Moral hazard and the demand for health services: A matching estimator approach

We estimate the impact of extra health insurance coverage beyond a National Health System on the demand for several health services. Traditionally, the literature has tried to deal with the endogeneity of the private (extra) insurance decision by finding instrumental variables. Since a priori instrumental variables are hard to find we take a different approach. We focus on the most common health insurance plan in Portugal, ADSE, which is given to all civil servants and their dependents. We argue that this insurance is exogenous, i.e., not correlated with the beneficiaries’ health status. This identifying assumption allows us to estimate the impact of having ADSE coverage on the demand for three different health services using a matching estimator technique. The health services used are number of visits, number of blood and urine tests, and the probability of visiting a dentist. Results show large positive effects of ADSE coverage for number of visits and tests among the young (18–30 years old) but only the latter is statistically significantly different from zero. The effects represent 21.8% and 30% of the average number of visits and tests for the young. On the contrary, we find no evidence of moral hazard on the probability of visiting a dentist.Publicad

Moral hazard and the demand for health services: a matching estimator approach

We estimate the impact of health insurance coverage beyond National Health Insurance on the demand for several health services. Traditionally, the literature has tried to deal with the endogeneity of the private (extra) insurance decision by finding instrumental variables. Since a priori instrumental variables are hard to find we take a different approach. We focus on the most common health insurance plan in Portugal, ADSE, which is given to all civil servants and their dependants. We argue this insurance is exogenous i.e. not correlated with beneficiaries’ health status. This identifying assumption allows us to estimate the impact of having ADSE coverage on three different health services using a matching estimator technique. The health services used are: number of visits, number of blood and urine tests, and the probability of visiting a dentist. Results show large positive effects of ADSE for number of visits and tests among the young (18 to 30 years old) but only the latter is statistically significantly different from zero. The effects represent 21.8 and 30% of the average number of visits and tests for the young. On the contrary, we find no evidence of moral hazard on the probability of visiting a dentist

Literacy and primary school expansion in Portugal : 1940-62

In 1940, the Portuguese government approved a massive primary school construction plan that projected a 60% increase in the number of primary schools. Based on the collection of a new dataset, we describe the education in Portugal prior to the plan as well as the plan's strategy regarding the location of schools. We then estimate the causal impact of the increase in the number of schools between 1940 and the early 60s on enrolment and literacy, all at the county level

MORAL HAZARD AND THE DEMAND FOR HEALTH SERVICES: A MATCHING ESTIMATOR APPROACH

In this paper we estimate the impact of health insurance coverage beyond National Health Insurance on the demand for several health services. Traditionally, the literature has tried to deal with the endogeneity of the private (extra) insurance decision by finding instrumental variables. It is hard to think, however, of any variable that a priori would be a good instrument and, therefore, we take a different approach. We concentrate on the most common health insurance plan in the Portuguese Health Survey, (ADSE), which is given to all civil servants and their dependants. We argue that this insurance is exogenous for most people i.e. not correlated with their health status. Under this identifying assumption we estimate the impact of having ADSE coverage on three different health services using a matching estimator technique. The measures of demand for health services are number of visits, number of blood and urine tests, and the probability of visiting a dentist. Preliminary results show large effects of ADSE for number of visits and tests among the young (18 to 30 years old) but only for tests are these effects statistically significantly different from zero. The magnitude of the effects represent 21.8 and 30 percent of the average number of visits and tests for the young. On the contrary we find no evidence of moral hazard on the probability of visiting a dentist. Finally, we argue that there is evidence of a positive cumulative effect of ADSE over the years.

Moral hazard and the demand for health services: A matching estimator approach.

We estimate the impact of extra health insurance coverage beyond a National Health System on the demand for several health services. Traditionally, the literature has tried to deal with the endogeneity of the private (extra) insurance decision by finding instrumental variables. Since a priori instrumental variables are hard to find we take a different approach. We focus on the most common health insurance plan in Portugal, ADSE, which is given to all civil servants and their dependents. We argue that this insurance is exogenous, i.e., not correlated with the beneficiaries’ health status. This identifying assumption allows us to estimate the impact of having ADSE coverage on the demand for three different health services using a matching estimator technique. The health services used are number of visits, number of blood and urine tests, and the probability of visiting a dentist. Results show large positive effects of ADSE coverage for number of visits and tests among the young (18–30 years old) but only the latter is statistically significantly different from zero. The effects represent 21.8% and 30% of the average number of visits and tests for the young. On the contrary, we find no evidence of moral hazard on the probability of visiting a dentist.Demand for health services; Matching estimator; Moral hazard; Portuguese health system;

Macroecology of parental care in arthropods: higher mortality risk leads to higher benefits of offspring protection in tropical climates

