• European Marine Science
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Die Finanzierung globaler Umweltpolitik stellt sowohl aufgrund der Grosenordnung der erforderlichen Mittel als auch angesichts der damit verbundenen weltweiten Verteilungskonflikte zwischen Nettozahlern und Nettoempfangern zu den schwierigsten, aber notwendigsten Aufgaben einer Reform des internationalen Institutionengefuges. Die Brisanz dieser Thematik wird angesichts des in den OECD-Landern stetig sinkenden BSP-Anteils fur Leistungen zur Entwicklungszusammenarbeit bei zunehmendem Finanzbedarf und fortwahrender Kritik dieser Lander an ineffizienten und wenig effektiven Strukturen internationaler Organisationen beim Einsatz finanzieller Mittel deutlich.

© 2019 Palou, Muntaner-Mas, Cantallops, Borràs, Labayen, Jiménez-Pavón, Dorado García, Moliner-Urdiales, Rodríguez Pérez, Rojo-Tirado, Cadenas-Sanchez, Ortega and Vidal-Conti. Physical inactivity is recognized as a determinant of low physical fitness and body composition in preschool children, which in turn, are important markers of health through the lifespan. Objective methods to assess physical activity, physical fitness and body composition in preschool children are preferable; however, they have some practical limitations in the school context. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test whether a single question regarding physical activity level of preschool children, reported by their parents, could be used as an alternative screening tool of physical fitness and body composition. The information was obtained from 10 different cities throughout Spain, gathering a total of 3179 healthy preschool children (52.8% boys and 47.2% girls) aged 3-5 years. Physical activity levels of preschool children were reported by parents using a single question with five response options (very low, low, average, high, or very high). Physical fitness and body composition were assessed with the PREFIT fitness battery. The results showed that parents' perception of their children's physical activity was positively associated with all objectively measured physical fitness components (βrange = -0.094 to 0.113; all p < 0.020); and negatively with body composition indicators as measured (βrange = -0.113 to -0.058; all p < 0.001). The results showed significant differences in all physical fitness and body composition z-scores across the parent-reported physical activity levels (all p < 0.017 and all p < 0.001, respectively), as well as, for the fitness index (p < 0.001). Our study suggests that in school settings with insufficient resources to objectively assess fitness and body composition, parents-reported physical activity level by means of a single question might provide useful information about these important health markers in preschool children. ERIH PLUS 2067,0 0,914 SSCI Q1 Q2

Agricultural loans present unutilized bank credit market segment in Serbia. This is not only missed profit opportunity for banks, but also serious deficiency that slows down the development of agriculture and rural areas. Paper uses FADN, NBS and bank balance sheet data in order to analyse supply and demand side of this credit market segment, with the aim to better understand the conditions for its development. Paper recommends better education of producers and lenders. Banks should better understand the requirements of agricultural producers and risks of the production to be able to create tailored credits. Insurance has very important role in specific risk hedging and can facilitate agricultural loans. There is also a need to adjust the conditions for obtaining subsidized loans, while the land size is considered as a key prerequisite for obtaining loans in the situation of large fragmentation of properties.

Background Social gradients in health have been observed for many health conditions and are suggested to operate through the effects of status anxiety. However, the gradient between education and Alzheimer’s disease is presumed to operate through cognitive stimulation. We examined the possible role of status anxiety through testing for state-level income inequality and social gradients in markers of socioeconomic position (SEP) for Alzheimer’s disease risk. Methods Using data from the cross-sectional 2015 and 2016 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, we tested for the association between U.S. state-level income inequality and individual SEP on subjective cognitive decline (SCD) – a marker of dementia risk – using a generalized estimating equation and clustering by state. Results State income inequality was not significantly associated with SCD in our multivariable model (OR 1.2; 95% CI: 0.9, 1.6; p=0.49). We observed a clear linear relationship between household income and SCD where those with an annual household income of 50k to 75k had 1.4 (95% CI: 1.3, 1.6) times the odds and those with household incomes of less than $10,000 had 4.7 (95% CI: 3.8, 5.7) times the odds of SCD compared to those with household income of more than $75,000. We also found that college graduates (ref.) and those who completed high school (OR: 1.1; 95% CI 1.04, 1.2) fared better than those with some college (OR: 1.3, 95% CI 1.2, 1.4) or less than a high school degree (OR: 1.5; 95% CI: 1.4, 1.7). Conclusions Income inequality does not play a dominant role in SCD, though a social gradient in individual income for SCD suggests the relationship may operate in part via status anxiety. Highlights • Research suggests education impacts cognitive decline via cognitive stimulation • Associations with income and inequality may suggest a “status anxiety” mechanism • Income inequality was not statistically associated with cognitive decline • We found a dose-response effect of individual income on cognitive decline • Status anxiety may contribute to disparities in dementia risk

