Background: Depressive symptoms are potential outcomes of poorly functioning work environments. Such symptoms are frequent and cause considerable suffering for the employees as well as financial loss for the employers. Accordingly good prospective studies of psychosocial working conditions and depressive symptoms are valuable. Scientific reviews of such studies have pointed at methodological difficulties but still established a few job risk factors. Those reviews were published some years ago. There is need for an updated systematic review using the GRADE system. In addition, gender related questions have been insufficiently reviewed. Method: Inclusion criteria for the studies published 1990 to June 2013: 1. European and English speaking countries. 2. Quantified results describing the relationship between exposure (psychosocial or physical/chemical) and outcome (standardized questionnaire assessment of depressive symptoms or interview-based clinical depression). 3. Prospective or comparable case-control design with at least 100 participants. 4. Assessments of exposure (working conditions) and outcome at baseline and outcome (depressive symptoms) once again after follow-up 1-5 years later. 5. Adjustment for age and adjustment or stratification for gender. Studies filling inclusion criteria were subjected to assessment of 1.) relevance and 2.) quality using predefined criteria. Systematic review of the evidence was made using the GRADE system. When applicable, meta-analysis of the magnitude of associations was made. Consistency of findings was examined for a number of possible confounders and publication bias was discussed. Results: Fifty-nine articles of high or medium high scientific quality were included. Moderately strong evidence (grade three out of four) was found for job strain (high psychological demands and low decision latitude), low decision latitude and bullying having significant impact on development of depressive symptoms. Limited evidence (grade two) was shown for psychological demands, effort reward imbalance, low support, unfavorable social climate, lack of work justice, conflicts, limited skill discretion, job insecurity and long working hours. There was no differential gender effect of adverse job conditions on depressive symptoms

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A systematic review including meta-analysis of work environment and depressive symptoms

The digital divide limits opportunities for those without ready access to Internet. Movement online of essential activities during COVID-19 took inadequate Internet service from inconvenient to emergency/crisis for many households. A negative correlation between rurality and Internet speed was found at the county level, highlighting the struggle for rural areas. Schools tackle challenges of providing equitable educational access by attempting to provide access for students, while even households with service available struggle to maintain sufficient speeds and/or can afford it. Essential activities moved online, yet sufficient Internet is an essential public service that remains unattainable for many US households.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/aepp.13104

Revisiting the Digital Divide in the COVID-19 Era.

This empirical application investigates the eventual presence of credit constraints using a panel of French farmers. This is the first European application using a direct modelling approach based upon axiomatic production theory. The credit constrained profit maximisation model proposed by Fare, Grosskopf and Lee is extended in three ways. First, we rephrase the model in terms of directional distance functions to allow for duality with the profit function. Second, we model the presence of credit constraints in the short-run and investment constraints in the long-run using short- respectively long-run profit functions. Third, we lag the expenditure constraint one year to account for the separation between planning and production. We find empirical evidence of both credit and investment constraints, though their relative impact on the degree of financial inefficiency is rather low in the short-run. Financially unconstrained farmers are larger, perform better, and seem to benefit from a virtuous circle where access to financial markets allows better productive choices. In the long-run, almost all farms seem to suffer from credit constraints for financing their investments.

Short- and Long-Run Credit Constraints in French Agriculture: A Directional Distance Function Framework Using Expenditure-Constrained Profit Functions

This book is suitable for graduates taking courses in labour economics which use a search approach. The economics of search has become a part of the standard graduate curriculum and deals with the costs and benefits to individual workers - either employed or unemployed - of seeking a job with the highest possible pay. This book surveys the empirical literature on the economics of search in a systematic manner.

Empirical Labor Economics: The Search Approach.

The attributable cost of catheter-associated urinary tract infections in the United States: A systematic review.

