Assessing The Impact of Managed-Care on the Distribution of Length-of-Stay Using Bayesian Hierarchical Models

Hierarchical models provide a useful framework for the complexities encountered in policy-relevant research in which the impact of social programs is being assessed. Such complexities include multi-site data, censored data and over-dispersion. In this paper, Bayesian inference through Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods is used for the analysis of a complex hierarchical log-normal model that shows the impact of a managed care strategy aimed at limiting length of hospital stays. Parameters in this model allow for variability in baseline length-of-stay as well as the program effect across hospitals. The authors demonstrate elicitation and sensitivity analysis with respect to prior distributions. All calculations for the posterior and predictive distributions were obtained using the software BUGS.     

The Burden of Labour Costs in Mexico

Abstract. We analysed labour costs in Mexico and evaluated their impact in terms of firm performance. Using a new survey, we studied how firms chose to conduct a firing procedure (i.e. mandatory payment, negotiation, or legal dispute) and the actual costs derived from that decision. We found that firms that negotiate have, on average, lower costs. This may mean that workers subvaluate the legal benefits. Moreover, legal disputes may increase firing costs by 50 per cent. We contributed to the analysis of the impact of such costs on employment and found that, when firms negotiate or pay higher costs, this decreases the level of employment. We also analysed the impact of Social Benefits on employment using an industrial survey. We found that a 10 per cent increment in these benefits may have a negative long‐term impact of 9 per cent on the level of employment.     

Hazardous Times for Monetary Policy: What Do Twenty‐Three Million Bank Loans Say About the Effects of Monetary Policy on Credit Risk‐Taking?

We identify the effects of monetary policy on credit risk‐taking with an exhaustive credit register of loan applications and contracts. We separate the changes in the composition of the supply of credit from the concurrent changes in the volume of supply and quality, and the volume of demand. We employ a two‐stage model that analyzes the granting of loan applications in the first stage and loan outcomes for the applications granted in the second stage, and that controls for both observed and unobserved, time‐varying, firm and bank heterogeneity through time*firm and time*bank fixed effects. We find that a lower overnight interest rate induces lowly capitalized banks to grant more loan applications to ex ante risky firms and to commit larger loan volumes with fewer collateral requirements to these firms, yet with a higher ex post likelihood of default. A lower long‐term interest rate and other relevant macroeconomic variables have no such effects.     

“Getting even”: Clinical considerations of adaptive and maladaptive vengeance

This article is intended to acquaint the reader with the concept of vengeance. Conceptualized as the intense, compelling wish or intention to get even, right a wrong, or avenge an injury, vengeance is best understood on a continuum from innocuous retaliatory fantasies/actions on one end of the continuum to meeting out of death and destruction on the other end. This article identifies various manifestations of vengeance, discusses theoretical formulations related to affects in general and vengeance, in particular, and presents a series of case vignettes which highlight the adaptive and maladaptive function of this psychological phenomenon.     

The Endowment Effect,Status Quo Bias and Loss Aversion: Rational Alternative Explanation

The endowment effect, status quo bias, and loss aversion are robust and well documented results from experimental psychology. They introduce a wedge between the prices at which one is willing to sell or buy a good. The objective of this paper is to address this wedge. We show that the presence of asymmetric information in a rational-agent framework can also account for the endowment effect, status quo bias and loss aversion without invoking psychology-based explanations proposed in the past.     

Socio-economic variables as alternatives to income in measuring regional economic Welfare—The Israeli case

It is quite surprising that, while data on national economic growth is published almost annually in most countries, cautious data for the measurement of regional economic welfare is rarely available. The purpose of the present study is to present a methodological disussion of the quality of variables utilized for measuring regional economic welfare over a span of time, in a situation where an “ideal” data base is lacking. The conclusions of the methodological discussion serve as an essential base for the second part of the paper, which deals with the problem of the increasing or decreasing regional inequality of economic welfare in Israel.     

Respondent characteristics in citizen evaluation of municipal services

Research on citizen surveys tend to focus on how to conduct a survey and how to best utilize the survey data. How respondent characteristics affect responses to a survey has received only cursory treatment in the literature. The present study investigated the role of demographics and generalized attitude, two types of respondent characteristics, in citizen evaluations of municipal services. Of particular interest was the pattern of respondent-responses interaction across time. The Automatic Interaction Detector (AID) was used to analyze survey data collected annually from 1974 through 1979 by a University-affiliated Urban Studies Center in a mid-size metropolitan area. Results indicated that these respondent characteristics could account for a substantial portion of the variance associated with service evaluation. However, the relationship between respondent characteristics and service evaluations is nonlinear, interactively complex and lacking in consistency across time. This widely varying pattern of respondent-responses interactions across time was explained in terms of the effect of a third exposure-experiential factor. Implications for future research and for using citizen survey data in public policy analysis and program development were discussed.     

The Prophecy that Never Fails: On the Uses and Gratifications of Horoscope Reading*

Several studies have revealed the growing popularity of astrology columns, which has brought astrology to a mass level never in its long history enjoyed before. The widespread exposure of astrology columns in newspapers and magazines is studied in the present research, according to the “uses and gratifications” approach originally developed by mass communication scholars, in an attempt to reveal the need gratified by them. Using different anxiety scales and measures of horoscope usage–exposure, regularity, and acceptance—the possible sets of relations between anxiety level, fatalism, and horoscope use are tested following the log-linear procedure. The results only partially confirm the hypothesis: exposure and regularity of readership are shown to be significantly related to several anxiety dimensions, while acceptance of horoscope predictions is related to locus of control, but not directly to anxiety. Finally, the compatibility of horoscopes to the readers' needs is analyzed by the elements of contents, social setting of exposure, and the medium's attributes. This study supports a claim of the uses and gratifications approach, which sees modern media encroaching upon older means of satisfaction of social and psychological needs. Fulfilling this function, horoscopes are the prophecies that never fail.