Inheritance Law and Investment in Family Firms

Entrepreneurs may be legally bound to bequeath a minimal stake to non-controlling heirs. The size of this stake can reduce investment in family firms, by reducing the future income they can pledge to external financiers. Using a purpose-built indicator of the permissiveness of inheritance law and data for 10,004 firms from 38 countries in 1990-2006, we find that stricter inheritance law is associated with lower investment in family firms, but does not affect investment in non-family firms. Moreover, as the model predicts, inheritance law affects investment only in family firms that experience a succession

Determination of serum zinc levels in normal Maltese adults by atomic absorption spectrophotometry

The importance of zinc as one of the essential trace elements in the living organisms is becoming increasingly recognised. In the process of carrying out measurements to establish normal reference values for our laboratory, it was noticed that the values being obtained, generally appeared to be higher than those published in the literature where similar techniques had been employed. It is important to gain further understanding of this metal in both health and disease as it appears that zinc is essential to an important variety of metabolic processes in man. We are unable to offer a satisfactory explanation for the difference in serum zinc levels in the two groups reported in this paper. Local water does not appear to have high zinc content and Maltese soil is known to be zinc deficient. It is known however that local farmers use a zinc containing fungicide (Zineb) on a large scale.peer-reviewe

From the axial line to the walked line: Evaluating the utility of commercial and user-generated street network datasets in space syntax analysis

Data availability, reliability and cost are some of the most constraining factors in space syntax analysis and wider commercial acceptance. In recent years user-created Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) that is free to all via the Internet has gained wider acceptance and proven reliability (Haklay, 2010). Furthermore it has the property of being created by the people who inhabit the spaces being mapped; therefore it captures local knowledge and detail to a far greater degree than commercial mapping agencies. From a space syntax perspective it also relates more closely to the pedestrian network as it is used on foot and captures details of pedestrian routes through the urban fabric that other road-centric data sources ignore. This paper demonstrates the methodological approaches and analytic outcomes of a space syntax sensitivity analysis of Open Street Map (OSM) VGI road network data, the UK national mapping agency Ordnance Survey Integrated Transport Network (ITN) road data and a hand-drawn Axial map for four areas within the Greater London Region. The space syntax segment analysis was completed within the Depthmap application. The segment analysis was completed on the ITN model, OSM model and hand-drawn model separately and then it was carried out on a combined model of the ITN and OSM that integrated all the network elements from both. The integration and comparison of the network models was carried out through the usage of a new algorithm currently under development at University College London that identifies and extracts the differences between two line network datasets (Koukoletsos, forthcoming) and standard GIS processing techniques. The space syntax measures were evaluated on four areas in outer London that are the focus of the Adaptable Suburbs project at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies. The analysis was carried out using length-weighted angular segment and choice analysis at radii 800m, 2000m and n (Turner, 2007). Comparative statistics were then generated for the areas to evaluate the analysis outcomes of the different network models. The London-wide network that was created through the combination of the OSM and ITN networks had a total length of 32,000km representing an increase of approximately 20% over the Ordnance Survey ITN network. The dramatic increase in network length alone demonstrates the divergent realities of the two mapping techniques and the representation of the world that they capture. It is anticipated that the sensitivity analysis will find that there was no significant difference in the global syntax values between the ITN and OSM and Axial models but at the local level the additional network segments for pedestrian routes within the OSM data will provide greater network accuracy and syntax values that model the reality on the ground better than the Ordnance Survey ITN model. Furthermore it captures potential pedestrian routes that are not present in the other data sets. The work carried out seeks to understand whether Volunteered Geographic Information is a viable alternative to official mapping sources when creating models for analysis of small urban areas. If this proves to be the case such data would provide not only a cost effective alternative to commercially produced data but indeed a more reliable network model for the analysis to be carried out. Open source geographic data have the capability to improve and enrich space syntax analysis whilst removing high price barriers that commercial data sources impose

