Rationale For Investment Research Articles

Active Immunotherapy for the Prevention of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease.

Neurodegenerative diseases (ND) give rise to significant declines in motor, autonomic, behavioral, and cognitive functions. Of these conditions, Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) are the most prevalent, impacting over 55 million people worldwide. Given the staggering financial toll on the global economy and their widespread manifestation, NDs represent a critical issue for healthcare systems worldwide. Current treatment options merely seek to provide symptomatic relief or slow the rate of functional decline and remain financially inaccessible to many patients. Indeed, no therapy has yet demonstrated the potential to halt the trajectory of NDs, let alone reverse them. It is now recognized that brain accumulation of pathological variants of AD- or PD-associated proteins (i.e., amyloid-β, Tau, α-synuclein) begins years to decades before the onset of clinical symptoms. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to pursue therapies that prevent the neurodegenerative processes associated with pathological protein aggregation long before a clinical diagnosis can be made. These therapies must be safe, convenient, and affordable to ensure broad coverage in at-risk populations. Based on the need to intervene long before clinical symptoms appear, in this review, we present a rationale for greater investment to support the development of active immunotherapy for the prevention of the two most common NDs based on their safety profile, ability to specifically target pathological proteins, as well as the significantly lower costs associated with manufacturing and distribution, which stands to expand accessibility to millions of people globally.

Budget Process and Execution: A Case Study on the Underperformance of the Peruvian Health System, 2000-2021.

Health system financing for emerging economies with aging populations and changing epidemiological profiles is an increasing challenge. Peru, as one of the countries with the highest economic growth in this century, provides a good example for analyzing the impact of the budgeting process and the budget execution on the performance of a health system. This article aims to answer how policies and processes are the root causes of the performance gap of the Peruvian health system. We used a case study methodology composed of 17 semistructured interviews with senior national and regional actors conducted between the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. Participants were selected with a combination of purposive, convenience, and snowball sampling until reaching saturation at 14 interviews. Participants' answers were grouped according to the topics explored, enabling comparisons and identification of themes. The responses revealed that 4 interconnected influences affect the Peruvian health system. Political instability affects the sustainable development of health policies. The fiscal cycle limits the public health expenditure to a low 3% of the gross domestic product. The budget cycle is based on the low motivation of the Ministry of Health (MOH) to establish a proper budgeting process. The execution cycle represents the results of chronic underinvestment with a lack of professionals, equipment, and data affecting the access to care expressed by a high out-of-pocket share in health expenditure. To escape these cycles, the MOH needs to be able to argue in economic terms for the prioritization of health, showing the economic rationale for investment in health. Taxes need to finance the additional investment within the available fiscal space. The rigidity of the budget law needs to be adapted, and a technical budget that is oriented to the current and future health priorities needs to be elaborated.

Factors influencing students’ learning satisfaction and students’ learning outcomes in blended learning

In China, there is a thriving trend of utilizing a unique form of blended learning that combines MOOCs (massive open online courses) and SPOC (Small Private Online Course). However, the evaluation methods used for these blended learning courses have not been adequately developed. The objective and accurate evaluation of blended learning poses a challenge. Therefore, it is imperative to conduct a preliminary study to examine the relationships between various factors, such as the quality of the teaching environment, the quality of teachers' offline teaching, the quality of teachers' online teaching, and their impacts on students' learning satisfaction and learning outcomes in a blended learning setting. This study aims to analyze the factors in blended learning by employing structural equation modeling and interviews with 275 students. The findings of this research contribute to the advancement of student learning evaluation in blended learning by incorporating the evaluation of the teaching environment, the quality of teachers' online teaching, the quality of teachers' offline teaching, student satisfaction, and students' learning outcomes. Furthermore, this study offers a comprehensive analysis of the influence of the teaching environment on the aforementioned factors in blended learning, thereby providing a rationale and robust empirical evidence for the Chinese government's sustained investment in information technology infrastructure in higher education.

