Assessing dispositional empathy in adults: A French validation of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI).

The goal of this study was to validate a French version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a self-report questionnaire comprised of four subscales assessing affective (empathic concern and personal distress) and cognitive (fantasy and perspective taking) components of empathy. To accomplish this, 322 adults (18 to 89 years) completed the French version of the IRI (F-IRI). A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the four-factor structure of the original IRI. The F-IRI showed good scale score reliability, test-retest reliability, and convergent validity, tested with the French version of the Empathy Quotient. These findings confirmed the reliability and validity of the F-IRI and suggest that the F-IRI is a useful instrument to measure self-reported empathy. In addition, we observed sex and age differences consistent with findings in the literature. Women reported higher scores in empathic concern and fantasy than men. Older adults reported less personal distress and less fantasy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)

Validity of the Katz Index to assess activities of daily living by informants in neuropathological studies

Abstract OBJECTIVE To analyze the evidences of construct validity of the Katz Index for the retrospective assessment of activities of daily living (ADL) by informants, to assist neuropathological studies in the elderly. METHOD A cross-sectional study analyzed the functional ability of ADL measure by the Katz Index, of 650 cases randomly selected from the Brazilian Brain Bank of the Ageing Brain Study Group (BBBABSG) database. Sample was divided in two subsamples for the analysis (N=325, each) and then stratified according to cognitive decline assessed by the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR). Factor analyses with calculations of internal consistency and invariance were performed. RESULTS Factor analysis evidenced a unidimensional instrument with optimal internal consistency, in all subgroups. Goodness of fit indices were obtained after two treatments of covariance, indicating adequacy of the scale for assessing ADL by informants. The scale is invariant to cognitive decline meaning that it can be used for subjects with or without cognitive impairment. CONCLUSION Katz Index is valid for the retrospective assessment of basic ADL by informants, with optimal reliability.

Hot vs. cold: Sequential responses and preference stability in experimental games

In experiments with two-person sequential games we analyzewhether responses to favorable and unfavorable actions dependon the elicitation procedure. In our hot treatment thesecond player responds to the first player s observed actionwhile in our cold treatment we follow the strategy method and have the second player decide on a contingent action foreach and every possible first player move, without firstobserving this move. Our analysis centers on the degree towhich subjects deviate from the maximization of their pecuniaryrewards, as a response to others actions. Our results show nodifference in behavior between the two treatments. We also findevidence of the stability of subjects preferences with respectto their behavior over time and to the consistency of theirchoices as first and second mover.

Monetary policy rules and macroeconomic stability: Evidence and some theory

We estimate a forward-looking monetary policy reaction function for thepostwar United States economy, before and after Volcker's appointmentas Fed Chairman in 1979. Our results point to substantial differencesin the estimated rule across periods. In particular, interest ratepolicy in the Volcker-Greenspan period appears to have been much moresensitive to changes in expected inflation than in the pre-Volckerperiod. We then compare some of the implications of the estimated rulesfor the equilibrium properties of inflation and output, using a simplemacroeconomic model, and show that the Volcker-Greenspan rule is stabilizing.

Growing at the production frontier. European aggregate growth, 1870-1914

The view of a 1870-1913 expanding European economy providing increasing welfare to everybody has been challenged by many, then and now. We focus on the amazing growth that was experienced, its diffusion and its sources, in the context of the permanent competition among European nation states. During 1870-193 the globalized European economy reached a silver age . GDP growth was quite rapid (2.15% per annum) and diffused all over Europe. Even discounting the high rates of population growth (1.06%), per capita growth was left at a respectable 1.08%. Income per capita was rising in every country, and the rates of improvement were quite similar. This was a major achievement after two generations of highly localized growth, both geographically and socially. Growth was based on the increased use of labour and capital, but a good part of growth (73 per cent for the weighted average of the best documented European countries) came out of total factor productivity efficiency gains resulting from not well specified ultimate sources of growth. This proportion suggests that the European economy was growing at full capacity at its production frontier. It would have been very difficult to improve its performance. Within Europe, convergence was limited, and it only was in motion after 1900. What happened was more the end of the era of big divergence rather than an era of convergence.

On the distribution of income and worker assignment under intra-firm spillovers, with an application to ideas and networks

We study the earnings structure and the equilibrium assignment of workers when workers exert intra-firm spillovers on each other.We allow for arbitrary spillovers provided output depends on some aggregate index of workers' skill. Despite the possibility of increasing returns to skills, equilibrium typically exists. We show that equilibrium will typically be segregated; that the skill space can be partitioned into a set of segments and any firm hires from only one segment. Next, we apply the model to analyze the effect of information technology on segmentation and the distribution of income. There are two types of human capital, productivity and creativity, i.e. the ability to produce ideas that may be duplicated over a network. Under plausible assumptions, inequality rises and then falls when network size increases, and the poorest workers cannot lose. We also analyze the impact of an improvement in worker quality and of an increased international mobility of ideas.

