Human capital, technological spillovers and development across OECD countries

In this paper, we study the relationship between the level of development of an economy and returns to different levels of education for the panel of OECD countries over the 1965-2004 period, in a club convergence framework. The connection between growth and human capital measures of primary, secondary and tertiary education in a multiple-club spatial convergence model with non linearities and spatial dependence is considered. By decomposing total schooling into its three constituent parts, we are able to evaluate their impact on regional growth without imposing homogeneous returns from each level of education. We contribute to the identification of two regimes for OECD countries, each characterized by different returns on physical and human capital accumulation and technological spillovers. We also find that the non-monotonic pattern of convergence is strongly influenced by human capital stocks and technology diffusion process is stronger in the club less close to the technological frontier.

Global compactness for a class of quasi-linear elliptic problems

We prove a global compactness result for Palais-Smale sequences associated with a class of quasi-linear elliptic equations on exterior domains.Comment: 19 page

Diagnosis of calcium pyrophosphate crystal deposition disease by ultrasonography: how many and which sites should be scanned?

ObjectiveTo develop the optimal US scanning protocol for the diagnosis of CPPD disease.MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, consecutive patients with a crystal-proven diagnosis of CPPD disease, and age-, sex-matched disease controls and with a negative synovial fluid analysis were prospectively enrolled in two Italian Institutions. Four rheumatologists, blinded to patients’ clinical details, performed US examinations using a standardised scanning protocol including 20 joints (shoulders, elbows, wrists, metacarpophalangeal joints from 2nd to 5th fingers, hips, knees, ankles). CPPD was identified as presence/absence, according to the OMERACT definitions. Reduced US scanning protocols were developed by selecting the most informative joints to be imaged by US using the LASSO technique. Patients were randomly divided into training and validation sets. Their diagnostic accuracy was tested comparing the area under the ROC curves.Results204 participants were enrolled: 102 with CPPD disease and 102 disease controls [age (mean±standard deviation) 71.3 ± 12.0 vs 71.1 ± 13.5 years, female: 62.8% vs 57.8%].The median number of joints with US evidence of CPPD was 5 (IQR: 4–7) and 0 (IQR: 0–1) in patients with CPPD disease and controls, respectively (p< 0 01).The detection of CPPD in ≥ 2 joints using a reduced scanning protocol (bilateral assessment of knees, wrists, and hips) showed a sensitivity of 96.7% (95%CI: 82.8–99.9) and a specificity of 100 (95%CI: 88.8–100.0) for the diagnosis of CPPD disease and had good feasibility [(mean±standard deviation) 12.5 ± 5.3 min].ConclusionBilateral US assessment of knees, wrists, and hips had excellent accuracy and good feasibility for the diagnosis of CPPD disease

OP0319 DIAGNOSTIC ACCURACY OF ULTRASOUND IN CALCIUM PYROPHOSPHATE DEPOSITION DISEASE: PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF THE OMERACT US IN CPPD SUB-GROUP

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