Gender differences in selection into self-competition

While previous studies demonstrated that, in many settings, women tend to be less willing than men to engage in interpersonal competition, this study focuses on selection into self-competition. Competing against own past performances can be an integral part of life, including job and sports. Using data obtained from a lab-in-the-field experiment, we find empirical evidence that women are, on average, more reluctant than men to compete against their own past performance. Our results suggest that this difference can be mainly explained by gender differences in risk preferences.     

Automatic smoothing parameter selection: A survey

This is a survey of recent developments in smoothing parameter selection for curve estimation. The first goal of this paper is to provide an introduction to the methods available, with discussion at both a practical and also a nontechnical level, including comparison of methods. The second goal is to provide access to the literature, especially on smoothing parameter selection, but also on curve estimation in general. The two main settings considered here are nonparametric regression and probability density estimation, although the points made apply to other settings as well. These points also apply to many different estimators, although the focus is on kernel estimators, because they are the most easily understood and motivated, and have been at the heart of the development in the field.     

团队模式下人力资源选拔理论与方法的改进——基于"个体-团队"匹配视角的分析

随着越来越多的企业在业务运作中采用了团队这一组织模式,如何有效的进行团队人力资源选拔与配置成为当前研究与实践共同关注的焦点。个体与团队的匹配是团队高效运作的重要前提。文章在对团队人力资源选拔的特殊要求以及“个体一团队”匹配的概念模型进行剖析的基础上,从工作分析、人力资源测评方法和测验工具三个方面对团队模式下的人力资源选拔的理论模型进行了改进,并分别给出了一些实际应用的操作方法。     

Healthcare costs associated with nephrology care in pre-dialysis chronic kidney disease patients

Abstract

Objective:

To compare the healthcare costs of pre-dialysis chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients cared for in a nephrology clinic setting versus other care settings.

Methods:

An analysis of health claims between 01/2002 and 09/2007 from the Ingenix Impact Database was conducted. Inclusion criteria were ≥18 years of age, ≥1 ICD-9 claim for CKD, and ≥1 estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) value of <60?mL/min/1.73?m². Patients were classified in the nephrology care cohort if they were treated in a nephrology clinic setting at least once during the study period. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to compare average annualized healthcare costs of patients in nephrology care versus other care settings.

Results:

Among the 20,135 patients identified for analysis, 1,547 patients were cared for in a nephrology clinic setting. Nephrology care was associated with lower healthcare costs with an unadjusted cost savings of $3,049 ($11,303 vs. $14,352, p?=?0.0014) and a cost ratio of 0.8:1 relative to other care settings. After adjusting for covariates, nephrology care remained associated with lower costs (adjusted cost savings: $2,742, p?=?0.006).

Limitations:

Key limitations included potential inaccuracies of claims data, the lack of control for patients’ ethnicity in the calculation of eGFR values, and the presence of potential biases due to the observational design of the study.

Conclusions:

The current study demonstrated that pre-dialysis CKD patients treated in nephrology clinics were associated with significantly lower healthcare costs compared with patients treated in other healthcare settings.     

EFFICIENCY AND LABOR MARKET DYNAMICS IN A MODEL OF LABOR SELECTION

This article characterizes efficient labor market allocations in a labor selection model. The model's crucial aspect is cross‐sectional heterogeneity for new job contacts, which leads to an endogenous selection threshold for new hires. With cross‐sectional dispersion calibrated to microeconomic data, 40% of empirically relevant fluctuations in the job‐finding rate arise, which contrasts with results in an efficient search and matching economy. The efficient selection model's results hold in partial and general equilibrium, as well as with sequential search.     

Clostridial collagenase ointment and medicinal honey utilization for pressure ulcers in US hospitals

Aims: To describe the utilization of clostridial collagenase ointment (CCO) and medicinal honey debridement methods in real-world inpatient and outpatient hospital settings among pressure ulcer (PU) patients and compare the frequency of healthcare re-encounters between CCO- and medicinal honey-treated patients.

Materials and methods: De-identified hospital discharge records for patients receiving CCO or medicinal honey methods of debridement and having an ICD-9 code for PU were extracted from the US Premier Healthcare Database. Multivariable analysis was used to compare the frequency of inpatient and outpatient revisits up to 6 months after an index encounter for CCO- vs medicinal honey-treated PUs.

Results: The study identified 48,267 inpatients and 2,599 outpatients with PUs treated with CCO or medicinal honeys. Among study inpatients, n?=?44,725 (93%) were treated with CCO, and n?=?3,542 (7%) with medicinal honeys. CCO and medicinal honeys accounted for 1,826 (70%) and 773 (30%), respectively, of study outpatients. In adjusted models, those treated with CCO had lower odds for inpatient readmissions (OR?=?0.86, 95% CI?=?0.80–0.94) after inpatient index visits, and outpatient re-encounters both after inpatient (OR?=?0.73, 95% CI?=?0.67–0.79) and outpatient (OR?=?0.78, 95% CI?=?0.64–0.95) index visits in 6 months of follow-up.

