The Effectiveness of Britain's Financial Service Authority: An Economic Analysis

Sweeping regulatory reforms in Britain resulted in the formation of the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Because greater transparency of information is a major objective for this Act, shifting from one information system to another has re-distributive effects. We identify these effects at a sector level and their drivers at the firm level. At a sector level, FSA has generally increased the precision of investors’ priors reducing the information risk component of the cost of capital. At a firm level, large firms act as “Stackelberg leaders” in voluntary disclosure games. FSA regulation shifts power from leaders to “followers”.Disclosure, Regulation, Game Theory, Stackelberg Leader, Cost of Capital: information asymmetry

Measuring the Impact of Regulationon Market Stability: Evidence from the US Markets

In this paper, we introduce a new methodology designed to test the effect of new regulatory disclosure requirements on the disclosure threshold as predicted by the extant literature (Verrecchia (1983), Dye (1985)). We apply our methodology to test the consistency between observed effects from major US regulation past and present (1933/1934 Securities Acts, Regulation Fair Disclosure 2000, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002) with regulatory objectives.

The Financial Services Reform Act 2001: Impact on Systemic risk in Australia

The rise of conglomerate banks and their interrelated balance sheets, pose new challenges to theories of financial regulation. We measure the impact of recent legislative changes in Australia upon systemic risk, for banking and near banking sectors, and demonstrate a significant reduction post the legislation. This is consistent with a major legislative goal, to promote global competitiveness, because it implies a reduction in the cost of equity capital. In addition, we find no evidence in support of the HIH collapse increasing systemic risk in the overall financial sector but a relatively small effect was detected in the banking sector.Ris, Banks, Disclosure, Regulation, Entropy

The Impact of Differential Cost Sharing of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Agents on the Use and Costs of Analgesic Drugs

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the effect of differential cost sharing (DCS) schemes for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) on drug subsidy program and beneficiary expenditures. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: Monthly aggregate claims data from Pharmacare, the public drug subsidy program for seniors in British Columbia, Canada over the period 1989-11 to 2001-06. STUDY DESIGN: DCS limits insurance reimbursement of a group of therapeutically similar drugs to the cost of the lowest priced drugs, with beneficiaries responsible for costs above the reimbursement limit. Pharmacare introduced two different forms of DCS, generic substitution (GS) and reference pricing (RP), in April 1994 and November 1995, respectively, to the NSAIDs. Under GS, generic and brand versions of the same NSAID are considered interchangeable, whereas under RP different NSAIDs are. We extrapolated average reimbursement per day of NSAID therapy over the months before GS and RP to estimate what expenditures would have been without the policies. These counterfactual predictions were compared to actual values to estimate the impact of the policies; the estimated impacts on reimbursement rates were multiplied by the post-policy volume of NSAIDS dispensed, which appeared unaffected by the policies, to estimate expenditure changes. DATA COLLECTION: The cleaned NSAID claims data, obtained from Pharmacare’s databases, were aggregated by month and by their reimbursement status under the GS and RP policies. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: After RP, program expenditures declined by $22.7 million, or$4 million annually, cutting expenditure by half. Most savings accrued from the substitution of low cost NSAIDs for more costly alternatives. About 20% of savings represented expenditures by seniors who elected to pay for partially-reimbursed drugs. GS produced one quarter the savings of RP. CONCLUSIONS: RP of NSAIDs achieved its goal of reducing drug expenditures and was more effective than GS. The effects of RP on patient health and associated health care costs remain to be investigated.Reference pricing; generic substitution; prescription drugs; drug cost containment; NSAIDs.

Construction and Preliminary Characterization of a Series of Mouse and Rat Testis cDNA Libraries

We have constructed a series of 23 cDNA libraries from mouse and rat testicular cells. These include libraries made from whole, intact adult testes; seminiferous tubule cells from adult testes; combined populations of primary spermatocytes from 18‐day‐old mouse testes; and isolated populations of primitive type A spermatogonia, type A spermatogonia, type B spermatogonia, preleptotene spermatocytes, leptotene plus zygotene spermatocytes, juvenile pachytene spermatocytes, adult pachytene spermatocytes, round spermatids, Sertoli cells from 6‐, 8‐, 17‐, and 18–20‐day‐old mice, and peritubular cells from 18–20 day old mice, all recovered from outbred white Swiss (CD‐1) mice. We also constructed libraries from whole adult testes from five other lines of mice: C57 BI6/J, C3 HEB, BDF‐1, Balb/c, and 129 Sv. Finally, there are two libraries made from populations of Sertoli cells and peritubular cells isolated from testes of 20‐day‐old Sprague‐Dawley rats. Enzymatic dissociation, followed by gradient separation or plating/lysing techniques, was used to prepare populations of specific cell types in purities of 85–98%. cDNAs were synthesized from poly A+ mRNA primed with oligo dT and unidirectionally cloned into the lambda Uni‐Zap XR expression vector from Stratagene. Primary titers ranged from 2.1 ± 105 to 2.9 × 108 plaque‐forming units, and insert sizes averaged 1.0–1.2 kb. These libraries have been amplified once and submitted to the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) for distribution to interested investigators. ATCC accession numbers are provided

