Ultimately, decisions about the need for, and volume of, food production from our own land resources are political ones since agriculture, in general, is dependent for a variety of reasons on substantial Government support. This is especially true of the hill areas and although it is difficult to calculate the total expenditure on agricultural support to the hills and uplands since farmers in t...

A competitive firm which chooses the timing of investment and optimal volume of debt is considered. The price of the firm’s output follows the geometric Brownian motion or more general jump-diffusion processes, and the firm takes an arbitrage free borrowing rate as given. The optimal timing of investment and volume of debt is computed, and it is shown that if the borrowing rate is close to the ...

Most low- and middle-income countries face financing pressures if they are to adequately address the recommendations of the Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescent's Health. Negotiations between government ministries of health and finance are a key determinant of the level and effectiveness of public expenditure in the health sector. Yet ministries of health in low- and middle-in...

The objective of this paper is to compare the effectiveness of financial markets and financial intermediaries in financing new industries and technologies in the presence of diversity of opinion. In markets, investors become informed about the details of the new industry or technology and make their own investment decisions. In intermediaries, the investment decision is delegated to a manager, ...

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EU does not currently meet the different needs of diverse agricultural conditions of different member countries in a just and equal way. To meet this challenge has become inevitably more difficult as new and diverse Central and Eastern European countries have entered the Community. Several commentators and economists have thus suggested that a renatio...

This paper critically re-examines the restructuring of public services. Four main decision-making phases are identified: the public oversight to be guaranteed to socially sensitive economic activities; the ways of financing them; the economic organisation of the industry; and the production decisions. By focusing on organisation, the paper reinterprets the market structure in public service ind...

There are errors in the Funding section. The correct funding information is as follows: A research grant from Aichi Kidney Foundation, YH. The COE for education and research of Micro-Nano Mechatronics Nagoya University Global COE Program, YH KH. Funding was also received from Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Ltd; Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co.,Ltd; Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma Co., Ltd; and MOCHIDA PHARMACEUTICA...

BACKGROUND The Scottish Medicines Consortium evaluates new drugs for use in the National Health Service in Scotland. Reforms in 2014 to their evaluation process aimed to increase patient access to new drugs for end-of-life or rare conditions; the changes include additional steps in the process to gain further information from patients and clinicians, and for revised commercial agreements. This ...

The asset structure of companies should matter for financing decisions. Small and medium-sized companies in Croatia may use tangible assets as collateral, either providing more access to creditors or as a guarantee in case of bankruptcy. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between tangible assets and the capital structure of Croatian small and medium-sized enterprises. Most...

There are errors in the Funding section. The publisher apologizes for the errors. The correct funding information is as follows: Mr. Jami Pekkanen received funding from a personal grant from Finnish Cultural Foundation (grant no. 00140724). Mr. Jami Pekkanen and Mr. Teemu Itkonen were employed in MULSIMCO project funded by the Finnish Academy (www.aka.fi, project no. 1279905 PI prof. Heikki Sum...