‘Population pressure’ on the land: Analysis of trends past and future

At some point during development, total agricultural labour force (ALF) begins to decline even as total population is increasing. This paper explores the determinants of this decline. We find that income level and population growth rate explain much of the variation in ALF. Rate of income change does not seem to have an independent effect. Population density may or may not have an independent effect. If population growth is considered to be an intermediate variable, the overall effect of income alone is such that the elasticity of ALF with respect to income is of the order of ?0.27 to *minus;0.4.     

One Kind of Freedom: Poverty Dynamics in Post-apartheid South Africa

A 1993 South African living standards survey documented the legacy of apartheid in the form high levels of inequality and human insecurity. Drawing on a 1998 re-survey of households in the 1993 study, this paper explores whether this legacy has been superseded, or whether apartheid's end has been only one kind of freedom that has left households in a poverty trap from which they cannot escape. After proposing a theoretically grounded dynamic poverty typology that distinguishes stochastic from structural poverty transitions, the paper goes on to estimate that significant numbers of the South African poor are potentially trapped in a structural poverty trap and lack the means to escape poverty over time.     

Scatters and clusters in time and space: implications for delivering integrated and inclusive transport

This paper calls for a refinement in the literature on social exclusion/inclusion, and an alteration in the counterpart policy practices, in order to take account of ‘scatter’ and ‘cluster’ dimensions in the patterning of transport deprivation. Disaggregating social exclusion and inclusion data to enable the identification of scatters and clusters is key to the development of appropriate transport planning strategies. The degree to which lack of mobility is scattered or clustered can have profound implications for the ways in which time and space are treated by policy.     

Economic evaluation of rituximab in addition to standard of care chemotherapy for adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Aims: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is an aggressive form of leukemia with a poor prognosis in adult patients. The addition of the monoclonal antibody rituximab to standard chemotherapy has been shown to improve survival in adults with ALL. However, it is unknown whether the addition of rituximab is cost-effective. The objective was to determine the economic impact of rituximab in addition to standard of care (SOC) chemotherapy vs SOC alone in newly-diagnosed Philadelphia chromosome-negative, CD20-positive, B-cell precursor ALL.

Methods: A decision analytic model was constructed, based upon the Canadian healthcare system. It included the following health states over a lifetime horizon (max ≈60 years): event-free survival (EFS), relapsed/resistant disease, cure, and death. SOC was either hyper-CVAD or the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) ALL consortium. EFS, overall survival, and serious adverse event (SAE) rates were derived from a large randomized controlled trial. Costs of the model included: first-line treatment and administration, disease management, second-line and third-line treatment and administration, palliative care, and SAE-related treatments. Inputs were sourced from provincial and national public data, the literature, and cancer agency input.

Results: Quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) increased by 2.20 QALYs with rituximab in addition to SOC. The resulting mean Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio (ICER) was C$21,828/QALY. At a willingness-to-pay threshold of C$100,000/QALY, the probability of being cost-effective was 98%. Decision outcomes were robust to the probabilistic and deterministic sensitivity analyses, including the SOC backbone as either hyper-CVAD or DFCI.

Limitations: The results of this analysis are limited by generalizability of the chemotherapy backbone to Canadian practice.

Conclusions: For adults with ALL, rituximab in addition to SOC was found to be a cost-effective intervention, compared to SOC alone. The addition of rituximab is associated with increased life years and increased QALYs at a reasonable incremental cost.     

Using GIS to visualise and evaluate student travel behaviour

Using GIS to evaluate travel behaviour is an important technique to increase our understanding of the relationship between accessibility and transport demand. In this paper, the activity space concept was used to identify the nature of participation in activities (or lack of it) amongst a group of students using a 2 day travel-activity diary. Three different indicators such as the number of unique locations visited, average daily distance travelled, and average daily activity duration were used to measure the size of activity spaces. These indicators reflect levels of accessibility, personal mobility, and the extent of participation, respectively. Multiple regression analyses were used to assess the impacts of students socio-economic status and the spatial characteristics of home location. Although no differences were found in the levels of accessibility and the extent of participation measures, home location with respect to a demand responsive transport (DRT) service was found to be the most important determinant of their mobility patterns. Despite being able to travel longer distances, students who live outside of the DRT service area were found to be temporally excluded from some opportunities. Student activity spaces were also visualised within a GIS environment and a spatial analysis was conducted to underpin the evaluation of the performance of the DRT. This approach was also used to identify the activity spaces of individuals that are geographically excluded from the service. Evaluation of these results indicated that although the service currently covers areas of high demand, 90% of the activity spaces remained un-served by the DRT service. Using this data six new routes were designed to meet the coverage goal of public transport based on a measure of network impedance based on inverse activity density. Following assessment of public transport service coverage, the study was extended using a spatial multi criteria evaluation (SMCE) technique to assess the effect of service provision on patronage.     

Social and Political Risks: Factors Affecting FDI in China's Mining Sector

Political risk can be defined as the potential for uncertainty and harm to business/economic operations that arise from political (governmental and other) behavior and events. These risks typically stem from factors such as economic structures, government institutions, policies, and societal characteristics, and are becoming more of a concern to prospective investors in a changing global political economy. This article seeks to expand upon the framework of political risk analysis by looking at “softer,” nonquantifiable risk factors. Through the analysis of foreign business experiences in China, we aim to demonstrate, via a qualitative case study of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Chinese mining sector, that in addition to typical financial, operational, and geological factors, firms should be better aware of the particular sociopolitical and cultural risks that can harm their investments in a given industry. This study draws on primary fieldwork, focuses on micropolitical risks to the industry, and stresses that multinational corporations (MNCs) could be more cognizant of the many societal factors that can influence an investment success. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.