1,559 research outputs found
Legislative behaviour absent reâelection incentives: findings from a natural experiment in the Arkansas Senate
Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141545/1/rssa12293.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141545/2/rssa12293-sup-0001-SupInfo.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141545/3/rssa12293_am.pd
Reform of Unemployment Compensation in Germany : A Nonparametric Bounds Analysis Using Register Data
Economic theory suggests that an extension of the maximum length of entitlement for unemployment benefits increases the duration of unemployment. Empirical results for the reform of the unemployment compensation system in Germany during the 1980s are less clear. The analysis in this paper is motivated by the controversial empirical findings and by recent developments in econometrics for partial identification. We use extensive administrative data with the drawback that registered unemployment is not directly observed. For this reason we bound the reform effect on unemployment duration over different definitions of unemployment. By exploiting the richness of the data we use a nonparametric approach without imposing critical parametric model assumptions. We identify a systematic increase in unemployment duration in response to the reform in samples that amount to less than 15% of the unemployment spells for the treatment group
Equality of opportunity and educational achievement in Portugal
Portugal has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe, and low wages and unemployment are concentrated among low skill individuals. Education is an important determinant of inequality. However, there are large differences in the educational attainment of different individuals in the population, and the sources of these differences emerge early in the life-cycle when families play a central role in individual development. We estimate that most of the variance of school achievement at age 15 is explained by family characteristics. Observed school inputs explain very little of adolescent performance. Children from highly educated parents benefit of rich cultural environments in the home and become highly educated adults. Education policy needs to be innovative: (1) it needs to explicitly recognize the fundamental long run role of families on child development; (2) it needs to acknowledge the failure of traditional input based policies
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Frenemies: how do financial firms vote on their own kind?
The financial sector is unique in being largely self-governed: the majority of financial firmsâ shares are held by other financial institutions. This raises the possibility that monitoring of financial firms is especially undermined by conflicts of interest due to personal and professional links between these firms and their shareholders. To investigate this possibility, we scrutinize the aspect of the financial sectorâs self-governance that is directly observable: mutual fund companiesâ voting of their peersâ stock. We find that considerations specific to investee firmsâ membership in the same industry as their investors do indeed impact voting. This impact is in the direction of supporting the investeeâs management. We show that the own-industry effect reduces director efficacy and lowers firm value as a result. We extend our analysis to other financial companies and show that they also tend to vote more favorably when it comes to their peers. Our results suggest that peer support is a corrupting factor in the financial sectorâs governance
Validity of algorithms for identifying five chronic conditions in MedicineInsight, an Australian national general practice database.
Background
MedicineInsight is a database containing de-identified electronic health records (EHRs) from over 700 Australian general practices. It is one of the largest and most widely used primary health care EHR databases in Australia. This study examined the validity of algorithms that use information from various fields in the MedicineInsight data to indicate whether patients have specific health conditions. This study examined the validity of MedicineInsight algorithms for five common chronic conditions: anxiety, asthma, depression, osteoporosis and type 2 diabetes.
Methods
Patientsâ disease status according to MedicineInsight algorithms was benchmarked against the recording of diagnoses in the original EHRs. Fifty general practices contributing data to MedicineInsight met the eligibility criteria regarding patient load and location. Five were randomly selected and four agreed to participate. Within each practice, 250 patients agedââĽâ40 years were randomly selected from the MedicineInsight database. Trained staff reviewed the original EHR for as many of the selected patients as possible within the time available for data collection in each practice.
Results
A total of 475 patients were included in the analysis. All the evaluated MedicineInsight algorithms had excellent specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value (above 0.9) when benchmarked against the recording of diagnoses in the original EHR. The asthma and osteoporosis algorithms also had excellent sensitivity, while the algorithms for anxiety, depression and type 2 diabetes yielded sensitivities of 0.85, 0.89 and 0.89 respectively.
Conclusions
The MedicineInsight algorithms for asthma and osteoporosis have excellent accuracy and the algorithms for anxiety, depression and type 2 diabetes have good accuracy. This study provides support for the use of these algorithms when using MedicineInsight data for primary health care quality improvement activities, research and health system policymaking and planning
The linked survival prospects of siblings : evidence for the Indian states
This paper reports an analysis of micro-data for India that shows a high correlation in infant mortality
among siblings. In 13 of 15 states, we identify a causal effect of infant death on the risk of infant death of the
subsequent sibling (a scarring effect), after controlling for mother-level heterogeneity. The scarring effects
are large, the only other covariate with a similarly large effect being motherâs (secondary or higher)
education. The two states in which evidence of scarring is weak are Punjab, the richest, and Kerala, the
socially most progressive. The size of the scarring effect depends upon the sex of the previous child in three
states, in a direction consistent with son-preference. Evidence of scarring implies that policies targeted at
reducing infant mortality will have social multiplier effects by helping avoid the death of subsequent
siblings. Comparison of other covariate effects across the states offers some interesting new insights
Acceptance of Simulated Oral Rabies Vaccine Baits by Urban Raccoons
In summer 1986, a study was conducted to evaluate raccoon (Procyon lotor) acceptance of oral baits that could be used for rabies vaccination, One thousand wax-coated sponge bait cubes were filled with 5 mg of a seromarker (iophenoxic acid), placed in polyethylene bags, and hand-distributed in an 80 ha area within an urban National Park in Washington, D.C. (USA), After 3 wk, target and nontarget animals were trapped and blood samples collected to evaluate bait uptake. Thirty-three of 52 (63%) raccoons had elevated blood iodine levels indicating they had eaten at least one bait, 13 (25%) were negative, and six (12%) had marginal values, These results indicate that sponge baits hand-placed at a density of 12,4/ha can reach a significant proportion of an urban raccoon population. Implications for oral rabies vaccination of raccoons are discussed
On ordinal utility, cardinal utility, and random utility Â
Though the Random Utility Model (RUM) was conceivedÂ
entirely in terms of ordinal utility, the apparatus throughwhich it is widely practised exhibits properties ofÂ
cardinal utility.  The adoption of cardinal utility as aÂ
working operation of ordinal is perfectly valid, providedÂ
interpretations drawn from that operation remain faithfulÂ
to ordinal utility.  The paper considers whether the latterrequirement holds true for several measurements commonlyÂ
derived from RUM.  In particular it is found thatÂ
measurements of consumer surplus change may depart fromÂ
ordinal utility, and exploit the cardinality inherent inÂ
the practical apparatus.
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