Population Normalization with Ammonium in Wastewater-Based Epidemiology: Application to Illicit Drug Monitoring

Fluctuations in ammonium (NH4+), measured as NH4-N loads using an ion-selective electrode installed at the inlet of a sewage treatment plant, showed a distinctive pattern which was associated to weekly (i.e., commuters) and seasonal (i.e., holidays) fluctuations of the population. Moreover, population size estimates based on NH4-N loads were lower compared to census data. Diurnal profiles of benzoylecgonine (BE) and 11-nor-9-carboxy-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC-COOH) were shown to be strongly correlated to NH4-N. Characteristic patterns, which reflect the prolonged nocturnal activity of people during the weekend, could be observed for BE, cocaine, and a major metabolite of MDMA (i.e., 4-hydroxy-3-methoxymethamphetamine). Additional 24 h composite samples were collected between February and September 2013. Per-capita loads (i.e., grams per day per 1000 inhabitants) were computed using census data and NH4-N measurements. Normalization with NH4-N did not modify the overall pattern, suggesting that the magnitude of fluctuations in the size of the population is negligible compared to those of illicit drug loads. Results show that fluctuations in the size of the population over longer periods of time or during major events can be monitored using NH4-N loads: either using raw NH4-N loads or population size estimates based on NH4-N loads, if information about site-specific NH4-N population equivalents is available.

Institutions and the Scale Effect

Growth models which imply a scale effect are commonly refuted on the basis of empirical evidence. A focus on the extent of the market as opposed to the scale of the country has led recent studies to reconsider the role that country scale plays when conditioning on other factors. We consider a variant of a simple learning by doing model to account for the potential role for institutions in determining the strength – and direction – of the scale effect. Using cross-country data, we find a significant interaction between property rights institutions and the effect of scale on long-run growth: In countries with poor property rights institutions, scale is positively related with income per capita; where property rights institutions are good, higher scale is associated with lower per capita ncomes. We find no evidence of such role for contracting institutions.

The Role of Institutions in Cross-Section Income and Panel Data Growth Models: A Deeper Investigation on the Weakness and Proliferation of Instruments

This paper investigates the role of institutions in determining per capita income levels and growth. It contributes to the empirical literature by using different variables as proxies for institutions and by developing a deeper analysis of the issues arising from the use of weak and too many instruments in per capita income and growth regressions. The cross-section estimation suggests that institutions seem to matter, regardless if they are the only explanatory variable or are combined with geographical and integration variables, although most models suffer from the issue of weak instruments. The results from the growth models provides some interesting results: there is mixed evidence on the role of institutions and such evidence is more likely to be associated with law and order and investment profile; government spending is an important policy variable; collapsing the number of instruments results in fewer significant coefficients for institutions.

Interprovincial disparities in China since the reforms: Convergence or divergence?

This paper investigates the extent of disparities amongst the provinces of China since the economic reform in 1978 up to the most recent year for which data is available. After a brief review of theoretical and in particular recent empirical literature on regional inequality in China it investigates whether or not the dynamic economic growth in China has been coupled with increasing disparities amongst the Chinese provinces. The paper utilises a few models of convergence along the lines of those hypothesised by neoclassical economists. It employs per capita income and per capita consumption to identify the possible absolute and conditional convergence since the economic reforms. The coverage and impact of the disparities in terms of the relative size of population affected are then taken into account in the analysis of inequality in income and consumption.

Environmental Kuznets Curves for Carbon Emissions: A Critical Survey

The empirical finding of an inverse U-shaped relationship between per capita income and pollution, the so-called Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), suggests that as countries experience economic growth, environmental deterioration decelerates and thus becomes less of an issue. Focusing on the prime example of carbon emissions, the present article provides a critical review of the new econometric techniques that have questioned the baseline polynomial specification in the EKC literature. We discuss issues related to the functional form, heterogeneity, “spurious” regressions and spatial dependence to address whether and to what extent the EKC can be observed. Despite these new approaches, there is still no clear-cut evidence supporting the existence of the EKC for carbon emissions. JEL classifications: C20; Q32; Q50; O13 Keywords: Environmental Kuznets Curve; Carbon emissions; Functional form; Heterogeneity; “Spurious” regressions; Spatial dependence.Residential satisfaction is often used as a barometer to assess the performance of public policy and programmes designed to raise individuals' well-being. However, the fact that responses elicited from residents might be biased by subjective, non-observable factors casts doubt on whether these responses can be taken as trustable indicators of the individuals' housing situation. Emotional factors such as aspirations or expectations might affect individuals' cognitions of their true residential situation. To disentangle this puzzle, we investigated whether identical residential attributes can be perceived differently depending on tenure status. Our results indicate that tenure status is crucial not only in determining the level of housing satisfaction, but also regarding how dwellers perceive their housing characteristics. Keywords: Housing satisfaction, subjective well-being, homeownership. JEL classification: D1, R2.

