Retirement and Cognitive Functioning

Author(s):  
Raquel Fonseca ◽  
Arie Kapteyn ◽  
Gema Zamarro

This chapter surveys recent literature on the effects of retirement on cognitive functioning at older ages around the world. Studies using similar data, definitions of cognition, and instruments to capture causal effects find that being retired leads to a decline of cognition, controlling for different specifications of age functions and other covariates. The size and significance of the estimated effects varied depending on specifications used, such as whether or not models included fixed effects, dynamic specifications, or alternative specifications of instrumental variables. The authors replicated several of these results using the same datasets. Factors that are likely causing the differences across specifications include endogeneity of right-hand side variables, and heterogeneity across gender, occupation, or skill levels. Results were especially sensitive to the inclusion of country fixed effects, to control for unobserved country differences, suggesting the key role of unobserved differences across countries, which both affect retirement ages and cognitive decline.

Author(s):  
Chang He ◽  
Miaoran Zhang ◽  
Jiuling Li ◽  
Yiqing Wang ◽  
Lanlan Chen ◽  
...  

AbstractObesity is thought to significantly impact the quality of life. In this study, we sought to evaluate the health consequences of obesity on the risk of a broad spectrum of human diseases. The causal effects of exposing to obesity on health outcomes were inferred using Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses using a fixed effects inverse-variance weighted model. The instrumental variables were SNPs associated with obesity as measured by body mass index (BMI) reported by GIANT consortium. The spectrum of outcome consisted of the phenotypes from published GWAS and the UK Biobank. The MR-Egger intercept test was applied to estimate horizontal pleiotropic effects, along with Cochran’s Q test to assess heterogeneity among the causal effects of instrumental variables. Our MR results confirmed many putative disease risks due to obesity, such as diabetes, dyslipidemia, sleep disorder, gout, smoking behaviors, arthritis, myocardial infarction, and diabetes-related eye disease. The novel findings indicated that elevated red blood cell count was inferred as a mediator of BMI-induced type 2 diabetes in our bidirectional MR analysis. Intriguingly, the effects that higher BMI could decrease the risk of both skin and prostate cancers, reduce calorie intake, and increase the portion size warrant further studies. Our results shed light on a novel mechanism of the disease-causing roles of obesity.


ILR Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (5) ◽  
pp. 1219-1253 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Craig Riddell ◽  
Xueda Song

Technology use and adoption by firms and workers is a critical component of the process of technological change. Relying on data from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey, this study assesses the causal effects of education on technology use and adoption by using instrumental variables for schooling derived from Canadian compulsory school attendance laws. The authors find that education increases the probability of using computers on the job, and that employees with more education spend more time using computers and have longer work experiences with computers than those with less education. Education does not, however, influence the use of computer-controlled and computer-assisted devices or other technological devices such as cash registers and sales terminals. These findings are consistent with the view that formal education increases the use of technologies that require or enable workers to carry out higher-order tasks, but not those involving routine workplace tasks.


2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-393
Author(s):  
Andŕe Albuquerque Sant' Anna ◽  
Leonardo Weller

Did the threat of communism influence income distribution in developed capitalist economies during the Cold War? This article addresses this question by testing whether income inequality in OECD countries was related to events linked to the spread of communism—revolutions and Soviet interventions—around the world. We argue that the threat of the spread of communism acted as an incentive for the elites and governments to keep economic inequality low. This article provides an empirical contribution to the recent literature on inequality, which highlights the role of domestic institutions but ignores the role of the Cold War in redistributing income. We find a robust relationship between income inequality and the distance to communist events. The results, reinforced by cases studied, suggest that the spread of communism fostered income redistribution deals between domestic elites and workers. Finally, we show that these effects were reinforced by strong unions and the presence of strong communist parties.


