Financing innovation activity in Ukraine: realities and perspectives

The role of the European Union (EU) in direct investment into the real sector of the Ukrainian economy is discussed in the article. Activity indicators of Ukrainian industrial enterprises are analyzed. Assessment of the attraction of foreign direct investment from the EU to the real sector of the Ukrainian economy is provided. The correlation between the influence of the total amount of expenditures for financing innovation activity of industrial enterprises and gross domestic product of Ukraine in actual prices is calculated and forecasting of these expenditures by applying the theory of Markov chains is carried out. The research on the basis of correlation-regression analysis between the total amount of expenditures for financing innovation activity of industrial enterprises and gross domestic product of Ukraine in actual prices for the period of 2013-2017 made it possible to establish a sufficiently strong correlation between the indicators (the correlation coefficient is 1), which indicates that the positive dynamics of the increase in the total amount of expenditures for financing innovation activity of industrial enterprises will lead to a positive dynamics of Ukraine’s gross domestic product in actual prices. This, in turn, will improve practically all indicators of the industrial activity of the national economy

The influence of project complexity on estimating accuracy

With the rapid development in technology over recent years, construction, in common with many areas of industry, has become increasingly complex. It would, therefore, seem to be important to develop and extend the understanding of complexity so that industry in general and in this case the construction industry can work with greater accuracy and efficiency to provide clients with a better service. This paper aims to generate a definition of complexity and a method for its measurement in order to assess its influence upon the accuracy of the quantity surveying profession in UK new build office construction. Quantitative data came from an analysis of twenty projects of varying size and value and qualitative data came from interviews with professional quantity surveyors. The findings highlight the difficulty in defining and measuring project complexity. The correlation between accuracy and complexity was not straightforward, being subjected to many extraneous variables, particularly the impact of project size. Further research is required to develop a better measure of complexity. This is in order to improve the response of quantity surveyors, so that an appropriate level of effort can be applied to individual projects, permitting greater accuracy and enabling better resource planning within the profession

Survey of air cargo forecasting techniques

Forecasting techniques currently in use in estimating or predicting the demand for air cargo in various markets are discussed with emphasis on the fundamentals of the different forecasting approaches. References to specific studies are cited when appropriate. The effectiveness of current methods is evaluated and several prospects for future activities or approaches are suggested. Appendices contain summary type analyses of about 50 specific publications on forecasting, and selected bibliographies on air cargo forecasting, air passenger demand forecasting, and general demand and modalsplit modeling

How predictable is technological progress?

Recently it has become clear that many technologies follow a generalized version of Moore's law, i.e. costs tend to drop exponentially, at different rates that depend on the technology. Here we formulate Moore's law as a correlated geometric random walk with drift, and apply it to historical data on 53 technologies. We derive a closed form expression approximating the distribution of forecast errors as a function of time. Based on hind-casting experiments we show that this works well, making it possible to collapse the forecast errors for many different technologies at different time horizons onto the same universal distribution. This is valuable because it allows us to make forecasts for any given technology with a clear understanding of the quality of the forecasts. As a practical demonstration we make distributional forecasts at different time horizons for solar photovoltaic modules, and show how our method can be used to estimate the probability that a given technology will outperform another technology at a given point in the future

The Deskilling vs Upskilling Debate: The Role of BLS Projections

[Excerpt] The growing shortage of professionally trained workers and the rising skill premiums will tend to cause supply to increase more rapidly than we have projected. But the gap between the projected growth of demand and supply is huge. Just to maintain the balance between the growth of supply and the growth of occupational demand that prevailed in the 1980s, itself a period of shortage, it will be necessary to increase in the stock of college graduates in the year 2000 by 3.7 million or, put another way, to raise the number of college graduates entering the labor forces by 462,000 or 42 percent between 1992 and the year 2000

Economic impact of large public programs: The NASA experience

The economic impact of NASA programs on weather forecasting and the computer and semiconductor industries is discussed. Contributions to the advancement of the science of astronomy are also considered

A social forecast revisited

In 1971, the authors produced a 30-year forecast of leisure in the UK. In 2001 they obtained survey data for comparison with the forecasts. The paper presents the original forecasts and describes the methods used to produce them, assesses their accuracy in the light of the survey data, and concludes with some reflections on the underlying forecasting methodology and on changes in leisure patterns

Productivity Growth and Convergence in Crop, Ruminant and Non-Ruminant Production: Measurement and Forecasts

There is considerable interest in projections of future productivity growth in agriculture. Whether one is interested in the outlook for global commodity markets, future patterns of international trade, or the interactions between land use, deforestation and ecological diversity, the rate of productivity growth in agriculture is an essential input. Yet solid projections for this variable have proven elusive particularly on a global basis. This is due, in no small part, to the difficulty in measuring historical productivity growth. The purpose of this paper is to report the latest time series evidence on total factor productivity growth for crops, ruminants and non-ruminant livestock, on a global basis. We then follow with tests for convergence amongst regions, providing forecasts for farm productivity growth to the year 2040. The results suggest that most regions in the sample are likely to experience larger productivity gains in livestock than in crops. Within livestock, the non-ruminant sector is expected to continue to be more dynamic than the ruminant sector. Given the rapid rates of productivity growth observed recently, non-ruminant and crop productivity in developing countries may be converging to the productivity levels of developed countries. For ruminants, the results show that productivity levels may be diverging between developed and developing countries.Malmquist index, productivity, convergence, projections, crops, livestock, Productivity Analysis, D24, O13, O47, Q10,

Reducing Investment Risk in Tractors and Combines with Improved Terminal Asset Value Forecasts

Secondary asset market data for combines and tractors are used to estimate and separate out historical economic depreciation, embodied technological change and time value change. Combines and tractors generally exhibit constant geometric economic depreciation on a year to year basis. Depreciation rates vary by manufacturer. Farm investors can use these manufacturer specific depreciation rates reported here to estimate terminal asset values. The study found significant seasonal differences in machinery depreciation rates. A major source of error in forecasting terminal asset values comes from changes related to time. There is a predictable time component to the constant quality asset index that has not been investigated in previous studies. Unanticipated shocks to demand should be followed by price reversion to long-run average manufacturing costs as industry capacity adjusts to demand. This reversion component is predicable. Investment risk over longer planning horizons may be lower when both depreciation coefficients and time component estimates are employed.Farm Management,