A report on the study of land-sourced pollutants and their impacts on water quality in and adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef: an assessment to guide the development of management plans to halt any decline in the water quality of river catchments draining to the Reef, as a result of land-based pollution, and to achieve the long-term goal of reversing any trend in declining water quality

Includes 'Summary statement of the Reef Science Panel regarding water quality in and adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef

Environmental Impacts of the CGIAR: An Initial Assessment

Preliminary evaluation of the environmental impact of research undertaken by the CGIAR and its partners. The evaluation was conducted by a two member panel consisting of Michael Nelson and Mywish Maredia, and was completed in October 1999. The study was commissioned by the Impact Assessment and Evaluation Group (IAEG) which became TAC's Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) before it was published. The document also contains an excerpt from the summary of proceedings of the CGIAR 1999 Mid Term Meeting where the evaluation results were presented, and a foreword by IAEG Chairman Hans Gregersen.This study may be considered the first phase of a longer term effort, and considers unplanned and unaccounted for environmental costs and benefits attributable to past research. It focuses on evaluating changes in the use, management and conservation of land resources, which the panel believed are likely have effects orders of magnitude greater than any other positive impacts of CGIAR research.Given the shortage of reliable data, the method used was analysis of different scenarios, rather than economic models. The authors concluded that a very large amount of land, in excess of that available, would have been required to equal the increased production of seven mandate crops and permanent pasture attributed to CGIAR research. The study concluded by listing issues for further empirical assessment, questions on next steps, and recommendations on further activity. In view of the large costs involved, it suggested that the CGIAR provide guidance on the depth and breadth of evaluation of environmental impact it desired

Project Retrosight. Understanding the returns from cardiovascular and stroke research: Policy Report

Copyright @ 2011 RAND Europe. All rights reserved. The full text article and the summary of the article are both available via the links below.This project explores the impacts arising from cardiovascular and stroke research funded 15-20 years ago and attempts to draw out aspects of the research, researcher or environment that are associated with high or low impact. The project is a case study-based review of 29 cardiovascular and stroke research grants, funded in Australia, Canada and UK between 1989 and 1993. The case studies focused on the individual grants but considered the development of the investigators and ideas involved in the research projects from initiation to the present day. Grants were selected through a stratified random selection approach that aimed to include both high- and low-impact grants. The key messages are as follows: 1) The cases reveal that a large and diverse range of impacts arose from the 29 grants studied. 2) There are variations between the impacts derived from basic biomedical and clinical research. 3) There is no correlation between knowledge production and wider impacts 4) The majority of economic impacts identified come from a minority of projects. 5) We identified factors that appear to be associated with high and low impact. This report presents the key observations of the study and an overview of the methods involved. It has been written for funders of biomedical and health research and health services, health researchers, and policy makers in those fields. It will also be of interest to those involved in research and impact evaluation.This study was initiated with internal funding from RAND Europe and HERG, with continuing funding from the UK National Institute for Health Research, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the National Heart Foundation of Australia. The UK Stroke Association and the British Heart Foundation provided support in kind through access to their archives

The happy few: the internationalisation of European firms

The 2007 report from the research network European Firms and International Markets (EFIM) is the first systematic, cross-country, firm-level research of the features of European firms that compete in international markets.

Real Exchange Rates, Dollarization and Industrial Employment in Latin America

This paperuses a panel dataset on industrial employment and trade for 9 Latin American countries for which liability dollarization data at the industrial level is available. It tests whether real exchange rate fluctuations have a significant impact on employment, and analyze whether the impact varies with the degree of trade openness and liability dollarization. Econometric evidence supports the view that real exchange rate depreciations can impact employment growth positively, but this effect is reversed as liability dollarization increases. In industries with high liability dollarization, the overall impact of a real exchange rate depreciation can be negative.

