The effect of mentee and mentor gender on scientific productivity of applicants for NIH training fellowships

Several studies have suggested that women in science are less productive than men, and that this gap contributes to their under-representation in the ranks of senior researchers. However, few studies have examined the role of mentoring, and in particular mentor gender, on the productivity of female scientists early in their careers. Such efforts are limited by the difficulties of unambiguously linking mentees to their mentors and measuring the research productivity resulting from those relationships. Here we use our novel author disambiguation solution to investigate the role of self-identified gender in mentorship of 12,932 trainees who either successfully or unsuccessfully applied to the National Institutes of Health for research fellowships between fiscal years 2011 and 2017, applying a multi-dimensional framework to assess productivity. We found that, after normalizing for the funding level of mentors, the productivity of female and male mentees is indistinguishable; it is also independent of the gender of the mentor, other than in measures of clinical impact, where women mentored by women outperform other mentee-mentor dyads.

Investigating the Impact of Competition and Incentive Design on Performance of Crowdfunding Projects: A Case of Independent Movies

Recently, crowdfunding has become a popular e-commerce model based on web 2.0 platforms for fundraisers to collect funding from a large group of supporters using the Internet. However, many projects failed to reach their funding targets. Despite the growing interest of academic researchers and e-commerce professionals in identifying drivers of crowdfunding success, important factors like competition and incentive design have not received much attention in prior research. In this study we aim to fill this gap by investigating the impact of competition and incentive design on the performance of crowdfunding projects. Drawing upon literature of entrepreneurship, we develop a research model involving key factors such as competition intensity and the number of reward levels. Using real data of 209 independent movie projects of an online crowdfunding platform, we test the proposed hypotheses of the impact of competition and incentive design on crowdfunding success. Our results show that competition plays a significant role in crowdfunding performance. The higher competition pressure is, the lower performance of crowdfunding projects will be. We also find that factors such as the number of reward levels and the plan of attending movie festivals are essential to the success of crowdfunding projects, but the funding level of getting the top reward does not exert a significant impact. Our study contributes to the e-commerce literature by further exploring the mechanism of crowdfunding success with theoretical explanation and empirical evidence. Researchers and professionals can apply our theoretical findings regarding competition and incentive design in other e-commerce platforms. Furthermore, our results provide useful managerial insights and operational policies for project founders and managers of crowdfunding platforms.

Factors Influencing Rain-Fed Agricultural Land Abandonment in Mnquma and Mbashe Municipalities, Eastern Cape

Agriculture is one of the imperative segments in the South African economy and it remains the imperative sector for livelihood generation. However, it has been observed that farmers are gradually giving up agriculture in favor of non-agricultural activities. This paper examines the factors influencing agricultural land abandonment in Mnquma and Mbashe Municipalities in Eastern Cape Province. Surveys of 158 semistructured field interviews were conducted to capture household characteristics, location and farming practices in the study areas. The findings show that limited access to funding, level of education, household size and farming experience seem were the main factors influencing abandonment of rain-fed agricultural land. Another notable reason for agricultural land abandonment was the lack of resources such as storage facilities, transport and access to lucrative markets. Therefore the study recommended that government policies should go beyond supporting primary production and focus also on value adding activities. One of the findings indicated that these areas are dominated by older people (55 years). The study also recommended that focus should be directed on more manageable small plots for older people to increase food production.

Creating Financial Statements For Start-Ups

This paper represents the sample of entrepreneurs who are in the process of starting a business. At investigates the determinants of financial projections and statements in start-ups. The predictions information in economics is consistent. There is a positive association frequency of financial statement preparation concerning the use of outside funding, level competition, and venture scale. There are alternative influences and suggestions that benefit in reducing competition and uncertainty in fundamental variations to prepare financial statements. For instance, cash statements are more important for start-ups, and frequency varies among different financial statements with products in earlier stages of development and with greater competition. In contrast to this financial statements projections and regular forecasts of sales by start-ups are positively associated with the importance of intangible investments such as parents, research, and development. The start-ups in high –tech industries are used for projections.

Effect of debt tax benefits on corporate pension funding and risk-taking

PurposeThis study theoretically investigates the impacts of tax benefits on funding level and risk-taking of a corporate defined benefit (DB) pension plan.Design/methodology/approachThe present value of the future tax benefits is maximized while the stockholders determine the funding level and investment risk-taking in DB plans. As a feature of DB plans, this study considers pension benefits to be pre-determined. Further, the pension beneficiary has a priority over the sponsor company's creditors for the pension reserve fund. These are seldom considered in previous studies.FindingsIt is desirable to decrease the funding level of DB plans to increase tax benefits. This is because the effect of tax exemption for the pension fund's investment income is eliminated by the change in the contribution arising from the investment's result. The optimal investment risk-taking depends on the funding level.Originality/valueThe impact of tax benefits on decision-making for DB plans is significantly different from that stated by previous studies, that is, an increase in pension funds will reduce the corporate debt. To explain corporate behavior, this study's results—derived from the essential feature of DB plans, which could not have been included in previous studies—should be considered.

Does the Measurement Matter? Assessing Alternate Approaches to Measuring State School Finance Equity for California’s Local Control Funding Formula

Scholars have not reached consensus on the best approach to measure state school finance equity. The regression-based approach estimates the relationship between district poverty rate and funding level, controlling for other district cost factors. A second commonly used approach involves estimating the weighted average funding level for low-income students or other subgroups. Meanwhile, policymakers have preferences for their own data systems and poverty indicators when reading reports and assessing progress. We constructed parallel, district-level panel data sets using data from the California Department of Education and the U.S. Census. We estimated changes over time in district-level school finance equity under California’s Local Control Funding Formula, using multiple school finance measurement approaches, with each of the two data sets. Our results show that different methods and analytic choices result in policy-relevant differences in findings. We discuss the implications for policy and future research.

Rating score of renal medical care in Ukraine provinces: 2018

The aim of the work was to conduct a rating of nephrological services in the regions of Ukraine by using the method of complex statistical coefficients. Methods. Evaluation of nephrological services in the regions of Ukraine was performed via using indicators of the structure, health care resources, quality and efficiency of renal medical care of patients with chronic kidney disease and patients with acute kidney injury. Results. The place of each province in national rating of state of renal medical care was identified. Conclusions. Dramatic differences in the specialized nephrological care between the regions of Ukraine are primarily due, in our opinion, to the understanding of its medical and social importance and, hence, the funding level.