Policy Brief No. 10 - The Town with No Poverty: Health Effects of Guaranteed Annual Income

Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) has been advocated and opposed in both the United States and Canada as a means to fight poverty since the 1960s, but how does GAI influence specific health and social outcomes? In examining data from a town involved in a Canadian GAI field experiment, we primarily found that a relatively modest GAI can improve population health at the community level. Considering the increasing burden of health care costs in Canada, it is possible that implementing GAI could amount to considerable savings

Paying People to Be Healthy

User Financial Incentives (UFIs) have emerged as a powerful tool for health promotion. Strong evidence suggests that large enough incentives paid to individuals conditional on behaviour they can control encourages more of the desired behaviour. However, such interventions can have unintended consequences for non-targeted behaviours. Implementation difficulties that result in individuals not understanding the nature of the incentive, unintended opportunities to “game” the system and inefficient roll-outs, can dampen results. Moreover, the legitimacy of paternalistic interventions by health planners requires careful consideration if we accept that the families involved will almost certainly be better judges of their own best interests than outsiders

Predicting the Electron Requirement for Carbon Fixation in Seas and Oceans

Marine phytoplankton account for about 50% of all global net primary productivity (NPP). Active fluorometry, mainly Fast Repetition Rate fluorometry (FRRf), has been advocated as means of providing high resolution estimates of NPP. However, not measuring CO2-fixation directly, FRRf instead provides photosynthetic quantum efficiency estimates from which electron transfer rates (ETR) and ultimately CO2-fixation rates can be derived. Consequently, conversions of ETRs to CO2-fixation requires knowledge of the electron requirement for carbon fixation (Φe,C, ETR/CO2 uptake rate) and its dependence on environmental gradients. Such knowledge is critical for large scale implementation of active fluorescence to better characterise CO2-uptake. Here we examine the variability of experimentally determined Φe,C values in relation to key environmental variables with the aim of developing new working algorithms for the calculation of Φe,C from environmental variables. Coincident FRRf and 14C-uptake and environmental data from 14 studies covering 12 marine regions were analysed via a meta-analytical, non-parametric, multivariate approach. Combining all studies, Φe,C varied between 1.15 and 54.2 mol e- (mol C)-1 with a mean of 10.9±6.91 mol e- mol C)-1. Although variability of Φe,C was related to environmental gradients at global scales, region-specific analyses provided far improved predictive capability. However, use of regional Φe,C algorithms requires objective means of defining regions of interest, which remains challenging. Considering individual studies and specific small-scale regions, temperature, nutrient and light availability were correlated with Φe,C albeit to varying degrees and depending on the study/region and the composition of the extant phytoplankton community. At the level of large biogeographic regions and distinct water masses, Φe,C was related to nutrient availability, chlorophyll, as well as temperature and/or salinity in most regions, while light availability was also important in Baltic Sea and shelf waters. The novel Φe,C algorithms provide a major step forward for widespread fluorometry-based NPP estimates and highlight the need for further studying the natural variability of Φe,C to verify and develop algorithms with improved accuracy. © 2013 Lawrenz et al

Paying People to Be Healthy

User Financial Incentives (UFIs) have emerged as a powerful tool for health promotion. Strong evidence suggests that large enough incentives paid to individuals, conditional on behaviour they can control, encourages more of the desired behaviour. However, such interventions can have unintended consequences for non-targeted behaviours. Implementation difficulties that result in individuals not understanding the nature of the incentive, unintended opportunities to “game” the system and inefficient roll-outs, can dampen results. Moreover, the legitimacy of paternalistic interventions by health planners requires careful consideration if we accept that the families involved will almost certainly be better judges of their own best interests than outsiders. Keywords Incentives; Behavi

American Women and the Economics Profession in the Twentieth century

The history of American women economists in the economics profession during the 20th century can be divided into four phases. Before 1918, women represented a distinct minority within the profession but published monographs and professional journal articles, received PhDs in economics from leading graduate schools, appeared at professional gatherings and built careers as economists. In the interwar years, women became less visible in the economics profession as women interested in social issues began to drift to related fields such as social work and home economics. Academic employment of women declined, as did the proportion of economics doctorates awarded to women, but women working on economic problems increasingly found employment in state and federal government agencies. Between 1950 and 1970, women began to return to economics and once again found academic employment alongside male colleagues although they fought against social pressures for professional recognition and career awards. Finally, by the 1970s, women began to enter in profession in ever larger numbers, building careers in the field as social barriers to career advancement fell away

American Women and the Economics Profession in the Twentieth century

The history of American women economists in the economics profession during the 20th century can be divided into four phases. Before 1918, women represented a distinct minority within the profession but published monographs and professional journal articles, received PhDs in economics from leading graduate schools, appeared at professional gatherings and built careers as economists. In the interwar years, women became less visible in the economics profession as women interested in social issues began to drift to related fields such as social work and home economics. Academic employment of women declined, as did the proportion of economics doctorates awarded to women, but women working on economic problems increasingly found employment in state and federal government agencies. Between 1950 and 1970, women began to return to economics and once again found academic employment alongside male colleagues although they fought against social pressures for professional recognition and career awards. Finally, by the 1970s, women began to enter in profession in ever larger numbers, building careers in the field as social barriers to career advancement fell away.L’histoire des femmes économistes américaines dans la profession économique, au cours du XXe siècle, peut être divisée en quatre phases distinctes. Avant 1918, les femmes représentent une minorité à part au sein de la profession mais publient des monographies et des articles dans les journaux professionnels, obtiennent des doctorats en économie dans les meilleures universités, participent aux réunions et rencontres professionnelles et font des carrières d’économistes. Durant l’entre-deux-guerres, les femmes deviennent moins visibles dans la profession, car celles qui s’intéressent aux problèmes sociaux commencent à se diriger vers des sujets connexes comme le travail social et l’économie du foyer familial (home economics). L’emploi des femmes dans le milieu académique commence à décliner de la même manière que décline le nombre de doctorats délivrés à des femmes

The Ricardo Debates: Hollander and Garegnani on Natural Price and Output Determination.

Samuel Hollander and Pierangelo Garegnani have debated the appropriate interpretation of David Ricardo since 1973, without substantive agreement. On at least one issue--the interdependence of prices and output levels--the debate has stalled because textual exegesis cannot solve a logical problem. This paper demonstrates that such interdependence exists unless one makes one of two restrictive (and un-Ricardian) assumptions: either output levels must be insensitive to wage rate changes, or all industries must be subject to constant costs.