Determinants of public education expenditure: Evidence from Indian states

Public education expenditure varies significantly across Indian states. Using data on sixteen Indian states from 2001-2010, the paper tries to identify the determinants of per capita education expenditure of state governments in India. The econometric findings indicate that richer states spend more on education compared to the poorer states. A lower share of child population (0-14 years) is found to significantly enhance education expenditure at the state level. We do not find any evidence that political factors such as political ideology of the ruling party and level of corruption affect education expenditure of state governments.

La médecine de famille en Suisse à l'horizon 2030: quelle place pour la délégation des tâches médicales. [Family practitioners in Switzerland by 2030: which roles for medical task delegation?]

Due to population aging, by 2030 Switzerland may face a demand of 24 million family practitioner visits, a growth of 13 percent from the 2005 level. This result is based on the assumption that the per capita demand for doctor visits remains what was observed in 2005 by age groups and sex. During the same period, the total number of practitioners may decrease by 14 percent whereas the female proportion of such practitioners may double. These changes may cause a 33 percent decrease in the supply of physician visits to reach only 14 millions. The comparison of the demand and supply of family doctor visits reveals that by 2030, 10 million visits may be unmet which represents 40 percent of the demand. On the supply side, a full scale implementation of task delegation may partially reduce that gap (minus 2 millions). On the demand side, improved health status may bring in a larger decrease in the needs for visits (minus 4 million).

Inter-regional redistribution through infrastructure investment: tactical or programmatic?

In this paper we analyze the effects of both tactical and programmatic politics on the inter-regional allocation of infrastructure investment. We use a panel of data for the Spanish electoral districts during the period 1964-2004 to estimate an equation where investment depends both on economic and political variables. The results show that tactical politics do matter since, after controlling for economic traits, the districts with more ‘Political power’ still receive more investment. These districts are those where the incumbents’ Vote margin of victory/ defeat in the past election is low, where the Marginal seat price is low, where there is Partisan alignment between the executives at the central and regional layers of government, and where there are Pivotal regional parties which are influential in the formation of the central executive. However, the results also show that programmatic politics matter, since inter-regional redistribution (measured as the elasticity of investment to per capita income) is shown to increase with the arrival of the Democracy and EU Funds, with Left governments, and to decrease the higher is the correlation between a measure of ‘Political power’ and per capita income.

Sobre la puesta en marcha del nuevo sistema de financiación regional: proyecciones para 2009 y algunas reflexiones

This paper presents an estimate of the financial results of the new Spanish system of regional financing in 2009. According to these estimates, some regions will experience sharp reductions in their adjusted financing per capita between 2007 and 2009 which may be very difficult to accept. This would mean that there will be strong pressures for the reform of the new system from the very beginning. To avoid, or at least mitigate, this problem it would be helpful to introduce some changes in the bill currently being discussed by the Parliament. The necessary changes would not alter the nucleus of the recent agreement.

Productivity, quality, and export intensities

We study how firm and foreign market characteristics affect the geographic distribution of exporter' sales. To this purpose, we use export intensities (the ratio of exports to sales) across destinations as our key measures of firms'relative involvement in heterogeneous foreign markets. In a representative sample of Italian manufacturing firms, we find a robust negative correlation between revenue-TFP and export intensity to low-income destinations and, more generally, that the correlations between export intensities and TFP are increasing in per capita income of the foreign destinations. We argue that these (and other) empirical regularities can arise from the interplay between (endogenous) cross-firm heterogeneity in product quality and cross-country heterogeneity in quality consumption. To test this conjecture, we propose a new strategy to proxy for product quality that allows to exploit some unique features of our dataset. Our results strongly suggest that firms producing higher-quality products tend to concentrate their sales in the domestic and other high-income markets.

Trends in economic research: an international perspective

Given the recent efforts in several countries to reorganize the research institutional setting to improve research productivity, our analysis addresses the following questions: To which extent has the recent awareness over international quality standards in economics around the world been reflected in research performance? How have individual countries fared? Do research quantity and quality indicators tell us the same story? We concentrate on trends taking place since the beginning of the 1990s and rely on a very comprehensive database of scientific journals, to provide a cross-country comparison of the evolution of research in economics. Our findings indicate that Europe is catching-up with the US but, in terms of influential research, the US maintains a dominant position. The main continental European countries, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, experienced some of the largest growth rates in economic scientific output. Other European countries, namely the UK, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, have shown remarkable progress in per capita output. Collaborative research seems to be a key factor explaining the relative success of some European countries, in particular when it comes to publishing in top journals, attained predominantly through international collaborations.

