Weed Control

Does economic development depend on geographic endowments like temperate instead of tropical location, the ecological conditions shaping diseases, or an environment good for grains or certain cash crops? Or do these endowments of tropics, germs, and crops affect economic development only through institutions or policies? We test the endowment, institution, and policy views against each other using cross country evidence. We find evidence that tropics, germs, and crops affect development through institutions. We find no evidence that tropics, germs, and crops affect country incomes directly other than through institutions, nor do we find any effect of policies on development once we control for institutions. r

We propose a cross-sectional time-series model to assess the impact of market liberalizations in emerging equity markets on the cost of capital, volatility, beta, and correlation with world market returns. Liberalizations are defined by regulatory changes, the introduction of depositary receipts and country funds, and structural breaks in equity capital f lows to the emerging markets. We control for other economic events that might confound the impact of foreign speculators on local equity markets. Across a range of specifications, the cost of capital always decreases after a capital market liberalization with the effect varying between 5 and 75 basis points.

Recent research studying the link between law and finance has concentrated on countrylevel investor protection measures and focused on differences in legal systems across countries and legal families. Our paper extends this literature and provides a study of firmlevel corporate governance practices across emerging markets and a greater understanding of the environments under which corporate governance matters more. Our empirical tests show that better corporate governance is highly correlated with better operating performance and market valuation. More importantly, we provide evidence showing that firm-level corporate governance provisions matter more in countries with weak legal environments. These results suggest that well-governed firms benefit more in bad corporate governance environments and that firms can partially compensate for ineffective laws and enforcement by establishing good corporate governance and providing credible investor protection. Our tests also show that firm-level governance and performance is lower in countries with weak legal environments, suggesting that improving the legal system should rema in a priority for policymakers.

helpful comments. We thank the Kauffman Foundation for financial support. Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Census Bureau or the National Bureau of Economic Research. All results have been reviewed to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

We apply a new approach to a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross-border equity flows between 14 countries, 1989-96. The remarkably good results have strong implications for theories of asset trade. We find that the geography of information heavily determines the pattern of international transactions.

We estimate a production function model of aggregate economic growth including two variables that microeconomists have identified as fundamental components of human capital: work experience and health. Our main result is that good health has a positive, sizable, and statistically significant effect on aggregate output even when we control for experience of the workforce. We argue that the life expectancy effect in growth regressions appears to be a real labor productivity effect, and is not the result of life expectancy acting as a proxy for worker experience.

Pesticides, the most cost-effective means of pest and weed control, allow the maintenance of current yields and so contribute to economic viability. Concern about the environmental impact of repeated pesticide use has prompted research into the environmental fate of these agents, which can emigrate from treated fields to air, other land and waterbodies. How long the pesticide remains in the soil depends on how strongly it is bound by soil components and how readily it is degraded. It also depends on the environmental conditions at the time of application, e.g., soil water content. Pesticide use must ensure public safety and environmental protection with regards to both the chemical itself and their potentially harmful metabolites. This paper reviews what is known of the influence of the physical and chemical characteristics of the soil system, such as moisture content, organic matter and clay contents, and pH, on the sorption/desorption and degradation of pesticides and their access to groundwater and surface waters. An understanding of the fate of pesticides is essential for rational decision-taking regarding their authorization. To reach an adequate understanding will require the concourse of soil science, clay mineralogy, physical chemistry, surface chemistry, environmental microbiology, plant physiology and, no doubt, other disciplines. Only through a multidisciplinary approach to environmental research will it be possible to plan, manage, pursue and integrate the results of the studies that will be necessary for the development of tools and techniques allowing effective environmental decision-making. There seems to be a great potential to develop microbially derived pesticides, which are effective, reliable and have a low environmental risk. In addition, new application techniques, for example precision band spraying, can reduce the dose, which can be a very effective way to minimize transport and emission but also to avoid a build-up of resistance in target organisms. Improved formulations will also be needed to reduce off-target deposition, improve retention on target, and enhance uptake and translocation. #

The theory of market-preserving federalism stresses the importance of decentralization and incentives of government on market development. Using a panel data set, we investigate the central-provincial relationship during China's reform process. [In comparison with the pre-reform period,] we find much stronger correlations between local government budgetary revenue collection and its budgetary expenditure under the implementation of "fiscal contracting system." *compared with the pre-reform period.* We also find that more fiscal decentralization and stronger fiscal incentives -the latter measured in terms of higher (ex ante) marginal local *budgetary* revenue retention rate -implies faster development of non-state enterprises and more reform in state-owned enterprises, while the Party's control over appointment has opposite effects. However, the Party's control is effective in restricting local government's investment but ineffective in curbing local credit expansion, suggesting that the Party's control had played some, but limited, role in helping macroeconomic stability. We also compare federalism, Chinese style, to federalism, Russian style. 1 We would like to thank

