Latin American convergence and divergence towards the mortality profiles of developed countries

It is uncertain whether Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries are approaching a single mortality regime. Over the last three decades, LAC has experienced major public health interventions and the highest number of homicides in the world. However, these interventions and homicide rates are not evenly shared across countries. This study documents trends in life expectancy and lifespan variability for 20 LAC countries, 2000–14. By extending a previous method, we decompose differences in lifespan variability between LAC and a developed world benchmark into cause-specific effects. For both sexes, dispersion of amenable diseases through the age span makes the largest contribution to the gap between LAC and the benchmark. Additionally, for males, the concentration of homicides, accidents, and suicides in mid-life further impedes mortality convergence. Great disparity exists in the region: while some countries are rapidly approaching the developed regime, others remain far behind and suffer a clear disadvantage in population health.     

Risk management: a general framework for rural development

This paper proposes a new concept of rural development in an uncertain world. The nature of risk and uncertainty is discussed and risk management is defined as a positive model of economic and social behaviour. Some relevant paradigms for rural development are reviewed and evaluated within the general approach of risk management. It is demonstrated that the proposed view of risk management can effectively combine and reconcile different approaches by highlighting their advantages and shortcomings. Departing from a subjective definition of risk management, we progressively include its social dimensions which introduce both complexity and structure into the process of rural development.     

Moral conformity in online interactions: rational justifications increase influence of peer opinions on moral judgments

Over the last decade, social media has increasingly been used as a platform for political and moral discourse. We investigate whether conformity, specifically concerning moral attitudes, occurs in these virtual environments apart from face-to-face interactions. Participants took an online survey and saw either statistical information about the frequency of certain responses, as one might see on social media (Study 1), or arguments that defend the responses in either a rational or emotional way (Study 2). Our results show that social information shaped moral judgments, even in an impersonal digital setting. Furthermore, rational arguments were more effective at eliciting conformity than emotional arguments. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of moral judgment that prioritize emotional responses.     

Recent Mortality Trend Reversal in Russia: Are Regions Following the Same Tempo?

After several decades of negative trends and short-term fluctuations, life expectancy has been increasing in Russia since 2004. Between 2003 and 2014, the length of life rose by 6.6 years among males and by 4.6 years among females. While positive trends in life expectancy are observed in all regions of Russia, these trends are unfolding differently in different regions. First, regions entered the phase of life expectancy growth at different points in time. Second, the age- and cause-specific components of the gains in life expectancy and the number of years added vary noticeably. In this paper, we apply decomposition techniques—specifically, the stepwise replacement algorithm—to examine the age- and cause-specific components of the changes in inter-regional disparities during the current period of health improvement. The absolute inter-regional disparities in length of life, measured by the population-weighted standard deviation, decreased slightly between 2003 and 2014, from 3.3 to 3.2 years for males, and from 2.0 to 1.8 years for females. The decomposition of these small changes by ages and causes of death shows that these shifts were the result of diverse effects of mortality convergence at young and middle ages, and of mortality divergence at older ages. With respect to causes of death, the convergence is mainly attributable to external causes, while the inter-regional divergence of trends is largely determined by cardiovascular diseases. The two major cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, are currently pioneering mortality improvements in Russia and are making the largest contributions to the inter-regional divergence.     

Predictive Hierarchic Modeling of Operational Characteristics in Clinical Trials

An analytic methodology for patient enrollment modeling using a Poisson-gamma model is developed by Anisimov & Fedorov (2005–2007). For modeling hierarchic processes associated with enrollment, a new methodology using evolving stochastic processes is proposed. This provides rather general and unified framework to describe various operational processes associated with enrollment. The technique for calculating predictive distributions, mean, and credibility bounds for evolving processes is developed. Some applications to modeling operational characteristics in clinical trials are considered with focus to modeling events associated with incoming and follow-up patients in different settings. For these models, predictive characteristics are derived in a closed form.     

International coopetition for innovation: Are the benefits worth the challenges?

International coopetition has rarely been studied in relation to innovation. Further exploration of effects of international coopetition, i.e. the pursuit of simultaneous cooperation and competition, on a firm’s innovation performance is especially important as such a relationship is challenging with a high propensity to fail. This observation formed the point of departure for this study, which aims to increase the understanding of the effects of international coopetition on firm innovativeness and how these effects are conditioned on the magnitude of the organizational adjustments a firm introduces. We use an unbalanced panel of 9839 firms that participated in four waves of the Swedish Community Innovation Survey between 2008 and 2014 as our empirical base. We illustrate that firms that cooperate with competitors internationally are more likely to exhibit higher propensity to introduce radical innovations, yet this effect is conditioned upon the magnitude of organizational adjustments. Overall, our study contributes to the understanding of the implications of international coopetition and what a firm needs to benefit from it.     

Effects of Alternative Policies on Income Redistribution: Evidence from Brazil

Despite recent successes, Brazilian income (cash) transfer policies remain controversial, and alternative approaches to income redistribution are being actively considered. This article contributes to this debate, analysing the effects of several alternative policies for income redistribution in the Brazilian economy using a computable general equilibrium model. Simulations were conducted consistent with the following policies: direct transfer of income, reduction of taxes, and incentives to agricultural exports. The results suggest that transfer of income is the most effective in promoting redistribution of income, with a positive impact on the level of welfare of the poorest households.