We investigated marijuana, alcohol and tobacco consumption using micro‐unit data from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Surveys. We estimated a multivariate probit (MVP) model to allow for correlations across participations of different drugs and a sequential model to study separately the determinants of participation and the levels of consumption. The MVP results indicate significant and positive correlations across all three drugs through unobservable characteristics, with the correlation coefficient between marijuana and tobacco being the highest. The MVP approach allows for better prediction of conditional and joint probabilities, providing valuable information for policy makers in a multidrug framework.
The results of our research contribute to assessing the benefits and costs of hospital stays-and their alternatives-in a quantitative manner. Instead of discharging patients early to alternative care, it would be more desirable to address underlying causes of adverse events. However, this may prove costly, difficult, or impossible, at least in the short run. In such situations, our research supports hospital managers in making informed treatment and discharge decisions.
This paper discusses the major transformation of higher education that has been under way in China since 1999 and evaluates its potential global implications. Reflecting China’s commitment to continued high growth, this transformation focuses on major new resource commitments to tertiary education and significant changes in organisational form. All of these changes have already had large impacts on China’s higher educational system and are beginning to be felt by the global educational structure. This focus on tertiary education differentiates the Chinese case from other countries who earlier at similar stages of development instead stressed primary and secondary education.
The recent debate on alcohol tax reform, recommendations from the national preventative health task force and from the Henry Tax Review in Australia have highlighted the need for quantifying externalities of excessive alcohol consumption by beverage types. This paper presents microlevel information from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Surveys to examine the association between risky drinking behaviour, drinker characteristics, health and labour market status, and types of alcohol beverages consumed. Drinkers of regular-strength beer (RSB) and ready-to-drink spirits in a can (RTDC) have the highest incidences of heavy bingeing, whereas low-alcohol beer, fortified wine or bottled wine drinkers are least likely. Bottled spirits, RSB and RTDC are most likely to be linked to risky behaviour such as property damage, stealing, and verbal and physical abuse under alcohol influence. All three spirit products are overwhelmingly the favourable drinks for the underage and young drinkers. Risky drinking behaviour is not found to be associated with the alcohol strength of the products. Copyright (c) 2010 The Economic Society of Australia.
This article investigates factors affecting the participation in marijuana, cocaine and heroin using micro-unit data from an Australian national survey on recreational drugs. Accounting for cross-drug correlation potentially induced by unobserved personal characteristics such as individual tastes and addictive personalities, we estimate a trivariate probit model, where the participation decisions are jointly modelled as a system with correlated error terms. The estimated correlation coefficients are significant across all three drugs. The study provides valuable empirical information on conditional and joint probabilities of drug participation. The multivariate approach is shown to provide better analysis relative to a univariate approach that does not address the endogeneity of all drug participation variables.
This paper examines the effects of socioeconomic and demographic factors on Australian individuals’ participation in beer, wine and spirits consumption using unit‐record data during 1991–2001. A trivariate probit formulation allows for participation in the three alcoholic beverages to be modelled jointly accounting for correlation via unobserved personal characteristics. Own and cross price elasticities are estimated for both unconditional and conditional participation probabilities. While the three beverages are commonly considered closely related economic goods, we find that they relate to rather heterogenous population groups and the correlations via the unobservable characteristics are low in magnitude.
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