The Money–Happiness Relationship in Transition Countries: Evidence from Albania

With an empirical analysis on a panel of individuals living in a transition country (Albania) we document that the impact of money on happiness does not depend only on the pecuniary outcome but also on aspirations and conditions leading to its determination. Additional factors which matter are the self perceived economic status and the share earned from remittances (and, more weakly, from social assistance). By looking at different sides of the phenomenon we find that these factors affect levels, changes in income and the probability of being “frustrated achievers”. Finally, unlike what happens in developed countries, higher income levels are negatively and not positively correlated with the probability of frustrated achievement thereby supporting the hypothesis that individuals in transition countries are not in the upper side of a concave happiness-income relationship.     

Eliciting expert judgements about a set of proportions

Eliciting expert knowledge about several uncertain quantities is a complex task when those quantities exhibit associations. A well-known example of such a problem is eliciting knowledge about a set of uncertain proportions which must sum to 1. The usual approach is to assume that the expert's knowledge can be adequately represented by a Dirichlet distribution, since this is by far the simplest multivariate distribution that is appropriate for such a set of proportions. It is also the most convenient, particularly when the expert's prior knowledge is to be combined with a multinomial sample since then the Dirichlet is the conjugate prior family. Several methods have been described in the literature for eliciting beliefs in the form of a Dirichlet distribution, which typically involve eliciting from the expert enough judgements to identify uniquely the Dirichlet hyperparameters. We describe here a new method which employs the device of over-fitting, i.e. eliciting more than the minimal number of judgements, in order to (a) produce a more carefully considered Dirichlet distribution and (b) ensure that the Dirichlet distribution is indeed a reasonable fit to the expert's knowledge. The method has been implemented in a software extension of the Sheffield elicitation framework (SHELF) to facilitate the multivariate elicitation process.     

The Relationship Between Social Leisure and Life Satisfaction: Causality and Policy Implications

Social leisure is generally found to be positively correlated with life satisfaction in the empirical literature. We ask if this association captures a genuine causal effect by using panel data from the GSOEP. Our identification strategy exploits the change in social leisure brought about by retirement, since the latter is an event after which the time investable in (the outside job) relational life increases. We instrument social leisure with various measures of the age cohort specific probability of retirement. With such approach we document that social leisure has a positive and significant effect on life satisfaction. Our findings shed some light on the age-happiness pattern. Policy implications are also discussed.     

Experiments with the Traveler��s Dilemma: welfare, strategic choice and implicit collusion

This article investigates behavior in the Traveler??s Dilemma game and isolates deviations from textbook predictions caused by differences in welfare perceptions and strategic miscalculations. It presents the results of an experimental analysis based on a 2?×?2 design where the own and the other subject??s bonus?Cpenalty parameters are changed independently. We find that the change in own bonus?Cpenalty alone entirely explains the effect on claims of a simultaneous change in one??s own and the other??s bonus?Cpenalty. An increase in the other subject??s bonus?Cpenalty has a significant negative effect on claims when the own bonus?Cpenalty is low, whereas it does not have a significant effect when the own bonus?Cpenalty is high. We also find that expected claims are inconsistent with actual claims in the asymmetric treatments. Focusing on reported strategies, we document substantial heterogeneity and show that changes in choices across treatments are largely explained by risk aversion.     

The healthcare supply network: current state of the literature and research opportunities

Abstract

This literature review maps recent studies addressing supply chain management (SCM) in the healthcare sector through a systematic approach that synthesises 74 empirical studies (2006–2016). Our approach adopts a network lens to map the literature and offers key contributions to the field. First, we show that there is a lack of network level studies. Second, there is an imbalance of research attention regarding the various types of supply, namely health services, medicines, medical supplies and blood supply. Third, we underline the advantages of the network lens, indicating network actors and flows between those actors that need further research. Fourth, we show an alarming lack of theoretical lens in healthcare SCM studies and draw attention to the fact that even when explicitly adopting a theory, some studies show inconsistencies between theoretical lens and level of analysis. Ultimately, we offer a map of future research for healthcare SCM through a network lens in order to improve the understanding the complexities of the healthcare sector.     

Postural analysis of eight university student wheelchair users when performing written exercises in their classroom: a case study in Santiago de Cali, Colombia

In students with physical disabilities, the more energy and time required and invested into finding a good posture, the longer the learning process takes. For this reason, the objective of this study was to characterize the posture in the act of writing of wheelchair users in a classroom. Eight students, (three women) aged 18-40, of some of the main universities of the city of Santiago de Cali participated. An observational field study filming of approximately 10 minutes was done while they took notes in their classes. Posture of the head, trunk, and upper extremities was analyzed with respect to its axis and the type of movement in each joint. The postures were classified depending on the location of support surface finding five different postures in the eight students. In these five postures some biomechanical risk factors, usually present in wheelchair users, are increased when they are associated with those postures. Those associated risk factors are: possible disc spine deformation, muscular stress and causing of pressure ulcer. In conclusion, in four of these five postures a poor interaction among person, task and work desk was observed. Therefore, seven of the eight students in this study were found to have a posture that could be considered risky.     

Analysis of the lifted weight including height and frequency factors for workers in Colombia

Factors related to the height of the load and the frequency of handling have become a way to predict the acceptable standard weight lifted for workers whose main task is the manual lifting of materials and measuring the conditions is important to determine a maximum weight lifted. This study was conducted to twenty (20) workers between eighteen (18) and forty (40) years old with a minimum six months experience and belonging to the warehouse and packaging area of a dairy products company. Consideration was given to three different heights such as knuckle, shoulder and total height as well as frequencies of 2, 4 and 6 times per minute. Average values for lifted weight were 17.9306 ± 2.37 kg. The conclusions and recommendations included a review of legislation related to Colombian maximum acceptable weight of lifting due to the current law does not match the acceptable weight handled in this research.