A comparison of sex offenders and other types of offenders referred to intellectual disability forensic services

This study compared 131 sex offenders with ID and 346 other types of offenders with ID using case file records. All the females in the study were non sexual offenders. Significantly more sexual offenders were referred from court and criminal justice services while significantly fewer were referred from secondary healthcare. A higher percentage of sex offenders had some form of legal status at time of referral. Greater proportions of non sexual offenders were referred for aggression, damage to property, substance abuse and fire setting while only the sex offenders had an index sex offence. For previous offending, the non sexual offenders had higher rates of aggression, cruelty and neglect of children, property damage and substance abuse while the sexual offenders had higher rates of previous sexual offending. For psychiatric disturbance and adversity in childhood, only ADHD showed a significant difference between groups with the non sexual offenders recording higher rates

The Effect of Multiple Transverse Modes in Self-Mixing Sensors Based on Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

In this work we investigate the effect of multiple transverse modes, such as those found in Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers, in self-mixing sensors. We show that the sensitivity of the system and the accuracy of the measurement changes periodically with target distance

Lewy body compared with Alzheimer dementia is associated with decreased functional connectivity in resting state networks.

Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure whole brain functional connectivity within specific networks hypothesised to be more affected in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) (a disease characterised by prominent attentional deficits, spontaneous motor features of parkinsonism and depression) than in Alzheimer׳s disease (AD) and controls. This study involved 68 subjects (15 DLB, 13 AD and 40 controls) who were scanned using resting state BOLD (blood-oxygen-level-dependent) fMRI on a 3T MRI scanner. Functional connectivity was measured using a model-free independent component analysis approach that consisted of temporally concatenating the resting state fMRI data of all study subjects and investigating group differences using a back-reconstruction procedure. Resting state functional connectivity was affected in the default mode, salience, executive and basal ganglia networks in DLB subjects compared with AD and controls. Functional connectivity was lower in DLB compared with AD and controls in these networks, except for the basal ganglia network, where connectivity was greater in DLB. No resting state networks showed less connectivity in AD compared with DLB or controls. Our results suggest that functional connectivity of resting state networks can identify differences between DLB and AD subjects that may help to explain why DLB subjects have more frequent attentional deficits, parkinsonian symptoms, and depression than those with AD.North East Dementia and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Network (DeNDRoN)This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2014.06.00

What are the attributes of good pharmacy faculty (lecturers)? An international comparison of the views of pharmacy undergraduate students from universities in Australia and Wales, UK

This study aimed to investigate what La Trobe pharmacy students (Australia) considered to be the attributes of a good lecturer (faculty member) and to compare the findings to pharmacy undergraduates at Cardiff University, Wales, UK. A 22 item questionnaire, developed at Cardiff, was administered to students at La Trobe University. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, and Mann-Whitney U Test or Kruskal-Wallis Test were used to compare groups. Ethics approval was obtained. Pharmacy students believed good lecturers (faculty) provided clear instruction and assessment criteria, were enthusiastic, inspired students to do their best, motivated students to learn, were accessible for support and started the teaching sessions on time. They also provided timely feedback and illustrated the relevance of material to pharmacy. Australian and UK pharmacy undergraduates in this study shared the same opinions on most aspects of the positive attributes of faculty (lecturers)

The functional brain favours segregated modular connectivity at old age unless affected by neurodegeneration.

Brain's modular connectivity gives this organ resilience and adaptability. The ageing process alters the organised modularity of the brain and these changes are further accentuated by neurodegeneration, leading to disorganisation. To understand this further, we analysed modular variability-heterogeneity of modules-and modular dissociation-detachment from segregated connectivity-in two ageing cohorts and a mixed cohort of neurodegenerative diseases. Our results revealed that the brain follows a universal pattern of high modular variability in metacognitive brain regions: the association cortices. The brain in ageing moves towards a segregated modular structure despite presenting with increased modular heterogeneity-modules in older adults are not only segregated, but their shape and size are more variable than in young adults. In the presence of neurodegeneration, the brain maintains its segregated connectivity globally but not locally, and this is particularly visible in dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson's disease dementia; overall, the modular brain shows patterns of differentiated pathology