Majority Of Funds Research Articles

Economical Impact of Integration of Mental Health Services to Primary Care - A Review.

There are numerous people all across the world who are struggling with mental health (MH) conditions. There is a growing recognition of the significance of MH as a primary cause of disability with substantial effects on daily functioning. The Ministry of Health's financial division oversees money with the Ministry of Finance's approval. Thus, this review explores the economics of integrating MH services in a primary healthcare center (PHC) in Saudi Arabia (SA). The incorporation of MH services into basic medical care is required as it ensures that the general population has access to the necessary MH care and the likelihood of better health outcomes is raised when receiving treatment in PHCs. The majority of funds that are now allocated to the provision of MH care are used to pay the wages of MH professionals and paramedical staff members who are employed in mental hospitals, as well as to invest in the development of infrastructure and education of MH experts. A report found that MH expenditures accounted for 4% of the entire budget for health care. The expenditure for mental hospitals was 22% of the total for MH hospitals. The allocation of funds is integral for the PHCs to perform at their maximum potential in the MH domain. Thus, this review explores the economics of integrating MH services in a PHC in S SA.

Investing in Smart Cities: Enhancing Public Libraries for Quality Services in India

ABSTRACT This article comprehensively examines investments in India’s smart cities1 with a specific focus on public libraries. A survey of 100 Smart Cities Mission projects was conducted to gather data on budget allocation and expenditure for public libraries, construction and renovation projects, and IT infrastructure and outreach programs. Results reveal investments in 27 library projects across 12 states geographically distributed throughout India, spanning new library establishments, renovations, digitization efforts, and IT integration with library services. The majority of funds (60%) support new libraries including business and innovation components, while renovation projects claim 30%. The article contributes valuable insights for public library development, targeting library authorities, municipal administrators, and local planners as statutory services at the heart of community development and engagement of public.

The Utilization of User Fees to Subsidize Greenhouse and Growth Chamber Facilities at Public and Land Grant Universities

Greenhouse and growth chamber operating and maintenance costs continue to escalate while budgets remain stagnant. As a result, many universities struggle to find the necessary funds for the maintenance, repair, and replacement of basic research infrastructure needs. A survey was conducted to develop an understanding of how user fee systems contribute to funding stability, and how they are designed and managed in support of greenhouse and growth chamber facilities at colleges of agriculture throughout the United States. Where user fees have been implemented, the majority of greenhouse and growth chamber facilities are managed centrally, and are administered by agricultural experiment station (AES) directors or facility managers. Regardless of the administrative authority, most systems use an advisory committee to set fee schedules and determine policies. The majority of user fees are allocated back to the specific facility, with the majority of funds in general used to help pay for indirect expenses. The findings also indicate that user fees make more efficient use of space by providing faculty with a financial incentive to minimize their project area and to conduct experiments quickly.

What is going wrong in health research investment? post-pandemic lessons and the need for change

The emergence of a new dimension of consciousness after the COVID-19 pandemic might provide an opportunity to highlight gaps and inequalities in health research investment and to mobilize scientific and public opinion to change the way things are done. This analysis considers some lessons learned from the pandemic crisis concerning the priority of global health research, research in prevention and well-being, and international research cooperation. The question raised by these issues concerns the unfairness of health research funding, mainly dominated by the pharmaceutical and device industries. However, evidence shows that these companies shifted funding to late-phase clinical trials and away from innovation activity and global health priorities. On the other hand, public institutions continue to invest in basic science, with the majority of funds still focused on basic research and innovation. This direct relationship between industry and biomedical research disrupts the reliability of findings and biases the evidence. Several initiatives and efforts are shaping pathways towards health research independence from industry funding. We can propose the idea of industry funding without a direct relationship with researchers through a common pot managed by an independent international agency. Nevertheless, to promote publicly funded research, the scientific community must strengthen its position compared to industry-funded research through transparency and the scientific value of publications.

