mean salary and capacity to bear risk are more susceptible to profit sharing schemes. The industrial sector in which the individual is employed is also an important determinant factor. We find weak evidence of a relationship between performance of firms and employment of profit sharing schemes at the industrial sector level.

Income Inequality and Healt: A Multi-Country Analysis

This paper investigates the effect of income inequality on health status. A model of health status was specified in which the main variables were income level, income inequality, the level of savings and the level of education. The model was estimated using a panel data set for 44 countries covering six time periods. The results indicate that income inequality (measured by the Gini coefficient) has a significant effect on health status when we control for the levels of income, savings and education. The relationship is consistent regardless of the specification of health status and income. Thus, the study results provide some empirical support for the income inequality hypothesis.

Process of burnout: structure, antecedents, and consequences

The major changes that have been witnessed in today's workplaces are challenging the mental well-being of employed people. Stress and burnout are considered to be modern epidemics, and their importance to physical health and work ability has been acknowledged world-wide. The aim of the thesis was to study the concept of burnout as a process proceeding from its antecedents, through the development of the syndrome, and to its outcomes. Several work-related factors considered antecedents of burnout were studied in different occupational groups. The syndrome of burnout is seen as consisting of three dimensions - exhaustion, cynicism and lack of professional efficacy - and different alternatives for the sequential development of these dimensions were tested. Furthermore, several indicators of the severely detrimental health and work ability outcomes of burnout were investigated in a longitudinal study design. The research questions were as follows. 1) Is burnout, as measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI-GS), a three-dimensional construct and how invariant is the factorial structure across occupations (Finnish) and national samples (Finnish, Swedish and Dutch)? How persistent is exhaustion over time? 2) What is the sequential process of burnout? Is it similar across occupations? How do work stressors relate to the process? 3) How does burnout relate to severe health consequences as well as temporary and chronic work disability according to hospitalization periods, sick-leave episodes and receiving disability pensions? The data were collected between 1986 and 2005. The population of the study consisted of respondents to a company-wide questionnaire survey carried out in 1996-1997 (N=9705, response rate 63%). The participants comprised 6025 blue-collar workers and 3680 white-collar workers. The majority were men (N=7494) and the average age was 43.7 years. In addition, a sample from the population had responded to a questionnaire survey in 1988, which was combined with the 1996 data to form panel data on 713 respondents. The register-based data were collected between 1986 and 2005 from 1) the company's occupational health services' records for a sample of respondents from the 1996 questionnaire survey (sick-leave data), 2) hospitalization records from the Hospital discharge register, and 3) disability pension records from the Finnish Centre for Pensions. These data were combined person by person with the 1996 questionnaire survey data with the help of personal identification numbers which were saved with the study numbers by the researchers. The results showed that burnout consists of three separate but correlating symptoms: exhaustion, cynicism and lack of professional efficacy. As a syndrome, burnout was strongly related to job stressors at work, and seemed to develop from exhaustion through cynicism to lack of professional efficacy in a similar manner among white-collar and blue-collar employees. The results also showed that exhaustion persisted even after eight years of follow-up but did not predict cynicism or lack of professional efficacy after that amount of time. Nor were job stressors longitudinally related to burnout. Longitudinal results were obtained for the severe health-related consequences of burnout. The investigated outcomes represented different phases of health deterioration ranging from sick-leaves and hospitalization periods to receiving work disability pensions. The results showed that burnout syndrome, and its elements of exhaustion and cynicism, were related to future mental and cardiovascular disorders as indicated by hospitalization periods. Burnout was also related to future sick-leave periods due to mental, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal disorders. Of the separate elements, exhaustion was related to the same three categories of disorder, cynicism to mental, musculoskeletal and digestive disorders, and lack of professional efficacy to mental and musculoskeletal disorders. Burnout also predicted receiving disability pensions due to mental and musculoskeletal disorders among initially healthy subjects. Exhaustion was related to receiving disability pensions even when self-reported chronic illness was taken into account. The results suggest that burnout is a multidimensional, chronic, work-related syndrome, which may have serious consequences for health and work ability.

