bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Efficacy, Safety, and Tolerability of On-Demand Tadalafil and Daily Dosed Tadalafil for the Treatment of Erectile Dysfunction
Authors: McMahon Chris 
Published: April 2005

ABSTRACT

Objective
To assess and compare the efficacy of on-demand tadalafil and daily tadalafil in the treatment of erectile dysfunction.

Materials and Methods
A total of 145 men with a mean age of 57.3 years (range 19–82 years) and mild to severe erectile dysfunction of various etiologies were randomized to receive on-demand tadalafil (20 mg) or daily tadalafil (10 mg) taken without food or alcohol restrictions in a trial lasting 26 weeks. The three primary outcome measures were changes from baseline in the erectile function domain of the International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF), the proportion of “yes” responses to questions 2 and 3 of the Sexual Encounter Profile (SEP). Additional efficacy instruments included a Global Assessment Question administered at completion of the study.

Results
Compared with baseline, on-demand and daily tadalafil enhanced all efficacy outcomes. Patients receiving on-demand tadalafil (20 mg) and daily tadalafil (10 mg) experienced a significant mean improvement of 8.3 and 11.9, respectively, in the erectile function domain of the IIEF from baseline (P &lt; 0.001). The mean change from baseline was significantly higher for daily dosed tadalafil than for on-demand tadalafil (P &lt; 0.05). Sexual intercourse was successfully completed (SEP3) in 69% and 84% of patients taking on-demand tadalafil and daily tadalafil, respectively, compared with 30% at baseline (P &lt; 0.001). Successful completion of sexual intercourse was statistically higher for daily tadalafil than for on-demand tadalafil (P &lt; 0.05). Treatment with on-demand tadalafil or daily tadalafil was well tolerated, and headaches, facial flushing, and dyspepsia were the most frequently observed adverse events.

Conclusion
Tadalafil was effective and well tolerated in this patient population. Treatment with daily tadalafil was associated with a significantly higher IIEF erectile function domain score and completion of successful intercourse compared with on-demand tadalafil.
The Prevalence of Bother, Acceptance, and Need for Help in Men with Erectile Dysfunction
Authors: De Boer B.J. , Bots M.L. , Lycklama à Nijeholt A. A. B. , Verheij Th.J.M. 
Published: April 2005

ABSTRACT

Introduction
Apart from knowledge on the prevalence of erectile dysfunction (ED), for clinical reasons it is important to obtain information on concern or bother and need for help. However, information is lacking on men with ED who need help but do not seek medical attention. Thus, this study aimed to assess the distribution of bother, acceptance, and need for help in men with ED, and assess characteristics of patients with ED in need for help but not receiving medical attention for ED.

Methods
A total of 5,721 men aged 18 years and older and registered in 12 general practices in the middle of the Netherlands were sent a questionnaire by mail about sexual problems, ED, need for help, and medical attention. Out of 2,117 questionnaires that were returned, 1,481 were completed on ED, bother, and need for help.

Results
The prevalence of ED (according to World Health Organization definition) in the 1,481 men was 14.2%. Of these men 67.3% were bothered, 68.7% did not accept ED, and 85.3% wanted help. Surprisingly, 41.9% of men who denied a need for help were bothered and 19.4% did not accept ED. Only 10.4% of men with ED received any medical care. Bother in men with ED was related to increasing age (decreasing above 60 years). Compared with men who already received help for ED, men who wanted help but did not receive it more often suffered from diabetes, neurological problems, and various cardiovascular problems. On the other hand, history of myocardial infarction increased the chance of getting adequate medical attention for ED.

Conclusions
The majority of men with ED are concerned or bothered and perceive a need for help. Most of them do not receive any medical attention. These men are characterized by chronic medical conditions, visiting the physician's office regularly for their medical condition.
Prevalence of Premature Ejaculation: A Global and Regional Perspective
Authors: Montorsi Francesco 
Published: April 2005

ABSTRACTThe effort to determine the global burden of premature ejaculation (PE) has been impeded by the lack of a clear and universally accepted definition of the condition. Current diagnostic criteria are variable and rely, to a large degree, on subjective measurements. Moreover, the absence of a clear consensus on what constitutes a normal ejaculatory latency has impeded research into the prevalence of PE, although evidence is gradually accruing that may make this definition easier. Perception of “normal” ejaculatory latency varies by country and can differ when assessed either by the patient or their partner. Despite these limitations, information from the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors and other sources suggests a global prevalence of PE of approximately 30% across all age groups. The etiology underpinning this prevalence remains to be clarified, but current evidence reflects a shift from psychogenic theories to more neurobiological bases. While elucidation of the etiology of PE will undoubtedly aid the development of more effective therapies, it is clear that, whatever the cause of the condition, it is associated with a significant burden on psychological and overall health.
VALUE AT RISK: USES AND ABUSES
Authors: Culp Christopher L. , Miller Merton H. , Neves Andrea M. P. 
Published: April 2005