Estudi energètic de les llars del barri de Haër (Senegal)

En el present estudi s’han analitzat quines són les fonts energètiques utilitzades a les llars de Haër, així com les repercussions que aquestes tenen sobre el medi natural i socioeconòmic de les famílies. Per tal de poder identificar quines són aquestes fonts i els seus efectes, s’ha realitzat un inventari i una diagnosi energètica. S’ha estudiat l’ús de l’energia en dos àmbits domèstics principals: la il·luminació i el cuinat, analitzant la freqüència d’ús i quantificant el consum energètic familiar. Les fonts energètiques detectades són: llenya, carbó, gas, querosè, piles i espelmes, de les quals, la llenya, el querosè i el carbó són les majoritàriament utilitzades. El consum energètic per càpita és de 2.100 kWh/any. Per altra banda, l’obtenció d’algunes d’aquestes fonts energètiques, suposen un cost econòmic molt elevat per les economies familiars, arribant a suposar un 60% dels ingressos. A partir de les dades obtingudes a la diagnosi, s’ha aplicat un indicador per tal de quantificar la magnitud de l’impacte sobre el medi produït pel model energètic seguit dins de les llars. L’indicador estudiat ha estat la petjada energètica, amb la qual s’ha traduït aquest consum en unitats de superfície biològicament productiva, requerida per absorbir el CO2 emès. El resultat ha estat que una persona produeix anualment 2,09·10-2 tCO2, que requereix de 7,53·10-3 gha/persona de superfície forestal per ser absorbides. S’ha comparat aquest resultat amb la petjada energètica domèstica calculada pel poble d’Araós, el qual, amb un model energètic totalment diferent, té una petjada energètica de 1,53 gha/persona. Un cop detectats els problemes o impactes causats pel model energètic actual, es proposa una alternativa energètica per tal de reemplaçar algunes fonts convencionals, principalment el querosè dels quinqués. Així doncs, mitjançant l’aprofitament de l’energia solar, es plantegen dos models fotovoltaics adaptats a dues tipologies de llars diferents, amb l’objectiu de minimitzar el cost i optimitzar els recursos energètics. Finalment es planteja una solució financera per abordar el cost inicial de la instal·lació solar.

Testing for sufficient information in structural VARs

We derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which a set of variables is informationally sufficient, i.e. it contains enough information to estimate the structural shocks with a VAR model. Based on such conditions, we suggest a procedure to test for informational sufficiency. Moreover, we show how to amend the VAR if informational sufficiency is rejected. We apply our procedure to a VAR including TFP, unemployment and per-capita hours worked. We find that the three variables are not informationally sufficient. When adding missing information, the effects of technology shocks change dramatically.

Growth in a Cross-Section of Cities: Location, Increasing Returns or Random Growth?

This article analyzes empirically the main existing theories on income and population city growth: increasing returns to scale, locational fundamentals and random growth. To do this we implement a threshold nonlinearity test that extends standard linear growth regression models to a dataset on urban, climatological and macroeconomic variables on 1,175 U.S. cities. Our analysis reveals the existence of increasing returns when per-capita income levels are beyond $19; 264. Despite this, income growth is mostly explained by social and locational fundamentals. Population growth also exhibits two distinct equilibria determined by a threshold value of 116,300 inhabitants beyond which city population grows at a higher rate. Income and population growth do not go hand in hand, implying an optimal level of population beyond which income growth stagnates or deteriorates

Ambulatory healthcare information system: a conceptual framework

Despite the tremendous amount of data collected in the field of ambulatory care, political authorities still lack synthetic indicators to provide them with a global view of health services utilization and costs related to various types of diseases. Moreover, public health indicators fail to provide useful information for physicians' accountability purposes. The approach is based on the Swiss context, which is characterized by the greatest frequency of medical visits in Europe, the highest rate of growth for care expenditure, poor public information but a lot of structured data (new fee system introduced in 2004). The proposed conceptual framework is universal and based on descriptors of six entities: general population, people with poor health, patients, services, resources and effects. We show that most conceptual shortcomings can be overcome and that the proposed indicators can be achieved without threatening privacy protection, using modern cryptographic techniques. Twelve indicators are suggested for the surveillance of the ambulatory care system, almost all based on routinely available data: morbidity, accessibility, relevancy, adequacy, productivity, efficacy (from the points of view of the population, people with poor health, and patients), effectiveness, efficiency, health services coverage and financing. The additional costs of this surveillance system should not exceed Euro 2 million per year (Euro 0.3 per capita).