How impact fees and local planning regulation can influence deployment of telecoms infrastructure

This paper examines how local government planning regulations and charges affect the deployment of telecommunications infrastructure. We explore the economic rationale for local government regulation of such infrastructure, which we suggest should be based on managing negative externalities. Using data from Ireland, we find that the observed geographical pattern of impact fees is inconsistent with the economic rationale for them. A simple econometric model of the number of telecoms masts in each country also suggests that the level of impact fees is negatively associated with mast deployment. This paper also examines other regulatory factors that affect the provision of new infrastructure. We find wide regional variation in these regulations but are unableto quantify their impact on infrastructure provision. Such regulatory complexity places extra compliance burdens on private operators, which may in turn distort the level and regional pattern of network investment. We suggest further regional harmonisation of development policy towards telecoms infrastructure to avoid exacerbating regional disparities in rollout of services. --Land use regulation,telecommunications infrastructure investment,impact fees

The Ineffectiveness of Retrospective Drug Utilization Review

As policymakers debate adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, they must also seek ways to promote cost-effective use of drugs and minimize inappropriate prescribing. For more than a decade, all state Medicaid agencies and most private insurers have used computerized drug utilization review (DUR) programs to prevent or rectify potential prescribing errors. DUR can be retrospective, in which claims data are reviewed to identify patterns of drug use, or prospective, in which prescriptions are reviewed before a drug is dispensed. This Issue Brief summarizes a landmark study that suggests that retrospective DUR has had no measurable effects on outpatient drug use or clinical outcomes in the Medicaid program

How impact fees and local planning regulation can influence deployment of telecoms infrastructure. ESRI WP401, August 2011

This paper examines how local government planning regulations and charges affect the deployment of telecommunications infrastructure. We explore the economic rationale for local government regulation of such infrastructure, which we suggest should be based on managing negative externalities. Using data from Ireland, we find that the observed geographical pattern of impact fees is inconsistent with the economic rationale for them. A simple econometric model of the number of telecoms masts in each county also suggests that the level of impact fees is negatively associated with mast deployment. This paper also examines other regulatory factors that affect the provision of new infrastructure. We find wide regional variation in these regulations but are unable to quantify their impact on infrastructure provision. Such regulatory complexity places extra compliance burdens on private operators, which may in turn distort the level and regional pattern of network investment. We suggest further regional harmonisation of development policy towards telecoms infrastructure to avoid exacerbating regional disparities in rollout of services

The impact of information on animal product consumption

Consumers' dietary preferences for animal products such as meat, dairy, and eggs carry a profound influence on environmental sustainability, public health, and animal rights. While shifting preferences towards plant products is important to many organizations working across those three fields, there are not many peer-reviewed studies available concerning the most effective methods of doing so. This paper describes an impact evaluation of one campaign method for dietary change – distributing factual leaflets modeled after those used by animal advocacy organizations worldwide – in a campus setting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The results could help answer a significant question: in a Midwestern United States school, what is the impact of distributing leaflets that describe the benefits of a plant-based diet on the recipients' consumption of animal products? Further, the study reflects on a more general question in consumer economics: can a single information treatment significantly impact the composition of food demand? I find there was insufficient evidence that the leaflets impacted animal product consumption; however, the results might not direct organizations away from leafleting as an effective technique for advocacy. Instead I recommend that researchers conduct additional independent studies with improved research methods to be published in academic journals, especially given that it appears a larger sample size is required to detect an impact due to the high rate of sample attrition in email surveys

Thromboembolic and neurologic sequelae of discontinuation of an antihyperlipidemic drug during ongoing warfarin therapy

Warfarin and antihyperlipidemics are commonly co-prescribed. Some antihyperlipidemics may inhibit warfarin deactivation via the hepatic cytochrome P450 system. Therefore, antihyperlipidemic discontinuation has been hypothesized to result in underanticoagulation, as warfarin metabolism is no longer inhibited. We quantified the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and ischemic stroke (IS) due to statin and fibrate discontinuation in warfarin users, in which warfarin was initially dose-titrated during ongoing antihyperlipidemic therapy. Using 1999-2011 United States Medicaid claims among 69 million beneficiaries, we conducted a set of bidirectional self-controlled case series studies-one for each antihyperlipidemic. Outcomes were hospital admissions for VTE/IS. The risk segment was a maximum of 90 days immediately following antihyperlipidemic discontinuation, the exposure of interest. Time-varying confounders were included in conditional Poisson models. We identified 629 study eligible-persons with at least one outcome. Adjusted incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for all antihyperlipidemics studied were consistent with the null, and ranged from 0.21 (0.02, 2.82) for rosuvastatin to 2.16 (0.06, 75.0) for gemfibrozil. Despite using an underlying dataset of millions of persons, we had little precision in estimating IRRs for VTE/IS among warfarin-treated persons discontinuing individual antihyperlipidemics. Further research should investigate whether discontinuation of gemfibrozil in warfarin users results in serious underanticoagulation

Robust Causal Inference of Drug-drug Interactions

There is growing interest in developing causal inference methods for multi-valued treatments with a focus on pairwise average treatment effects. Here we focus on a clinically important, yet less-studied estimand: causal drug-drug interactions (DDIs), which quantifies the degree to which the causal effect of drug A is altered by the presence versus the absence of drug B. Confounding adjustment when studying the effects of DDIs can be accomplished via inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW), a standard approach originally developed for binary treatments and later generalized to multi-valued treatments. However, this approach generally results in biased results when the propensity score model is misspecified. Motivated by the need for more robust techniques, we propose two empirical likelihood-based weighting approaches that allow for specifying a set of propensity score models, with the second method balancing user-specified covariates directly, by incorporating additional, nonparametric constraints. The resulting estimators from both methods are consistent when the postulated set of propensity score models contains a correct one; this property has been termed multiple robustness. We then evaluate their finite sample performance through simulation. The results demonstrate that the proposed estimators outperform the standard IPTW method in terms of both robustness and efficiency. Finally, we apply the proposed methods to evaluate the impact of renin-angiotensin system inhibitors (RAS-I) on the comparative nephrotoxicity of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) and opioids, using data derived from electronic medical records from a large multi-hospital health system.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figures and 2 table

Motivations and Preferred Activities of Tourists to Rural Destinations: A Comparative Analysis of Rural and Urban Residents

The primary purposes of this study were to identify the perceived importance of motivations and activities for travel to a rural destination, and to determine whether these variables were influenced by the tourist’s place of residence. The study is based on an on-line survey completed by 1,048 individuals. A series of independent t-tests were used to determine whether there were differences in the motivations and preferred activities of rural residents versus urban residents, while canonical correlation analysis revealed relationships between the two sets of variables (motivations and activities). Findings suggest that rural destinations appeal to both rural and urban residents. In some instances, differences with regards to the motivations and activity preferences of these two groups were identified. Correlations between the motivations and activity preferences of respondents also suggest that rural tourists are interested in activities that are aligned with their initial motivations for deciding to travel to a rural area