BACKGROUND Numerous studies have established that socio-economic position is positively related to health status, but we know little about the real costs of these differences across an entire population. This paper estimates the potential savings in morbidity and dollars from reducing the inequalities in health among Winnipeg residents. METHODS We measure excess morbidity by examining rates o...

Smart contracts—stateful executable objects hosted on blockchains like Ethereum—carry billions of dollars worth of coins and cannot be updated once deployed. We present a new systematic characterization of a class of trace vulnerabilities, which result from analyzing multiple invocations of a contract over its lifetime. We focus attention on three example properties of such trace vulnerabilitie...

Background The major objective of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in Nigeria is to protect families from the financial hardship of large medical bills. Catastrophic Health Expenditure (CHE) is rampart in Nigeria despite the take-off of the NHIS. This study aimed to determine if households enrolled in the NHIS were protected from having CHE.   Methods The study took place among 714 h...

I study the California Alternate Rates for Energy program (CARE), which provides a price reduction for natural gas and electricity for low-income customers. Using approximately one million monthly observations from 70,000 households, I provide the first demand elasticity estimate for natural gas using a natural field experiment (around -0.38). I also provide the first benefitcost analysis of CA...

A method of accelerated eradication of bovine brucellosis was developed and applied in the Czech Republic, where livestock was reared primarily in large-scale units. Before this method was adopted, annual economic losses were about US dollars 20 million and thousands of people were estimated to suffer from brucellosis (e.g. 32.4% of tested veterinarians were positive). Initial mass serological ...

CONTEXT Although medical injuries are recognized as a major hazard in the health care system, little is known about their impact. OBJECTIVE To assess excess length of stay, charges, and deaths attributable to medical injuries during hospitalization. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) were used to identify medi...

a r t i c l e i n f o In March 1999, 31 million " shopping coupons " worth 20,000 yen each were distributed to Japanese families with children and to the elderly. The coupons expired after six months and could only be used within the recipient's local community. We use variation in the number of children across families and in the number of recipients across prefectures to measure the effect of...

Energy is a key issue for Portugal, it is responsible for the higher part of its imports and since almost 30% of Portuguese energy is generated in power stations it is also responsible for high CO2 emissions. Between 1995 and 2005 Portuguese GNP rise 28%, however the imported energy in the same period increased 400%, from 1500 million to 5500 million dollars. As to the period between 2005 and 2...

I f Microsoft’s SenseCam has pioneered visual life-logging—the act of attaching a camera to your neck and taking a picture every 30 seconds— Martin Källström’s Narrative Clip has brought it to the masses. The tiny wearable started out life as the “Memoto Wearable Camera” on Kickstarter in November 2012, raising over half a million US dollars more than its original funding goal of $50,000. After...