Economics of cardiovascular prevention in the Russian Federation

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading threat to the population health in the Russian Federation (RF), ranking first in the mortality structure. Demonstration of the economic impact of CVD is a rationale for investing in prevention and treatment. The economic damage caused by CVD in 2016 in the RF amounted to RUB 2,7 trillion, which is equivalent to 3,2% of gross domestic product (GDP). In the structure of damage by diseases, coronary artery disease occupies a leading position — RUB 1 trillion or 1,3% of GDP, while cerebrovascular diseases, stroke and myocardial infarction — RUB 560, 424 and 213,2 billion, respectively. Evaluation of cardiovascular prevention measures is not an easy task because the effect develops over a significant period of time. At the same time, various processes can affect the effect. The RF analysis showed that the potential economic effect from anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol measures, reducing salt consumption and increasing physical activity will be RUB 8,1 trillion in labor productivity increase over 15 years (equivalent to 7,8% of GDP in 2018), with most of the effect from the prevention of CVD deaths. Analyzing the economic impact of CVDs, preventive and curative measures provide a rationale for investment and is an important step in making informed decisions.

Investments are more than money: Emerging investment rationales and farmers in the Danish agri-food system

Danish and European farming increasingly depends on external investments due to a surge in farmland prices, capital intensive production facilities and structural development. In response, the land market has been deregulated giving external investors access to ownership of Danish farmland. Based on farming systems theory, this article explores the impacts of this policy reform. We identify four emerging investment rationales: 1) family business, 2) investment object, 3) social and ecological finance and 4) value-chain cooperation. We argue that the emergence of these new investment rationales reflects a fundamental change in financial conditions; today investors are more involved in asset management and use a range of new devises, such as benchmarking tools, farm advisory boards and contracts, to observe the performance of farming systems and to allocate funding. However, changing conditions are also the result of an evolving agri-food sector, which has deliberately pursued a growth strategy characterised by capital intensive mergers and expansion, financed by external investments. For agri-food studies this implies that the boundaries of farming systems are broadened and the individual farmer cannot be the sole entrance to the analysis, but this financialization constitute a new reality that increasingly need to be considered.

The role of the university entrepreneurial ecosystem in entrepreneurial finance: case studies of UK innovation knowledge centres

ABSTRACT How to commercialize university research and create positive socio-economic impact is a fundamental research question that is under explored. Considerable public funds are invested in universities globally to create knowledge and then to explore its viability to exploit commercial value through supporting entrepreneurship. We explore how publicly funded research and commercialization of projects promote university’s science and technology (S&T) initiatives. Qualitative case studies, involving 45 interviews, examine three UK government-funded Innovation Knowledge Centres’ (IKCs) roles in commercializing three different emerging disruptive technologies: cyber security, digital construction and synthetic biology. An improved entrepreneurial finance (“entfin”) ecosystem is the catalyst to promote innovation, through public funds to empower industry and deliver an effective finance escalator. A “WHO” policy analysis framework examines: the “Why” rationale for public investment; “How” process of translation; and “Outcomes”. This identified how Entrepreneurial Finance combined with Intermediaries, Infrastructure, Training and Leadership impacts scientific research commercialization. We reveal several inter connectors that link maturity of projects, their locality and outcome horizons. Universities play an important intermediary role, regionally and globally to connect the wider entfin ecosystems. The conclusions suggest that government needs to improve the policy mix across university ecosystem actors to improve long horizon investment.

