Assessing the Impact of Public Policy on Homicide Rates in Brazil: The Case of PRONASCI Program

2021 ◽  
pp. 073401682110390
Author(s):  
Talita Egevardt de Castro ◽  
Marcelo Justus ◽  
Ana Lúcia Kassouf

The current study evaluates the impact of the National Public Security with Citizenship Program (PRONASCI) on the homicide rate in Brazilian municipalities. PRONASCI program was implemented in Brazilian metropolitan regions and urban territories with high violent crime rates in 2007. In this study, we have applied a spatial difference-in-differences model with matching approaches. Municipalities that did not receive funds from the program made up the control group. We found that the program was inefficient to reduce the homicide rate in all of the municipalities that had received funds from it, compared to those that had not, even considering their potential spatial spillover effects. This result was expected due to the program complexity, in particular due to its ineffective management and the resistance from municipalities to change with the program.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Sanchez ◽  
Cécile Payet ◽  
Marie Herr ◽  
Anne Dazinieras ◽  
Caroline Blochet ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND The elderly are particularly exposed to adverse events from medication. Among the various strategies to reduce polypharmacy, educational approaches have shown promising results. OBJECTIVE We aimed to evaluate the impact of the implementation of a good medical practice booklet on polypharmacy in nursing homes. METHODS We identified nursing homes belonging to a geriatric care provider that had launched a policy of proper medication use using a good medical practice booklet delivered to prescribers and pharmacists. Data were derived from electronic pill dispensers. The effect of the intervention on polypharmacy was assessed with multilevel regression models, with a control group to account for natural trends over time. The main outcomes were the average daily number of times when medication was administered and the number of drugs with different presentation identifier codes per resident per month. RESULTS 96,216 residents from 519 nursing homes were included between 1 January 2011 and 31 December 2014. The intervention group and the control group both decreased their average daily use of medication (-0.05 and -0.06). The good medical practice booklet did not have a statistically significant effect (exponentiated difference-in-differences coefficient 1.00, 95% confidence interval 0.99-1.02, P=.45). CONCLUSIONS Although the good medical practice booklet itself did not seem effective in decreasing medication use, our data show the effectiveness of a higher-level policy to decrease polypharmacy.


2015 ◽  
Vol 91 (5) ◽  
pp. 1493-1512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive S. Lennox

ABSTRACT In 2005–2006, the PCAOB imposed restrictions on auditors' tax services in order to strengthen auditor independence and improve audit quality. The restrictions resulted in a significant drop in auditor-provided tax services (APTS). To test the impact on audit quality, I partition the sample into a treatment group (companies whose APTS purchases dropped significantly when the restrictions were introduced) and a control group (companies whose APTS purchases were relatively unaffected) and I measure audit quality using the incidence of accounting misstatements, tax-related misstatements, and auditors' going-concern opinions. Using a difference-in-differences design, I find no change in audit quality for the treatment group relative to the control group after the restrictions are imposed.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Oduse ◽  
Temesgen Zewotir ◽  
Delia North

Abstract Background This article examines the impact of antenatal care on child health outcome. We specifically investigated if women visits to antenatal care services has a positive effect in the reduction of under-five mortality. Methods We employ a difference-in-differences design with propensity score matching to identify direct causal effects of antenatal care on under-five mortality based on the Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey data of 2011 and 2016. Our sample includes 22 295 women between the ages of 14-49 years who have at least one antenatal care visit before delivery (treatment group) or had no antenatal care visit before delivery (control group). Results The study revealed 1 481 cases of reported under-five mortality. 83.7% of that is by women who never had any antenatal care visit while the remaining 16.3% are by women who had at least one antenatal visit during their pregnancy. Antenatal care visit decreases the likelihood of under-five mortality in Ethiopia by 29% (CI = 1.3-56%, P= 0.04). Conclusions To achieve significant reduction in under-five mortality rate, Intervention programs that encourages antenatal care visits should be considered. This will improve child survival and help in attaining sustainable Development Goal target.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Perinel ◽  
Antoine Duclos ◽  
Cecile Payet ◽  
Yves Bouffard ◽  
Jean Christophe Lifante ◽  
...  

Background: Implementation of enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) program after pancreatic surgery was associated with decreased length of stay (LOS). However, there were only retrospective uncontrolled before-after study, and care protocols were heterogeneous. We aimed to evaluate the impact of ERAS program on postoperative outcomes after pancreatectomy through a prospective controlled study. Methods: A before/after study with a contemporary control group was undertaken in patients undergoing pancreatectomy. We compared 2 groups: the intervention hospital that implemented ERAS program and the control hospital that performed traditional care; and 2 periods: the preimplementation and the post-implementation period. A difference-in-differences approach was used to evaluate whether implementation of ERAS program was associated with improved LOS and postoperative morbidity. Results: About 97 and 75 patients were included in intervention and control hospital. In multivariate analysis, implementation of ERAS was associated with a significantly shorten LOS (hazard ratio 1.61; 95% CI 1.07–2.44) and higher compliance rate (OR 1.34; 95% CI 1.18–1.53). Difference-in-differences analysis revealed that LOS, morbidity, and readmission did not differ after ERAS implementation. Conclusion: Implementation of ERAS program was safe and effective after pancreatectomy with high compliance rate. LOS was significantly reduced without compromising morbidity


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 42-49
Author(s):  
Debashree Das

