Community Colleges for International Development Inc., June 30, 2002

Community College Audit Report

Community Colleges for International Development Inc., Cedar Rapids Iowa, June 30, 2003

Community College Audit Reports

Statins for cardiovascular prevention according to different strategies: a cost analysis.

Background: Several studies have shown that treatment with HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins) can reduce coronary heart disease (CHD) rates. However, the cost effectiveness of statin treatment in the primary prevention of CHD has not been fully established. Objective: To estimate the costs of CHD prevention using statins in Switzerland according to different guidelines, over a 10-year period. Methods: The overall 10-year costs, costs of one CHD death averted, and of 1 year without CHD were computed for the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), the International Atherosclerosis Society (IAS), and the US Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP-III) guidelines. Sensitivity analysis was performed by varying number of CHD events prevented and costs of treatment. Results: Using an inflation rate of medical costs of 3%, a single yearly consultation, a single total cholesterol measurement per year, and a generic statin, the overall 10-year costs of the ESC, IAS, and ATP-III strategies were 2.2, 3.4, and 4.1 billion Swiss francs (SwF [SwF1 = $US0.97]). In this scenario, the average cost for 1 year of life gained was SwF352, SwF421, and SwF485 thousand, respectively, and it was always higher in women than in men. In men, the average cost for 1 year of life without CHD was SwF30.7, SwF42.5, and SwF51.9 thousand for the ESC, IAS, and ATP-III strategies, respectively, and decreased with age. Statin drug costs represented between 45% and 68% of the overall preventive cost. Changing the cost of statins, inflation rates, or number of fatal and non-fatal cases of CHD averted showed ESC guidelines to be the most cost effective. Conclusion: The cost of CHD prevention using statins depends on the guidelines used. The ESC guidelines appear to yield the lowest costs per year of life gained free of CHD.

Community Colleges for International Development Inc., Independent Auditor's Report Financial Statements, June 30, 2004

Community College Audit Reports

Community Colleges for International Development, Inc., Independent Auditor's Reports, Financial Statements, June 30, 2005

