Your money or your life: a new variation on the Heinz Dilemma

Millions of Medicare-age Americans are drug dependent, not because of addiction but because of common chronic health problems such as diabetes, heart failure, high blood pressure, and arthritis. Seniors are up in arms because drug company control of distribution and pricing of pharmaceuticals is eating away hard-earned nest eggs. Who cares? Where's the justice?     

Restaurant Revenue Management at Chevys: Determining the Best Table Mix

Revenue management has been used in a variety of industries and generally takes the form of managing demand by manipulating length of customer usage and price. Supply mix is rarely considered, although it can have considerable impact on revenue. In this research, we focused on developing an optimal supply mix, specifically on determining the supply mix that would maximize revenue. We used data from a Chevys restaurant, part of a large chain of Mexican restaurants, in conjunction with a simulation model to evaluate and enumerate all possible supply (table) mixes. Compared to the restaurant's existing table mix, the optimal mix is capable of handling a 30% increase in customer volume without increasing waiting times beyond their original levels. While our study was in a restaurant context, the results of this research are applicable to other service businesses.     

Risk Management in a Polio-Free World

Inherent in the decision to launch the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988 was the expectation for many people that immunization against poliomyelitis would eventually simply stop, as had been the case with smallpox following its eradication in 1977. However, the strategies for managing the risks associated with a "polio-free" world must be continuously refined to reflect new developments, particularly in our understanding of the live polioviruses in the oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) and in the international approach to managing potential biohazards. The most important of these developments has been the confirmation in 2000 that vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPVs) can circulate and cause polio outbreaks, making the use of OPV after interruption of wild poliovirus transmission incompatible with a polio-free world. A comprehensive strategy has been developed to minimize the risks associated with eventual OPV cessation, centered on appropriate long-term biocontainment of poliovirus stocks (whether for vaccine production, diagnosis, or research), the controlled reintroduction of any live poliovirus vaccine (i.e., from an OPV stockpile), and appropriate use of the inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV). Although some aspects of this risk management strategy are still debated, there is wide agreement that no strategy would entirely eliminate the potential risks to a polio-free world. The current strategy for risk management in a polio-free world will continue to evolve with better characterization of these risks and the development of more effective approaches both to reduce those risks and to limit their consequences should they occur.     

Animal Magic: Nigel Nicholson and Evolutionary Psychology

Nicholson, N., Managing the Human Animal: Why People Behave the Way They Do in Corporate Settings     

Corporate Governance and Democracy: The Stakeholder Debate Revisited

'Stakeholding' is a term laden with manymeanings. In this paper we attempt to put someorder on the discourse by confining attentionto the corporation. We assess the originsand the intellectual foundations of the 'shareholder versus stakeholder' debate. We askwhether and how 'stakeholding' might be a morelogical or rational system, a fairer or moredemocratic system, and one that provides betterperformative outcomes. Each of these claims isassessed in respect to the micro firmperspective and the macro economy-wideperspective.One of the most difficult and neglected areasin the stakeholding debate concerns thepracticalities of its implementation. The papertackles this issue directly, at both thedomestic and the international level. We asknot only how stakeholding might be sensiblyintroduces within a national context but alsowhat it means to discuss stakeholding inrespect to transnational enterprises.     

Making predictions from complex longitudinal data, with application to planning monitoring intervals in a national screening programme

When biological or physiological variables change over time, we are often interested in making predictions either of future measurements or of the time taken to reach some threshold value. On the basis of longitudinal data for multiple individuals, we develop Bayesian hierarchical models for making these predictions together with their associated uncertainty. Particular aspects addressed, which include some novel components, are handling curvature in individuals' trends over time, making predictions for both underlying and measured levels, making predictions from a single baseline measurement, making predictions from a series of measurements, allowing flexibility in the error and random-effects distributions, and including covariates. In the context of data on the expansion of abdominal aortic aneurysms over time, where reaching a certain threshold leads to referral for surgery, we discuss the practical application of these models to the planning of monitoring intervals in a national screening programme. Prediction of the time to reach a threshold was too imprecise to be practically useful, and we focus instead on limiting the probability of exceeding the threshold after given time intervals. Although more complex models can be shown to fit the data better, we find that relatively simple models seem to be adequate for planning monitoring intervals.