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.     

Correction: Speaking Truth to Power: Twitter Reactions to the Panama Papers

Journal of Business Ethics -     

Reciprocal value sharing in manufacturer-retailer relationships: the case of new product introductions

Prior literature examined reciprocity in the context of value creation. However, research has yet to examine whether reciprocity exists in value sharing. To address this gap, the authors examine retailer’s reciprocal value sharing with its manufacturer in relation to new product introductions. The authors test, via a survey of retail managers, whether reciprocal value sharing is influenced by an interaction of manufacturer’s prior new product success with innovativeness of a manufacturer’s products and the frequency of new product introduction. The results indicate that a retailer’s reciprocal value sharing is greater when the manufacturer historically launched successful new products, and that this effect is decreased with the innovativeness of a manufacturer’s products but increased with the frequency of new product introduction.     

Day-of-the-Week Effects in the Long-Run Performance of Initial Public Offerings

This study examines the influence of day-of-the-week patterns in security returns on long-run IPO underperformance. Comparisons are made between the IPOs in Ritter's [20] database, and a constructed set of matching firms based on SIC code and size, using NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ securities. It is found that virtually all of the IPO underperformance occurs on Mondays and Tuesdays and that the degree of underperformance significantly differs from other days. Thus, a common explanation may exist for the general day-of-the-week pattern in security returns and IPO long-run underperformance.     

Child malnutrition and school performance in China

Data on the height, weight, age and grade level of over 3,000 children in five quite different locations in China allow computation of how far behind in school each child is, relative to where he should be given his age, as well as of the nutritional status variables of height-for-age, weight-for-age and weight-for-height. This paper uses these data to estimate the impact of the nutritional variables on the available measure of school performance. Children tend to be about one grade further behind in rural areas than in the provincial capitals, and about one-half a grade further behind in the provincial capitals than in Beijing. Even after controlling for location, however, lower nutritional status (particularly height-for-age) was found to affect school performance adversely; a one standard deviation reduction in height-for-age, for example, would result in a child's being about one-third of a year further behind. Though results from a geographically limited sample should be generalized only with substantial caution, and alternative interpretations of the data are possible, it does appear likely that malnutrition in rural China remained sufficiently prevalent in 1979 to retard the school advancement of large numbers of children.     

Perceptions of the Ethicality of Consumer Insurance Claim Fraud

It was proposed that ethical evaluation of insurance claim padding behavior would be affected by characteristics of the policyholder, insurance agent, and company. These three factors were manipulated in written scenarios and the premise was tested in a factorial experimental design. No significant support was found for an effect of any of the three factors on ethical perceptions of claim padding. However, females found claims padding to be significantly less ethical than males. Given a claim scenario where the actual loss was $500 and the claimed amount was $3000, subjects awarded an average of $986.91 on the claim. Many respondents were willing to compensate victims for intangible losses as well as tangible losses.     

Can Chinese Discuss Conflicts Openly? Field and Experimental Studies of Face Dynamics in China

Chinese people have been theorized to be particularly sensitive to social face and avoid direct discussion in conflict to promote interpersonal harmony. Social face has been used to explain the proclivity of East Asians to smooth over conflict. More research is needed to study social face empirically and its relationship with direct discussion and the processes by which social face has its impact. Results from a field interview study and an experiment conducted in China support theorizing that confirmation of face induces cooperative goals and open-mindedness. In contrast with common assumptions about Chinese organizations, direct discussion, compared to avoiding, strengthened relationships. Direct controversy, especially when face was confirmed, induced open-mindedness: Participants asked more questions, explored the opposing views, demonstrated more knowledge of the opposing arguments, and worked to integrate views. These results were interpreted as suggesting that Chinese people can discuss their conflicts directly and cooperatively when they are assured that their face is confirmed. Results have implications both for the general theory of cooperation and competition as well as our understanding of social face in China.