Limitations: The study was observational in nature, and did not adjust for reasons why patients were hospitalized initially, or why they returned to the facility. Although the study adjusted for differences in a variety of demographic, clinical, and hospital characteristics between the treatments, we are not able to rule out selection bias.

Conclusion: Patients with CCO-treated PUs returned to inpatient and outpatient hospital settings less often compared with medicinal honey-treated PUs. These results from real-world administrative data help to gain a better understanding of the clinical characteristics of patients with PUs treated with these two debridement methods and the economic implications of debridement choice in the acute care setting.     

Public-private partnerships in micro-finance: Should NGO involvement be restricted?

This paper examines public–private partnerships in micro-finance, whereby NGOs can help in channelizing credit to the poor, both in borrower selection, as well as in project implementation. We argue that a distortion may arise out of the fact that the private partner, i.e. the NGO, is a motivated agent. We find that whenever the project is neither too productive, nor too unproductive, reducing such distortion requires unbundling borrower selection and project implementation, with the NGO being involved in borrower selection only. Further, we compare and contrast two alternative credit delivery mechanisms, the linkage mechanism (which is the focus of this paper), with the ‘Grameen’ one.     

The Effect of Protest Votes on the Estimates of WTP for Use Values of Recreational Sites

Contingent valuation studies are often characterized by a considerable number of protest responses, which may cause selectivity bias on the final estimates for WTP. Sample selection models can detect and – if necessary – correct selectivity bias. In economic applications where the relevant dependent variable is continuous, sample selection models are generally estimated using Heckman's 2-step method rather than the FIML estimator. Either method has its own drawback: computational complexity for the FIML method, susceptibility to collinearity problems for the 2-step method. Using data on valuation of forest resources for recreational use, we analyse the performance of the two estimators. In this application, given the presence of some collinearity, the FIML is preferred to the 2-step method. A procedure is outlined to deal with selectivity problems in similar settings.     

The Stability of Hedonic Coalition Structures

We consider the partitioning of a society into coalitions in purely hedonic settings, i.e., where each player's payoff is completely determined by the identity of other members of her coalition. We first discuss how hedonic and nonhedonic settings differ and some sufficient conditions for the existence of core stable coalition partitions in hedonic settings. We then focus on a weaker stability condition: individual stability, where no player can benefit from moving to another coalition while not hurting the members of that new coalition. We show that if coalitions can be ordered according to some characteristic over which players have single-peaked preferences, or where players have symmetric and additively separable preferences, then there exists an individually stable coalition partition. Examples show that without these conditions, individually stable coalition partitions may not exist. We also discuss some other stability concepts, and the incompatibility of stability with other normative properties. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C71, A14, D20.     

Economic burden of healthcare-associated infection in US acute care hospitals: societal perspective

Abstract

Background:

Assessing the costs of healthcare-associated infection (HAI) is challenging. Methodological issues abound. Previous estimates have been derived in diverse ways from varied perspectives in different settings with dissimilar data. Results can be confusing. Full societal costs, which are more inclusive than commonly reported direct hospital costs, have never been fully measured or reported.

Objective:

To update, combine, and expand previous cost estimates to determine the annual societal burden of illness (direct medical, non-medical, and indirect costs) arising from HAIs in US acute-care hospitals.

Methods:

The research approach encompassed literature and internet searches; reference identification, selection, and review; then data abstraction, compilation, and analyses to estimate full societal costs. Previously published systemic reviews, surveillance reports, and individual clinical studies, along with newly computed component costs, all contributed to final estimates.

Results:

HAIs in US acute-care hospitals lead to direct and indirect costs totaling $96–$147 billion annually. These results are subject to the same limitations as previous studies from which contributing data were derived.

Conclusion:

The enormous clinical and economic burden of infection places HAIs high on the list of devastating and costly illnesses, such as cancer, heart attack, stroke, and diabetes, thereby mandating further research and greater efforts to contain a pressing healthcare problem.     

Migration,self‐selection and income distributions

Self‐selection in rural–urban migration is examined using three datasets from rural and urban China in 2002. We construct a migrant sample including both migrants who converted their hukou status from rural to urban (permanent migrants) and those who did not (temporary migrants). We find a strong positive selection for permanent migrants, but the selection for temporary migrants is ambiguous. We reach these conclusions by comparing migrants' counterfactual wage densities, assuming they are paid as rural local workers, to actual wage densities of rural local workers. Our results imply that permanent migration has negative effects on rural human capital accumulation and income levels.     

WHEN AND HOW THE PUNISHMENT MUST FIT THE CRIME

In repeated normal‐form (simultaneous‐move) games, simple penal codes (Abreu, Journal of Economic Theory 39(1) (1986), 191–225; and Econometrica 56(2) (1988), 383–96) permit an elegant characterization of the set of subgame‐perfect outcomes. We show that in repeated extensive‐form games such a characterization no longer obtains. By means of examples, we identify two types of settings in which a subgame‐perfect outcome may be supported only by a profile with the property that the continuation play after a deviation is tailored not only to the identity of the deviator but also to the nature of the deviation.     

