N ° 2014-4: "Reassessing Vulnerability to Macroeconomic Volatility: a nonstationary panel

The article examines the sensibility of economic growth to macroeconomic volatility, and the impact of financial development on volatility for a sample of 85 countries and OECD countries over two periods covering 1975 to 2006. In that purpose, we implented nonstationary panel techniques that account for cross-section dependence issue. We checked for the existence of a cointegrating relationship between variables. Finally we estimated such relationship using the Augmented mean group (AMG) method. We confirm the Ramey (1995) findings of the negative correlation between output growth and volatility for the full sample and the subsample of OECD countries, however our results are stronger for OECD countries. Moreover accounting for the interaction between volatility and financial development leads to stronger results. Indeed the interaction seems to impact positively on growth, but at the same times, it seems to magnify vulnerability to shocks

The P2P war: Someone is monitoring your activities

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Are there regional variations in the diagnosis surveillance, and control of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus?

OBJECTIVE: To assess the way healthcare facilities (HCFs) diagnose, survey, and control methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). DESIGN: Questionnaire. SETTING: Ninety HCFs in 30 countries. RESULTS: Evaluation of susceptibility testing methods showed that 8 laboratories (9%) used oxacillin disks with antimicrobial content different from the one recommended, 12 (13%) did not determine MRSA susceptibility to vancomycin, and 4 (4.5%) reported instances of isolation of vancomycin-resistant S. aureus but neither confirmed this resistance nor alerted public health authorities. A MRSA control program was reported by 55 (61.1%) of the HCFs. The following isolation precautions were routinely used: hospitalization in a private room (34.4%), wearing of gloves (62.2%), wearing of gowns (44.4%), hand washing by healthcare workers (53.3%), use of an isolation sign on the patient's door (43%), or all four. When the characteristics of HCFs with low incidence rates (< 0.4 per 1,000 patient-days) were compared with those of HCFs with high incidence rates (≥ 0.4 per 1,000 patient-days), having a higher mean number of beds per infection control nurse was the only factor significantly associated with HCFs with high incidence rates (834 vs 318 beds; P = .02). CONCLUSION: Our results emphasize the urgent need to strengthen the microbiologic and epidemiologic capacities of HCFs worldwide to prevent MRSA transmission and to prepare them to address the possible emergence of vancomycin-resistant S. aureus.link_to_subscribed_fulltex