Una nova estimació retrospectiva del VAB regional industrial. Espanya, 1860-1930

[cat] En aquest treball, es realitza una nova estimació del VAB industrial espanyol a un nivell de desagregació territorial corresponent a les províncies (NUTSIII) i les Comunitats Autònomes (NUTS II). Per assolir aquest objectiu es planteja una nova metodologia d’estimació de les xifres històriques de VAB industrial regional. Front a les aproximacions tradicionals, basades en la utilització de fonts fiscals com a forma d’aproximar la capacitat productiva industrial, en aquest treball s’ofereix una estimació que també es basa en les rendes generades per la producció industrial de les regions. Amb aquest objectiu, es fa servir la metodologia proposada per Geary i Stark (2002) i les millores proposades per Crafts (2005). La utilització d’aquesta metodologia permet elaborar una nova estimació retrospectiva del VAB industrial de les regions espanyoles a diversos talls temporals corresponents al període 1860-1930.

Economics of dialysis dependence following renal replacement therapy for critically ill acute kidney injury patients.

BACKGROUND: The obective of this study was to perform a cost-effectiveness analysis comparing intermittent with continuous renal replacement therapy (IRRT versus CRRT) as initial therapy for acute kidney injury (AKI) in the intensive care unit (ICU). METHODS: Assuming some patients would potentially be eligible for either modality, we modeled life year gained, the quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and healthcare costs for a cohort of 1000 IRRT patients and a cohort of 1000 CRRT patients. We used a 1-year, 5-year and a lifetime horizon. A Markov model with two health states for AKI survivors was designed: dialysis dependence and dialysis independence. We applied Weibull regression from published estimates to fit survival curves for CRRT and IRRT patients and to fit the proportion of dialysis dependence among CRRT and IRRT survivors. We then applied a risk ratio reported in a large retrospective cohort study to the fitted CRRT estimates in order to determine the proportion of dialysis dependence for IRRT survivors. We conducted sensitivity analyses based on a range of differences for daily implementation cost between CRRT and IRRT (base case: CRRT day $632 more expensive than IRRT day; range from $200 to $1000) and a range of risk ratios for dialysis dependence for CRRT as compared with IRRT (from 0.65 to 0.95; base case: 0.80). RESULTS: Continuous renal replacement therapy was associated with a marginally greater gain in QALY as compared with IRRT (1.093 versus 1.078). Despite higher upfront costs for CRRT in the ICU ($4046 for CRRT versus $1423 for IRRT in average), the 5-year total cost including the cost of dialysis dependence was lower for CRRT ($37 780 for CRRT versus $39 448 for IRRT on average). The base case incremental cost-effectiveness analysis showed that CRRT dominated IRRT. This dominance was confirmed by extensive sensitivity analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Initial CRRT is cost-effective compared with initial IRRT by reducing the rate of long-term dialysis dependence among critically ill AKI survivors.

The Economics of Dead Zones: Linking Externalities from the Land to their Consequences in the Sea, October 2012,

The purpose of this review and analysis is to provide a basic understanding of the issues related to worldwide hypoxic zones and the range of economic questions sorely in need of answers. We begin by describing the causes and extent of hypoxic zones worldwide, followed by a review of the evidence concerning ecological effects of the condition and impacts on ecosystem services. We describe what is known about abatement options and cost effective policy design before turning to an analysis of the large, seasonally recurring hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. We advance the understanding of this major ecological issue by estimating the relationship between pollutants (nutrients) and the areal extent of the hypoxic zone. This “production function” relationship suggests that both instantaneous and legacy contributions of nutrients contribute to annual predictions of the size of the zone, highlighting concerns that ecologists have raised about lags in the recovery of the system and affirms the importance of multiple nutrients as target pollutants. We conclude with a discussion of critical research needs to provide input to policy formation.

Case studies and mathematical models of ecological speciation. 1. Cichlids in a crater lake.

A recent study of a pair of sympatric species of cichlids in Lake Apoyo in Nicaragua is viewed as providing probably one of the most convincing examples of sympatric speciation to date. Here, we describe and study a stochastic, individual-based, explicit genetic model tailored for this cichlid system. Our results show that relatively rapid (<20,000 generations) colonization of a new ecological niche and (sympatric or parapatric) speciation via local adaptation and divergence in habitat and mating preferences are theoretically plausible if: (i) the number of loci underlying the traits controlling local adaptation, and habitat and mating preferences is small; (ii) the strength of selection for local adaptation is intermediate; (iii) the carrying capacity of the population is intermediate; and (iv) the effects of the loci influencing nonrandom mating are strong. We discuss patterns and timescales of ecological speciation identified by our model, and we highlight important parameters and features that need to be studied empirically to provide information that can be used to improve the biological realism and power of mathematical models of ecological speciation.

