Bounded rationality,expectations, and child labour

This paper develops a model with overlapping generations, where the household's optimal fertility, child labour, and education decisions depend on the parents’ expectations or beliefs about the return to education. It is shown that there exists a range of parental income where the fertility rate is high and children participate in the labour market and receive an incomplete education if a parent believes the return to education is low. The act of participating in the labour market reduces the child's ability to accumulate human capital; thus, the action of sending a child into the labour market is sufficient to ensure that the parents’ initially pessimistic expectations are fulfilled. It is then shown that a one‐time policy intervention, such as banning child labour and mandatory education, can be enough to move a country from the positive child labour equilibrium to an equilibrium with no child labour.     

Moral dilemmas,moral reasons and moral learning: interpreting a real case in terms of particularistic theory

The core of the paper consists of dialogue from a true case where an employee experienced moral dilemmas following a disquieting directive from his manager. The case is considered from the perspective of Dancy's particularistic theory of moral reasons (with some insight also from Ross's theory of prima facie duties). This case was chosen not to illustrate the theory, but rather to test the assumption that an approach to moral judgement based on Ross and Dancy has general applicability. It is suggested that, in its simplest form, that approach approximates to the manner in which people in organisations, without prior knowledge of ethical theorising, would ordinarily deal with comparable situations, and so it can be relatively easy to learn given practice. Based on this case, some insight is also offered into individuals' moral learning, including their need for personal qualities such as assertiveness and independence of mind. In that context a reciprocal relationship between Dancy's approach and Werhane's thinking on moral imagination is suggested.     

Academic Wage Structure by Gender: The Roles of Peer Review,Performance, and Market Forces

We focus on understanding the role of productivity in determining wage structure differences between men and women in academia. The data arise from a pay equity study carried out in a single midwestern U.S. university over the 1996–1997 academic year. Econometric results confirm that external market forces exert influence over both male and female salary. But peer review ratings play a significant role in male but not female earnings determination, with similar results for objective measures of research, teaching, and service.     

Spatial Aspects of ICT Development in Russia

The paper investigates the potentials of ICT in Russia for tackling the challenges of huge territory, strong regional disparities, segmentation of economic space and over-centralisation by Moscow. The Internet currently imposes a definite regional discrimination in Russia based on complex criteria, which are not limited to household incomes. After initial polarisation in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Internet use is now concentrated in a dozen Russian regions, marking a shift to polycentric polarisation, but Internet service activities remain concentrated in Western Russia. A new wave of centrifugal trends is starting thanks to offshore outsourcing in software development, in which Russia is preferred to China and India.     

Evaluating wind-following and ecosystem services for hydroelectric dams in PJM

Hydropower can provide inexpensive, flexible fill-in power to compensate for intermittent renewable generation. Policies for hydropower dams maintain multiple services beyond electric generation, including environmental protection, flood control and recreation. We model the decision of a hydroelectric generator to shift some of its power production capacity away from the day-ahead energy market into a “wind-following” service to smooth the intermittent production of wind turbines. Offering such a service imposes both private and social opportunity costs. Since fluctuations in wind energy output are not perfectly correlated with day-ahead energy prices, a wind-following service will necessarily affect generator revenues. Seasonal wind patterns produce conflicts with the goal of managing rivers for “ecosystem services”—the maintenance or enhancement of downstream ecosystems. We illustrate our decision model using the Kerr Dam in PJM’s territory in North Carolina. We simulate the operation of Kerr Dam over a three-year period that features hydrologic variability from normal water years to extreme drought conditions. We use an optimization framework to estimate reservation prices for Kerr Dam offering wind-following services in the PJM market. Wind-following may be profitable for Kerr Dam at low capacity levels during some time periods if ecosystems services are neglected and if side payments, or reserves-type payments, are provided. Wind-following with ecosystem services yields revenue losses that typically cannot be recovered with reserves market payments. Water release patterns are inconsistent with ecosystem-services goals when Kerr Dam dedicates significant capacity to wind-following, particularly in drought years.     

