A cost-effectiveness analysis of revaccination and catch-up strategies with the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV23) in older adults in Japan

Objective: In Japan, the National Immunization Program (NIP) includes PPV23 as the primary vaccination for adults and catch-up cohorts. The Japanese Association for Infectious Diseases recommends revaccination for older adults who received primary vaccination ≥5 years earlier. The cost-effectiveness of adding revaccination and/or continuing catch-up vaccination in the NIP was evaluated from the public payer perspective in Japan.

Methods: The Markov model included five health states: no pneumococcal disease, invasive pneumococcal diseases (IPD), non-bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia (NBPP), post-meningitis sequelae, and death. Cohorts of adults aged 65–95 were followed until age 100 or death: 2014 cohort (aged 65–95, vaccinated: 2014); 2019 cohort (aged 65: 2019); and 2019 catch-up cohort (aged 70–100: 2019, unvaccinated: 2014). Strategies included: (1) vaccinate 2014 and 2019 cohorts; (2) vaccinate 2014 and 2019 cohorts and revaccinate both; (3) strategy 1 and vaccinate 2019 catch-up cohort; (4) strategy 2 and vaccinate 2019 catch-up cohort; and (5) strategy 4 and revaccinate 2019 catch-up cohort. Parameters were retrieved from global and Japanese sources, costs and QALYs discounted at 2%, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) estimated.

Results: Strategy 1 had the highest number of IPD and NBPP cases, and strategy 5 the lowest. Strategies 3–5 dominated strategy 1 and strategy 2 was cost-effective compared to strategy 1 (ICER: ¥1,622,153 per QALY gained). At a willingness-to-pay threshold of ¥5 million per QALY gained, strategy 2 was cost-effective and strategies 3–5 were cost-saving compared to strategy 1.

Conclusions: Strategies including revaccination, catch-up, or both were cost-effective or cost-saving in comparison to no revaccination and no catch-up. Results can inform future vaccine policies and programs in Japan.     

Effects of individual resources and team-member exchange on service quality

While workplace resources are generally viewed as positively affecting performance, some studies indicate that not all resources increase performance. This study addresses the controversial disparate effects of workplace resources on performance by exploring functionally classified workplace resources in self-managing service teams and their relative impacts on team service quality. Considering membership dynamics and consequences between members, a field experiment was conducted in a cafeteria, with data collected through a working diary for workplace resources and a customer survey to evaluate service quality. Results suggest that efficacy-resources in self-managing teams should be controlled with caution as they may adversely affect team service quality. Supporting the person–situation interactionism perspective, workplace resources interact dynamically with individual employees and with situations. Esteem-resources were found to increase team service quality, while team-member exchange not only improved team service quality but also moderated the impact of esteem-resources on team service quality.     

The impact of influencers' multi-SNS use on followers’ behavioral intentions: An integration of cue consistency theory and social identity theory

The considerable marketing potential brought by the rapid growth of social media has been extensively examined in the literature, particularly in terms of the impact of influencers' recommendations on their followers' decisions. However, little attention has been given to how the individual influencers' use of multiple social networking sites affects their followers' behavioral intentions. Hence, this academic gap warrants further exploration. Drawing on cue consistency theory, social identity theory, and stimulus-organism-response framework, this research proposes three research questions and constructs an integrated research model to explore how the influencers' cue consistency affects the social identification of their followers, subsequently influencing their behavioral intentions. A structural equation modeling technique is performed to analyze the data of 510 valid respondents. The findings show that influencers' consistent cues (i.e., information and image consistency) across social media have positive impacts on followers' cognitive and affective identification toward the influencers. Furthermore, the determinants for followers' purchase intention and electronic word-of-mouth intention are affirmed to serve as both cognitive and affective identification. Especially, the results indicate that the relationships between followers’ social identifications and behavioral intentions are moderated by the type of influencer (i.e., lifestyle vs. review). Accordingly, the results indicate how the use of multiple social networking sites by influencers impacts the behavioral intentions of their followers. The findings offer new insights into influencer marketing and provide important lessons for marketers.     

Plausible versus implausible tensile price claim: Selective accessibility model approach

Retailers frequently use exaggerated price discount advertisements with a tensile price claim (TPC; e.g., “Save up to 70%”) to attract consumers because they expect that once consumers enter a store, they will purchase low‐ or medium‐discounted products. Drawing on the selective accessibility model, this study investigated the way in which an implausibly high maximum level of savings stated in a TPC influences consumers’ expected price discount (EPD) and perceptions of actual price discounts across different types of TPCs (i.e., TPC stating a maximum level and TPC stating a range of savings). This study also investigated two situations in which consumers have previous knowledge of a product’s price discount versus when they have less or no knowledge of the discount. For both conditions, a single‐anchor TPC (i.e., “Save up to Y%”) that stated an implausible maximum level of savings led to a higher EPD and lower perceptions of the deal (i.e., perceived savings, price fairness, and perceived value) with respect to the actual price discount than did a TPC with a plausible maximum level of savings. In contrast, when the TPC stated two anchors (i.e., “Save X–Y%”) and consumers had knowledge of the price discount, their EPDs assimilated only toward the plausible anchor (X), and ignored the implausibly high maximum price discount (Y), resulting in a lower EPD and higher perceptions of the deal of the actual price discounts than a TPC that stated a plausibly high maximum level of savings. In contrast, when consumers had no knowledge of the price discount, their EPDs only adjusted toward the more plausible anchor (X), regardless of whether they perceived the maximum anchor as plausible or implausible. Thus, there was no difference in consumers’ perceptions of “Save X–Y%” between implausibly and plausibly high Y%.     

