Informal payments in developing countries' public health sector

In China and some other developing countries' public health sectors, many patients give their doctors a payment outside the official channel before a major treatment. This secret payment has been documented as informal payment in the literature. We argue that the fundamental cause for informal payments is that patients have more information about doctors' skill than the government does. The price, set by the government, for services offered by doctors cannot fully differentiate patients' various needs. As a consequence, informal payment rises as a tool for patients to compete for the skillful doctor. We study the welfare implications of different policies that can potentially be used to regulate such payments. Patient heterogeneity plays a central role in welfare implications of different policies: when patients' willingness-to-pay differs a lot, informal payments should be allowed and when it differs little, informal payments should be banned. Also we show that selling the right to choose physicians publicly always improves social welfare.informal payments; public health sector; welfare; efficiency

Dimension Estimates on Circular (s,t)(s,t)-Furstenberg Sets

In this paper, we show that circular $(s,t)$-Furstenberg sets in $\mathbb R^2$ have Hausdorff dimension at least $$\max\{\frac{t}3+s,(2t+1)s-t\} \text{ for all $0<s,t\le 1$}.$$ This result extends the previous dimension estimates on circular Kakeya sets by Wolff.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figure

On the Dimension of Kakeya Sets in the First Heisenberg Group

We define Kakeya sets in the Heisenberg group and show that the Heisenberg Hausdorff dimension of Kakeya sets in the first Heisenberg group is at least 3. This lower bound is sharp since, under our definition, the $\{xoy\}$-plane is a Kakeya set with Heisenberg Hausdorff dimension 3.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Beyond Higgs Couplings: Probing the Higgs with Angular Observables at Future e+e−e^+ e^- Colliders

We study angular observables in the $e^+e^-\to Z H\to \ell^+ \ell^-\,b\bar{b}$ channel at future circular $e^+ e^-$ colliders such as CEPC and FCC-ee. Taking into account the impact of realistic cut acceptance and detector effects, we forecast the precision of six angular asymmetries at CEPC (FCC-ee) with center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s} =$ 240 GeV and 5 (30) ${\rm ab}^{-1}$ integrated luminosity. We then determine the projected sensitivity to a range of operators relevant for the Higgs-strahlung process in the dimension-6 Higgs EFT. Our results show that angular observables provide complementary sensitivity to rate measurements when constraining various tensor structures arising from new physics. We further find that angular asymmetries provide a novel means of both probing BSM corrections to the $H Z \gamma$ coupling and constraining the "blind spot" in indirect limits on supersymmetric scalar top partners.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures. v2: references added, matches published version in JHE

Does A Customers Own Review Behavior Have An Impact On Its Purchase Behavior? Analyzing The Impact Of Review Platform On Group-Buying Platform-----A Study Based On Dianping.Com

With the development of Web 2.0, traditional customers have increasingly transferred to online purchase and created a large volume of User Generated Content (UGC) on the Internet. The changes brought traditional customer relationship management a great impact and forced companies to adapt, change and evolve. The previous researches have studied the influence of crowds’ feedback on customer’s purchase behavior, but little researches explore the impact of customer’s own review behavior on its purchase behavior. In this paper, our study seeks insights into analyzing the impact of customer’s own review behavior on its purchase behavior and discovering how this effect could be fully utilized to predict customer’s next stage churn. Based on data from Dianping.com, a famous comprehensive website which contains review and purchase platforms, we build the Logit regression model, considering customer’s own review and purchase behavior and finding the impact of user’s own review behavior on purchase behavior. Finally, we also use ten-fold cross-validation to prove the stability of our model

\u3ci\u3eCamelina sativa\u3c/i\u3e promoters of seed development genes resemble \u3ci\u3eArabidopsis thaliana\u3c/i\u3e orthologs

Camelina sativa, a relative of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, has gained commercial interest in recent years for its seed oil. Camelina oil is a desirable ingredient in animal feed and for cooking due to its rich concentration of omega-3 fatty acids. It is also emerging as an eco-friendly jet biofuel. However, since C. sativa has only recently entered the public eye, regulation of its seed oil synthesis remains largely unexplored. A. thaliana, on the other hand, has been extensively studied. Promoters directly upstream of genes harbor hundreds of cis-acting regulatory DNA elements. These motifs are often tissue-specific and associated with specific biological processes. Many motifs are also induced by hormones, which regulate development. Comparing promoter motifs of four prominent seed development genes, FUS3, LEC1, LEC2, and ABI3, in A. thaliana to their orthologs in C. sativa revealed significant similarity between the two. This suggests that regulation of seed development in C. sativa may be similar to that of A. thaliana. Notably, seed-specific motifs associated with storage proteins and carbon metabolism are most highly represented in both species. However, C. sativa seed-specific promoters were found to harbor a greater composition of motifs induced by abscisic acid, which has been implicated in seed maturation and dormancy. Moving forward, expression analysis of these genes in various C. sativa tissue types will further validate their function. Understanding specific regulatory factors modulating seed development will reveal molecular targets to improve camelina oil yield for industrial applications