The intensity of biotic interactions varies around the world, in such a way that mortality risk imposed by natural enemies is usually higher in the tropics. A major role of offspring attendance is protection against natural enemies, so the benefits of this behaviour should be higher in tropical regions. We tested this macroecological prediction with a meta-regression of field experiments in which the mortality of guarded and unguarded broods was compared in arthropods. Mortality of unguarded broods was higher, and parental care was more beneficial, in warmer, less seasonal environments. Moreover, in these same environments, additional lines of defence further reduced offspring mortality, implying that offspring attendance alone is not enough to deter natural enemies in tropical regions. These results help to explain the high frequency of parental care among tropical species and how biotic interactions influence the occurrence of parental care over large geographic scales. Finally, our findings reveal that additional lines of defences – an oftentimes neglected component of parental care – have an important effect on the covariation between the benefits of parental care and the climate-mediated mortality risk imposed by natural enemies

On a parallelised diffusion induced stochastic algorithm with pure random search steps for global optimisation

Funding Information: Funding: For the second author, this work was undertaken with partial financial support of RFBR (Grant n. 19-01-00451). For the first and third author, this work was partially supported through the project of the Centro de Matemática e Aplicações, UID/MAT/00297/2020, financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology). The APC was by supported the New University of Lisbon through the PhD program in Statistics and Risk Management of the FCT Nova Faculty.We propose a stochastic algorithm for global optimisation of a regular function, possibly unbounded, defined on a bounded set with regular boundary; a function that attains its extremum in the boundary of its domain of definition. The algorithm is determined by a diffusion process that is associated with the function by means of a strictly elliptic operator that ensures an adequate maximum principle. In order to preclude the algorithm to be trapped in a local extremum, we add a pure random search step to the algorithm. We show that an adequate procedure of parallelisation of the algorithm can increase the rate of convergence, thus superseding the main drawback of the addition of the pure random search step.publishersversionpublishe

Freiburgh Personality Inventory-Revised (FPI-R): Validation study with a Portuguese sample of university students

Neste estudo instrumental é apresentado o primeiro estudo de validação da versão portuguesa do Inventário de Personalidade de Freiburg-Revisto (FPI-R) junto de uma amostra de 1099 estudantes universitários. O FPI-R é composto por 138 itens de resposta dicotómica («verdadeiro» vs. «falso»), distribuídos por 12 escalas, 10 escalas standard (satisfação com a vida, orientação social, orientação para o desempenho, inibição, irritabilidade, agressividade, solicitação, queixas somáticas, preocupações com a saúde e sinceridade) e 2 escalas suplementares (extroversão e emocionalidade). Este inventário procura abarcar constructos relativamente amplos, que contêm sub-constructos delimitados, encontrando-se organizados em escalas unipolares (e.g. poucas queixas somáticas – muitas queixas somáticas) e bipolares (e.g. insatisfação com a vida – satisfação com a vida). Os principais resultados revelam que embora o instrumento apresente uma estrutura factorial semelhante ao original, foram encontradas fragilidades em termos de fidelidade das sub-escalas. Discutem-se os resultados obtidos, as limitações encontradas e são propostas possíveis soluções a desenvolver em estudos futuros

Deep Learning Framework for Controlling Work Sequence in Collaborative Human–Robot Assembly Processes

project UIDB/EMS/00667/2020 (UNIDEMI)The human–robot collaboration (HRC) solutions presented so far have the disadvantage that the interaction between humans and robots is based on the human’s state or on specific gestures purposely performed by the human, thus increasing the time required to perform a task and slowing down the pace of human labor, making such solutions uninteresting. In this study, a different concept of the HRC system is introduced, consisting of an HRC framework for managing assembly processes that are executed simultaneously or individually by humans and robots. This HRC framework based on deep learning models uses only one type of data, RGB camera data, to make predictions about the collaborative workspace and human action, and consequently manage the assembly process. To validate the HRC framework, an industrial HRC demonstrator was built to assemble a mechanical component. Four different HRC frameworks were created based on the convolutional neural network (CNN) model structures: Faster R-CNN ResNet-50 and ResNet-101, YOLOv2 and YOLOv3. The HRC framework with YOLOv3 structure showed the best performance, showing a mean average performance of 72.26% and allowed the HRC industrial demonstrator to successfully complete all assembly tasks within a desired time window. The HRC framework has proven effective for industrial assembly applicationspublishersversionpublishe

On the renormalization group flow of f(R)-gravity

We use the functional renormalization group equation for quantum gravity to construct a non-perturbative flow equation for modified gravity theories of the form $S = \int d^dx \sqrt{g} f(R)$. Based on this equation we show that certain gravitational interactions monomials can be consistently decoupled from the renormalization group (RG) flow and reproduce recent results on the asymptotic safety conjecture. The non-perturbative RG flow of non-local extensions of the Einstein-Hilbert truncation including $\int d^dx \sqrt{g} \ln(R)$ and $\int d^dx \sqrt{g} R^{-n}$ interactions is investigated in detail. The inclusion of such interactions resolves the infrared singularities plaguing the RG trajectories with positive cosmological constant in previous truncations. In particular, in some $R^{-n}$-truncations all physical trajectories emanate from a Non-Gaussian (UV) fixed point and are well-defined on all RG scales. The RG flow of the $\ln(R)$-truncation contains an infrared attractor which drives a positive cosmological constant to zero dynamically.Comment: 55 pages, 7 figures, typos corrected, references added, version to appear in Phys. Rev.