The position profiles of order cancellations in an emerging stock market

Order submission and cancellation are two constituent actions of stock trading behaviors in order-driven markets. Order submission dynamics has been extensively studied for different markets, while order cancellation dynamics is less understood. There are two positions associated with a cancellation, that is, the price level in the limit-order book (LOB) and the position in the queue at each price level. We study the profiles of these two order cancellation positions through rebuilding the limit-order book using the order flow data of 23 liquid stocks traded on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in the year 2003. We find that the profiles of relative price levels where cancellations occur obey a log-normal distribution. After normalizing the relative price level by removing the factor of order numbers stored at the price level, we find that the profiles exhibit a power-law scaling behavior on the right tails for both buy and sell orders. When focusing on the order cancellation positions in the queue at each price level, we find that the profiles increase rapidly in the front of the queue, and then fluctuate around a constant value till the end of the queue. These profiles are similar for different stocks. In addition, the profiles of cancellation positions can be fitted by an exponent function for both buy and sell orders. These two kinds of cancellation profiles seem universal for different stocks investigated and exhibit minor asymmetry between buy and sell orders. Our empirical findings shed new light on the order cancellation dynamics and pose constraints on the construction of order-driven stock market models.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures and 6 table

Major coastal engineering works : monitoring and management of environmental impacts and risks : a case study from the Central Mediterranean (Malta)

Coastal tourism and related developments of the past decades have significantly altered parts of the Mediterranean coastline. These include major coastal engineering works and alterations such as marina developments which lead not only to habitat loss but also to risks of degradation of water and sediment quality and of benthic communities. Being the smallest island-state in the region with the highest population density, Malta is an ideal case-study to assess such impacts.The paper presents data from a long-term compliance marine monitoring programmerelated to the development and operation of a major marina in Malta, involving major excavation works to develop a new marina basin able to hold 130 berths, complete with breakwater and other facilities. The monitoring programme(1996 to 2003)aimed at identifying and managing associated risks to the marine environment (including Posidonea oceanica meadows).For management purposes, a set of environmental objectives and quality standards were initially set for various water and sediment parameters and then subsequent monitoring of these parameters served as surveillance against risks of environmental deterioration. The paper provides useful information on the dynamics and trends in water and sediment quality resulting from such major coastal engineering works, and on how such trends may be related to associated changes (and possible recovery) of P. oceanica meadows.peer-reviewe

Epistemic policy networks in the European Union’s CBRN risk mitigation policy

This paper offers insights into an innovative and currently flagship approach of the European Union (EU) to the mitigation of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) risks. Building on its long-time experience in the CBRN field, the EU has incorporated methods familiar to the students of international security governance: it is establishing regional networks of experts and expertise. CBRN Centers of Excellence, as they are officially called, aim to contribute to the security and safety culture in different parts of Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia, and South East Europe, in the broadly construed CBRN area. These regional networks represent a modern form of security cooperation, which can be conceptualized as an epistemic policy networks approach. It offers flexibility to the participating states, which have different incentives to get involved. At the same, however, the paper identifies potential limitations and challenges of epistemic policy networks in this form

Gridded global surface ozone metrics for atmospheric chemistry model evaluation

The concentration of ozone at the Earth's surface is measured at many locations across the globe for the purposes of air quality monitoring and atmospheric chemistry research. We have brought together all publicly available surface ozone observations from online databases from the modern era to build a consistent data set for the evaluation of chemical transport and chemistry-climate (Earth System) models for projects such as the Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative and Aer-Chem-MIP. From a total data set of approximately 6600 sites and 500 million hourly observations from 1971-2015, approximately 2200 sites and 200 million hourly observations pass screening as high-quality sites in regionally representative locations that are appropriate for use in global model evaluation. There is generally good data volume since the start of air quality monitoring networks in 1990 through 2013. Ozone observations are biased heavily toward North America and Europe with sparse coverage over the rest of the globe. This data set is made available for the purposes of model evaluation as a set of gridded metrics intended to describe the distribution of ozone concentrations on monthly and annual timescales. Metrics include the moments of the distribution, percentiles, maximum daily 8-hour average (MDA8), sum of means over 35 ppb (daily maximum 8-h; SOMO35), accumulated ozone exposure above a threshold of 40 ppbv (AOT40), and metrics related to air quality regulatory thresholds. Gridded data sets are stored as netCDF-4 files and are available to download from the British Atmospheric Data Centre (doi:10.5285/08fbe63d-fa6d-4a7a-b952-5932e3ab0452). We provide recommendations to the ozone measurement community regarding improving metadata reporting to simplify ongoing and future efforts in working with ozone data from disparate networks in a consistent manner