LAND USE-- A PERSPECTIVE FROM SCOTLAND

Land Economics/Use,

Venture capital and risk in high-technology enterprises

We find UK investors and entrepreneurs are significantly concordant in rankings of investments and key factors for risk but significantly discordant on risk classes. Investors emphasise agency risk (e.g., motivation, empowerment, alignment), and entrepreneurs emphasise business risk (e.g., market opportunities)

Venture capital investor behaviour in the backing of UK high technology firms : financial reporting and the level of investment

This paper is an empirical investigation into the ways in which venture capitalists value (and invest in) high technology firms, focusing on financial reporting, risk disclosure and intangible assets. It is based on questionnaire returns from UK investors in diverse sectors, ranging from biotechnology, through software/ computer services, to communications and medical services. This evidence is used to examine: (a) the usefulness of financial accounts; (b) the implications of technopole investment; (c) the extent of investor control over the investee's AIS; and (d) the role of investor opinion (e.g. on disclosure, due diligence and risk reporting) in determining the level of equity provision

Early Twentieth Century Productivity Growth Dynamics: An Inquiry into the Economic History of “Our Ignorance”

A marked acceleration of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in U.S. manufacturing followed World War I. This development contributed substantially to the absolute and relative rise of the domestic economy's aggregate TFP residual, which is observed when the 'growth accounts' for the first quarter of the twentieth century are compared with those for the second half of the nineteenth century. Two visions of the dynamics of productivity growth are germane to an understanding of these developments. One emphasizes the role of forces affecting broad sections of the economy, through spillovers of knowledge and the diffusion of general purpose technologies (GPT's). The second view considers that possible sources of productivity increase are multiple and idiosyncratic. Setting aside possible measurement errors, the latter approach regards sectoral and economy-wide surges of the TFP growth to be simply the result of which carried more weight than others. Although there is room for both views in an analysis of the sources of the industrial TFP acceleration during the 1920's, we find the evidence more compelling in support of the first approach. The proximate source of the TFP surge lay in the switch from declining or stable capital productivity to a rising output-capital ratio, which occurred at this time in many branches of manufacturing, and which was not accompanied by slowed growth in labor productivity. The 1920's saw critical advances in the electrification industry, the diffusion of a GTP that brought significant fixed capital-savings. But the same era also witnessed profound transformations in the American industrial labor market, followed the stoppage of mass immigration from Europe; rising real wages provided strong impetus to changes in workforce recruitment and management practices that were underway in some branches of the economy before the War. The productivity surge reflected the confluence of these two forces. This historical study has direct relevance for policies intended to increase the rate of productivity growth. In many respects, the decade of the 1920's launched the US economy on a high-growth path that lasted until the 1970's. If we hope to return to the growth performance of that era, we would be well advised to understand how it began.

The Silurian Hypothesis: Would It Be Possible to Detect an Industrial Civilization in the Geological Record?

If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to ourown era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event

The origins of American resource abundance

American manufacturing exports became increasingly resource-intensive over the very period, roughly 1880-1920, during which the U.S. ascended to the position of world leadership in manufacturing. This paper challenges the simplistic view that the resource-intensity of manufacturing reflected the country''s abundant geological endowment of mineral deposits. Instead, it shows that in the century following 1850 the U.S. exploited its natural resource potentials to a far greater extent than other countries and did so across virtually the entire range of industrial minerals. It argues that "natural resource abundance" was an endogenous. "socially constructed" condition that was not geologically pre-ordained. It examines the complex legal, institutional, technological and organizational adaptations that shaped the U.S. supply-responses to the expanding domestic and international industrial demands for minerals and mineral-products. It suggests that the existence of strong "positive feedbacks"--even in the exploitation of depletable resources--was responsible for the explosive growth of the American minerals economy.economic development an growth ;

The effects of climate change and variation in New Zealand: An assessment using the CLIMPACTS system

