Health Care Expenditure and Economic Growth in SAARC Countries (1995–2012): A Panel Causality Analysis

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between health care expenditure (HCE) and economic growth and to the causality between HCE and economic growth in the selected South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries by employing the Panel cointegration and panel causality analysis over the period 1995–2012. Per capita income, labor force, literacy rate, and elderly population of age 65 and above are used an independent variables, as these variables are considered as main indicator of human and physical capital. For examining the time series properties of the data and long run relationships between HCE and economic growth, the panel unit root and panel cointegration tests are employed. The panel Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) method is used to estimate long run parameters, whereas the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) method is employed to estimate the short run parameters. For the panel causality among HCE and per capita GDP, a new technique developed by Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) is used. The results reveal that income elasticity of HCE is less than unity in the long run as well as in the short run. Furthermore, there is an evidence of unidirectional causality running from per capita GDP to HCE in the South Asian countries in the short run. Two-way causation between per capita GDP, labor force, literacy rate, and elderly population of age 65 and above is also observed. We also found two-way causality between labor force, elderly population of age 65 and health care expenditure.     

Higher Education and Health Care Development: The Case of Northern Cyprus

The aim of this study is to investigate long-run equilibrium relationship and the direction of causality between health care development and higher education in Northern Cyprus, which has shown a tremendous development in higher education sector. Results of the present study reveal that higher education is a long term determinant of health care development in this small island. Health care in Northern Cyprus converges to its long term equilibrium level by 35.2 % speed of adjustment every year through the channel of higher education growth in Northern Cyprus. The other finding of this study is that there exists unidirectional causality in the short term period that runs from higher education growth to health care growth in Northern Cyprus.     

Do Good Institutions Make Citizens Happy, or Do Happy Citizens Build Better Institutions?

Recent empirical investigations show that ‘good institutions’, in the form of democracy and economic freedom, are related to elevated scores of subjective well-being across countries. Most of these studies automatically assume that causality runs from formal institutions to happiness. None the less, an inverse relationship is also feasible and only a few authors have specifically analyzed this possibility. Furthermore, not much is known about the individual aspects of institutions that are valued by citizens, and how these preferences might change with the level of economic development. This paper contributes to closing these gaps, conducting ordinary least squares- and instrumental variable analysis as an empirical strategy. Results show that citizens in developing countries value the procedural aspects of democracy, access to sound money, and free trade, while citizens in developed countries only seem to value a comparatively well-functioning legal system and higher security of property rights. Findings indicate the existence of a causal channel from economic freedom to well-being, but can’t exclude a long run effect of intrinsic happiness on economic freedom through social capital.     

An application of terror management theory in the design of social and health‐related anti‐smoking appeals

• Marketers and public policy makers continue to be plagued with the problem of creating effective communications, which can increase the probability of complying with risk avoidance behavior related to smoking. Using Terror Management Theory (TMT) as a theoretical basis, we provide a rationale as to why traditional anti‐smoking appeals focusing on negative health consequences are not impactful. We use the implications of the theory to predict and show that an appeal focusing on social exclusion should be more motivating than a health appeal to encourage smokers to quit in the short and long run. Specifically, we conduct an experiment designed to investigate the impact of mortality salience and self‐esteem on whether college‐age smokers will comply with anti‐smoking messages. We observe that social exclusion messages compared to health effect messages are particularly effective in reducing intentions to smoke for college‐age smokers who derive their self‐esteem in part from smoking. Overall, our results show that mortality salience interacts with self‐esteem in terms of influencing the probability of smoking in the short run and that social exclusion appeals have a stronger impact than health‐related appeals both in reducing long run smoking intention and emphasizing the salience of health‐related consequences of smoking.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Data Envelopment Analysis and Equal Weights/Minimax Methods of Composite Social Indicator Construction: a Methodological Study of Data Sensitivity and Robustness

