US agencies 'can fight' declining budgets

Can rating agencies look through the cycle?

Rating agencies claim to look through the cycle when assigning corporate credit ratings, which entails that they are able to separate trend components of default risk from transitory ones. To test whether agencies possess this competence, I take market-based estimates of one-year default probabilities of corporate bond issuers and estimate their long-run trend using the Hodrick-Prescott filter,...

Zika Virus: Can India Win the Fight?

Zika virus is an emerging arbovirus of public health importance transmitted by Aedes mosquito which also transmits dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. The disease has been spreading at an alarming rate in Africa, Pacific Islands, and the Americas. Given the expansion of environments where mosquitoes can live and breed, facilitated by urbanization and globalization, there is potential for majo...

The immune system can fight cancer

US federal health agencies questioned over Ebola response.

As US President Barack Obama ramped up the country’s response to the Ebola crisis domestically and abroad (panel), his top health officials attempted, during a tense congressional hearing last week, to address potential solutions to the epidemic ravaging west Africa, which has now reached the USA, confronting emergency medical providers at a well regarded hospital in Dallas, Texas. But the Repu...

How US Government Agencies Value Mortality Risk Reductions

Each year, US government agencies promulgate health and safety regulations that impose hundreds of millions of dollars of costs on the national economy. A key issue in developing these regulations is determining whether the value of the associated risk reductions and other benefits exceeds the value of the resources diverted from other purposes. This article explores one component of this benef...