Objective:  To review the efficacy of instrumental variable (IV) models in addressing a variety of assumption violations to ensure standard ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates are consistent. IV models gained popularity in outcomes research because of their ability to consistently estimate...

A standard approach to the analysis of skewed response data with concomitant information is to use a log-transformation to normalize the distribution of the response variable and then conduct a log- regression analysis. However, the mean response at original scale is often of interest....

We consider the situation of two ordered categorical variables and a binary outcome variable, where one or both of the categorical variables may have missing values. The goal is to estimate the probability of response of the outcome variable for each cell of the contingency table of categorical...

The growth of private medical care in Sweden has occurred despite the lack of overt encouragement by the long-term Social Democrat government. This can be documented from official government statistics, private insurance sales, media sources, membership growth in the private doctors association,...

Life history theory postulates tradeoffs of current versus future reproduction; today women face evolutionarily novel versions of these tradeoffs. Optimal age at first birth is the result of tradeoffs in fertility and mortality; ceteris paribus , early reproduction is advantageous. Yet modern...

Objective: Traditional cost–utility analysis assumes that all benefits from health-related interventions are captured by the quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) gained by the few individuals whose outcome is improved by the intervention. However, it is possible that many individuals who do not...

Interaction effects have been consistently found important in explaining the variation in outcomes in many scientific research fields. Yet, in practice, variable selection including interactions is complicated due to the limited sample size, conflicting philosophies regarding model...

This paper addresses three issues. First, why did market competition emerge in the U.S. health care system? Second, once free of regulatory constraints, how is the structure of the medical care system likely to evolve? Three, what are the implications of market competition for the public as well...

Researchers and practitioners have expressed considerable interest in contingency contracting as a promising intervention strategy for enlisting patient cooperation, particularly with regard to long-term treatment regimens. After brief examination of the theoretical background, the authors...