OBJECTIVE To develop estimates of the direct and indirect costs of smoking for California in 1999. METHODS A prevalence based approach was used to estimate the annual costs of smoking. Econometric models were used to estimate the smoking attributable fraction (SAF) for direct costs (hospitalisations, ambulatory care, prescription drugs, home health care, and nursing home services) and indirec...

BACKGROUND Researchers and policy makers have determined that accounting for productivity costs, or "indirect costs," may be as important as including direct medical expenditures when evaluating the societal value of health interventions. These costs are also important when estimating the global burden of disease. The estimation of indirect costs is commonly done on a country-specific basis. Ho...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this analysis is to report the incremental costs and benefits of different doses of spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) in patients with chronic low back pain (LBP). METHODS We randomized 400 patients with chronic LBP to receive a dose of 0, 6, 12, or 18 sessions of SMT. Participants were scheduled for 18 visits for 6 weeks and received SMT or light massage control from...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Although intracranial vascular malformations (IVMs) are the leading cause of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) in young adults, there has not been a cost-of-illness study on an unselected cohort. METHODS We measured the direct healthcare costs (inpatient, outpatient, intervention, and brain imaging) incurred by every adult within 3 years after their first presentation with...

Background: Neck injuries following whiplash trauma can lead to long-term sequelae. Population-based studies covering traffic and non-traffic whiplash trauma are rare. The aim was to describe the incidence of neck injuries following whiplash trauma during one year, from a well-defined area served by a single hospital, and the resulting long-term sick leave during a five-year follow-up. Possible...

This paper provides empirical evidence for the interaction between firm-level total factor productivity and trade liberalization as key determinants of firm-level job destruction caused by trade. We also test some key theoretical predictions from Melitz (2003), whose model is used to derive an explicit equation relating firm productivity and trade-induced labor layoff when a country liberalizes...