Trial-based Economic Evaluations: Methodological and Applied Studies

Due to high and rising healthcare costs in combination with budget constraints and rising demands for healthcare, resources for healthcare are scarce. Therefore, healthcare decision-makers need to allocate these scarce resources as efficiently as possible with the aim to maximize health benefits within the available budget. To inform such decisions, they need information on the relative efficiency of alternative healthcare interventions, which can be provided by economic evaluations. A prerequisite for using results of so-called trial-based economic evaluations in day-to-day decision-making, is that they are valid and reliable. Using suboptimal methods can lead to biased conclusions and thus potentially to a waste of scarce resources in healthcare. Within this thesis, optimal statistical methods for trial-based economic evaluations are identified by summarizing recommendations in the health economic literature, evaluating their statistical performance in methodological studies and demonstrating their use in applied trial-based economic evaluations. In order to facilitate researchers in employing optimal statistical methods in trial-based economic evaluations, this thesis includes statistical software code

On a conjecture concerning some automatic continuity theorems

Let A and B be commutative locally convex algebras with unit. A is assumed to be a uniform topological algebra. Let h be an injective homomorphism from A to B. Under additional assumptions, we characterize the continuity of the homomorphism h^(-1) / Im(h) by the fact that the radical (or strong radical) of the closure of Im(h) has only zero as a common point with Im(h). This gives an answer to a conjecture concerning some automatic continuity theorems on uniform topological algebras.Comment: 5 page

A real seminorm with square property is submultiplicative

A seminorm with square property on a real associative algebra is submultiplicativeComment: 3 page

A remark on continuity of positive linear functionals on separable Banach *-algebras

Using a variation of the Murphy-Varopoulos Theorem, we give a new proof of the following R.J.Loy Theorem: Let A be a separable Banach*-algebra with center Z such that ZA has at most countable codimension, then every positive linear functional on A is continuous.Comment: 3 page

Positive linear functionals on BP*-algebras

Let A be a BP*-algebra with identity e, P_{1}(A) be the set of all positive linear functionals f on A such that f(e) = 1, and let M_{s}(A) be the set of all nonzero hermitian multiplicative linear functionals on A. We prove that M_{s}(A) is the set of extreme points of P_{1}(A). We also prove that, if M_{s}(A) is equicontinuous, then every positive linear functional on A is continuous. Finally, we give an example of a BP*-algebra whose topological dual is not included in the vector space generated by P_{1}(A), which gives a negative answer to a question posed by M. A. Hennings.Comment: This is an English translation of the original article written in Frenc

On saturated uniformly A-convex algebras

Following ideas of A.C.Cochran, we give a suitable definition of a saturated uniformly A-convex algebra. In the m-convex case, such algebra is a uniform topological one.Comment: 6 page