Personal and Institutional Timelines for Hurricane Preparedness, Recovery and Mitigation

Institutional and personal timelines are constantly placed in tension by hurricanes, from decisions regarding preparedness and evacuation, to recovery and hazard mitigation decisions. Government timelines for evacuation, for example, must allow sufficient time for the large scale movement of a population; but, individually, evacuation timelines are impacted by a myriad of personal decisions including caregiving concerns and employment concerns, both of which tend to push the decision making window further out. Another example is in recovery, where institutional timelines for recovery assistance, spread out across several agencies and timescales, do not readily align with personal and family decision-making timelines in which returning to a sense of normalcy is prioritized highest. These varying timelines result in complications with the marrying of various sources of assistance and lead to both unnecessary confusion and also missed opportunities to maximize recovery assistance. In hazard mitigation, the fact that the majority of funds are available after damages have occurred already creates an inverted timeline in which preventative actions are taken after the fact, but the delays inherent to the management of the programs also create extensive delays to family recovery timelines.

Have Investors Paid a Performance Price? Examining the Behavior of ESG Equity Funds

The academic and practitioner literature provides a variety of contradicting theories as to expected consequences of environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-related factors on the risk and return of equity securities. In light of these heterogeneous expectations, this article sets out to empirically investigate the performance characteristics of investable ESG equity funds to assess whether support for a particular direction in performance impact can be found. The dataset comprises index and active equity mutual funds and exchange-traded funds with a US investment focus that indicate the use of ESG factors in their investment process and extends over a period of 15 years (2004–2018). The empirical results are rather mixed. The authors find substantial cross-sectional dispersion in performance among funds. After controlling for style factor exposures, the majority of funds in any of the tested ESG categories does not produce statistically significant positive or negative gross alpha. An industry-based performance contribution analysis reveals that systematic differences in allocations relative to the broad market exist. However, their median contribution to performance is close to zero over time. Overall, return and risk differences of ESG funds can be significant but appear to be mainly driven by fund-specific criteria rather than by a homogeneous ESG factor. As a result, investors would be better served by assessing investment implications on a fund-by-fund basis. TOPICS:ESG investing, mutual fund performance, passive strategies, portfolio theory Key Findings • The majority of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) equity funds in any of the tested categories do not produce statistically significant positive or negative gross alpha. • Systematic differences in industry allocations relative to the broad market exist, but their median contribution to performance is close to zero over time. • Mixed and substantial cross-sectional dispersion in performance among ESG funds suggests that both the direction and magnitude of any risk or return impact is best assessed on a fund-by-fund basis.

Selecting Mutual Funds from the Stocks They Hold: A Machine Learning Approach

We select mutual funds in real time by combining individual fund holdings and a large number (94) of stock characteristics to compute fund-level characteristics on the basis of the stocks they hold. We show that, first, the majority of funds are largely exposed---both positively and negatively---to approximately 40-50 characteristics. Second, fund performance is non-linearly related to fund characteristics and there are significant degrees of interaction between different fund characteristics and fund performance. Third, when we predict fund performance, these non-linearities and interactions prove important as machine learning methods such as Boosted Regression Trees (BRT) outperform significantly standard linear frameworks and the BRT-generated forecasts encompass the ones generated by the predictors of mutual fund performance that have been proposed in the literature so far. Fourth, while in our setting BRT outperform the LASSO, elastic nets, random forests, and neural networks with 1 through 5 hidden layers, these other machine learning methods deliver good performance and they all outperform ordinary least squares models. Finally, while we detect signi cant predictability using machine learning methods, the fund characteristics that matter the most in predicting fund returns and the functional relation between fund characteristics and fund performance are time-varying.

How Efficiently Do Investors Allocate Capital to Active Mutual Funds?

I show that investors misallocate a substantial amount of capital in the active mutual fund industry. To this end, I develop a novel structural identification strategy to estimate the returns to scale in active management and the time-varying fund skills. A median fund is over-allocated by $29 million, so the majority of funds are expected to underperform. The industry can host more capital, but additional capital should go to a small fraction of funds. In particular, funds with the highest skills are severely under-allocated and account for most of the missing capital. In the time-series, under-allocated funds can outperform their benchmarks for three years. My findings suggest the active mutual fund industry is not always in a frictionless rational expectations equilibrium. The disequilibrium implies the existence of profit opportunities to informed investors and thus rationalizes the popularity of active management.

