Research trends in contemporary health economics: a scientometric analysis on collective content of specialty journals.

INTRODUCTION: Health economics is a thriving sub-discipline of economics. Applied health economics research is considered essential in the health care sector and is used extensively by public policy makers. For scholars, it is important to understand the history and status of health economics-when it emerged, the rate of research output, trending topics, and its temporal evolution-to ensure clarity and direction when formulating research questions. METHODS: Nearly 13,000 articles were analysed, which were found in the collective publications of the ten most specialised health economic journals. We explored this literature using patterns of term co-occurrence and document co-citation. RESULTS: The research output in this field is growing exponentially. Five main research divisions were identified: (i) macroeconomic evaluation, (ii) microeconomic evaluation, (iii) measurement and valuation of outcomes, (iv) monitoring mechanisms (evaluation), and (v) guidance and appraisal. Document co-citation analysis revealed eighteen major research streams and identified variation in the magnitude of activities in each of the streams. A recent emergence of research activities in health economics was seen in the Medicaid Expansion stream. Established research streams that continue to show high levels of activity include Child Health, Health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) and Cost-effectiveness. Conversely, Patient Preference, Health Care Expenditure and Economic Evaluation are now past their peak of activity in specialised health economic journals. Analysis also identified several streams that emerged in the past but are no longer active. CONCLUSIONS: Health economics is a growing field, yet there is minimal evidence of creation of new research trends. Over the past 10 years, the average rate of annual increase in internationally collaborated publications is almost double that of domestic collaborations (8.4% vs 4.9%), but most of the top scholarly collaborations remain between six countries only.

Provider responses to the expansion of public subsidies in healthcare: The case of oral chemotherapy treatment in Australia.

We examine provider responses to the expansion of public subsidies in 2015 for innovative oral chemotherapy treatment, in a health system where providers were free to determine their own prices. The new treatment was known to have similar efficacy to its traditional intravenous alternative and was preferred by patients for its at-home administration. However, from a policymaker's perspective, the potential for misalignment between patient and provider preferences was significant given the shift to full reimbursement for the oral chemotherapy medication but no change in fee-for-service payments for associated chemotherapy services. Under this scenario, a shift away from traditional intravenous chemotherapy may entail reduced activity and revenues associated with infusions for providers, and we hypothesise that it may result in unintended policy consequences such as reduced take-up of the new therapy or higher prices. We implement a difference-in-difference model using national administrative data on services provided, and chemotherapy medications prescribed, by providers to 1850 patients in New South Wales, Australia. Our estimates indicate that the subsidies expanded access to oral chemotherapy for newly eligible patients by 15 percentage points. However, prices charged by providers for an episode of care rose by 23 percent, driven mostly by increases in service volumes. The results illustrate the importance of understanding differential provider responses to policy changes in financial incentives.

Bringing MRI to low- and middle-income countries: Directions, challenges and potential solutions.

The global disparity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a major challenge, with many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) experiencing limited access to MRI. The reasons for limited access are technological, economic and social. With the advancement of MRI technology, we explore why these challenges still prevail, highlighting the importance of MRI as the epidemiology of disease changes in LMICs. In this paper, we establish a framework to develop MRI with these challenges in mind and discuss the different aspects of MRI development, including maximising image quality using cost-effective components, integrating local technology and infrastructure and implementing sustainable practices. We also highlight the current solutions-including teleradiology, artificial intelligence and doctor and patient education strategies-and how these might be further improved to achieve greater access to MRI.

Estimating health care costs at scale in low- and middle-income countries: Mathematical notations and frameworks for the application of cost functions.

Appropriate costing and economic modeling are major factors for the successful scale-up of health interventions. Various cost functions are currently being used to estimate costs of health interventions at scale in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) potentially resulting in disparate cost projections. The aim of this study is to gain understanding of current methods used and provide guidance to inform the use of cost functions that is fit for purpose. We reviewed seven databases covering the economic and global health literature to identify studies reporting a quantitative analysis of costs informing the projected scale-up of a health intervention in LMICs between 2003 and 2019. Of the 8725 articles identified, 40 met the inclusion criteria. We classified studies according to the type of cost functions applied-accounting or econometric-and described the intended use of cost projections. Based on these findings, we developed new mathematical notations and cost function frameworks for the analysis of healthcare costs at scale in LMICs setting. These notations estimate variable returns to scale in cost projection methods, which is currently ignored in most studies. The frameworks help to balance simplicity versus accuracy and increase the overall transparency in reporting of methods.

