The lower the interest rate the lower the direct cost of investment for US firms.
Another direct cost may be felt by Chinese students looking for college places abroad.
So restoring differentials would roughly double the direct cost of the minimum wage.
This illusion is compounded by the belief of many voters that someone else is also bearing the direct cost of current taxes.
Since Delaware law indemnifies company officers from paying most civil damages, they are rarely exposed to the direct cost of shareholder litigation anyway.
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The moral of the story is also clear: there is much that governments can do to stimulate more innovation with little direct cost to taxpayers.
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According to Ask.com, 57% of Americans age 65 to 74 year olds wear dentures, making them a distinct possibility, and direct cost, future retirees are likely to face.
Overall, the direct cost of incidental absences is only about 2% of the payroll, according to a 2010 survey of 473 employers of all sizes by benefits consultants Mercer.
But what is important about the IDC Energy Insights study (and the like) is that it emphasizes energy which, like water, is a direct cost that cuts across industries.
Depending on how you calculate it, the direct cost of developing a drug equals everything that you actually spend on the drug that makes it, plus all of the costs of the drugs that failed.
While the direct cost of providing equal treatment to agency workers will fall on the employment agencies rather than the hirer, agencies may seek to pass on these costs to end-users in the rates charged for their workers.
The CPI also ignores the direct cost of property taxes--sure to go up as states and cities bail out underfunded pension plans--and subtracts the "hedonic" effects of regulations that increase quality of life, such as the added expense of pollution-reducing gasoline additives.
He warns that the new programme could cost more than direct payments, because cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office assume that crop prices will remain high.
Although the direct, measurable cost of malpractice premiums is small, the effect on physician behaviour is enormous.
Besides TIAA, Fidelity, Vanguard and USAA offer low-cost annuities through direct sales, but less than 4% of all annuities are of the low-cost, directly marketed variety.
The combination of smaller size, lower power, and lower cost make direct green lasers an attractive alternative to synthetic green lasers for Microvision's mobile display solutions.
These organizations have a true financial incentive to reduce the cost of care, and their direct control of physicians allows them to orchestrate more cost-effective interventions.
Which will, of course, put the low-cost PS3 into direct price competition with the Wii U over the holidays.
This will fill a needed gap in ship-to-shore communications and also provide for friends and family to be able to communicate onboard without high cost by giving direct dial capability between smartphones.
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Perhaps more interesting than the rankings, though, was the finding that customers of MVNOs (like Virgin) ranked their services higher in account management and cost, while direct services (like T-Mobile) fared better in areas like company image and call quality.
ENGADGET: Virgin Mobile takes top prepaid honors in J.D. Powers survey
The cost-lowering potential of direct-payment practices is heartening because the current third-party payment system has failed to stem our burgeoning health cost crisis.
FORBES: Fed Up With Obamacare, Doctors Increasingly Prefer Cash For Care
Finally, microfinance institutions can tackle the cost of distribution for direct to farmer lending.
For direct-mail solicitations, the cost is 20 cents per dollar back.
Credit Suisse (nyse: CS - news - people ) division that uses computers to direct trades to the lowest-cost exchange at any given moment.
Direct-payment could check that cost growth, particularly in the primary care realm, by empowering doctors and patients to negotiate mutually agreeable prices, free of interference from insurers or the government.
FORBES: Fed Up With Obamacare, Doctors Increasingly Prefer Cash For Care
"People used to talk about each stock having a principal exchange, " says Daniel Mathisson, managing director in charge of a Credit Suisse division that uses computers to direct trades to the lowest-cost exchange at any given moment.
Mr Milburn also announced that older people in need of care could choose whether to have a direct service or cash to cover the cost of buying care.
An expert witness testifying on behalf of the plaintiffs - the US Department of Justice and the US states affected by the spill - countered that the disaster was a direct result of poor management and heavy cost-cutting at BP.
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