In the construction of composite or summary social indicators/indices, a recurrent methodological issue pertains to how to weight each of the quality-of-life/well-being components of the indices. Two methods of composite index construction that have been widely applied empirically in recent decades are Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which is based on an optimization principle, and the equal weights/minimax (EW/MM) method, which has been shown to have minimax statistical properties in the sense that it minimizes maximum possible disagreements among individuals on weights. This paper applies both of these methods to two empirical datasets of social indicators: 1) data on 25 well-being indicators used in the construction of state-level Child and Youth Well-being Indices for each of the 50 U.S. states, and 2) data on indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment, and income used in the construction of the United Nations Human Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI) for 188 countries. In these empirical contexts, we study issues of measurement sensitivity of the EW/MM and DEA methods to the numbers of indictors used in the construction of the composite indices and corresponding issues of robustness. We find that the DEA method is more sensitive to the numbers of component indicators than the EW/MM method. In addition, the composite indicators formed by the EW/MM and DEA methods become more similar as the numbers of indicators in the composites decreases. We also apply Chance-Constrained DEA method to reclassify countries in the HDI dataset by levels of human development. The resulting human development groupings of the DEA composite indices have a large overlap with those of the HDI in the Human Development Reports, which are based on fixed cut-off points derived from the quartiles of distributions of the HDI component indicators.

     

The Reliability and Validity of a Brief Self-Report Questionnaire to Screen for Mental Health Problems: The Health Dynamics Inventory

Mental health problems are underrecognized in medical settings, leading to inadequate treatment. The present paper describes the development of the Health Dynamics Inventory (HDI), a brief, self-report questionnaire developed to evaluate mental health functioning. The HDI was written to evaluate the three aspects of mental disorders as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): (1) the experience of emotional or behavioral symptoms; (2) emotional distress; and (3) psychosocial impairment. This study evaluated the psychometric properties and construct validity of its items, scales, and subscales. Results indicated that the items distinguish patients from nonpatients, that the instrument's scales and subscales are reliable, and that the scales and subscales discriminates between persons with mental health concerns or diagnosable problems and those without such concerns or problems. The utility of the instrument for screening mental health problems in primary care settings is discussed.     

Happiness and Sex Difference in Life Expectancy

The aim of this study is to test the explanatory power of happiness on survival at the aggregate level. Based on previous findings that psychological stress adversely affects survival and that its effect on survival is more severe for men, this study uses the sex difference in, rather than the level of, life expectancy as the dependent variable. As long as psychological stress and happiness are negatively correlated, happiness is expected to have a greater impact on men’s life expectancy and negatively influence the life expectancy gap between women and men. However, at the same time, the causality is expected to run in both directions. In the reverse direction from the life expectancy gap to national happiness, the intermediary is the women’s widowhood ratio. Since the widowed are, on average, less happy, an increase in the life expectancy gap, which raises the women’s widowhood ratio, is expected to lower women’s average happiness. For this reason, this study first investigates the reverse causality and demonstrates that the life expectancy gap negatively affects national happiness. Then, taking this reverse causality into account, it shows that happiness is significant in explaining the cross-country differences in the life expectancy gap. As national average happiness decreases, the sex difference in life expectancy increases. This result suggests that happiness has a significant impact on survival even at the aggregate level.     

Does Life Satisfaction Determine Subjective Health?

The majority of previous studies on life satisfaction and health status were conducted in the advanced developed countries, while less attention has been focused on transitional countries, especially those in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans. This study is among a very few studies that focused on the regions which faced on the prolonged economic and political crisis during the transition. Drawing on comparable data from 28 transitional countries in Eastern and Central Europe, the Caucasus, the Central Asia, and Turkey, we quantify the effect of self-reported life satisfaction on the self-reported health status of the population. To rule out reverse causality and to reduce estimation biases, we employed simultaneous equation models with instrumental variables. Two models used standard simultaneous equation regression (2SLS) and bivariate ordered probit regression (bioprobit) for categorical ordered variables. Our main finding is that, regardless of the model used, higher levels of life satisfaction determine higher health status. The mechanisms regarding the effects of life satisfaction on health are discussed. Future researchers are encouraged to include life satisfaction in their analyses of health status. From a methodological standpoint, we demonstrate that a strong endogeneity exists between life satisfaction and health status, regardless of the models used. Ignoring endogeneity and estimating a single stage regression model with life satisfaction and health status will likely lead to biased results.     

Risk perception and conspiracy theory endorsement predict compliance with COVID-19 public health measures

Public health measures such as spatial distancing and physical hygiene have been found effective in mitigating the spread of the coronavirus. However, there is considerable variability in individual compliance with such public health measures and factors contributing to these interindividual differences are currently still understudied. The present study set out to determine the role of risk perception and conspiracy theory endorsement on compliance with COVID-19 public health measures and explored variations in these associations across participant age and the developmental status of a country, leveraging a large multi-national data set (N = 45,772) across 66 countries/territories, collected via online survey during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and May 2020). Human Development Index (HDI), developed by the United Nations Development Program, was used as a proxy of a country's achievement in key dimensions of human development. Overall, higher risk perception was associated with greater compliance, particularly in individuals with greater conspiracy theory endorsement. Specifically, people from more developed countries who perceived themselves less at risk but showed stronger conspiracy theory endorsement reported the lowest compliance with COVID-19 public health measures. Findings from this study advance understanding of the interplay between risk perception and conspiracy theory endorsement in their effect on compliance with COVID-19 public health measures, under consideration of both individual-level and country-level demographic variables and have potential to inform the design of tailored interventions to fight the current and future global pandemics.     

