Assessing the impact of regeneration spending: lessons from the United Kingdom and the wider world

YesThe government increased the funding for regional development agencies to £2.3 billion in 2007/8, yet hard evidence on the effectiveness of the spending is difficult to find. Techniques for valuing benefits in difficult areas have existed for many years. They range from the hedonic methods and contingent valuation studies of environmental economists to the estimates of shadow wage rates used by development economists to take account of the economic value of additional employment. The latter have been used for years in some of the poorest developing countries in the world, as well as some countries in the European Union. Meanwhile some attempts to capture the indirect benefits of regeneration spending have surfaced through the United States with the ‘Social Return on Investment’ and Local Multiplier 3, yet the proponents of these approaches do not seem to have come across the abundant literature on the use of shadow pricing in the context of developing countries. This article attempts to explore the extent to which practices used and lessons learned in the economic analysis of environmental impacts and of investments in developing countries can inform the evaluation and appraisal of regeneration projects in the United Kingdom

EFFECTS OF BANKING STRUCTURE ON THE ALLOCATION OF CREDIT TO NONMETROPOLITAN COMMUNITIES

Recent and proposed legislative changes encourage increases in multioffice banking activity. In this manuscript, the allocation of credit to nonmetropolitan communities in a branch banking state (Arizona) is compared to that in a unit banking-holding company state (Colorado). Rapidly growing nonmetropolitan areas have experienced increased lending activity under statewide branching relative to unit banking. Rural communities, which experienced slow or negative growth, had lower loan-to-deposit rations under branch banking than might have existed under unit banking. Therefore, conversion to branch banking may result in a reallocation of loanable funds within nonmetropolitan areas.Financial Economics,

Policy Reform and the Economic Development of Tanzania.

This paper reviews the long-term economic performance of Tanzania since independence using long-term series of key economic and social indicators constructed from a variety of sources. The disastrous export performance for most of the period under consideration can be attributed partly to domestic policy failures and partly to a hostile external environment. However inconsistent donor support to a highly aid dependent economy at times exacerbated the constraints imposed by persistent foreign exchange shortages. Greater stability in funding and a more flexible policy dialogue are needed. The extent to which a small and poor economy with a weak indigenous private sector can rely on foreign private investment to finance investment in the early stages of adjustment is questioned. Investment in human capital beyond primary school level is also needed if growth is to be sustained

Experimental validation of dynamic stability analysis applied to dart flight

The game of darts attracts a large international following and can be fiercely competitive. Despite its popularity, and the large equipment market, no previous peer-reviewed studies have examined the trajectory of a dart in flight. This study used high-speed video techniques to measure the trajectories of 225 dart throws from 19 amateur players. The dart’s pitch and angle of attack were found to oscillate during flight in a manner that is analogous to damped harmonic motion. It was also found that the dart’s oscillation frequency was strongly correlated to launch speed, whilst its characteristic wavelength and damping ratio were independent of launch speed. The measured wavelength of oscillation (2.16 m) was found to be similar to the regulation throwing distance (2.37 m). It is proposed that the dart is ‘tuned’ to the throwing distance such that it undergoes one full oscillation before striking the board. The dart flight was modelled using a classical dynamic stability analysis and good agreement was found between the experimental observations and the theoretical predictions. The success of the model confirms that the approach can be used to explore the dynamics of different dart designs through parametric sensitivity analyses

Changes In The Regional Responsiveness To Federal Reserve Policy Shocks And The Declining Importance Of Interest Rate Sensitive Industry Sectors

This paper extends the existing research on regional economic responses to federal-reserve policy shocks along two dimensions.  First, we focus on the evolution over time of a particular region’s responsiveness to federal funds shocks.  This differs from prior work that analyzed differences across regions in their responsiveness to a federal funds shock over a single sample period.  For the state of Delaware, we track how the declining importance of manufacturing and construction alters the region’s income response to both federal funds rate and oil price shocks.  Delaware was selected for analysis because of the large decline since the 1970’s in the share of its Gross State Product coming from construction and manufacturing. This paper’s second extension of the literature is its use of sequential updating of the data set.  Prior research utilized quarterly data sets starting in the late 1950’s and ending in the early 1990’s.  We construct a parsimonious structural VAR model and first estimate the model over the 1958Q1 to 1992 Q4 period. Over this period our results are consistent with earlier findings.  Next, we roll the sample period forward one year at a time, keeping the time period’s length constant, up through 2004 Q2 and re-estimate the model after each resetting of the sample period.  Overall, our findings are consistent with the view that declines in the importance of interest rate sensitive sectors will lead to declines in the responsiveness of a region’s income growth to federal funds rate shocks, but the magnitude of the observed decline in income sensitivity is considerably smaller than what one would forecast based upon the earlier cross-sectional based research.  The impact of oil price shocks, however, was contrary to ‘conventional wisdom’ expectations.  Despite the declining share of manufacturing in GSP for Delaware over the rolling sample periods, there was a modest increase in the sensitivity of Delaware real personal income to oil price shocks as the sample period rolled forward

Quantifying the impact and relevance of scientific research

Qualitative and quantitative methods are being developed to measure the impacts of research on society, but they suffer from serious drawbacks associated with linking a piece of research to its subsequent impacts. We have developed a method to derive impact scores for individual research publications according to their contribution to answering questions of quantified importance to end users of research. To demonstrate the approach, here we evaluate the impacts of research into means of conserving wild bee populations in the UK. For published papers, there is a weak positive correlation between our impact score and the impact factor of the journal. The process identifies publications that provide high quality evidence relating to issues of strong concern. It can also be used to set future research agendas

Bee conservation: inclusive solutions

Conservation Biolog

Mining whole sample mass spectrometry proteomics data for biomarkers: an overview

In this paper we aim to provide a concise overview of designing and conducting an MS proteomics experiment in such a way as to allow statistical analysis that may lead to the discovery of novel biomarkers. We provide a summary of the various stages that make up such an experiment, highlighting the need for experimental goals to be decided upon in advance. We discuss issues in experimental design at the sample collection stage, and good practise for standardising protocols within the proteomics laboratory. We then describe approaches to the data mining stage of the experiment, including the processing steps that transform a raw mass spectrum into a useable form. We propose a permutation-based procedure for determining the significance of reported error rates. Finally, because of its general advantages in speed and cost, we suggest that MS proteomics may be a good candidate for an early primary screening approach to disease diagnosis, identifying areas of risk and making referrals for more specific tests without necessarily making a diagnosis in its own right. Our discussion is illustrated with examples drawn from experiments on bovine blood serum conducted in the Centre for Proteomic Research (CPR) at Southampton University