Investing In Research

A proposal for using cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the socioeconomic impact of public investment in large scientific projects. Large particle accelerators, outer space probes, genomics platforms: all are scientific enterprises managed through the new form of the research infrastructure, in which communities of scientists collaborate across nations, universities, research institutions, and disciplines. Such large projects are often publicly funded, with no accepted way to measure the benefits to society of these investments. In this book, Massimo Florio suggests the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to evaluate the socioeconomic impact of public investment in large and costly scientific projects. The core concept of CBA of any infrastructure is to undertake the consistent intertemporal accounting of social welfare effects using the available information. Florio develops a simple framework for such accounting in the research infrastructure context and then offers a systematic analysis of the benefits in terms of the social agents involved. He measures the benefits to scientists, students, and postdoctoral researchers; the effect on firms of knowledge spillovers; the benefits to users of information technology and science-based innovation; the welfare effects on the general public of cultural services provided by RIs; and the willingness of taxpayers to fund scientific knowledge creation. Finally, Florio shows how these costs and benefits can be expressed in the form of stochastic net present value and other summary indicators.

Finalist in the Business/Personal Finance category of the 2019 International Book Awards Every day, people around the world make financial decisions. They choose to invest in a stock, sell their holdings in a mutual fund or buy a condominium. These decisions are complex and financially tricky—even for financial professionals. But the literature available on financial research is dated and narrowly focused without any real practical application. Until now there's been a gap in the literature: a book that shows you how to conduct a step by step comprehensive financial investigation that ends in a decision. This book gives you that how. Investing in Financial Research is a guidebook for conducting financial investigations and lays out Cheryl Strauss Einhorn's AREA Method—a research and decision-making system that uniquely controls for bias, focuses on the incentives of others and expands knowledge while improving judgement—and applies it to investigating financial situations. AREA is applicable to all sorts of financial sleuthing, whether for investment analysis or investigative journalism. It allows you to be the expert in your own life. The AREA Method provides you with: *Defined tasks that guide and focus your research on your vision of success; *A structure that isolates your sources, giving you insight into their perspectives, biases and incentives; *Investigative resources, tips and techniques to upgrade your research and analysis beyond document-based sources; *Exercises to foster creativity and originality in your thinking; *A sequence and framework that brings your disparate pieces of research together to build your confidence and conviction about your financial decision.

Shortly after taking office in 1993, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore called for a shift in American technology policy toward an expansion of public investments in partnerships with private industry. The authors of this volume were invited by the Clinton administration to take a hard, nonpartisan look at how successful the new policies have been and to propose ways to make their programs more effective. The first summary report of the team's recommendations was called the "hottest technology policy property on Capitol Hill."This book, an expansion of that report, offers a new set of technology policy principles. The authors use the principles to evaluate many federal research programs and to make recommendations for change. This volume will set the terms of the debate over the national research and innovation policy for years to come.

The editor of "Investment Strategy" shows how individual investors can access institutional-quality tools, data, and indicators and consistently beat the market. Hayes presents walk-through examples of a wide variety of investment models based on more than 100 years of stock market data and research from Ned Davis Research to achieve top results. 120 illustrations. 60 tables.

In a world where advanced knowledge is widespread and low-cost labor is readily available, U.S. advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology have begun to erode. A comprehensive and coordinated federal effort is urgently needed to bolster U.S. competitiveness and pre-eminence in these areas. This congressionally requested report by a pre-eminent committee makes four recommendations along with 20 implementation actions that federal policy-makers should take to create high-quality jobs and focus new science and technology efforts on meeting the nation's needs, especially in the area of clean, affordable energy: 1) Increase America's talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education; 2) Sustain and strengthen the nation's commitment to long-term basic research; 3) Develop, recruit, and retain top students, scientists, and engineers from both the U.S. and abroad; and 4) Ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world for innovation. Some actions will involve changing existing laws, while others will require financial support that would come from reallocating existing budgets or increasing them. Rising Above the Gathering Storm will be of great interest to federal and state government agencies, educators and schools, public decision makers, research sponsors, regulatory analysts, and scholars.

Research universities are critical contributors to our national research enterprise. They are the principal source of a world-class labor force and fundamental discoveries that enhance our lives and the lives of others around the world. These institutions help to create an educated citizenry capable of making informed and crucial choices as participants in a democratic society. However many are concerned that the unintended cumulative effect of federal regulations undercuts the productivity of the research enterprise and diminishes the return on the federal investment in research. Optimizing the Nation's Investment in Academic Research reviews the regulatory framework as it currently exists, considers specific regulations that have placed undue and often unanticipated burdens on the research enterprise, and reassesses the process by which these regulations are created, reviewed, and retired. This review is critical to strengthen the partnership between the federal government and research institutions, to maximize the creation of new knowledge and products, to provide for the effective training and education of the next generation of scholars and workers, and to optimize the return on the federal investment in research for the benefit of the American people.

The interplay between human rights and investments is a key and complex issue in today’s world. To take stock of this importance and to tackle this complexity, this Research Handbook offers a unique multi-faceted approach. It gathers in-depth contributions which focus on the interplay between human rights and investments in various international legal regimes, economic sectors and regions. It also provides thorough analyses of the various types of accountability that may result from the activities of multinational corporations in relation to human rights. This Research Handbook is intended for practitioners, policy-makers, academics and students eager to understand the interaction between human rights and investments in all its dimensions.​

A fast growing share of investors have recently widened their scope of analysis to criteria regarded as extra-financial. They are driven by different motivations. Adoption of sustainable investment strategies can be driven, on the one hand by the sole motivation to hedge portfolios against knowable risks by expanding the conceptual framework to incorporate the latest best practice in risk management. Other investors focus rather on a long-term view and make an active bet on societal change. Recent empirical research has shown that considering sustainability factors within investment practices does not come at a cost (i.e. through a reduced opportunity set) but allows for competitive returns. Furthermore, the growing market and resulting competition in the wake of sustainable investing going mainstream has the welcome effect to compress fees for such products. Hence, staying informed about recent trends in sustainable investing is imperative no matter what the main motivation is.