Flat-of-the-Curve Medicine – A New Perspective on the Production of Health

Health economists have studied the determinants of the expected value of health status as a function of medical and nonmedical inputs, often finding small marginal effects of the former. This paper argues that both types of input have an additional benefit, viz. a reduced variability of health status. Using OECD health data for 24 countries between 1960 and 2004, medical and nonmedical inputs are found to reduce the variability of life expectancy. While the evidence supports the "flat-of-the-curve medicine" hypothesis with respect to the expected value of life expectancy and its variability, healthcare expenditure is comparatively effective in reducing variability.production of health, control over health status, Gini coefficient

Music similarity analysis using the big data framework spark

A parameterizable recommender system based on the Big Data processing framework Spark is introduced, which takes multiple tonal properties of music into account and is capable of recommending music based on a user's personal preferences. The implemented system is fully scalable; more songs can be added to the dataset, the cluster size can be increased, and the possibility to add different kinds of audio features and more state-of-the-art similarity measurements is given. This thesis also deals with the extraction of the required audio features in parallel on a computer cluster. The extracted features are then processed by the Spark based recommender system, and song recommendations for a dataset consisting of approximately 114000 songs are retrieved in less than 12 seconds on a 16 node Spark cluster, combining eight different audio feature types and similarity measurements.Ein parametrisierbares Empfehlungssystem, basierend auf dem Big Data Framework Spark, wird präsentiert. Dieses berücksichtigt verschiedene klangliche Eigenschaften der Musik und erstellt Musikempfehlungen basierend auf den persönlichen Vorlieben eines Nutzers. Das implementierte Empfehlungssystem ist voll skalierbar. Mehr Lieder können dem Datensatz hinzugefügt werden, mehr Rechner können in das Computercluster eingebunden werden und die Möglichkeit andere Audiofeatures und aktuellere Ähnlichkeitsmaße hizuzufügen und zu verwenden, ist ebenfalls gegeben. Des Weiteren behandelt die Arbeit die parallele Berechnung der benötigten Audiofeatures auf einem Computercluster. Die Features werden von dem auf Spark basierenden Empfehlungssystem verarbeitet und Empfehlungen für einen Datensatz bestehend aus ca. 114000 Liedern können unter Berücksichtigung von acht verschiedenen Arten von Audiofeatures und Abstandsmaßen innerhalb von zwölf Sekunden auf einem Computercluster mit 16 Knoten berechnet werden

Impact of Specialization on Health Outcomes – Evidence from U.S. Cancer Data

There have been many studies of the volume-outcome relationship. In all of these, the unit of analysis is the hospital or physician. However, this level of analysis is mostly limited to the use of in-hospital mortality rates and is particularly sensitive to selective referral. Moreover, the literature on agglomeration economies highlights the importance of information spillovers within regions (Glaeser, 2010). To overcome these problems, our study is the first that examines the volume-outcome relationship on a regional (county or cancer registry) level. Using data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results program we find that regions with relatively more of the same cancer type exhibit relatively better health outcomes.Specialization, experience, cancer, survival

Fine Tuning of Health Insurance Regulation: Unhealthy Consequences for an Individual Insurer

This paper sheds light on some unexpected consequences of health insurance regulation that may pose a big challenge to insurers’ risk management. Because mandated uniform contributions to health insurance trigger risk selection efforts risk adjustment (RA) schemes become necessary. A good deal of research into the optimal RA formula has been performed (Ellis and Van de Ven [2000]). A recent proposal has been to add ”Hospitalization exceeding three days during the previous year” as an indicator of high risk (Beck et al. [2006]). Applying the new formula to an individual Swiss health insurer, its payments into the RA scheme are postdicted to explode, reaching up to 13 percent of premium income. Its mistake had been to successfully implement Managed Care, resulting in low rates of hospitalization. The predicted risk management response is to extend hospital stays beyond three days, contrary to stated policy objectives also of the United States.Health insurance, regulation, risk adjustment, risk management

Power Structure and the Evolution of Social Networks in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

