PhD series
Author: Roberta Distante
Publisher:
Published: 2012
Total Pages:
ISBN-13:
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Heterogeneity and Relative Concerns
Author: Roberta Distante
Publisher:
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 133
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDeveloping a Protocol for Observational Comparative Effectiveness Research: A User's Guide
Author: Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (U.S.)
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Published: 2013-02-21
Total Pages: 236
ISBN-13: 1587634236
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis User’s Guide is a resource for investigators and stakeholders who develop and review observational comparative effectiveness research protocols. It explains how to (1) identify key considerations and best practices for research design; (2) build a protocol based on these standards and best practices; and (3) judge the adequacy and completeness of a protocol. Eleven chapters cover all aspects of research design, including: developing study objectives, defining and refining study questions, addressing the heterogeneity of treatment effect, characterizing exposure, selecting a comparator, defining and measuring outcomes, and identifying optimal data sources. Checklists of guidance and key considerations for protocols are provided at the end of each chapter. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews. More more information, please consult the Agency website: www.effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov)
Exploring the Heterogeneity of Other-regarding Preferences
Author: Langchuan Peng
Publisher:
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 112
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis project studies the impact of heterogeneous other-regarding preferences on many issues, such as taxation, government revenue and income inequality. The first two chapters build upon the literature of relative income effects pioneered by Duesenberry (1949). This hypothesis says that the utility of an individual depends on not only his absolute income level, but also his relative income position. An individual gains utility if his income exceeds the income of most members in his comparison group and loses utility if his income falls below the income of most members in the group. Most previous studies consider either a symmetric or a simple version of asymmetric case. In contrast, chapter 1 uses the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to depict a broader heterogeneity: income-dependent relative income effects. Results suggest that one's relative income effect indeed depends on one's income level. In chapter 2, we investigate the effect of these income-dependent relative income effects on an optimal income tax model. Simulation results show that the optimal tax system becomes more progressive to the extent that the relatively wealthy have stronger concerns regarding others' income than the relatively poor. This is an important result because it may provide theoretical evidence that increasing progressivity can be efficiency-enhancing. In chapter 3, we consider the effects of other-regarding preferences on equilibrium labor supply, tax revenue, and income inequality in a society where agents have heterogeneous skill levels and thus heterogeneous wage rates. Different from the previous two chapters, the model in this chapter is sufficiently flexible to allow the externality from agents who are "ahead" to differ in both magnitude and direction from those who are "behind." Our findings have important implications for tax policy.
Comparative Effectiveness Review Methods
Author: U. S. Department of Health and Human Services
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
Published: 2013-05-17
Total Pages: 226
ISBN-13: 9781484997062
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) commissioned the RTI International–University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (RTI-UNC) Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) to explore how systematic review groups have dealt with clinical heterogeneity and to seek out best practices for addressing clinical heterogeneity in systematic reviews (SRs) and comparative effectiveness reviews (CERs). Such best practices, to the extent they exist, may enable AHRQ's EPCs to address critiques from patients, clinicians, policymakers, and other proponents of health care about the extent to which “average” estimates of the benefits and harms of health care interventions apply to individual patients or to small groups of patients sharing similar characteristics. Such users of reviews often assert that EPC reviews typically focus on broad populations and, as a result, often lack information relevant to patient subgroups that are of particular concern to them. More important, even when EPCs evaluate literature on homogeneous groups, there may be varying individual treatment for no apparent reason, indicating that average treatment effect does not point to the best treatment for any given individual. Thus, the health care community is looking for better ways to develop information that may foster better medical care at a “personal” or “individual” level. To address our charge for this methods project, the EPC set out to answer six key questions (KQ). Key questions for methods report on clinical heterogeneity include: 1. What is clinical heterogeneity? a. How has it been defined by various groups? b. How is it distinct from statistical heterogeneity? c. How does it fit with other issues that have been addressed by the AHRQ Methods Manual for CERs? 2. How have systematic reviews dealt with clinical heterogeneity in the key questions? a. What questions have been asked? b. How have they pre-identified population subgroups with common clinical characteristics that modify their intervention-outcome association? c. What are best practices in key questions and how these subgroups have been identified? 3. How have systematic reviews dealt with clinical heterogeneity in the review process? a. What do guidance documents of various systematic review groups recommend? b. How have EPCs handled clinical heterogeneity in their reviews? c. What are best practices in searching for and interpreting results for particular subgroups with common clinical characteristics that may modify their intervention-outcome association? 4. What are critiques in how systematic reviews handle clinical heterogeneity? a. What are critiques from specific reviews (peer and public) on how EPCs handled clinical heterogeneity? b. What general critiques (in the literature) have been made against how systematic reviews handle clinical heterogeneity? 5. What evidence is there to support how to best address clinical heterogeneity in a systematic review? 6. What questions should an EPC work group on clinical heterogeneity address? Heterogeneity (of any type) in EPC reviews is important because its appearance suggests that included studies differed on one or more dimensions such as patient demographics, study designs, coexisting conditions, or other factors. EPCs then need to clarify for clinical and other audiences, collectively referred to as stakeholders, what are the potential causes of the heterogeneity in their results. This will allow the stakeholders to understand whether and to what degree they can apply this information to their own patients or constituents. Of greatest importance for this project was clinical heterogeneity, which we define as the variation in study population characteristics, coexisting conditions, cointerventions, and outcomes evaluated across studies included in an SR or CER that may influence or modify the magnitude of the intervention measure of effect (e.g., odds ratio, risk ratio, risk difference).
