Health Care in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland - the medium term fiscal aspects

The paper provides perspective of recent developments in health care reforms in three fast-reforming transition economies: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The two former countries have been implementing reforms since early 1990s, while Poland started its reform on January 1, 1999 only. But the reforms are not over: in all three countries further changes are envisaged. The objective of this paper is to assess the current situation from a fiscal perspective. This, of course, is not the only criterion, but still vital enough to deserve careful analysis.Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, health care

The Long Road to First Oil

This paper analyzes the factors affecting the speed at which newly discovered oil and gas fields are developed. Using data from over 25,000 oil and gas assets globally I demonstrate that both asset and country characteristics are critical in determining which assets reach production stage. I analyze the effects of countries adopting a set of market oriented reforms, to shed light on the impacts of institutional changes on petroleum extraction timeline. Mitigating climate change will require a large share of the world's already discovered fossil resources to stay underground. The results of this study can help inform how petroleum producers may respond to the energy transition underway. My findings also calls into question the assumption used in earlier research that giant oil and gas discoveries can be considered exogenous in their impacts on subsequent production

Text-mining IMF country reports - an original dataset

This article introduces an original panel dataset based on the text of country reports by the International Monetary Fund. It consists of a total of 5561 Article IV consultation and program review documents, published between 2004 and 2018 on 201 countries. The text of these reports provide indications of the perceived policy weaknesses, economic risks, ongoing reforms and implemented or neglected policy advice. Thus the content of IMF reports are widely used in the economics, political science and IR literature. To our knowledge this is the first comprehensive dataset that aggregates these country reports. The paper gives a detailed account on the data acquisition and management process. To demonstrate and validate the dataset’s application for research we present three validation exercises. We find that Article IV reports can indicate incoming institutional reforms, show changes in IMF policy advice overtime and identify potential gains from recently discovered natural resources in certain cases. Taken together, this paper contributes an original dataset of IMF country reports and demonstrates how it can be a useful foundation for further research into the role of international financial institutions

Motivational interviewing and dual diagnosis clients: Enhancing self-efficacy and treatment completion

This study explored treatment completion and self-efficacy of dual-diagnosis clients receiving cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and a combination of CBT with motivational interviewing (MI) in an intensive outpatient setting. Results indicated that MI was associated with increased self-efficacy and treatment completion

Inhibition of phospho-MurNAc-pentapeptide translocase (MraY) by nucleoside natural product antibiotics, bacteriophage <phi>X174 lysis protein E, and cationic antibacterial peptides

This review covers recent developments in the inhibition of translocase MraY and related phospho-GlcNAc transferases WecA and TagO, and insight into the inhibition and catalytic mechanism of this class of integral membrane proteins from the structure of Aquifex aeolicus MraY. Recent studies have also identified a protein-protein interaction site in E. coli MraY, that is targeted by bacteriophage X174 lysis protein E, and also by cationic antimicrobial peptides containing Arg-Trp close to their N- or C-termini

Grexit, Brexit – The future of Europe. Editor’s preface

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Kaldor and Kornai on economics without equilibrium – two life courses

Nicholas Kaldor and János Kornai are known in the academic literature as the most principled and unyielding opponents of the neoclassical, mainstream economics in general, and the Arrow-Debreu General Equilibrium Theory (GET) in particular since the beginning of the 1970s. Nevertheless, they remained in the minority camp with their views until today. The mainstream of the economic profession still holds that only the neoclassical paradigm offers a comprehensive, systematic, consistent and, above all, mathematical (hence “scientific”) description of how modern economies operate. This paper aims at investigating why these two prolific writers, who were friends and spoke the same mother tongue, did not find a common ground and did not even try to build a school of followers jointly

Measurement of the CKM Angle Alpha at the BABAR Detector Using B Meson Decays to Rho Final States

This thesis contains the results of an analysis of B{sup 0} {yields} {rho}{sup +}{rho}{sup -} using 232 million {Upsilon}(4S) {yields} B{bar B} decays collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC. From a fitted signal yield of 617 {+-} 52 events, the longitudinal polarizations fraction, f{sub L}, of the decay is measured to be 0.978 {+-} 0.014(stat){sub -0.029}{sup +0.021}(syst). The nearly fully longitudinal dominance of the B{sup 0} {yields} {rho}{sup +}{rho}{sup -} decay allows for a measurement of the time dependent CP parameters S{sub L} and C{sub L}, where the first parameter is sensitive to mixing induced CP violation and the second one to direct CP violation. From the same signal yield, these values are found to be S{sub L} = -0.33 {+-} 0.24(stat){sub -0.14}{sup +0.08}(syst) and C{sub L} = - 0.03 {+-} 0.18(stat) {+-} 0.09(syst). The CKM angle {alpha} is then determined, using these results and the branching fractions and polarizations of the decays B{sup 0} {yields} {rho}{sup 0}{rho}{sup 0} and B{sup +} {yields} {rho}{sup +}{rho}{sup 0}. This measurement is done with an isospin analysis, in which a triangle is constructed from the isospin amplitudes of these three decay modes. A {chi}{sup 2} expression that includes the measured quantities expressed as the lengths of the sides of the isospin triangles is constructed and minimized to determine a confidence level on {alpha}. Selecting the solution compatible with the Standard Model, one obtains {alpha} = 100{sup o} {+-} 13{sup o}