The residential energy demand is growing steadily and the trend is expected to continue in the near future. At the same time, under the impulse of economic crises and environmental and energy policies, many households have experienced reductions in real income and higher energy prices. In the residential sector, the number of fuel-poor households is thus expected to rise. A better understanding of the determinants of residential energy demand, in particular of the role of income and the sensitivity of households to changes in energy prices, is crucial in the context of recurrent debates on energy efficiency and fuel poverty. We propose a panel threshold regression (PTR) model to empirically test the sensitivity of French households to energy price fluctuations—as measured by the elasticity of residential heating energy prices—and to analyze the overlap between their income and fuel poverty profiles. The PTR model allows to test for the non-linear effect of income on the reactions of households to fluctuations in energy prices. Thus, it can identify specific regimes differing by their level of estimated price elasticities. Each regime represents an elasticity-homogeneous group of households. The number of these regimes is determined based on an endogenously PTR-fixed income threshold. Thereafter, we analyze the composition of the regimes (i.e. groups) to locate the dominant proportion of fuel-poor households and analyse their monetary poverty characteristics. Results show that, depending on the income level, we can identify two groups of households that react differently to residential energy price fluctuations and that fuel-poor households belong mostly to the group of households with the highest elasticity. By extension, results also show that income poverty does not necessarily mean fuel poverty. In terms of public policy, we suggest focusing on income heterogeneity by considering different groups of households separately when defining energy efficiency measures. We also suggest paying particular attention to targeting fuel-poor households by examining the overlap between fuel and income poverty.

The business context in developing economies introduces challenges in scaling production that are often distinct from those faced in mature economies. This study focuses on the potential for risk-sharing mechanisms to overcome some of those challenges for agricultural supply chains in Uganda. The study follows a two-stage research approach conducted in collaboration with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which supported adoption of hermetic crop storage products such as silos in the country since 2013. In the first stage, through interviews with six artisanal silo manufacturers we identified three constraints in scaling silo production that were accentuated by the newsvendor dynamics in this market. In the second stage, we considered the potential for risk-sharing contracts to help alleviate some of those constraints and explored behavioral explanations to account for differences. We ran a laboratory experiment using two contracts that our interviews suggest are feasible in this business context: a buyback mechanism that allows manufacturers to share the risks of procuring excess metal sheets and a salvage mechanism that allows them to share the risks of over-producing silos. The results reveal a consistent under-ordering across both contracts. They also show that while buyback participants respond to contract prices as existing theory would predict, salvage participants do not. Our study provides insights regarding the potential, and the limitations, of different risk-sharing mechanisms to increase the supply of products in developing economies. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

Abstract Productive diversification has long been acknowledged as a volatility-reducing strategy. Yet, recent theoretical contributions have shown that, in strongly diversified economies, idiosyncratic shocks could translate into aggregate volatility via the network of inter-industry linkages. By exploiting exogenous cross-country-sector variations in demand shocks during the 2008 Great Recession, we provide empirical evidence that the network properties of a sector affected by an individual shock determine its propensity to transmit volatility to the rest of the economy. More precisely, shocks to sectors that are located in denser parts of a production network fade out over a large number of alternative paths of propagation due to substitution effects, whereas shocks to sectors that are more influential within the network generate aggregate fluctuations through contagion effects. We also find that the impact of sectoral shocks on aggregate volatility (1) is not conditional on sector-level differences in trade intensity, and (2) is larger for developing countries because they tend to have more isolated influential sectors and larger structural holes in their production network. Our results thus help consolidate the two opposite views in the literature on the impact of productive diversification on aggregate volatility.