Healthcare costs for Crohn’s disease patients treated with infliximab: a propensity weighted comparison of the effects of treatment adherence

Objective:

The objective for the research was to evaluate the direct healthcare costs for Crohn’s disease (CD) patients categorized by adherence status.

Methods:

Adult patients with ≥1 claim for infliximab and ≥2 claims for CD who were continuously insured for 12 months before and after their first infliximab infusion (index date) were identified in a 2006–2009 US managed care database. Patients were excluded if they had rheumatoid arthritis claims, received infliximab billed as a pharmacy benefit, or received another biologic drug. Patients were categorized as being either adherent or intermittently adherent to infliximab using a pre-defined algorithm. Total and component direct costs, CD-related costs, rates of surgery, and days of hospitalization were estimated for the 360-day post-index period. Propensity weighted generalized linear models were used to adjust the cost estimates for potential confounding variables.

Results:

The total propensity weighted cost for infliximab adherent patients was $40,425 (95% CI?=?[$38,686, $42,242]), compared to $41,082 (95% CI?=?[$38,163, $44,223]) for the intermittently adherent (p?=?0.71). However, adherent patients had lower total direct medical costs, exclusive of infliximab, that were $13,097 (95% CI?=?[$12,141, $14,127]) compared with $20,068 (95% CI?=?[$17,676, $22,784]) for intermittently adherent patients as a result of substantially lower hospital and outpatient costs (p?Conclusions:

Greater drug-related costs for infliximab adherent patients were offset by lower costs from hospitalization and outpatient visits. These findings indicate that adherent patients have improved clinical outcomes, at a similar aggregate cost, than patients who are only intermittently adherent to therapy.     

我国房地产市场调控政策影响力度评估与未来取向研究

面对房地产市场过热和房价上涨过快的现象,我国政府出台了一系列房地产市场调控政策,而且逐渐趋向频繁和严厉,表达了我国政府调控房地产市场的决心和信心。影响我国房地产市场价格的因素主要有基本消费性需求、改善性需求、投资性需求、投机性需求等四个方面,其中后两者是引发房价过快增长的重要因素。目前,我国房地产市场泡沫程度不一,对此应高度重视,严加调控,并认真执行,加强监管,如此才能使我国房地产调控政策切实收到实效。     

Anomalies in green national accounting

We “extend” standard arguments for greening the product side of the national accounts to the income side of the accounts and turn up an anomaly. For an economy with oil use, no entry for oil income, a supposed primary factor, appears in the income side of the national accounts when the depletion of natural capital is accounted for on the product side of the accounts. We resolve this issue by applying an income definition developed in the theory of national accounting. This, however, leads to another anomaly on the income side of the national accounts.     

评大西广《关于钓鱼岛主权之争的思考》

钓鱼岛领土争议在中日两国引发起民族主义的惊天骇浪,两国知识界也被卷进这场国权之争,双方学者各执一词,剑拔弩张。但是,在日本,也能够听到一些有历史洞见力和远见卓识的学者,站在公正的立场上所发表的具有良知和良识的声音。京都大学名誉教授、庆应义塾大学教授,日本著名经济外交研究专家大西广就是其中的代表人物。今年8月27日,他在由京都大学经济学研究科东亚经济研究中心主办的东亚经济研究通讯《京大东亚中心新闻简报（第432号）》上发表了署名文章《关于钓鱼岛主权之争的思考》。在该文中,作者客观公允地表达了自己的主张。以下,笔者就其主要观点略作评述,以飨读者。     

ARE CONSUMERS MORE LOYAL TO NATIONAL BRANDS THAN TO PRIVATE LABELS?

The evolution of private labels (PLs) can be understood in terms of a strategy adopted by the retail industry with the aim of competing with national brands (NBs). In the 1990s, this strategy led to the development of ‘me too’ products, which currently represent the largest share of store brand products. Since the early 2000s, retailers have widened the range of their store brands by introducing high‐quality products. The aim of this study was to estimate consumers’ attachment to ‘me‐too’ and niche PLs respectively, as compared to NBs. We captured the degree of maturity of these PLs through their price‐elasticities, computed for three staple goods offered by three mass retail companies. It was found that price sensitivity does not differ much between the ‘me‐too’ PLs and the corresponding NBs. This result confirms that ‘me‐too’ products are now considered reliable quality brands. However, in the high quality segment, consumers remain more sensitive to the price of PLs than to that of NBs, a characteristic which may relate to their recent introduction on the market.     

