Modeling and Forecasting Health Expectancy: Theoretical Framework and Application

Life expectancy continues to grow in most Western countries; however, a major remaining question is whether longer life expectancy will be associated with more or fewer life years spent with poor health. Therefore, complementing forecasts of life expectancy with forecasts of health expectancies is useful. To forecast health expectancy, an extension of the stochastic extrapolative models developed for forecasting total life expectancy could be applied, but instead of projecting total mortality and using regular life tables, one could project transition probabilities between health states simultaneously and use multistate life table methods. In this article, we present a theoretical framework for a multistate life table model in which the transition probabilities depend on age and calendar time. The goal of our study is to describe a model that projects transition probabilities by the Lee-Carter method, and to illustrate how it can be used to forecast future health expectancy with prediction intervals around the estimates. We applied the method to data on the Dutch population aged 55 and older, and projected transition probabilities until 2030 to obtain forecasts of life expectancy, disability-free life expectancy, and probability of compression of disability.     

Combining estimators from variety trials that are connected by control varieties only

At one site and year often numerous variety trials are performed. Sometimes these trials only have a small number of control varieties in common. It is possible to obtain best linear unbiased estimators (BLUEs) of estimable linear combinations of the variety parameters without analysing the joint observations of all trials as a whole. The unbiased local estimator of the contrast between the parameter of a new variety and the average of the parameters of the control varieties, calculated at a single trial, can be improved to the BLUE with information from the other trials. This improvement represents a contrast of contrasts between control variety parameters at the various trials. In some situations the local estimator is already the BLUE, e.g. if only one control variety is used or in case of variance-balanced designs.     

Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy

This article questions the fashionable ideas that bureaucraticorganization is an obsolescent, undesirable, and non-viableform of administration and that there is an inevitable and irreversibleparadigmatic shift towards market- or network-organization.In contrast, the paper argues that contemporary democraciesare involved in another round in a perennial debate and ideologicalstruggle over what are desirable forms of administration andgovernment: that is, a struggle over institutional identitiesand institutional balances. The argument is not that bureaucraticorganization is a panacea and the answer to all challenges ofpublic administration. Rather, bureaucratic organization ispart of a repertoire of overlapping, supplementary, and competingforms coexisting in contemporary democracies, and so are market-organizationand network-organization. Rediscovering Weber's analysis ofbureaucratic organization, then, enriches our understandingof public administration. This is in particular true when we(a) include bureaucracy as an institution, not only an instrument;(b) look at the empirical studies in their time and context,not only at Weber's ideal-types and predictions; and (c) takeinto account the political and normative order bureaucracy ispart of, not only the internal characteristics of "the bureau."     

Unemployment and Monetary Integration: On the relevance of wage-formation characteristics in a target-zone regime versus an irrevocably fixed exchange-rate regime

Abstract. This paper examines the relevance of wage-formation characteristics for the evolution of unemployment, comparing the current semi-fixed exchange rate system (EMS, described by a target zone regime) with an irrevocably fixed exchange-rate regime (EMU). The topic is analyzed in a model which emphasizes the working of the labour market and distinguishes between three types of shocks (a shock to money demand, goods demand and goods supply). The analysis points out that the impact of wage formation on unemployment depends crucially on the kind of shock as well as the exchange-rate regime in force.