Health Policy in the Asian NIEs

This paper compares the health policies of Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan with the purpose of drawing policy lessons. The study finds two distinct policy clusters: Hong Kong and Singapore on the one hand, and Korea and Taiwan on the other. With respect to provision of health care, the former rely largely on public hospitals for delivering inpatient care while the latter rely on private hospitals. In matters of financing, they are similar in that out‐of‐pocket is a major source of financing in all four countries. However, they are also different because Korea and Taiwan have universal health insurance while the city states do not. The study concludes that public provision of hospital care, as in Hong Kong and Singapore, yields more favourable outcomes than many mainstream economists would have us believe. Conversely, private provision in combination with social insurance, as found in Korea and Taiwan, severely undermines efforts to contain health care costs.     

Making Inter-country Comparison of Life Expectancy Inequality Sensitive

Two populations with the sameoverall longevity but different age andage-specific-mortality profiles may produce avariety of differences in terms of issues thatare relevant for development policy. A simplemethod of comparing countries has beensuggested in this paper, which is sensitive tosome of these differences that are usuallyhidden under life expectancy figures. In theprocess, some of the recent attempts inadjusting life expectancy for `inequality' havebeen critically examined.     

Trust,Social Networks and Subjective Wellbeing in China

Using data from the World Values Survey, this study examines the associations among trust, social networks and subjective wellbeing in China. We address the endogenous nature of trust and social networks, and examine how these elements of social capital affect subjective wellbeing. We also explore the interplay between trust and social networks. Existing literature suggests that trust and social networks positively impact wellbeing, with one strand of the literature suggesting that in developed countries social capital is a stronger determinant of wellbeing than income. However, we find that this is not the case for China (a developing country) where the effects of trust and social networks on wellbeing are found to be relatively weaker compared to the effect of income.     

Study on lumbar kinematics and the risk of low back disorder in female university students by using shoes of different heel heights

The study was taken up to investigate the effects of heel heights on lumbar kinematics and the risk of Low Back Disorder (LBD) in females. Nineteen female university students (24.5 ± 3.36 yrs) volunteered in the study. Lumbar kinematics was measured by using Industrial Lumbar Motion Monitor (iLMM). The volunteers were asked to walk for a distance of 50 meters in 3 different given conditions i.e bare foot (Heel 0), with flat heels (Heel 1) and with high heels (Heel 2). Heights of Heel 1 and Heel 2 were 1.5 ± 0.84 cm and 5.5 ± 1.70 cm respectively. The Lumbar kinematic parameters studied were- Average Twisting Velocity (ATV), Maximum Sagital Flexion (MSF) and Maximum Lateral Velocity (MLV). It was observed that all the above mentioned Lumbar kinematics - ATV, MSF and MLV increases with increase of heel heights, which in turn increases the risk of LBD. As a result of increase in Lumbar kinematic values with increase in heel heights, LBD risk has also increased. Mean and SD of the LBD risk with Heel 0, Heel 1 and Heel 2 were 16.79 ± 6.04%, 19.00 ± 7.38% and 22.11 ± 6.98% respectively. Lower stature with high heels showed higher risk of LBD than the higher stature with high heels.     

Local likelihood smoothing of sample extremes

Trends in sample extremes are of interest in many contexts, an example being environmental statistics. Parametric models are often used to model trends in such data, but they may not be suitable for exploratory data analysis. This paper outlines a semiparametric approach to smoothing sample extremes, based on local polynomial fitting of the generalized extreme value distribution and related models. The uncertainty of fits is assessed by using resampling methods. The methods are applied to data on extreme temperatures and on record times for the women's 3000 m race.     

Demand Forecast Sharing in Supply Chains

This paper examines the incentives of a manufacturer and a retailer to share their demand forecasts. The demand at the retailer is a linearly decreasing function of price. The manufacturer sets the wholesale price first, and the retailer sets the retail price after observing the wholesale price. Both players set their prices based on their forecasts of demand. In the make‐to‐order scenario, the manufacturer sets the production quantity after observing the actual demand; in the make‐to‐stock scenario, the manufacturer sets the production quantity before the demand is realized. In the make‐to‐order scenario, we show that sharing the forecast unconditionally by the retailer with the manufacturer benefits the manufacturer but hurts the retailer. We also demonstrate that a side payment contract cannot induce Pareto‐optimal information sharing equilibrium, but a discount based wholesale price contract can. The social welfare as well as consumer surplus is higher under the discount contract, compared with under no information sharing. In the make‐to‐stock scenario, the manufacturer realizes additional benefits in the form of savings in inventory holding and shortage costs when forecasts are shared. If the savings from inventory holding and shortage costs because of information sharing are sufficiently high, then a side payment contract that induces Pareto‐optimal information sharing is feasible in the make‐to‐stock scenario. We also provide additional managerial insights with the help of a computational study.     

Analysis of discrete data by Conway–Maxwell Poisson distribution

In this paper, we further study the Conway–Maxwell Poisson distribution having one more parameter than the Poisson distribution and compare it with the Poisson distribution with respect to some stochastic orderings used in reliability theory. Likelihood ratio test and the score test are developed to test the importance of this additional parameter. Simulation studies are carried out to examine the performance of the two tests. Two examples are presented, one showing overdispersion and the other showing underdispersion, to illustrate the procedure. It is shown that the COM-Poisson model fits better than the generalized Poisson distribution.     

The Effect of Antenatal Care on Professional Assistance at Delivery in Rural India

Delivering births in a medical institution or at home with professional medical assistance has been shown to promote safe motherhood and child survival. Yet three-quarters of births in rural India continue to take place at home, most of them without the assistance of any trained health worker. This study examines the role of antenatal care (ANC) in promoting professional assistance at delivery, using data from India’s 1992–93 and 1998–99 National Family Health Surveys (NFHS-1 and NFHS-2). We estimate the effect of number of antenatal care visits (0, 1–2, 3+) on professional assistance at delivery (no assistance, professional assistance at home, delivery in a medical institution), using multinomial logistic regression, controlling for demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic factors, pregnancy complications, and two measures of access to health facilities. The results indicate that, after controlling for other variables (including ANC), pregnancy complications and access to health facilities do not have much effect on assistance at delivery. By contrast, ANC has a large effect, even after all other variables are controlled. The effect of ANC on professional assistance at delivery is larger in South India than in North India, and predicted percentages receiving professional assistance are higher in South India than in North India. A policy implication is that increased antenatal care coverage can be an effective means of increasing professional assistance at delivery, especially delivery in a medical institution.

Distribution of a linear function of correlated ordered variables

In this paper, we have considered the problem of finding the distribution of a linear combination of the minimum and the maximum for a general bivariate distribution. The general results are used to obtain the required distribution in the case of bivariate normal, bivariate exponential of Arnold and Strauss, absolutely continuous bivariate exponential distribution of Block and Basu, bivariate exponential distribution of Raftery, Freund's bivariate exponential distribution and Gumbel's bivariate exponential distribution. The distributions of the minimum and maximum are obtained as special cases.