460 research outputs found
Intergenerational Analysis of the Donating Behaviour of Parents and their Offspring
Using data drawn from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we explore the relationship between the donating behavior of parents and that of their children aged less than 18 which gives a direct insight into whether an intergenerational relationship in donating behavior exists. Furthermore, we exploit information relating to whether or not parents encourage their children to donate to charity by talking to them about donating to unveil information related to the intergenerational transmission of philanthropic behavior. Our findings suggest that an intergenerational correlation is only present in the absence of a control for whether the parent talks to the child about donating. The effect from the parent talking to their offspring is associated with an increased likelihood that the child donates by approximately 10 percentage points, a finding which is robust to a number of different estimation strategies
Corporate efficiency, credit status and investment
This paper considers the relationship between financial frictions and investment. In an effort
to clarify the role of cash flow in examining the impact of capital-market imperfections,
endogenous switching regression models (SRM) are estimated for a panel of 1122 UK firms
listed on the London Stock Exchange over the period of 1981 to 2009. Not only is the financial
regime which the firm faces endogenous, we also allow the regime to change over time
via modelling efficiency using stochastic frontier analysis. The results reveal that a firmâs
constrained credit status changes with the improvement of its efficiency. Furthermore, the
analysis reveals that financially constrained firmâs investment is comparatively more sensitive
to its cash flow. Moreover this sensitivity is statistically significant and is negatively
related with corporate efficiency
Early influences on saving behaviour: Analysis of British panel data
Using data from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society, we examine the saving behaviour of individuals over time. Initially, we explore the determinants of the saving behaviour of children aged 11â15. Our findings suggest that parental allowances/pocket money (earnings from part-time work) lower (increase) the probability that a child saves. There is also evidence that the financial expectations of the head of household have an influence on their offspringâs saving behaviour, where children of optimistic parents have a lower probability of saving by approximately 2 percentage points. However, there is no evidence of an intergenerational correlation in savings behaviour: the saving behaviour of parents appears to have no bearing on the saving decisions of their offspring. We then go on to explore the implications of the saving behaviour of children for their savings decisions in later life, specifically when observed in early adulthood. We find that having saved as a child has a large positive influence both on the probability of saving on a monthly basis and on the amount saved as an adult. This finding is robust to alternative empirical strategies including IV analysis where the most conservative estimates show that having saved as a child increases the probability of saving during adulthood by 12 percentage points
Intraoperative high resolution duplex imaging during carotid endarterectomy: Which abnormalities require surgical correction?
Objectives:This study evaluates high resolution, duplex ultrasound imaging for quality control of carotid endarterectomy in order to determine which technical factors were linked to residual stenosis and to define duplex criteria for reexploration.Design, material and methods:A consecutive series of 100 patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy were evaluated. Duplex imaging was performed prior to wound closure and repeated at 6â8 weeks postoperatively. Stenoses were classified as non-significant, moderate or severe based on duplex criteria. Intimal flaps, shelves, kinks, clamp damage and fronds were identified by ultrasound imaging.Results:Five moderate stenoses were noted in the proximal endarterectomy site (PES), and at follow-up three had resolved. Adherent fronds were detected in 83% of vessels and resolved in all but three cases. At the distal endarterectomy site there were 10 severe and 12 moderate stenoses. Intimal flaps were associated with an increased incidence of residual stenosis (p = 0.010).Conclusions:We conclude that severe stenoses with an intimal flap should be corrected immediately. Further data is required to establish the significance of kinks. Residual intimal flaps in the PES appear to remodel. The role of completion duplex may lie in the modification of surgical technique to eradicate anatomical and haemodynamic imperfections
Large Scale Structure Formation with Global Topological Defects. A new Formalism and its implementation by numerical simulations
We investigate cosmological structure formation seeded by topological defects
which may form during a phase transition in the early universe. First we derive
a partially new, local and gauge invariant system of perturbation equations to
treat microwave background and dark matter fluctuations induced by topological
defects or any other type of seeds. We then show that this system is well
suited for numerical analysis of structure formation by applying it to seeds