Along with a need to better understand the climate and biophysical systems of New Zealand, the need to develop an improved capacity for evaluating possible changes in climate and their effects on the New Zealand environment has been recognised. Since the middle of 1993 the CLIMPACTS programme, has been focused on the development of such a capacity, in the first instance for the agricultural sector. the goals of this present assessment are: 1. To present current knowledge on likely scenarios of climate change and associated uncertainties in New Zealand; 2. To present current knowledge, based on quantitative analyses using a consistent set of scenarios, on the likely effects of climate change on a range of agricultural and horticultural crops of economic importance; 3. To demonstrate, by way of this report and the associated technical report, the capacity that has been developed for ongoing assessments of this kind in New Zealand. This report has been prepared for both the science and policy communities in New Zealand. There are two main components: 1. The detailed findings of the assessment, presented in a series of chapters; 2. An annex, which contains technical details on models used in the assessment

Methods for the Study of Transverse Momentum Differential Correlations

We introduce and compare three differential correlation functions for the study of transverse momentum correlation in $p+p$ and $A+A$ collisions. These consist of {\it inclusive}, {\it event-wise} and a differential version of the correlation measure $\tilde C$ introduced by Gavin \cite{Gavin} for experimental study of the viscosity per unit entropy of the matter produced in $A+A$ collisions. We study the quantitative difference between the three observables on the basis of PYTHIA simulations of $p+p$ collisions and $A+A$ collisions consisting of an arbitrary superposition of $p+p$ collision events at $\sqrt{s} =$200 GeV. We observe that {\it inclusive} and {\it event-wise} correlation functions are remarkably identical to each other where as the observable $\tilde C$ differs from the two. We study the robustness and efficiency dependencies of these observables based on truncated Taylor expansions in efficiency in $p+p$ collisions and on the basis of Monte Carlo simulation using an adhoc detector efficiency parameterization. We find that all the three observables are essentially independent of detector efficiency. We additionally study the scaling of the correlation measures and find all the observables exhibit an approximate $1/N$ dependence of the number of participants ({\it N}) in $A+A$ collisions. Finally, we study the impact of flow-like anisotropy on the {\it inclusive} correlation function and find flow imparts azimuthal modulations similar to those observed with two-particle densities.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure

The use of otolith morphology to indicate the stock structure of common coral trout (Plectropomus leopardus) on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

We investigated the use of otolith morphology to indicate the stock structure of an exploited serranid coral reef fish, Plectropomus leopardus, on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia. Otoliths were measured by traditional one-and two-dimensional measures (otolith length, width, area, perimeter, circularity, and rectangularity), as well as by Fourier analysis to capture the finer details of otolith shape. Variables were compared among four regions of the GBR separated by hundreds of kilometers, as well as among three reefs within each region, hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers apart. The temporal stability in otolith structure was examined by comparing two cohorts of fully recruited four-year-old P. leopardus collected two years before and two years after a signif icant disturbance in the southern parts of the GBR caused by a large tropical cyclone in March 1997. Results indicated the presence of at least two stocks of P. leopardus, although the structure of each stock varied depending on the cohort considered. The results highlight the importance of incorporating data from several years in studies using otolith morphology to discriminate temporary and possibly misleading signals from those that indicate persistent spatial structure in stocks. We conclude that otolith morphology can be used as an initial step to direct further research on groups of P. leopardus that have lived at least a part of their life in different environments

Time step rescaling recovers continuous-time dynamical properties for discrete-time Langevin integration of nonequilibrium systems

When simulating molecular systems using deterministic equations of motion (e.g., Newtonian dynamics), such equations are generally numerically integrated according to a well-developed set of algorithms that share commonly agreed-upon desirable properties. However, for stochastic equations of motion (e.g., Langevin dynamics), there is still broad disagreement over which integration algorithms are most appropriate. While multiple desiderata have been proposed throughout the literature, consensus on which criteria are important is absent, and no published integration scheme satisfies all desiderata simultaneously. Additional nontrivial complications stem from simulating systems driven out of equilibrium using existing stochastic integration schemes in conjunction with recently-developed nonequilibrium fluctuation theorems. Here, we examine a family of discrete time integration schemes for Langevin dynamics, assessing how each member satisfies a variety of desiderata that have been enumerated in prior efforts to construct suitable Langevin integrators. We show that the incorporation of a novel time step rescaling in the deterministic updates of position and velocity can correct a number of dynamical defects in these integrators. Finally, we identify a particular splitting that has essentially universally appropriate properties for the simulation of Langevin dynamics for molecular systems in equilibrium, nonequilibrium, and path sampling contexts.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, and 2 table