Community College Audit Reports

Financial Markets and Real Ecinomy: Four Essays in International Trade

Financial markets play an important role in an economy performing various functions like mobilizing and pooling savings, producing information about investment opportunities, screening and monitoring investments, implementation of corporate governance, diversification and management of risk. These functions influence saving rates, investment decisions, technological innovation and, therefore, have important implications for welfare. In my PhD dissertation I examine the interplay of financial and product markets by looking at different channels through which financial markets may influence an economy.My dissertation consists of four chapters. The first chapter is a co-authored work with Martin Strieborny, a PhD student from the University of Lausanne. The second chapter is a co-authored work with Melise Jaud, a PhD student from the Paris School of Economics. The third chapter is co-authored with both Melise Jaud and Martin Strieborny. The last chapter of my PhD dissertation is a single author paper.Chapter 1 of my PhD thesis analyzes the effect of financial development on growth of contract intensive industries. These industries intensively use intermediate inputs that neither can be sold on organized exchange, nor are reference-priced (Levchenko, 2007; Nunn, 2007). A typical example of a contract intensive industry would be an industry where an upstream supplier has to make investments in order to customize a product for needs of a downstream buyer. After the investment is made and the product is adjusted, the buyer may refuse to meet a commitment and trigger ex post renegotiation. Since the product is customized to the buyer's needs, the supplier cannot sell the product to a different buyer at the original price. This is referred in the literature as the holdup problem. As a consequence, the individually rational suppliers will underinvest into relationship-specific assets, hurting the downstream firms with negative consequences for aggregate growth. The standard way to mitigate the hold up problem is to write a binding contract and to rely on the legal enforcement by the state. However, even the most effective contract enforcement might fail to protect the supplier in tough times when the buyer lacks a reliable source of external financing. This suggests the potential role of financial intermediaries, banks in particular, in mitigating the incomplete contract problem. First, financial products like letters of credit and letters of guarantee can substantially decrease a risk and transaction costs of parties. Second, a bank loan can serve as a signal about a buyer's true financial situation, an upstream firm will be more willing undertake relationship-specific investment knowing that the business partner is creditworthy and will abstain from myopic behavior (Fama, 1985; von Thadden, 1995). Therefore, a well-developed financial (especially banking) system should disproportionately benefit contract intensive industries.The empirical test confirms this hypothesis. Indeed, contract intensive industries seem to grow faster in countries with a well developed financial system. Furthermore, this effect comes from a more developed banking sector rather than from a deeper stock market. These results are reaffirmed examining the effect of US bank deregulation on the growth of contract intensive industries in different states. Beyond an overall pro-growth effect, the bank deregulation seems to disproportionately benefit the industries requiring relationship-specific investments from their suppliers.Chapter 2 of my PhD focuses on the role of the financial sector in promoting exports of developing countries. In particular, it investigates how credit constraints affect the ability of firms operating in agri-food sectors of developing countries to keep exporting to foreign markets.Trade in high-value agri-food products from developing countries has expanded enormously over the last two decades offering opportunities for development. However, trade in agri-food is governed by a growing array of standards. Sanitary and Phytosanitary standards (SPS) and technical regulations impose additional sunk, fixed and operating costs along the firms' export life. Such costs may be detrimental to firms' survival, "pricing out" producers that cannot comply. The existence of these costs suggests a potential role of credit constraints in shaping the duration of trade relationships on foreign markets. A well-developed financial system provides the funds to exporters necessary to adjust production processes in order to meet quality and quantity requirements in foreign markets and to maintain long-standing trade relationships. The products with higher needs for financing should benefit the most from a well functioning financial system. This differential effect calls for a difference-in-difference approach initially proposed by Rajan and Zingales (1998). As a proxy for demand for financing of agri-food products, the sanitary risk index developed by Jaud et al. (2009) is used. The empirical literature on standards and norms show high costs of compliance, both variable and fixed, for high-value food products (Garcia-Martinez and Poole, 2004; Maskus et al., 2005). The sanitary risk index reflects the propensity of products to fail health and safety controls on the European Union (EU) market. Given the high costs of compliance, the sanitary risk index captures the demand for external financing to comply with such regulations.The prediction is empirically tested examining the export survival of different agri-food products from firms operating in Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Senegal and Tanzania. The results suggest that agri-food products that require more financing to keep up with food safety regulation of the destination market, indeed sustain longer in foreign market, when they are exported from countries with better developed financial markets.Chapter 3 analyzes the link between financial markets and efficiency of resource allocation in an economy. Producing and exporting products inconsistent with a country's factor endowments constitutes a serious misallocation of funds, which undermines competitiveness of the economy and inhibits its long term growth. In this chapter, inefficient exporting patterns are analyzed through the lens of the agency theories from the corporate finance literature. Managers may pursue projects with negative net present values because their perquisites or even their job might depend on them. Exporting activities are particularly prone to this problem. Business related to foreign markets involves both high levels of additional spending and strong incentives for managers to overinvest. Rational managers might have incentives to push for exports that use country's scarce factors which is suboptimal from a social point of view. Export subsidies might further skew the incentives towards inefficient exporting. Management can divert the export subsidies into investments promoting inefficient exporting.Corporate finance literature stresses the disciplining role of outside debt in counteracting the internal pressures to divert such "free cash flow" into unprofitable investments. Managers can lose both their reputation and the control of "their" firm if the unpaid external debt triggers a bankruptcy procedure. The threat of possible failure to satisfy debt service payments pushes the managers toward an efficient use of available resources (Jensen, 1986; Stulz, 1990; Hart and Moore, 1995). The main sources of debt financing in the most countries are banks. The disciplining role of banks might be especially important in the countries suffering from insufficient judicial quality. Banks, in pursuing their rights, rely on comparatively simple legal interventions that can be implemented even by mediocre courts. In addition to their disciplining role, banks can promote efficient exporting patterns in a more direct way by relaxing credit constraints of producers, through screening, identifying and investing in the most profitable investment projects. Therefore, a well-developed domestic financial system, and particular banking system, would help to push a country's exports towards products congruent with its comparative advantage.This prediction is tested looking at the survival of different product categories exported to US market. Products are identified according to the Euclidian distance between their revealed factor intensity and the country's factor endowments. The results suggest that products suffering from a comparative disadvantage (labour-intensive products from capital-abundant countries) survive less on the competitive US market. This pattern is stronger if the exporting country has a well-developed banking system. Thus, a strong banking sector promotes exports consistent with a country comparative advantage.Chapter 4 of my PhD thesis further examines the role of financial markets in fostering efficient resource allocation in an economy. In particular, the allocative efficiency hypothesis is investigated in the context of equity market liberalization.Many empirical studies document a positive and significant effect of financial liberalization on growth (Levchenko et al. 2009; Quinn and Toyoda 2009; Bekaert et al., 2005). However, the decrease in the cost of capital and the associated growth in investment appears rather modest in comparison to the large GDP growth effect (Bekaert and Harvey, 2005; Henry, 2000, 2003). Therefore, financial liberalization may have a positive impact on growth through its effect on the allocation of funds across firms and sectors.Free access to international capital markets allows the largest and most profitable domestic firms to borrow funds in foreign markets (Rajan and Zingales, 2003). As domestic banks loose some of their best clients, they reoptimize their lending practices seeking new clients among small and younger industrial firms. These firms are likely to be more risky than large and established companies. Screening of customers becomes prevalent as the return to screening rises. Banks, ceteris paribus, tend to focus on firms operating in comparative-advantage sectors because they are better risks. Firms in comparative-disadvantage sectors finding it harder to finance their entry into or survival in export markets either exit or refrain from entering export markets. On aggregate, one should therefore expect to see less entry, more exit, and shorter survival on export markets in those sectors after financial liberalization.The paper investigates the effect of financial liberalization on a country's export pattern by comparing the dynamics of entry and exit of different products in a country export portfolio before and after financial liberalization.The results suggest that products that lie far from the country's comparative advantage set tend to disappear relatively faster from the country's export portfolio following the liberalization of financial markets. In other words, financial liberalization tends to rebalance the composition of a country's export portfolio towards the products that intensively use the economy's abundant factors.