Critical factors in computing externalities for electricity resources

The New York State Environmental Externalities Cost Study and computerized externality model (EXMOD) are used to examine the specification of methods design and application factors in the computation of electricity externalities. We report the sensitivity of externality estimates with alternative specifications for 15 different factors in the analysis, including the selection of facility type, site, and operating characteristics; air emission assumptions and air modeling procedures; dose-response assumptions; economic valuation assumptions; and other modeling procedures and assumptions. Many of the factors that most influence externality computations can be well specified in the analysis, such as the facility type, age, characteristics, emission rates, whether there is SO₂ trading, and the inclusion of long range impacts. Most significant among the factors for which there remains significant scientific uncertainty are the selection and application of air dispersion models, selection of air pollution thresholds for health impacts, reduced life span risks associated with ozone exposure and with long-term exposure to PM₁₀, values for CO₂ damages, and the value to be applied to increased risks of reduced life span for individuals age 65 or older.     

Equity market neutral hedge funds and the stock market: an application of score-driven copula models

In this article, we study the time-varying market neutrality of equity market neutral hedge funds. We use data from the Hedge Fund Research? Equity Market Neutral Index (HFRX EH), which represents the performance of a portfolio of individual equity market neutral hedge funds. For each day, we measure different levels of association of the Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&;P 500) index and the HFRX EH. We use non-linear dynamic conditional score models of location, scale and copula that, to the best of our knowledge, have not yet been applied in the body of literature on hedge funds. We study whether the neutrality of the HFRX EH that is evidenced in the body of literature for the period of April 1993–April 2003 also holds for the following decade, for the period of May 2003–December 2016. We estimate different average levels of association for the pre-, during- and post-periods of the US financial crisis of 2008. We find that the association of the S&;P 500 and the HFRX EH, on average, is significantly positive for the pre- and post-periods of the financial crisis, and it is significantly negative for the period during the financial crisis.     

增长极战略的实现机制与中国实践模式的重构

增长极理论是20世纪50年代新古典区域均衡发展理论遭遇危机之后的新选择,但自其诞生以来由于缺乏成功案例的支持而备受争议。我国区域非均质、不平衡使得增长极模式备受推崇,但在发展中同样遭遇困境。鉴于理论与现实鲜明的反差,以增长极的实现机制为切入点剖析了该理论的不足,指出我国三大增长极在实践中存在政府依赖刚性、自我发展能力弱、关联效应差等问题,认为完整的增长极实现机制应包括形成机制、运行机制和扩散机制,并从这三大机制入手重构了中国增长极的实践模式,提出相关政策建议。     

Truthful germs are contagious: A local-to-global characterization of truthfulness

We study the question of which social choice functions from an abstract type space to a set of outcomes are truthful, i.e., implementable by truthful mechanisms, when utilities are quasi-linear. For convex domains, our main theorem characterizes truthful social choice functions as those satisfying two properties: local weak monotonicity and vortex-freeness. The first of these constrains the function values at any two sufficiently proximal points, while the second asserts that its line integrals around sufficiently small triangular loops must vanish.The characterization implies a local-to-global principle that allows one to deduce truthfulness of a function from its behavior on arbitrarily small neighborhoods of each point. Other consequences include a simple alternate derivation of the Saks–Yu Theorem that weak monotonicity characterizes truthfulness of functions having a convex domain and finite range, and a sufficient condition for constructing truthful functions by “stitching together” truthful subfunctions on different subsets of the domain.     

Economic and environmental impacts of trade liberalization: The case of Indonesia

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the environmental impacts of trade liberalization. This paper provides further discourse in this area with a study on Indonesia and its trade agreements with Japan (IJEPA) and ASEAN (AFTA). A static global CGE model, known as the Global Trade Analysis Project, was used to project the Indonesian economy to the year 2022, with and without tariff reforms agreed under the agreements. Environmental impacts are assessed using different pollution indicators—air, water and waste. The study suggests that Indonesia would grow rapidly over the period considered with a large deterioration in its environment. Following these, however, the agreements only have a marginal positive impact on Indonesia's output but with a noticeable increase in trade flows and signs of trade diversion. Overall AFTA has a greater impact on the Indonesian economy compared to IJEPA. Similarly, the impact of trade liberalization on the environment is marginal. On the whole, tariff reform is inducing air pollution and reducing water pollution. In conclusion, the study suggests that Indonesia's participation in the AFTA and IJEPA agreements is not likely to bring drastic changes to her economic and environmental performance.