We assess long-run patterns of global agricultural productivity growth between 1970 and 2005 and examine the relationship between investments in technology capital and productivity. To measure agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) we employ a Solow-type growth accounting method to decompose output growth into input and TFP growth. For technology capital we construct two indexes reflectin...

An increase in obesity prevalence among patients who initiate dialysis may influence the growth of the total ESRD population as a result of improved survival and decreased likelihood for transplantation. Temporal trends in mean body mass index (BMI) and obesity prevalence were examined among incident patients with ESRD by year of dialysis initiation between 1995 and 2002, and these trends were ...

Giving consumers choice can improve welfare in principle. In this study, we explore optimality a health insurance market that allows for variations coverage but is standardized otherwise, theoretically implying optimal conditions observing improvements from choice. However, find as much 49 percent of the adult population opts into non-welfare maximizing plans. laboratory experimental setting, e...

Human multisensory systems are known to bind inputs from the different sensory modalities into a unified percept, a process that leads to measurable behavioral benefits. This integrative process can be observed through multisensory illusions, including the McGurk effect and the sound-induced flash illusion, both of which demonstrate the ability of one sensory modality to modulate perception in ...

Few previous studies have explored whether defined contribution retirement saving plans offer sufficiently diversified investment menus, though it is likely that these menus significantly shape workers’ accumulations of retirement wealth. This paper assesses the efficiency and performance of 401(k) investment options offered by a large group of US employers. We show that the majority of plans i...

There are three approaches to complete Bayesian Network (BN) model construction: total expert-centred, total datacentred, and semi data-centred. These three approaches constitute the basis of the empirical investigation undertaken and reported in this paper. The objective is to determine, amongst these three approaches, which is the optimal approach for the construction of a BN-based model for ...

To examine whether the predictive performance of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and PSA-related markers for prostate cancer (PCa) is modified by body mass index (BMI). Patients with a PSA 2-10 ng/mL who underwent multicore prostate biopsies were recruited from three tertiary centers. Serum markers measured included total PSA (tPSA), free-to-total PSA (f/tPSA), p2PSA, percentage of p2PSA (%p2PS...

The extremal index is an important parameter measuring the degree of clustering of extremes in a stationary process. If we consider the point process of exceedance times over a high threshold, then this can be shown to converge asymptotically to a clustered Poisson process. The extremal index, a parameter between 0 and 1, is the reciprocal of the mean cluster size. Apart from being of interest ...