Online Interactive Pedagogical Tools for the Principles of Microeconomics Curriculum.

We discuss over one hundred interactive learning tools that we created and piloted in introductory open-education (OER) microeconomics classes. These interactive tools cover a wide range of microeconomics topics. They are highly randomized so that the presented scenario and correct answers are different on each usage of a tool, which not only provides students with unlimited practice attempts, but also significantly reduces the possibility of cheating by sharing answers. These tools can be uploaded into most learning management systems, and scores are automatically recorded. Student feedback is positive. The tools are available to others at no monetary cost at http://econreimagined.gsu.edu.

Nonequilibrium phase transitions in competitive markets caused by network effects.

Network effects are the added value derived solely from the popularity of a product in an economic market. Using agent-based models inspired by statistical physics, we propose a minimal theory of a competitive market for (nearly) indistinguishable goods with demand-side network effects, sold by statistically identical sellers. With weak network effects, the model reproduces conventional microeconomics: there is a statistical steady state of (nearly) perfect competition. Increasing network effects, we find a phase transition to a robust nonequilibrium phase driven by the spontaneous formation and collapse of fads in the market. When sellers update prices sufficiently quickly, an emergent monopolist can capture the market and undercut competition, leading to a symmetry- and ergodicity-breaking transition. The nonequilibrium phase simultaneously exhibits three empirically established phenomena not contained in the standard theory of competitive markets: spontaneous price fluctuations, persistent seller profits, and broad distributions of firm market shares.

Working for your own folks: the microeconomics of social media.

This paper uses a comparative ethnographic approach to explore the ways in which social media enables new economic strategies that capitalize on women's traditional forms of reliance within their local communities. We use ethnographic examples from northern Chile, southeast Italy, and south India to show how women are successful in establishing small but prestigious entrepreneurial activities by using social media to respond to local social and cultural needs. Women use social media to transform both conventional work practices and individuals' notions of work in ways that overcome important structural constraints they face in their respective communities. These findings contrast with optimistic analyses that suggest online platforms decrease global inequalities through bringing disadvantaged people into global economic flows. This article demonstrates the effective ways in which individuals use social media to gradually change local norms related to gender and work while making small but important gains towards economic stability. This process is related to important shifts in sociality that have resulted from social media use within local communities. By focusing on entrepreneurship and gendered aspects of online economic exchange, we develop an understanding of what happens when longstanding expectations for gendered work meet commerce made possible through new media.

It's the Economy, Stupid: Applying (Micro)economic Principles to Microbiome Science.

A key challenge in microbiome science is the scale mismatch problem, which arises when the scale at which microbial communities are sampled, interrogated, and averaged is different from the scale at which individual microorganisms within those communities interact with each other and with their environment. Profiling the microbial communities in a teaspoon of soil, from a scoop of fecal matter, or along a plant leaf surface represents a scale mismatch of multiple orders of magnitude, which may limit our ability to interpret or predict species interactions and community assembly within such samples. In this Perspective, we explore how economists, who are historically and topically split along the lines of micro- and macroeconomics, deal with the scale mismatch problem, and how taking clues from (micro)economists could benefit the field of microbiomics.

The evolution of deception.

