A beacon in the night : government certification of SMEs towards banks

Policymakers around the world have created several schemes to support financially constrained SMEs. However, whether these mechanisms improve the access to external sources of finance or on the contrary crowd out private players remains a relevant question. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of a recent form of government support, called participative loan, in improving recipient SMEs\u2019 access to external financial debt. Relying on the literature about the certification effect, we develop hypotheses on the conditions under which the improvement is stronger. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 488 Spanish SMEs that received participative loans from a Spanish government agency and a control group of 719 matched twins. We show that the former register a significantly higher external financial debt (+31.5%). The effect is stronger for smaller firms, or for those operating in high-technology sectors, which suffer more acutely from information asymmetries, and negligible for firms that already received a support from another government-supported institution. After ruling out alternative explanations, we interpret this result as a positive evidence of government certification of SMEs towards banks

Gauge-invariant tree-level photoproduction amplitudes with form factors

We show how the gauge-invariance formulation given by Haberzettl is implemented in practice for photoproduction amplitudes at the tree level with form factors describing composite nucleons. We demonstrate that, in contrast to Ohta's gauge-invariance prescription, this formalism allows electric current contributions to be multiplied by a form factor, i.e., it does not require that they be treated like bare currents. While different in detail, this nevertheless lends support to previous ad hoc approaches which multiply the Born amplitudes by an overall form factor. Numerical results for kaon photoproduction off the nucleon are given. They show that the gauge procedure by Haberzettl leads to much improved $\chi^2$ values as compared to Ohta's prescription.Comment: 5 pages, RevTeX, two eps figure

Patient education and disease activity: A study among rheumatoid arthritis patients

Objective: To determine whether patients experiencing high disease activity derive more benefit from patient education than those experiencing low disease activity. - \ud Methods: Data from a randomized study on the effects of a program of patient education were analyzed retrospectively. Four subgroups were studied: the high disease activity subgroup of patients who had participated in the educational program, the complementary low disease activity subgroup, the high disease activity subgroup of controls, and its low disease activity complement. Patients with erythrocyte sedimentation rate >28 mm/first hour were classified as having high disease activity. Effects on frequency of physical exercises, endurance exercises, and relaxation exercises and effects on health status (Modified Health Assessment Questionnaire, Dutch Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales [AIMS]) were measured. - \ud Results: There were no significant differences between the adherence parameters of the various pairs of groups. Four months after the educational program began, anxiety and depression scores on the Dutch-AIMS had increased among participating patients who were experiencing high disease activity and decreased among those who were experiencing low disease activity. - \ud Conclusions: Patients experiencing high disease activity did not derive more benefit from patient education than those experiencing low disease activity. On the contrary, an increase of anxiety and depression is found in these patients. Further study is needed to confirm our findings

Limited results of group self-management education for rheumatoid arthritis patients and their partners: explanations from the patient perspective

This study aimed to identify the reasons for limited results of group self-management for RA patients and their partners from the patient perspective. Semi-structured interviews with ten male and ten female patients who had participated in group self-management with or without their partner were content analyzed with respect to motivation to participate and the effects of the program on them. The limited effects of the self-management program appear to be linked with low motivation to participate and to change health behavior. The data show that a decline in health and also stressful life events might be associated with the disappointing effects of the program. Three strategies were proposed for improving the program’s effects: (a) provide information about the program in advance to ensure that patients have appropriate expectations. (b) Enhance intrinsic motivation to change health behavior by counseling techniques. (c) Tailoring with respect to motivation and current concerns could help to form more homogeneous groups or could be the basis for a tailored online intervention

Quantum Chinos Game: winning strategies through quantum fluctuations

We apply several quantization schemes to simple versions of the Chinos game. Classically, for two players with one coin each, there is a symmetric stable strategy that allows each player to win half of the times on average. A partial quantization of the game (semiclassical) allows us to find a winning strategy for the second player, but it is unstable w.r.t. the classical strategy. However, in a fully quantum version of the game we find a winning strategy for the first player that is optimal: the symmetric classical situation is broken at the quantum level.Comment: REVTEX4.b4 file, 3 table