Research objective Hospital-acquired conditions, or HACs, often result in additional Medicare payments, generated during the initial hospitalization and in subsequent health care encounters. The purpose of this article is to estimate the incremental cost to Medicare, as measured by Medicare program payments, of six HACs. Study design The researchers used a matched case-control design to determine the incremental increase in Medicare payments attributable to each HAC. For each HAC patient, five comparison patients were matched on diagnosis group, sex, race, and age. Using the matched sample, we estimated a hospital fixed effects log-linear regression on total Medicare payments for the episode of care, further controlling for co-morbid conditions. Care episodes included the initial hospitalization and all inpatient, outpatient, physician, home health, and hospice care that occurred within 90 days of hospital discharge. Population studied All Medicare fee-for-service patients discharged alive from a hospital between October 2008 and June 2010 with one of six HACs-severe pressure ulcer, fracture, catheter-associated urinary tract infection, vascular catheter-associated infection, surgical site infection following certain orthopedic procedures, or deep vein thrombosis/ pulmonary embolism following certain orthopedic procedures-were included in the sample and matched to five similar patients without the HACs. Principal findings The multivariate analysis suggests that Medicare paid an additional $146 million per year across these HAC care episodes compared with what would have been paid without the HACs. Conclusions HACs create a significant financial burden for the Medicare program. We compare the incremental Medicare payments for these six HACs to the current and upcoming Medicare HAC payment penalties.

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The impact of hospital-acquired conditions on Medicare program payments.

We estimate the effect of legalization on the wages and benefits of foreign-born agricultural workers. Using data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey, we employ propensity score matching techniques to compare legal permanent residents in the United States with an appropriate control group of undocumented workers. Consistent with previous findings, we show that becoming a legal permanent resident results in a modest wage gain of about 5%. Further, we provide novel evidence that, in addition to higher wages, legalization leads to a significantly higher likelihood of receiving some other form of compensation, such as employer-sponsored health insurance or a monetary bonus.

The effect of legalization on wages and health insurance: evidence from the National Agricultural Workers Survey.

Impact of hospital-acquired conditions on financial liabilities for Medicare patients

We evaluate the impact that the USDA’s low-cost broadband loan programs have on the U.S. agricultural sector. The broadband loan programs increase access to high-speed Internet in recipient communities, which can raise farm sales by increasing both farm output and prices received by producers. Further, high-speed Internet may drive down costs by providing information on cheaper inputs and better management practices, leading to an overall improvement in farm profits. Using U.S. county-level data on farm sales and expenditures in 2000 and 2007, we employ an inverse probability weighting technique to control for endogenous selection in an econometric model that also accounts for spatial dependence. We find that the two USDA broadband loan programs have had positive causal impacts on farm sales, expenditures, and profits in a subset of rural counties—those adjacent to metropolitan counties—but not in other types of counties.

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The Impact of Broadband on U.S. Agriculture: An Evaluation of the USDA Broadband Loan Program

We conducted an evaluation of a patient-centered medical home demonstration sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. We implemented a quasi-experimental pre-post with a comparison group design. Traditional propensity score weighting failed to achieve balance (exchangeability) between the two groups on several critical characteristics. In response, we incorporated a relatively new alternative known as entropy balancing. Our objective is to share lessons learned from using entropy balancing in a quasi-experimental study design. We document the advantages and challenges with using entropy balancing. We also describe a set of best practices, and we present a series of illustrative analyses that empirically demonstrate the performance of entropy balancing relative to traditional propensity score weighting. We compare alternative approaches based on: (i) covariate balance (e.g., standardized differences); (ii) overlap in conditional treatment probabilities; and (iii) the distribution of weights. Our comparison of overlap is based on a novel approach we developed that uses entropy balancing weights to calculate a pseudo-propensity score. In many situations, entropy balancing provides remarkably superior covariate balance compared to traditional propensity score weighting methods. Entropy balancing is also preferred because it does not require extensive iterative manual searching for an optimal propensity score specification. However, we demonstrate that there are some situations where entropy balancing “fails”. Specifically, there are instances where entropy balancing achieves adequate covariate balance only by using a distribution of weights that dramatically up-weights a small set of observations, giving them a disproportionately large and undesirable influence.

Using entropy balancing to strengthen an observational cohort study design: lessons learned from an evaluation of a complex multi-state federal demonstration

Amy M. G. Kandilov

Papers

The impact of hospital-acquired conditions on Medicare program payments.

The effect of legalization on wages and health insurance: evidence from the National Agricultural Workers Survey.

Impact of hospital-acquired conditions on financial liabilities for Medicare patients

The Impact of Broadband on U.S. Agriculture: An Evaluation of the USDA Broadband Loan Program

Using entropy balancing to strengthen an observational cohort study design: lessons learned from an evaluation of a complex multi-state federal demonstration