Estimation Methods for Duration Models

This paper is a selected overview of econometric methods for duration models and will appear in the forthcoming book The Economics of Search by the authors. The focus of the paper is on martingale methods for continuous time data and general methods for the analysis of discretetime data including multi-spell models and general life-history models.

When to Start a Fight and When to Fight Back: Liability Disputes in the Workers' Compensation System

Despite the adoption of no-fault Workers' Compensation legislation in most states, there is substantial litigation over the issue of employer liability for injury claims. We develop a sequential asymmetric information model of liability disputes and estimate the model using data on injury claims from the state of Minnesota. The key insight of our model is that when workers differ in their costs of pursuing a injury claim, employers have an incentive to deny liability and force those with higher costs to abandon their claim. Likewise, workers who expect a bigger return from pursuing their claim are more likely to fight back when liability is denied. Estimates of the structural model confirm that the decision rules of both parties depend on the expected costs and benefits of continuing the dispute. The model provides a parsimonious but relatively successful explanation for the distribution of liability disputes across different workers and types of injuries.

Signalling pathways and gene expression profiles in prostate cancer

In general, cancer, encompassing prostate cancer (PCa), is a disease that utilises signalling pathways to progress through the uncontrolled proliferation of cancerous cells. Although the mechanisms of how the cells evade intrinsic or extrinsic signals of death and keep on dividing is not completely understood, there is a plethora of evidence that point to certain signalling molecules that are crucial conveyors of the fine tuning that slightly differs in cancer in comparison to control states. The present chapter provides a detailed description of the key regulators of PCa cell life and unveils their closely communicating proteins that aid in the fine tuning of the cancerous state

Disabling and Fatal Occupational Claim Rates, Risks, and Costs in the Oregon Construction Industry 1990-1997

Occupational research has demonstrated construction to be among the most dangerous of all occupational industries. This study examines 20,680 accepted workers' compensation claims filed by Oregon construction workers over the period of 1990-1997. Injury rate estimates for occupations were calculated using Oregon employment data from the Current Population Survey. The estimated annual rate of lost-time claims was 3.5 per 100 workers annually (95% CI=2.8-4.2) with insulators having the highest rate and supervisors the lowest. The majority of claims, 3,940, were filed by laborers. Over 52% of all claims were filed by workers under 35 years of age, and over half the claimants had less than 1 year of tenure at the time of injury. There were 52 fatalities reported, representing a rate of 8.5 per 100,000 workers (95% CI = 8.1-8.9), of which 32.7% resulted from falls. The most frequently recorded nature of non-fatal injury was listed as a "sprain," and the most common body part injured was the back. The total costs of all claims was $208,537,120, averaging$10,084 per claim, and the average indemnity time per injury was 57.3 days, with female claimants having longer indemnity periods than males. The highest percentage of claims by weekday occurred on Mondays (21.5%), and subsequent analysis showed the highest odds ratio for time of accident, relative to the first hour on the job, occurred on the third hour of work (OR = 2.456, 95% CI = 2.452-2.460.Construction; Workers' Compensation; Occupational Safety; Fatalities; Injuries; Musculoskeletal Disorders; Surveillance

A Quantification and Risk Analysis of Occupational Burns: Oregon Workers' Compensation Claims 1990-1997

This study examined all accepted Oregon workers' compensation claims for occupational burn injuries over 1990-1997 (n = 3,158). The Current Population Survey (CPS) was used to derive employee population baselines for establishing rate estimates. It was estimated that the average occupational burn claim rate was 2.89 per 10,000 workers (95% C.I. = 2.76-3.02). The majority of claimants (71.7%) were males, the largest proportion (32.6%) were aged 25 years or under, and almost half (48.7%) had less than 1 year of job tenure. Costs averaged over $1.6 million annually. The average indemnity period was 16 days. Higher relative risks were found for evening workers (2.97, 95% C.I. = 2.96-2.98) and night workers (2.13, C.I. = 2.12-2.13) compared to day shift workers. Kitchen workers had the highest burn rate of all occupations with 62.5 per 10,000.burns, occupational burns, employee safety, Oregon, workers' compensation

Occupational Vehicular Accidents: A Workers' Compensation Analysis of Oregon Truck Drivers 1990-1997