Deception plays a critical role in the dissemination of information, and has important consequences on the functioning of cultural, market-based and democratic institutions. Deception has been widely studied within the fields of philosophy, psychology, economics and political science. Yet, we still lack an understanding of how deception emerges in a society under competitive (evolutionary) pressures. This paper begins to fill this gap by bridging evolutionary models of social good-public goods games (PGGs)-with ideas from interpersonal deception theory (Buller and Burgoon 1996 Commun. Theory 6, 203-242. (doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.1996.tb00127.x)) and truth-default theory (Levine 2014 J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 33, 378-392. (doi:10.1177/0261927X14535916); Levine 2019 Duped: truth-default theory and the social science of lying and deception. University of Alabama Press). This provides a well-founded analysis of the growth of deception in societies and the effectiveness of several approaches to reducing deception. Assuming that knowledge is a public good, we use extensive simulation studies to explore (i) how deception impacts the sharing and dissemination of knowledge in societies over time, (ii) how different types of knowledge sharing societies are affected by deception and (iii) what type of policing and regulation is needed to reduce the negative effects of deception in knowledge sharing. Our results indicate that cooperation in knowledge sharing can be re-established in systems by introducing institutions that investigate and regulate both defection and deception using a decentralized case-by-case strategy. This provides evidence for the adoption of methods for reducing the use of deception in the world around us in order to avoid a Tragedy of the Digital Commons (Greco and Floridi 2004 Ethics Inf. Technol. 6, 73-81. (doi:10.1007/s10676-004-2895-2)).

A Bayesian approach to investment in innovation projects with the presence of fake innovators.

The paper proposes a game-theoretic model of interaction between investors and innovators, taking into account the existence of so-called "fake" innovators offering knowingly unprofitable projects. The model is a Bayesian non-cooperative, repetitive game with recalculated payments and partly unobservable ex interim player types. It allows quantifying the parameters of the strategy for all player types to find equilibrium solutions. The model describes rational modes for screening "fake" innovators based on adjusting players' probabilistic estimates.

Corruption and instutitions: An analysis for the Colombian case.

This paper identifies the main determinants of errors in the allocation of spending by the Colombian Government. Using information from the Electronic Public Procurement System (SECOP), the determinants of the probability of an addition to a contract are identified. The errors of the government can be interpreted as an approximation of their corruption. The average income and educational level of a colombian department are found to directly influence the probability of an addition. Using the estimation of the binary choice models, the forecast error of an addition is estimated, it is found that public and civil works contracts have more forecast error, forming an ideal mechanism for thefts and accumulation of bribes. Our results show that predicting an addition can be done with high certainty.

Identifying the systemically important banks of Turkey with the CoVaR method.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the systemic risk contributions of Turkish banks and to identify the systemically important banks of Turkey during the period from 2005 to 2016. We apply the conditional value-at-risk (CoVaR) method proposed by Adrian and Brunnermeier (2009) using quantile regression. The study includes thirteen major banks of Turkey, including both public and private banks, out of a total of 52 banks. The banks are ranked in terms of their systemic risk contribution to the Turkish financial system based on their asset returns, macroeconomic variables and individual bank variables. The study reveals that Akbank, Garanti, Yapi Kredi and Isbank have the highest systemic risk contribution to the financial system when adding macroeconomic variables to the model. This ranking is changed to Yapi Kredi, Garanti, TEB, Sekerbank and Akbank when taking into account bank-specific variables. One surprising result is that risk in isolation and the spillover risks of public banks are smaller than in large private banks. Furthermore, the marginal systemic risk contributions of public banks are smaller than those of private banks. In conclusion, authorities improve the regulatory framework according to the context of CoVaR in addition to monitor the idiosyncratic risks of banks.

The nexus between capital structure, firm-specific factors, macroeconomic factors and financial performance in the textile sector of Pakistan.

The study aimed to analyse the role of the capital structure in the financial performance of 90 textile firms listed in Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) during the period 2008-2017. The dependent variable was return on equity as a proxy for financial performance. The independent variables were the debt to equity, total debt to total assets, asset turnover ratios, sales growth, taxation, and export growth, while the firm size was taken as a control variable. The panel regression estimation technique was employed for analysis purposes, and both cross-sectional and time-series data were collected for this study. This study used the random-effect regression estimation model based on the Hausman diagnostic test statistics. The results indicate that the capital structure debt to equity variable has a negative and significant relationship with financial performance while the asset turnover ratio and firm performance showed a negative and statistically insignificant relationship. Export growth and sales growth have a considerable positive connection with financial performance; however, firm size has a negative and significant impact on firm performance, in favour of our alternative research hypothesis. The remaining variables include tax payable and the total debt to total assets ratio, which have an insignificant connection with financial performance (ROE) and validate the agency theory. With better corporate governance by putting more pressure on managers or increasing managerial ownership, institutional investors can reduce the capital, leverage risk and the overall firm capital cost that help to improve the firm's financial performance and economic stability.

