Difficulties in the privatisation and reorganisation of the agricultural enterprises in Russia

Presently Russia is experiencing the complicated process of transforming the economic system of central planning into a socially oriented market economy. Of great importance for the success of this process is the institutional reshaping of the agricultural sector, particularly the privatisation of land and assets. In this paper the procedure and the problems of privatising Russian agriculture are extensively discussed against the background of the unfavourable development of the Russian agricultural sector. -- G E R M A N V E R S I O N: Gegenwärtig durchläuft Rußland einen komplizierten Prozeß der Transformation des zentral geplanten Wirtschaftssystems in eine soziale Marktwirtschaft. Von großer Bedeutung für den Erfolg dieses Prozesses ist der institutionelle Wandel des landwirtschaftlichen Sektors, insbesondere die Privatisierung von Land und sonstigem Vermögen. Vor dem Hintergrund der ungünstigen Entwicklung der russischen Landwirtschaft werden in dieser Arbeit die Vorgehensweise und die Probleme der russischen Landwirtschaft ausführlich diskutiert.

Budgetary policies and available actions: a generalisation of decision rules for allocation and research decisions

The allocation problem in health care can be characterised as a mathematical programming problem but attempts to incorporate uncertainty in costs and effect have suffered from important limitations. A two stage stochastic mathematical programming formulation is developed and applied to a numerical example to explore and demonstrate the implications of this more general and comprehensive approach. The solution to the allocation problem for different budgets, budgetary policies, and available actions are then demonstrated. This analysis is used to evaluate different budgetary policies and examine the adequacy of standard decision rules in cost-effectiveness analysis. The research decision is then considered alongside the allocation problem. This more general formulation demonstrates that the value of further research depends on: i) the budgetary policy in place; ii) the realisations revealed during the budget period; iii) remedial actions that may be available; and iv) variability in parameters values.

An economic framework for analysing the social determinants of health and health inequalities

Reducing health inequalities is an important part of health policy in most countries. This paper discusses from an economic perspective how government policy can influence health inequalities, particularly focusing on the outcome of performance targets in England, and the role of sectors of the economy outside the health service – the ‘social determinants’ of health - in delivering these targets.

Laparoscopic fundoplication compared with medical management for gastro-oesophageal reflux disease : cost effectiveness study

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The inevitability of unconditionally deleterious substitutions during adaptation

Studies on the genetics of adaptation typically neglect the possibility that a deleterious mutation might fix. Nonetheless, here we show that, in many regimes, the first substitution is most often deleterious, even when fitness is expected to increase in the long term. In particular, we prove that this phenomenon occurs under weak mutation for any house-of-cards model with an equilibrium distribution. We find that the same qualitative results hold under Fisher's geometric model. We also provide a simple intuition for the surprising prevalence of unconditionally deleterious substitutions during early adaptation. Importantly, the phenomenon we describe occurs on fitness landscapes without any local maxima and is therefore distinct from "valley-crossing". Our results imply that the common practice of ignoring deleterious substitutions leads to qualitatively incorrect predictions in many regimes. Our results also have implications for the substitution process at equilibrium and for the response to a sudden decrease in population size.Comment: Corrected typos and minor errors in Supporting Informatio