Amplifying accountability by benchmarking results at district and national levels

This multi‐level ethnography of the Zambian health system illustrates the importance of top‐down accountability, and how it has emerged in a historically neglected sector. Maternal healthcare indicators are prioritized when they are benchmarked, at district and national levels. The realization that Zambia was lagging behind African countries in making progress towards Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 (to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters) appears to have evoked reputational concerns and revealed inspirational possibilities. Growing prioritization also stems from a change in incentives, with some partner funding being conditional on the proportion of deliveries attended by skilled health personnel.     

Estimating Merging Costs by Merger Preconditions

This article provides a method for estimating the bounds of transaction costs in horizontal mergers. Consider, for example, a completed monopoly merger in linear Cournot oligopolies with 10 symmetric firms. The method shows that its transaction costs are at most 25% (78%) of total premerger profits if there is zero (100%) excess capacity. Such estimations can be extended in a straightforward manner to other mergers and other oligopoly models. The estimation is based both on the profitability precondition, and on the non-empty core precondition, which postulates that the split of a merger’s profits be in its core. The article shows that the core in linear Cournot oligopolies has a non-empty interior, and indicates that the non-empty core precondition also sheds new lights on understanding important issues such as the stylized fact that mergers are likely to occur in markets plagued by excess capacities; why profitable mergers might not be formed; and why completed mergers might break up in the future.      

Fairness of the national health service in Italy: a bivariate correlated random effects model

The primary purpose of this paper is to comprehensively assess households’ burden due to health payments. Starting from the fairness approach developed by the World Health Organization, we analyse the burden of healthcare payments on Italian households by modeling catastrophic payments and impoverishment due to healthcare expenditures. For this purpose, we propose to extend the analysis of fairness in financing contribution through a generalized linear mixed models by introducing a bivariate correlated random effects model, where association between the outcomes is modeled through individual- and outcome-specific latent effects which are assumed to be correlated. We discuss model parameter estimation in a finite mixture context. By using such model specification, the fairness of the Italian national health service is investigated.     

The Benefits of Reducing Gun Violence: Evidence from Contingent-Valuation Survey Data

This article presents an estimate of the benefits of reducing crime using the contingent-valuation (CV) method. We focus on gun violence, a crime of growing policy concern in America. Our data come from a national survey in which we ask respondents referendum-type questions that elicit their willingness-to-pay (WTP) to reduce gun violence by 30%. We estimate that the public's WTP to reduce gun assaults by 30% equals $24.5 billion, or around $1.2 million per injury. Our estimate implies a statistical value of life that is quite consistent with those derived from other methods.     

Nursing a Grievance? The Role of Healthcare Assistants in a Modernized National Health Service

The complex division of labour in health care has encouraged the analysis of occupational boundary disputes between separate professions. Less attention has been directed at the divisions in individual occupational groups but in a context of intensive health sector workforce reform there has been a growth in lower status occupations. This article extends debate about lower status occupations by exploring the manner in which nurses and healthcare assistants engage in boundary work to advance their occupational interests. The UK government's modernization agenda has encouraged a more prominent role for healthcare assistants and the findings confirm that this agenda has reinforced occupational boundary disputes between nurses and healthcare assistants. Tensions between nurses and healthcare assistants took particular forms influenced by gendered notions of caring work. The consequences of these boundary management strategies in terms of work undertaken, pay and status are also explored.     

交易活跃性与交易成本动态关系研究

交易成本和市场活跃性是流动性相互联系的两个重要方面,已往研究多基于横截面分析研究两者的静态关系,而未考虑两者的动态相互作用。用久期,交易量来度量市场活跃程度,买卖价差度量交易成本,提出了基于超高频数据研究交易活跃程度和交易成本动态关系的系统模型。利用中国股市的样本数据对模型进行了实证研究,并从信息揭示的角度对实证结果给出了理论解释。结果表明交易活跃性和交易成本之间存在着动态相互影响,监管部门应该采取措施降低交易成本,增加市场的活跃性,防止出现市场低迷和流动性缺乏的恶性循环。     

Cost-Utility Analysis to Control Campylobacter on Chicken Meat—Dealing with Data Limitations

The current article describes the economic evaluation of interventions to control Campylobacter on chicken meat by means of a cost-utility analysis. Apart from the methodology used, the main focus of this article is on data gaps and assumptions made, and their impact on results and conclusions. The direct intervention costs, the relative risk, the disease burden (expressed in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)), and the costs of illness for the various interventions are necessary inputs for the cost-utility analysis. The cost-utility ratio (CUR) -- the measure for efficiency -- is expressed in net costs per avoided DALY. Most data gaps were of a biological order, but for some interventions, information on costs was also scarce. As a consequence, assumptions had to be made, which had some impact on the estimated CUR. A higher (lower) incidence of Campylobacter infections associated with chicken meat, higher (lower) effectiveness, and lower (higher) intervention costs, respectively, would result in absolute better (worse) CUR estimates. By taking the perspective of all consumers eating Dutch chicken meat, rather than only the Dutch society, absolute better CUR estimates could be obtained. Indirect costs or a shift toward non-Dutch chicken meat would both result in higher CUR estimates. Despite the assumptions made, three interventions showed for most of the applied sensitivity analyses relatively favorable CUR estimates: limiting fecal leakage during processing, carcass decontamination by dipping in a chemical solution, and the phage therapy. However, all three do have some clauses.     

Informational Regulation of Environmental Risks

This paper examines the law and economics of informational regulation (IR) of environmental risks. Informational regulation here means regulation which provides to affected stakeholders information on the operations of regulated entities, usually with the expectation that such stakeholders will then exert pressure on these entities to comply with regulations in a manner which serves the interests of stakeholders. As such, IR reinforces and augments direct regulatory monitoring and enforcement through third-party monitoring and incentives. The paper provides two contrasting frameworks, from law and economics, to analyze the costs and benefits likely to arise from IR and concludes with a discussion of the appropriate scope of IR as a substitute for and complement of traditional environmental regulation and law.     

企业的自制-外购决策:一个几何模型

能够影响企业的生产成本、组织成本、交易成本和中间品购买价格的一切因素,都可能对企业的自制-外购决策产生重要影响。因此,为强调某因素而把其它因素看成可忽略因素的一切已有的理论,都是难免被证伪的。在述评已有的几种主要理论的基础上,发展了一个几何模型去说明各种因素对企业自制-外购决策的影响,并讨论了其理论意义和应用前景。     

高等教育的学费问题研究

高校培养成本的核算应公正、科学、合理。个人分担比例的划定应兼顾老百姓的承受能力和高校的正常运行所需。应根据“利益获得”原则,分层次划定公办高校学费标准。应认识到,对高等教育的投资是一种风险投资。