Physician dispensing and antibiotic prescriptions

The regulation on prescribing and dispensing of antibiotics has a double purpose: to enhance access to antibiotic treatment and to reduce the inappropriate use of drugs. Nevertheless, incentives to dispensing physicians may lead to inefficiencies. We sketch a theoretical model of the market for antibiotic treatment and empirically investigate the impact of self-dispensing on the per capita outpatient antibiotic consumption using data from small geographic areas in Switzerland. We find evidence that a greater proportion of dispensing practices is associated with higher levels of antibiotic use. This suggests that health authorities have a margin to adjust economic incentives on dispensing practices in order to reduce antibiotic misuse.Physician dispensing, Antibiotic use

Dispensing practices and antibiotic use

The regulation on prescribing and dispensing of antibiotics has a double purpose: to enhance access to antibiotic treatment and to reduce the inappropriate use of drugs. Nevertheless, incentives to dispensing physicians may lead to inefficiencies. We sketch a theoretical model of the market for antibiotic treatment and empirically investigate the impact of self-dispensing on the per capita outpatient antibiotic consumption using data from small geographic areas in Switzerland. We find evidence that a greater proportion of dispensing practices is associated with higher levels of antibiotic use. This suggests that health authorities have a margin to adjust economic incentives on dispensing practices in order to reduce antibiotic misuse.Dispensing, Antibiotic use

External Market Conditions, Competitiveness, Diversification, and Pakistan’s Export Performance

Pakistan’s exports evolve broadly in line with total world imports. Accordingly, Pakistan’s share in world imports was remarkably stable during the last 20 years, ranging between a minimum of 0.12 percent in 1980 and a maximum of 0.18 percent in 1992. In 1999-2000, the share was 0.15 percent. This would suggest that Pakistan’s export performance was not worse than that of the world on average. Compared to regional competitors, however, the performance was unimpressive, especially when compared to China and Thailand throughout the 1980s and 1990s or compared to Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka during the 1990s. All these countries succeeded in achieving sustainable market share increases in total world imports. In light of the growing awareness about the importance of exports in the overall economy of Pakistan and in view of the unimpressive export performance of Pakistan vis-à-vis other countries in the region it would be interesting to study the export performance of Pakistan and analyse the possible reasons for this poor performance and see whether it is due to demand deficiency or is it something to do with the supply side of the issue.

Reforma y crecimiento en América Latina: ¿Puro dolor y nada que ganar?

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se analiza lo adecuado del crecimiento posterior a las reformas en América Latina durante los años 90 sobre la base de una comparación internacional y otras medidas pertinentes. Se analiza analítica y empíricamente se pone a prueba una serie de hipótesis para tratar de explicar la insatisfacción percibida con el desempeño del crecimiento.

Economic Integration and Trade Competitiveness in Latin America

There are large differences in gross domestic products by sectors among Latin American countries, and the majority of these differences are due to the value of industrial and service sectors. The structural reforms in countries of Latin America has broadly focused in the five major areas comprising international trade, financial markets, labor markets, and the generation and use of public resources. Consequently the financial development has improved, especially the depth of financial intermediation, private sector participation in banking, and the size and activity of stock markets. The economic integration and structural reforms in Latin America considered that import substitution in manufacturing sector would be synonymous with industrialization, which in turn was seen as the key to development. As far as the efficient generation and use of public resources are concerned, much has been done to make the value-added tax system efficient and to privatize public enterprises. In response to the liberalization of economies, which has been followed by a significant increase in their imports, was found primarily due to lower inflation, lesser government intervention, and fewer trade barriers. International trade has been the key indicator of the overall economic growth of Latin American countries. The paper reviews the approach to trade policy in early development research and evolution of thoughts integrating the economic and structural reforms in Latin America. The reference period for analysis of spatial and temporal data is 1950-2003. The aspects of trade and growth and problems of Balance of Payments and their relation with macroeconomic policy have also been discussed in the paper. Further, this paper analyzes economic integration between two economies: one central, with a large local market, and the other peripheral, with a small local market. Each economy has an imperfectly competitive manufacturing sector. It has been observed in the discussion that the trade liberalization creates a strong incentive for the imperfectly competitive industry to concentrate in the central region, near the large market. Additionally, the role of supporting policies to assure the success of trade liberalization is analyzed in the paper.Economic integration, total factor productivity, competitiveness, trade policy, regional growth

Is democracy beneficial for growth in countries with low ethnic diversity?

We study the impact of democracy on economic growth for a panel of the most and least ethnically diverse nations as documented by Easterly and Levine (1997). Using a GMM system to capture endogeneity and simultaneity, we find that democracy exerts a direct positive impact on growth, in addition to ameliorating the adverse effects of ethnic diversity on growth, unlike some of the results of the previous empirical literature

The use of Latin-square designs in educational and psychological research

A Latin square is a matrix containing the same number of rows and columns. The cell entries are a sequence of symbols inserted in such a way that each symbol occurs only once in each row and only once in each column. Fisher (1925) proposed that Latin squares could be useful in experimental designs for controlling the effects of extraneous variables. He argued that a Latin square should be chosen at random from the set of possible Latin squares that would fit a research design and that the Latin-square design should be carried through into the data analysis. Psychological researchers have advanced our appreciation of Latin-square designs, but they have made only moderate use of them and have not heeded Fisher’s prescriptions. Educational researchers have used them even less and are vulnerable to similar criticisms. Nevertheless, the judicious use of Latin-square designs is a powerful tool for experimental researchers