W e use an innovative technique to examine an enduring but recently neglected question: How do environmental turbulence and complexity affect the appropriate formal design of organizations? We construct an agent-based simulation in which multidepartment firms with different designs face environments whose turbulence and complexity we control. The model's results produce two sets of testable hypotheses. One set pinpoints formal designs that cope well with three different environments: turbulent settings, in which firms must improve their performance speedily; complex environments, in which firms must search broadly; and settings with both turbulence and complexity, in which firms must balance speed and search. The results shed new light on longstanding notions such as equifinality. The other set of hypotheses argues that the impact of individual design elements on speed and search often depends delicately on specific powers granted to department heads, creating effects that run contrary to conventional wisdom and intuition. Ample processing power at the bottom of a firm, for instance, can slow down the improvement and narrow the search of the firm as a whole. Differences arise between our results and conventional wisdom when conventional thinking fails to account for the powers of department heads-powers to withhold information about departmental options, to control decision-making agendas, to veto firmwide alternatives, and to take unilateral action. Our results suggest how future empirical studies of organizational design might be fruitfully coupled with rigorous agent-based modeling efforts.

The median-voter hypothesis has been central to an extensive literature on consequences of income redistribution. For example, it has been proposed that greater inequality is associated with lower growth, because of the greater redistribution that is sought by the median voter when income distribution is less equal. There have however been no proper tests of the median-voter hypothesis concerning redistribution, because of previous absence Ž . of data on factor-income distribution that is, incomes before taxes and transfers across households, and thus on the gains by poorer households from redistribution. The study reported in this paper is based on the required data, with 79 observations drawn from household budget surveys from 24 democracies. The results strongly support the conclusion that countries with greater inequality of factor income redistribute more to the poor. This is so even when we control for the share of the elderly in the population and for pension transfers. The evidence that the median-voter hypothesis adequately describes the collective-choice mechanism is however considerably weaker. Although middle-income groups Ž . gain moreror lose less through redistribution in countries where initial factor income distribution is more unequal, this regularity is all but lost when, by excluding pensions, we )

Humans are currently confronted by many global challenges. These include achieving food security for a rapidly expanding population, lowering the risk of climate change by reducing the net release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere due to human activity, and meeting the increasing demand for energy in the face of dwindling reserves of fossil energy and uncertainties about future reliability of supply. Legumes deliver several important services to societies. They provide important sources of oil, fiber, and protein-rich food and feed while supplying nitrogen (N) to agro-ecosystems via their unique ability to fix atmospheric N 2 in symbiosis with the soil bacteria rhizobia, increasing soil carbon content, and stimulating the productivity of the crops that follow. However, the role of legumes has rarely been considered in the context of their potential to contribute to the mitigation of climate change by reducing fossil fuel use or by providing feedstock for the emerging biobased economies where fossil sources of energy and industrial raw materials are replaced in part by sustainable and renewable biomass resources. The aim of this review was to collate the current knowledge regarding the capacity of legumes to (1) lower the emissions of the key greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) compared to N-fertilized systems, (2) reduce the fossil energy used in the production of food and forage, (3) contribute to the sequestration of carbon (C) in soils, and (4) provide a viable source of biomass for the generation of biofuels and other materials in future biorefinery concepts. We estimated that globally between 350 and 500 Tg CO 2 could be emitted as a result of the 33 to 46 Tg N that is biologically fixed by agricultural legumes each year. This compares to around 300 Tg CO 2 released annually from the manufacture of 100 Tg fertilizer N. The main difference is that the CO 2 respired from the nodulated roots of N 2 -fixing legumes originated from photosynthesis and will not represent a net contribution to atmospheric concentrations of CO 2 , whereas the CO 2 generated during the synthesis of N fertilizer was derived from fossil fuels. Experimental measures of total N 2 O fluxes from legumes and N-fertilized systems were found to vary enormously (0.03-7.09 and 0.09-18.16 kg N 2 O-N ha −1 , respectively). This reflected the data being collated from a diverse range of studies using different rates of N inputs, as well as the large number of climatic, soil, and management variables known to influence denitrification and the portion of

