ANALYSIS OF ALTERNATIVE SCHEDULING POLICIES FOR HOSPITAL NURSES

The persistent shortage of nurses adversely affects the productivity, quality of care, and operating costs in most acute care hospitals. Aggravating the shortage are high nurse turnover rates, approaching 200% in some institutions. Policies to ensure adequate staffing levels and provide more attractive work schedules are alleged to improve nurse retention. However, their cost is seldom discussed. We compared expected nursing expense and workforce requirements to staff eight medical and surgical nursing units of a large hospital for 1 month, under 12 different scheduling policies alleged to improve turnover. Using simulation and an integrated staffing and scheduling methodology, we found that the expected nursing wages and workforce requirements for some policies differed by as much as 33%. In this hospital, the expected labor costs for certain policies could erode the benefits expected from improved retention. In contrast, other policies appear to allow high utilization of nursing resources, enhancing the expected benefits of reduced turnover with significant reductions in expenses for labor, recruiting, training, and fringe benefits.     

Expert system for production manager recruitment

Abstract

Production manager recruitment poses a three-fold problem: finding a broad-knowtedged recruiter; obtaining an objective evaluation of the candidate; and the ever present risk of accepting unqualified candidates and rejecting qualified candidates A prototype expert system (ES) was developed for the purpose of testing the technical potential for computer assisted recruiting. The ES embodied a three-fold strategy: probing the candidate's past; asking questions from a business case study; and from several human-behaviour, video-taped episodes. The candidate's responses are graded, rated for competency (excellent, good, fair, poor), and weighted. A hiring action is recommended based on the composite weight. The prototype effectively demonstrated thit potential for expert system-conducted recruiting.     

Continuities in Support for Racial Equality, 1972 to 1976

Capitalizing upon the panel component of the 1972–1976National Election Study, we explore change in white Americans'support for racial equality. Two general propositions regardingindividual change are examined: frustration-aggression theory,which attributes change to the stresses and strains of privatelife; and realistic group conflict theory, which attributeschange to the tangible threats blacks pose to whites' privateinterests. We find intermittent support for the first and virtuallyno support for the second. Much more impressive is the durabilityof opinion on racial equality, the insulation of racial opinionfrom the ostensibly powerful predicaments of private life.     

DOES THE CENTRAL AMERICAN COMMON MARKE1 BENEFIT ITS MEMBERS?

This paper estimates the welfare consequences for members of the Central American Common Market if they abolish their union by imposing tariffs against each other. An imperfect substitutes trade model is used and direct estimates are provided for the effects of the union. These are important advances over previous studies, which relied on perfect substitutes models and merely imputed the effects of the union by assuming that it left either market shares or income elasticities of demand constant in member countries. The union is shown to impose static welfare losses on the members, which contradicts the results of previous studies.     

SURVIVE THEN THRIVE: DETERMINANTS OF SUCCESS IN THE ECONOMICS PH.D. PROGRAM

This study investigates the completion of the Ph.D. in economics. We use ex ante information, based upon reviewing individual applications from former doctoral students. Students need different skills to succeed at each distinct stage of the doctoral program. Significant determinants for passing the comprehensive exams include Graduate Record Exam (GRE) verbal and quantitative scores, a Masters degree, and prior focus on economics. By contrast, research motivation and math preparation play significant roles in completing the dissertation. GRE scores become insignificant for completion in the generalized ordered logit estimates, which emphasize the sequential nature of the Economics Ph.D. program . ( JEL I210)     

COMPETITION AND BIDDING BEHAVIOR: SOME EVIDENCE FROM THE RICE MARKET

When objects have uncertain value, the net effect of competition in sealed-bid auctions is ambiguous. The risk of succumbing to the "winner's curse" generally causes bidders to exhibit a non-aggressive response in addition to the standard competitive effect. Sellers can influence the size of the nonaggressive effect by responding to the value uncertainty. This paper focuses specifically on individual bidding behavior in a rice auction market in which sellers issue a product-quality guarantee. The empirical evidence supports my hypothesis that such a guarantee negates the significance of the nonaggressive bidder response.     

DOES SEX STILL MATTER? NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE 1980s

Recent analyses of gender based salary differentials among University faculty have focused on colleges and universities which are quite different from those used in earlier (pre-1975) studies. To facilitate comparisons with previous studies we examine gender earnings differentials during the 1983–84 academic year at Kent State University, a school similar to those studied in the pre-1975 period. Our results suggest that after controlling for differentials in productivity-related characteristics and market influences, there is little evidence of gender based salary discrimination at Kent State during 1983–84.     

NEWSPAPER EFFECTS ON POLICY PREFERENCES

This research offers clear evidence that what is presented inthe media influences the policy preferences of the Americanpublic. More important, it reconciles some earlier problemsthat led to an inability to determine the approximate relationshipsbetween television and newspaper information concerning policy.By correcting some methodological problems in earlier attemptsto examine the impact of New York Times policy news, I am ableto conclude that different actors or news sources do indeedhave differential impacts on public opinion and that in bothnewspaper items and television broadcasts experts and commentatorswield heavy influence.