The non mortality of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in an unselected, community diagnosed and treated population

Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HC) is portrayed in past literature as having an ominous prognosis. However, most studies emanated from medical centers and suffered from potential referral bias. A population based, community diagnosed and treated survival study is analyzed by the life table method. Despite potential causes for both underestimation of the observed mortality as well as for overestimation of expected mortality, the study appears to reveal a more favorable prognosis for HC in this population.     

Trading Against the Random Expiration of Private Information: A Natural Experiment

For years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accidentally distributed securities disclosures to some investors before the public. We exploit this setting, which is unique because the delay until public disclosure was exogenous and the private information window was well defined, to study informed trading with a random stopping time. Trading intensity and the pace at which prices incorporate information decrease with the expected delay until public release, but the relation between trading intensity and time elapsed varies with traders' learning process. Noise trading and relative information advantage play similar roles as in standard microstructure theories assuming a fixed time window.     

OBESITY AND MORAL HAZARD IN DEMAND FOR VISITS TO PHYSICIANS

In this article, we use count data regression with sample selection to analyze the effects and degree of moral hazard in demand for visits to physicians among groups of individuals with similar body mass index (BMI). Our results suggest that the effect of moral hazard on the demand for visits to doctors is increasing in BMI for men and for overweight and obese women. Moral hazard is highest among overweight men. (JEL I11, C25)     

Global compliance with international accounting education guidelines

The International Accounting Education Guidelines (IAEG) of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) issued since 1982 specify the components for the Professional preparation to become a qualified accountant.

This paper presents the results of a survey of compliance conducted in fifty-four countries outside the USA with International Accounting Education Guidelines (IAEG), as issued by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). Its purpose is to provide a benchmark measure of compliance for current assessment of accounting education, and for reference in future studies. This study is the first attempt to examine compliance with IAEGs in all sectors of the world in which IFAC has members. The paper is divided into the following sections: international accounting education guidelines; survey questions; methodology; results; effectiveness of the guidelines, and summary and conclusions.     

Mortality outcome of surgically treated atrial septal defects

Comparative mortality in this abstract shows that surgical repair of an atrial septal defect (ASD) confers a survival advantage beyond that expected for the study population. Determinates of expected mortality and mean q' include the table selected, zero-time age and annual age, and sex distribution of the cohort. Each has an independent effect on mortality ratios and excess death rates. Confounding variables such as participant selection within the study cohort affect the outcome. Despite the multiple, methodologic variables in this abstract, individuals having surgical repair of an ASD appear to have low mortality.     

Comparison of the mortality between ischemia and frequent premature ventricular contractions on an exercise test

Ischemia on an exercise test (ET) is a known risk factor for cardiovascular mortality. However, the magnitude of risk of frequent premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) on ET is often overlooked. This analysis reveals that the quantitative additional mortality risk on ET presented by frequent PVCs is similar to ischemia.     

Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments1

Over the past decade ‘material culture’ has become a sub‐discipline of Italian Renaissance studies. This literature, however, has focused on the rich and their objects preserved in museums or reflected in paintings. In addition, the period 1300 to 1600 has been treated without attention to changes in the relationship between people and possessions. The article turns to last wills and testaments, which survive in great numbers and sink deep roots through late medieval and Renaissance cities and their hinterlands. They reveal aspirations and anxieties about things from post‐mortem repairs to farm houses to pillows of monk's wool. These aspirations changed fundamentally after the Black Death. Earlier, during the ‘commercial revolution’, ordinary merchants, artisans, and peasants on their deathbeds practised what the mendicants preached: stripping themselves of their possessions, they converted their estates to coin to be scattered among pious and non‐pious beneficiaries. After the Black Death, testators began to reverse tack, devising ever more complex legal strategies to govern the future flow of their goods. This work of the dead had larger economic consequences. By encouraging the liquidation of estates, the earlier mendicant ideology quickened the velocity of exchange, while the early Renaissance attachment to things did the opposite.