Cost-benefit analysis of mitigating subsidence damage in Semarang and Demak, Indonesia

Since the early 1990s, the coastal Semarang City in Indonesia has been undergoing rapid industrialization and population expansion. To meet growing water demand, groundwater is abstracted with an ever-increasing number of abstraction wells. This has led to lower groundwater tables in the largely unconsolidated substrate and this, in turn, causes land subsidence in the area. This has led to significant direct and indirect economic damage. In the context of limited public resources, this study aims to analyze the economic rationale of alternative (public) investment strategies to reduce subsidence impact in the Semarang-Demak region. With Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), three alternative strategies to replace groundwater abstraction wells are analyzed: (1) Installment of a piped clean water supply system with 1,000 L/s capacity, (2) a new 2 km2 coastal freshwater reservoir in West Semarang, (3) installment of a piped clean water supply system with 2,000 L/s capacity. All strategies have a positive (>1) benefit-cost ratio, which indicates that there is an economic rationale for investment to mitigate subsidence in Semarang and Demak. Under a low water demand scenario, the best strategy is strategy 1; under a high water demand scenario, the best strategy is strategy 3. As strategy 3 gives the highest economic benefit in the worst-case scenario, this is the most robust strategy.

Beyond GDP: Using healthy lifetime income to trace well-being over time with estimates for 193 countries

We measure well-being across 193 countries from 1990 to 2019 using a new indicator: healthy lifetime income (HLI). Apart from the income component as captured by standard per capita gross domestic product, HLI incorporates health as a second important component. Overall, HLI can be interpreted as the income of the average person in an economy during the years in which the person is in good health. We show that HLI has particular strengths as compared with other measures such as the Human Development Index. These include requiring only easily accessible data for its construction, having an immediate economic interpretation and unit of measurement, not needing the application of arbitrary weights of subcomponents, and not being bounded from above. As compared with using per capita gross domestic product as a metric for well-being, we find that countries with better population health tend to fare better in the rankings. This provides a rationale for investments in health and helps shift the focus from material well-being (as an instrumental indicator of well-being) toward health (as an intrinsic goal).

Exploring the landscape of University-affiliated venture funds: an archetype approach

ABSTRACT In the last few decades, universities have engaged in the creation of university-affiliated venture capital (UVC) funds to solve the funding gap of new ventures that emerge from academic research. Little is known about their specific characteristics and typology in terms of their role, investment rationale and governance. This study undertakes an attempt to explore the diversity of UVC funds through the lens of an archetype approach. The analysis of 11 European UVC funds suggests that similarities and differences in such issues as governance system, industry focus and the stage of a venture development are the possible elements that define three distinct archetypes of UVC funding. The study contributes to academic research by proposing a categorisation of UVC funds, and demonstrating their uniqueness in terms of institutional hybridity, and dual organisational schemes and structures. It also suggests that UVC archetypes are not isolated and tend to borrow elements from each other, which contributes to creating a more fluid and flexible entrepreneurial university ecosystem.

The lifetime costs of perinatal depression and anxiety in Brazil

BackgroundEach year, an estimated 860,000 Brazilian women experience depression and anxiety perinatally. Despite well-known devastating impacts of these conditions on mothers and children, they remain neglected in low- and middle-income countries. Knowing the costs of untreated perinatal depression and anxiety can inform decision-making. MethodsSimulation modelling is used to examine lifetime costs of perinatal depression and anxiety for a hypothetical cohort of women and their children, followed until children are aged 40 years. Costs are measured from a societal perspective, including healthcare expenditure, productivity and health-related quality of life losses; 2017 data are taken from country-specific sources. Present values are calculated using a discount rate of 3 %. ResultsLifetime cost of perinatal depression and anxiety in Brazil are USD 4.86 billion or R$ 26.16 billion, including costs linked to poorer quality of life (USD 2.65 billion), productivity loss (USD 2.16 billion) and hospital care (USD 0.05 billion). When the costs associated with maternal suicide are included, total costs increase to USD 4.93 billion. LimitationsSeveral costs could not be included in the analysis because of a lack of data. The study is reliant of longitudinal data on associations between perinatal depression and anxiety and impacts on mothers and children. Therefore, no causality can be inferred. ConclusionOur findings illustrate the economic rationale for investment in this area. This is the first study that estimates the costs of perinatal mental health problems in a low- or middle-income country setting.

