Aid Effectiveness: Looking at the Aid-Social Capital-Growth Nexus

We examine the impact of institutional quality and social capital on aid effectiveness. We find strong evidence that social capital and institutions enhance aid effectiveness. Moreover, once we account for the role of social capital and institutions, the impact of policies tend to disappear. These findings have important policy implications as they indicate that conditioning aid allocation on ?good policies? may not lead to an optimal (or fair) allocation of aid, as countries with high social capital at the macro level could actually make good use of aid regardless of the quality of policy. This casts doubt on the conclusions in Burnside and Dollar (2000) and the policy lessons derived from their findings.aid effectiveness, social capital, institutions, growth

Transfer Programs and Consumption under Alternative Insurance Schemes and Liquidity Constraints

We consider a dynamic allocation problem under alternative insurance and capital market regimes and proper risk aversion separate from intertemporal substitution. We apply the model to study the effect of one-size-fits-all transfers. We find that one-size-fits-all transfers can have different and diametrically opposed qualitative and quantitative effects on consumption, investment, expected growth of output and consumption and the fair price of insurance of the risky technology. The differences depend upon the regime of insurance to the risky technology, the regime of capital markets and the proper separate measures of risk aversion and intertemporal substitution.Transfers, insurance, liquidity constraint, intertemporal substitution, risk aversion

Value Orientation of Introducing Social Capital in Medical and Health Services

Introduction of social capital into medical and health services can effectively alleviate the problems of insufficient resources, poor allocation and unbalanced structure in developing medical institutions. Social capital entering medical institutions, through reasonable guidance, differentiated development and fair competition, can effectively promote optimal allocation of medical resources, improve balanced development of medical structures, continuously expand the scale and scope of medical service targets, and improve standard and effectiveness of medical services. The nature of capital is to chase profits. Therefore, after introducing social capital, medical institutions should combine and strengthen self-discipline and heteronomy supervisions, guide this part of capital to actively assume social responsibilities, to fulfill social obligations, and to serve the public, in order to ensure the medical industry to have sustainable growth

Impairment of Assets or Impairment of Financial Information?

This paper begins with overviews of the Statements of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 144 and No. 142 as they pertain to impairments. Subsequent to the overviews, a conceptual evaluation considers how the impairment standards are related to various components of the conceptual framework, including reliability, relevance, and various components within and related to these two characteristics. Incorporated into the discussion is SFAS No. 157 and current fair value measurements in accounting. Controversies surrounding SFAS No. 144 and No. 142 are discussed and companies that have incurred impairment losses or conduct impairment testing on a regular basis are presented. All components of this paper are directed to an analysis of the costs and benefits of impairment testing and the possible result of the trade-off

Optimal funding and investment strategies in defined contribution pension plans under Epstein-Zin utility

A defined contribution pension plan allows consumption to be redistributed from the plan member’s working life to retirement in a manner that is consistent with the member’s personal preferences. The plan’s optimal funding and investment strategies therefore depend on the desired pattern of consumption over the lifetime of the member. We investigate these strategies under the assumption that the member has an Epstein-Zin utility function, which allows a separation between risk aversion and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution, and we also take into account the member’s human capital. We show that a stochastic lifestyling approach, with an initial high weight in equity-type investments and a gradual switch into bond-type investments as the retirement date approaches is an optimal investment strategy. In addition, the optimal contribution rate each year is not constant over the life of the plan but reflects trade-offs between the desire for current consumption, bequest and retirement savings motives at different stages in the life cycle, changes in human capital over the life cycle, and attitude to risk

Solutions for Impact Investors: From Strategy to Implementation

In writing this monograph, our main goal is to provide impact investors with tools to tighten the link between their investment decisions and impact creation. Our intent is threefold: to attract more capital to impact investing; to assist impact investors as they move from organizational change to executing and refining their impact investment decision-making process; and to narrow the gap within foundations between program professionals and investment professionals thereby contributing to a mutual understanding and implementation of a portfolio approach to impact investing.Additionally, we intend to help break down the barriers making it difficult to identify opportunities in impact investing. To this end, we provide examples throughout the monograph and at www.rockpa.org/impactinvesting of impact investment opportunities in most major asset classes.While we understand the important role that impact investors can play in providing financial capital, we also want to acknowledge the wide range of non-financial resources needed to address the world's problems. Our intent with this monograph is not to provide a comprehensive list of investments across asset classes nor any type of investment advice with regard to the selected profiles. We strongly encourage the reader to conduct their own assessment and evaluation for risk and suitability before considering any investment