2011 ◽  
pp. 61-79
Author(s):  
Riccardo Silvi ◽  
Monica Bartolini

Recent literature on financial reporting underlines that, in order to meet the changing needs of business reporting users, more information with a forward-looking perspective should be provided, with a focus on those factors that are responsible for longer- term value, including non-financial measurers. This article hence focuses on the importance of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Management Commentary (MC). Through content analysis, we examine a sample of 111 reports from around the world (following different local and/or international regulations). The paper explores how organizations in practice use KPIs for external purposes, first investigating to what extent KPIs provide the information required by the MC frameworks, and, secondly, whether such KPIs have the suggested characteristics. Results show that although KPIs seem to potentially play a valuable and recognized role in providing the information required by the different MC frameworks, a large number of companies have not provided an effective and balanced picture of the drivers and factors that will lead their future performance. This paper contributes to the scarce research on the effectiveness of different approaches to regulate MC reports, with a specific focus on KPIs. It also highlights some critical issues concerning what and how KPI information should be produced and reported.


2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 75-89
Author(s):  
Giulia Schioppetto ◽  
Marco Monzani ◽  
Silvio Ciappi

AbstractThe narrative-based approach acts as the only tool capable of creating and assigning a meaning to individual life stories, linking individuals to their actions. The use of narrative as a reference frame for understanding the motive of the crime therefore offers an innovative perspective into criminology and its forensic application. Through the stories of the criminals and the victims, of society, and the world of justice as a whole, doing narrative criminology means listening to and accurately analysing criminal life stories to shed some light and meaning on the obscure elements of reality that from time to time take shape as a violent act. After a review of the most recent literature in the criminological narrative area, the present work analyses the role of the criminologist as an expert who provides an essential contribution during investigation and trial phases. Moreover, the work proposes the use of a narrative approach and the contribution of a narrative criminologist in two different moments of the criminal procedure: during the investigation phase, through a preventive methodological narrative training of forensic experts, with emphasis on team work, and in the trial phase through the use of criminological interviews to assess criminal liability and dangerousness.


2021 ◽  
pp. 3-32
Author(s):  
V.N. Leksin

The third and final article of the three-part series of articles «Artificial intelligence in the economy and politics of our time» (the first and second articles of the series were published in the fourth and fifth issues of the journal for this year, respectively) presents the results of a study of the goals, motivations and specifics of the adoption of national strategies to support the development of artificial intelligence in different countries. It is shown that such a strategy in Russia is based on the idea of the most important role of using artificial intelligence in solving the most complex economic, social, and military-political problems of the country. Differences in conceptual approaches to the development of research and practical use of artificial intelligence developments in the national strategies of the largest countries of the world — the United States, China and India.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Esposito ◽  
Claudia Tagliabue ◽  
Samantha Bosis

Neisseria meningitidisis a Gram-negative pathogen that actively invades its human host and leads to the development of life-threatening pathologies. One of the leading causes of death in the world,N. meningitidiscan be responsible for nearly 1,000 new infections per 100,000 subjects during an epidemic period. The bacterial species are classified into 12 serogroups, five of which (A, B, C, W, and Y) cause the majority of meningitides. The three purified protein conjugate vaccines currently available target serogroups A, C, W, and Y. Serogroup B has long been a challenge but the discovery of the complete genome sequence of an MenB strain has allowed the development of a specific four-component vaccine (4CMenB). This review describes the pathogenetic role ofN. meningitidisand the recent literature concerning the new meningococcal vaccine.


2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain M. Cockburn ◽  
Jean O. Lanjouw ◽  
Mark Schankerman

Analysis of the timing of launches of 642 new drugs in 76 countries during 1983–2002 shows that patent and price regulation regimes strongly affect how quickly new drugs become commercially available in different countries. Price regulation delays launch, while longer and more extensive patent rights accelerate it. Health policy institutions and economic and demographic factors that make markets more profitable also speed up diffusion. The estimated effects are generally robust to controlling for endogeneity of policy regimes with country fixed effects and instrumental variables. The results highlight the important role of policy choices in driving the diffusion of new innovations. (JEL I18, L11, L51, L65, O31, O33, O34)


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