No description available.

Over the last decade, six major earthquakes that occurred in Turkey dramatically demonstrated the poor performance of the buildings that were designed and constructed far from Turkish seismic code&rsquo / s requirements. The Marmara region, where most of the population and industry is located, is in the active seismic zone. With the rising cost of damages due to earthquakes, the necessity of the cost-benefit analysis for various rehabilitation strategies used in existing buildings has become a major concern for the decision makers who are in the position of making decisions on the building rehabilitation This study evaluates the performance of two different rehabilitation strategies applied to two five-story reinforced concrete buildings and assesses their cost-benefit analyses. These buildings were chosen to be representative of the typical residential To carry out the structural analysis of the buildings, three-dimensional models of the buildings were developed using SAP2000 [6]. Two alternative strengthening methods, insertion of reinforced concrete shear walls and application of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) on hallow clay tile infill walls, were used for both of the buildings. While modeling infill walls strengthened with CFRP, two specific modeling attempts proposed by the researchers at Middle East Technical University were used. Pushover analyses were performed to evaluate seismic performance of the buildings. The Life Safety criterion was chosen as the rehabilitation objective. The global and component response acceptability limits were checked and the cost-benefit analysis was performed in order to determine the most attractive rehabilitation alternative. The results and comparisons given here illustrated that strengthening with shear wall had the most significant improvement on the seismic performance and cost effectiveness of the case study buildings. Outcomes of this study are only applicable to the buildings employed here and are bound by the assumptions made, approximations used and parameters considered in this study. The findings cannot be generalized for the buildings rehabilitated with CFRP due to lack of the consistent models for CFRP application. More research needs to be conducted to provide solid guidelines and reliable models applicable to the CFRP rehabilitated infill walls.

In dieser Arbeit wird ein Modell zur integrierten Verkehrsnachfrage- und Nutzenberechnung für den privaten Personenverkehr entwickelt, mit dem eine harmonisierte Bewertung der entscheidungsrelevanten Aufwände der Verkehrsteilnehmer in der Verkehrsnachfragemodellierung und der Nutzen-Kosten-Analyse ermöglicht wird. Notwendig ist die Modellentwicklung und die damit verbundene Zusammenführung, da die derzeit praktizierte methodische Trennung zum einen nicht theoriekonform mit der Nutzen-Kosten-Analyse ist, zum anderen daraus fehlerhafte Ergebnisse im Rahmen der ökonomischen Gesamtbewertung einer Verkehrsinvestition resultieren können. Das entwickelte Modell liefert als Ergebnis einerseits die Verkehrsnachfrage für den Ohne- und Mitfall (ohne und mit zu bewertender Verkehrsinvestition), andererseits wird die Änderung der Konsumentenrente der Verkehrsteilnehmer ausgegeben, die unmittelbar in die Nutzen-Kosten-Analyse einfließt. Das zugrundegelegte Verkehrsnachfragemodell ist das EVA-Logit-Modell, das dem EVA-Grundmodell in Form eines Logit-Modells entspricht und damit mikroökonomisch interpretierbar und integrierbar ist. Die Nutzenänderung der Verkehrsteilnehmer wird durch das Integral des EVA-Logit-Modells bestimmt und mit Hilfe der in der Verkehrsnachfrage modellierten Bewertungspräferenzen der Verkehrsteilnehmer gegenüber den Reisekosten monetarisiert. Das Ergebnis stellt die konsistent bestimmte Änderung der Konsumentenrente dar. Die Funktionsfähigkeit und Verwendbarkeit des entwickelten Modells wird anhand einer Beispielanwendung getestet.

This thesis consists of an overview and five essays. The purpose of the thesis is to show how economics can contribute to a better understanding of medical practice variations – why they exist, their consequences, and the extent to which they can – and should – be influenced. The first essay, Econometric analysis of variation in cesarean section rates – a cross-sectional study of 59 obstetrical departments in Sweden, is an attempt to identify the causes of variation in cesarean section rates, and to discuss their economic consequences. The econometric model applied explains 27 percent of the variation. We conclude that the unexplained variation in cesarean section rates indicates inefficiency, mainly due to over-utilisation. Estimates of the economic consequences indicate an additional cost for "unnecessary" cesarean sections of 13-16 million SEK per year. The welfare loss to society due to undesired variation is tentatively estimated to be about twice as high. In the second essay, Estimating the effect of cesarean section rate on health outcome – evidence from Swedish hospital data, we test the null hypothesis of a zero effect of cesarean section rate on health outcome, against the alternative of a positive effect. We could not reject the null hypothesis of a zero effect, i.e., we did not find any significant positive relationship between cesarean section rate and health outcome, in terms of perinatal mortality or rate of asphyxia. In the third essay, Benchmarking in obstetric care – a comparative study based on data envelopment analysis (DEA), we apply the DEA method to compare technical efficiency (productivity) of inpatient obstetric care in Swedish hospitals in 1994 and 1995. The results indicate an average potential for enhanced productivity of at least 6-7 percent each year. Most hospitals show decreasing productivity 1994-1995, partly due to inability to adjust production capacity and costs to a decreasing demand. The last two essays apply a new method – Quality Satisfaction Performance (QSP) – for incorporating patient perspectives into the management of health care, i.e., as a basis for quality improvement. Change-oriented patient questionnaires – testing a new method at three departments of ophthalmology, is a pilot study. The results show consistently high patient satisfaction indices. Satisfaction varies somewhat among the different patient segments and departments. We conclude that decisions on improvements must be preceded by thorough assessment of costs as well as effects associated with the various changes. The last essay, Patient satisfaction and priority setting – an economic approach, aims at analysing if and how priorities according to the QSP approach are influenced when an economic perspective is explicitly included. This is accomplished by a cost-effectiveness analysis of certain proposed changes/improvements, and a cost-benefit analysis based upon the patients` willingness-to-pay for these changes. Our results show that the ranking between various improvements is strongly influenced when an economic dimension is included. We conclude that even a methodologically appropriate measurement of patient satisfaction may lead to cost-ineffective priority setting, unless economic consequences are explicitly considered. / Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2001

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karolinska institutet, 2005. / Härtill 6 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Linköping : Univ., 2004. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2007. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri--Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 27-30). Also available on the Internet.

The diploma thesis deals with the assessment of investment "Finalization of waterway of Vltava in section České Budějovice {--} Týn nad Vltavou" in the South Bohemia region. The aim of this work is the analysis of the impact of this investment on region from macroeconomic and microeconomic perspectives. The other aim of work is basic presentation of the investment, the progress of cost benefit analysis and identification of benefits, which will be brought by the investment to South Bohemia region.