An HSUS Report: The Impact of Animal Agriculture on Global Warming and Climate Change

The farm animal production sector is the single largest anthropogenic user of land, contributing to soil degradation, dwindling water supplies, and air pollution. The breadth of this sector‘s impacts has been largely underappreciated. Meat, egg, and milk production are not narrowly focused on the rearing and slaughtering of farm animals. The animal agriculture sector also encompasses feed grain production which requires substantial water, energy, and chemical inputs, as well as energy expenditures to transport feed, live animals, and animal products. All of this comes at a substantial cost to the environment. One of animal agriculture‘s greatest environmental impacts is its contribution to global warming and climate change. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), the animal agriculture sector is responsible for approximately 18%, or nearly one-fifth, of human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In nearly every step of meat, egg, and milk production, climate-changing gases are released into the atmosphere, potentially disrupting weather, temperature, and ecosystem health. Mitigating this serious problem requires immediate and far-reaching changes in current animal agriculture practices and consumption patterns

Structural features of distributive trades and their impact on prices in the euro area

The distributive trades sector, which is primarily accounted for by wholesale and retail trade, is not only economically important in its own right, but also relevant to monetary policy. Ultimately, it is retailers who set the actual prices of most consumer goods. They are the main interface between producers of consumer goods and consumers, with around half of private consumption accounted for by retail trade. The “value added” of this intermediation service can be substantial, as this accounts for, on average, about 25% of consumer prices. The purpose of this report is to analyse the structural features of the distributive trades sector and the developments within it, as well as how these may influence prices and price dynamics. This report contributes to a better understanding of the impact of the structural features of the distributive trades sector on prices and price-setting behaviour, thereby improving on previous research in this area. From a policy perspective, it highlights the importance of structural reforms that help enhance competition in this sector. This report uses a wide range of data sources – some of which are unique – to study an area that has been under-investigated, especially at the European level. There is, however, ample room for further research in this direction. JEL Classification: E58, F41competition, distributive trades, monetary policy, prices, retail trades

Environmental Impacts of Productivity-Enhancing Crop Research: A Critical Review

Study by Drs. Mywish Maredia and Prabhu Pingali reviewing evidence of the possible negative impacts of productivity-enhancing technologies on the environment. Identifying "negative land savings" as a suitable measure of negative impact, the authors find salinity problems associated with irrigation as the most complete available index of land savings lost, and together with less precise measures of the impacts of intensification and monocultures, estimate global land savings lost to be on the order of 90-100 million hectares. This is several hundreds of millions of hectares less than the positive land savings attributable to CGIAR research on eight mandated crops (see "Environmental Impacts of the CGIAR: An Assessment.")A treatment of efforts by the CGIAR and NARS to mitigate negative impacts on the environment follows, focusing on the development of pest-resistant varieties and integrated pest management practices which reduce the need for pesticides. While this was identified clearly as an area of significant advances, farmers' adoption of these varieties and practices was not matched by a concomitant reduction in pesticide use - which represented a major failure in disseminating the implications of the new technologies for pesticide requirements. The study ends by pointing to the complexities of relating environmental impacts to agricultural research, given the many factors other than research that contribute to these impacts. Adding to this difficulty of attributing the causes of environmental impacts to research, the authors describe a common tendency of literature to conflate the green revolution with the larger phenomenon of agricultural intensification

The Industry R&D Survey – Patent Database Link Project

This paper details the construction of a firm-year panel dataset combining the NBER Patent Dataset with the Industry R&D Survey conducted by the Census Bureau and National Science Foundation. The developed platform offers an unprecedented view of the R&D-to-patenting innovation process and a close analysis of the strengths and limitations of the Industry R&D Survey. The files are linked through a name-matching algorithm customized for uniting the firm names to which patents are assigned with the firm names in Census Bureau’s SSEL business registry. Through the Census Bureau’s file structure, this R&D platform can be linked to the operating performances of each firm’s establishments, further facilitating innovation-to-productivity studies.innovation, research and development, patents, scientists, technology