Putting a specific value on human life is important in many contexts and forms part of the basis for many political, administrative, commercial, and personal decisions. Sometimes, the value is set explicitly, sometimes even in monetary terms, but much more often, it is set implicitly through a decision that allows us to calculate the valuation of a life implicit in a certain rule or a certain resource allocation. We also value lives in what looks like a completely different way when we evaluate whether a particular life is being or has been lived well. Both of these ways of valuing are done from an outside or third-person perspective, but there is also a third way of valuing a life which is from the first-person perspective, and which essentially asks how much my life is worth to me. Is there any connection between these different ways of valuing life, and if so what is the connection between them? This paper provides an account of John Harris’ analysis of the value of life and discusses whether it can bridge the gap between first-person and third-person evaluations of the value of life, and whether it can do so in a way that still allows for resource allocation decisions to be made in health care and other sectors.

Phenological studies for Cuban bulrush [Oxycaryum cubense (Poepp. & Kunth) Lye] have been limited to the monocephalous form in Lake Columbus (Mississippi). Accordingly, there is little available information on potential phenological differences among O. cubense forms (monocephalous vs. polycephalous) and populations in other geographic locations in the United States. Therefore, seasonal patterns of biomass and starch allocation in O. cubense were quantified from two populations in Lake Columbus on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway in Mississippi (monocephalous), two populations from Lake Martin in Louisiana (polycephalous), and two populations from Orange Lake in Florida (polycephalous). Monthly samples of O. cubense inflorescence, emergent, and submersed tissue were harvested from two plots per state from October 2021 to September 2022. During monthly data collection, air temperature and photoperiod were recorded. Starch allocation patterns were similar among all sites, with starch storage being less than 1.5% dry weight for all plant tissues. Biomass was greatest in Lake Columbus (monocephalous; 600.7 g dry weight [DW] m−2) followed by Lake Martin (polycephalous; 392.3 g DW m−2) and Orange Lake (polycephalous; 233.85 g DW m−2). Peak inflorescence biomass occurred in the winter for the Lake Martin and Orange Lake populations and in the summer for the Lake Columbus population. Inflorescence biomass in Lake Columbus had a positive relationship (r2 = 0.53) with warmer air temperatures. Emergent and submersed biomass generally had negative relationships with both photoperiod and temperature (r2 = 0.02 to 0.77) in all sites. Peak biomass was also negatively related to temperature and photoperiod. Results from this study indicate that there are differences in biomass allocation between the two growth forms of O. cubense and that growth can occur at temperatures below freezing. Low temperature tolerance may allow this species to expand its range farther north than previously suspected.

Current escalation of natural disasters, pandemics, and humanitarian crises underscores the pressing need for inclusion of disaster medicine in medical education frameworks. Conventional medical training often lacks adequate focus on the complexities and unique challenges inherent in such emergencies. This discourse advocates for the integration of disaster medicine into medical curricula, highlighting the imperative to prepare health-care professionals for an effective response in challenging environments. These competencies encompass understanding mass casualty management, ethical decision-making amidst resource constraints, and adapting health-care practices to varied emergency contexts. Therefore, we posit that equipping medical students with these specialized skills and knowledge is vital for health-care delivery in the face of global health emergencies.

The allocation of resources is a crucial part of political decision-making in healthcare, but explicit priorities are rarely set when resources are distributed. Two areas that have received some attention in research about legitimacy and priority-setting decisions in healthcare are the role of technical expert agencies as mediating institutions and the role of elected politicians. This paper investigates a political priority-setting advisory committee within a regional authority in Sweden. The aim is to explore how a political body can serve as a mediating institution for priority-setting in healthcare by disentangling the arrangements of its work in terms of what role it performs in the organisation and what it should do. The findings illustrate that promoting the notion of explicit priority-setting and the political aspects inherent in priority-setting in political healthcare management can contribute to consolidating political governance and leadership. There is, however, a complex tension between stability and conflicting values which has implications for the role of politicians as citizens' democratic representatives. This paper enhances our understanding of the role of mediating institutions and political properties of healthcare priority-setting, as well as our understanding of political and democratic healthcare governance in local self-government.