Income inequality in the process of economic development : An empirical approach

This thesis studies the effect of income inequality on economic growth. This is done by analyzing panel data from several countries with both short and long time dimensions of the data. Two of the chapters study the direct effect of inequality on growth, and one chapter also looks at the possible indirect effect of inequality on growth by assessing the effect of inequality on savings. In Chapter two, the effect of inequality on growth is studied by using a panel of 70 countries and a new EHII2008 inequality measure. Chapter contributes on two problems that panel econometric studies on the economic effect of inequality have recently encountered: the comparability problem associated with the commonly used Deininger and Squire s Gini index, and the problem relating to the estimation of group-related elasticities in panel data. In this study, a simple way to 'bypass' vagueness related to the use of parametric methods to estimate group-related parameters is presented. The idea is to estimate the group-related elasticities implicitly using a set of group-related instrumental variables. The estimation results with new data and method indicate that the relationship between income inequality and growth is likely to be non-linear. Chapter three incorporates the EHII2.1 inequality measure and a panel with annual time series observations from 38 countries to test the existence of long-run equilibrium relation(s) between inequality and the level of GDP. Panel unit root tests indicate that both the logarithmic EHII2.1 inequality measure and the logarithmic GDP per capita series are I(1) nonstationary processes. They are also found to be cointegrated of order one, which implies that there is a long-run equilibrium relation between them. The long-run growth elasticity of inequality is found to be negative in the middle-income and rich economies, but the results for poor economies are inconclusive. In the fourth Chapter, macroeconomic data on nine developed economies spanning across four decades starting from the year 1960 is used to study the effect of the changes in the top income share to national and private savings. The income share of the top 1 % of population is used as proxy for the distribution of income. The effect of inequality on private savings is found to be positive in the Nordic and Central-European countries, but for the Anglo-Saxon countries the direction of the effect (positive vs. negative) remains somewhat ambiguous. Inequality is found to have an effect national savings only in the Nordic countries, where it is positive.

Crystal structure of quenched and in-field electroluminescent phosphors

Electroluminescent zinc sulfide doped with copper and chloride (ZnS:Cu, Cl) powder was heated to 400°C and rapidly quenched to room temperature. Comparison between the quenched and non-quenched phosphors using synchrotron radiation X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) (λ = 0.828692 Å) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) was made. XRPD shows that the expected highly faulted structure is observed with excellent resolution out to 150° 2θ (or to (12 2 2) of the sphalerite phase). The quenched sample compared to the unheated sample shows a large change in peak ratios between 46.7° and 46.9°, which is thought to correspond to the wurtzite (0 0 6), (0 3 2) and sphalerite (3 3 3)/(5 1 1) peaks. Hence, a large proportion of this sphalerite diffraction is lost from the material upon rapid quenching, but not when the material is allowed to cool slowly. The Zn K-edge XAS data indicate that the crystalline structures are indistinguishable using this technique, but do give an indication that the electronic structure has altered due to changing intensity of the white line. It is noted that the blue electroluminescence (EL) emission bands are lost upon quenching: however, a large amount of total EL emission intensity is also removed, which is consistent with our findings. We report the XRPD of a working alternating-current electroluminescence device in the synchrotron X-ray beam, which exhibits a new diffraction pattern when the device is powered in an AC field even though the phosphor is fixed in the binder. Significantly, only a few crystals are required to yield the diffraction data because of the high flux X-ray source. These in panel data show multiple sharp diffraction lines spread out under the region, where capillary data show broad diffraction intensity indicating that the phosphor powder is comprised of unique crystals, each having different structures.

Methods for Measuring Aggregate Costs of Conflict

This paper reviews the methods for measuring the economic cost of conflict. Estimating the economic costs of conflict requires a counterfactual calculation, which makes this a very difficult task. Social researchers have resorted to different estimation methods depending on the particular effect in question. The method used in each case depends on the units being analyzed (firms, sectors, regions or countries), the outcome variable under study (aggregate output, market valuation of firms, market shares, etc.) and data availability (a single cross-section, time series or panel data). This paper reviews existing methods used in the literature to assess the economic impact of conflict: cost accounting, cross-section methods, time series methods, panel data methods, gravity models, event studies, natural experiments and comparative case studies. The paper ends with a discussion of cost estimates and directions for further research.

Long-Term Growth and Persistence with Endogenous Depreciation: Theory and Evidence

Previous research has shown a strong positive correlation between short-term persistence and long-term output growth as well as between depreciation rates and long-term output growth. This evidence, therefore, contradicts the standard predictions from traditional neoclassical or AK-type growth models with exogenous depreciation. In this paper, we first confirm these findings for a larger sample of 101 countries. We then study the dynamics of growth and persistence in a model where both the depreciation rate and growth are endogenous and procyclical. We find that the model s predictions become consistent with the empirical evidence on persistence, long-term growth and depreciation rates.