Probabilistic equilibria for evolutionarily stable strategies

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30(1): pp. 34-36.This comment suggest that an equilibrium framework may be retained, in an evolutionary model such as Gintis’ and with far more realistic results, if rationality is relaxed in a slightly different way than he proposes: decisions are assumed to be related to rewards probabilistically, rather than with certainty. This relaxed concept of rationality gives rise to probabilistic equilibria

Acceptable Contracts, Opportunism, and Rigid Hourly Wages

This paper presents a model of opportunism and contingent wage schedules in labor markets, which is, in a sense, intermediate between the "implicit" and explicit contract approaches. The "expected utility" condition is not a part of the contract, but is a condition for the acceptability of a contract form by employees. Contract forms are constrained by conditions that are enforcable ex post. Of the contract forms examined, the only one mutually acceptable is one with inflexible hourly wages.

Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate

BACKGROUND: Sharing research data provides benefit to the general scientific community, but the benefit is less obvious for the investigator who makes his or her data available. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We examined the citation history of 85 cancer microarray clinical trial publications with respect to the availability of their data. The 48% of trials with publicly available microarray data received 85% of the aggregate citations. Publicly available data was significantly (p = 0.006) associated with a 69% increase in citations, independently of journal impact factor, date of publication, and author country of origin using linear regression. SIGNIFICANCE: This correlation between publicly available data and increased literature impact may further motivate investigators to share their detailed research data

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

Game theory and public policy

This book provides a critical, selective review of concepts from game theory and their applications in public policy, and further suggests some modifications for some of the models (chiefly in cooperative game theory) to improve their applicability to economics and public policy

Markets, Decisions, And Organizations : intermediate microeconomic theory

New Jerseyxiv, 555 p.: illus.; 24 c