Marriage Matching and Intercorrelation of Preferences

Men's and women's preferences are intercorrelated to the extent that men rank highly those women who rank them highly. Intercorrelation plays an important but overlooked role in determining outcomes of matching mechanisms. We study via simulation the effect of intercorrelated preferences on men's and women's aggregate satisfaction with the outcome of the Gale-Shapley matching mechanism. We conclude with an application of our results to the student admission matching problem.

Job Matching and Wage Growth in the U.S. and Germany

This paper examines the contribution of job matching to wage growth in the U.S. and Germany using data drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984 through 1992. Using a symmetrical set of variables and data handling procedures, real wage growth is found to be higher in the U.S. than in Germany during this period. Also, using two different estimators, job matches are found to enhance wage growth in the U.S. and retard it in Germany. The relationship of general skills to employment in each country appears responsible for this result.

The multiple location time weighted index: Using patient activity spaces to calculate primary care service areas

Geographic health planning analyses, such as service area calculations, are hampered by a lack of patient-specific geographic data. Using the limited patient address information in patient management systems, planners analyze patient origin based on home address. But activity space research done sparingly in public health and extensively in non-health related arenas uses multiple addresses per person when analyzing accessibility. Also, health care access research has shown that there are many non-geographic factors that influence choice of provider. Most planning methods, however, overlook non-geographic factors influencing choice of provider, and the limited data mean the analyses can only be related to home address. This research attempted to determine to what extent geography plays a part in patient choice of provider and to determine if activity space data can be used to calculate service areas for primary care providers. ^ During Spring 2008, a convenience sample of 384 patients of a locally-funded Community Health Center in Houston, Texas, completed a survey that asked about what factors are important when he or she selects a health care provider. A subset of this group (336) also completed an activity space log that captured location and time data on the places where the patient regularly goes. ^ Survey results indicate that for this patient population, geography plays a role in their choice of health care provider, but it is not the most important reason for choosing a provider. Other factors for choosing a health care provider such as the provider offering "free or low cost visits", meeting "all of the patient's health care needs", and seeing "the patient quickly" were all ranked higher than geographic reasons. ^ Analysis of the patient activity locations shows that activity spaces can be used to create service areas for a single primary care provider. Weighted activity-space-based service areas have the potential to include more patients in the service area since more than one location per patient is used. Further analysis of the logs shows that a reduced set of locations by time and type could be used for this methodology, facilitating ongoing data collection for activity-space-based planning efforts. ^

Table 1. Mean geochemical values for Baseline (pre-injection) and Monitor-1 (post-injection) samples, and the percent change between the two weighted means

The Weyburn Oil Field, Saskatchewan is the site of a large (5000 tonnes/day of CO2) CO2-EOR injection project By EnCana Corporation. Pre- and post-injection samples (Baseline and Monitor-1, respectively) of produced fluids from approximately 45 vertical wells were taken and chemically analyzed to determine changes in the fluid chemistry and isotope composition between August 2000 and March 2001. After 6 months of CO2 injection, geochemical parameters including pH, [HCO3], [Ca], [Mg], and ?13CO2(g) point to areas in which injected CO2 dissolution and reservoir carbonate mineral dissolution have occurred. Pre-injection fluid compositions suggest that the reservoir brine in the injection area may be capable of storing as much as 100 million tonnes of dissolved CO2. Modeling of water-rock reactions show that clay minerals and feldspar, although volumetrically insignificant, may be capable of acting as pH buffers, allowing injected CO2 to be stored as bicarbonate in the formation water or as newly precipitated carbonate minerals, given favorable reaction kinetics.