Prolonging life and delaying death: The role of physicians in the context of limited intensive care resources

In the past decade donor commitments to health have increased by 200 percent. Correspondingly, there has been a swell of new players in the global health landscape. The unprecedented, global response to a single disease, HIV/AIDS, has been responsible for a substantial portion of this boon. Numerous health success have followed this windfall of funding and attention, yet the food, fuel, and economic crises of 2008 have shown the vulnerabilities of health and development initiatives focused on short term wins and reliant on a constant flow of foreign funding. For too long, the international community has responded to global health and development challenges with emergency solutions that often reflect the donor's priorities, values, and political leanings, rather than funding durable health systems that can withstand crises. Progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals has stalled in many countries. Disease specific initiatives have weakened health systems and limited efforts to improve maternal and child health. As we enter this era of scarce resources, there is a need to return to the foundations of the Alma Ata Declaration signed thirty years ago with the goal of providing universal access to primary healthcare. The global health community must now objectively evaluate how we can most effectively respond to the crises of 2008 and take advantage of this moment of extraordinary attention for global health and translate it into long term, sustainable health improvements for all.     

Longitudinal Service Learning in Medical Education: An Ethical Analysis of the Five-Year Alternative Curriculum at Stritch School of Medicine

In this article, the author explores a model of alternative medical education being pioneered at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. The five-year Global Health Fieldwork Fellowship (GHFF) track allows two students per year to complete an extra year of medical education while living and working in a free rural clinic in the jungle lowlands of Bolivia. This alternative curricular track is unique among other existing models in that it is (a) longitudinally immersive for at least one full additional year of medical education, (b) grounded in clinical and service learning, and (c) heavily focused upon global health and the social components of medicine. Studies have shown that both longitudinal alternative medical curricular tracks and short-term global health electives have long-term benefits upon the professional development of participants, suggesting that the GHFF is likely to do the same. The author also argues that the GHFF is an advantageous model of global health education compared to standard offerings and provides a unique curricular model by which to foster the development of social values—such as professionalism, advocacy, and social justice—that are widely considered lacking in today’s medical education.     

Factors predicting the probability of initiating sexual intercourse by context and sex

Despite men initiating sex more than women there is considerable variance within the sexes. This study is the first to consider the impact of multiple predictors from the literature, and investigates how factors, such as relationship length, sociosexuality, and different aspects of self‐perceived mate value among others, independently and interactively predict initiation of sexual intercourse in both short‐term sexual and long‐term romantic mating contexts, testing predictions from Sexual strategies theory. For long‐term relationships, positive partner bond increased initiative to sexual intercourse for women. For men, self‐perceived independence increased probability of taking the initiative, while relationship attachment decreased probability. For short‐term relations, the desire component of the sociosexual orientation inventory increased probability of initiation for both sexes, while male initiative was increased by pleasure reasons for sex. The impact of individual predictors on initiating intercourse is influenced by being included in a multidimensional model, and relationship context affects the impact of the predictors.     

Predicting Bidirectional Intimate Partner Violence: Demographic and Historical Factors That Influence Initiating Threats or Use of Violence by IPV Victims

Using data from the National Violence Against Women Survey, this study explored the role of gender and other demographic and historical factors that influence initiating threats or use of violence among a sample of intimate partner violence (IPV) victims—an element of bidirectional violence. For this study, involvement in a relationship marked by bidirectional violence was defined as an affirmative response to this question: Were you the first person to use/threaten physical force? after respondents self-identified as IPV victims. The hypothesized model to predict initiating threats or use of violence among male victims was not significant, but marital status, income, employment status, and childhood victimization experiences did significantly predict female behavior. Age, race, education, alcohol use, drug use, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were not useful in explaining model variance for men or women. The rates of perpetration were equivalent for males and females; however, these findings suggest that gender is still an important context to consider when theorizing about bidirectional IPV.     

Happy PIIGS?

