94 research outputs found
Extending Health Insurance: Effects of the National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana
There is considerable interest in exploring the potential of health insurance to increase the access to, and the affordability of, health care in Africa. We focus on the recent experience of Ghana, where a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) became law in 2003 and fully implemented from late 2005. Even though there is some evidence of large coverage levels, the effect of the NHIS on health care demand and out-of-pocket expenditures has still not been fully examined. This paper is an attempt to close this gap. Using nationally-representative household data from the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we find that the introduction of the NHIS has a positive and significant effect on the utilisation of health care services, although it does have only a weak effect on out-of-pocket expenditure.Health insurance; out-of-pocket expenses; maternity care demand
The Explanatory and Predictive Power of Non Two-Stage-Probability Theories of Decision Making Under Ambiguity
Representing ambiguity in the laboratory using a Bingo Blower (which is transparent and not manipulable) and asking the subjects a series of allocation questions (which are more efficient than pairwise choice questions), we obtain data from which we can estimate by maximum likelihood methods (with explicit assumptions about the errors made by the subjects) a significant subset of the empirically relevant models of behaviour under ambiguity, and compare their relative explanatory and predictive abilities. Our results suggest that not all recent models of behaviour represent a major improvement in explanatory and predictive power, particularly the more theoretically sophisticated ones.Alpha Model, Ambiguity, Bingo Blower, Choquet Expected Utility, Contraction Model, Rank Dependent Expected Utility, Subjective Expected Utility,Vector Expected Utility.
The Explanatory and Predictive Power of Non Two-Stage-Probability Theories of Decision Making Under Ambiguity
Representing ambiguity in the laboratory using a Bingo Blower (which is transparent and not manipulable) and asking the subjects a series of allocation questions (which are more efcient than pairwise choice questions), we obtain data from which we can estimate by maximum likelihood methods (with explicit assumptions about the errors made by the subjects) a signicant subset of the empirically relevant models of behaviour under ambiguity, and compare their relative explanatory and predictive abilities. Our results suggest that not all recent models of behaviour represent a major improvement in explanatory and predictive power, particularly the more theoretically sophisticated ones.Alpha Model, Ambiguity, Bingo Blower, Choquet Expected Utility, Contraction Model, Rank Dependent Expected Utility, Subjec tive Expected Utility,Vector Expected Utility.
Growth of non-linear structures and spherical collapse in the Galileon Ghost Condensate model
We present a detailed study of the collapse of a spherical matter overdensity
and the non-linear growth of large scale structures in the Galileon ghost
condensate (GGC) model. This model is an extension of the cubic covariant
Galileon (G3) which includes a field derivative of type
in the Lagrangian. We find that the cubic
term activates the modifications in the main physical quantities whose time
evolution is then strongly affected by the additional term. Indeed, the GGC
model shows largely mitigated effects in the linearised critical density
contrast, non-linear effective gravitational coupling and the virial
overdensity with respect to G3 but still preserves peculiar features with
respect to the standard CDM cosmological model, e.g. both the linear
critical density contrast and the virial overdensity are larger than those in
CDM. The results of the spherical collapse model are then used to
predict the evolution of the halo mass function, non-linear matter and lensing
power spectra. While at low masses the GGC model presents about 10% fewer
objects with respect to CDM, at higher masses for it predicts
10% ()-20% () more objects per comoving volume. Using a
phenomenological approach to include the screening effect in the matter power
spectrum, we show that the difference induced by the modifications of gravity
are strongly dependent on the screening scale and that differences can be up to
20% with respect to CDM. These differences translate to the lensing
power spectrum where qualitatively the largest differences with respect to the
standard cosmological model are for . Depending on the screening
scale, they can be up to 25% on larger angular scales and then decrease for
growing . These results are obtained for the best fit parameters from
linear cosmological data for each model.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables. Figures 8, 9 and 10 updated; new
figure 11 added. Extended discussion in Sections 6 and 7. Matches the PDU
journal versio
Evaluation of Lesothoâs Child Grants Programme (CGP) andâ Sustainable Poverty Reduction through Income, Nutrition and Access to Government Services (SPRINGS) project