An essential feature of human progress is the use of different modes of learning so agents acquire the appropriate behaviour to survive in a changing environment. Learning may result from agents who discover new knowledge on their own (individual learning), or imitate the behaviour of others (social learning). Social learning is less costly than discovery, but imitation might yield no benefit. Early theoretical models of a population consisting of purely individual and purely social learners found that both types are present in an evolutionary equilibrium. However, the presence of social learners did not provide any improvement to the average population fitness. Subsequent research showed that the presence of social learners could improve the average population fitness, provided that the pure characterisation of the agents’ learning is relaxed. We return to the pure conceptualisation of agents to challenge an assumption in the early work: agents were guaranteed enough resources to perform their desired learning. We show that, if the resources an agent receives are uncertain, this turns social learning into a source of fitness improvement at the population level. Perhaps counter-intuitively, uncertain provision of resources prompts an increase in the proportion of the population that pursues the costlier individual learning activity in equilibrium.

In an era of hypercompetition, research and development (R&D) investments are vital for organizations to stay competitive. This microlevel study draws on dynamic managerial capability (DMC) theory to explore the mechanisms contributing to competitive advantages. It posits that DMCs enhance firm performance by increasing R&D spending, and explores the moderating role of slack resources due to their effect on resource availability. Employing hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping methods on a longitudinal sample comprising 31 German DAX firms, the findings robustly demonstrate that DMCs facilitate firm performance by fostering R&D expenditures and confirm the moderating effect of specific slack resources. However, only internal but not external slack resources amplify the relationship between DMCs and R&D intensity. Overall, this study emphasizes the critical role of managers’ microlevel capabilities in determining firm performance and sheds light on how different slack resources influence the relationships between DMCs, R&D intensity, and firm performance.

This note corrects an error in the formula to obtain the Whittle index using the Sherman–Morrison formula in Akbarzadeh and Mahajan (2022). Also, some other minor typos are highlighted.

Healthcare innovations often represent important improvements in population welfare, but at what cost, and to whom? Health technology assessment (HTA) is a multidisciplinary process to inform resource allocation. HTA is conventionally anchored on health maximization as the only relevant output of health services. If we accept the proposition that health technologies can generate value outside the healthcare system, resource allocation decisions could be suboptimal from a societal perspective. Incorporating “broader value” in HTA as derived from social values and patient experience could provide a richer evaluative space for informing resource allocation decisions. This article considers how HTA is practiced and what its current context implies for adopting “broader value” to evaluating health technologies. Methodological challenges are highlighted, as is a future research agenda. Ireland serves as an example of a healthcare system that both has an explicit role for HTA and is evolving under a current program of reform to offer universal, single-tier access to public services. There are various ways in which HTA processes could move beyond health, including considering the processes of care delivery and/or expanding the evaluative space to some broader concept of well-being. Methods to facilitate the latter exist, but their adaptation to HTA is still emerging. We recommend a multi-stakeholder working group to develop and advance an international agenda for HTA that captures welfare/benefit beyond health.

Inclusion and exclusion strategies for allocation of scarce goods involve different processes. The conditions under which one strategy is chosen in favor of the other, however, have not been fully explicated. In the present study, decision makers chose a single strategy after reading through descriptions of 16 potential organ recipients; they then narrowed the list of transplant candidates. Most liberals chose to use exclusion under conditions of abundance and inclusion under scarcity. In contrast, conservatives preferred an inclusion strategy under abundance and exclusion (though not significantly) under scarcity. Theoretical implications as well as ongoing work in inclusion-exclusion strategy choice, political ideology, and distributive justice are discussed.

This paper investigates how the numerosity bias influences individuals’ allocation of resources between themselves and others, using the backdrop of the traditional dictator game. Across four studies including both hypothetical and real exchanges of money, we show that the form of the numerical value representing the quantity of the resource (e.g., $20 vs 2000 cents) systematically biases the decision-maker to perceive the quantity s/he is thinking of allocating as being “less than adequate” or “more than adequate”. Essentially, such a biased perception of adequacy with respect to the quantity of the resource consequently influences the decision-maker’s final allocation decision. We attribute this systematic bias to the “numerosity” of the resource. We find that bigger numerical values representing quantity (e.g., 2000 cents) bias decision-makers to over-infer the quantity, thus inducing them to allocate less to the entities they are focusing on.

Economic games involving allocation of resources have been a useful tool for the study of decision making for both psychologists and economists. In two experiments involving a repeated-trials game over twenty opportunities, undergraduates made choices to distribute resources between themselves and an unseen, passive other either optimally (for themselves) but non-competitively, equally but non-optimally, or least optimally but competitively. Surprisingly, whether participants were told that the anonymous other was another student or a computer did not matter. Using such terms as “game” and “player” in the course of the session was associated with an increased frequency of competitive behavior. Males were more optimal than females: a gender-by-incentive interaction was found in the first experiment. In agreement with prior research, participants whose resources were backed by monetary incentive acted the most optimally. Overall, equality was the modal strategy employed, although it is clear that motivational context affects the allocation of resources.