Mortality and Macroeconomic Fluctuations in Contemporary Sweden

Recent research has provided strong evidence that, in the United States in particular and in high- or middle-income economies in general, mortality tends to evolve better in recessions than in expansions. It has been suggested that Sweden may be an exception to this pattern. The present investigation shows, however, that in the period 1968?C2003 mortality oscillated procyclically in Sweden, deviating from its trend upward during expansions and downward during recessions. This pattern is evidenced by the oscillations of life expectancy, total mortality, and age- and sex-specific mortality rates at the national level, and also by regional mortality rates for the major demographic groups during recent decades. Results are robust for different economic indicators, methods of detrending, and models. In lag regression models macroeconomic effects on annual mortality tend to appear lagged 1 year. As in other countries, traffic mortality rises in expansions and declines in recessions, and the same is found for total cardiovascular mortality. However, macroeconomic effects on ischemic heart disease mortality appear at lag two and are hard to interpret. Reasons for the procyclical oscillations of mortality, for inconsistent results found in previous studies, as well as for the differences observed between Sweden and the United States are discussed.     

Macroeconomic fluctuations and mortality in postwar Japan

Recent research has shown that after long-term declining trends are excluded, mortality rates in industrial countries tend to rise in economic expansions and fall in economic recessions. In the present work, co-movements between economic fluctuations and mortality changes in postwar Japan are investigated by analyzing time series of mortality rates and eight economic indicators. To eliminate spurious associations attributable to trends, series are detrended either via Hodrick-Prescott filtering or through differencing. As previously found in other industrial economies, general mortality and age-specific death rates in Japan tend to increase in expansions and drop in recessions, for both males and females. The effect, which is slightly stronger for males, is particularly noticeable in those aged 45-64. Deaths attributed to heart disease, pneumonia, accidents, liver disease, and senility--making up about 41% of total mortality--tend to fluctuate procyclically, increasing in expansions. Suicides, as well as deaths attributable to diabetes and hypertensive disease, make up about 4% of total mortality and fluctuate countercyclically, increasing in recessions. Deaths attributed to other causes, making up about half of total deaths, don't show a clearly defined relationship with the fluctuations of the economy.     

Sensitivity analysis of longitudinal count responses: a local influence approach and application to medical data

Longitudinal count responses are often analyzed with a Poisson mixed model. However, under overdispersion, these responses are better described by a negative binomial mixed model. Estimators of the corresponding parameters are usually obtained by the maximum likelihood method. To investigate the stability of these maximum likelihood estimators, we propose a methodology of sensitivity analysis using local influence. As count responses are discrete, we are unable to perturb them with the standard scheme used in local influence. Then, we consider an appropriate perturbation for the means of these responses. The proposed methodology is useful in different applications, but particularly when medical data are analyzed, because the removal of influential cases can change the statistical results and then the medical decision. We study the performance of the methodology by using Monte Carlo simulation and applied it to real medical data related to epilepsy and headache. All of these numerical studies show the good performance and potential of the proposed methodology.     

Humanitarian Interorganizational Information Exchange Network: How Do Clique Structures Impact Network Effectiveness?

Humanitarian information coordination and sharing continue to challenge the international community. Interorganizational networks are believed to be a way to improve coordination and collaboration among humanitarian organizations. Although researchers have devoted a considerable amount of time exploring the influence of network structure on network performance and effectiveness, little work has been done in the humanitarian relief field. We use the theoretical lens of social network to investigate the relationship between network cliques and network effectiveness. Data were collected through multiple sources among members of GlobalSympoNet, a community of humanitarian organizations engaged in humanitarian information management and exchange. Our findings suggest that, similar to the public health service delivery sector, network effectiveness can be explained by network integration and network cliques in the humanitarian relief field. We discuss these findings and provide some implications of our research in designing interorganizational networks within the humanitarian relief field.     

An emotional step toward automated trust detection in crisis social media

To this date, research on crisis informatics has focused on the detection of trust in Twitter data through the use of message structure, sentiment, propagation and author. Little research has examined the usefulness of these messages in the crisis response domain. In this paper, we characterize tweets, which are perceived useful or trustworthy, and determine their main features as one possible dimension to identify useful messages in case of crisis. In addition, we examine perceived emotions of these messages and how the different emotions affect the perceived usefulness and trustworthiness. Our analysis is carried out on two datasets gathered from Twitter concerning Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the Boston Bombings in 2013. The results indicate that there is a high correlation between trustworthiness and usefulness, and, interestingly, that there is a significant difference in the perceived emotions that contribute to each of these. Our findings are poised to impact how messages from social media data are analyzed for use in crisis response.     

Deploying for Deliverance: The Digital Divide in Municipal Wireless Networks

Abstract

The use of information technology (IT) is growing; access and use differ among those from different races, ethnicities, income and education levels, jobs, ages, and genders. Although some argue that broadband technology could be the platform for universal access, the benefits are still debatable for municipalities providing access. The authors discuss how public officials have decided to lead, support, and usher in an era of rapid IT development through wireless broadband networks to address digital divide concerns, and how these claims may meet—or fail to meet—expectations. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to propose a fruitful investigative overview of U.S. cities claiming that a municipal wireless network will bridge the “digital divide”; and (2) to employ discourse analysis to examine the digital divide language 24 municipal wireless networks (MWNs) use.     

Optimal smoothing of direct estimates of the power spectrum

In this paper we demonstrate how the task of spectral density estimation by direct methods may be posed as that of solving a simple optimal smoothing problem. A criterion functional is considered which involves a smoothness frequency domain term and a fidelity time domain term.     

Third order asymptotics: connections among test quantities

Saddlepoint methods, extended to distribution functions, can provide highly accurate tail probabilities for testing real parameters in exponential models. For extensions, asymptotic connections among various test quantities are needed. For five quantities, the maximum likelihood departure standardized by observed and expected information, the score function standardized by observed and expected information, and the signed square root of the likelihood ratio statistic, the needed connections to third order are recorded. Their use is illustrated by a simple integration proof of the Lugannani and Rice formula.     

The Joint Action of Parents and Adolescents in Conversation About Career

Analyses of 14 videotaped parent—adolescent career conversations reveal the socially constructed nature of career. These analyses are used to identify joint actions in career conversations, determine their patterns, and address their meaning for the participants. Joint action refers to the action that people take together or that occurs between them. The participants used 3 superordinate joint actions (struggle, exploration, and negotiation) and several subordinate joint actions. Three patterns of joint actions were also identified. The joint actions had particular meaning for both career and the relationship between the participants.