lmidazolinone herbicides, which include imazapyr, imazapic, imazethapyr, imazamox, imazamethabenz and imazaquin, control weeds by inhibiting the enzyme acetohydroxyacid synthase (ARAS), also called acetolactate synthase (ALS). ARAS is a critical enzyme for the biosynthesis of branched-chain amino acids in plants. Several variant AHAS genes conferring imidazolinone tolerance were discovered in plants through mutagenesis and selection, and were used to create imidazolinonetolerant maize (Zea rnays L), wheat (Triticurn aestivurn L), rice (Oryza sativa L), oilseed rape (Brassica napus L) and sunflower (Helianthus annuus L). These crops were developed using conventional breeding methods and commercialized as Clearfield* crops from 1992 to the present. lmidazolinone herbicides control a broad spectrum ofgrass and broadIeafweeds in imidazolinone-tolerant crops, including weeds that are closely related to the crop itself and sorne key parasitic weeds. lmidazolinone-tolerant crops may also prevent rotational crop injury and injury caused by interaction between AHAS-inhibiting herbicides and insecticides. A single target-site mutation in the AHAS gene may confer tolerance to AHAS-inhibiting herbicides, so that it is technically possible to develop the imidazolinone-tolerance trait in many crops. Activities are currently directed toward the continued improvement of imidazolinone tolerance and development ofnew Clearfield* crops. Management ofherbicide-resistant weeds and gene flow from crops to weeds are issues that must be considered with the development of any herbicide-resistant crop. Thus extensive stewardship programs have been developed to address these issues for Clearfield* crops.

We investigate whether analyst behavior inf luenced banks' likelihood of winning underwriting mandates for a sample of 16,625 U.S. debt and equity offerings in 1993-2002. We control for the strength of the issuer's investment banking relationships with potential competitors for the mandate, prior lending relationships, and the endogeneity of analyst behavior and the bank's decision to provide analyst coverage. Although analyst behavior was inf luenced by economic incentives, we find no evidence that aggressive analyst behavior increased their bank's probability of winning an underwriting mandate. The main determinant of the lead-bank choice is the strength of prior underwriting and lending relationships.

Plantwide control is concerned with the structural decisions involved in the control system design of a chemical plant ; "Which variables should be controlled, which variables should be measured, which inputs should be manipulated, and which links should be made between them?" In particular, the first issue about which variables to control has received little attention. It is argued that the answer is related to finding a simple and robust way of implementing the economically optimal operating policy. The goal is to find a set of controlled variables which, when kept at constant setpoints, indirectly lead to near-optimal operation with acceptable loss. This is denoted "self-optimizing" control. Since the economics are determined by the overall plant behavior, it is necessary to take a plantwide perspective. A systematic procedure for finding suitable controlled variables based on only steady-state information is presented. Important steps are degree of freedom analysis, definition of optimal operation (cost and constraints), and evaluation of the loss when the controlled variables are kept constant rather than optimally adjusted. A case study yields very interesting insights into the control and maximum throughput of distillation columns.

Balancing productivity, profitability, and environmental health is a key challenge for agricultural sustainability. Most crop production systems in the United States are characterized by low species and management diversity, high use of fossil energy and agrichemicals, and large negative impacts on the environment. We hypothesized that cropping system diversification would promote ecosystem services that would supplement, and eventually displace, synthetic external inputs used to maintain crop productivity. To test this, we conducted a field study from 2003-2011 in Iowa that included three contrasting systems varying in length of crop sequence and inputs. We compared a conventionally managed 2-yr rotation (maize-soybean) that received fertilizers and herbicides at rates comparable to those used on nearby farms with two more diverse cropping systems: a 3-yr rotation (maize-soybean-small grain + red clover) and a 4-yr rotation (maize-soybean-small grain + alfalfa-alfalfa) managed with lower synthetic N fertilizer and herbicide inputs and periodic applications of cattle manure. Grain yields, mass of harvested products, and profit in the more diverse systems were similar to, or greater than, those in the conventional system, despite reductions of agrichemical inputs. Weeds were suppressed effectively in all systems, but freshwater toxicity of the more diverse systems was two orders of magnitude lower than in the conventional system. Results of our study indicate that more diverse cropping systems can use small amounts of synthetic agrichemical inputs as powerful tools with which to tune, rather than drive, agroecosystem performance, while meeting or exceeding the performance of less diverse systems.

