19 research outputs found
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The determinants and use of risk disclosure quality: Evidence from an emerging market
Purpose:
Few studies have focused on emerging markets owing to difficulties in identifying the real effect of disclosures on these economies, where many institutional variables influence the growth of capital markets. This paper fills this gap by focusing on China, a country that has had a greater influence than others on worldwide economies in recent years. This paper investigates the main drivers for the quantity and the quality of risk disclosure, and further studies the impact of such disclosure on market liquidity.
Design/methodology/approach:
The sample comprises all financial firms listed in the Shanghai A-shares market for the period 2013-2015. The quality of risk disclosure is measured through a multidimensional approach which encompasses three factors: quantity of disclosure, coverage of disclosure, and the semantic properties of depth and outlook. This paper utilises manual content analysis of annual reports to capture risk disclosure quality and quantity. To identify the main drivers for quality and quantity of risk disclosure and then to observe their impact on market liquidity, this paper uses ordinary least squares (OLS) and fixed-effects estimations.
Findings (limit 100 words)
Our study highlights that Quantity and Quality risk disclosure show a general positive interaction with size and book to market, a moderate negative interaction with capital structure and a marked negative interaction with the presence of board independent directors. These findings confirm that at this stage of Chinese market development, companies’ characteristics and market indicators can capture some of the risk disclosure configurations, while the corporate governance indicators do not provide significant results. When we reintroduced the previous analyses on a yearly basis, we find that limited role for risk disclosure in improving market liquidity over the crisis period (2014 and 2015), suggesting that our previous conclusion is mainly driven by 2013.
Research limitations/implications:
The sample of this paper is limited to financial firms in China. Further research is needed either to look at non-financial firms or to compare between these types of firms. The usage of manual content analysis limits our ability to investigate risk reporting drivers and its impact on market liquidity on a large scale. Further research is needed to study risk reporting practices in China over a longer period of time. This paper makes an important contribution to extant literature on risk disclosure by confirming the high tendency towards reporting information related to the past compared to the future.
Practical implications:
Our paper is likely to be of interest to investors, since there has been no significant previous research of the quality of risk disclosure practices in China. The importance of this paper stems from documenting several reporting incentives concerning not only firms’ quantity, but also firms’ quality of risk reporting. Collectively, our findings support activism for reforms and the enhancement of regulations in China in order to make the market more efficient.
Originality/value (limit 100 words)
This study provides new evidence on the impact of firm characteristics on risk disclosures and highlights the impact of risk disclosure practices on market liquidity of financial companies in China’s market. Furthermore, this paper confirms previous findings on the Chinese market (Ball et al., 2000; Zou and Adams, 2008) in which, given a decreasing but still strong state presence, there is higher stock volatility and weak corporate governance
Measuring universal health coverage based on an index of effective coverage of health services in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019 : A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019
Background
Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) involves all people receiving the health services they need, of high quality, without experiencing financial hardship. Making progress towards UHC is a policy priority for both countries and global institutions, as highlighted by the agenda of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WHO's Thirteenth General Programme of Work (GPW13). Measuring effective coverage at the health-system level is important for understanding whether health services are aligned with countries' health profiles and are of sufficient quality to produce health gains for populations of all ages.
Methods
Based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019, we assessed UHC effective coverage for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019. Drawing from a measurement framework developed through WHO's GPW13 consultation, we mapped 23 effective coverage indicators to a matrix representing health service types (eg, promotion, prevention, and treatment) and five population-age groups spanning from reproductive and newborn to older adults (≥65 years). Effective coverage indicators were based on intervention coverage or outcome-based measures such as mortality-to-incidence ratios to approximate access to quality care; outcome-based measures were transformed to values on a scale of 0–100 based on the 2·5th and 97·5th percentile of location-year values. We constructed the UHC effective coverage index by weighting each effective coverage indicator relative to its associated potential health gains, as measured by disability-adjusted life-years for each location-year and population-age group. For three tests of validity (content, known-groups, and convergent), UHC effective coverage index performance was generally better than that of other UHC service coverage indices from WHO (ie, the current metric for SDG indicator 3.8.1 on UHC service coverage), the World Bank, and GBD 2017. We quantified frontiers of UHC effective coverage performance on the basis of pooled health spending per capita, representing UHC effective coverage index levels achieved in 2019 relative to country-level government health spending, prepaid private expenditures, and development assistance for health. To assess current trajectories towards the GPW13 UHC billion target—1 billion more people benefiting from UHC by 2023—we estimated additional population equivalents with UHC effective coverage from 2018 to 2023.
