Lessons for PreK-3rd From Montgomery County Public Schools

Presents a case study of how a district improved third-grade reading proficiency rates and narrowed the achievement gap, in spite of growing English Language Learner and low-income populations, by implementing an integrated early learning strategy

Organizational Differences in Managerial Compensation and Financial Performance

The present study has two general purposes. First, based on the compensation strategy literature, we examine the extent to which organizations facing similar conditions make different managerial compensation decisions regarding base pay, bonus pay, and eligibility for long-term incentives. Second, working from expectancy and agency theory perspectives, we explore the consequences of these decisions for subsequent firm performance as measured by return on assets. Using longitudinal data on approximately 16,000 top and middle level managers and 200 organizations, significant between-organization differences in compensation decisions are found. The smallest organization effects are on the level of base pay. The largest organization effects are on bonus levels and eligibility for long-term incentives. In other words, our results suggest that organizations tend to distinguish themselves through decisions about pay contingency or variability rather than through decisions about the level of base pay. To study consequences, residualized measures (adjusted for employee and job factors) of organization pay level and pay mix are used. Pay level is not associated with organization financial performance. On the other hand, greater contingency of pay in the form of bonuses and long-term incentives is associated with better financial performance

ANALYZING THE POTENTIAL FOR INCREASED TRADE IN DAIRY PRODUCTS: A CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE

International Relations/Trade,

Chemical spray pyrolysis of Tl-Ba-Ca-Cu-O high-T(sub c) superconductors for high-field bitter magnets

The deposition of Tl-Ba-Ca-Cu-O thick films by spray pyrolyzing a Ba-Ca-Cu-O precursor film and diffusing thallium into the film to form the superconducting phase is examined. This approach was taken to reduce exposure to thallium and its health and safety hazards. The Tl-Ba-Ca-Cu-O system was selected because it has very attractive features which make it appealing to device and manufacturing engineering. Tl-Ba-Ca-Cu-O will accommodate a number of superconducting phases. This attribute makes it very forgiving to stoichiometric fluctuations in the bulk and film. It has excellent thermal and chemical stability, and appears to be relatively insensitive to chemical impurities. Oxygen is tightly bound into the systems, consequently there is no orthorhombic (conductor) to tetragonal (insulator) transition which would affect a component's lifetime. More significantly, the thallium based superconductors appear to have harder magnetic properties than the other high-Tc oxide ceramics. Estimates using magnetoresistance measurements indicate that at 77 K Tl2Ba2CaCu2O10 will have an upper critical field, H(sub c2) fo 26 Tesla for applied fields parallel to the c-axis and approximately 1000 Tesla for fields oriented in the a-b plane. Results to date have shown that superconducting films can be reproducibly deposited on 100 oriented MgO substrates. One film had a zero resistance temperature of 111.5 K. Furthermore, x ray diffraction analysis of the films showed preferential c-axis orientation parallel to the plane of the substrate. These results have now made it possible to consider the manufacture of a superconducting tape wire which can be configured into a topology useful for high-field magnet designs. The research which leads to the preparation of these films and plans for further development are reviewed

Incentive-based approaches to sustainable fisheries

The failures of traditional target-species management have led many to propose an ecosystem approach to fisheries to promote sustainability. The ecosystem approach is necessary, especially to account for fishery-ecosystem interactions, but by itself is not sufficient to address two important factors contributing to unsustainable fisheries — inappropriate incentives bearing on fishers, and the ineffective governance that frequently exists in commercial, developed fisheries managed primarily by total harvest limits and input-controls. We contend that much greater emphasis must be placed on fisher motivation when managing fisheries. Using evidence from more than a dozen ‘natural experiments’ in commercial fisheries, we argue that incentive-based approaches that better specify community, individual harvest, or territorial rights and also price ecosystem services — coupled with public research, monitoring and effective oversight — promote sustainable fisheries.incentives, sustainability, rights, fisheries management

Capacity Reduction and Productivity: The Case of Fishery

The paper presents the first ex-post analysis of profit and productivity of individual vessels following a vessel or licence buyback in a fishery. Using individual firm-level data for the period 1997-2000, the paper analyzes a "natural experiment" of the effects of a 1997 scheme to reduce fishing capacity in the South East trawl fishery of Australia. The scheme was unique in the sense that the buyback was implemented in a fishery managed by individual vessel tradeable harvesting rights rather than input controls. Using an innovative index method that decomposes the contributions of output prices, input prices, vessel size and productivity to relative profits, the economic performance of vessels is analyzed in the year of the buyback and for three years afterwards. Profits for all vessel classes rose over the period 1997-2000 following the 1997 buyback of 27 fishing licenses, but some of the gains were due to a rise in output prices that were independent of the adjustment program. All vessel classes (small and large) also experienced substantial productivity gains immediately following the 1997 license buyback with an average increase over all vessels of 39%. This increase, coincident with a decline in catch per unit of effort for key species, provides strong support that the buyback was successful at improving economic performance. Ongoing productivity improvements for small vessels over the period 1998-2000 following the buyback is attributed to the existence of individual tradeable harvesting rights in the fishery.productivity, capacity reduction, fishery

Changing Mix of Medical Care Services: Stylized Facts and Implications for Price Indexes

The utilization of health care services has undergone several important shifts in recent years that have implications for the cost of medical care. We empirically document the presence of these shifts for a broad list of medical conditions and assess the implications for price indexes. Following the earlier literature, we compare the growth of two price measures: one that tracks expenditures for the services actually provided to treat conditions and another that holds the mix of those services fixed over time. Using retrospective claims data for a sample of commercially-insured patients, we find that, on average, expenditures to treat diseases rose 11% from 2003:1 to 2005:4 and would have risen even faster, 18%, had the mix of services remained fixed at the 2003:1 levels. This suggests that fixed-basket price indexes, as are used in the official statistics, could overstate true price growth significantly.

Impact of Cross-listing on Local Stock Returns: Case of Russian ADRs

The paper examines the impact of American Depositary Receipt (ADR) listings on the return of the underlying Russian stocks. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it looks at a new sample of ADRs issued by Russian companies. Second, the technique used to estimate the market model is different from the previous studies. The returns are modeled to follow GARCH process, as opposed to the regular OLS procedure, which assumes homoscedasticity in residual returns. Average abnormal returns and cumulative average abnormal returns are calculated for the [-25, +25] event window, with the ADR listing date being the event date. The results indicate a significant negative abnormal local market return on an ADR listing day. The return volatilities after the listing are compared to those before the listing. Eleven out of sixteen companies experienced increased volatility of local returns after the cross-listing.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40077/3/wp691.pd

Conservation Payments under Risk: A Stochastic Dominance Approach

Conservation payments can be used to preserve forest and agroforest systems. To explain landowners’ land-use decisions and determine appropriate conservation payments, it is necessary to focus on revenue risk. Marginal conditional stochastic dominance rules are used to derive conditions for determining the conservation payments required to guarantee that the environmentally-preferred land use dominates. An empirical application to shaded-coffee protection in the biologically important Chocó region of West-Ecuador shows that conservation payments required for preserving shaded-coffee areas are much higher than those calculated under risk-neutral assumptions. Further, the extant distribution of land has strong impacts on the required payments.agroforest systems, conservation payments, land allocation, portfolio diversification, risk, stochastic dominance