Based on a panel data model this paper investigates whether the effects of fiscal policy on national saving in Europe have changed after the Maastricht Treaty came into force. Recently Giavazzi, Jappelli and Pagano (2000) found evidence that national saving responds nonlinearly to fiscal policy when a large and persistent consolidation is undertaken. I show that their finding is not robust, one...

When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) "scores" legislation, or assesses the likely cost impact, it requires substantial evidence that a cost-saving initiative has historically achieved savings. The agency has difficulty addressing the impact of multiple changes made simultaneously without historical precedent where there is an interaction effect among proposed changes. This study examines ...

OBJECTIVE This paper aims to provide an overview of the added societal value of generic medicines beyond their cost-saving potential through reduced prices. In addition, an observational case study will document the impact of generic entry on access to pharmacotherapy in The Netherlands and an illustrative exercise was carried out to highlight the budget impact of generic entry. METHODS A nar...

BACKGROUND Hip fractures require operation within 36-48 h, and they are most common in the elderly. A high International Normalized Ratio should be corrected before surgery. In the current study, we analyzed the budget impact of various warfarin reversal approaches. METHODS Four reversal strategies were chosen for the budget impact analysis: the temporary withholding of warfarin, administrati...

We study the problem of maximizing the amount of stochastic diffusion in a network by acquiring nodes within a certain limited budget. We use a Sample Average Approximation (SAA) scheme to translate this stochastic problem into a simulation-based deterministic optimization problem, and present a detailed empirical study of three variants of the problem: where all purchases are made upfront, whe...

We proposed a mixed-integer program to model the management of C. trachomatis infections in women visiting publicly funded family planning clinics. We intended to maximize the number of infected women cured of C. trachomatis infections. The model incorporated screening, re-screening, and treatment options for three age groups with respective age-specific C. trachomatis infection and re-infectio...

Energy saving becomes critical in modern cloud wireless multimedia and mobile communication systems. In this paper we propose to study a new paradigm named application layer Position-Value diversity for wireless image sharing for cloudedge communications, which has significant energy saving potentials for modern wireless networking systems. In this new paradigm, saving energy is achieved by loo...

BACKGROUND Grass pollen-induced allergic rhinoconjunctivitis constitutes a large burden for society. Up to 20% of European and United States (US) populations suffer from respiratory allergies, including grass pollen-induced allergic rhinoconjunctivitis. The majority of patients are treated with symptomatic medications; however, a large proportion remains uncontrolled despite use of such treatme...