induced by fluctuations of a global scalar field. Our numerical results are
complementary to previous investigations since we use substantially different
methods. The resulting microwave background fluctuations are compatible with
older simulations. We also obtain a scale invariant spectrum of fluctuations
with about the same amplitude. However, our dark matter results yield a smaller
bias parameter compatible with on a scale of in contrast to
previous work which yielded to large bias factors. Our conclusions are thus
more positive. According to the aspects analyzed in this work, global
topological defect induced fluctuations yield viable scenarios of structure
formation and do better than standard CDM on large scales.Comment: uuencoded, compressed tar-file containing the text in LaTeX and 12
Postscript Figures, 41 page
Magnetic properties of exactly solvable doubly decorated Ising-Heisenberg planar models
Applying the decoration-iteration procedure, we introduce a class of exactly
solvable doubly decorated planar models consisting both of the Ising- and
Heisenberg-type atoms. Exact solutions for the ground state, phase diagrams and
basic physical quantities are derived and discussed. The detailed analysis of
the relevant quantities suggests the existence of an interesting quantum
antiferromagnetic phase in the system.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Physical Review
Coherent matter wave inertial sensors for precision measurements in space
We analyze the advantages of using ultra-cold coherent sources of atoms for
matter-wave interferometry in space. We present a proof-of-principle experiment
that is based on an analysis of the results previously published in [Richard et
al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 91, 010405 (2003)] from which we extract the ratio h/m
for 87Rb. This measurement shows that a limitation in accuracy arises due to
atomic interactions within the Bose-Einstein condensate
Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience?
Given the increasingly global stresses on forests, many ecologists argue that managers must maintain ecological resilience: the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbances without undergoing fundamental change. In this review we ask: Can the emerging paradigm of natural-disturbance-based management (NDBM) maintain ecological resilience in managed forests? Applying resilience theory requires careful articulation of the ecosystem state under consideration, the disturbances and stresses that affect the persistence of possible alternative states, and the spatial and temporal scales of management relevance. Implementing NDBM while maintaining resilience means recognizing that (i) biodiversity is important for long-term ecosystem persistence, (ii) natural disturbances play a critical role as a generator of structural and compositional heterogeneity at multiple scales, and (iii) traditional management tends to produce forests more homogeneous than those disturbed naturally and increases the likelihood of unexpected catastrophic change by constraining variation of key environmental processes. NDBM may maintain resilience if silvicultural strategies retain the structures and processes that perpetuate desired states while reducing those that enhance resilience of undesirable states. Such strategies require an understanding of harvesting impacts on slow ecosystem processes, such as seed-bank or nutrient dynamics, which in the long term can lead to ecological surprises by altering the forest's capacity to reorganize after disturbance
Non--power law behavior of the radial profile of phase--space density of halos
We study the pseudo phase-space density, , of
CDM dark matter halos with and without baryons (baryons+DM, and pure
DM), by using the model introduced in Del Popolo (2009), which takes into
account the effect of dynamical friction, ordered and random angular momentum,
baryons adiabatic contraction and dark matter baryons interplay. We examine the
radial dependence of over 9 orders of magnitude in radius
for structures on galactic and cluster of galaxies scales. We find that
is approximately a power-law only in the range of halo
radius resolved by current simulations (down to 0.1% of the virial radius)
while it has a non-power law behavior below the quoted scale, with inner
profiles changing with mass. The non-power-law behavior is more evident for
halos constituted both of dark matter and baryons while halos constituted just
of dark matter and with angular momentum chosen to reproduce a
Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) density profile, are characterized by an
approximately power-law behavior. The results of the present paper lead to
conclude that density profiles of the NFW type are compatible with a power-law
behavior of , while those flattening to the halo center,
like those found in Del Popolo (2009) or the Einasto profile, or the Burkert
profile, cannot produce radial profile of the pseudo-phase-space density that
are power-laws at all radii. The results argue against universality of the
pseudo phase-space density and as a consequence argue against universality of
density profiles constituted by dark matter and baryons as also discussed in
Del Popolo (2009).Comment: 20 pages; 7 figs. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with
arXiv:0906.4447 and arXiv:1012.432
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