Why a Water Quality Index?, 2005

Iowa has nearly 72,000 miles of streams. With one week of camping, miles of paddling, on-going educational opportunities, and hundreds of dedicated and hard-working Iowans, Project AWARE can make a difference – one stretch of river, one week a year, one piece of trash at a time. If it seems like a vacation to the participants…it is. They just learn and improve the river as they go.

The association between body mass index and patients' experiences with inpatient care.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the association between patients' body mass index (BMI) and their experiences with inpatient care. DESIGN: Cross-sectional. Mail survey. SETTING: University Hospital of Geneva. PARTICIPANTS: Questionnaires were mailed to 2385 eligible adult patients, 6 weeks after discharge (response rate = 69%). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Patients' experiences with care were measured using the Picker inpatient survey questionnaire. BMI was calculated using self-reported height and weight. Main dependent variables were the global Picker patient experience (PPE-15) score and nine dimension-specific problem scores, scored from 0 (no reported problems) to 1 (all items coded as problems). We used linear regressions, adjusting for age, gender, education, subjective health, smoking and hospitalization, to assess the association between patients' BMI and their experiences with inpatient care. RESULTS: Of the patients, 4.8% were underweight, 50.8% had normal weight, 30.3% were overweight and 14.1% were obese. Adjusted analysis shows that compared with normal weight, obesity was significantly associated with fewer problematic items in the surgery-related information domain, and being underweight or overweight was associated with more problematic items in the involvement of family/friends domain. The global PPE-15 score was significantly higher (more problems) for underweight patients. CONCLUSIONS: Underweight patients, but not obese patients, reported more problems during hospitalization.

Beyond Smith's rule: An optimal dynamic index, rule for single machine stochastic scheduling with convex holding costs

Most research on single machine scheduling has assumedthe linearity of job holding costs, which is arguablynot appropriate in some applications. This motivates ourstudy of a model for scheduling $n$ classes of stochasticjobs on a single machine, with the objective of minimizingthe total expected holding cost (discounted or undiscounted). We allow general holding cost rates that are separable,nondecreasing and convex on the number of jobs in eachclass. We formulate the problem as a linear program overa certain greedoid polytope, and establish that it issolved optimally by a dynamic (priority) index rule,whichextends the classical Smith's rule (1956) for the linearcase. Unlike Smith's indices, defined for each class, ournew indices are defined for each extended class, consistingof a class and a number of jobs in that class, and yieldan optimal dynamic index rule: work at each time on a jobwhose current extended class has larger index. We furthershow that the indices possess a decomposition property,as they are computed separately for each class, andinterpret them in economic terms as marginal expected cost rate reductions per unit of expected processing time.We establish the results by deploying a methodology recentlyintroduced by us [J. Niño-Mora (1999). "Restless bandits,partial conservation laws, and indexability. "Forthcomingin Advances in Applied Probability Vol. 33 No. 1, 2001],based on the satisfaction by performance measures of partialconservation laws (PCL) (which extend the generalizedconservation laws of Bertsimas and Niño-Mora (1996)):PCL provide a polyhedral framework for establishing theoptimality of index policies with special structure inscheduling problems under admissible objectives, which weapply to the model of concern.

The network origins of aggregate fluctuations

This paper argues that in the presence of intersectoral input-output linkages, microeconomicidiosyncratic shocks may lead to aggregate fluctuations. In particular, itshows that, as the economy becomes more disaggregated, the rate at which aggregatevolatility decays is determined by the structure of the network capturing such linkages.Our main results provide a characterization of this relationship in terms of the importanceof different sectors as suppliers to their immediate customers as well as theirrole as indirect suppliers to chains of downstream sectors. Such higher-order interconnectionscapture the possibility of "cascade effects" whereby productivity shocks to asector propagate not only to its immediate downstream customers, but also indirectlyto the rest of the economy. Our results highlight that sizable aggregate volatility isobtained from sectoral idiosyncratic shocks only if there exists significant asymmetryin the roles that sectors play as suppliers to others, and that the "sparseness" of theinput-output matrix is unrelated to the nature of aggregate fluctuations.

A genome-wide approach accounting for body mass index identifies genetic variants influencing fasting glycemic traits and insulin resistance.

Recent genome-wide association studies have described many loci implicated in type 2 diabetes (T2D) pathophysiology and β-cell dysfunction but have contributed little to the understanding of the genetic basis of insulin resistance. We hypothesized that genes implicated in insulin resistance pathways might be uncovered by accounting for differences in body mass index (BMI) and potential interactions between BMI and genetic variants. We applied a joint meta-analysis approach to test associations with fasting insulin and glucose on a genome-wide scale. We present six previously unknown loci associated with fasting insulin at P < 5 × 10(-8) in combined discovery and follow-up analyses of 52 studies comprising up to 96,496 non-diabetic individuals. Risk variants were associated with higher triglyceride and lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels, suggesting a role for these loci in insulin resistance pathways. The discovery of these loci will aid further characterization of the role of insulin resistance in T2D pathophysiology.