Guidelines for managing low back pain: a policy checklist

Back injuries devour one-third of health care benefits and workers' compensation, yet corporate strategies vary widely in their approach to back pain prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. These recommendations provide a benchmark for evaluation policies on low back pain. They emphasize a sports medicine approach, focused on returning workers to activity as soon as possible.     

Estimating visitors’ travel mode choices along the Bear Lake Road in Rocky Mountain National Park

The National Park Service (NPS) in the United States of America (USA) is looking to alternative transportation systems to provide visitors access to the national parks in a manner that potentially reduces traffic congestion, enhances visitors’ experiences, and more effectively protects park resources. However, shuttle bus systems without adequate planning and management may lead to unintended consequences such as eliminating the constraint to visitor use levels associated with parking lot capacities. As a consequence, the demand for recreation use in the area increases the potential impacts to the visitor experience and park resources. This study examined the trade-offs Rocky Mountain National Park visitors were willing to make about transportation mode choice using a stated choice survey to inform park managers about visitor acceptance of potential transportation related management actions. Results indicate that visitors prefer to use their private vehicles over the parks transit system but are willing to make trade-offs to ride the shuttle bus in order to avoid crowding along the trail at Bear Lake and vehicle traffic along the Bear Lake Road. In addition, there were statistically significant differences among choices of transportation mode trade-offs among different age groups (i.e., less than 40 years of age, 40–60 years of age, and more than 60 years of age) Specifically, results suggest that visitors less than 40 years are more willing than the older age groups to make trade-offs among transportation options to enhance their chances of being on the trail system at Bear Lake with fewer other people. The significant and interacted relationships with shuttle bus use, visitor use, and vehicle traffic levels found in this study provide RMNP managers opportunities to influence visitors’ transportation mode choices.     

Theorizing Ontology

Sandra Harding identifies a set of questions to which, she suggests, she and I would provide contrasting answers. In this short note I wonder if our differences are quite as sharp as Harding supposes.     

Evenly rotating economy: A new modeling technique for an old equilibrium construct

In the middle of the twentieth century, just five years before Arrow and Debreu proved the existence of an equilibrium for a competitive economy in the Walrasian system, Ludwig von Mises introduced the English-speaking world to his alternative equilibrium construct: the evenly rotating economy. In contrast to Arrow and Debreu, which characterizes equilibrium as a unique vector of prices and quantities, Mises depicts equilibrium as a pattern of behavior. After reviewing the Misesian conception of equilibrium and its failure to take hold in the profession, I turn to the modern literature. I contend that the evenly rotating economy is a special case of the now-prevalent class of search-theoretic exchange models. As such, I argue that this class of models is particularly well suited for applications considered by economists working in the Austrian tradition.     

Alchian and Allen Revisited: Law Enforcement and the Price of Weed

Alchian and Allen (1964) theorized that the imposition of a fixed fee or a unit cost in a market with multiple quality grades of the good would encourage consumption of the higher quality grades. Using newly available data on marijuana prices by state, we empirically test the hypothesis that the price of higher quality marijuana will be higher in states with more strict enforcement of marijuana possession laws. Consistent with the Alchian-Allen theorem, the relative price of both medium- and high-quality marijuana are found to be greater in states with stricter law enforcement, suggesting an increase in demand for such varieties.     

Consumer Rights: An Assessment of Justice

For the last 50 years the idea of consumer rights has formed an essential element in the formulation of policy to guide the workings of the marketplace. The extent and coverage of these rights has evolved and changed over time, yet there has been no comprehensive analysis as to the purpose and scope of consumer rights. In moral and ethical philosophy, rights are integrally linked to the notion of justice. By reassessing consumer rights through a justice-based framework, a number of key issues emerge regarding the way in which markets enable justice for consumers. The consumer rights which underpin the United Nations consumer protection guidelines address all forms of justice to some degree, but the predominant focus is on procedural justice. Our conclusions question whether this is sufficient and also whether there is a case to develop the notion of consumer ‘duties’ that complement the idea of rights.