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.     

Allocations and Common Costs in Long-Run Investing and Pricing Decisions: An Historical Analysis

The extent to which allocated common costs should influence business decisions remains controversial in management accounting. In the finance and investment literature this issue is generally ignored or dismissed by appeals to the'incremental' principle. This article presents an historical analysis of allocations in long-run investing and pricing decisions. It is demonstrated that seminal figures in the development of both investment and price theory were conscious of the need for firms to cover common costs and generally favoured some form of allocation. The anti-allocationist position is shown to be of relatively recent origin and to have caused an inconsistency in the management accounting literature in the treatment of common costs. European costing theory is shown to have been consistently allocationist. Evidence of a return in the recent U.S. literature to the older Anglo-American, and continuing European, allocations tradition is presented.     

对我国上市银行非经常性损益披露的分析和建议

本文通过分析2001至2004年上市银行年报非经常性损益的披露状况,对照监管部门法规,发现存在披露不充分的现象,对非经常性损益的确认也有理解偏颇,由此造成很多重大的可疑事项未计入非经常性损益。本文认为这对银行利润的真实性产生一定的影响,故建议政策制定者制定更详细的法规来规范披露行为,并就一些特殊事项做出释疑。     

The use of the postal questionnaire in accounting history research

This methodological article discusses the first project in accounting history to use the postal questionnaire as a research tool. The historical context was the changing nature of the company audit in Britain, and this article outlines the process by which the questionnaire was devised, the stages through which the project developed, the data that were collected, and how these were analysed and interpreted. A significant innovation was to sample, in equal proportions, accountants who qualified in each decade from the 1920s and 1930s down to the 1980s, and direct the questioning toward their early training and careers, thereby generating historical trends in the responses. Some of the results of the survey are given here by way of illustrating the weaknesses and strengths/costs and benefits of the technique in comparison with oral history and traditional documentary sources.     

On estimating the mean of the selected normal population under the LINEX loss function

Following Parsian and Farsipour (1999), we consider the problem of estimating the mean of the selected normal population, from two normal populations with unknown means and common known variance, under the LINEX loss function. Some admissibility results for a subclass of equivariant estimators are derived and a sufficient condition for the inadmissibility of an arbitrary equivariant estimator is provided. As a consequence, several of the estimators proposed by Parsian and Farsipour (1999) are shown to be inadmissible and better estimators are obtained. Received January 2001/Revised May 2002     

中小私营企业融资中"逆向选择"失灵现象新探

对某些地域中小私营企业融资行为的实证分析表明与常规的设想相反,同国有企业极高的融资热情相比,一般被人们认为风险较大的私营中小企业在融资中存在“逆向选择”失灵的现象。本建立了一个模型对导致此现象的原因进行了探讨。     

公共经济视角下的国有企业改革分析

国有企业的发展状况表明,单纯从产权方面进行国有企业改革的理论研究和实践是有很大缺陷的,需要从新的视角去探索国有企业的改革思路。之所以从公共经济学的角度去分析国有企业问题,是因为国有企业或多或少具有公共产品的性质,政府对国有企业改革的态度及其行为反映了市场配置资源的能力和国有企业改革所引起的福利改变。     

Using technology to improve the management of development impacts on biodiversity

The mitigation hierarchy (MH) is a prominent tool to help businesses achieve no net loss or net gain outcomes for biodiversity. Technological innovations offer benefits for business biodiversity management, yet the range and continued evolution of technologies creates a complex landscape that can be difficult to navigate. Using literature review, online surveys, and semi-structured interviews, we assess technologies that can improve application of the MH. We identify six categories (mobile survey, fixed survey, remote sensing, blockchain, data analysis, and enabling technologies) with high feasibility and/or relevance to (i) aid direct implementation of mitigation measures and (ii) enhance biodiversity surveys and monitoring, which feed into the design of interventions including avoidance and minimization measures. At the interface between development and biodiversity impacts, opportunities lie in businesses investing in technologies, capitalizing on synergies between technology groups, collaborating with conservation organizations to enhance institutional capacity, and developing practical solutions suited for widespread use.     

论管理层收购与国有资产流失

管理层收购(MBO)作为一种企业收购方式,可以将公司发展和管理层利益紧密联系,起到激励管理层积极性、提升企业的经营管理凝聚力、降低委托代理成本等作用。在实践MBO过程中,出现了大量的国有资产流失的现象,但是,国有资产流失与MBO本身没有必然联系,而是由于缺乏合理的定价模式、国有资产所有者虚置、信息披露和监管不利以及法律滞后等外部原因造成的,本文对这些原因进行了具体分析,并提出了相应解决方案。     

警惕我国企业集群发展中潜在问题

企业集群是当今区域经济发展规划的新趋势 ,引起了多学科领域学者关注。我国已经出现了一些企业集群的雏形 ,但是这些企业集群都存在不同的问题。以东莞、温州及部分的高新区为例 ,从各自的形成过程、发展轨迹等角度 ,讨论了各具特色的区域集群存在的不同性质的问题