Transparency of agriculture companies: rationale of responsible investment for better decision making under sustainability

Purpose. The purpose of the article – to explore transparency under sustainability among agricultural companies in Ukraine (company “Kernel”) and the Czech Republic (company “Agrofert”) with further recommendations and implications related to reporting.
 Methodology / approach. Qualitative estimations of sustainability transparency are based on Sustainability Transparency Index (STI) calculations. Methodology of this index is based on binary estimations of a number of transparency criterions including links to sustainability information; existence of sustainable development policy; availability of sustainability and SDG reports; disclosure according to ESG criteria and specifics SDGs as well as other relevant goals related to SDG and sustainable development.
 Results. Sustainability transparency from 2016 till 2019 in Agrofert and Kernel was almost the same. But since 2019 after Kernel introduced a number of steps to increase its transparency the situation has changed dramatically. STI index has increased from 32 in 2019 to 80 in 2021. STI values for Agrofert were unchanged in 2020 (the latest available period of analysis). As a result, Kernel’s financial results and indicators have demonstrated significant improvement both absolute and relative. For example, net profit increased by more than 1000 %, investment cash-flow by 100 %, ROE – by 500 % and ROIC by 140 %.
 Originality / scientific novelty. New empirical results based on qualitative estimations of sustainability transparency for the agriculture companies from different countries are provided. Current study covers the existing research gap, proved by bibliometric analysis tool, for instance in pure academic discussion in measurement, comparison and benchmarking of agricultural companies’ transparency for the responsible investment purpose. Recommendations for sustainability transparency improvement are proposed. They are intended on better perception of sustainability ideology and incorporation of ESG/SDG criterion by agriculture companies in Ukraine and especially Czech Republic, levelling the informational asymmetry and moral risks for their investors and create better investment rationale for decision making under sustainability. 
 Practical value / implications. The most efficient steps include the following ones: development and implementation of sustainability policy; emergence of specific reports based on ESG criteria; implementation of SDGs in activity of the company with further prioritization of these criteria within two groups. Further study in this field might be devoted to sustainability transparency comparison for agriculture companies in different branch in Ukraine and Czech Republic. Spreading the scope and sample of research allows making cross-industries STI benchmarking analysis.

Transparency of agriculture companies: rationale of responsible investment for better decision making under sustainability

Purpose. The purpose of the article – to explore transparency under sustainability among agricultural companies in Ukraine (company “Kernel”) and the Czech Republic (company “Agrofert”) with further recommendations and implications related to reporting.
 Methodology / approach. Qualitative estimations of sustainability transparency are based on Sustainability Transparency Index (STI) calculations. Methodology of this index is based on binary estimations of a number of transparency criterions including links to sustainability information; existence of sustainable development policy; availability of sustainability and SDG reports; disclosure according to ESG criteria and specifics SDGs as well as other relevant goals related to SDG and sustainable development.
 Results. Sustainability transparency from 2016 till 2019 in Agrofert and Kernel was almost the same. But since 2019 after Kernel introduced a number of steps to increase its transparency the situation has changed dramatically. STI index has increased from 32 in 2019 to 80 in 2021. STI values for Agrofert were unchanged in 2020 (the latest available period of analysis). As a result, Kernel’s financial results and indicators have demonstrated significant improvement both absolute and relative. For example, net profit increased by more than 1000 %, investment cash-flow by 100 %, ROE – by 500 % and ROIC by 140 %.
 Originality / scientific novelty. New empirical results based on qualitative estimations of sustainability transparency for the agriculture companies from different countries are provided. Current study covers the existing research gap, proved by bibliometric analysis tool, for instance in pure academic discussion in measurement, comparison and benchmarking of agricultural companies’ transparency for the responsible investment purpose. Recommendations for sustainability transparency improvement are proposed. They are intended on better perception of sustainability ideology and incorporation of ESG/SDG criterion by agriculture companies in Ukraine and especially Czech Republic, levelling the informational asymmetry and moral risks for their investors and create better investment rationale for decision making under sustainability. 
 Practical value / implications. The most efficient steps include the following ones: development and implementation of sustainability policy; emergence of specific reports based on ESG criteria; implementation of SDGs in activity of the company with further prioritization of these criteria within two groups. Further study in this field might be devoted to sustainability transparency comparison for agriculture companies in different branch in Ukraine and Czech Republic. Spreading the scope and sample of research allows making cross-industries STI benchmarking analysis.