SIMSAFADIM-CLASTIC: A new approach to mathematical 3D forward simulation modelling for terrigenous and carbonate marine sedimentation

Most sedimentary modelling programs developed in recent years focus on either terrigenous or carbonate marine sedimentation. Nevertheless, only a few programs have attempted to consider mixed terrigenous-carbonate sedimentation, and most of these are two-dimensional, which is a major restriction since geological processes take place in 3D. This paper presents the basic concepts of a new 3D mathematical forward simulation model for clastic sediments, which was developed from SIMSAFADIM, a previous 3D carbonate sedimentation model. The new extended model, SIMSAFADIM-CLASTIC, simulates processes of autochthonous marine carbonate production and accumulation, together with clastic transport and sedimentation in three dimensions of both carbonate and terrigenous sediments. Other models and modelling strategies may also provide realistic and efficient tools for prediction of stratigraphic architecture and facies distribution of sedimentary deposits. However, SIMSAFADIM-CLASTIC becomes an innovative model that attempts to simulate different sediment types using a process-based approach, therefore being a useful tool for 3D prediction of stratigraphic architecture and facies distribution in sedimentary basins. This model is applied to the neogene Vallès-Penedès half-graben (western Mediterranean, NE Spain) to show the capacity of the program when applied to a realistic geologic situation involving interactions between terrigenous clastics and carbonate sediments.

The Economics of Reducing the County Road System: Three Case Studies in Iowa - Executive Summary, HR-242, 1986

This Executive Summary presents a brief summary of the main research report, "The Economics of Reducing the County Road System: Three Case Studies in Iowa" (DOT/OST/P-34/86-035). The case studies are described, as well as the analytic methodology and research findings.

The Economics of Reducing the County Road System: Three Case Studies in Iowa, HR-242, 1986

This research project looked at the economic benefits and costs associated with alternative strategies for abandoning low volume rural highways and bridges. Three test counties in Iowa were studied, each 100 square miles in size: Hamilton County having a high agricultural tax base and a high percentage of paved roads and few bridges; Shelby County having a relatively low agricultural tax base, hilly terrain and a low percentage of paved road and many bridges; and Linn County having a high agricultural tax base, a high percentage of paved roads and a large number of non-farm households. A questionnaire survey was undertaken to develop estimates of farm and household travel patterns. Benefits and costs associated with the abandonment of various segments of rural highway and bridge mileages in each county were calculated. "Benefits" calculated were reduced future reconstruction and maintenance costs, whereas "costs" were the added cost of travel resulting from the reduced mileage. Some of the findings suggest limited cost savings from abandonment of county roads with no property access in areas with large non-farm rural population; relatively high cost savings from the abandonment of roads with no property access in areas with small rural population; and the largest savings from the conversion of public dead-end gravel roads with property or residence accesses to private drives.

Decision making techniques with similarity measures and OWA operators

We analyse the use of the ordered weighted average (OWA) in decision-making giving special attention to business and economic decision-making problems. We present several aggregation techniques that are very useful for decision-making such as the Hamming distance, the adequacy coefficient and the index of maximum and minimum level. We suggest a new approach by using immediate weights, that is, by using the weighted average and the OWA operator in the same formulation. We further generalize them by using generalized and quasi-arithmetic means. We also analyse the applicability of the OWA operator in business and economics and we see that we can use it instead of the weighted average. We end the paper with an application in a business multi-person decision-making problem regarding production management

The economics of infertility

Infertility is a growing issue that affects thousands of Spanish couples; increasingly there are more and more people who cannot raise a family by themselves. Instead they have to resort to ART, adoption -local or international- or surrogacy abroad, a practice that many couples consider but that isn’t legalized in Spain. In this paper we have broken down each option in detail by analysing the market, differentiating its variants and specific steps, calculating its “price” and suggesting possible improvements that could be made from an economic perspective. We end our paper with the “SWOT” analysis of a hypothetical surrogacy market in Spain by calculating an estimated price, using the US as a reference, and the degree of acceptance it would have, based on the results of random surveys.