BACKGROUND The Irish government has committed to expand midwifery-led care alongside consultant-led care nationally, although very little is known about the potential net benefits of this reconfiguration. OBJECTIVES To formally compare the costs and benefits of the major models of care in Ireland, with a view to informing priority setting using the contingent valuation technique and cost-bene...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE This study evaluated the cost-effectiveness of different noninvasive imaging strategies in patients with possible basilar artery occlusion. METHODS A Markov decision analytic model was used to evaluate long-term outcomes resulting from strategies using computed tomographic angiography (CTA), magnetic resonance imaging, nonenhanced CT, or duplex ultrasound with intraveno...

Do people from different countries and different backgrounds have similar preferences for how much more the rich should earn than the poor? Using survey data from 40 countries (N = 55,238), we compare respondents' estimates of the wages of people in different occupations-chief executive officers, cabinet ministers, and unskilled workers-to their ideals for what those wages should be. We show th...

Whether to legislate to maintain " net neutrality " , the current status quo of prohibiting broadband service providers from charging online websites for preferential access to their residential and commercial customers, has become a subject under fierce debate. We develop a stylized game-theoretic model to address two critical issues of the net neutrality: (1) who are gainers and losers of aba...

OBJECTIVE: The goal was to determine the net return (gain or loss after costs were subtracted from revenues) to private pediatric medical practices from investing time and resources in vaccines and vaccination of their patients. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of private medical practices requested data on all financial and capacity aspects of the practices, including ...

Previous research has shown that loan loss provisions and security gains and losses are used to manage banks’ net income. However, these income components are reported below banks largest operating component, net interest income (NII). This study extends the literature by examining whether banks exploit the accounting permitted under past and current hedge accounting standards to manage NII by ...

OBJECTIVE The goal was to determine the net return (gain or loss after costs were subtracted from revenues) to private pediatric medical practices from investing time and resources in vaccines and vaccination of their patients. METHODS A cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of private medical practices requested data on all financial and capacity aspects of the practices, including ...