Examining the association of smoking with work productivity and associated costs in Japan

Aims: Smoking is associated with significant health and economic burden globally, including an increased risk of many leading causes of mortality and significant impairments in work productivity. This burden is attenuated by successful tobacco cessation, including reduced risk of disease and improved productivity. The current study aimed to show the benefits of smoking cessation for workplace productivity and decreased costs associated with loss of work impairment.

Materials and methods: The data source was the 2011 Japan National Health and Wellness Survey (n?=?30,000). Respondents aged 20–64 were used in the analyses (n?=?23,738) and were categorized into: current smokers, former smokers, and never smokers. Generalized linear models controlling for demographics and health characteristics examined the relationship of smoking status with the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire (WPAI-GH) endpoints, as well as estimated indirect costs.

Results: Current smokers reported the greatest overall work impairment, including absenteeism (i.e. work time missed) and presenteeism (i.e. impairment while at work); however, after controlling for covariates, there were no significant differences between former smokers and never smokers on overall work impairment. Current smokers and former smokers had greater activity impairment (i.e. impairment in daily activities) than never smokers. Current smokers reported the highest indirect costs (i.e. costs associated with work impairment); however, after controlling for covariates, there were no significant differences between former smokers and never smokers on indirect costs.

Limitations and conclusions: Smoking exerts a large health and economic burden; however, smoking cessation attenuates this burden. The current study provides important further evidence of this association, with former smokers appearing statistically indistinguishable from never smokers in terms of work productivity loss and associated indirect costs among a large representative sample of Japanese workers. This report highlights the workplace benefits of smoking cessation across productivity markers and cost-savings.     

中国各地区自主创新能力的间接融资支持研究

自主创新能力日益成为一国经济发展的核心动力,而自主创新能力的提高离不开金融支持。由于我国仍是一种以间接融资为主的银行主导型金融结构,因此本文选取中国31个省市1997-2009的面板数据,分析了间接融资对各地区自主创新能力的影响。结果表明间接融资对全国自主创新活力和创新效率都有显著正效应,尤其对东部地区自主创新的影响最强,政府的资金支持对中部地区的自主创新比较显著,西部地区的自主创新主要依赖于地区经济的发展水平。     

以标准化为基石开拓创新测试技术——以眼点模拟仪的自主研制为例

眼点模拟仪是模拟人眼进行汽车后视镜及内视镜测量的必用设备,为了满足最新颁布的GB15084-2013《机动车辆间接视野装置性能和安装要求》标准对于测量设备发光量及视野等要求,解决原有测量设备体积较大、重量较大、定位精度低、使用不便等问题,自主研制了一种新型的、功能更加齐全的、工作稳定性更高的眼点模拟仪.     

Ranking opportunity sets in a simple intertemporal framework

We extend the problem of ranking subsets (opportunity sets) of a set of alternatives to an intertemporal setting, whereby the agent makes a sequence of choice decisions over time. In particular, we show in a simple two-period model that an agent who satisfies five plausible axioms ranks opportunity sets in a lexicographic fashion. That is, the agent ranks opportunity sets based solely on the relative desirability of their first-period alternatives, and only if the first-period alternatives are thought equally desirable does the agent consider the second-period alternatives. We discuss this strong time-discounting result and the role of the axioms, and also show that the popular “independence” axioms employed in the existing “static” literature are inconsistent with some reasonable axioms regarding intertemporal choice.      

On the characterization of excess demand functions

Summary. In this paper, we give the necessary and sufficient conditions that characterize the individual excess demand function when it depends smoothly on prices and endowments. A given function is an excess demand function if and only if it satisfies, in addition to Walras law and zero homogeneity in prices, a set of first order partial differential equations, its substitution matrix is symmetric and negative semidefinite. Moreover, we show that these conditions are equivalent to the symmetry and negative semidefiniteness of Slutsky matrix, Walras law and zero homogeneity of Marshallian demand functions.Received: 25 November 2002, Revised: 11 March 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D11.Marwan Aloqeili: I would like to thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

我国物权法中应规定间接占有制度

本文从比较法、案例、立法效果等角度论证了我国《物权法》规定间接占有制度的必要性。     

Conjectural variations and evolutionary stability in finite populations

Recently it has been shown that consistent conjectures are evolutionarily stable. In this note we show that this finding depends on the use of the infinite population ESS (Maynard-Smith, Evolution and the theory of games, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1982). When applying the finite-population ESS (Schaffer, J Theor Biol 132:469–478, 1988) we show that the conjectures surviving in the long run are not consistent.      

A comparison of indirect connectivity in Chinese airport hubs: 2010 vs. 2015

Airport hubs’ indirect connectivity is important for any aviation network. Indirect connectivity describes the capacity of airport hubs to provide indirect connections over the airline network. As the Chinese aviation industry has experienced development, this paper offers a comparative analysis of indirect connectivity for Chinese airport hubs between 2010 and 2015. We investigate wave-system structures, weighted indirect connectivity (WIC) and indirect connections of the top ten airport hubs in China. In the spatial analysis, this paper surveys the spatial patterns of indirect connections at four important airport hubs. Beijing-Capital airport has strong indirect connectivity worldwide. Pudong and Hongqiao airports worked together to maximize the spatial coverage of Shanghai. Guangzhou-Baiyun airport has sufficient indirect connections across southern China, and it intends to expand its spatial influence into northern cities.     

A note on “Evolution of Preferences”

A surprising result in Dekel et al. (2007) states that strict Nash equilibria might cease to be evolutionary stable when agents are able to observe a signal that fully reveals the opponent’s preferences, even if the frequency of the signal is very low. I show that when the signal a player receives on her opponent’s preferences is almost uninformative, all strict Nash equilibria are evolutionary stable, no matter the frequency of the signal.     

Sexual health education for young tourists

There is a pressing need for developing effective sexual health education for a high-risk group of young tourists. The purpose of this study was to explore the necessity of sexual health education for young tourists and to identify the characteristics of potentially successful sexual health messages. The data were obtained from three mixed-gender focus groups and 13 individual interviews (N = 32) and analyzed using constructivist grounded theory. The findings highlight the necessity for innovative sexual health education methods supporting young adults' decision-making in tourism. Participants' recommendations for sexual health education for tourists included informing decisions about safer sex instead of condemning sex; developing tourism-focused, age-specific, and gender-sensitive messages; varying messages’ emphases on risks vs. benefits; and individualizing the messages based on risk perceptions and motivations. These recommendations can be explained and applied using context-specific, harm reduction, and health promotion approaches as well as the methods of targeting, framing, and tailoring.