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This indispensable Handbook examines the interface of competition policy, competition law and industrial economics. The book aims to further our understanding of how economic reasoning and legal expertise complement each other in defining the fundamental issues and principles in competition policy. In specially commissioned chapters the book provides a scholarly review of economic theory, empirical evidence and standards of legal evaluation with respect to monopolization of markets, exploitation of market power and mergers, among other issues. The International Handbook of Competition - Second

Interdependencies of attitudes towards vignettes of mentally ill patients and the professional approach of medical students measured by means of diagnostic assessments and therapeutic distance were studied. First, the findings indicate that the attitudes towards the vignettes depended on the behavioral characteristics of each patient presented in the vignettes. Thus, the levels on four attitudinal subscales were different for each of the patients. Second, the two variables of the professional approach of the students towards the patients, i.e., the diagnostic assessment and the therapeutic distance, were dependent on the attitudes towards the patients. The findings indicate that the more disturbed a patient is, and the less he is diagnosed as mentally ill, the more he is rejected from treatment, and the more negative the students' attitudes are towards him.

ZusammenfassungSchleimhautmelanome sind seltene Formen von Melanomen mit einer ungünstigen Prognose. Bei Fehlen von therapierelevanten Mutationen und Inoperabilität stellt die Therapie mit Immuncheckpoint-Inhibitoren eine aussichtsreiche Option dar. Die Kombination aus dem PD-1-Antikörper Nivolumab und dem CTLA4-Antikörper Ipilimumab ist effektiver, jedoch auch erheblich toxischer als die Monotherapie mit PD-1-Antikörpern. Wir berichten über eine 57-jährige Patientin mit einem lymphogen metastasierten inoperablen Gingivamelanom im Stadium IIID, die mit einer Kombination aus Nivolumab und Ipilimumab behandelt wurde und hierunter multiple autoimmunvermittelte Nebenwirkungen einschließlich eines Schubs einer rheumatoiden Arthritis, einer Autoimmunkolitis, einer Autoimmunthyreoiditis und einer Autoimmunhepatitis entwickelte. Diese konnten mithilfe von systemischen Steroiden und symptomatischer Therapie beherrscht werden und es konnte eine anhaltende partielle Remission bei guter Lebensqualität erzielt werden. Unser Fall liefert ein Beispiel für den erfolgreichen Einsatz von Immuncheckpoint-Inhibitoren bei seltenen Melanom-Entitäten, veranschaulicht jedoch auch die Bedeutung von intensivem Monitoring besonders bei Patienten mit zugrunde liegenden Autoimmunerkrankungen.

In this article, the dependence structure of the asset classes stocks, government bonds, and corporate bonds in different market environments and its implications on asset management are investigated. Asset returns are modelled by a Markov-switching model which allows for two market regimes with completely different risk-return structures. Using major stock indices, calm and turbulent market periods are identified for the time period between 1987 and 2009 and the correlation structures in the respective periods are compared. It turns out that the correlations between as well as within the asset classes under investigation are far from being stable and vary significantly between calm and turbulent market periods as well as in time. Finally, the impact of these findings is examined in a portfolio optimization context. To accomplish this, a case study using the mean-variance and the mean-conditional-value-at-risk framework as well as two levels of risk aversion is conducted. The results show that an explicit consideration of different market conditions in the modelling framework yields better portfolio performance as well as lower portfolio risk compared to standard approaches. These findings hold true for all investigated optimization frameworks and risk-aversion levels.

Background: The German healthcare sector is in the process of being disrupted by digitization. Universities are asked to reflect on the consequences and develop strategies to prepare their medical students for a digitalized health care sector. The current state of research does not systematically record the associated activities of individual medical faculties in Germany. Objective: This study was designed to survey the status-quo of how German medical faculties view the digitization progress and to what extend digital capability building is already integrated into the curricula.Methods: A questionnaire with three focus areas was developed: Firstly, the general view of the medical faculties on digitization; secondly, concrete measures to prepare students for digital change and thirdly, the overarching organizational and regulatory conditions. The data was collected through short, questionnaire-based telephone interviews among those responsible for the curriculum at their faculty. The datasets collected were anonymized and statistically evaluated. Results: 30 interviews were conducted. The majority of faculty representatives agreed that digitization will change the role of physicians (87% agreement). Changes caused by individual digitization trends were however viewed to be less likely, e.g., whether medical expertise will become less important due to digital assistance systems (20% agreement), whether physician positions will be replaced by robots and algorithms (7% agreement), or whether hierarchies in hospitals will flatten (13% agreement). Digitization was seen to be of major importance for medical studies (93% agreement). Associated content should be given a higher priority in the curriculum (87% agreement). Two-thirds of faculty representatives believed that overarching institutions such as politics and medical associations ought to have more concrete plans for implementing the digital transformation and that innovations should be implemented in practice faster.Conclusion: While most faculty representatives ...