This article analyses whether there exists any short-term inflationary pressure on Indian economy post Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation. It was found that the introduction of GST showed no significant effect on the rate of change of consumer price index (CPI). Though, the effect of the GST implementation on consumer prices in India showed no significant change in the short term, the impact needs to monitored and observed for the long term, because the current state of economic conditions may have led to a delayed pass-through of the GST increase into consumer prices. To estimate the pass-through effect on prices due to GST implementation from 1 July 2017, various graphical and statistical methods are used to ascertain whether there has been any significant pass-through of GST on CPI– ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and difference-in differences (DID) estimation technique has been used. The impact of post- and pre-implementation of GST has been analysed through DID by segregating the data set on the basis of treatment and control groups. The non-special category states have been taken as the treatment group and remaining special category states as control group. The results indicate that there is no significant evidence of upward bias in the CPI post GST implementation; these conventional estimates hold true for all states that were segmented based on revenue distribution and contribution to gross domestic product (GDP). JEL: D78, H20, H22


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (S4) ◽  
pp. 74-82
Author(s):  
Ian Ayres ◽  
Zachary Shelley ◽  
Fredrick E. Vars

This article tests the impact of Walmart's corporate decisions to end the sale of handguns at its stores in 1994 and to discontinue the sale of all firearms at approximately 59% of its stores in 2006 before resuming firearms sales at some of those stores in 2011. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that that from 1994 to 2005 counties with Walmarts robustly experienced a reduction in the suicide rate and experienced no change in the homicide rate. These models suggest that Walmart's policy change caused a 3.3 to 7.5% reduction in the suicide rate within affected counties, which represents an estimated 5,104 to 11,970 lives saved over the studied period (425-998 per year). In contrast, Walmart's 2006 and 2011 decisions to discontinue and subsequently resume the sale of rifles and shotguns in many of its stores was not associated with a robustly measured effect on homicide or suicide rates. We do find evidence that Walmart's 2006 decision to reduce the number of its stores that sold firearms caused a statistically significant reduction in the suicide rate for counties in which Walmart did not subsequently resume firearms sales.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (23) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Anastasia Mews

This paper examines the effect of scandalous news on corporate reputation of rival firms from the same industry and investigates the effects’ differences in China and in Europe, providing evidence that scandalous news influences not only the target company itself, but also other companies from the industry. For this purpose, the paper uses the 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal as a natural experiment. Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Porsche were selected as sample companies. To measure reputational spillover effects, cumulative abnormal stock returns and sales growth of the sample companies are calculated and compared before and after the announcement of the scandal. The methodology adopted for estimating stock returns is the event study method, which measures the impact of a specific event on the value of a firm. Stock price data is collected from Bloomberg and used to calculate cumulative abnormal returns of the sample companies. Furthermore, difference-in-differences estimation is used to compare the sample companies’ sales growth before and after the scandal. Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are included in the treatment group, whereas 29 non-German car manufacturers were selected as the control group. The results show that overall rival companies were affected by the scandal, cumulative abnormal returns declined by 6% and 10% for BMW and Mercedes-Benz respectively, showing the contagion effect. However, the sales growths of these two manufacturers greatly increased, specifically on the Chinese market for Mercedes-Benz and on the European market for BMW, proving dominance of the competitive effect and differences of the reputational spillover effects across countries.


Author(s):  
Benedikt Downar ◽  
Jürgen Ernstberger ◽  
Stefan Reichelstein ◽  
Sebastian Schwenen ◽  
Aleksandar Zaklan

AbstractWe examine the impact of a disclosure mandate for greenhouse gas emissions on firms’ subsequent emission levels and financial operating performance. For UK-incorporated listed firms a carbon disclosure mandate was adopted in 2013. Our difference-in-differences design shows that firms affected by the mandate reduced their emissions by about 8% relative to a control group of European firms. At the same time, our tests indicate that the treated firms experienced no significant changes in their gross margins. Taken together, our findings indicate that the reporting mandate had a real effect on the variable to be disclosed without adversely affecting the financial operating performance of the treated firms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 456-473
Author(s):  
Chih-Min Liang ◽  
Chun-Chang Lee ◽  
You-Hsin Lin ◽  
Zheng Yu ◽  
Wen-Chih Yeh

This study investigated the spatial spillover effects of luxury housing during and after construction, in regards to increases in housing prices in neighboring areas as well as the spatial dependence of neighboring housing. This study focused on already completed luxury housing in Taipei, Taiwan. First, the nearest-neighbor matching approach of propensity score matching was used to overcome the problem of data heterogeneity. The difference-in-differences (DD) method and spatial econometrics were used for analysis. The empirical results indicated that the spatial error model had the best goodness of fit. This indicated that housing prices increased by 13.0% during construction of luxury housing nearby. This indicated that housing prices increased by 5.8% after the construction of luxury housing nearby. The empirical results showed that the ongoing and completed construction of luxury housing had spillover effects on housing prices. The effect of ongoing construction of luxury housing was particularly large in scope, indicating its role as a predictor of psychological reaction in the market.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Xueming Xu ◽  
Changping Liu

Infrastructure construction results in transportation cost and regional economy changes. Based on the exogenous infrastructure change of a county highway opening as a natural experiment, this paper uses the spatial difference-in-differences (DID) model to analyze the impact of highway construction in three different provinces of China from 2004 to 2017. It was proved that highway connectivity had no significant or negative impact on the economy of the counties in three provinces that the highway passes through. In addition, highway connectivity was claimed to have obvious spatial spillover effects, which could promote the economic development of the whole region. For counties belonging to provinces in different regions and stages of economic development, we establish a spatial DID model that integrates time and space dimensions to study the impact of expressways on county economic development, to make up for the traditional DID model’s dependence on SUTVA assumptions, and to obtain spatial spillover effects.


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