Findings
Globally, performance on the UHC effective coverage index improved from 45·8 (95% uncertainty interval 44·2–47·5) in 1990 to 60·3 (58·7–61·9) in 2019, yet country-level UHC effective coverage in 2019 still spanned from 95 or higher in Japan and Iceland to lower than 25 in Somalia and the Central African Republic. Since 2010, sub-Saharan Africa showed accelerated gains on the UHC effective coverage index (at an average increase of 2·6% [1·9–3·3] per year up to 2019); by contrast, most other GBD super-regions had slowed rates of progress in 2010–2019 relative to 1990–2010. Many countries showed lagging performance on effective coverage indicators for non-communicable diseases relative to those for communicable diseases and maternal and child health, despite non-communicable diseases accounting for a greater proportion of potential health gains in 2019, suggesting that many health systems are not keeping pace with the rising non-communicable disease burden and associated population health needs. In 2019, the UHC effective coverage index was associated with pooled health spending per capita (r=0·79), although countries across the development spectrum had much lower UHC effective coverage than is potentially achievable relative to their health spending. Under maximum efficiency of translating health spending into UHC effective coverage performance, countries would need to reach adjusted for purchasing power parity) in order to achieve 80 on the UHC effective coverage index. From 2018 to 2023, an estimated 388·9 million (358·6–421·3) more population equivalents would have UHC effective coverage, falling well short of the GPW13 target of 1 billion more people benefiting from UHC during this time. Current projections point to an estimated 3·1 billion (3·0–3·2) population equivalents still lacking UHC effective coverage in 2023, with nearly a third (968·1 million [903·5–1040·3]) residing in south Asia.
Interpretation
The present study demonstrates the utility of measuring effective coverage and its role in supporting improved health outcomes for all people—the ultimate goal of UHC and its achievement. Global ambitions to accelerate progress on UHC service coverage are increasingly unlikely unless concerted action on non-communicable diseases occurs and countries can better translate health spending into improved performance. Focusing on effective coverage and accounting for the world's evolving health needs lays the groundwork for better understanding how close—or how far—all populations are in benefiting from UHC
Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019
Background: In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries. Methods: GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution. Findings: Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI. Interpretation: As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and developm nt investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licens
Measuring universal health coverage based on an index of effective coverage of health services in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019
Background
Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) involves all people receiving the health services they need, of high quality, without experiencing financial hardship. Making progress towards UHC is a policy priority for both countries and global institutions, as highlighted by the agenda of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WHO's Thirteenth General Programme of Work (GPW13). Measuring effective coverage at the health-system level is important for understanding whether health services are aligned with countries' health profiles and are of sufficient quality to produce health gains for populations of all ages.
Methods
Based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019, we assessed UHC effective coverage for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019. Drawing from a measurement framework developed through WHO's GPW13 consultation, we mapped 23 effective coverage indicators to a matrix representing health service types (eg, promotion, prevention, and treatment) and five population-age groups spanning from reproductive and newborn to older adults (≥65 years). Effective coverage indicators were based on intervention coverage or outcome-based measures such as mortality-to-incidence ratios to approximate access to quality care; outcome-based measures were transformed to values on a scale of 0–100 based on the 2·5th and 97·5th percentile of location-year values. We constructed the UHC effective coverage index by weighting each effective coverage indicator relative to its associated potential health gains, as measured by disability-adjusted life-years for each location-year and population-age group. For three tests of validity (content, known-groups, and convergent), UHC effective coverage index performance was generally better than that of other UHC service coverage indices from WHO (ie, the current metric for SDG indicator 3.8.1 on UHC service coverage), the World Bank, and GBD 2017. We quantified frontiers of UHC effective coverage performance on the basis of pooled health spending per capita, representing UHC effective coverage index levels achieved in 2019 relative to country-level government health spending, prepaid private expenditures, and development assistance for health. To assess current trajectories towards the GPW13 UHC billion target—1 billion more people benefiting from UHC by 2023—we estimated additional population equivalents with UHC effective coverage from 2018 to 2023.
Findings
Globally, performance on the UHC effective coverage index improved from 45·8 (95% uncertainty interval 44·2–47·5) in 1990 to 60·3 (58·7–61·9) in 2019, yet country-level UHC effective coverage in 2019 still spanned from 95 or higher in Japan and Iceland to lower than 25 in Somalia and the Central African Republic. Since 2010, sub-Saharan Africa showed accelerated gains on the UHC effective coverage index (at an average increase of 2·6% [1·9–3·3] per year up to 2019); by contrast, most other GBD super-regions had slowed rates of progress in 2010–2019 relative to 1990–2010. Many countries showed lagging performance on effective coverage indicators for non-communicable diseases relative to those for communicable diseases and maternal and child health, despite non-communicable diseases accounting for a greater proportion of potential health gains in 2019, suggesting that many health systems are not keeping pace with the rising non-communicable disease burden and associated population health needs. In 2019, the UHC effective coverage index was associated with pooled health spending per capita (r=0·79), although countries across the development spectrum had much lower UHC effective coverage than is potentially achievable relative to their health spending. Under maximum efficiency of translating health spending into UHC effective coverage performance, countries would need to reach adjusted for purchasing power parity) in order to achieve 80 on the UHC effective coverage index. From 2018 to 2023, an estimated 388·9 million (358·6–421·3) more population equivalents would have UHC effective coverage, falling well short of the GPW13 target of 1 billion more people benefiting from UHC during this time. Current projections point to an estimated 3·1 billion (3·0–3·2) population equivalents still lacking UHC effective coverage in 2023, with nearly a third (968·1 million [903·5–1040·3]) residing in south Asia.
