Awareness Promotion About Excessive Gambling Among Video Lottery Retailers

This paper describes and evaluates “As luck would have it,” an awareness program completed by retailers in Quebec Province. This program, which is presented as a two-hour awareness promotion workshop, aimed to inform retailers about excessive gambling. More specifically, it provided answers to the following questions: (1) What is chance and randomness? (2) Is there a link between misunderstanding the concept of chance and excessive gambling? (3) How does one recognise the symptoms of this disorder? (4) How should retailers intervene if they decide to do so? Results showed that retailers developed a better understanding of problem gambling, could recognise its main symptoms, felt more capable of coping with excessive gamblers, and of choosing the most appropriate moment to do so. In the follow-up phase, retailers who had attended the workshop reported that they approached a problem gambler significantly more often than the retailers who had not attended the workshop, and had discussed how to help problem gamblers significantly more often. The practical implications of these results are briefly discussed.     

网购环境下在线零售商的退货运费承担策略研究

在电子商务环境下，宽松的退货政策能够刺激需求，促进货品销量的增长，但与此同时也导致了退货量的增多。在面临高退货，特别是无缺陷退货不断攀升的挑战下，在线商家应如何制定合理的退货策略成为值得研究的一个问题。本文主要针对退货运费承担问题，重点比较消费者承担退货运费、商家承担退货运费、双方共同承担退货运费三种策略，探讨不同策略下在线零售商的最优定价及其盈利能力。研究结果表明：为实现利润最大化，在线零售商应根据商品的无缺陷退货比例特征选择相应的策略。具体而言，当商品的无缺陷退货比例较低时，宜采用消费者承担退货运费策略；当无缺陷退货比例高时，宜采用商家承担退货运费策略；当无缺陷退货比例居中时，宜采用共同承担退货运费策略。值得注意的是，退货政策的目的是为了刺激需求的增长，但有时退货政策对需求的促进作用不够理想，不能抵消退货的负面影响，那么这种情况下则无论无缺陷退货占比如何，在线零售商的最佳退货策略只能是让消费者承担退货运费，以此避免更多非理性退货行为的发生。     

Expanded renal transplantation: a competing risk model approach

Multi-state models (MSMs) are useful to analyze survival data when, besides the event of main interest, one or more intermediate states of the individual are identified. These models take the several existing states and the possible transitions among them into account. At the same time, covariate effects on each transition intensity may be investigated separately and, therefore, MSMs are more flexible than the standard Cox proportional hazards model. In this work, we use MSMs to investigate the impact of the quality of a transplanted kidney for a group of patients at the Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias. Specifically, we use an illness-death model to study the evolution of patients with kidney disease who received a renal transplant after a dialysis period. The intermediate state is defined as the failure of the received organ, while the terminating state is the death of the patient. In order to increase the potential number of organs available for transplant, the standards of quality for the transplanted kidneys were relaxed (the new criteria are labeled expanded criteria), and these ‘expanded kidneys’ were transplanted in appropriate candidates (older patients, with higher prevalence of diabetes mellitus). Results suggest that the expanded kidneys have a minor effect on survival, while both the kidney mortality and the risk of death increase with the patient's age and the serum creatinine and serum hemoglobin levels.     

The Impact of Abuse History and Trauma Symptoms on Successful Completion of a Prostitution-exiting Program

This study examines the trauma symptoms and life experiences of 49 women in a residential prostitution-exiting program and identifies differences among women who complete 90 days of the program and women who drop out of the program prior to completing 90 days. The majority of the women reported childhood abuse, adult abusive relationships, and victimization. Women who completed 90 days of treatment were found to be older than the non-completers. Non-completers were more likely to report clinically significant trauma symptoms including dissociation, poor coping behaviors, sex-related issues, and dysfunctional sexual behavior than completers. These findings suggest the importance of incorporating trauma-focused intervention early in the services provided in the exiting programs as well as the need to address the traumatic symptoms related to childhood and adult trauma histories. Findings also indicate the importance of clinically addressing trauma-related sexual issues, concerns, and behavior.     

A longitudinal analysis of infant and senescent mortality using mixture models

We construct a mixture distribution including infant, exogenous and Gompertzian/non-Gompertzian senescent mortality. Using mortality data from Swedish females 1751–, we show that this outperforms models without these features, and compare its trends in cohort and period mortality over time. We find an almost complete disappearance of exogenous mortality within the last century of period mortality, with cohort mortality approaching the same limits. Both Gompertzian and non-Gompertzian senescent mortality are consistently present, with the estimated balance between them oscillating constantly. While the parameters of the latter appear to be trending over time, the parameters of the former do not.     

烟草行业零售户满意度测评及其提升对策——基于安徽烟草商业企业的调查数据分析

运用比较成熟的顾客满意度测评理论,以安徽省烟草商业企业为例,分析烟草公司面临的形势、经营状况、特别是其销售网络的现状,阐述了安徽烟草公司进行卷烟零售户满意度测评的意义,提出测评实施方法,测评卷烟零售户对烟草公司的满意程度,以了解零售户对烟草公司满意状况和存在的不满意方面。在此基础上,提出了改善这些不足的对策建议,期望以此提高卷烟零售户对烟草公司的满意程度。     

The Influence of Intimate Violence on Transitions out of Cohabitation

Does the experience of violence in a cohabiting union lead participants away from marriage and toward separation, or does violence have only minimal impact once other characteristics of unions and their participants are controlled? This issue is examined using a sample of 411 cohabiting couples followed in both waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Marriage and separation are treated as competing risks. Results show that violence does have an effect, although dissimilar effects emerge for transitions to separation, as opposed to marriage. Net of other factors, intense male violence—male violence that is more severe than the female partner's—raises the hazard of separation. In contrast, female violence, but not male violence, lowers the rate of marriage. The findings appear robust to a variety of operationalizations of partner violence.     

“网运分离”模式下我国铁路运输业路运的竞争

为铁路运输业引入竞争以提高其效率,是一切改革方案的最终目的。“网运分离”模式为此提供了可能。虽然从理论上分析,“网运分离”后铁路运输业存在多种竞争形式,但真正有效的是线路运营权的竞争和与其它运输方式间的竞争两种。从有效竞争理论和可竞争市场理论分析,在我国铁路运输业引入竞争,需要政府、企业、社会多方面的努力。     

Nonparametric estimation of discrete hazard functions

A smoothing procedure for discrete time failure data is proposed which allows for the inclusion of covariates. This purely nonparametric method is based on discrete or continuous kernel smoothing techniques that gives a compromise between the data and smoothness. The method may be used as an exploratory tool to uncover the underlying structure or as an alternative to parametric methods when prediction is the primary objective. Confidence intervals are considered and alternative techniques of cross validation based choices of smoothing parameters are investigated.     

Land‐Price Dynamics and Macroeconomic Fluctuations

We argue that positive co‐movements between land prices and business investment are a driving force behind the broad impact of land‐price dynamics on the macroeconomy. We develop an economic mechanism that captures the co‐movements by incorporating two key features into a DSGE model: We introduce land as a collateral asset in firms' credit constraints, and we identify a shock that drives most of the observed fluctuations in land prices. Our estimates imply that these two features combine to generate an empirically important mechanism that amplifies and propagates macroeconomic fluctuations through the joint dynamics of land prices and business investment.