Choosing Your Pond
Author: Nicolas L. Bottan
Publisher:
Published: 2017
Total Pages: 41
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWe provide a unique revealed-preference test of the hypothesis that, in addition to their absolute level of consumption, individuals care about their relative consumption. We study the decisions of senior medical students participating in the National Residency Match Program (NRMP). They must choose between programs that offer similar nominal income, but in cities with different costs of living and income distributions. As a result, they face trade-offs between absolute consumption and relative consumption. We conducted a survey experiment with 1,100 NRMP participants. We elicited their perceptions about cost of living and income distribution in the cities that they are considering living in, as well as their rank order submissions. To assess the direction of causality, we embedded an information-provision experiment that generates exogenous variation in perceptions. We find that, holding absolute consumption constant, the average individual prefers higher relative consumption. Moreover, we find substantial and meaningful heterogeneity in relative concerns by relationship status.
Heterogeneity and Persistence in Returns to Wealth
Author: Andreas Fagereng
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Published: 2018-07-27
Total Pages: 69
ISBN-13: 1484370066
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWe provide a systematic analysis of the properties of individual returns to wealth using twelve years of population data from Norway’s administrative tax records. We document a number of novel results. First, during our sample period individuals earn markedly different average returns on their financial assets (a standard deviation of 14%) and on their net worth (a standard deviation of 8%). Second, heterogeneity in returns does not arise merely from differences in the allocation of wealth between safe and risky assets: returns are heterogeneous even within asset classes. Third, returns are positively correlated with wealth: moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile of the financial wealth distribution increases the return by 3 percentage points - and by 17 percentage points when the same exercise is performed for the return to net worth. Fourth, wealth returns exhibit substantial persistence over time. We argue that while this persistence partly reflects stable differences in risk exposure and assets scale, it also reflects persistent heterogeneity in sophistication and financial information, as well as entrepreneurial talent. Finally, wealth returns are (mildly) correlated across generations. We discuss the implications of these findings for several strands of the wealth inequality debate.
Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
Author: Julian P. T. Higgins
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2008-11-24
Total Pages: 672
ISBN-13: 9780470699515
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHealthcare providers, consumers, researchers and policy makers are inundated with unmanageable amounts of information, including evidence from healthcare research. It has become impossible for all to have the time and resources to find, appraise and interpret this evidence and incorporate it into healthcare decisions. Cochrane Reviews respond to this challenge by identifying, appraising and synthesizing research-based evidence and presenting it in a standardized format, published in The Cochrane Library (www.thecochranelibrary.com). The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions contains methodological guidance for the preparation and maintenance of Cochrane intervention reviews. Written in a clear and accessible format, it is the essential manual for all those preparing, maintaining and reading Cochrane reviews. Many of the principles and methods described here are appropriate for systematic reviews applied to other types of research and to systematic reviews of interventions undertaken by others. It is hoped therefore that this book will be invaluable to all those who want to understand the role of systematic reviews, critically appraise published reviews or perform reviews themselves.
The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2015-09-17
Total Pages: 243
ISBN-13: 030931710X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe U.S. population is aging. Social Security projections suggest that between 2013 and 2050, the population aged 65 and over will almost double, from 45 million to 86 million. One key driver of population aging is ongoing increases in life expectancy. Average U.S. life expectancy was 67 years for males and 73 years for females five decades ago; the averages are now 76 and 81, respectively. It has long been the case that better-educated, higher-income people enjoy longer life expectancies than less-educated, lower-income people. The causes include early life conditions, behavioral factors (such as nutrition, exercise, and smoking behaviors), stress, and access to health care services, all of which can vary across education and income. Our major entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Supplemental Security Income - have come to deliver disproportionately larger lifetime benefits to higher-income people because, on average, they are increasingly collecting those benefits over more years than others. This report studies the impact the growing gap in life expectancy has on the present value of lifetime benefits that people with higher or lower earnings will receive from major entitlement programs. The analysis presented in The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income goes beyond an examination of the existing literature by providing the first comprehensive estimates of how lifetime benefits are affected by the changing distribution of life expectancy. The report also explores, from a lifetime benefit perspective, how the growing gap in longevity affects traditional policy analyses of reforms to the nation's leading entitlement programs. This in-depth analysis of the economic impacts of the longevity gap will inform debate and assist decision makers, economists, and researchers.