LT码新型度分布及其在电力线通信中的应用

Luby变换(Luby Transform,LT)码作为信道编码应用于电力线通信(Power Line Communication,PLC)，可实现电信号的可靠传输。度分布对LT码编译码性能的影响至关重要。为了得到更优的度分布，首先调整二进制指数分布(Binary Exponential Distribution,BED)中的度数比例，获得一种译码性能更优的改进的二进制指数分布(Improved BED,IBED)。然后，根据IBED在冗余度较小时译码成功率高，而冗余度增大后鲁棒孤子分布(Robust Soliton Distribution,RSD)的译码性能表现更佳的特点，通过求和归一化的方式将IBED与RSD两种度分布的优势进行有机结合，提出一种新型二进制鲁棒孤子分布(Binary RSD,BRSD)。仿真结果表明，与其他方法及传统的RSD相比，采用新度分布进行LT编码，可明显降低译码开销，并节约编译码耗时。将新型度分布应用于基于LT码的PLC系统中，能有效地抑制PLC信道中各种噪声对电信号的干扰，并提高通信效率。     

Investor Pessimism and the German Stock Market: Exploring Google Search Queries

We analyze the relationship of retail investor sentiment and the German stock market by introducing four distinct investor pessimism indices (IPIs) based on selected aggregate Google search queries. We assess the predictive power of weekly changes in sentiment captured by the IPIs for contemporaneous and future DAX returns, volatility and trading volume. The indices are found to have individually varying, but overall remarkably high explanatory power. An increase in retail investor pessimism is accompanied by decreasing contemporaneous market returns and an increase in volatility and trading volume. Future returns tend to increase while future volatility and trading volume decrease. The outcome is in line with the conjecture of correction effects. Overall, the results are well in line with modern investor sentiment theory.     

Are China’s regional agricultural productivities converging: How and why?

This article tests the hypotheses of convergence to a single level of total factor productivity (TFP), and a steady state of TFP growth rate in China’s agricultural sector. Based on multilateral TFP estimates we found that China’s agricultural sector has rebounded in recent years from a slower TFP growth in the 2005–2007 period. While convergence test results confirm a “catch-up” effect that provinces with lower TFP levels tend to grow faster than others, estimated rates of β convergence are conditional on how we capture the heterogeneity effect across regions. The rates of β convergence range from 0.016 to 0.039 under different model specifications. Estimates show that higher growth rates of educational attainment, R&D, and intermediate goods density (per unit of labor) can enhance TFP growth. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of an overall σ convergence, indicating that TFP levels are not converging except in the South region. It implies that to catch up with leading provinces, it would require extra efforts for those lagging behind by increasing their region-specific research investment, promoting rural educational attainment, and enhancing embodied technical change.     

正交实验设计方法在B to B电子商务体系质量改进中的应用

电子商务在全球快速地发展，中国企业面临着由B to C方式向B to B方式的转变，本文采用正交实验设计的方法来解决已建成电子商务体系的质量，以满足新的需求。     

跨国公司技术联盟:动因、效应及启示

跨国公司技术联盟是在经济全球化与一体化的国际背景下发展起来的，它被愈来愈多的人认为是一种知识联盟，是一种独立的组织形式。跨国公司进行技术联盟的动因在于：获取与企业核心技术相关的上下游技术、适应网络竞争的需要及促进研究与开发等。跨国公司技术联盟既给合作方带来一定的积极效应，同时也产生相当的负面影响。在当前，跨国公司技术联盟对我国企业进行技术联盟与合作有积极的借鉴意义。     

Identifying “best” applicants in recruiting using data envelopment analysis

Selecting the most promising candidates to fill an open position can be a difficult task when there are many applicants. Each applicant achieves certain performance levels in various categories and the resulting information can be overwhelming. We demonstrate how data envelopment analysis (DEA) can be used as a fair screening and sorting tool to support the candidate selection and decision-making process. Each applicant is viewed as an entity with multiple achievements. Without any a priori preference or information on the multiple achievements, DEA identifies the non-dominated solutions, which, in our case, represent the “best” candidates. A DEA-aided recruiting process was developed that (1) determines the performance levels of the “best” candidates relative to other applicants; (2) evaluates the degree of excellence of “best” candidates’ performance; (3) forms consistent tradeoff information on multiple recruiting criteria among search committee members, and, then, (4) clusters the applicants.