Controlling the Urban Fabric: The Complex Game of Distance and Proximity in European Upper‐Middle‐Class Residential Strategies

This article presents an open discussion of the processes of urban secession and gentrification in contemporary European cities, arguing that intergroup social dynamics in urban spaces are generally more complex than either extreme mutual avoidance or the colonization of neighbourhoods by the wealthiest groups. We analyse the residential strategies of urban upper‐middle class managers in various European metropolitan areas through in‐depth semi‐structured interviews to argue that these groups develop complex strategies of proximity and distance in relation to other social groups. The development of these ‘partial exit’ strategies takes place through specific combinations of practices that allow groups to select the dimensions they are willing to share with other social groups, and those in which they prefer a more segregated social environment for themselves and their families. The responses of our interviewees were consistently more nuanced and complex than suggested by a simplistic theory about their drive to withdraw from society, forcing us to develop more sophisticated conceptual frameworks to account for the growing prevalence of multi‐layered identities and spheres of reference and solidarity, specific combinations of elective segregation and local involvement, and more active patterns of mobility combined with local embeddedness.     

人工神经网络自学习方法在大港滩海油田的应用

本文以人工神经网络自学习方法在大港滩海油田的试验为例,探讨能否利用人工神经网络自学习方法预测泵的工作状况并通过生产参数优化提高电潜泵油井产量.试验结果表明,该方法可以解决电潜泵油井生产过程中的两大问题:预测泵的工作状况,实时计算并优化泵的最大合理产量.操作人员根据预测结果可及时合理地采取防范措施,尽量避免故障的发生或将故障损失降到最低,及时调整油井的合理产量,使油井处于最佳生产状态,提高电潜泵油井生产运行的稳定性,并提高了试验油井产量的5%.     

HIV/AIDS AND BANKING STABILITY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

We argue that the recent large increase in deposits’ turnover in many developing countries with high HIV/AIDS prevalence is associated with the spread of the disease. The point is that the need to pay for individual treatments force large‐scale withdrawals of households’ deposits, and that those large withdrawals put the banking industry at risk. In a standard demand‐deposit model where the HIV/AIDS prevalence among depositors is random, we show that (1) the probability of a large‐scale banking failure without a bank run increases as the odds of any prevalence level increases, and (2) it is always optimal to deposit, and thus to accept the risk of banking failure, to maintain long‐term investments in place.     

A real-world analysis of healthcare costs and relative risk of hyperprolactinemia associated with antipsychotic treatments in the United States

Abstract

Aims: Antipsychotic medications are associated with an increased risk of hyperprolactinemia, but differ in their propensity to cause this complication. This study aimed to assess the economic burden of hyperprolactinemia, and to compare its risk among adult patients using atypical antipsychotics (AAs) with a mechanism of action associated with no/low vs high/moderate prolactin elevation.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study was based on US Commercial and Medicaid claims databases. Healthcare costs were compared between matched hyperprolactinemia and hyperprolactinemia-free cohorts using a two-part model. Risk of hyperprolactinemia was compared between patients receiving AAs with a mechanism of action associated with no/low (no/low prolactin elevation cohort) vs high/moderate prolactin elevation (high/moderate prolactin cohort) using logistic regression.

Results: In the commercially insured sample, compared to the hyperprolactinemia-free cohort (n?=?499), the hyperprolactinemia cohort (n?=?499) was associated with incremental total healthcare costs of $5,732 ($20,081 vs $14,349; p?=?.004), and incremental medical costs of $3,861 ($13,218 vs $9,357; p?=?.040), mainly driven by hyperprolactinemia-related costs. In the Medicaid-insured sample, compared to the hyperprolactinemia-free cohort, the hyperprolactinemia cohort was associated with incremental total healthcare costs of $10,773 ($30,763 vs $19,990; p?=?.004), and incremental medical costs of $9,246 ($20,859 vs $11,613; p?=?.004), mainly driven by hyperprolactinemia-related and mental health-related costs. The odds of hyperprolactinemia in the no/low prolactin elevation cohort were 4–5-times lower than that in the high/moderate prolactin elevation cohort (odds ratio =0.21; p?<?.001).

Limitations: Hyperprolactinemia may be under-reported in claims data.

Conclusions: Hyperprolactinemia is associated with substantial healthcare costs. AAs associated with no/low prolactin elevation reduce the risk of hyperprolactinemia by 4–5-times compared to AAs associated with moderate/high prolactin elevation. Treatment options with minimal impact on prolactin levels may contribute to reducing hyperprolactinemia burden in AA-treated patients.