This article presents evidence on peer effects among U.S. agricultural workers. On average, we find that a 10% increase in peer productivity increases focal worker productivity by 2.8%. This effect ...is modified by the ability and gender of workers and peers. Exceptionally slow workers are least responsive to peers and have pronounced negative spillovers on the productivity of their coworkers—their presence decreases productivity by 2%. Male workers are more responsive to their peers than female workers—a 10% increase in peer productivity increases the productivity of men by 3% and women by 2.6%. Workers are also generally more responsive to peers of similar ability and gender. Workers increase their speed the most when in the presence of peers with abilities just above their own. Male workers are more responsive to male peers than female peers, and female workers are more responsive to female peers.
As Germany's birthrate declines, childlessness is a reality for more women yet remains underrepresented in literature and pop-culture. In this article, I analyze two texts that have struck a nerve ...with the German public: the novel Wetlands by Charlotte Roche (2008) and the connected short stories in Alice by Judith Hermann (2009). Both protagonists resist what Lee Edelman called the "fascism of the baby's face" and remain childless despite cultural pressure to reproduce. Drawing on works by queer theorists such as Edelman and Halberstam, I show how the texts question neoliberalism's insistence on reproductive futurity and posit counter models for life beyond biological family.
An infodemic is an overabundance of information-some accurate and some not-that occurs during an epidemic. In a similar manner to an epidemic, it spreads between humans via digital and physical ...information systems. It makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.
A World Health Organization (WHO) technical consultation on responding to the infodemic related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic was held, entirely online, to crowdsource suggested actions for a framework for infodemic management.
A group of policy makers, public health professionals, researchers, students, and other concerned stakeholders was joined by representatives of the media, social media platforms, various private sector organizations, and civil society to suggest and discuss actions for all parts of society, and multiple related professional and scientific disciplines, methods, and technologies. A total of 594 ideas for actions were crowdsourced online during the discussions and consolidated into suggestions for an infodemic management framework.
The analysis team distilled the suggestions into a set of 50 proposed actions for a framework for managing infodemics in health emergencies. The consultation revealed six policy implications to consider. First, interventions and messages must be based on science and evidence, and must reach citizens and enable them to make informed decisions on how to protect themselves and their communities in a health emergency. Second, knowledge should be translated into actionable behavior-change messages, presented in ways that are understood by and accessible to all individuals in all parts of all societies. Third, governments should reach out to key communities to ensure their concerns and information needs are understood, tailoring advice and messages to address the audiences they represent. Fourth, to strengthen the analysis and amplification of information impact, strategic partnerships should be formed across all sectors, including but not limited to the social media and technology sectors, academia, and civil society. Fifth, health authorities should ensure that these actions are informed by reliable information that helps them understand the circulating narratives and changes in the flow of information, questions, and misinformation in communities. Sixth, following experiences to date in responding to the COVID-19 infodemic and the lessons from other disease outbreaks, infodemic management approaches should be further developed to support preparedness and response, and to inform risk mitigation, and be enhanced through data science and sociobehavioral and other research.
The first version of this framework proposes five action areas in which WHO Member States and actors within society can apply, according to their mandate, an infodemic management approach adapted to national contexts and practices. Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the related infodemic require swift, regular, systematic, and coordinated action from multiple sectors of society and government. It remains crucial that we promote trusted information and fight misinformation, thereby helping save lives.
Abstract
Labor markets can shape the impacts of global market developments and local sustainability policies on agricultural outcomes, including changes in production and land use. Yet local labor ...market outcomes, including agricultural employment, migration and wages, are often overlooked in integrated assessment models (IAMs). The relevance of labor markets has become more important in recent decades, with evidence of diminished labor mobility in the United States (US) and other developed countries. We use the SIMPLE-G (Simplified International Model of agricultural Prices, Land use, and the Environment) modeling framework to investigate the impacts of a global commodity price shock and a local sustainable groundwater use policy in the US. SIMPLE-G is a multi-scale framework designed to allow for integration of economic and biophysical determinants of sustainability, using fine-scale geospatial data and parameters. We use this framework to compare the impacts of the two sets of shocks under two contrasting assumptions: perfect mobility of agricultural labor, as generally implicit in global IAMs, and relatively inelastic labor mobility (‘sticky’ agricultural labor supply response). We supplement the numerical simulations with analytical results from a stylized two-input model to provide further insights into the impacts of local and global shocks on agricultural labor, crop production and resource use. Findings illustrate the key role that labor mobility plays in shaping both local and global agricultural and environmental outcomes. In the perfect labor mobility scenario, the impact of a commodity price boom on crop production, employment and land-use is overestimated compared with the restricted labor mobility case. In the case of the groundwater sustainability policy, the perfect labor mobility scenario overestimates the reduction in crop production and employment in directly targeted grids as well as spillover effects that increase employment in other grids. For both shocks, impacts on agricultural wages are completely overlooked if we ignore rigidities in agricultural labor markets.
