Rabobank’s Success in Uncertain Times: An Executive Interview with Frans van Bijsterveld

The end of 2008 ushered in a severe and sweeping economic change throughout the global economy. In an Executive Interview conducted during IAMA’s 2009 World Forum and Symposium in Budapest, Hungary, Frans van Bijsterveld, Global Head of Food & Agribusiness Research at Rabobank explains why Robobank is one of the few financial institutions that has not been heavily affected. Rabobank continues to remain successful in these uncertain times because of it’s careful selection of customers and sole focus on Food and Agribusiness (F&A) outside of the Netherlands, as F&A is typically far more resilient than other sectors.economic crisis, banking industry, food and agribusiness, Rabobank, Agribusiness, Crop Production/Industries, Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

Billiards in Nearly Isosceles Triangles

We prove that any sufficiently small perturbation of an isosceles triangle has a periodic billiard path. Our proof involves the analysis of certain infinite families of Fourier series that arise in connection with triangular billiards, and reveals some self-similarity phenomena in irrational triangular billiards. Our analysis illustrates the surprising fact that billiards on a triangle near a Veech triangle is extremely complicated even though Billiards on a Veech triangle is very well understood.Comment: Errors have been corrected in Section 9 from the prior and published versions of this paper. In particular, the formulas associated to homology classes of curves corresponding to stable periodic billiard paths in obtuse Veech triangles were corrected. See Remark 9.1 of the paper for more information. The main results and the results from other sections are unaffected. 82 pages, 43 figure

Medical Support for the Fleet

The attitude reflected above, that medical support is primarily for the provision of care to the wounded after the battle is over, is still widely held by naval officers. A few years ago, I interviewed a number of commanding officers regarding the medical support they were receiving. The general perception was that a medical officer’s primary function was to take care of casualties resulting from accidents or battle. This perception is understandable because the prevailing public view of medicine in general is that the doctor\u27s function is to treat illness or injury, and sailors as a group are generally healthy

Cascade diagrams for depicting complex interventions in randomised trials

Clarity about how trial interventions are delivered is important for researchers and those who might want to use their results. A new graphical representation aims to help make complex interventions clearer. Many medical interventions—particularly non-pharmacological ones—are complex, consisting of multiple interacting components targeted at different organisational levels. Published descriptions of complex interventions often do not contain enough detail to enable their replication. Reports of behaviour change interventions should include descriptions of setting, mode, intensity, and duration, and characteristics of the participants. Graphical methods, such as that showing the relative timing of assessments and intervention components, may improve clarity of reporting. However, these approaches do not reveal the connections between the different “actors” in a complex intervention.8 Different audiences may want different things from a description of an intervention, but visualising relationships between actors can clarify crucial features such as the fidelity with which the intervention is passed down a chain of actors and possible routes of contamination between treatment arms. Here we describe a new graphical approach—the cascade diagram—that highlights these potential problems

What is the evidence of the impact of microfinance on the well-being of poor people?

The concept of microcredit was first introduced in Bangladesh by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Professor Yunus started Grameen Bank (GB) more than 30 years ago with the aim of reducing poverty by providing small loans to the country’s rural poor (Yunus 1999). Microcredit has evolved over the years and does not only provide credit to the poor, but also now spans a myriad of other services including savings, insurance, remittances and non-financial services such as financial literacy training and skills development programmes; microcredit is now referred to as microfinance (Armendáriz de Aghion and Morduch 2005, 2010). A key feature of microfinance has been the targeting of women on the grounds that, compared to men, they perform better as clients of microfinance institutions and that their participation has more desirable development outcomes (Pitt and Khandker 1998). Despite the apparent success and popularity of microfinance, no clear evidence yet exists that microfinance programmes have positive impacts (Armendáriz de Aghion and Morduch 2005, 2010; and many others). There have been four major reviews examining impacts of microfinance (Sebstad and Chen, 1996; Gaile and Foster 1996, Goldberg 2005, Odell 2010, see also Orso 2011). These reviews concluded that, while anecdotes and other inspiring stories (such as Todd 1996) purported to show that microfinance can make a real difference in the lives of those served, rigorous quantitative evidence on the nature, magnitude and balance of microfinance impact is still scarce and inconclusive (Armendáriz de Aghion and Morduch 2005, 2010). Overall, it is widely acknowledged that no well-known study robustly shows any strong impacts of microfinance (Armendáriz de Aghion and Morduch 2005, p199-230). Because of the growth of the microfinance industry and the attention the sector has received from policy makers, donors and private investors in recent years, existing microfinance impact evaluations need to be re-investigated; the robustness of claims that microfinance successfully alleviates poverty and empowers women must be scrutinised more carefully. Hence, this review revisits the evidence of microfinance evaluations focusing on the technical challenges of conducting rigorous microfinance impact evaluations

Understanding the Contribution of Direct Use of Gas to New Zealand’s Future Energy Efficiency Objectives

A report produced for the Gas Association of New Zealand. Includes 2008 Addendu

Bone and Joint Diseases: Prevention and Control

Arthritis is Australia's major cause of disability and chronic pain. In Australian women, osteoarthritis is the third leading cause of years lost due to disability. Osteoporosis affects nearly two million Australians. The Federal government acknowledged the importance of musculoskeletal diseases by designating arthritis and musculoskeletal diseases as the seventh National Health Priority. This decade has been designated by the United Nations and the World Health Organization as the Decade of Bone and Joint Disease. To try to raise awareness, the National Action Network (the committee charged with organising activities in Australia) arranged a summit in 2002 to focus on preventive issues for osteoporosis and arthritis, and the benefits of surgical approaches