Economic burden of chemotherapy-treated recurrent and/or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck in France: real-world data from the permanent sample of national health insurance beneficiaries

Aims: Overall survival (OS) of patients with recurrent or metastatic (R/M) squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) is extremely poor. New therapeutic options emerge but need to establish their economic value. The objective was to describe the direct and related costs of R/M SCCHN in France.

Materials and methods: We selected all adult patients treated with chemotherapy for R/M SCCHN between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2014 from the permanent sample of the French national health insurance database (EGB). Data were analyzed from the index date (first chemotherapy) until patients’ death or 31 December 2015. “Treatment period” and “end-of-life” (EoL) (from last chemotherapy until death) were distinguished. Costs included all hospitalizations for SCCHN and ambulatory care. Costs of hospitalized and non-hospitalized adverse events (AEs) were estimated.

Results: Among 267 patients identified, 85% were men, 44% had metastases at the index date and the mean age was 62.0 years (±9.9). The most common tumor location was oropharynx (29%) but 39% of patients had multiple locations. Median OS was 9.3 (95% CI: 7.9–11.8) months for the overall population. The average total direct cost per patient was €49,954, broken down into €32,908 (95% CI: 29,525–36,290) for hospitalizations and €17,047 (14,941–19,152) for ambulatory care. Main cost drivers were drug acquisition and administration (€14,538) during the treatment period (209?days on average) and palliative care (€3,750) during the EoL period (125?days). Regarding related costs, around 12% of patients received disability pensions (€1,397 per patient [624–2,171]) and sick leave payments (€1,592 [888–2,297]). “Metabolism and nutrition disorders” and “Infections and infestations” were the most expensive hospitalized AEs (€1,513 and €1,180 per patient, respectively). Febrile neutropenia was the most expensive non-hospitalized AE (€766 per patient).

Conclusions: This analysis of real-world data confirms the poor prognosis of patients with R/M SCCHN and provides cost data for future economic evaluations.     

A dynamic theory of the declining aggregated labor income share: Intangible capital vs. tangible capital

Reports of the literature documenting the declining labor share of income have increased greatly in the past few years, which is opposed to one of the famous “Kaldor's stylized facts” of growth. The declining labor income share has been observed since the 1980s in a number of countries, and especially in the United States. Recent studies have revealed the following five major driving forces of the declining labor share: (i) supercycles and boom-busts, (ii) rising and faster depreciation, (iii) superstar effects and consolidation, (iv) capital substitution and automation, and (v) globalization and labor bargaining power. We set up a two-sector optimal growth model with the R&D intermediate sectors producing intangible capital. By integrating driving factors (ii) through (iv) above into the model, we demonstrate the long-run decline of the aggregated labor income share.     

How does Internationalisation affect the productivity of R&D activities in large innovative firms? A conditional nonparametric investigation

Quality & Quantity - This work explores the relationship between multinational R&D and innovation productivity among top corporate knowledge and R&D producers by adopting a...     

Public Trading and Private Incentives

This article studies the link between public trading and theactivity of a firm's large shareholder who can affect firm value.Public trading results in the formation of a stock price thatis informative about the large shareholder's activity. Thisincreases the latter's incentives to engage in value-increasingactivities. Indeed, if he has to liquidate part of his stakebefore the effect of his activity is publicly observed, a moreinformative price rewards him for his activity. Implicationsare derived for the decision to go public, capital structure,and security design.     

‘Weltoffenheit schafft Jobs’: Turkish entrepreneurship and multiculturalism in Berlin

This article investigates the connections between multiculturalism, unemployment and self–employment in the case of Berlin’s Turkish economy. It first describes five trends that are currently shaping German–Turks’ business activities: heterogeneity, hybridity, professionalism, internationalization and state interest. The consequences of these five trends are partly contradictory. On the one hand, they challenge the relevance of the ‘Turkish economy’ concept. On the other hand, they give an unprecedented respectability to the ‘Turkish economy’, thus popularizing this concept. The article argues that this contradiction should be interpreted as an outcome of the growing importance of multiculturalism in Germany’s relation to immigrants. Acknowledging the presence of immigrants has led to an emphasis on their high rate of self–employment, viewed as a possible solution to their unemployment and ‘integration’ problems. What emerges is the economic dimension of multiculturalism, i.e. an ideology that sees immigration and ethnic pluralism as economically positive. The article concludes by a critical analysis of this ideology. Cet article étudie les liens entre multiculturalisme, chômage et entreprise individuelle dans le cas de l’économie turque berlinoise. Il décrit d’abord cinq tendances qui configurent actuellement l’activitééconomique des Germano–turcs: hétérogénéité, hybridité, professionnalisme, internationalisation et intérêt de l’État. Les conséquences de ces cinq tendances sont en partie contradictoires. D’un côté, elles remettent en question le concept ‘d’économie turque’ et, de l’autre, elles lui offrent une respectabilité sans précédent, propageant ainsi le concept. Cette contradiction devrait être interprétée comme le résultat de l’importance croissante du multiculturalisme dans la relation de l’Allemagne à l’égard des immigrants. Reconnaître la présence d’immigrés a conduit à souligner le rôle important des entrepreneurs, considérés comme une solution possible à leurs problèmes de chômage et ‘d’intégration’. Est ainsi révélée la dimension économique du multiculturalisme, c’est–à–dire une idéologie qui voit l’immigration et le pluralisme ethnique comme économiquement positifs. La conclusion expose une analyse critique de cette idéologie.     

Coordination Costs and the Geography of Production

In a model à la Venables of 1996 Venables, A. J. (1996) Equilibrium locations of vertically linked industries, International Economic review, 37, 341–359. doi: 10.2307/2527327[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], we distinguish two kinds of intermediate goods: complex goods that entail endogenous coordination costs, and simple goods that do not. Coordination costs depend on geographical distance and the number of intermediate goods used in the production process. In the final stage of integration, there are two possible spatial configurations: (1) a symmetric configuration and (2) a partial core–periphery equilibrium, comprised of a core region that produces the final and complex intermediate goods, and a periphery that produces simple intermediate goods. We discuss some policy implications of this multiple-equilibria outcome.

Les coûts de coordination et la géographie de la production     

On the reliability of unitizing textual continua: Further developments

This paper builds on an agreement coefficient proposed by Krippendorff (Content analysis: an introduction to its methodology, 2013) for measuring the reliability of unitizing and coding continuous phenomena, for example, of texts, videos, or sound recordings. It serves three purposes: It modifies Krippendorff’s definition which turned out to behave not as expected when applied to more than two observers, coders, or annotators. It extends this reliability measure to a family of four coefficients able to assess the reliabilities of diverse properties of unitized continua. It adds a way to obtain the confidence intervals of these coefficients as well as the probability of failing to reach targeted reliability levels. And it describes and provides access to free software that calculates all values of this family of reliability coefficients.     

On the efficient use of the informational content of estimating equations: Implied probabilities and Euclidean empirical likelihood

A number of information-theoretic alternatives to GMM have recently been proposed in the literature. For practical use and general interpretation, the main drawback of these alternatives, particularly in the case of conditional moment restrictions, is that they give up the computational and interpretational simplicity of quadratic optimization. The main contribution of this paper is to analyze the informational content of estimating equations within the unified framework of Chi-square distance. Improved inference by control variables, closed form formulae for implied probabilities and information-theoretic interpretations of continuously updated GMM are discussed in the two cases of unconditional and conditional moment restrictions.