The United States spends more for healthcare than any other country in the world. With the rising prevalence of both Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) represents the leading chronic gastrointestinal disease with increasing healthcare expenditures in the US. IBD costs have shifted from inpatient to outpatient care since the introduction of biologic therapies as the standard of care. Gastroenterologists need to be aware of the national cost burden of IBD and clinical practices that optimize cost-efficiency. This investigation offers a systematic review of the economics of IBD and evidence-based strategies for cost-effective management.

Abstract

This chapter will deal with the actual and efficient functioning of health insurance in settings where risk (expected value) of medical spending or insurance benefits varies across individuals at a given point in time or over time for a given individual. It will deal with equilibrium in insurance markets with risk variation and will also deal with various configurations of information, the impacts on such markets of regulation motivated by risk variation, and the actual and optimal impact of governmental policies to deal with risk variation in national insurance systems. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

Venture capital investment has become globalized in the business landscape. Scholars
have reported an increasing globalization trend in the VC industry, as measured by VC
investment across national borders (Wright et al., 2005). Aylward (1998) found that Asian
countries/economies (e.g., Singapore, Hong Kong, and India) largely sourced their venture funds internationally. Baygan (2000) demonstrated that European countries experienced increases of cross-border VC flow. Aizenman & Kendall (2008) found that the number/volume of VC deals with international participation has increased in recent years. Finally, according to the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu 2009 Global Venture Capital Survey, 52% of VCs already invest outside their home countries (Deloitte, 2009). Researchers also examine mechanisms behind this globalization trend: Guler & Guillen (2010) analyze the influence of recipient countries’ institutions on U.S. VC firms’ international investment decision. Aizenman & Kendall analyze the determinants of global VC flow using the gravity model framework. My two studies, both of which examine determinants and patterns of VC investment globalization, are positioned in this stream of research.

This article sketches the outlines of a contemporary inter- and transdisciplinary methodology to understand the current global change. It gives a short overview over the seven-fold approach of the author called “System Action Theory”, which tries to integrate the typological discourses and systemic order patterns of politics, economics, culture, religion, technology and demography. According to the author, the “global systemic shift” is nevertheless not reducable to the sum of these six dimensions, but is “more than the sum of its parts” and thus a seventh dimension which has to be understood through its inbuilt dialectics, conflicts and (productive) contradictions. Because most relevant problems in the globalized world get multidimensional, plurifaceted and ambiguous, no single discipline will be able to achieve a sound, complex-adequate analysis anymore. Instead, an inter- and transdisciplinary stance will always be more necessary.

Following the Second Industrial Revolution, Western medicine has become an interwoven enterprise of humanitarian and technologic values. In this essay, we posited that rather than being seen as a means toward achieving the ends of providing technically right and morally sound pain care, the resources and goods of pain medicine have been subordinated to a market-based values system that regards these tools as ends unto themselves. We argued that this approach is 1) pragmatically inapt, in that it fails to acknowledge and provide those tools as rightly necessary for the “good” of pain medicine to be enacted; and is therefore 2) morally unsound, in that the good, while recognized, is not afforded, thereby disserving the fiduciary of science/technology, medicine, and economics. We framed these issues within 1) the context(s) and effects of postmodernism and 2) the increasing call for a globally relevant and applicable system of pain care. Toward this latter end, we addressed how policies can be created that accommodate differing social values, and still enable the execution of care in ways that are morally sound, yet economically viable. We posited that such policies need to be finely grained so as to 1) sustain research in pain diagnosis, assessment, treatment, and management; 2) translate research efforts into clinically relevant resources; 3) enable availability and just distribution of both low- and high-tech resources; and 4) prompt fiscal programs that support, allow, and reinforce responsible choice (of such resources) as socioculturally required, valued, and valid.

This paper examines the academic performance of migrant students in migrant schools in China and explores determinants of their performance. The paper compares academic performance, student backgrounds and measures of school quality between Beijing migrant schools and rural public schools in Shaanxi province. Furthermore, we employ multivariate regression to examine how individual characteristics and school quality affect migrant student performance and the achievement gap between students in migrant schools and those in rural public schools. We find that although students in Beijing migrant schools outperform students in Shaanxi’s rural public schools when they initially arrive in Beijing, they gradually lose ground to rural students due to the poorer school resources teachers in migrant schools. Additional analysis comparing migrant students in migrant schools to migrant students in Beijing public schools demonstrates that given access to better educational resources, migrant school students may be able to significantly improve their performance.

Consistent with the property rights theory of ownership incorporating soft budget constraints (SBCs), we find that controlling for SBCs, for-profit hospitals drop safety-net services more often and exhibit higher mortality rates, suggesting aggressive cost control that damages non-contractible quality.

Many educational systems have struggled with the question about how best to give out financial aid. In particular, if students do not know the amount of financial aid that they are receive before they make a decision about where to go to college and what major to study, it may distort their decision. This study utilizes an experiment (implemented by ourselves as a Randomized Control Trial) to analyze whether or not an alternative way of providing financial aid--by providing an early commitment on financial aid during the student's senior year of high school instead of after entering college--affects the college decision making of poor students in rural China. We find that if early commitments are made early enough; and they are large enough, students will make less distorting college decisions.

Background

Cardiovascular diseases represent an increasing share of the global disease burden. There is concern that increased consumption of palm oil could exacerbate mortality from ischemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke, particularly in developing countries where it represents a major nutritional source of saturated fat.

Methods

The study analyzed country-level data from 1980-1997 derived from the World Health Organization's Mortality Database, U.S. Department of Agriculture international estimates, and the World Bank (234 annual observations; 23 countries). Outcomes included mortality from IHD and stroke for adults aged 50 and older. Predictors included per-capita consumption of palm oil and cigarettes and per-capita Gross Domestic Product as well as time trends and an interaction between palm oil consumption and country economic development level. Analyses examined changes in country-level outcomes over time employing linear panel regressions with country-level fixed effects, population weighting, and robust standard errors clustered by country. Sensitivity analyses included further adjustment for other major dietary sources of saturated fat.

Results

In developing countries, for every additional kilogram of palm oil consumed per-capita annually, IHD mortality rates increased by 68 deaths per 100,000 (95% CI [21-115]), whereas, in similar settings, stroke mortality rates increased by 19 deaths per 100,000 (95% CI [-12-49]) but were not significant. For historically high-income countries, changes in IHD and stroke mortality rates from palm oil consumption were smaller (IHD: 17 deaths per 100,000 (95% CI [5.3-29]); stroke: 5.1 deaths per 100,000 (95% CI [-1.2-11.0])). Inclusion of other major saturated fat sources including beef, pork, chicken, coconut oil, milk cheese, and butter did not substantially change the differentially higher relationship between palm oil and IHD mortality in developing countries.

Conclusions

Increased palm oil consumption is related to higher IHD mortality rates in developing countries. Palm oil consumption represents a saturated fat source relevant for policies aimed at reducing cardiovascular disease burdens.