This paper investigates the causality dynamics between happiness and per capita GDP growth and the impact of the recent financial crisis using a VAR–GARCH model for 10 European EMU countries divided in peripheral and non-peripheral members. The rationale of the analysis is to look at the two different dimensions (mean and variance) of economic growth and happiness within a time-series framework. The results show that GDP growth has significant positive effects on happiness in all countries considered, particularly in the PIIGS countries; happiness volatility is responsive to economic uncertainty. The size of this effect is bigger following the most recent crisis period, especially for the PIIGS countries. Our findings confirm the important role played by economic growth in determining population happiness and, most importantly, provides new evidence on the existence of causality linkages between economic uncertainty and happiness volatility.     

Hemispheric Processing of Categorical and Coordinate Spatial Relations in Vision and Visual Imagery

Right-handed subjects participated in a visual half-field experiment using “clock” stimuli. For the Categorical task, subjects indicated whether the long and short hands of a clock were above or below the horizontal midline of the dial. For the Coordinate task, they indicated whether the long and short hands of a clock formed an angle that is more or less than 60°. For both tasks, clock stimuli were either analog clocks (Visual version) or digital clocks from which subjects generated images of analog clocks (Imagery version). The results indicated that for both the Visual and Imagery versions, there was a nonsignificant trend toward a left hemisphere advantage in the Categorical task, whereas there was a significant right hemisphere advantage in the Coordinate task. Implications of the results were discussed from the viewpoints of task factors in hemispheric processing of visual imagery, Kosslyn's (1987, 1994) computational model of vision and visual imagery, and vision/imagery isomorphism.     

Qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance: a bidirectional longitudinal relationship?

This study adds to the understanding of the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and employee in-role performance, by analysing the association longitudinally. While social exchange theory predicts that the relationship should be negative and bidirectional, the job preservation motivation model indicates a self-correcting mechanism, where job insecurity leads to increased performance, which, in turn, could decrease job insecurity. We developed competing hypotheses and examined them using structural equation modelling in a heterogeneous sample of 337 employees. For employees with a higher professional level, results pointed towards a reciprocal causal relationship between qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance, indicating a loss cycle. For employees with a lower professional level, results showed a small positive direct causal relationship between qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance, while the negative direct path from in-role performance to qualitative job insecurity did not reach statistical significance. This is the first study to test the diverging theoretical predictions of social exchange theory and the job preservation motivation model, with regard to the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance. Being longitudinal, our study only allows us to hint at possible causal relationships between the involved variables, the chronological order being necessary, but not sufficient to prove causality.     

自我决定理论:一个积极的人格视角

自我决定理论是有关人格和动机的理论。自我决定理论认为人的动机是一个在自主性或自我决定维度上的连续体,三种基本需要和个人的因果定向影响外在动机的内化和自主性动机的形成,人格整合和成长的过程,就是自我决定的过程。自我决定理论在教育、医疗、体育和组织等领域得到了广泛的应用。最后,文章回顾了自我决定理论在中国的研究情况,并对该领域需要进一步研究的问题做了讨论。     

综合性大学开设长学制高等医学教育的初步研究

我国现有的医学教育学制偏短,不利于培养高质量医学人才。综合性大学有着许多办学优势,有利于开设长学制医学教育,因此,要发挥综合性大学的优势,实行多通道办学模式,学分制和弹性学制,强化公共基础教育和人文素质教育,改善办学条件,提高管理水平,努力培养能参与国际竞争的高层次医学人才。     

Does Immigration always Promote Innovation? Evidence from Thai Manufacturers

Contrary to studies of other migrant-receiving countries, most of which are developed countries, this paper examines impacts of immigrant workers on innovative capacities in Thailand, which is not only a representative of a receiving country that is a developing country but also a country where the majority of its immigrant workers are unskilled. Analysis of firm-level survey data in Thailand finds that employing unskilled and cheap labor from neighboring countries, namely Myanmar, the Lao PDR, and Cambodia, is like adopting a kind of “labor-saving technology” which actually impedes firms’ R&D investment. Contrary to developed countries in which immigrants are found to boost innovation and promote sustainable growth, in Thailand, even though employing unskilled immigrant workers helps firms maintain their cost competitiveness in the short run, its negative impacts on R&D investment tend to hamper improvements in productivity and thus diminish global competitiveness in the long run. Employing skilled or educated migrants, on the other hand, complements technological progress and encourages firms to innovate more quickly. In addition, the paper finds that providing government incentives and promoting access to financing have become effective tools in facilitating Thai firms’ investment in innovation.