The Impact of Housing Stressors on the Mental Health of a Low-Income African-American Population

Health and disease reflect broad social conditions including economic, environmental, and cultural components. The impact of challenging housing conditions experienced by low-income African American households on their mental health is an example of this principle. Do physical housing conditions, the presence of roaches and rodents, plumbing defects, and heating/cooling problems contribute to mental health dysfunction such as being depressed, feeling worried, feeling sad, feeling helpless, and feeling emotionally upset? To address this research question, a sample of 128 households that originally lived in public housing in Washington, D.C. were surveyed. These households had been relocated to other low-income housing during the demolition and reconstruction phase of a HOPE VI project, some to alternative public housing developments and others to private units based on vouchers. The survey included self-reports by heads of household on their housing conditions and mental health status using Likert scales. The survey also asked participants for demographic, socio-economic, and physical health data and for information on neighborhood characteristics. Correlation and regression analyses were used to estimate the impact of building structure, building systems, neighborhood characteristics, physical health, and socio-economic/demographic variables on mental health stresses. Specific housing issues included the number of bedrooms, plumbing, heating, cooling, rodents, roaches, and building security (the independent variables). Mental health stresses (the dependent variables) included feeling depressed, nervous, anxious, sad, helpless, and having trouble concentrating. Several alternative specifications and models were used and estimated. They generally demonstrated strong overall explanatory value. The findings from these models suggested that challenging housing conditions significantly contributed to many mental health disorders. For example, in the 2SLS model of “problem being depressed”, the condition of the apartment (β?=?0.278, t?=?2.022) and plumbing (β?=?0.182, t?=?2.145) were significant and the model’s explanatory power was reasonable with an adjusted R²?=?0.221. Many non-housing control variables were also significantly associated with mental health challenges.     

An Overview of Public Consultation Mechanisms Developed to Address the Ethical and Social Issues Raised by Biotechnology

Biotechnology, whether applied to plants, animals, or humans is a rapidly expanding industry. Citizens, often organized in groups or organizations, wish to express their views and even to participate in the decision-making process that authorized to the marketing of new biotechnology derived products. In order to allow participation of the public in the debate on the ethical and social issues raised by biotechnology, it is important to select appropriate consultation mechanisms. Much may be learned from the experiences and mechanisms used in various countries.Part I of this report surveys various institutional models for public consultation activities. Part II then reviews various mechanisms used to address ethical and social issues with public participation and Part III highlights the strengths and weaknesses of these mechanisms in a Canadian context.     

Feedback and incentives: Experimental evidence

This paper experimentally investigates the impact of different pay schemes and relative performance feedback policies on employee effort. We explore three feedback rules: no feedback on relative performance, feedback given halfway through the production period, and continuously updated feedback. We use two pay schemes, a piece rate and a tournament. We find that overall feedback does not improve performance. In contrast to the piece-rate pay scheme there is some evidence of positive peer effects in tournaments since the underdogs almost never quit the competition even when lagging significantly behind, and front runners do not slack off. But in both pay schemes relative performance feedback reduces the quality of the low performers' work; we refer to this as a “negative quality peer effect”.     

The Law of Proportionate Effect: The Growth of the UK Credit Union Movement at National and Regional Level

Abstract:   This study examines credit union size‐growth relationships within the context of Gibrat's law of proportionate effect. This relates to the hypothesis that the growth of each firm in each period is random. The analysis covers the period 1994 to 2000 and is undertaken separately for the United Kingdom (UK) and its regions, Northern Ireland, England & Wales and Scotland. Sample attrition is a characteristic of the data and to avoid the problem of survivorship bias the inverse of the Mill's ratio, obtained from a probit regression for surviving credit unions, is introduced into the estimating relationship. In terms of the empirical results, little evidence emerged to support the law of proportionate effect as a theoretical paradigm. Although not universal, three broad findings emerged. First, small credit unions on average grow faster than their larger counterparts, although there was also some evidence of non‐linearity in this relationship. Secondly, growth persistence pertained with credit unions which experienced above average growth (below average growth) in one period, experiencing above average growth (below average growth) in the next. Thirdly, variability of growth was not independent of size with the cross‐sectional variance of the error term inversely related to size suggesting that small credit unions have greater growth variability than larger ones.     

The Role of Local Authority Accountants in Environmental Decision-Making

This research used case studies in decision-making for environmental issues as a means to observe the role of management accountants in English local government. We found that while environmental considerations are important in local authorities, there is a lack of available accounting techniques to address them. The decisions we examined were made through an informal, essentially party political, process in which the accountants' role was limited to legitimising decisions.     

Impact of income tax on happiness: evidence from the United States

The present work considers the level of demonstrated happiness and unhappiness within groups, the latter measured by the conditional probability of suicide within groups facing an income tax rate and those without. Using US data for the year 2004, our results show that individuals have lower rates of suicide or are ‘happy’ when they do not pay income taxes than those who pay.     

The employment–population nexus and implications for sustainable economic development: insights from Irish regions using a partial adjustment model

In this paper, we use a partial adjustment model to analyse the relationship between employment and population growth in Irish district electoral divisions. We employ a spatial estimator to augment our partial adjustment model with a spatial lag and spatial error process. Our results indicate a dual relationship between employment and population growth, suggesting that not only do people follow jobs but also jobs follow people. This finding has implications for economic development policies, which typically focus solely on attracting jobs to a location. The results suggest that a dual-pronged approach to policy may be necessary including developing a region’s amenities to ensure that it is attractive to people and to stimulate population growth. We highlight how our analysis can be used to inform policy through the lenses of place-based and smart specialisation strategies.     

Cost-effectiveness of ceritinib in previously untreated anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer in the United States

Aims: To assess the cost-effectiveness of first-line ceritinib vs crizotinib and platinum doublet chemotherapy for anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) from a US third-party payer’s perspective.

Materials and methods: A partitioned survival model with three health states (stable disease, progressive disease, death) was developed over a 20-year time horizon. Ceritinib’s efficacy inputs (progression-free and overall survival) were estimated from ASCEND-4; parametric survival models extrapolated data beyond the trial period. The relative efficacy of ceritinib vs chemotherapy was obtained from ASCEND-4, the relative efficacy of ceritinib vs crizotinib was estimated using a matching-adjusted indirect comparison based on ASCEND-4 and PROFILE 1014. Drug acquisition, treatment administration, adverse event management, and medical costs were obtained from publicly available databases and the literature, and inflated to 2016?US dollars. Treatment-specific stable-state utilities were derived from trials and progressive-state utility from the literature. Incremental costs per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) were estimated for ceritinib vs each comparator. Cost-effectiveness was assessed based on US willingness-to-pay thresholds. Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were performed to test model robustness.

Results: In the base case, first-line ceritinib was associated with total direct costs of $299,777 and 3.28 QALYs (from 4.61 life years gained [LYG]) over 20 years. First-line crizotinib and chemotherapy were associated with 2.73 and 2.41 QALYs, 3.92 and 3.53 LYG, and $263,172 and $228,184 total direct costs, respectively. The incremental cost per QALY gained was $66,064 for ceritinib vs crizotinib and $81,645 for ceritinib vs chemotherapy. In the first 2 years following treatment initiation, ceritinib dominated crizotinib by conferring greater health benefits at reduced total costs. Results were robust to deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses.

Limitations: In the absence of head-to-head trials, an indirect comparison method was used.

Conclusions: Ceritinib is cost-effective compared to crizotinib and chemotherapy in the treatment of previously untreated ALK-positive metastatic NCSLC in the US.