We estimate price and income elasticities from a linear, log-linear, and the almost ideal demand model (with and without an adjustment for selectivity bias) in an effort to show that special attention should be paid to the underlying assumptions of consumer behaviour when estimating a medical care demand model. The literature on medical care utilization is extended by incorporating two major components of spending as separate demands in a system of medical care spending. We find that estimates of elasticities vary depending on the functional form of the estimating equation, thus questioning the usefulness for policy purposes of single estimates of elasticities. 相似文献
While the ready-made Lego™ Robotics kits are popular in schools and are used by students at both primary and secondary year
levels, using the Picaxe microcontroller (chip) to create simple electronic devices, including robotic devices is less popular.
The latter imposes an additional challenge as a result of the need to construct the universal board with the chip in it—a
challenge embraced in the cross-disciplinary mechatronics program in this study. This paper reports on how teachers from five
Australian secondary schools put into practice technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) developed from expert-led
workshops and explores factors (intrinsic and extrinsic) that influenced the implementation. The results show that different
strategies were adopted by the schools in implementing the programs. While teacher attitude played an important role in influencing
the program’s success, being able to identify where the program sits within the curriculum and planning around timetable and
facility constraints were also important factors to consider. The research indicated that teachers’ TPCK was most challenged
in non-obvious areas such as diagnosing where faulty soldering joints were. 相似文献
Despite disincentive effects, it is more efficient to tackle inequality by general equality promotion policies, including tax/transfers, than by trying to pursue equality in specific issues or policies. The latter policy also has the same degree of disincentive effects as the general policy but has additional distortive effects. While Piketty' concern with inequality is well taken and his proposal to reduce inequality has merits, his argument on the inevitability of increasing capital share under capitalism and the condition of rate of returns to capital being larger than the rate of growth in incomes (r > g) is not correct. (JEL D3, D6, H) 相似文献
This paper studies the impact of US antidumping (AD) measures on US import volumes and prices from China, employing both theoretical analysis (mesoeconomics) and empirical analysis (difference in differences). Using US customs data, we find that US AD measures have substantial trade-dampening effects at the product level, and the exogenous increases of costs caused by AD duties push up the import prices of influenced import goods more than the increases in costs. We also build a mesoeconomic model that gives a reasonable and analytical explanation for our empirical findings. 相似文献
This paper examines whether the firm-level accrual and cash flow effects extend to the aggregate stock market. In sharp contrast to previous firm-level findings, aggregate accruals is a strong positive time series predictor of aggregate stock returns, and cash flows is a negative predictor. In addition, innovations in accruals are negatively contemporaneously correlated with aggregate returns, and innovations in cash flows are positively correlated with returns. These findings suggest that innovations in accruals and cash flows contain information about changes in discount rates, or that firms manage earnings in response to marketwide undervaluation. 相似文献
This paper develops a Mincerian measure of human capital distribution and applies it to evaluate national and global human capital inequality and compare them with education inequality measures. It is shown that using education inequality as a proxy of human capital inequality is problematic due to the nonmonotonic relationship between them. We find that the inconsistent evidence on education and human capital Kuznets curves in the literature is due to the use of different inequality measures. In particular, human capital Kuznets curves are evident when relative inequality measures are used, whereas education Kuznets curves are found when absolute inequality measures are used. It is also observed that while global education inequality has been declining over the past four decades, global human capital inequality remains largely steady, as the decrease in between‐country human capital inequality is largely balanced by the increase in within‐country human capital inequality. 相似文献
Objective: Omalizumab add-on to standard-of-care therapy has proven to be efficacious in severe asthma patients for whom exacerbations cannot be controlled otherwise. Moreover, evidence from different healthcare settings suggests reduced healthcare resource utilization with omalizumab. Based on these findings, this study aimed to assess the cost-effectiveness of the addition of omalizumab to standard-of-care therapy in patients with uncontrolled severe allergic asthma in a Brazilian healthcare setting.
Methods: A previously published Markov model was adapted using Brazil-specific unit costs to compare the costs and outcomes of the addition of omalizumab to standard-of-care therapy vs standard-of-care therapy alone. Model inputs were largely based on the eXpeRience study. Costs and health outcomes were calculated for lifetime-years and were annually discounted at 5%. Both one-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were performed.
Results: An additional cost of R$280,400 for 5.20 additional quality-adjusted life-years was estimated with the addition of omalizumab to standard-of-care therapy, resulting in an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of R$53,890. One-way sensitivity analysis indicated that discount rates, standard-of-care therapy exacerbation rates, and exacerbation-related mortality rates had the largest impact on incremental cost-effectiveness ratios.
Limitations: Assumptions of lifetime treatment adherence and rate of future exacerbations, independent of previous events, might affect the findings. The lack of Brazilian patients in the eXpeRience study may affect the findings, although sample size and baseline characteristics suggest that the modeled population closely resembles Brazilian severe allergic asthma patients.
Conclusion: Results indicate that omalizumab as an add-on therapy is more cost-effective than standard-of-care therapy alone for Brazilian patients with uncontrolled severe allergic asthma, based on the World Health Organization’s cost-effectiveness threshold of up to 3-times the gross domestic product. 相似文献