Searchers vs surveyors in estimating the monetary value of a QALY: resolving a nasty dilemma for NICE

Recently, for many health economics researchers, empirical estimation of the monetary valuation of a quality-adjusted life year (QALY) has become an important endeavour. Different philosophical and practical approaches to this have emerged. On the one hand, there is a view that, with health-care budgets set centrally, decision-making bodies within the system can iterate, from observation of a series of previous decisions, towards the value of a QALY, thus searching for such a value. Alternatively, and more consistent with the approach taken in other public sectors, individual members of the public are surveyed with the aim of directly eliciting a preference-based - also known as a willingness-to-pay-based (WTP-based) - value of a QALY. While the former is based on supply-side factors and the latter on demand, both in fact suffer from informational deficiencies. Sole reliance on either would necessitate an acceptance or accommodation of chronic inefficiencies in health-care resource allocation. On the basis of this observation, this paper makes the case that in order to approach optimal decision making in health-care provision, a framework incorporating and thus, to a degree, reconciling these two approaches is to be preferred.     

The Ultimate Shopper

Using the example of a fictional shopper from the early twentieth century, Bowlby looks at how the notion of mobility as characteristic of the modern subject intersects with notions of femininity and masculinity. Valéry Larbaud's ultramobile imaginary shopper is compared with Freud's portrait of the woman sadly fixed for all time in her character once she has reached the age of thirty. The concluding section looks at the way that mobility of identity has become a norm for both sexes in the last part of the century, making the very idea of a self into a kind of rational shopping, a 'choosing' of different identities.     

The wall has feet but so do we: Palestinian workers in Israel and the ‘separation’ wall

While the Israeli-constructed wall in the occupied West Bank seemingly signifies a shift to a policy of separation, every year thousands of West Bank Palestinians legally and illegally cross its bounds into Israel for work. In this article, I explore the varying regimes of (il)legality and (im)mobility that have accompanied the construction of the Israel–West Bank separation wall, which decisively impact the lives of Palestinians who work in Israel. The peculiar separation legislated by the wall, which is often treated as a de facto ‘border’, obscures the ways in which it facilitates continued Israeli territorial expansion and deepens the subjugation of the Palestinian population. As a border, the separation wall functions more as a colonial frontier, the asymmetry of which has powerful implications for the border crossings of documented and undocumented workers, as well as their respective experiences of illegality inside the West Bank and in Israel. It is in the context of West Banker Palestinians who work in Israel, I argue, that the doctrine of separation embodied in the wall is exposed as not only deceptive, but also obfuscating of the relation of asymmetrical dependence between the two entities.     

The trouble with frames: Insights from India on the challenge of using collective action frames to persuade state agents

Collective action frames are a key strategy of human rights activists and educators, and central to this strategy is the ability to connect frames to a population's extant beliefs. But two dilemmas plague framing efforts directed at state agents such as police officers, who are seen as potential violators of rights. First, these actors may be less likely than members of the general public to share the beliefs in terms of which human rights workers frame rights; and second, frames by their very nature simplify reality, and fail to take into account factors that constrain state agents' actions. This article explores these issues through a case study of human rights education involving police officers in India. Educators may be able to mitigate such obstacles by basing their framing efforts on research on the specific populations with which they are working, and using frames as only one part of an approach that takes into account the limited ability of frames to encompass all aspects of the situations in which violations occur.     

Political Reliability and the Chinese Bar Exam

This article uses the case of contemporary China to explore an understudied type of political socialization: the bar exam. Content analysis of 3,996 exam questions from 2002–2014 shows a turning point in the mid‐2000s, when the test became explicitly political. The newly political exam is now a site of political learning where tomorrow's lawyers, judges, and prosecutors perform loyalty by exchanging politically correct answers for points. Viewed from this perspective, the Chinese bar exam has much in common with demands for public displays of correct behaviour in other authoritarian states. This adds a fresh, political layer to our understanding of whose interests bar exams serve, and why they take the form they do.