A review of the characteristics of 108 author-level bibliometric indicators

An increasing demand for bibliometric assessment of individuals has led to a growth of new bibliometric indicators as well as new variants or combinations of established ones. The aim of this review is to contribute with objective facts about the usefulness of bibliometric indicators of the effects of publication activity at the individual level. This paper reviews 108 indicators that can potentially be used to measure performance on the individual author level, and examines the complexity of their calculations in relation to what they are supposed to reflect and ease of end-user application.Comment: to be published in Scientometrics, 201

Determinants and Effects of Reserve Prices in Hattrick Auctions

We use a unique hand collected data set of 6,258 auctions from the online football manager game Hattrick to study determinants and effects of reserve prices. We find that chosen reserve prices exhibit both very sophisticated and suboptimal behavior by the sellers. On the one hand, reserve prices are adjusted remarkably nuanced to the resulting sales price pattern. However, reserve prices are too clustered at zero and at multiples of e 50,000 as to be consistent with fully rational behavior. We recover the value distribution and simulate the loss in expected revenue from suboptimal reserve prices. Finally, we find evidence for the sunk cost fallacy as there is a substantial positive effect on the reserve price when the player has been acquired previously

Switching patients from other inhaled corticosteroid devices to the Easyhaler(®) : historical, matched-cohort study of real-life asthma patients

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The impact of adult deaths on children's health in Northwestern Tanzania

The AIDS epidemic is dramatically increasing mortality of adults in many Sub-Saharan African countries, with potentially severe consequences for surviving family members. Until now, most of these impacts had not been quantified. The authors examine the impact of adult mortality in Tanzania on three measures of health among children under five: morbidity, height for age, and weight for height. The children hit hardest by the death of a parent or other adult are those in the poorest households, those with uneducated parents, and those with the least access to health care. The authors also show how much three important health interventions-immunization against measles, and rehydration salts, and access to health care-can do to mitigate the impact of adult mortality. These programs disproportionately improve health outcomes among the poorest children and, within that group, among children affected by adult mortality. In Tanzania there is so much poverty, and child health indicators are so low that these interventions should be targeted as much as possible to the poorest households, where the children hit hardest by adult mortality are most likely to be found. (Conceivably, the targeting strategy for middle-income countries with severe AIDS epidemics, such as Thailand, or countries with less poverty and better child health indicators might be different.)Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Early Child and Children's Health,Disease Control&Prevention,Early Childhood Development,Public Health Promotion,Adolescent Health,Early Child and Children's Health,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Street Children,Youth and Governance

A Review of Theory and Practice in Scientometrics

Scientometrics is the study of the quantitative aspects of the process of science as a communication system. It is centrally, but not only, concerned with the analysis of citations in the academic literature. In recent years it has come to play a major role in the measurement and evaluation of research performance. In this review we consider: the historical development of scientometrics, sources of citation data, citation metrics and the “laws" of scientometrics, normalisation, journal impact factors and other journal metrics, visualising and mapping science, evaluation and policy, and future developments

Do innovation and human capital explain the productivity gap between small and large firms?

Empirical evidence is compelling that large firms are more productive than small firms. The hypothesis in this paper is that the productivity differences between small and large firms are associated with two of the main determinants of a firm’s performance: the human and technological capital that firms incorporate. We suggest that the contribution of these factors in explaining the size of the productivity gap might not only be due to the fact that large firms make a more extensive use of them, but also because large firms obtain higher returns from their investment in human and technological capital. The evidence we obtain for a comprehensive sample of Spanish manufacturing firms (1990-2002) supports this hypothesis, which has important implications for the effectiveness of policies designed to improve productivity in SMEs by stimulating innovation and the use of more skilled workers.total factor productivity; innovation; skilled labour; firm size.

Housing affordability and tenure choices: an empirical investigation

Several empirical studies have established that tenure choice and households mobility decisions are highly correlated (Ozyildirim et al., 2005). In the literature, there have been two methods that have used to estimate tenure choice models. The first uses a sample of recent movers while the second employs a sample of all households. Other approaches are mixed (Painter, 2000). This work refers on the results of an empirical analysis, developed to the urban level, by a sample of movers (renters and homeowners). The main goal is to test if homeownership is systematically preferred to leasing and if the housing affordability effect can be estimated by a tenure choice model. A random utility approach is used to model observed choices of renterswithin and between rent and property markets. The analytical results confirm, as expected, the strong trend to the homeownership for the families of renters. But, in current economic situation, the high value of the rent is systematically associated with a reduced chance of changing for the medium-income households. Monetary estimates of affordable rents are given in the last part of the paper, conditioned to the income level, the family size and the previous and actual level of affordability.

Understanding sectoral differences in downward real wage rigidity: workforce composition, institutions, technology and competition

This paper examines whether differences in wage rigidity across sectors can be explained by differences in workforce composition, competition, technology and wage-bargaining institutions. We adopt the measure of downward real wage rigidity (DRWR) developed by Dickens and Goette (2006) and rely on a large administrative matched employer-employee dataset for Belgium over the period 1990-2002. Firstly, our results indicate that DRWR is significantly higher for white-collar workers and lower for older workers and for workers with higher earnings and bonuses. Secondly, beyond labour force composition effects, sectoral differences in DRWR are related to competition, firm size, technology and wage bargaining institutions. We find that wages are more rigid in more competitive sectors, in labour-intensive sectors, and in sectors with predominant centralised wage setting at the sector level as opposed to firm-level wage agreements. JEL Classification: J31matched employer-employee data, wage rigidity, wage-bargaining institutions

The Choice of Debt Source by UK Firms

Peer reviewedPostprin