Excessive CEO Pay: Background and Policy Approaches

[Excerpt] During the past several decades, average pay for non-management workers has stagnated, after adjustment for inflation, falling slightly since the early 1970s. In contrast, compensation of top corporate executives has risen dramatically. Supporters of current CEO pay levels argue that executive compensation is determined by normal private market bargaining, that rising pay reflects competition for a limited number of qualified candidates, and that even the richest pay packages are a bargain compared with the billions in shareholder wealth that successful CEOs create. Others, however, cite instances in which executive pay appears to be excessive. Some see a social equity problem in which CEO pay is seen to embody a troublesome rise in income and wealth inequality. Others see excessive pay as a form of shareholder abuse made possible by weak corporate governance structures and a lack of clear, comprehensive disclosure of the various components of executive compensation. This report describes the major legislative and regulatory proposals that have sought to remedy these perceived problems. It will be updated as events warrant

Denoising Adversarial Autoencoders: Classifying Skin Lesions Using Limited Labelled Training Data

We propose a novel deep learning model for classifying medical images in the setting where there is a large amount of unlabelled medical data available, but labelled data is in limited supply. We consider the specific case of classifying skin lesions as either malignant or benign. In this setting, the proposed approach -- the semi-supervised, denoising adversarial autoencoder -- is able to utilise vast amounts of unlabelled data to learn a representation for skin lesions, and small amounts of labelled data to assign class labels based on the learned representation. We analyse the contributions of both the adversarial and denoising components of the model and find that the combination yields superior classification performance in the setting of limited labelled training data.Comment: Under consideration for the IET Computer Vision Journal special issue on "Computer Vision in Cancer Data Analysis

Challenging US Country of Origin Labelling at the WTO: The Law, the Issues and the Evidence

COOL, WTO, labelling, despite, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade,

Preschool and School Readiness: Experiences of Children With Non-English-Speaking Parents

Examines gaps in school readiness among low-income children, especially those in immigrant and linguistically isolated families; the type of early care and education they receive; and the need for targeted center-based preschool programs to close gaps

Integrating evidence for managing asthma in patients who smoke

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Nutrition in Early Childcare Programs: The Benefits and Barriers

Introduction: 1 in 5 Vermont children experience food insecurity. Inadequate nutrition threatens cognitive, social, and emotional development in the first years of life. 49.1% of Vermont children arrive at kindergarten underprepared. It has been shown that undernourished children have reduced activity levels and withdraw from their environment, removing them from critical learning opportunities and social interactions. Supporting the provision of healthy food in early childcare programs may help address the issue of food insecurity and promote healthy childhood development. Currently, there are no existing data on both Vermont childcare providers and parents of these children on their perceptions of the importance of providing food in early childcare programs as well as the associated benefits and barriers to do so.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1228/thumbnail.jp

Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) treatment train assessment tool

This paper outlines a rationale and scoring system for the stormwater treatment train assessment tool (STTAT) which is a proposed regulatory tool for Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS). STTAT provides guidance and regulatory consistency for developers about the requirements of planners and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). The tool balances the risks of pollution to the receiving water body with the treatment provided in a treatment train. It encourages developers to take SUDS into account early, avoiding any misunderstanding of SUDS requirements at the planning stage of a development. A pessimistic view on pollution risks has been adopted since there may be a change of land use on the development in the future. A realistic view has also been taken of maintenance issues and the ‘survivability’ of a SUDS component. The development of STTAT as a response to the requirements of the Water Framework Directive is explored, the individual scores being given in tabular format for receiving water and catchment risks. Treatment scores are proposed for single SUDS components as well as multiple components within treatment trains. STTAT has been tested on a range of sites, predominantly in Scotland where both development and receiving water information was known. The operational tool in use by SEPA is presented

Differences in Preferences Towards the Environment: The Impact of a Gender, Age and Parental Effect

The paper investigates empirically the differences in preferences towards protection of the environment. Using seven different dependent variables to focus on the impact of age, gender and children we use a large micro data set covering data from 33 Western and Eastern European countries. The results indicate that women have both a stronger preference towards the environment and a stronger willingness to contribute. Moreover, we observe the tendency of a negative correlation between age and environmental preferences. However, a positive effect is visible once we focus on the impact of age on social norms (environmental morale). Finally, we were not able to observe that having children is positively correlated with a stronger preference towards the environment.Environmental Preferences, Environmental Morale, Gender, Age, Children

Justifiability of Littering: An Empirical Investigation

The paper investigates the relationship between environmental participation and littering. Previous empirical work in the area of littering is scarce as is evidence regarding the determinants of littering behavior. We address these deficiencies, demonstrating a strong empirical link between environmental participation and reduced public littering using European Values Survey (EVS) data for 30 Western and Eastern European countries. The results suggest that membership in environmental organizations strengthens commitment to anti-littering behaviour, thereby supporting improved environmental quality.littering, environmental participation, environmental preferences, environmental outcomes