Value at risk (or “VAR”) is a method of measuring the financial risk of an asset, portfolio, or exposure over some specified period of time. By facilitating the consistent measurement of risk across different assets and activities, VAR allows companies to monitor, report, and control their risks in a manner that efficiently relates risk control to desired and actual economic exposures.Nevertheless, reliance on VAR can result in serious problems when improperly used, and would‐be users of VAR are advised to consider the following three pieces of advice:

First, VAR is a tool for firms engaged in total value risk management. Companies concerned not with the value of a stock of assets and liabilities over a specific time horizon, but rather with the volatility of a flow of funds, are often better off eschewing VAR altogether in favor of a measure of cash flow volatility.
Second, VAR should be applied very carefully to companies that practice “selective” risk management those firms that choose to take certain risks as a part of their primary business. When VAR is reported in such situations without estimates of corresponding expected profits, the information conveyed by the VAR estimate can be extremely misleading.
Third, as a number of recent derivatives disasters are used to illustrate, no form of risk measurement including VAR–is a substitute for good management. Risk management as a process encompasses much more than just risk measurement. Indeed, risk measurement (whether using VAR or some of the alternatives proposed in this article) is pointless without a well‐developed organizational infrastructure and IT system capable of supporting the complex and dynamic process of risk taking and risk control.
OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL IN SOUTH AFRICA UNDER BLACK RULE
Authors: Kantor Brian 
Published: April 2005

An article published in this journal three years ago defended the South African corporate ownership system with its five largest “groups” then exercising effective control over companies representing nearly 80% of the value of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange–as “an efficient outcome of a largely voluntary market process in which owner‐managers compete for capital supplied mainly by South African institutional investors.” This article extends the earlier analysis by noting that, since the beginning of black majority rule in 1994, the South African group system has adapted by finding ways for black entrepreneurs to participate in the control and ownership of major South African businesses. And such experiments in “black empowerment” have produced a number of notable successes. At the same time, the idea of investing in shares has now become widely accepted in black communities that once viewed the Stock Exchange as a bastion of exclusive white interests.The larger import of such changes is their apparent success in “legitimizing” the established financial structure for the new South Africa, thereby protecting a fundamentally market‐based system from potentially damaging intervention by the State. But if that system is to prosper over the longer run, economic efficiency must remain the primary goal; and, as share ownership spreads among the black community, it must become a more important source of black wealth than the successes of a small group of black entrepreneurs controlling large stakes on the JSE.
SOURCING EQUITY INTERNATIONALLY WITH DEPOSITARY RECEIPT OFFERINGS: TWO EXCEPTIONS THAT PROVE THE RULE
Authors: Karolyi G. Andrew 
Published: April 2005

Corporations around the world are now aggressively raising equity capital in the U.S. by crosslisting their shares on major U.S. stock exchanges in the form of depositary receipts (DRs). After describing the process by which companies create DR programs to crosslist their shares in the U.S., this article surveys the existing empirical evidence on the effects of such cross‐listings on the companies' cost of capital, global risk exposures, and liquidity.Among the most notable findings, the article reports that significant positive share price reactions, reductions in risk measures, and increases in liquidity are observed following crossborder listings, though mainly in the case of non‐U.S. companies listing for the first time in the U.S. To illustrate these capital‐market effects, the article recounts in some detail two recent cases of international capital‐raising facilitated by DR offerings: Deutsche Telekom and China's Huaneng Power International.
DEBT, FOLKLORE, AND CROSS‐COUNTRY DIFFERENCES IN FINANCIAL STRUCTURE
Authors: Rajan Raghuram , Zingales Luigi 
Published: April 2005

Conventional wisdom has long held that, in relationship‐based economies such as Japan and Germany, corporations are able to borrow more than U.S. companies, which in turn reduces their cost of capital and gives them a competitive edge. But such folklore does not stand up to scrutiny. In Japan and Germany, large businesses do not borrow more than U.S. companies–and, in fact, judging from coverage ratios, German companies (as well as U.K. companies) seem to borrow considerably less than their international competitors.The article also reports that, in countries where financial markets are “transparent,” the development of the banking sector has little additional impact on the growth of “financially dependent” industries. That is, although industries that require a lot of external finance grow faster in countries where the bank credit‐to‐GDP ratio is high, the growth rates of such industries are much more correlated with the level of accounting standards (with high standards serving as a proxy for well‐developed capital markets) than with a strong banking system.
DISAPPEARING DIVIDENDS: CHANGING FIRM CHARACTERISTICS OR LOWER PROPENSITY TO PAY?
Authors: Fama Eugene F. , French Kenneth R. 
Published: April 2005