Selection of significant genes via expression patterns is an important problem in microarray experiments. Owing to small sample size and the large number of variables (genes), the selection process can be unstable. This paper proposes a hierarchical Bayesian model for gene (variable) selection. We employ latent variables to specialize the model to a regression setting and uses a Bayesian mixture prior to perform the variable selection. We control the size of the model by assigning a prior distribution over the dimension (number of significant genes) of the model. The posterior distributions of the parameters are not in explicit form and we need to use a combination of truncated sampling and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based computation techniques to simulate the parameters from the posteriors. The Bayesian model is flexible enough to identify significant genes as well as to perform future predictions. The method is applied to cancer classification via cDNA microarrays where the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 are associated with a hereditary disposition to breast cancer, and the method is used to identify a set of significant genes. The method is also applied successfully to the leukemia data.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is expected to generate technology spillovers to indigenous firms in transition economies. This paper disentangles the positive effect of technology transfer on the productivity of domestic firms from that of competition. We use a production function framework to estimate the impact of technology transfer from FDI on the growth of sales of domestic firms in Estonia during the period from 1994 to 1999. Employing panel data techniques, we control for industry and firm specific effects and use a Heckman two-stage procedure to control for sample self-selection bias. We find that the magnitude of the spillover effect depends on the characteristics of incoming FDI and, of the recipient local firm. More specifically, spillovers vary with the measure of foreign presence used, and are is influenced by the recipient firm's size, its ownership structure and its trade orientation.

Allelopathy is a naturally occurring ecological phenomenon of interference among organisms that may be employed for managing weeds, insect pests and diseases in field crops. In field crops, allelopathy can be used following rotation, using cover crops, mulching and plant extracts for natural pest management. Application of allelopathic plant extracts can effectively control weeds and insect pests. However, mixtures of allelopathic water extracts are more effective than the application of single-plant extract in this regard. Combined application of allelopathic extract and reduced herbicide dose (up to half the standard dose) give as much weed control as the standard herbicide dose in several field crops. Lower doses of herbicides may help to reduce the development of herbicide resistance in weed ecotypes. Allelopathy thus offers an attractive environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides in agricultural pest management. In this review, application of allelopathy for natural pest management, particularly in small-farm intensive agricultural systems, is discussed.

The focus of this paper is the relationship between subjective measures of well-being and individual environmental attitudes. We use an ordered probit model to examine the relationship between measures of subjective well-being and attitudes regarding ozone pollution and species extinction. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey we find a negative coefficient for concern about ozone pollution on individual's well-being and a positive one for concern about species extinction. These results hold when explanatory variables are included indicating whether or not the person lives in a polluted environment, whether or not the person engages in outdoor leisure activities, and the region where an individual lives. These results also hold when we control for individual psychological traits.

Point defects largely govern the electrochemical properties of oxides: at low defect concentrations, conductivity increases with concentration; however, at higher concentrations, defect-defect interactions start to dominate 1,2 . Thus, in searching for electrochemically active materials for fuel cell anodes, high defect concentration is generally avoided. Here we describe an oxide anode formed from lanthanum-substituted strontium titanate (La-SrTiO 3 ) in which we control the oxygen stoichiometry in order to break down the extended defect intergrowth regions and create phases with considerable disordered oxygen defects. We substitute Ti in these phases with Ga and Mn to induce redox activity and allow more flexible coordination. The material demonstrates impressive fuel cell performance using wet hydrogen at 950 8C. It is also important for fuel cell technology to achieve efficient electrode operation with different hydrocarbon fuels 3,4 , although such fuels are more demanding than pure hydrogen. The best anode materials to date-Ni-YSZ (yttriastabilized zirconia) cermets 5 -suffer some disadvantages related to low tolerance to sulphur 6 , carbon build-up when using hydrocarbon fuels 7 (though device modifications and lower temperature operation can avoid this 8,9 ) and volume instability on redox cycling. Our anode material is very active for methane oxidation at high temperatures, with open circuit voltages in excess of 1.2 V. The materials design concept that we use here could lead to devices that enable more-efficient energy extraction from fossil fuels and carbon-neutral fuels.