Interpretation
The present study demonstrates the utility of measuring effective coverage and its role in supporting improved health outcomes for all people—the ultimate goal of UHC and its achievement. Global ambitions to accelerate progress on UHC service coverage are increasingly unlikely unless concerted action on non-communicable diseases occurs and countries can better translate health spending into improved performance. Focusing on effective coverage and accounting for the world's evolving health needs lays the groundwork for better understanding how close—or how far—all populations are in benefiting from UHC
Highly Proton Conducting Polyelectrolyte Membranes with Unusual Water Swelling Behavior Based on Triptycene-containing Poly(arylene ether sulfone) Multiblock Copolymers
Multiblock
poly(arylene ether sulfone) copolymers are attractive for polyelectrolyte
membrane fuel cell applications due to their reportedly improved proton
conductivity under partially hydrated conditions and better mechanical/thermal
stability compared to Nafion. However, the long hydrophilic sequences
required to achieve high conductivity usually lead to excessive water
uptake and swelling, which degrade membrane dimensional stability.
Herein, we report a fundamentally new approach to address this grand
challenge by introducing shape-persistent triptycene units into the
hydrophobic sequences of multiblock copolymers, which induce strong
supramolecular chain-threading and interlocking interactions that
effectively suppress water swelling. Consequently, unlike previously
reported multiblock copolymer systems, the water swelling of the triptycene-containing
multiblock copolymers did not increase proportionally with water uptake.
This combination of high water uptake and low swelling behavior of
these copolymers resulted in excellent proton conductivity and membrane
dimensional stability under fully hydrated conditions. In particular,
the triptycene-containing multiblock copolymer film with the longest
hydrophilic block length (i.e., BPSH100-TRP0-15k-15k) had a water
uptake of 105%, an excellent proton conductivity of 0.150 S/cm, and
a volume swelling ratio of just 29% (more than 42% reduction compared
to Nafion 212)
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Mild traumatic brain injury induces microvascular injury and accelerates Alzheimer-like pathogenesis in mice.
IntroductionTraumatic brain injury (TBI) is considered as the most robust environmental risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Besides direct neuronal injury and neuroinflammation, vascular impairment is also a hallmark event of the pathological cascade after TBI. However, the vascular connection between TBI and subsequent AD pathogenesis remains underexplored.MethodsIn a closed-head mild TBI (mTBI) model in mice with controlled cortical impact, we examined the time courses of microvascular injury, blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction, gliosis and motor function impairment in wild type C57BL/6 mice. We also evaluated the BBB integrity, amyloid pathology as well as cognitive functions after mTBI in the 5xFAD mouse model of AD.ResultsmTBI induced microvascular injury with BBB breakdown, pericyte loss, basement membrane alteration and cerebral blood flow reduction in mice, in which BBB breakdown preceded gliosis. More importantly, mTBI accelerated BBB leakage, amyloid pathology and cognitive impairment in the 5xFAD mice.DiscussionOur data demonstrated that microvascular injury plays a key role in the pathogenesis of AD after mTBI. Therefore, restoring vascular functions might be beneficial for patients with mTBI, and potentially reduce the risk of developing AD
Mild traumatic brain injury induces microvascular injury and accelerates Alzheimer-like pathogenesis in mice
INTRODUCTION: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is considered as the most robust environmental risk factor for Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD). Besides direct neuronal injury and neuroinflammation, vascular impairment is also a hallmark event of the pathological cascade after TBI. However, the vascular connection between TBI and subsequent AD pathogenesis remains underexplored. METHODS: In a closed-head mild TBI (mTBI) model in mice with controlled cortical impact, we examined the time courses of microvascular injury, blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction, gliosis and motor function impairment in wild type C57BL/6 mice. We also evaluated the BBB integrity, amyloid pathology as well as cognitive functions after mTBI in the 5xFAD mouse model of AD. RESULTS: mTBI induced microvascular injury with BBB breakdown, pericyte loss, basement membrane alteration and cerebral blood flow reduction in mice, in which BBB breakdown preceded gliosis. More importantly, mTBI accelerated BBB leakage, amyloid pathology and cognitive impairment in the 5xFAD mice. DISCUSSION: Our data demonstrated that microvascular injury plays a key role in the pathogenesis of AD after mTBI. Therefore, restoring vascular functions might be beneficial for patients with mTBI, and potentially reduce the risk of developing AD