The Social Reality of Depression: DTC Advertising of Antidepressants and Perceptions of the Prevalence and Lifetime Risk of Depression

This study is rooted in the research traditions of cultivation theory, construct accessibility, and availability heuristic. Based on a survey with 221 subjects, this study finds that familiarity with direct-to-consumer (DTC) print advertisements for antidepressant brands is associated with inflated perceptions of the prevalence and lifetime risk of depression. The study concludes that DTC advertising potentially has significant effects on perceptions of depression prevalence and risk. Interpersonal experiences with depression coupled with DTC advertising appear to significantly predict individuals\u27 perceived lifetime risk of depression. The study ultimately demonstrates that DTC advertising may play a role in constructing social reality of diseases and medicine. The findings strongly suggest that the social cognitive effects of DTC advertising are far-reaching, impacting pharmaceutical marketing strategy as well as presenting issues regarding public health and the business ethics of advertising drugs to consumers

Symptom Information in Direct-to-Consumer Antidepressant Advertising and College Students\u27 Perception of the Lifetime Risk Depression

While consumers’ health cognition and behavior are likely formed through multiple influences, the current study focused on the effects of exposure to specific content elements in direct-to-consumer advertising. The study revealed that consumers’ exposure to the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) diagnostic guideline has potential to reduce their perceived lifetime risk of depression and intention to consult a health professional to discuss the health issue. The study further revealed when an antidepressant ad mentioned a long list of symptoms, exposure to the diagnostic guideline reduced risk perception and consultation intention significantly, whereas in the presence of a short list of symptoms, the APA guideline had minimal impact

Your Life is Waiting! : Symbolic Meanings in Direct-to-Consumer Antidepressant Advertising

This semiotic analysis demonstrates how pharmaceutical companies strategically frame depression within the hotly contested terrain of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. The study tracks regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, relative to DTC advertising, including recent industry codes of conduct. Focusing on the antidepressant category, and its three major brands—Paxil (GlaxoSmithKline), Prozac (Eli Lilly), and Zoloft (Pfizer)—this comparative study analyzes 7 years of print advertising following deregulation in 1997. The authors glean themes from within the advertising texts, across the drug category and within individual-brand campaigns. The findings indicate that DTC advertising of antidepressants frames depression within the biochemical model of causation, privileges benefits over risks, fails to adequately educate consumers, and frames depression as a female condition. The authors close with commentary on the potential implications, with particular focus on the new codes of conduct, and offer suggestions for future research

On distinct finite covers of 3-manifolds

Every closed orientable surface S has the following property: any two connected covers of S of the same degree are homeomorphic (as spaces). In this, paper we give a complete classification of compact 3-manifolds with empty or toroidal boundary which have the above property. We also discuss related group-theoretic questions.Comment: 29 pages. V3: Implements suggestions from a referee report. This version has been accepted for publication by IUM

The Cost of Food Self-Sufficiency and Agricultural Protection in South Korea

As part of its food security policy, South Korea has been pursuing food self-sufficiency using high tariffs and high administrative prices in key agricultural and food markets. Using a dual approach to trade and trade restrictiveness indices, we analyze the impact of these market distortions on welfare and trade volume. Then, we compute optimum distortions, which minimize the welfare cost of observed self-sufficiency and production objectives. We rationalize these optimum distortions to what could be claimed as legitimate protection under a "food security" (FS) box in World Trade Organization negotiations. FS-box protection is sensitive to changes in the definition and the extent of the FS objectives. We show that FS via production targets and reliance on imports would be more palatable to consumers and trade partners, while preserving rents to the farm sector.agricultural distortions, food security, Korea, protection, targeting, WTO negotiations, Food Security and Poverty,

The Impact of Culture on the Demand for Non-Life Insurance

Regression techniques are applied to an unbalanced panel data that includes 68 countries observed over a ten-year period, to explore the factors that affect non-life insurance demand across nations. While previous literature has discovered several significant economic, demographic, and institutional variables, little attention has been devoted to cultural dimensions. We find that non-life insurance consumption is adversely impacted in countries where a large fraction of the population has Islamic beliefs. Also highly significant are three of the cultural scores developed by Hofstede in a celebrated study: Power Distance, Individualism, and Uncertainty Avoidance. An important finding is that culture impacts non-life insurance more in affluent countries, with an adjusted R-square coefficient increasing by 11.7%, than in developing countries where the R-square coefficient increase due to cultural impacts is only 1.2%. These results have implications for multinational insurers seeking to enter a new market. Ceteris Paribus, these insurers should target countries, and population segments within these countries, that exhibit low Power Distance, and high Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance scores

Global Imbalances: Time for Action

The world economy faces a grave danger from the large imbalances in current account positions. Policymakers should not wait until financial markets force global adjustment. They should initiate a credible, comprehensive adjustment program to reduce the risks of a crisis, which could produce a world recession and disruptions to the global trading system. Participants in a February 2007 workshop, held in Washington and sponsored by Brussels-based Bruegel, Seoul-based Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, and Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, outlined how an orderly reduction in global imbalances can be achieved. They presented estimates of the exchange rate implications of current account adjustment scenarios in which the US current account deficit narrowed to 3 percent of GDP in the medium term and the world growth rate was unchanged. Most of the adjustment would be borne by China, Japan, other Asian economies, a few high-surplus European economies not in the euro area, and the oil-exporting countries. The combined role of the smaller surplus economies in Asia and Europe (outside of the euro area) in the adjustment process will be more important than the role of either China or Japan. The adjustment would require a rebalancing of world demand with both higher saving in the United States and higher consumption in East Asia, as well as effective appreciations of the currencies of China, Japan, and other surplus countries in East Asia and Europe and bilateral appreciations against the dollar by other currencies. The problem is multilateral in nature and needs to be addressed in a multilateral context such as that potentially provided by the International Monetary Fund.