Pesticide loss to stream water was studied in a small agricultural catchment in southern Sweden during the period 1990᎐1996. A total of 38 pesticides were detected in water samples, including 30 herbicides, four fungicides, three insecticides and one metabolite of one of the herbicides. Concentrations of pesticides in stream water were observed throughout the sampling periods. Peak concentrations occurred during the spraying seasons and following runoff events. Daily average concentrations sometimes varied by one order of magnitude from one day to another. Pesticides were also found in water samples as a result of incautious actions during handling and application procedures. Concentrations were lower at the outlet of the catchment area when the water had passed an open part of the stream, compared to concentrations detected in discharge from a culvert system upstream. This was largely a result of dilution from groundwater intrusion during low-flow periods. Sampling at different sites along the culvert demonstrated that the small village situated in the catchment did not contribute to pesticide findings in the culvert discharge. Wind drift had little influence on stream-water quality. Pesticide application for weed control in farmyards resulted in a substantial contribution to the pesticide load in stream water. Pesticides were persistent in the discharge throughout the winter and originated from both autumn and spring applications, as well as from farmyard application. Some autumn applied pesticides prevailed in stream flow during the following summer. Total amounts of pesticides lost in stream flow during May᎐September each year varied between 0.5 and 2.8 kg during the 7-year period, corresponding to ; 0.1% of the applied amount. Losses of single pesticides were generally less than 0.3% of the applied amount during individual years. Pesticides from agricultural applications in the catchment constituted, on average, 82% of the total transported amount lost during May᎐September each year, of which 2% was from autumn application the previous year. There was an overall correlation between amounts used in the catchment and occurrence in the water samples. The total pesticide load in water decreased markedly during the course of the investigation, in accordance with decreased amounts applied during spring and early summer. The results indicate that concentrations of some pesticides entering head-water streams in agricultural areas are close to, and during

In 1992-1993, the SEC required enhanced disclosure on executive compensation and Congress enacted tax legislation limiting the deductibility of non-performance related compensation over one million dollars, i.e. Internal Revenue Code Section 162(m). We examine the effects of these regulatory changes and report small and large sample evidence that many million-dollar firms have reduced salaries in response to 162(m) and that salary growth rates have declined post-1993 for the firms most likely to be affected $

One goal of federal housing policy is to improve the prospects of children in poor families. This paper examines the effect of public housing participation on housing quality and educational attainment. Using the SIPP, we show that living in projects is associated with more negative outcomes for children, although this appears to be due to unobserved heterogeneity. We control for the endogeneity of project participation using TSIV techniques which combine information on project participation from the CPS with information on outcomes from the Census. We find that project households are less likely to suffer from overcrowding or live in high-density complexes. Project children are less likely to have been held back. Thus, our results run counter to the stereotype that housing projects harm children.

In recent R&D work, we have made progress in developing a commercial technology using hyperaccumulator plant species to phytoextract nickel (Ni) from contaminated and/or Ni-rich soils. An on-going program is being carried out to develop a genetically improved phytoextraction plant that combines favorable agronomic and Ni accumulation characteristics. Genetically diverse Ni hyperaccumulator species and ecotypes of Alyssum were collected and then evaluated in both greenhouse and field using serpentine and Ni-refinery contaminated soils. Large genetic variation was found in those studies. Mean shoot Ni concentrations in field-grown plants ranged from 4200 to 20 400 mg kg −1 . We have been studying several soil management practices that may affect the efficiency of Ni phytoextraction. Soil pH is an important factor affecting absorption of metals by plants. An unexpected result of both greenhouse and field experiments was that Ni uptake by two Alyssum species was reduced at lower soil pH and increased at higher soil pH. At higher pH, plant yield was improved also. In soil fertility management studies, we found that N application significantly increased plant biomass, but did not affect plant shoot Ni concentration. These findings indicate that soil management will be important for commercial phytoextraction. A number of field trials have been carried out to study planting methods, population density, weed control practices, harvest schedule and methods, pollination control, and seed processing. Such crop management studies have improved phytoextraction efficiency and provide a tool for farmers to conduct commercial production. We have done some work to develop efficient and cost-effective methods of Ni recovery. Recovery of energy by biomass burning or pyrolysis could help make phytoextraction more cost-effective. The progress made in our recent studies will enable us to apply this technology commercially in the near future.