Performance evaluation of the Turkish pension fund system

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth performance evaluation of funds offered by the Turkish pension system. Design/methodology/approach This paper compares aggregate fund index returns with the corresponding asset class returns, estimates a factor model to decompose excess returns to factor exposures, i.e., β return and excess return originating from residual α and analyzes persistence of fund returns using migration tables and Fama–MacBeth regressions and tests for market timing ability. Findings Majority of pension funds are unable to generate excess returns. Majority of funds are unable to generate a positive α and fund returns are predominantly driven factor exposures. There is evidence for slight persistence in returns, mainly due to factor exposures and funds do not exhibit market timing ability. Originality/value In this paper, the authors perform an in-depth analysis of pension fund performance for the Turkish pension fund system. The authors identify weaknesses and strengths of the pension fund industry and provide policy recommendations for a better design of pension fund system.

Leadership training design, delivery, and implementation: A meta-analysis.

Recent estimates suggest that although a majority of funds in organizational training budgets tend to be allocated to leadership training (Ho, 2016; O'Leonard, 2014), only a small minority of organizations believe their leadership training programs are highly effective (Schwartz, Bersin, & Pelster, 2014), calling into question the effectiveness of current leadership development initiatives. To help address this issue, this meta-analysis estimates the extent to which leadership training is effective and identifies the conditions under which these programs are most effective. In doing so, we estimate the effectiveness of leadership training across four criteria (reactions, learning, transfer, and results; Kirkpatrick, 1959) using only employee data and we examine 15 moderators of training design and delivery to determine which elements are associated with the most effective leadership training interventions. Data from 335 independent samples suggest that leadership training is substantially more effective than previously thought, leading to improvements in reactions (δ = .63), learning (δ = .73), transfer (δ = .82), and results (δ = .72), the strength of these effects differs based on various design, delivery, and implementation characteristics. Moderator analyses support the use of needs analysis, feedback, multiple delivery methods (especially practice), spaced training sessions, a location that is on-site, and face-to-face delivery that is not self-administered. Results also suggest that the content of training, attendance policy, and duration influence the effectiveness of the training program. Practical implications for training development and theoretical implications for leadership and training literatures are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Degree of Convergence of the Efficiency of the Polish Equity Investment Funds Obtained with Measures Based on the Sharpe Ratio

Abstract Long-term persistence of low interest rates and a decline in attractiveness of investing in low-interest bank deposits generate additional demand for investments in investment funds. In such a situation, it is expected to have widespread use of the investment efficiency measures which take into account not only return, but risk level. The study examines eight measures of efficiency based on the Sharpe ratio. The study uses monthly data for 22 active equity funds over the period 2005-2015. It was found that the majority of funds were more efficient than the market in periods of moderate economic growth and less effective in the period of strong growth on the capital market. The most efficient funds retain high efficiency in all phases of the economic cycle. The efficiency values obtained using indicators: Shape, Treynor, Jensen, Sortino, Omega, Sharpe-Israelsen and IR were strongly correlated, while values of the UPR indicator were significantly different from the other results.

End of „Mass Imprisonmet” Policy in the USA? (Un)profitability Widespread Use of Inprisonment

Since the 1970s, the number of prisoners in the US has been increasing., but this is not due to an increase in crime as statistics during this time actually indicate a decline. America is living with the illusion that imprisonment is the cure for crime. The majority of funds from the budget, rather than being spent on education, welfare and health, goes to gigantic expansions of prisons. Legislation under which an increasing number of criminals is sentenced to longer terms of imprisonment for an even broader range of offenses has changed. Support for such a number of new prisoners consumes more and more costs, both financial and social. This realization came quite late, because only in 2011, when the financial system of California, a state which expanded its prison system the most of all the US states, broke down. Since then, the prison population of the United States has begun to decrease slightly.

