Psychometric validation of anti-clot treatment scale and treatment satisfaction questionnaire for medication version II in Japanese patients with atrial fibrillation

Aims: The Anti-Clot Treatment Scale (ACTS) and Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication version II (TSQM-II) are validated treatment satisfaction patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments. The ACTS includes two domains: Burdens and Benefits; the TSQM-II includes four: Effectiveness, Side Effects, Convenience, and Global Satisfaction. Japanese-language versions of the ACTS and TSQM-II have been developed and linguistically validated. This study aimed to assess their psychometric properties in Japanese patients with atrial fibrillation (AF).

Materials and methods: ACTS and TSQM-II data from 534 patients with AF were collected in a Japanese post-marketing surveillance study of a direct oral-anticoagulant, rivaroxaban. Four key psychometric properties, in line with best practice guidelines from the US Food and Drug Administration, were examined using traditional psychometric methods: acceptability, scaling assumptions, reliability (i.e. internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability), and construct validity (i.e. convergent validity and known groups).

Results: ACTS Burdens and Benefits and TSQM-II Effectiveness, Convenience, and Global Satisfaction scales were found to be acceptable (e.g. item-level missing data at baseline <4%), with all scales having good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha > 0.80). test-retest reproducibility intraclass correlation coefficients for the ACTS Burdens and Benefits were 0.59 and 0.65, respectively, and between 0.54–0.61 for the TSQM-II scales. Known-groups validity for the ACTS and TSQM-II was supported by differences in scale scores by positive and negative impact (p?<?0.05). Correlations between the ACTS and TSQM-II (convergent validity) were lower than expected (range r?=?0.09–0.48), but in line with the original ACTS development study.

Limitations: Evaluation of test-retest reproducibility was limited by assessment period, which was longer (3 months) than recommended guidelines (usually up to 2 weeks).

Conclusions: Overall, Japanese versions of ACTS and TSQM-II scales satisfied internal consistency reliability and traditional validity criteria. Our study supports the ACTS and TSQM-II as appropriate PRO instruments to measure satisfaction with anticoagulant treatment in Japanese patients with AF.

Trial registration: NCT01598051, clinicaltrials.gov; registered April 20, 2012.     

Does Foreign Direct Investment Affect the Growth of Local Firms？ The Case of China＇s Electrical and Electronics Industry

Does foreign direct investment(FDI) into developing countries affect the growth of local firms in host countries? Using a dataset of 38 sectors in China’s electrical and electronics industry,in this paper,we analyze whether FDI has a positive effect on local firms,with technology spillovers,added value and increasing total factor productivity,or a negative, market stealing,effect.Estimating the relationship between growth of local firms and investment of foreign firms,our results show that FDI is likely to have a negative impact on the growth of local firms in sectors with large disparities in technology and less experience in business.Therefore,local firms lacking in technology need to find markets with no competition from foreign firms or determine strategies to compensate technology disparities.     

European Alliance and Knowledge Networks1

This paper presents an exploratory exercise to characterize the nature of inter-organizational networks and the strategic positioning of companies in five industrial sectors: pharmaceuticals, plastics, computers, electronics and instruments. Two types of networks in each sector are analysed: knowledge networks based on patent citations and technology alliance networks based on strategic partnerships. Three sets of results with significant policy and strategy implications underline both the need for better understanding of the social/competitive context within which companies operate and the utility of social network analysis in achieving this goal. First, apparent differences in the networking behaviour in ‘simple technology’ sectors (pharmaceuticals) vis-à-vis networking behaviour in ‘complex technology’ sectors (computers, electronics and instruments) are indicated. Second, a difference between knowledge and alliance networks across all examined sectors is pointed out in terms of their effectiveness as channels of knowledge communication. Third, apparent differences in the competitive positioning of European firms and firms from the United States and Japan in the examined sectoral knowledge networks may reveal significant variance in inter-continental business strategy.     

Market Size and Firm Location in a Service Industry

This paper investigates the welfare effects of firm location in a service industry. We consider the situation where firms determine their locations in either of two regions with a difference in market size. From the viewpoint of the consumers' welfare, there are too few firms in the large market and too many in the small market. However, from the viewpoint of the producers' and social welfare, the opposite is true. Further, an increase in the difference in market size is unambiguously unfavorable for the producers. On the other hand, such an increase is favorable for the consumers and the economy as a whole.     

Conjectural Variations and Voluntary Public Good Provision in a Repeated Game Setting

The purpose of this paper is to show how conjectural variations can be derived as a reduced form in an infinitely repeated game of private provision of public goods. We obtain explicit closed forms of conjectural variations associated with maximal sustainable equilibria in which the sum of the utilities of all of a community's members is maximized for both quadratic and Cobb–Douglas preferences, provided that the resulting sequence of contributions can be sustained as a Nash (or subgame perfect) equilibrium in the underlying repeated game. We also show that positive conjectural variations will emerge as long as people place positive weight on the future, and that those conjectures are positively related to the discount factor.     

Policy coordination in East Asia and across the Pacific

In this paper, we construct a macro-econometric model that describes the economic activity in the Asia-Pacific area and provide quantitative insights into the recent policy debates on monetary and currency coordination among the East Asian economies. The model includes a wide variety of monetary and currency policy rules that the East Asian economies adopt and allows for one country's policymaking to have substantial effects on foreign countries. We apply the model to three current policy issues: (1) the desirability of currency basket pegs in East Asia, (2) the anticipated effects of China's currency policy reform, and (3) the non-negativity constraint on Japanese nominal interest rates. The simulation analyses show the external economy effects of policy rules quantitatively and suggest the difficulty of monetary and currency policy coordination among the East Asian economies.

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A Continuous-Time Optimal Insurance Design with Costly Monitoring

We provide a theoretical and numerical framework to study optimal insurance design under asymmetric information. We consider a continuous-time model where neither the efforts nor the outcome of an insured firm are observable to an insurer. The insured may then cause two interconnected information problems: moral hazard and fraudulent claims. We show that, when costly monitoring is available, an optimal insurance contract distinguishes the one problem from the other. Furthermore, if the insured’s downward-risk aversion is weak and if the participation constraint is not too tight, then a higher level of the monitoring technology can mitigate both problems.     

Graduate education and long‐term inventive performance: Evidence from undergraduates' choices during recessions

Using individuals' life‐cycle invention data, we investigate how graduate education affects inventive performance and inventors' abilities to absorb and combine diverse knowledge sources. To control for the endogeneity of educational choice, we use the status of college labor markets as an instrumental variable (IV), specifically the difference between the unemployment rate and its long‐run average rate by academic field. We find that graduate education, induced by the IV, significantly enhances inventive performance and the scope of exploited knowledge, exceeding the levels implied by ordinary least squares. Graduate education can have a significant causal effect on inventive capability and performance.     

Network structure and robustness: lessons for research programme design

The information and communication technology (ICT) network of the last two European Research Framework Programmes (FPs) is deeply influenced by two distinct groups of organizations: a small group of hubs (3% of the participants) hold the key to keeping the network together and a second group of non-hub connectors large enough (39% of the participants) with a significant share of the overall networking activity provide a robust base for the network. The ICT network can survive the removal of single important funding instruments such as integrated projects or specific targeted research projects. Increasing policy rhetoric on innovative application in the new FP (Horizon 2020) should be reflected in a shift of core participants from largely public research and teaching organizations to private-sector companies.