Demographic variation in active consumer behaviour: On-line search for retail broadband services.

Consumers who actively search for better broadband deals may benefit from lower prices or improved service quality compared to those who do not. If, however, consumers differ in their propensity to engage with the market and actively search, these potential benefits may not accrue equally. This paper investigates differences in consumer search activity for telecommunications services across small geographic areas. We exploit rich and novel data from a commercial price comparison site to explore the dispersion of consumer search in the Irish retail broadband market, while controlling for supply-side variations. By linking geo-coded searches to census data on small area socio-economic characteristics, we identify the areas where most search originates and can thus characterise the socio-economic groups to whom the benefits of search are most likely to accrue. We find evidence that areas populated by many highly educated, married people, commuters, mortgage holders, and retirees are among the most active in search. In contrast, those areas in which many older people, farmers, low-skilled workers and students reside give rise to significantly fewer consumer searches.

Financial performance of rural banks in Indonesia: A two-stage DEA approach.

This study aims to analyze the efficiency performance of conventional and Islamic rural banks in Indonesia, specifically, Bank Perkreditan Rakyat (BPR) and Bank Pembiayaan Rakyat Syariah (BPRS). Using a DEA approach, the results indicate that both BPR and BPRS are still inefficient in terms of the intermediation role but are efficient in production. Furthermore, the Tobit estimation show that these two efficiency results are positively affected by location and the capital adequacy ratio (CAR). These rural banks operating in cities tend to have a higher level of efficiency than otherwise. Moreover, the higher the capital, the more efficient both Islamic and conventional rural banks in terms of production and intermediation.

Renewable energy community and the European energy market: main motivations.

With the implementation of the EU's key climate and energy policy objectives, there is a transition to a new energy system where renewable energy sources are pushed and where new technologies need to be developed and adopted. The energy transition may result in deeper participation of individual consumers or citizens in community-based initiatives. Those communities operate collectively in the energy market producing RE or in local networks, based on local collaborations. The development of energy communities is not the same in all member state. Moreover, it is noted that their development is different depending on the European country. The aim of this paper is to collect data, using a survey, to study and to better understand what the citizen energy initiatives are, their main features and the motivations of individuals to participate on it. The citizens participation is a crucial point for the development of this type of communities. The main motivation for participation in these communities seems to be concerns about environmental and climate impacts. We also note that in these communities the trust is very important for the development of any RE project.

The local economy and Re-election of incumbent district leaders in Indonesia.

This paper tests whether economic growth and unemployment rates matter in the re-election of incumbent district leaders in Indonesia. Applying the Probit and Hekcprobit model on Indonesia's local direct elections during 2005-2013, we find that both unemployment and GDP per capita growth has an impact on election outcomes in the election year. However, for incumbent district leaders' it is only the average annual GDP per capita growth that matters for re-election. However, when we separate luck (district's performance due to regional or national economy) from competence (district's own economic performance), we find that competence matters for re-election in the election year, while luck matters for re-election in the average annual performance of the incumbents' tenure. The findings suggest that voters put more attention and vigilance on the incumbents' performances in the last year of their tenure, rather than on their whole tenure.

Social networks and job quality in Mexico: 2005-2019.

This investigation analyzes labor implications of employment procurement through friends and family on wages, workers' benefits and job longevity in comparison to other job search methods in Mexico during 2005-2019. Various econometric models are performed. For salary, fixed effects by city and year will be estimated through Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). Second, it is analyzed if jobs obtained through friends and family are more likely to provide benefits equal to or greater than those required by law, for this, a logistic model and an ordered logistic model are employed with fixed effects; and finally, for the duration of employment we use a parametric survival model. The results indicate that employment procured through family and friends result in higher salaries and longer work durations but less work benefits.