Faith Based Investing (FBI) Fund Performance: Luck or Skill?

This study uses monthly net return data on 27 actively managed faith based mutual funds and the latest Fama-French bootstrap methodology to distinguish between luck and skill of fund managers. The main benchmark of this study is the Carhart (1997) four-factor model. The evidence suggests that majority of fund managers do not have enough skill to produce expected benchmark-adjusted net returns that cover costs. By ranking funds on performance after costs, we find that the performance of the majority of funds can be attributed to "bad skill". The evidence is strongest in the top 95th percentile and above, and from the bottom 10th percentile and below.

EU's Conservation Efforts Need More Strategic Investment to Meet Continental Commitments

AbstractThe European Union (EU) has made significant conservation efforts in the last two decades, guided by the Birds and Habitats Directives, currently under evaluation. Despite these efforts a large proportion of priority species are still in unfavorable condition and continue declining. For this reason, a thoughtful review of the implementation of conservation efforts in Europe is needed to identify potential causes behind this poor effectiveness. We compiled information on the distribution of all conservation funds under the LIFE‐Nature, the main financial tool for conservation in Europe. We found that LIFE‐Nature has not adequately covered continental conservation needs. The majority of funds have been directed toward nonthreatened species or regions of low conservation priority. Given the limited resources available, two key aspects are in urgent need for revision and improvement. First, the distribution of funds should be guided by continental and global conservation needs and planned at the EU scale. Second, new mechanisms are required to set conservation priorities in a dynamic fashion, rather than relying on fixed lists (i.e., the Directives’ Annexes) that may rapidly become outdated. These improvements would require new mechanisms to set priorities and redistribution of conservation efforts, supported by adequate policy and a more effective top‐down control on investment.

An Assessment of Small-Scale Rice Farmers’ Adaptability to Climate Change: Case Study in Central Java, Indonesia

Focus group discussions were carried out with rainfed rice farmers in Central Java, Indonesia to understand their rice production system and assess their adaptability to current and future climate change. Results show that the farmers dealt with various stresses such as water shortage, weeds, insects, and pathogens and they spent a significant amount of money for the prevention or reduction of yield loss due to these stresses. As a result, their production cost ranged from 33% to 40% of revenue in the first season and hovered around 30% in the second season. The majority of funds used to prevent or mitigate crop losses from stresses was sourced from debts borrowed from Original Research Article Boling et al.; AJAEES, 10(3): 1-13, 2016; Article no.AJAEES.25246 2 commercial and non-commercial sources. The farmers were therefore vulnerable to any additional damage caused by stresses. Drought is one of the most damaging abiotic stresses but farmers do not have any effective countermeasures to mitigate its effects. This situation results mainly from their inability to access accurate and timely information on the type and start/end of the rainy season. This lack of information prevents them from selecting and planting the correct varieties and adopting the appropriate cultural management practices. Research needs to focus on this particular constraint to help rainfed farmers reduce crop losses from stresses, drought in particular, and to substantially move forward the process of designing more responsive and sustainable rice production models for Central Java and other similarly-situated drought-prone areas.

Financial Management and Gender Equality in Interscholastic Athletics

Interscholastic athletic programs must avoid gender-based budgetary inequity lawsuits to ensure their successful operation. Potential problem areas are the methods used to generate athletic funds, female sports funding and the maintenance of Title IX compliance. Eighty-two interscholastic athletic directors from eastern Kentucky region shared their perceptions concerning these potential problem areas. They completed an online survey based on past literature (1, 2, 3) addressing themes concerning effective strategies for generating athletic funds and maintaining equitable athletic budgets for both gender sports. The results indicated that participants adopted both direct sales (food, apparels, and tangible product items) and indirect sales (advertising spaces, conducting camps, and offering services) to generate revenues for their athletic programs. They had adopted the popular fundraising methods which were commonly suggested by past literature. In general, participants also agreed that female students should receive necessary financial support and opportunity to accommodate their participatory need. It is suggested that keeping an accurate Title IX report is the key to ensure a high level of Title IX compliance. Potentially the most controversial finding is that participants prefer to keep the majority of funds for football and men's basketball.

