Real-life cost of vitamin K antagonist treatment in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation in France in 2013

Aims: Data highlighting the cost drivers for non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) patients in terms of vitamin K antagonist (VKA) treatment and monitoring are lacking in France. This study aimed to evaluate the real-life daily cost of VKA treatment in 2013, in French patients suffering from NVAF.

Methods: This longitudinal observational study was performed using the EGB (Echantillon Généraliste des Bénéficiaires) database, a random sample of the French national insurance (NHI) database, which covers 80% of the population. All adult patients whose first NVAF anticoagulant treatment in 2013 was a VKA were analyzed. Costs were calculated for the duration of follow-up and then divided by the number of days of therapy. The analysis was performed both from the French NHI perspective (amount reimbursed by the NHI) and from a collective perspective.

Results: In this study, 3,254 NVAF patients treated with VKA in 2013 were included, and this sample comprised 52.6% males. The mean daily cost of VKA treatment was €1.13 (±1.18) according to the collective perspective (89.4% of this cost was associated to INR measurement) and €1.05 (±1.16) according to the NHI perspective.

Limitations: As diagnoses associated with procedures are not available in the EGB database, proxies were used, and an algorithm was created to define the AF population.

Conclusions: This analysis is the first to consider an exhaustive spectrum of the costs of VKA treatment in France using EGB data. VKA medication requires exhaustive follow-up, and, thus, associated costs are important. The results of the present study confirmed this close follow-up for VKA patients, making the cost of treatment by VKA nearly 10-times more expensive than the cost of medication itself.     

Bulgaria’s hyperinflation in 1997: transition,banking fragility and foreign exchange

This article has two objectives: to study the 1997 episode of hyperinflation in Bulgaria, and to compare and contrast this analysis with the post-Keynesian theoretical approach. This approach highlights the role of three components observed simultaneously in order to understand the emergence of hyperinflation: a virulent distributive conflict; the presence of indexing mechanisms; and finally, flight from domestic currency into one or more foreign currencies. The article reveals that a transitional economy like that of Bulgaria in the 1990s may generate hyperinflation in the absence of any violent distribution conflict: the transition and the banking crisis engender inflation. The foreign exchange rate is decisive in the emergence of hyperinflationary dynamics (and therefore mistrust of domestic currency). This interpretation of hyperinflation is confirmed by an econometric analysis.     

Making Chile Visible: Purposes,Operationalisation and Audiences from the Perspective of Nation Branding Practitioners

Chile has become the paradigm of nation branding in Latin America, employing branding initiatives to try to shake off the uncomfortable past of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, as well as to create a ‘new’ image that fits into a globalised and neoliberal world. Whilst there has previously been some analysis of Chile’s branding efforts, the viewpoints of the local actors involved in these initiatives have largely been ignored. This article addresses this issue, examining the tensions faced by different individuals who have taken part in nation branding in the country. Drawing on interviews with some of these individuals, this article examines three areas of tension: (1) the conflicting purposes guiding the practice of nation branding, (2) the difficulties around the operationalisation of nation branding and (3) the controversies regarding the intended audiences for their efforts.     

Does personal background influence a finance minister to cook the books? An investigation of creative accounting in Swiss cantons

This article aims to identify the factors influencing the use of creative accounting in the public sector. Its distinctive feature is that it sheds light on creative accounting when used, not to hide public deficits, but to conceal surpluses. It especially explores the impact of the finance minister’s (FM)’s background on the phenomenon. We take advantage of the quasi-experimental settings of the Swiss cantons in which the financial management act sets out the possibility of implementing certain accounting gimmicks, including mainly additional ‘depreciation’ charges. These charges, which are depreciations in name only, enable the FM to artificially inflate expenses, thus increasing the deficit or reducing the surplus. Our panel data set of the 26 cantons over the period 1980–2012 includes a new data set of creative accounting and of 116 cantonal FMs. Our results indicate that the FMs cook the books irrespective of their personal or ideological background with the exception that trained economists tend to apply creative accounting more. Additionally, stringent fiscal rules urge FMs towards more surplus-hiding accounting.     