French city networking: Drivers and rationale for national investment

AbstractDrawing on qualitative investigations of three French cities, this this paper contributes to an understanding of the reasons behind the proliferation of activist city networks. Following the literature on the functions of transnational city networks, this article reveals four significant drivers that explain the preference of French cities for national city network ANVITA over international city networks amid a surge of welcoming initiatives. The four drivers offer opportunities to (1) share experience, (2) shame national authorities and propose alternative narratives, (3) limit pressure and opposition from NGOs and activists and (4) lend legitimacy to current policies and attain a label of “welcoming city” for Green and left‐leaning municipal coalitions. Thus, if the practical and symbolic functions are standard with international city networks, the symbolic functions play a significant role; some are explicit (shaming), whereas other are more implicit (relations with NGOs and partisan positioning). This article insists on the need to consider the political dimension of city networking as a significant driver for municipal actors. This political dimension is key to understanding how cities can (or not) be prominent actors in the governance of migration in the years to come.

Responsibilised parents and shadow education: managing the precarious environment in China

Growing literatures highlight global shifts in education brought by spreading neoliberal values and marketisation. Parallel literatures address parenting styles. Parents, these literatures observe, are increasingly made responsible and/or voluntarily take responsibility for educational inputs alongside mainstream schooling. Much parental investment is in the so-called shadow education sector of private supplementary tutoring. Examining Chinese patterns, this paper notes longstanding high enrolment rates in both academic and non-academic supplementary education prior to government restrictions that brought a sharp marketplace jolt. The paper then employs parental interview data to show the rationales for such investment despite efforts by the Chinese authorities to retain schooling as a fully-sufficient form of education. The strengthened government policy altered the picture, but it seems likely that in the competitive society many parents will still secure supplementary support to manage what they feel to be a precarious environment.

State ownership and technology adoption: The case of electric utilities and renewable energy

Technology adoption is crucial to address pressing public policy issues such as climate change, but the role of ownership structure in adoption decisions is not well understood. The low-carbon energy transition in the electricity industry is a case in point. Following market liberalization, the electricity industry in many countries is now characterized by a co-existence of state-owned and private utilities. We bring together the economic literatures on innovation and ownership to derive hypotheses of how ownership could affect renewable energy adoption by utilities. Focusing on data from incumbent utilities in the European Union (EU) during 2005–2016, we test these hypotheses using regression analyses and qualitative analysis of investment rationales for ten utilities. Results suggest that in the EU, state-owned utilities have a higher tendency to invest in renewables. We find evidence that state ownership interacts with the existence of pro-adoption policies and state enforcement capabilities. Based on our findings, we discuss broader implications for the role of state-owned enterprises in technological change in the energy sector and beyond.

Augustine Investments and Weapons Systems

ABSTRACT Augustine weapons systems are proposed as a new class of investment good. They have distinctive economic characteristics (technology intensive, high and rising unit costs, and declining volumes) leading to extensive changes in armed forces’ arsenals including the progressive replacement of military bulk with ever-smaller volumes of increasingly complex, capable, but also expensive weapons systems. While much has been written about their costs, there remain gaps in our understanding of their investment rationale and the modus operandi of their procurement. We distinguish between incremental and transformative Augustine weapons systems and discuss their investment rationale. We show that further understanding of Augustine weapons systems is obtained by using Lancaster’s model of product characteristics and the real investment options framework. Some civilian parallels are also discussed.