A Study on Agrarian Suicides in India with a Special Reference to Andhra Pradesh

“Farmers in India born in debt growing in debt and dieing in debt” -Gurnal MirdhalThe above quotation is a mirror image of Indian farmers economic condition. The famous quotation was coined by Gurnal Mirdhal, a great economist, in his famous book 'Asian Drama', for decades before. From ancient days to present our primary occupation is agriculture which is suffering by a wicked problems. Nearly 69 per cent of population depends upon agriculture and contributes 27 per cent in GDP. After free from British rule, our rulers had given a great importance to the primary sector. In 1st plan, the majority of funds were allocated to primary sector by recognizing the importance of agriculture and its allied sectors. There was no change in the government attitude and importance towards agriculture and it continuing up to Pre-LPG (Liberalization, Gloabalisation and Privatization). After LPG , the priority of government has been shifted a great extent to industrial sector, particularly IT and IT enabled services from agriculture sector. This has been affected on agriculture at considerable rate. Due to the government policies and attitudes towards, the fortune of farmers have changed and forcefully put in suicidal way. In particular, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Madhaya Pradesh become graveyards to farmers. One side developed countries were encouraging their farmers with huge subsidies where as in Andhra Pradesh governments were implemented anti-agriculture policies during the period of 1997-2003. In addition to the above, the rainfall conditions were also very bad and ultimately leads to severe drought which claims some thousands of farmer lives. Some corners in Andhra Pradesh farmers were sold out their kidneys too face drought conditions.

An empirical analysis of the Wall Street Journal’s SmartMoney fund screen

We examine mutual funds that appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s SmartMoney Fund Screen column from September 2004 through July 2009. We find that the majority of funds listed do not have Morningstar’s highest five star rating. Regardless of Morningstar rating, the average prepublication performance of the funds is significantly higher than the benchmarks used to measure performance. Post publication, fund performance declines, and the decline is statistically significant across our performance measures. However, additional tests indicate that the SmartMoney funds which have a three or four star rating from Morningstar are better investment values than corresponding five star Morningstar funds with the same prospectus objective and expense ratio.

A Direct and Full-Information Estimation of the Distribution of Skill in the Mutual Fund Industry

We propose a novel methodology that jointly estimates the proportions of skilled/unskilled funds and the cross-sectional distribution of skill in the mutual fund industry. We model this distribution as a three-component mixture of a point mass at zero and two components — one negative, one positive — that we estimate semi-parametrically. This generalizes previous approaches and enables information-sharing across funds in a data-driven manner. We find that the skill distribution is non-normal (asymmetric and fat-tailed). Furthermore, while the majority of funds have negative alpha, a substantial 13% generate positive alpha. Our approach improves out-of-sample portfolio performance and significantly alters asset allocation decisions.

EXECUTION OF FIDUCIARY GUARANTEE UNDER LAW NO. 42 OF 1999 ON FIDUCIARY GUARANTEE (A SOCIO-JURIDICAL ANALYSIS TO ANTICIPATE ITS EFFECTIVENESS)

Fiduciary Guarantee (Fiduciary Law) which approved by the House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia (DPR RI) on September 9, 1999 has accommodate the public needs to help business activities and to provide legal certainty to the interested parties. With the increase in the development activities and the needs for funding, a majority of funds are needed to meet the lending and borrowing activities that require protection for the lender and the borrower through a guarantee institution that can provide legal certainty and protection to the lender or the borrower. Viewed from the current lending practices, there is a difficulty on the part of the Fiduciary Guarantee to conduct the fiduciary execution if the Fiduciary Grantor defaults since in fact the goods being a fiduciary object are still in the possession of the Fiduciary Grantor or Debtor, then in line with the provisions of article 1977 of the Indonesian Civil Code, known as the principle of bezit geldt als volkomen titel.