1,720,990 research outputs found
Mental health, lifestyle and retirement
No full textThis chapter presents a mediation model that aims to disentangle the indirect from the direct effects of retirement on health, considering the mediating role of lifestyles. The model is applied to the risk of depression, and physical inactivity is assumed to potentially mediate the effect of retirement. The results indicate that there is a significant indirect effect via the mediator, albeit relatively small in comparison to the direct effect. The analysis highlights the importance of further exploring the influence of lifestyle factors in the relationship between retirement and health, in order to gain a better understanding of the potential pathways through which retirement impacts health
The impact of pre-admission care on hospital mortality: Results of an instrumental variable analysis from Italy
Full text linkJEL classification:
C55; D14; R11.Supplementary materials are available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851025002374?via%3Dihub#sec0009 .Background:
With healthcare spending projected to increase in the coming decades, the relationship between expenditure and health outcomes demands urgent attention.
Objective:
This paper investigates the impact of health care spending on hospital mortality. We use data on 96,778 patients admitted for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in the Lombardy region, Italy, in the years from 2007 to 2022 and combine them with information on expenditure on pharmaceuticals and outpatient visits made in the 12 months prior to hospital admission.
Methods:
We adopt an instrumental variables approach to evaluate the causal impact of the total cost for pre-admission prescriptions and outpatient visits on hospital patient’s mortality.
Results:
We find that pre-admission healthcare, particularly pharmaceutical spending, has a significant impact on reducing mortality rates within hospitals, with a 10 % increase in pharmaceutical spending leading to a reduction in mortality by around 3.0 percentage points, although this result varies depending on the age group and the type of infarction.
Conclusions:
The findings suggest that prioritizing pharmaceutical management can significantly reduce hospital mortality, highlighting a key area for healthcare optimization.Elisa Tosetti acknowledges funding from the PRIN project n. 2022CZKPMY 002 entitled “Health and Wellbeing of the Elderly”. Francesco Moscone acknowleges funding from the Next Generation EU project entitled - “Age-It - Ageing well in an ageing society” project (PE0000015), National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) - PE8 - Mission 4, C2, Intervention 1.3
Comparison of Parametric and Non-Parametric Adjustments using Vignettes for Self-Reported Data
No full textEstimating Uncertainty in Epidemic Models: An Application to COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy
No full textTraditional epidemic models, like the classical SIR, are fitted to real data using deterministic optimization techniques. As a consequence, their performances cannot be properly assessed and, more importantly, the estimates of the critical epidemic parameters (which are of dramatic importance in monitoring the epidemic evolution) cannot be complemented with the calculation of confidence intervals. The aim of the present work is to remove such limitations and to compare the results obtained using two stochastic versions of deterministic SIR models. We describe the two alternatives and the associated estimation procedures, and we apply the two methodologies to a set of COVID-19 data observed in Italy in the 2020 pandemic wave. Our estimates of the basic reproduction number are comparable with the official sources, but using our methods uncertainty can also be properly assessed
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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