Agricultural Labor Supply Hill, Alexandra E; Ornelas, Izaac; Taylor, J. Edward
Annual review of resource economics,
01/2021, Letnik:
13, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The labor supply response to agricultural wages is critical to the viability of crop production in high-income countries, which hire a largely foreign farm work force, as well as in low-income ...countries, where domestic workers move off the farm as the agricultural transformation unfolds. Modeling agricultural labor supply is more challenging than modeling the supply of other agricultural inputs or of labor to other sectors of the economy owing to unique features of agricultural production and farm labor markets. Data and econometric challenges abound, and estimates of agricultural labor supply elasticities are sparse. This review explains the importance and challenges of modeling farm labor supply and describes researchers' efforts to address these challenges. It summarizes estimates of agricultural labor supply elasticities over the last 80 years, provides insights into variation in these estimates, identifies priority areas for future research, and reviews the most influential empirical work related to this important topic.
Outdoor agricultural workers often work in harsh environmental conditions, including high temperatures and poor air quality. This paper studies how these factors impact worker productivity, which can ...have implications for worker health, well‐being, and income as well as farm payroll, production, and profitability. Our analysis uses 6 years of payroll records of harvesters on two large farms combined with pollution and weather monitor data from multiple sources. We address simultaneity issues by exploring pollution measurements from nearby upwind and downwind monitors and incorporating an alternative PM2.5 measure that better captures ambient or regional concentration. Across all specifications, results suggest that heightened concentrations of ground‐level ozone and PM2.5 are associated with reduced productivity. In our main specification, we find that one standard deviation increases in ozone and PM2.5 are associated with reductions in productivity of 2% and 1.1%, respectively.
Background
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections are common in adults, but data describing the cost of RSV‐associated hospitalization are lacking due to inconsistency in diagnostic coding and ...incomplete case ascertainment. We evaluated costs of RSV‐associated hospitalization in adult patients with laboratory‐confirmed, community‐onset RSV.
Methods
We included adults ≥ 18 years of age admitted to three hospital systems in New York during two RSV seasons who were RSV‐positive by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and had more than or equal to two acute respiratory infection symptoms or exacerbation of underlying cardiopulmonary disease. We ed costs from hospital finance systems or converted hospital charges to cost using cost‐charge ratios. We converted cost into 2020 US dollars and extrapolated to the United States. We used a generalized linear model to determine predictors of hospitalization cost, stratified by admission to intensive care units (ICU).
Results
Cost data were available for 79% (601/756) of eligible patients. The mean total cost of hospitalization was $8403 (CI95 $7240–$9741). The highest costs were those attributed to ICU services $7885 (CI95 $5877–$10,240), whereas the lowest were radiology $324 (CI95 $275–$376). Other than longer length of stay, predictors of higher cost included having chronic liver disease (odds ratio OR 1.38 CI95 1.05–1.80) for patients without ICU admission and antibiotic use (OR 1.49 CI95 1.10–2.03) for patients with ICU admission. The annual US cost was estimated to be $1.2 (CI95 0.9–1.4) billion.
Conclusion
The economic burden of RSV hospitalization of adults ≥ 18 years of age in the United States is substantial. RSV vaccine programs may be useful in reducing this economic burden.
In the course of her study, Schmidt extensively analyzes each represented genre: the degree of proximity to the author's lived experience, how each forms a relationship with the imagined reader, and ...its advantages and risks as a vehicle for exploring one's own illness. By connecting illness writing to disability studies—a field rapidly gaining attention in (feminist) scholarship—Schmidt further frames the reading and writing of these texts as political: "To share the knowledge gained from an experience of illness with the reading public—against convention and despite the artistic and personal risks this involves—is recognized here as an ethical act" (6). Examining these two unconventional literary works (Schlingensief's published diary includes transcriptions of audio recordings and then a series of blog posts; Herrndorf's is a blog that was later published as a book), Schmidt remains attentive to form, their relationship with the reader, and what possibilities they might offer the illness narrative.
El Niño and the shifting geography of cholera in Africa Moore, Sean M.; Azman, Andrew S.; Zaitchik, Benjamin F. ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
04/2017, Letnik:
114, Številka:
17
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and other climate patterns can have profound impacts on the occurrence of infectious diseases ranging from dengue to cholera. In Africa, El Niño conditions are ...associated with increased rainfall in East Africa and decreased rainfall in southern Africa, West Africa, and parts of the Sahel. Because of the key role of water supplies in cholera transmission, a relationship between El Niño events and cholera incidence is highly plausible, and previous research has shown a link between ENSO patterns and cholera in Bangladesh. However, there is little systematic evidence for this link in Africa. Using high-resolution mapping techniques, we find that the annual geographic distribution of cholera in Africa from 2000 to 2014 changes dramatically, with the burden shifting to continental East Africa—and away from Madagascar and portions of southern, Central, and West Africa—where almost 50,000 additional cases occur during El Niño years. Cholera incidence during El Niño years was higher in regions of East Africa with increased rainfall, but incidence was also higher in some areas with decreased rainfall, suggesting a complex relationship between rainfall and cholera incidence. Here, we show clear evidence for a shift in the distribution of cholera incidence throughout Africa in El Niño years, likely mediated by El Niño’s impact on local climatic factors. Knowledge of this relationship between cholera and climate patterns coupled with ENSO forecasting could be used to notify countries in Africa when they are likely to see a major shift in their cholera risk.
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