Influenza vaccination uptake among people aged over 85 years: an audit of primary care practice in the UK

Public health research and national guidelines have advocated for seasonal influenza vaccination in the elderly. General practice has established itself as an ideal setting for the safe administration and monitoring of vaccines.1 Due to waning immune systems and high levels of co-morbidities, the elderly are especially vulnerable to the acquisition of infectious diseases.2 Influenza in the elderly results in increased levels of hospitalisation, morbidity and mortality. This section of society clearly benefits from annual vaccination against circulating seasonal strains of influenza virus.3 Since a major policy change in 2000 from riskrelated vaccine administration to age-related vaccine administration, vaccine uptake on average has increased.1 Little is known about the vaccine uptake patterns in the elderly population aged 85 years and over. The primary objective was to audit the influenza vaccination uptake in Amherst Medical Practice among individuals aged over 85 years. Secondary objectives were: to determine the proportion of recurrent non-uptake of seasonal influenza vaccination in the primary care setting, to identify the underlying factors associated with recurrent non-uptake of seasonal influenza vaccination, and provide baseline information to target and improve vaccine uptake among patients aged over 85 years

City Tolls – One Element of an Effective Policy Cocktail

Stadtverkehr, Verkehrsstau, Straßenbenutzungsgebühr, Stadtverkehrspolitik, Urban transport, Traffic jam, Road pricing, Urban transport policy

Using Lessons from Health Care to Protect the Privacy of Library Users: Guidelines for the De-Identification of Library Data based on HIPAA

While libraries have employed policies to protect the data about use of their services, these policies are rarely specific or standardized. Since 1996 the U.S. healthcare system has been grappling with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which is designed to provide those handling personal health information with standardized, definitive instructions as to the protection of data. In this work, the authors briefly discuss the present situation of privacy policies about library use data, outline the HIPAA guidelines to understand parallels between the two, and finally propose methods to create a de-identified library data warehouse based on HIPAA for the protection of user privacy

The Stability of Downtown Parking and Traffic Congestion

In classical traffic flow theory, there are two velocities associated with a given level of traffic flow. Following Vickrey, economists have termed travel at the higher speed congested travel and at the lower speed hypercongested travel. Since the publication of Walters' classic paper (1961, Econometrica 29, 676-699), there has been an on-going debate concerning whether a steady-state hypercongested equilibrium can be stable. For a particular structural model of downtown traffic flow and parking, this paper demonstrates that a steady-state hypercongested equilibrium can be stable. Some other sensible models of traffic congestion conclude that steady-state hypercongested travel cannot be stable, and that queues develop to ration the demand in steady states. Thus, we interpret our result to imply that, when steady-state demand is so high that it cannot be rationed through congested travel, the trip price increase necessary to ration the demand may be generated either through the formation of steady-state queues or through hypercongested travel, and that which mechanism occurs depends on details of the traffic system.traffic congestion, cruising for parking, on-street parking, hypercongestion

Are Brokers' Commission Rates on Home Sales Too High? A Conceptual Analysis

Many people believe that prevailing commission rates for residential real estate brokers are "too high" but do not offer a formal model. This paper presents a general equilibrium model of the housing market in which real estate brokers serve as matching intermediaries. We use this model to construct an illustrative example which is "calibrated" using data representative of a typical housing market.real estate brokers, commission rate, matching technology, mismatch costs, idiosyncratic tastes

The Oil Supply and Demand Context for Security of Oil Supply to the EU from the GCC Countries

In examining the prospects for oil and gas supply from the GCC countries, we draw on the evidence that the supply of oil and gas from the region has been relatively reliable, notwithstanding the region’s perceived political instability. The approach taken here starts from this empirical observation; namely, that supply from the region will be available when called upon, as it has in the past. Oil and gas are of central importance to the economies of most GCC countries. Hydrocarbons provide the basis on which to gradually diversify GCC economies. Continued hydrocarbon-based economic growth provides the platform for economic diversification which can in turn underpin internal social and political cohesion and stability of these countries. Broadly speaking, Russia and the rest of the FSU will increasingly dominate the world’s oil supply outside OPEC and the Middle East, while China, India and North America will continue to determine oil demand. The political evolution of the FSU and the economic evolution, and macroeconomic policy making in particular, of the big Asian countries and the United States will be the determinants of the prospects for the call of GCC oil. Two scenarios of oil supply and demand; namely, Russia’s oil supply falters while China’s demand soars, versus Russia’s oil supply soars while China’s demand collapses, present two totally different outcomes for the economies of the GCC, and specifically affecting their ability to invest in their comparative advantages and diversify their economies. Paradoxically then, the internal prospects of the Middle East depend on external developments. Thus, this analysis looks outside for a basis to develop propositions for the inside with respect to, for example, ‘How much of the global oil and gas markets can GCC countries count on supplying?’Oil, Demand, Supply, Security, GCC

TENANCY RENT CONTROL AND CREDIBLE COMMITMENT IN MAINTENANCE

Under tenancy rent control, rents are regulated within a tenancy but not between tenancies. This paper investigates the effects of tenancy rent control on housing quality and maintenance. Since the discounted revenue received over a fixed-duration tenancy depends only on the starting rent, intuitively the landlord has an incentive to spruce up the unit between tenancies in order to “show†it well, but little incentive to maintain the unit well during the tenancy. The paper formalizes this intuition, and presents numerical examples illustrating the efficiency loss from this effect.tenancy rent control, rent control, maintenance, housing quality, credible commitment

Shopper City

The bulk of the literature on retail location looks at the topic from the perspective of either the retail firm or the individual shopper. Another branch of the literature examines the spatial distribution of retail activities within a city or region, drawing on either central place theory or the Lowry model, neither of which incorporates either markets or agglomeration economies. This paper looks at retail location from the perspective of a general equilibrium model of location and land use, with agglomeration economies in retailing. In particular, drawing on the Fujita-Ogawa (1982) model of non- monocentric cities, it develops a model of retail location, assuming that retail firms behave competitively, subject to spatial agglomeration economies. Locations are distinguished according to the effective variety of retail goods they offer. Shoppers are willing to pay more for goods at locations with greater effective variety, and in their choice of where to shop trade off retail price, product variety, and accessibility to home. Retail prices and land rents at different locations adjust to achieve spatial equilibrium.retail, agglomeration, variety, land use