Inside the black box of institutional investors in an emerging market: the role of sell side analyst outputs

PurposeIn the backdrop of emerging market setting of India, this study aims to attempt to identify how Institutional investors use sell side analyst outputs for their decision-making processes in light of inherent biases in their forecasts and recommendations. The study also conceptualizes the role of internal buy side teams in the process and try to figure out the key attributes and services provided by sell side analysts, which provide maximum value to the investors.Design/methodology/approachThe study is centered upon in-depth semi-structured interviews of ten institutional investors from top Indian asset management companies covering a wide range of topics tied back to theoretical explanations. The data collected was transcribed, coded and analyzed using content analysis to ensure a systematic synthesis of point of view.FindingsThe findings show that internal analyst teams of institutional investors play a dominant role in terms of validation of sell side analysts’ outputs (given the inherent biases in sell side analyst forecasts). Further, the engagement of sell side analysts by the investors are determined not only through profitable recommendations but also on the basis of soundness of the investment rationale along with other services provided. Finally, this study puts into perspective, the critical role of analyst industry knowledge and access to company management (as opposed to analyst pedigree and forecast accuracy) for institutional investors decision-making.Practical implicationsThe findings of the paper have profound implications for various stakeholders such as companies, sell side analysts, policy makers, researchers and students of finance in terms of detailed understanding of investment processes of institutional investors in the context of emerging markets like India, which have a different legal and regulatory set-up compared to developed markets. The authors also provide a critical perspective through an intriguing paradox that exists between finance theory and its relevance for actual practitioners.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in India which look inside the “black box” of institutional investors and their decision-making process, especially with respect to how they use sell side outputs.

On the optimality of the enzyme-substrate relationship in bacteria.

Much recent progress has been made to understand the impact of proteome allocation on bacterial growth; much less is known about the relationship between the abundances of the enzymes and their substrates, which jointly determine metabolic fluxes. Here, we report a correlation between the concentrations of enzymes and their substrates in Escherichia coli. We suggest this relationship to be a consequence of optimal resource allocation, subject to an overall constraint on the biomass density: For a cellular reaction network composed of effectively irreversible reactions, maximal reaction flux is achieved when the dry mass allocated to each substrate is equal to the dry mass of the unsaturated (or “free”) enzymes waiting to consume it. Calculations based on this optimality principle successfully predict the quantitative relationship between the observed enzyme and metabolite abundances, parameterized only by molecular masses and enzyme–substrate dissociation constants (Km). The corresponding organizing principle provides a fundamental rationale for cellular investment into different types of molecules, which may aid in the design of more efficient synthetic cellular systems.

Reconciling mean-variance portfolio theory with non-Gaussian returns

Mean-variance portfolio theory remains frequently used as an investment rationale because of its simplicity, its closed-form solution, and the availability of well-performing robust estimators. At the same time, it is also frequently rejected on the grounds that it ignores the higher moments of non-Gaussian returns. However, higher-moment portfolios are associated with many different objective functions, are numerically more complex, and exacerbate estimation risk. In this paper, we reconcile mean-variance portfolio theory with non-Gaussian returns by identifying, among all portfolios on the mean-variance efficient frontier, the one that optimizes a chosen higher-moment criterion. Numerical simulations and an empirical analysis show, for three higher-moment objective functions and adjusting for transaction costs, that the proposed portfolio strikes a favorable tradeoff between specification and estimation error. Specifically, in terms of out-of-sample Sharpe ratio and higher moments, it outperforms the global-optimal portfolio, and also the global-minimum-variance portfolio except when using monthly returns for which estimation error is more prominent.

Review of Viet Nam’s Family Planning Program in the context of declining donor funding

The aim of this paper is to review the evolution of the family planning program (PFP) and its learning experiences in transition from international donors to national funding. A total of 126 secondary documents including demographic and other surveys, government policy documents/ reports, donor reports, and published research were reviewed. PFP is a priority of the Vietnam Government. The policy process of transition was gradually and jointly implemented by both donors and the Viet Nam Government. The high cost-effectiveness and high impacts of the PFP policy were also as rationales for investment in the context of international budget declining. This influenced national political leaders to give sustained attention to theissue. This important lesson can be considered for applying several similar programs such as HIV/AIDS in Vietnam and in other countries.