A case-control study on risk factors of domestic accidents in an elderly population

The aim of this study was to evaluate the combined influence of several lifestyle, health and housing factors in the occurrence of home injuries (HIs) among the elderly. The subjects were recruited from 10 hospitals in Rome, Italy. This study is a paired case-control study. Cases included subjects, aged 65-85 years, who visited the Emergency Department for an HI and were subsequently hospitalised (15 September 2004-30 June 2005). Controls were the subjects of the same gender, age (±3 years) and area of residence of cases. A conditional logistic regression model was used for analysing the variables obtained. In this study, we enrolled 107 hospitalised cases. It was found that the living room was the place where 33% of the accidents occurred. Eighty-seven per cent of the accidents were falls, and 33% of the accidents were the immediate consequence of sudden malaise. One-half of the cases reported one or more leg fractures. The variables that were independently associated with HI were poor household illumination, poor emotional status, regular physical activities and housekeeping activities. We conclude that this study shows the areas of intervention to target HI prevention activities.     

Web-based recruiting’s impact on organizational image and familiarity: too much of a good thing?

Abstract

Little is known about the efficacy of many of the newer forms of online recruitment. Using a quasi-experimental design, we tested the impact of individual exposure to corporate recruitment websites and Facebook on perceptions of organizational familiarity and organizational image over time. Most interestingly, we found evidence of a curvilinear or non-linear relationship between frequency of exposure to organizational communications and perceptions of organizational familiarity across time. Implications of our findings for HR theory and practice are discussed.     

Modelling the fiscal reaction functions of the GIPS based on state-varying thresholds

We introduce non-linear fiscal reaction functions with endogenously estimated state-varying thresholds to capture the behaviour of fiscal policy authorities during “good” and “bad” times. These thresholds vary with the level of debt, the economic cycle and a financial pressure index.     

On the aubin-like characterization of competitive equilibria in infinite dimensional economies

For an exchange economy with finitely many agents and a commodity space which is infinite dimensional, it is proved that competitive equilibria are the same as allocations belonging to the fuzzy core of the economy. The latter is further characterized as a subset of the ordinary core of a suitably associated continuum economy.

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Riassunto Per un'economia di puro scambio con un numero finito di agenti e uno spazio dei beni di dimensione non necessariamente finita, si prova che gli equilibri Walrasiani possono essere caratterizzati come allocazioni che appartengono al nucleo fuzzy dell'economia. Inoltre, queste ultime allocazioni sono in corrispondenza biunivoca con allocazioni di tipo semplice che si trovano nel nucleo ordinario di un'opportuna economia che ha [0,1] come spazio rappresentativo dello spazio degli agenti.

     

Social and technological efficiency of patent systems

This article develops an evolutionary model of industry dynamics in order to carry out a richer theoretical analysis of the consequences of a stronger patent system. The first results obtained in our article are rather consistent with the anti-patent arguments and do not favor the case for a stronger patent system: higher social welfare and technical progress are observed in our model in industries with milder patent systems (lower patent height and patent life).     

Commissioning Design: Evidence from the Furniture Industry

Design is defined as a strategic competency that can be utilized in order to create new objects, artifacts (i.e. products), systems and services, starting with some idea about customer needs. Since the products and services from the design process are of strategic importance to the company, design knowledge itself can become a strategic asset. Although one might expect design to be an internal resource from the point of view of transaction costs, most companies only possess some design competencies and acquire creative design skills from design consultants. The important issue is how they delineate what is strategic and what is not strategic, but skills. The article is based on two case studies from the furniture industry in which the companies have found different solutions. In the paper we therefore explain the differences in terms of the resource-based view on strategy. This indicates different conceptions of design resources, operating in different, but comparable contexts.     

Roger Horowitz. Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. xiii + 170 pp. ISBN 0-8018-8240-0, $35.00 (cloth); ISBN 0-8018-8241-9, $19.00 (paper).

Roger Horowitz opens Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste,Technology, Transformation with the observation that Americais a meat-eating nation. Throughout his narrative, he examinesthe forces that allow so much meat—six to eight ouncesper person per day—to satiate Americans’ appetite.The central questions driving Horowitz’s analysis are(a) what is the relationship between producing and consuminga product and (b) how does the nature of the good affect thisrelationship? In     

The Aubin private core of differential information economies

Abstract We establish characterizations of Radner equilibrium allocations via private core notions in the framework of differential information economies with a finite number of states of nature and a measure space of agents that may have atoms. The commodity space is an ordered separable Banach space whose positive cone admits an interior point. We introduce the notion of Aubin private core and prove that it provides a characterization of Radner equilibrium allocations. We show that the Aubin private core is equivalent to Edgeworth private equilibria and to privately non-dominated allocations of suitable associated economies. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 91B50, 91B44 Journal of Economic Literature Classification: D51, D82, D11     

Commissioning Design: Evidence from the Furniture Industry

Design is defined as a strategic competency that can be utilized in order to create new objects, artifacts (i.e. products), systems and services, starting with some idea about customer needs. Since the products and services from the design process are of strategic importance to the company, design knowledge itself can become a strategic asset. Although one might expect design to be an internal resource from the point of view of transaction costs, most companies only possess some design competencies and acquire creative design skills from design consultants. The important issue is how they delineate what is strategic and what is not strategic, but skills. The article is based on two case studies from the furniture industry in which the companies have found different solutions. In the paper we therefore explain the differences in terms of the resource-based view on strategy. This indicates different conceptions of design resources, operating in different, but comparable contexts.     

External Ethics Statements: Research Recommendations and the Drip Effect

Should companies make explicit external statements of their ethical stance? If so, at what point in their ethical development? And, what form might such a statement take? The authors, MBA students at London Business School, researched these questions among the stakeholders of a large financial services organisation in the UK, and recommended what they term “the drip effect” approach. The implications of the project offer insights to other companies which may be deliberating whether and how to produce an external statement of ethics.