The proportion of U.S. firms paying dividends drops sharply during the 1980s and 1990s. Among NYSE, AMEX, and Nasdaq firms, the proportion of dividend payers falls from 66.5% in 1978 to only 20.8% in 1999. The decline is due in part to an avalanche of new listings that tilts the population of publicly traded firms toward small firms with low profitability and strong growth opportunities—the timeworn characteristics of firms that typically do not pay dividends. But this is not the whole story. The authors' more striking finding is that, no matter what their characteristics, firms in general have become less likely to pay dividends.The authors use two different methods to disentangle the effects of changing firm characteristics and changing propensity to pay on the percent of dividend payers. They find that, of the total decline in the proportion of dividend payers since 1978, roughly one‐third is due to the changing characteristics of publicly traded firms and two‐thirds is due to a reduced propensity to pay dividends. This lower propensity to pay is quite general—dividends have become less common among even large, profitable firms.Share repurchases jump in the 1980s, and the authors investigate whether repurchases contribute to the declining incidence of dividend payments. It turns out that repurchases are mainly the province of dividend payers, thus leaving the decline in the percent of payers largely unexplained. Instead, the primary effect of repurchases is to increase the already high payouts of cash dividend payers.
REAL OPTIONS PRIMER: A PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS OF CONCEPTS AND VALUATION APPROACHES
Authors: Hevert Kathleen T. 
Published: April 2005

Strategic capital investment decisions are being made every day in an increasingly uncertain world. While the traditional NPV approach does a reasonable job of valuing simple, passively managed projects, it does not capture the many ways in which a highly uncertain project might evolve, and the ways in which active managers will influence this evolution. In cases where managerial flexibility is a major source of strategic value, companies will want to use real options valuation methods.This article serves as a managerial tutorial on this newer, less understood approach. It uses simple examples to illustrate the essence of four basic categories of real options—timing, growth, production, and abandonment. The examples begin by taking a “binomial” approach to option valuation, in which the value of an investment initiative is allowed to take on two possible future values. Besides being used to illustrate the distinctive features of a real option, the binomial approach also serves to help the reader understand the alternative Black‐Scholes valuation approach (though without requiring the reader to master the complex mathematics underlying Black‐Scholes). Basic instructions for implementing both approaches are provided, along with a discussion of how to set appropriate discount rates and the important role of volatility assessment in the valuation process.
TRANSFORMING ENRON: THE VALUE OF ACTIVE MANAGEMENT
Authors: Kaminski Vince , Martin John 
Published: April 2005

Soon after Enron was formed as a regulated gas pipeline company in 1985, economic events forced a dramatic reorganization of the company. The result was the creation of an unregulated energy trading operation whose mission was to capitalize on opportunities arising from the deregulation of the natural gas market The initial form of the new business was that of a “gas bank” in which Enron became an intermediary between buyers and sellers of gas, locking in the spread as profit. Since there was no source of liquidity to the market, Enron had to develop its own risk management system.Furthermore, the need to respond quickly to rapidly changing market conditions required that Enron flatten its organizational structure and hire new people whose skills were better suited to the new decentralized organization. The focus of the new Enron accordingly became human and intellectual capital, not physical assets. Employees were encouraged to move about the firm to staff new business ventures. And in what may well be a unique feature in corporate America, Enron's top management today uses its human capital flows to guide its allocations of financial capital. Other aspects of the Enron model include attempts to capitalize on the option (as opposed to current DCF) value of assets, recognition of the value of networks in adding value to trading platforms, and the use of mark‐to‐market accounting for business transactions as a means of ensuring transparency and promoting timely decision‐making.
EVA IN THE E&P INDUSTRY: THE CASE OF NUEVO ENERGY
Authors: McCormack John , Gow Ian Drummond 
Published: April 2005