Are the BRIC countries overtaking intermediate countries in the race for international R&D? The case of Spain

The emergence of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) as international locations for foreign direct investment in R&D is a sign that multinationals are relocating their technological activities to new territories. This trend may weaken the supremacy of the developed countries until now considered leaders in innovation, and may mean the loss of the competitive advantages enjoyed by the countries considered intermediate innovators. This paper examines the situation of Spain as a typical intermediate economy and compares it to its main competitors among the BRICs. Based on eight case studies of subsidiaries with R&D centres in Spain, we conclude that the policies adopted by certain emerging economies to develop their national innovation systems are proving effective and that these countries now pose a threat to intermediate economies. However, the BRICs still lag behind in terms of the security of their institutional framework; this situation leaves intermediate countries in an advantageous position.     

Pigou,Del Vecchio,and Sraffa: the 1955 International “Antonio Feltrinelli” Prize for the Economic and Social Sciences

In 1955, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei awarded the inaugural International “Feltrinelli” Prize for the Economic and Social Sciences to Arthur Cecil Pigou. This paper considers Gustavo Del Vecchio's active role on the selection committee in recommending Pigou for the Feltrinelli Prize and the related correspondence between Pigou, Piero Sraffa, and Del Vecchio. One of the most significant discovery reported in this paper is Sraffa's contention, expressed in an unpublished letter to Del Vecchio, that Pigou had “never been honoured in proportion to his merits.”     

Do professional forecasters behave as if they believed in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve for the euro area?

This paper finds that participants in the European Central Bank’s Survey of Professional Forecasters have submitted forecasts that are consistent with a (mostly forward-looking) empirical version of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve for the euro area. The estimation technique takes advantage of the panel nature of the Survey of Professional Forecasters’ dataset to exploit both its time series and cross-section dimensions, and to control for unobservable individual heterogeneity across forecasters. The estimation results suggest that euro-area inflation forecasts have reacted less to unemployment forecasts after the start of the financial crisis but another cost measure (energy inflation) remains significant. This finding is consistent with a flatter Phillips Curve in the euro area after 2007. However, the reasons suggested by the International Monetary Fund for this finding, namely a better anchoring of inflation expectations and increases in structural unemployment do not seem to find support in the survey data. Instead, the expectations for compensation per employee submitted by professional forecasters are consistent with the existence of downward real-wage rigidities in euro-area labour markets.     

Public or Private Sector Wage Leadership? An International Perspective*

Whether a government acts as a wage leader, placing pressure on private‐sector wages (more open to competition), or whether it plays a passive role and merely follows wage negotiations in the private sector, there are important implications for macroeconomic development, particularly in small open economies and/or countries that are members of a monetary union, such as those of the European Monetary Union. With the notable exception of the case of Sweden, opinion on this issue is still divided. In this paper, we look at public‐ and private‐sector wage interactions from an international perspective (18 OECD countries). We focus on the causal two‐way relationship between public and private wage setting, confirming that the private sector, on the whole, appears to have a stronger influence on the public sector, rather than vice versa. However, we also find evidence of feedback effects from public wage setting, which affect private‐sector wages in a number of countries. When the private sector takes the lead on wages, there are few feedback effects from the public sector, while public wage leadership is typically accompanied by private‐sector feedback effects.     

Nowcasting the French index of industrial production: A comparison from bridge and factor models

Governments and central banks need to have an accurate and timely assessment of indicators for the current month, as this is essential for providing a reliable and early analysis of the current economic situation. The index of industrial production (IIP) is probably the most important and widely analyzed monthly indicator, given the relevance of the manufacturing activity as a driver of the whole business cycle. This paper presents a series of models conceived to forecast the current French monthly IIP, based on regression models and dynamic factor models. The combination of these two approaches allows selecting economically relevant explanatory variables among a large data set. In addition, a rolling forecast study is carried out to assess the forecasting performance of the estimated models, using predictive ability and model confidence set tests. This latter allows getting several models displaying equivalent forecasting performance and therefore gives robustness to the forecasting exercise rather than to base the forecasting analysis only on one model.