The economic burden of depression among adults with rheumatoid arthritis in the United States

Aims: Depression is the most frequent comorbidity reported among patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Comorbid depression negatively impacts RA patients’ health-related quality-of-life, physical function, mental function, mortality, and experience of pain and symptom severity. The objective of this study was to assess healthcare utilization, expenditures, and work productivity among patients with RA with or without depression.

Materials and methods: Data from adult patients who had at least two visits each related to RA and depression over a 1-year period were extracted from the Truven Health MarketScan research databases. Outcomes comprised healthcare resource utilization, work productivity loss, and direct healthcare costs comparing patients with RA with depression (n?=?3,478) vs patients with RA without depression (n?=?43,222).

Results: Patients with RA and depression had a significantly greater relative risk of hospitalization and number of all-cause and RA-related hospitalizations, utilization of emergency services, days spent in the hospital, physician visits, and RA-related surgeries compared with RA patients without depression. Patients with RA and depression had a higher risk of and experienced more events and days of short-term disability compared with patients without depression. The incremental adjusted annual all-cause and RA-related direct costs were $8,488 (95% CI = $6,793–$10,223) and $578 (95% CI = –$98–$1,243), respectively, when comparing patients with RA and depression vs RA only.

Limitations: The current analysis is subject to the known limitations of retrospective studies based on administrative claims data.

Conclusions: This study suggested increased healthcare utilization, work productivity loss, and economic burden among RA patients due to comorbid depression. These findings emphasize the importance of managing depression and including depression as a factor when devising treatment algorithms for patients with RA.     

Noise traders,firm-specific uncertainty and technical trading effectiveness

This is the first study to document evidence of technical trading effectiveness at firm level in the Chinese A-share market by investigating the relationship between excess profits of technical trading rules and firm-specific characteristics. Our results reveal that firms with higher excess profits from technical trading have more noise traders and higher institutional ownership and that those firms tend to be growth firms with lower liquidity and higher firm-specific uncertainty. Further analysis shows that the profitability of technical trading rules is unsustainable and the excess profits of the highest technical trading profit quintile portfolio disappear in the following year.     

基于社会服务的示范性高职院校师资队伍建设——以广东农工商职业技术学院为例

服务是高职院校的第一宗旨,而社会服务能力的高低关键在于示范院校师资队伍建设。该文从广东农工商职业技术学院社会服务能力的实际情况出发,分析了该院师资队伍建设存在的问题,认为,首先应通过体制创新,提高教师社会服务意识;其次通过不同途径打造"双师型"教师团队,从而提升教师社会服务能力。     

New Evidence on Housing Wealth and Consumption Channels

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - This paper provides new evidence on the effect of housing wealth on consumption by focusing on the impact of home-equity extraction. We develop a...     

“品牌触角”管理——中小型服务企业的品牌运作之道

服务业,区别于制造业、建筑业,其最大的特点就是“以人为本”,在品牌运作上有区别于其他产业的明显特征。中国中小企业中的服务企业如何发展品牌的解决之道——即“品牌触角”管理。品牌触角在中小型服务企业中,融资困难是普遍存在的现象,而在以往的品牌管理理论中,强调的是通过大众传媒的方式建立品牌,广告、公关、新闻策划、事件营销成了发展品牌的必经之路。但是,对于一个历史不过数年,职员不过数十人的中小型服务企业来说,以上的品牌运作方式无疑是一种冒险行为,真所谓“做品牌做得不好是找死,不做又无异于等死”。品牌,对于中小型服务…     

C++对象布局分析

分析了目前最为流行的面向对象的开发工具C 的对象布局，并进一步分析了其形成原因。     

Identifying “best” applicants in recruiting using data envelopment analysis

Selecting the most promising candidates to fill an open position can be a difficult task when there are many applicants. Each applicant achieves certain performance levels in various categories and the resulting information can be overwhelming. We demonstrate how data envelopment analysis (DEA) can be used as a fair screening and sorting tool to support the candidate selection and decision-making process. Each applicant is viewed as an entity with multiple achievements. Without any a priori preference or information on the multiple achievements, DEA identifies the non-dominated solutions, which, in our case, represent the “best” candidates. A DEA-aided recruiting process was developed that (1) determines the performance levels of the “best” candidates relative to other applicants; (2) evaluates the degree of excellence of “best” candidates’ performance; (3) forms consistent tradeoff information on multiple recruiting criteria among search committee members, and, then, (4) clusters the applicants.     

State-owned enterprises going public The case of China

Public listing is a key reform measure for large state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) in China. We find evidence that public listing lowers state ownership significantly, lessens firms’ reliance on debt finance, and allows firms to increase capital expenditure, at least temporarily. We also find that ownership structure affects post‐listing performance. However, we find no statistical evidence of a positive effect of public listing on firms’ profitability. We suggest alternative interpretations of the last finding.     

论地方性法规公信力的构建

法的公信力是法所具有的为社会公认、被社会成员自觉遵守、以国家强制力保证执行的力量.法的公信力对于建设法治社会具有至关重要的作用.地方性法规是我国法律体系的重要组成部分,但是存在着公信力不足的问题.构建地方性法规的公信力,需要行为和观念的统一,需要从立法、执法、司法等各个环节加以解决.     

Trade, product cycles, and inequality within and between countries

Abstract.  This paper incorporates Northern product innovation and product‐cycle‐driven technology transfer into the continuum‐of‐goods Heckscher‐Ohlin model. The creation of very skill‐intensive goods induces the North to transfer production of older, less skill‐intensive goods to the South. These relocated goods are the most skill intensive by Southern standards. Hence, product cycles raise the relative demand for skilled workers and thus wage inequality within both regions. This runs contrary to the Stolper‐Samuelson theorem, but accords well with the fact that wage inequality has risen in both Northern and Southern countries. Moreover, product cycles increase income inequality between countries. JEL classification: F1