UNEMPLOYMENT POLICIES IN AN ECONOMY WITH ADVERSE SELECTION

This paper studies the effects of unemployment policies in a simple static general equilibrium model with adverse selection in the labour market. Firms offer a contract that induces the self‐selection of workers. In equilibrium, all unskilled workers are screened out and some skilled workers are rationed out. It is shown that the provision of unemployment insurance raises involuntary unemployment by encouraging adverse selection, while unemployment assistance – or subsidy to unemployment – reduces involuntary unemployment. A simple efficiency wage model is also presented to show that either of the two policies reduces employment by taxing effort and subsidizing shirking. The key is whether the social role of unemployment is a sorting device or a worker discipline device.     

The determinants of tax morale in comparative perspective: Evidence from European countries

Applying a multilevel model, we argue that tax morale is a function of individual- and contextual-level variables. Evidence presented in this article, based on the 2004–2005 European Social Survey and information on institutional settings, shows that tax morale in European countries varies systematically with socio-demographic characteristics, personal financial experiences, political attitudes, on the one hand, and regional GDP and tax arrangements on the other hand. Moreover, cross-national differences in tax morale are also related to ethnic and linguistic fractionalizations.     

A CHARACTERIZATION OF THE RAWLSIAN SOCIAL ORDERING OVER INFINITE UTILITY STREAMS

In this paper, we characterize a Rawlsian ordering over infinite utility streams using a fairness principle called Hammond Equity, as well as a weak efficiency principle, Sup Continuity, and a condition that links finite and infinite settings of distributive justice called Preference Continuity.     

-Best response set

This paper introduces a notion of p-best response set (p-BR). We build on this notion in order to provide a new set-valued concept: the minimal p-best response set (p-MBR). After proving general existence results of the p-MBR, we show that it characterizes set-valued stability concepts in a dynamic with Poisson revision opportunities borrowed from Matsui and Matsuyama [An approach to equilibrium selection, J. Econ. Theory 65 (1995) 415–434.] Then, we study equilibrium selection. In particular, using our notion of p-BR, we generalize Morris et al. [p-Dominance and belief potential, Econometrica 63 (1995) 145–157.] that aimed to provide sufficient conditions under which a unique equilibrium is selected in the presence of higher order uncertainty.     

What is the systems perspective to Innovation and Technology Policy(ITP) and how can we apply it to developing and newly industrialized economies?

Despite recent advances in the Evolutionary and Systems Perspectives to Economic Change (SI), confusion still exists about how to apply it to the design and implementation of Innovation & Technology Policy (ITP) in concrete settings. Since the ‘Normative’ aspects of SI are framed in terms so general to make them insufficient or inadequate as guides and tools for actual policymaking, a presumption exists that additional theoretical and conceptual knowledge is required. Thus a major objective of this paper is to contribute to the development of a realistic and ‘grounded’ theoretical framework for Technology and Innovation Policy which is particularly relevant both for the promotion of Business Sector R&D and of hi tech (especially IT) industries in Top Tier and other Industrializing Economies. A second objective is to contribute directly to the capability of successfully applying this conceptual framework in concrete policy settings. Rather than justifying ITP the paper focuses on characterising and applying “Salient Normative Principles or Themes” of the SI perspective to ITP. Several concrete examples are given and the notions of Policy Process, (Country) Program Portfolio Profile and Policy Environment are introduced.     

Games with Imperfectly Observable Commitment

[1]claims that, in models of commitment, “the first-mover advantage is eliminated when there is aslightamount of noise associated with the observation of the first-mover's selection.” We show that the validity of this claim depends crucially on the restriction to pure strategy equilibria. The game analyzed by Bagwell always has a mixed equilibrium that is close to the Stackelberg equilibrium when the noise is small. Furthermore, an equilibrium selection theory that combines elements from the theory of[7]with elements from the theory of [6], actually selects this “noisy Stackelberg equilibrium.”Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Number: C72.     

Paying attention to payoffs in analogy-based learning

The analogy-based expectation equilibrium, or simply analogy equilibrium, analyzes equilibrium stereotypes by imposing consistency of infinitely large action samples with the expectation that broad classes of opponent types behave identically. This paper introduces the payoff-confirming analogy equilibrium (PAE) to refine the set of analogy equilibria. The concept imposes additionally that sample marginal of own payoffs be consistent with one’s expectations. Robust incorrect equilibrium stereotypes, i.e. non-Bayesian Nash PAE are shown to exist. General conditions are given for the prevalence of such stereotypes under correct expectations on exogenous uncertainty. In monotone selection games susceptible to winner’s curse, naive behavioral equilibrium leading to aggravation of adverse selection has been shown to match plausible informational assumptions of experienced, but behaviorally biased, equilibrium play. Here, behavioral equilibrium is matched with a corresponding PAE with an incorrect prior and correct prior is shown to imply correct overall expectations.     

Uniform selection in global games

This paper brings together results which are required in order to extend the global games approach to settings where the game structure is endogenous. More precisely, it shows that the selection argument of Carlsson and van Damme [Global games and equilibrium selection, Econometrica 61(5) (1993) 989-1018] holds uniformly over appropriately controlled families of games. Those results also give proper justification for the inversion of limits which is often implicit in applied work taking comparative statics on the selected risk-dominant equilibrium.