Chlamydia has a significant impact on public health provision in the developed world. Using pair approximation equations we investigate the efficacy of control programmes for chlamydia on short time scales that are relevant to policy makers. We use output from the model to estimate critical measures, namely, prevalence, incidence, and positivity in those screened and their partners. We combine ...

While much attention has been focused on the optimal ratio of a firm’s debt to equity, the “optimal” or best balance between bond financing and (longer-term) bank financing has scarcely been addressed. This essay examines the principal differences between an economy with a well-developed corporate bond market free from government interference and an economy in which bank financing plays a centr...

The question of whether private investors can discriminate between the risk taken by banks is empirically investigated by testing the risk sensitivity of European banks’ subordinated notes and debentures (SND) spreads. A unique dataset of spreads, ratings, accounting and market measures of bank risk is used for a sample of SND issued during the 1991-2000:Q1 period. Moody’s Bank Financial Streng...

Measures devised to quantify production upstreamness and downstreamness in value chains have been introduced and used increasingly in recent years. While the constructs embodied in these measures are meaningful, this paper identifies an overlooked implementation problem. Specifically, the algorithms have been applied either as though the underlying data represent flows, or under the assumption ...

In Germany, financial pressure and a lack of efficiency have caused the need for several reform processes in the local governments of German municipalities. These local governments are facing a growing contradiction between decreasing levels of financial support and increasing responsibilities. In order to address this tension, municipalities are starting to change their accounting systems by i...

A probabilistic topic model is a modern statistical tool for document collection analysis that allows extracting a number of topics in the collection and describes each document as a discrete probability distribution over topics. Classical approaches to statistical topic modeling can be quite effective in various tasks, but the generated topics may be too similar to each other or poorly interpr...

This paper integrates prior studies of accounting policy choice and lobbying activities by testing the empirical implications of Becker’s (1983) theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence over the determination of accounting standards. The theory is applied to explain the nature and outcome of conflict among pressure groups representing financial intermediaries (supplie...

This paper examines the costs and determinants of international capital raising for a sample of 427 straight public debt issues made by non-U.S. firms in the U.S. (Yankee) and Eurodollar markets. We model the joint determination of market choice and interest costs using a switching regression model with endogenous switching. We find that firms issue bonds in the highly regulated U.S. market whe...

Based on data from the Danish Stock Exchange, this paper analyses the value relevance of goodwill and goodwill amortization. Until Danish accounting legislation was changed as of January 1, 2002 companies were allowed to write-off goodwill or capitalize it subject to amortization, which provided a richer information set, as goodwill must be capitalized under most other accounting regimes. The v...