Economic Analysis of the Driot de Suite - The Artist's Resale Royalty

The paper reviews Droit de Suite legislation which will provide that living artists and the estates of recently dead artists will receive a percentage royalty on resales of their work.

Socioeconomic causes of loss of animal genetic diversity: analysis and assessment

The proximate causes and processes involved in loss of breeds are outlined. The path-dependent effect and Swanson's dominance-effect are discussed in relation to lock-in of breed selection. These effects help to explain genetic erosion. It is shown that the extension of markets and economic globalisation have contributed significantly to the loss of breeds. The decoupling of animal husbandry from surrounding natural environmental conditions is further eroding the stock of genetic resources. Recent trends in animal husbandry raise serious sustainability issues, apart from animal welfare concerns. The extension of markets and economic globalisation have contributed significantly to the rapid loss of domestic breeds, especially livestock. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Economic Incentives to Conserve Wildlife on Private Lands: Analysis and Policy

Some believe that provision of private property rights in wildlife on private land provides a powerful economic incentive for nature conservation because it enables property owners to market such wildlife or its attributes. If such marketing is profitable, private landholders will conserve the wildlife concerned and its required habitat. But land is not always most profitably used for exploitation of wildlife, and many economic values of wildlife (such as non-use economic values) cannot be marketed. The mobility of some wildlife adds to the limitations of the private-property approach. While some species may be conserved by this approach, it is suboptimal as a single policy approach to nature conservation. Nevertheless, it is being experimented with, in the Northern Territory of Australia where landholders had a possibility of harvesting on their properties a quota of eggs and chicks of red-tailed black cockatoos for commercial sale. This scheme was expected to provide an incentive to private landholders to retain hollow trees essential for the nesting of these birds but failed. This case and others are analysed. Despite private-property failures, the long-term survival of some wildlife species depends on their ability to use private lands without severe harassment, either for their migration or to supplement their available resources, for example, the Asian elephant. Nature conservation on private land is often a useful, if not essential, supplement to conservation on public lands. Community and public incentives for such conservation are outlined.

Validation of multicriteria analysis models

Validation procedures play an important role in establishing the credibility of models, improving their relevance and acceptability. This article reviews the testing of models relevant to environmental and natural resource management with particular emphasis on models used in multicriteria analysis (MCA). Validation efforts for a model used in a MCA catchment management study in North Queensland, Australia, are presented. Determination of face validity is found to be a useful approach in evaluating this model, and sensitivity analysis is useful in checking the stability of the model. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

When does leverage hurt productivity growth? A firm-level analysis:a firm-level analysis

In the wake of the global financial crisis, several macroeconomic contributions have highlighted the risks of excessive credit expansion. In particular, too much finance can have a negative impact on growth. We examine the microeconomic foundations of this argument, positing a non-monotonic relationship between leverage and firm-level productivity growth in the spirit of the trade-off theory of capital structure. A threshold regression model estimated on a sample of Central and Eastern European countries confirms that TFP growth increases with leverage until the latter reaches a critical threshold beyond which leverage lowers TFP growth. This estimate can provide guidance to firms and policy makers on identifying "excessive" leverage. We find similar non-monotonic relationships between leverage and proxies for firm value. Our results are a first step in bridging the gap between the literature on optimal capital structure and the wider macro literature on the finance-growth nexus. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

From Cash to Electronic Payments: Microeconomic, Macroeconomic, and Policy Aspects of Retail Payment Systems

This dissertation explores three aspects of the economics and policy issues surrounding retail payments (low-value frequent payments): the microeconomic aspect, by measuring costs associated with retail payment instruments; the macroeconomic aspect, by quantifying the impact of the use of electronic rather than paper-based payment instruments on consumption and GDP; and the policy aspect, by identifying barriers that keep countries stuck with outdated payment systems, and recommending policy interventions to move forward with payments modernization. Payment system modernization has become a prominent part of the financial sector reform agenda in many advanced and developing countries. Greater use of electronic payments rather than cash and other paper-based instruments would have important economic and social benefits, including lower costs and thereby increased economic efficiency and higher incomes, while broadening access to the financial system, notably for people with moderate and low incomes. The dissertation starts with a general introduction on retail payments. Chapter 1 develops a theoretical model for measuring payments costs, and applies the model to Guyana—an emerging market in the midst of the transition from paper to electronic payments. Using primary survey data from Guyanese consumers, the results of the analysis indicate that annual costs related to the use of cash by consumers reach 2.5 percent of the country’s GDP. Switching to electronic payment instruments would provide savings amounting to 1 percent of GDP per year. Chapter 2 broadens the analysis to calculate the macroeconomic impacts of a move to electronic payments. Using a unique panel dataset of 76 countries across the 17-year span from 1998 to 2014 and a pooled OLS country fixed effects model, Chapter 2 finds that on average, use of debit and credit cards contribute USD 16.2 billion to annual global consumption, and USD 160 billion to overall annual global GDP. Chapter 3 provides an in-depth assessment of the Albanian payment cards and remittances market and recommends a set of incentives and regulations (both carrots and sticks) that would allow the country to modernize its payment system. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the lessons of the dissertation’s research and brings forward issues to be explored by future research in the retail payments area.

Raman microscopy of formamide-intercalated kaolinites treated by controlled-rate thermal analysis technology

Raman spectroscopy of formamide-intercalated kaolinites treated using controlled-rate thermal analysis technology (CRTA), allowing the separation of adsorbed formamide from intercalated formamide in formamide-intercalated kaolinites, is reported. The Raman spectra of the CRTA-treated formamide-intercalated kaolinites are significantly different from those of the intercalated kaolinites, which display a combination of both intercalated and adsorbed formamide. An intense band is observed at 3629 cm-1, attributed to the inner surface hydroxyls hydrogen bonded to the formamide. Broad bands are observed at 3600 and 3639 cm-1, assigned to the inner surface hydroxyls, which are hydrogen bonded to the adsorbed water molecules. The hydroxyl-stretching band of the inner hydroxyl is observed at 3621 cm-1 in the Raman spectra of the CRTA-treated formamide-intercalated kaolinites. The results of thermal analysis show that the amount of intercalated formamide between the kaolinite layers is independent of the presence of water. Significant differences are observed in the CO stretching region between the adsorbed and intercalated formamide.

Detailed analysis of a conservative difference approximation for the time fractional diffusion equation

Diffusion equations that use time fractional derivatives are attractive because they describe a wealth of problems involving non-Markovian Random walks. The time fractional diffusion equation (TFDE) is obtained from the standard diffusion equation by replacing the first-order time derivative with a fractional derivative of order α ∈ (0, 1). Developing numerical methods for solving fractional partial differential equations is a new research field and the theoretical analysis of the numerical methods associated with them is not fully developed. In this paper an explicit conservative difference approximation (ECDA) for TFDE is proposed. We give a detailed analysis for this ECDA and generate discrete models of random walk suitable for simulating random variables whose spatial probability density evolves in time according to this fractional diffusion equation. The stability and convergence of the ECDA for TFDE in a bounded domain are discussed. Finally, some numerical examples are presented to show the application of the present technique.