Summary Early childhood development programmes vary in coordination and quality, with inadequate and inequitable access, especially for children younger than 3 years. New estimates, based on proxy ...measures of stunting and poverty, indicate that 250 million children (43%) younger than 5 years in low-income and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential. There is therefore an urgent need to increase multisectoral coverage of quality programming that incorporates health, nutrition, security and safety, responsive caregiving, and early learning. Equitable early childhood policies and programmes are crucial for meeting Sustainable Development Goals, and for children to develop the intellectual skills, creativity, and wellbeing required to become healthy and productive adults. In this paper, the first in a three part Series on early childhood development, we examine recent scientific progress and global commitments to early childhood development. Research, programmes, and policies have advanced substantially since 2000, with new neuroscientific evidence linking early adversity and nurturing care with brain development and function throughout the life course.
This paper discusses the empirical literature on the economic consequences of disclosure and financial reporting regulation, drawing on U.S. and international evidence. Given the policy relevance of ...research on regulation, we highlight the challenges with (1) quantifying regulatory costs and benefits, (2) measuring disclosure and reporting outcomes, and (3) drawing causal inferences from regulatory studies. Next, we discuss empirical studies that link disclosure and reporting activities to firm-specific and market-wide economic outcomes. Understanding these links is important when evaluating regulation. We then synthesize the empirical evidence on the economic effects of disclosure regulation and reporting standards, including the evidence on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption. Several important conclusions emerge. We generally lack evidence on market-wide effects and externalities from regulation, yet such evidence is central to the economic justification of regulation. Moreover, evidence on causal effects of disclosure and reporting regulation is still relatively rare. We also lack evidence on the real effects of such regulation. These limitations provide many research opportunities. We conclude with several specific suggestions for future research.
Penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) and electrical energy storage (EES) systems in distribution systems is increasing, and it is crucial to investigate their impact on systems' operation ...scheme, reliability, and security. In this paper, expected energy not supplied (EENS) and voltage stability index (VSI) of distribution networks are investigated in dynamic balanced and unbalanced distribution network reconfiguration, including RESs and EES systems. Furthermore, due to the high investment cost of the EES systems, the number of charge and discharge is limited, and the state-of-health constraint is included in the underlying problem to prolong the lifetime of these facilities. The optimal charging/discharging scheme for EES systems and optimal distribution network topology are presented in order to optimize the operational costs, and reliability and security indices simultaneously. The proposed strategy is applied to a large-scale 119-bus distribution test network in order to show the economic justification of the proposed approach.
This paper considers the existing method of outdoor lighting maintenance, its disadvantages and advantages of well-known modern, but not used methods. Modern service methods using a new connector are ...introduced. The requirements for the connector are defined, its structural and parametric synthesis is made and for this an integrated digital model is developed. The economic justification for using the new service method is presented.
Valuation of ecosystem services can provide evidence of the importance of sustaining and enhancing those resources and the ecosystems that provide them. Long appreciated only as a commercial source ...of oysters, oyster reefs are now acknowledged for the other services they provide, such as enhancing water quality and stabilizing shorelines. We develop a framework to assess the value of these services. We conservatively estimate that the economic value of oyster reef services, excluding oyster harvesting, is between $5500 and $99,000 per hectare per year and that reefs recover their median restoration costs in 2–14 years. In contrast, when oyster reefs are subjected to destructive oyster harvesting, they do not recover the costs of restoration. Shoreline stabilization is the most valuable potential service, although this value varies greatly by reef location. Quantifying the economic values of ecosystem services provides guidance about when oyster reef restoration is a good use of funds.
Demand decomposition (disaggregation) presents the process of assessing time-varying participation of different load categories within the total active or reactive load. Information on load ...composition is highly beneficial for different demand side management applications. In order to decompose total forecasted load of aggregated households where only some are monitored by smart meters (SMs) with submetering capabilities, a two-level methodology is proposed. At the first level, load disaggregation of the load monitored by SMs is done based on measurements of power consumed by each home appliance, and at the second, the disaggregation of the total forecasted load is performed using artificial neural network. This paper investigates the required percentage of users in an aggregation that should be equipped with a SM with submetering capabilities in order to forecast (within certain confidence level) the load composition of the overall aggregated demand. The methodology was first tested on a UK statistics-based load model, and then validated on a real pilot site's consumption dataset. The results show that even with 5% SM coverage, one can forecast, with high confidence, the composition of the load at the substation (aggregation point). In other words, there is no techno-economic justification for submetering technologies to be installed at every user's premise; a limited installation of such devices would suffice.
The rapidly expanding network of roads into the Amazon is permanently altering the world’s largest tropical forest. Most proposed road projects lack rigorous impact assessments or even basic economic ...justification. This study analyzes the expected environmental, social and economic impacts of 75 road projects, totaling 12 thousand kilometers of planned roads, in the region. We find that all projects, although in different magnitudes, will negatively impact the environment. Forty-five percent will also generate economic losses, even without accounting for social and environmental externalities. Canceling economically unjustified projects would avoid 1.1 million hectares of deforestation and US$ 7.6 billion in wasted funding for development projects. For projects that exceed a basic economic viability threshold, we identify the ones that are comparatively better not only in terms of economic return but also have lower social and environmental impacts. We find that a smaller set of carefully chosen projects could deliver 77% of the economic benefit at 10% of the environmental and social damage, showing that it is possible to have efficient tradeoff decisions informed by legitimately determined national priorities.
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