Penetration of industrial country markets by agricultural products from developing countries

About 55% of food and about 60% of non-food agricultural exports of the developing countries are sold in industrial country markets. Market access is therefore important.While the developing countries have been able to increase the market penetration of their manufactured exports in industrial countries at a remarkable rate of about 8% in the 1970s, market penetration in agricultural commodities has generally been less successful.From 1970 to 1980 the developing countries were able to increase their market penetration in processed agricultural commodities from 3.5 to 3.7%, which amounts to an average annual increase of only 0.6%. In basic agricultural products like sugar, maize, tomatoes and beef they even incurred losses in their market share that corresponded to an increase in the degree of self-sufficiency (and probably of protective trade barriers) of the industrial countries, in particular the EC.     

Healthcare utilization and costs associated with treatment for opioid dependence

Objective: Opioid use disorder (OUD) can be managed with medication assisted therapy (MAT) (methadone [MET], buprenorphine [BUP], or extended-release naltrexone [XR-NTX]) or counseling alone (non-pharmacological therapy [NPT]). The objective of this study was to evaluate healthcare resource utilization and costs associated with XR-NTX compared with alternative treatments for opioid dependence.

Methods: Adults with a diagnosis of opioid dependence who initiated treatment with XR-NTX, BUP, MET, or NPT between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2014 were identified in the Truven Health MarketScan Commercial administrative claims database. Healthcare resource utilization, costs (inpatient [IP], emergency department [ED], outpatient [OP], and pharmacy) and adherence were evaluated for each cohort during 12-month baseline and follow-up periods.

Results: A total of 29,235 patients were included in the analysis; 1,041, 20,566, 745, and 6,883 received XR-NTX, BUP, MET, and NPT, respectively. Patients in the XR-NTX cohort were significantly younger and had more comorbidities compared with the other cohorts. Patients in the XR-NTX group had the largest percentage decrease in IP and ED utilization and costs from baseline to follow-up. OP and pharmacy costs increased significantly from baseline to follow-up for all cohorts. Overall, there was no significant change in total healthcare costs for the XR-NTX group, whereas the costs increased significantly for other groups (BUP?=?+43%, MET?=?+47.7%, NPT?=?+38.8%).

Conclusions: Healthcare resource utilization and costs increased from baseline to follow-up in BUP, MET, and NPT patients, whereas patients receiving XR-NTX experienced no such increase. This analysis suggests there may be economic value in the use of XR-NTX for OUD.     

Global Financial Crises and Time‐Varying Volatility Comovement in World Equity Markets

This paper studies volatility comovement in world equity markets between 1994 and 2008. Global volatility factors are extracted from a panel of monthly volatility proxies relating to 25 developed and 20 emerging stock markets. A dynamic factor model (FM) is estimated using two‐year rolling‐window regressions. The FM's time‐varying variance shares of global factors map variations in volatility comovement over time and across countries. The results indicate that global volatility linkages are significantly stronger during financial crisis periods in Asia (1997‐1998), Brazil (1999), Russia (1998) and the United States (2000, 2007‐2008). Emerging markets are weakly synchronised with world volatility in comparison with developed markets. In particular, emerging market comovement is significantly lower than developed market comovement during the Asian and US sub‐prime crises. This suggests a degree of decoupling of emerging markets from the global drivers of volatility during these periods.     

Visitors' use of interpretive media at heritage sites

Although heritage interpretation is a central component of the modern heritage industry there has been relatively little concern with how visitors to heritage sites make use of interpretive media. This paper reports a study of visitors' use of three interpretive media — exhibitions, outdoor panels, and stereo-audio tours — commonly employed at one type of heritage site, namely ancient monuments. Interpretation is an important component of the visit for many people, although visitors differ in the interest and attention they display to the interpretive media. This is greatest for audio media and less for visual media. This was attributed both to qualities of the interpretive media themselves (e.g. subject matter, readability), and also to characteristics of visitors, particularly their motive for visiting. This supports the notion that the ‘effectiveness’ of interpretation is the result of an interaction between visitor and interpretive medium, rather than depending solely on the interpretive medium.     

Rule Making in Pursuit of a Single European Market

The paper explores the nature of rule systems in the Single European Market. It investigates the influence of firms in the legislative process and examines corporate responses in rule-governed conditions within the Single Market. It demonstrates that there have been very diverse outcomes for different sectors as a result of the manner in which rules have been formulated and implemented, and derives interpretations which may have a future bearing on the revision and refinement of Single Market legislation     

The EU Water Framework Directive: A multi-dimensional analysis of implementation and domestic impact

This paper tries to answer two questions related to the implementation of one of Europe's most influential EU-directives, the Water Framework Directive. First, it describes how three Member States, Denmark, the Netherlands and France, actually struggle and cope with this ambitious Directive. Second, it discusses existing theories of EU implementation and questions whether they are able to deal with the overwhelming diversity in national responses to this open-ended and flexible ‘new generation’ EU-directive. Denmark, the Netherlands and France were selected because they represent a fair degree of diversity. Denmark started out the implementation process with high ambitions and a relatively formal approach, whereas the Netherlands from the outset chose to follow a more pragmatic course. France is an interesting case because this country already had a mature system of river basin management in place before the WFD came into force. Compared to existing implementation theories, the paper offers a more differentiated way of describing and structuring the implementation processes that contemporary EU-directives are producing in a world coloured by multi-actor, multi-level and multi-sector governance.     

Managed by the other: cultural anxieties in two Anglo-Americanized Swedish firms

This paper reports a study of how the co-workers in two major Swedish companies, Volvo Cars and AstraZeneca, respond to the cultural influences from an American and a British company, derived from an acquisition and a merger at the end of the 1990s. These responses are examined in terms of being ‘cultural anxieties’, a form of emotional coping with ambiguities regarding the future on the part of the co-workers. The paper shows that adapting to an alien culture is not a trivial matter but rather includes a series of re-evaluations of predominant values, norms and beliefs. The paper concludes that the organization culture literature needs to recognize the consequences of cultural changes, the movement from one largely taken-for-granted cultural regime to another, more heterogeneous and complex, and how co-workers cope with such experiences of uprooting enacted and agreed upon cultures.