This paper examines the evolution of a social network in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) by modeling the players’ interaction network as a continuous-time markov chain. Results indicate that social hierarchy emerges out of an anarchical situation in which social actors participate voluntarily, have equal access to virtual resources from the beginning, cannot show their physical superiority and cannot show physical gestures during their communication / interaction. Our study findings hence contribute to the current interdisciplinary debate whether hierarchy is an emergent phenomenon that can be attributed to variations in individual qualities or whether hierarchy is an artificial outcome that is enacted on societies by parties that are privileged from birth

The Coevolution of Network Structure and Perceived Ease of Use

Perceived Ease of Use (PEoU) is one of the most central constructs in IS research. However, it has been examined only from an individual perspective. This article conceptualizes PEoU as a network construct. Results indicate three things. Firstly, the higher a person\u27s PEoU, the more likely she or he is sought for advice. Secondly, there is a greater likelihood that a person seeks out another person for advice if the other person also seeks out the first person for advice. Thirdly, a person\u27s PEoU will become similar to that of other persons\u27 she or he seeks out for advice

The Evolution of Interaction Networks in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

This article examines the co-evolution of players’ individual performance and their interaction network in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). The objective is to test whether the application of theories from the real world is valid in virtual worlds. While the results indicate that the structural effects and demographic variables active in the real world influence the evolution of the players’ interaction network in MMOGs (e.g. transitivity, reciprocity, and homophily), they do not provide evidence that players’ structural embeddedness in the interaction network influences player performance. These findings have important implications for researchers and practitioners who need to understand social processes in MMOGs (e.g., when launching marketing campaigns in MMOGs) or who study MMOGs and then use their findings to draw conclusions about the real world (e.g., when analyzing the relationship between employee performance and network structure)

Out-Group-Tie Centralization and the Performance of Work Groups

Organizations increasingly rely on group-based organizational structures to manage uncertain environments. However, at the group level there is still a limited understanding of how boundary-spanning activities should be managed to increase group performance. In this paper, we propose out-group-tie centralization as a concept that refers to the variation in the group members\u27 network ties to other social actors who are not members of the group itself. When the out-group-tie centralization is low, no group member enjoys substantially more ties to other social actors outside the group than does any other group member. A panel analysis with 120 work groups from a medium-size German bank over a 12-month period reveals a reversed u-shaped relationship between out-group-tie centralization and group performance. However, the results indicate no association between the density of a work group communication network and that group\u27s performanc

Social Capital in the ICT Sector – A Network Perspective on Executive Turnover and Startup Performance

Recently, The Wall Street Journal proclaimed the “War for Internet Talent” among companies in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. At the same time, talented employees become entrepreneurial and establish their own startups. We aim to provide evidence that startup performance is not based exclusively on access to talent, in the sense of individual human capital, but is also determined by a social capital aspect resulting from their executives’ turnover history. We apply social network analysis (SNA) combined with logistical regression on a large dataset of companies and executives in the ICT sector. Our study contributes to turnover and entrepreneurship in information systems research, as well as to social capital and multilevel systems research. Furthermore, we shed a light on turnover patterns in the ICT sector, contribute to a better understanding of success factors for startups, and provide a practical measure to help identify and differentiate key employees

Information Systems for “Wicked Problems” - Research at the Intersection of Social Media and Collective Intelligence

The objective of this commentary is to propose fruitful research directions built upon the reciprocal interplay of social media and collective intelligence. We focus on “wicked problems” – a class of problems that Introne et al. (Künstl. Intell. 27:45–52, 2013) call “prob- lems for which no single computational formulation of the problem is suffi- cient, for which different stakeholders do not even agree on what the prob- lem really is, and for which there are no right or wrong answers, only answers that are better or worse from differ- ent points of view”. We argue that in- formation systems research in partic- ular can aid in designing appropriate systems due to benefits derived from the combined perspectives of both so- cial media and collective intelligence. We document the relevance and time- liness of social media and collective in- telligence for business and information systems engineering, pinpoint needed functionality of information systems for wicked problems, describe related re- search challenges, highlight prospec- tive suitable methods to tackle those challenges, and review examples of initial results