Community Colleges For International Development, Inc., Independent Auditor's Report, Financial Statements, June 30, 2006

Community College Audit Reports

Research joint ventures in an international economy

D'Aspremont and Jacquemin's (1988) model is extended to studyalternative configurations of research agreements in a two--country integratedworld economy. Under unambiguous conditions on spillovers we show that:1) Allowing national firms to cooperate in R\&D confers them an advantageover foreign rivals, an effect similar to R\&D subsidies. 2) In a policygame, each government would allow national cooperative agreements. 3) Contraryto other trade policies which lead to a ``prisoners' dilemma'' result,welfare in both countries increases when they both allow R\&D cooperation.4) Welfare is even higher if a generalized (international) coalition isformed.

Credit constraints in general equilibrium: Experimental results

Our work attempts to investigate the influence of credit tightness orexpansion on activity and relative prices in a multimarket set-up. We report on somedouble- auction, two-market experiments where subjects had to satisfy an inequalityinvolving the use of credit. The experiments display two regimes, characterizedby high and low credit availability. The critical value of credit at the commonboundary of the two regimes has a compelling interpretation as the maximal credituse at the Arrow-Debreu equilibrium of the abstract economy naturally associatedto our experimental environment. Our main results are that changes in theavailability of credit: (a): have minor and unsystematic effects on quantitiesand relative prices in the high-credit regime, (b): have substantial effects, bothon quantities and relative prices, in the low-credit regime.

Audit report on Community Colleges for International Development, Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on Community Colleges for International Development, Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2007

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, International Lottery Schemes: You're the Loser!, April 2004

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: International Lottery Schemes: You're the Loser!

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, International Lottery Schemes: You're the Loser!, April 2004

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: International Lottery Schemes: You're the Loser!

Disability, capacity for work and the business cycle: An international perspective

An important policy issue in recent years concerns the number of people claimingdisability benefits for reasons of incapacity for work. We distinguish between workdisability , which may have its roots in economic and social circumstances, and healthdisability which arises from clear diagnosed medical conditions. Although there is a linkbetween work and health disability, economic conditions, and in particular the businesscycle and variations in the risk of unemployment over time and across localities, mayplay an important part in explaining both the stock of disability benefit claimants andinflows to and outflow from that stock. We employ a variety of cross?country andcountry?specific household panel data sets, as well as administrative data, to testwhether disability benefit claims rise when unemployment is higher, and also toinvestigate the impact of unemployment rates on flows on and off the benefit rolls. Wefind strong evidence that local variations in unemployment have an importantexplanatory role for disability benefit receipt, with higher total enrolments, loweroutflows from rolls and, often, higher inflows into disability rolls in regions and periodsof above?average unemployment. Although general subjective measures of selfreporteddisability and longstanding illness are also positively associated withunemployment rates, inclusion of self?reported health measures does not eliminate thestatistical relationship between unemployment rates and disability benefit receipt;indeed including general measures of health often strengthens that underlyingrelationship. Intriguingly, we also find some evidence from the United Kingdom and theUnited States that the prevalence of self?reported objective specific indicators ofdisability are often pro?cyclical that is, the incidence of specific forms of disability arepro?cyclical whereas claims for disability benefits given specific health conditions arecounter?cyclical. Overall, the analysis suggests that, for a range of countries and datasets, levels of claims for disability benefits are not simply related to changes in theincidence of health disability in the population and are strongly influenced by prevailingeconomic conditions. We discuss the policy implications of these various findings.

Importance of international linkages for local know-how flows. Some econometric evidence from Belgium

External knowledge is an important input for the innovation process of firms. Increasingly, this knowledge is likely to originate fromoutside of their national borders. This explains the preoccupationof policymakers with stimulating local technology transfers coming from international firms. We find that firms that have access to the international technology market are more likely to transfer technology to the local economy. In doing so, we qualify the traditional assertion that multinational firms are more likelyto transfer technology to the local economy. Once controlled for the superior access to the international technology market that multinationals enjoy, we find that these firms are not more likelyto transfer technology to the local economy compared to exportingor local firms that have access to the international technology market. In summary, the main result of this paper is that it isnot so much the international character of the firms, but rathertheir access to the international technology market that is important for generating external knowledge transfers to the local economy.