Social protection has been recognized as a key strategy to address poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion in Lesotho. As a result, the Government, with support from UNICEF and the European Union, developed the Child Grants Programme (CGP), which provides unconditional cash transfers to poor and vulnerable households registered in the National Information System for Social Assistance (NISSA). The quantitative impact evaluation presented in this report seeks to document the welfare and economic impacts of CGP and SPRINGS on direct beneficiaries and assess whether combining the cash transfers with a package of rural development interventions can create positive synergies at both individual and household level, especially in relation to income generating activities and nutrition. This paper is being published in the context of a partnership between FAO, IFAD and the Universidad de los Andes (UNIANDES) and its Centro de Estudios en Desarrollo EconĂłmico (CEDE) based in BogotĂĄ, Colombia
Cash transfers and women's economic inclusion
This paper investigates whether an increase in exogenous income through the Child Grants model of the Social Cash Transfer programme in Zambia fosters economic inclusion among rural women. We conceptualize economic inclusion as a transformative process comprised of four pillars: productive capacity, financial inclusion, social power, and psychological assets. Using experimental data, we find strong evidence of direct impacts of the Child Grant on the productive capacity, financial inclusion, and psychological assets of rural women. In addition to these direct impacts, we implement a mediation analysis to explore the potential mediating role of psychological assets in affecting the other pillars of economic inclusion. Through this approach, we find indicative evidence of indirect and mutually reinforcing relationships between changes in psychological assets brought about through the Child Grant and improvements in the productive capacity and financial inclusion of beneficiaries. Such results suggest that cash transfers might be effective in promoting womenâs economic inclusion, both through the direct monetary effect and through the mediated effect of psychological assets
To Switch or Not to Switch Payment Scheme? Determinants and Effects in a Bargaining Game
The incentive scheme selected in a laboratory experiment might trigger
different type of behavior in participants. This paper is an attempt to screen
the strategies adopted by agents in a bargaining game when buyer and seller
have partly conflicting interests and are asymmetrically informed. We allow
participants to choose the incentive scheme through which they will be paid
at the end of the experiment controlling for past experience and individual
characteristics. It is well known that payment method is highly correlated to
the risk preferences shown by individuals, but little research is devoted to the
analysis of the behavior induced by Random Lottery Incentive scheme (RLI
for short) and Cumulative Scheme payment (CS for short) both on individual
and social results. This paper aims to fill the gap
Does Health Insurance Make You Fat?
The prevalence of obesity has been rising dramatically in the U.S., leading to poor health and rising health care expenditures. The role of policy in addressing rising rates of obesity, however, is controversial. Policy recommendations for interventions intended to influence body weight decisions often assume the obesity creates negative externalities for the non-obese. We build on earlier work demonstrating that this argument depends on two important assumptions: 1) that the obese do not pay for their higher medical expenditures through differential payments for health care and health insurance, and 2) that body weight decisions are responsive to the incidence of medical care costs associated with obesity. In this paper, we test the latter proposition â that body weight is influenced by insurance coverage - using two approaches. First, we use data from the Rand Health Insurance Experiment, in which people were randomly assigned to varying levels of health insurance, to examine the effect of generosity of insurance coverage on body weight along the intensive coverage margin. Second, we use instrumental variables methods to estimate the effect of type of insurance coverage (private, public and none) on body weight along the extensive margin. We explicitly address the discrete nature of the endogenous indicator of health insurance coverage by estimating a nonlinear instrumental variables model. We find weak evidence that more generous insurance coverage increases body mass index. We find stronger evidence that being insured increases body mass index and obesity.
Using constraint satisfaction to aid group formation in CSCL
In computer-supported collaborative learning contexts, group formation is a key aspect, since different characteristics of students might influence the group performance. In this article, we present an intelligent assistant that models group formation as a weighted constraint satisfaction problem (WCSP). The assistant takes into account three studentsÂŽ features, namely: psychological styles, team roles and social networks. The proposed WCSP approach is able to combine constraints and preferences both for individuals and groups. The main goal of the assistant is to aid teachers to form learning groups considering factors such as team role balance and distribution of psychological styles. We also describe a pilot study to evaluate our proposal in different scenarios.Fil: Diaz Pace, Jorge Andres. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Tandil. Instituto Superior de Ingenieria del Software; ArgentinaFil: Balmaceda, JosĂ© MarĂa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Tandil. Instituto Superior de Ingenieria del Software; ArgentinaFil: Schiaffino, Silvia Noemi. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Tandil. Instituto Superior de Ingenieria del Software; Argentin
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