We study good-by-good deviations from the Law-of-One-Price for over 5,000 goods and services between European Union countries for the years 1975, 1980, 1985 and 1990. We …nd that between most countries there are roughly as many overpriced goods as there are underpriced goods. Equally-weighted and CPI-weighted averages of good-by-good relative prices generate relatively accurate predictions of most nominal cross-rates, as purchasing power parity (PPP) would suggest. These …ndings are robust across years, in spite of relatively large movements in nominal exchange rates. Variation around the averages is large but is found to be related to economically meaningful characteristics of goods such as international tradeability, non-tradedness of factors of production and the competitive structure of the markets in which the goods are sold. Using data on product brands, we …nd that product heterogeneity is at least as important as geography in explaining relative price dispersion. Overall, our data provide strong evidence that international goods markets are segmented, but (i) the evidence relies on absolute deviations from the Law-of-One-Price, not deviations from PPP, (ii) some markets are much more segmented than others, with the distinctions being consistent with economic theory. for helpful comments. We are particularly indebted to Charles Engel who provided many detailed and constructive comments on earlier versions. We gratefully acknowledge the …nancial support

The use of remote imagery captured by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has tremendous potential for designing detailed site-specific weed control treatments in early post-emergence, which have not possible previously with conventional airborne or satellite images. A robust and entirely automatic object-based image analysis (OBIA) procedure was developed on a series of UAV images using a six-band multispectral camera (visible and nearinfrared range) with the ultimate objective of generating a weed map in an experimental maize field in Spain. The OBIA procedure combines several contextual, hierarchical and object-based features and consists of three consecutive phases: 1) classification of crop rows by application of a dynamic and auto-adaptive classification approach, 2) discrimination of crops and weeds on the basis of their relative positions with reference to the crop rows, and 3) generation of a weed infestation map in a grid structure. The estimation of weed coverage from the image analysis yielded satisfactory results. The relationship of estimated versus observed weed densities had a coefficient of determination of r 2 =0.89 and a root mean square error of 0.02. A map of three categories of weed coverage was produced with 86% of overall accuracy. In the experimental field, the area free of weeds was 23%, and the area with low weed coverage (<5% weeds) was 47%, which indicated a high potential for reducing herbicide application or other weed operations. The OBIA procedure computes multiple data and statistics derived from the classification outputs, which permits calculation of herbicide requirements and estimation of the overall cost of weed management operations in advance.

Some policymakers argue that consumers need legal protection of their privacy before they adopt interactive technologies. Others contend that privacy regulations impose costs that deter adoption. We contribute to this growing debate by quantifying the effect of state privacy regulation on the diffusion of Electronic Medical Record technology (EMR). EMR allows medical providers to store and exchange patient information using computers rather than paper records. Hospitals may not adopt EMR if patients feel their privacy is not safeguarded by regulation. Alternatively, privacy protection may inhibit adoption if hospitals cannot benefit from exchanging patient information with one another. In the US, medical privacy laws that restrict the ability of hospitals to disclose patient information vary across time and across states. We exploit this variation to explore how privacy laws affect whether hospitals adopt EMR. Our results suggest that inhibition of EMR's network benefits reduces hospital adoption by up to 25 percent. We find similar evidence when we control for the endogeneity of state laws using variation in signups to the "Do Not Call" list.

This paper uses a panel database of 251 banks in 36 countries to analyze the impact of bank regulation on bank charter value and risk-taking. After controlling for deposit insurance and for the quality of a country&#x27;s contracting environment, the results indicate that regulatory ...

This paper analyses the growth effects of EU structural funds using a new panel dataset of 124 NUTS-1 / NUTS-2 regions over the time period [1995][1996][1997][1998][1999][2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005]. We extend the current literature with regard to at least three aspects: First of all, we extend the time period of investigation, using structural funds payments of the last Financial Perspective 2000-2006 that have not been analysed before. Second, we use more precise measures of structural funds by distinguishing between Objective 1, 2 and 3 payments and by investigating the impact of time lags more carefully. Third, we examine the robustness of our results by comparing various econometric approaches highlighting specific methodological problems. Apart from "classical" panel data methods like system GMM, we apply spatial panel econometric techniques.

This paper formalizes the process of updating the nowcast and forecast on output and inflation as new releases of data become available. The marginal contribution of a particular release for the value of the signal and its precision is evaluated by computing "news" on the basis of an evolving conditioning information set. The marginal contribution is then split into what is due to timeliness of information and what is due to economic content. We find that the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia surveys have a large marginal impact on the nowcast of both inflation variables and real variables and this effect is larger than that of the Employment Report. When we control for timeliness of the releases, the effect of hard data becomes sizeable. Prices and quantities affect the precision of the estimates of inflation while GDP is only affected by real variables and interest rates. JEL Classification: E52, C33, C53 Stock and Watson ). This literature proposes and applies factor models adapted to handle large panels of time series. On the basis of such models, and GRS formalize the real-time application of large datasets to nowcasting and forecasting inflation and output in the United States. GRS in particular show that a specification of the model with two dynamic factors has a forecasting performance comparable to that of the Federal Reserve's Greenbook.