This article presents a case study illustrating some aspects of the new business model discussed in the roundtable above. Continuing a major theme in the roundtable, the authors begin by arguing that the long‐run failure of the E&P industry to create shareholder wealth stems to a large degree from weak or distorted incentives held out to the top executives and managers of most large, publicly traded companies. This article traces the incentive problem to the lack of an effective wealth creation metric to guide the financial management process. Although the industry employs a variety of accounting‐based performance measures, none is a reliable measure of wealth creation.In place of traditional financial metrics such as earnings, annual cash flow, and return on capital, this article recommends a performance evaluation and incentive compensation system that is tied to the use of a “reserve‐adjusted” EVA measure—one that exhibits a strong statistical correlation with changes in shareholder wealth in the E&P business. The greater explanatory power of this new measure reflects the reality that changes in the value of reserves in the ground can greatly outweigh changes in annual earnings or cash flows.As the focal point of a compensation plan, EVA has advantages over stock options in that it can be calculated at various levels in the organization, even at the level of a single well, whereas stock prices only exist for the company as a whole. For this reason, an EVA incentive system permits a clearer “line of sight” between pay packages and the performance of the part of the business for which managers are directly accountable. Perhaps even more important, EVA can be calculated (using an “internal hedging” mechanism) in a way that removes the impact of changes in oil prices on the incentive outcome. And, as demonstrated in the case study of Nuevo Energy, such internal hedging allows companies to give their employees a much greater share of wealth created with far less cost than by simply granting stock or stock options.
WHY HEDGE? SOME EVIDENCE FROM OIL AND GAS PRODUCERS
Authors: Haushalter David 
Published: April 2005

Despite the prevalence of corporate risk management, there are no widely accepted explanations for why companies hedge or how shareholders benefit from hedging. This article provides some evidence on these issues by reporting the results of a study of the risk management policies of 100 oil and gas producers from 1992 to 1994.The first notable finding is the considerable variety of the hedging policies of the oil and gas producers. For example, in 1993 slightly more than half of the companies did not hedge, while a quarter of the firms in the sample hedged more than 28′ of their production, and some firms hedged almost 100′. The second main finding was that the extent of hedging was related to a variety of factors, largely those related to financing costs. In particular, companies with higher leverage—and thus presumably facing greater difficulties in accessing the capital markets—tended to hedge a larger fraction of their output than firms with lower leverage ratios. This result is consistent with the idea that corporations manage risks to help ensure they have sufficient capital to finance their investment opportunities and to reduce the likelihood that low oil and gas prices will push them into financial distress. Under either of these interpretations, financial theory would suggest that corporate hedging increases shareholder value. Whether it actually does so is a matter for future research.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT FINANCIAL SYSTEM FOR GROWTH
Authors: Barth James R. , Nolle Daniel E. , Root Hilton L. , Yago Glenn 
Published: April 2005

Well‐functioning financial systems promote economic growth by channeling funds from those who save to those who invest in the productive capacity of economies. What are the main features of a well functioning system? Are well developed capital markets essential to the process? Or are commercial banks and other “private” sources of capital capable of bringing about the same levels of growth and prosperity?In this article, the authors use information about the financial systems of a large number of both developed and developing countries to examine various relationships between a country's financial structure and its overall economic performance. Perhaps most important, the authors report a significantly positive correlation, using data for 34 countries, between the size of a country's financial system—measured by the total of commercial bank assets, equity market capitalization, and bonds outstanding—and economic development (as measured by GDP per capita). At the same time, the authors also provide evidence that banks (or loans) and capital markets (or securities) are complements, not substitutes, in promoting economic development, and that the presence of foreign‐owned banks (though not state‐owned banks) has a positive association with growth. In other words, both private banks and capital markets are likely to play important, though different roles in channeling funds from savers to investors.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMAN CAPITAL MARKETS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
Authors: Nowak Eric 
Published: April 2005

Financial economists continue to point to Germany as a relatively successful model of a “bank‐centered,” as opposed to a market‐based, economy. But few seem to recognize that, in the years leading up to World War I, German equity capital markets were among the most highly developed in the world. Although there are now only about 750 companies listed on German stock exchanges, in 1914 there were almost 1,200 (as compared to only about 600 stocks then listed on the New York Stock Exchange).Since German reunification in 1990, there have been signs of a possible restoration of the country's equity markets to something like their former prominence. The last 10 years have seen important legal and institutional developments that can be seen as preparing the way for larger and more active German equity markets, together with a more “shareholder‐friendly” corporate governance system. In particular, the 1994 Securities Act, the Corporation Control and Transparency Act passed in 1998, and the just released Takeover Act and Fourth Financial Market PromotionAct all contain legal reforms that are essential conditions for well functioning equity markets. Such legal and regulatory changes have helped lay the groundwork for more visible and dramatic milestones, such as the Deutsche Telekom IPO in 1996, the opening of the Neuer Market in 1997, and, perhaps most important, the acquisition in 2000 of Mannesmann by Vodafone, the first successful hostile takeover of a German company.