28 de juliol 2016

The dark side, the conflict option

The dark side of the force

While reading today FM Alvaro op-ed on current war: Questions in a war, I thought that was good to remember Jack Hirshleifer and specifically to retrieve an excellent speech he gave in 1993: The dark side of the force. When I read it for the first time I got impressed and I've remembered forever.
Therefore, my suggestion is to read the whole speech. If you are an economist, you'll be shaken by his views. Selected statements:
“Our profession has on the whole taken not too harsh but rather too benign a view of the human enterprise. Recognizing the force of self-interest, the mainline Marshallian tradition has nevertheless almost entirely overlooked what I will call the dark side of the force—to wit, crime, war, and politics."
“cooperation, with a few obvious exceptions, occurs only in the shadow of conflict.”  “when people cooperate, it is generally a conspiracy for aggression against others (or, at least, is a response to such aggression).”
"Pareto is saying, sure, you can produce goods for the purpose of mutually beneficial exchange with  other parties—OK, that's Marshall's "ordinary business." But there's another way to get rich: you can  grab goods that someone else has produced. Appropriating, grabbing, confiscating what you want— and, on the flip side, defending, protecting, sequestering what you already have—that's economic  activity too. Take television. Cops chase robbers, victims are stalked by hitmen (or should I say  hitpersons?), posses cut off rustlers at the pass, plaintiffs sue defendants, exorcists cast spells against  vampires. What is all this but muscular economics? Robbers, rustlers, hitpersons, litigants—they're all trying to make a living. Even vampires are making economic choices: sucking blood is presumably the cost-effective way of meeting their unusual nutritional needs.”
“This is Machiavelli's version of the golden rule: he who gets to rule, will get the gold. Human history is a record of the tension between the way of Niccolo Machiavelli and what might be called the way of Ronald Coase. According to Coase's Theorem, people will never pass up an opportunity to cooperate by means of mutually advantageous exchange. What might be called Machiavelli’s Theorem states that no one will ever pass up an opportunity to gain a one-sided advantage by exploiting another party.
Machiavelli's Theorem standing alone is only a partial truth, but so is Coase's Theorem standing alone. Our textbooks need to deal with both modes of economic activity. They should be saying that decision-makers will strike an optimal balance between the way of Coase and the way of Machiavelli—between the way of production combined with mutually advantageous exchange, and the dark-side way of confiscation, exploitation, and conflict.”
"Thus, in recognizing the role of conflict we must not go overboard in the other direction. All aspects of human life are responses not to conflict alone, but to the interaction of the two great life-strategy  options: on the one hand production and exchange, on the other hand appropriation and defense against  appropriation. Economics has done a great job in dealing with the way of Ronald Coase; what we need  now is an equally subtle and structured analysis of the dark side: the way of Niccolo Machiavelli.”
The balance between these modes of economic activity--the one leading to greater aggregate wealth, and the other to conflict over who gets the wealth--provides the main story line of human history.
This speech and several articles on conflict were published in a book  "The Dark Side of the Force: Economic Foundations of Conflict Theory".
Hirshleifer analytic frame may be applied to health economics as well, specifically to such cases where fraud, inappropriateness, and false advertising are part of the dark force.




PS. Long time ago I quoted in a post the Schelling book on the same topic.


27 de juliol 2016

DNA methylation assays as epigenetic biomarkers

Quantitative comparison of DNA methylation assays for biomarker development and clinical applications

A new milestone has been achieved in Medicine. Tracking epigenetic alterations is crucial to understand a disease. However, epigenetic biomarkers are needed to assess such changes. Its precision (sensitivity-specifity) is  paramount for its clinical application. Now a group of international researchers has certified its performance (partially). Have a look at this Nature article:
Genome-wide mapping and analysis of DNA methylation has become feasible for patient cohorts with thousands of samples, and epigenome-wide association studies have been conducted for numerous biomedically relevant phenotypes. To translate relevant epigenome associations into clinically useful biomarkers, it is necessary to select a manageable set of highly informative genomic regions, to target these loci with DNA methylation assays that are sufficiently fast, cheap, robust and widely available to be useful for routine clinical diagnostics, and to confirm their predictive value in large validation cohorts.
Among its conclusions I would like to highlight three of them:
(i) Absolute DNA methylation assays are the method of choice when validating DNA methylation differences in large cohorts, and they are also an excellent technology for developing epigenetic biomarkers.
(ii) Relative DNA methylation assays are not a good replacement for absolute assays. However, experiences of scientists in the contributing laboratories suggest that carefully selected, designed and validated relative assays can cost-effectively detect minimal  races of methylated DNA against an excess of unmethylated DNA.
(iii) Global DNA methylation assays suffer from noisy data and divergent results between technologies. Locus-specific assays (possibly combined with prediction) provide a more robust alternative
That's it. Very soon will see the epigenetic biomarkers in routine clinical use. And afterwards,  epigenetic drugs and treatments. Then, we'll confirm that the promise of precision medicine is a reality. The implications for medicine as a scientific discipline and clinical decision making are huge, and specifically, healthcare organizations will need to adapt to new knowledge and technologies.

PS. Neuroepigenetics: DNA methylation and memory

06 de juliol 2016

Food and risk perception

Food and the Risk Society: The Power of Risk Perception

This is the main message of the book: Do not send generic messages on food and its risks, the time for segmentation has arrived,
A generic approach, involving the provision of vast amounts of information to the general public, stands a real risk of leading to information overload, bewilderment and lack of interest among mainstream consumers. A more effective approach to change consumer food buying and consumption behaviour, is to focus on segmenting the population according to their information needs, and developing information with high levels of personal relevance to specific groups of respondents who may be at greater risk than the rest of the population. Such information is more likely to create attitudinal change and subsequent behavioural change as the perceived personal relevance is high.
Is the government already prepared for the task?

03 de juliol 2016

Voluntary health insurance, it's role and regulation

Voluntary health insurance in Europe: Role and regulation
Voluntary health insurance in Europe: country experience

A long time has passed since WHO published a book on voluntary health insurance, just a decade (!). Therefore, there are many reasons to review again what's going on, and this is precisely what you'll find in two recent books.
Before any recommendation, it is good to have a good analysis. And the best analysis comes from reliable data. Somebody should check the published data in the book. In the case of Spain it says 10% of suplementary insurance, while it is around 16% (!) (p.50) (and it is duplicate really according to OECD classfication). And beyond that, it says that there is 3% of voluntary health insurance that is substitutive, while it is exactly 0% (!). Therefore take care. I'll not comment anything else.


01 de juliol 2016

Why is it useless to predict future health expenditures?

National spending on health by source for 184 countries between 2013 and 2040

The Lancet has just published a new estimate of the size of health expenditures in the future up to 2040. Too often nobody looks backward and check what predictions said before. If somebody does it, it will get a surprise for the first time, however the following ones he will convey that predictions are useless, because there are too many uncertain situations to take into account. Basically most of the hypothesis are flawed. Take this statement from the article:
Despite remarkable health gains, past health fnancing trends and relationships suggest that many low-income and lower-middle-income countries will not meet internationally set health spending targets and that spending gaps between low-income and high-income countries are unlikely to narrow unless substantive policy interventions occur. Although gains in health system efficiency can be used to make progress, current trends suggest that meaningful increases in health system resources will require concerted action.
Is there anybody that can tell me what "internationally set health spending targets" are?.  Who sets them?. If anybody wants to check what I'm saying, have a look at the cutbacks from the great recession and the estimates by OECD or EU. Everybody was saying that technology innovation and aging would boost health expenditures forever, and now we know that this is not true. Forget the article. Distrust the fortune-tellers.