This study used workers' compensation data from Oregon from 1990-1997 to examine injuries due to vehicular accidents by truck drivers, and calculate rate estimates using baseline data derived from the U.S. Bureau of Census' Current Population Survey. During this period, 1,168 valid injury claims due to vehicular accidents were filed representing an accident rate of 50.3% (95% C.I. = 45.1-55.5) per 10,000 truck drivers annually. There were 19 work-related vehicular accident fatalities recorded in the data over the 8-year period. Of all claimants, males constituted the majority (80.7%), most were 35 years of age or younger (51.4%) and had less than 1 year of job tenure (51.0%). Truck driver injury rates due to vehicular accidents were lowest during the 6:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M. period. The average amount of compensable lost workdays per injury claim was 57.8 days, of which male claimants lost an average of 60.5 days of work and females lost an average of 46.9 days of work. The amount of lost work days due to vehicular accident increased with the claimant's age. A total of $11,642,635 was paid in claims for vehicular accidents of truck drivers in Oregon over the period examined, averaging$9,966.01 per claim. Sprains were the most frequently cited injury experienced from vehicular accidents.vehicular accidents, driving, truck drivers, workers' compensation, public health, workplace safety

Beyond Concurrent Chemoradiation: The Emerging Role of PD-1/PD-L1 Inhibitors in Stage III Lung Cancer.

Concurrent chemoradiation (cCRT) with platinum-based chemotherapy is standard-of-care therapy for patients with stage III unresectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Although cCRT is potentially curative, 5-year overall survival has hovered around 20%, despite extensive efforts to improve outcomes with increasing doses of conformal radiation and intensification of systemic therapy with either induction or consolidation chemotherapy. PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitors have demonstrated unprecedented efficacy in patients with stage IV NSCLC. In addition, preclinical and early clinical evidence suggests that chemotherapy and radiation may work synergistically with anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy to promote antitumor immunity, which has led to the initiation of clinical trials testing these drugs in patients with stage III NSCLC. A preliminary report of a randomized phase III trial, the PACIFIC trial, demonstrated an impressive increase in median progression-free survival with consolidative durvalumab, a PD-L1 inhibitor, compared with observation after cCRT. Here, we discuss the clinical and translational implications of integrating PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors in the management of patients with unresectable stage III NSCLC

THE GROCERY STORES' WAGE DISTRIBUTION: A SEMI-PARAMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE OF RETAILING AND LABOR MARKET INSTITUTIONS

How and why has the wage distribution in U.S. grocery stores changed between 1984 and 1994? Unlike other industries in the time period, the important change in the wage distribution is not rising inequality, but the real wages fell across the entire wage distribution. Changes in labor market institutions explain more than half of the change in the wage distribution in grocery stores. Specifically, the decline in the real value of the minimum wage explains little of the decline in the mean real wage but much of the change in the shape of the distribution between 1984 and 1994, and 95 percent of the decline at the lowest 10th percentile. The decline in union coverage in grocery stores and the narrowing of the union-nonunion wage gap explains much of the decline above the 25th percentile. A third institutional change, the use of part-time employees, is not associated with the changes in grocery industry wage outcomes. One might think that the major changes in operation and technologies that occurred during this time period are at least contributing factors, but we find quite the contrary. If average store size, weekly operating hours, and the use of scanning technology had remained at their 1984 levels, the real wage decline would have been even greater than that actually seen, and for the entire wage distribution. Changes in grocery retailing prevented and even greater decline in real wages. Again unlike many other industries, skill-biased technological change does not appear important for grocery industry wage outcomes. The basis of our analysis is a statistical technique which combines nonparametric kernel density estimation with a parametric re-weighting, applied to Current Population Survey data supplemented with secondary data sources on the Grocery industry.Agribusiness, Labor and Human Capital,

Causality-based criteria for a negative refractive index must be used with care

Using the principle of causality as expressed in the Kramers-Kronig relations, we derive a generalized criterion for a negative refractive index that admits imperfect transparency at an observation frequency $\omega$. It also allows us to relate the global properties of the loss (i.e. its frequency response) to its local behaviour at $\omega$. However, causality-based criteria rely the on the group velocity, not the Poynting vector. Since the two are not equivalent, we provide some simple examples to compare the two criteria.Comment: slightly longer version of published PR