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The media frequently report on the high cost of various health-related treatments. As there is a limit to the resources available to public and private health plans, they are not able to make all new treatments available. This raises questions about how to determine which treatments should be offered under a health plan. Cost effectiveness analysis has emerged as a powerful tool to help determine priorities and guide these policy decisions. This note is intended as a background reading for a first class on pharmacoeconomics or cost effectiveness analysis.

This note provides a summary of the guidance available in IAS 21: The effects of changes in foreign exchange rates, including a description of how to determine an entity's functional and presentation currencies, and the impact of this decision on the financial statements. The note also contrasts the IFRS approach to foreign currency transaction to the guidance provided by Accounting Standards for Private Enterprises.

This note discusses logistic regression using binomial data. Also discussed is an explanation of how to estimate the parameters from logistic regression using Microsoft Excel (without any add-ins). The note is a follow up to Note on Logistic Regression, product #910E05, which discusses the case with Bernoulli data.

This note describes the precautionary principle and its key tenets, highlights challenges associated with its use, and includes many examples of its application, primarily within the realm of regulating activities based on the risk of harm to human health and the environment. Appendices provide detailed examples of how the precautionary principle has been applied to regulations in three key industries: agriculture, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Describes various forms of the precautionary principle, its widespread adoption in international agreements, its distinction from cost-benefit analysis, its shift of the burden of proving that activities are safe from regulators to industry, and the importance of considering Type I and Type II errors and status quo bias when contemplating whether to evoke the precautionary principle.

This note provides an overview of the rationale and the challenges associated with building new businesses within established companies. It provides a framework for understanding why corporations pursue entrepreneurial ventures and the various levers that they employ. The note offers a comparison of the various approaches, with examples, and their pros and cons.

Provides an introduction to the fields of project finance and infrastructure finance, and gives a statistical overview of project-financed investments over the years from 2005 to 2009. Examples of project-financed investments include the $1.4 billion Mozal aluminum smelter in Mozambique, $4 billion Chad-Cameroon pipeline, $6 billion Iridium global satellite telecommunications system, €900 million A2 Toll Road in Poland, $20 billion Sakhalin II gas field in Russia, and the $28 billion Dabhol power project. Globally, firms financed $240 billion of capital expenditures using project finance in 2009, down from $409 billion in 2008 as the financial crisis hit the Western markets. The use of project finance has grown at a compound rate of 0% over the last five years, 4% over the past 10 years, and 12% over the past 15 years. This note focuses primarily on private sector investment in industrial and infrastructure projects, and contains four sections. The first section defines project finance and contrasts it with other well-known financing mechanisms. The second section describes the evolution of project finance from its beginnings in the natural resources industry in the 1970s, to the U.S. power industry in the 1980s, to a much wider range of industry applications and geographic locations in the 1990s, and most recently to infrastructure finance in the 2000s. The third section provides a statistical overview of project-financed investment over the last five years (2005 to 2009), and looks at industry, project, and participant specific data. The third section also provides recent data on infrastructure investments and public-private partnerships. The final section discusses current and likely future trends.

Analyzes the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and employee engagement, including CSR effects on employee commitment and motivation, new skills and training, and motivation. Also discusses best practices in employee engagement through CSR.

This note introduces the basic motivation behind Islamic finance and how it is implemented in practice. The note contains background regarding the religious principles underlying the practice of Islamic finance as well as a discussion of several products designed to be Shariah compliant and the means by which these products achieve this compliance.

Corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is a field as complex in law as it is in finance. The environment is heavily regulated: it draws on corporate, securities, antitrust and national security law involving obligations at the federal, provincial and self-regulatory levels. This note is designed to introduce non-lawyer managers and finance professionals to the technical securities law issues related to changes of corporate control. While this note deals primarily with the legal aspects of M&A in Canada, deals involving Canadian companies will often involve foreign counterparts. The topic of cross-border M&A is beyond the scope of this note, but, where relevant, distinctions will be drawn throughout between legal terminology, processes and approaches as they differ across the border - most often with the United States.

Corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is a field as complex in law as it is in finance. The environment is heavily regulated: it draws on corporate, securities, antitrust and national security law involving obligations at the federal, provincial and self-regulatory levels. This note is designed to introduce non-lawyer managers and finance professionals to the technical securities law issues related to changes of corporate control. While this note deals primarily with the legal aspects of M&A in Canada, deals involving Canadian companies will often involve foreign counterparts. The topic of cross-border M&A is beyond the scope of this note, but, where relevant, distinctions will be drawn throughout between legal terminology, processes and approaches as they differ across the border most often with the United States.

This note intends to clarify various discounted cash flow valuations and their usefulness. It examines how different methods analyze cash flow from different perspectives but finally arrive at an identical decision.

This brief background note provides an explanation and examples of biomimicry as an approach that provides insights into the innovative design of products and corporate strategy framing. Biomimicry uses nature's laws and successful strategies to inform commercial innovation.

This note provides background on a new certification process for B Corporations that enables companies to assess, compare, and protect the sustainability practices they integrate into corporate strategy. B Corporation status explicitly acknowledges stakeholder strategies and helps companies preserve triple bottom line accountability when and if they are sold/acquired.

This note provides a comprehensive research guide for real estate students, professionals, and executives. It includes lists of real estate industry trade organizations, publicly available research resources, books, and journals relevant to a wide range of financial and operational careers in real estate.

This technical note highlights the most useful resources for gathering data on particular companies or industries, including information relevant to ethics, accountability, and responsibility.

This note provides students with an explanation of the regulatory and tax framework for hedge funds vs. mutual funds in the U.S.

This note provides a background on the US life insurance regimes for the life insurance industry, including descriptions of different types of insurance, annuities, and regulation.

This note is an excerpt from Professor Bob Pozen's book "The Mutual Fund Business" and is an introduction to mutual funds, contrasted with commercial banks.

This note explains the basic structure of the trading floor in a typical financial institution and how the front, middle and back offices interact to ensure a functioning trading system.

In the face of major disruption in the industry television networks have sought new revenue sources, implemented cost-cutting measures and strategized on ways to monetize online access to content. Programming changes, new advertising strategies, and deals via online distribution platforms are presented as means to capture the value of online video consumption.