American Journal of Economics and Sociology最新文献

The Chinese government has launched the Rural Living Environment Improvement Initiative (RLEII) to solve the poor living conditions in rural areas. The initiative enhances rural greenery; provides sanitary toilets; and promotes proper disposal of animal manure, sewage, and household waste in rural areas. We collected data using in-person interviews with 938 rural residents in Xinjiang, China, to elicit their preference, preference intensity, and preference heterogeneity for RLEII. Results indicated that rural residents prefer to see shortcomings of the RLEII addressed. Rural greening construction is identified with the highest preference intensity. We also find significant heterogeneity in rural residents' preferences for each attribute of RLEII. The preference heterogeneity is rooted in the region's economic condition (poor vs. nonpoor region). It is essential to understand rural residents' choice for rural public goods supply and to respect their preference intensity, sequence, and heterogeneity for RLEII to enhance the implementation performance. We discuss the implications of these findings.

The financial well-being (FWB) of individuals is a topic that is becoming increasingly important across a multitude of disciplines. In this study, we use the 2016 National Financial Well-Being Survey administered by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to assess the determinants of an individual's FWB. We identify 144 potential covariates that could explain variation in the FWB score of individuals. The statistical methodology of choice is the Bayesian LASSO, which is a covariate selection algorithm that also allows for the importance ranking of covariates. Out of the 144 potential covariates, we find that 26 have 95% credible intervals that do not contain zero. Broadly speaking, the results show that objective measures of financial competency and psychological and sociological factors contribute the bulk of the explanatory power that help explain an individual's FWB score.

We use a computational linguistic algorithm to measure the topics covered in teacher contracts. Topic modeling metrics are used to assess a contract's expansiveness. Our topic, diversity measurement, is then related to the prevalence of support staff. If more specialized services are provided, then contracts should be broader as they cover more employment relationships. We confirm a strong, statistically significant relationship and, thus, have a valid measurement of contract breadth.

We rely upon a 50-state, 20-year panel to find that the number of Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) takers is only loosely related to economic conditions—although slightly more for men than for women, who in 2020 accounted for 58% of all LSAT takers. The number of test takers rose more than 35% between 2014 and 2020. This wave accentuated an already existing downtrend in the median real income of lawyers, and thus provides support for the hypothesis that most states have more lawyers than they need.

This paper examines convergence among cross-country shadow economies. Using the Phillips-Sul (2007, 2009) club convergence approach and data for over 150 countries from 1991 to 2017, the results show evidence against absolute convergence for all shadow economies; however, we find evidence of multiple convergence clubs. In particular, we find evidence for seven distinct convergence clubs and six divergent shadow economies. Each club is characterised by an increasingly larger shadow economy with the countries in club 1 having the largest shadow economy and those in club 7 having the smallest shadow economy. Using a two-way fixed effects approach, we also find that the determinants of the shadow economy are somewhat conditional on the convergence club. The existence of multiple equilibria suggests that policy makers in their attempt to combat the shadow economy would benefit by considering the different transitional paths associated with the different convergence clubs.

Background: Estimates of the number of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections are important for monitoring efforts aimed at preventing disease transmission, especially following the introduction of a highly effective treatment. This report provides updated estimates of HCV incidence, prevalence, undiagnosed proportion and treatment in Canada.

Methods: A combination of back calculation modelling and a modified version of the workbook method were used to estimate the incidence and prevalence of anti-HCV positive persons, the prevalence of chronic HCV infection and the undiagnosed proportion. The number of people treated for chronic HCV was estimated using administrative pharmaceutical data.

Results: An estimated 9,470 new infections occurred in 2019, corresponding to an incidence rate of 25 per 100,000 population, a 7.7% decrease since 2015. The estimated prevalence of anti-HCV antibodies in the Canadian population was 1.03% (plausible range: 0.83%-1.38%), and the estimated prevalence of chronic HCV was 0.54% (plausible range: 0.40%-0.79%). The overall proportion of anti-HCV positive persons who were undiagnosed was estimated at 24% of all infections, with individuals born between 1945 and 1975 being the priority population the most likely to be undiagnosed. An estimated 74,500 people with chronic HCV have been treated since the introduction of direct-acting antivirals in 2014.

Conclusion: Estimates of HCV incidence and prevalence are key metrics to guide interventions and resource allocation. While our estimates show that HCV incidence has decreased in Canada in recent years and treatment of chronic HCV has continued to increase, ongoing efforts are required to reduce the burden of HCV in Canada.

While working at Sloan Kettering Institute (SKI) in the 1970s, Ralph Moss discovered that the top research scientist there was impressed with the anti-cancer properties of amygdalin, the synthetic form of which is laetrile. At that time, laetrile was a topic of national interest as a low-cost way of treating cancer. It would have been big news if SKI announced that laetrile was effective in animal studies and then conducted human trials of its efficacy. But due to pressure from unknown sources, Moss’s superiors chose to publicly deny the validity of their scientist’s research. Moss and other dissenting staff tried to gain press attention for the cover-up going on at SKI, but their efforts failed. In 1979, the FDA ban on the interstate sale of laetrile was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, effectively ending the common use of it. It has been classified by the cancer establishment as a classic case of “quackery,” meaning that those who claim it has anti-cancer properties are frauds. Thus, this case study shows how easily information about potentially effective cancer treatments can be suppressed by a handful of people in positions of authority. It also shows how politics can change the scientific information available to the public.

In 1971, President Nixon launched the “war on cancer” with great fanfare. The dramatic increase in spending on targeted cancer research was supposed to quickly yield new treatments. That did not happen. The cancer establishment, which profits from the $200 billion spent annually on cancer treatment, has never provided an adequate accounting of how more spending translates into lives saved. In fact, by the mid-1980s, it became apparent that most of the “progress” in the war on cancer was little more than statistical sleight of hand. The death rate from cancer had climbed, not declined. Eventually, cancer deaths began to fall, but little of that improvement was due to better treatment. It was mostly a result of campaigns to reduce smoking and to promote early detection of treatable cancers. One reason the progress of treatment stalled was the unwillingness to consider unconventional treatments that were developed by doctors and other healers. Practitioners of unapproved treatments often sought refuge in Mexico from the medical apartheid system in the United States.

Chronic illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, are on the rise throughout the world due to modern diets and other factors. Western medicine has been ineffective in preventing or treating them. Thus, members of the public have sought alternatives. In the past 50 years, two social movements in the United States have shared an understanding of health in relation to the natural world. Chinese herbal medicine and practitioners of ecological agriculture agree that the nutritional requirements of complex living organisms are interconnected. Empirical findings in these applied sciences are supported by recent discoveries. However, economic constraints inhibit development. Each field is described separately, with notes from the author’s direct experience.