A proposed method for the analysis of public health policy in less developed countries

The study of public health policy in the less developed countries (LDCs) is handicapped by both lack of adequate data and gaps in conceptual apparatus. A new conceptual model is proposed that would be used for future policy analyses to assess what changes in health status of population in LDCs can be expected as direct functions of increased health service resources, and of improved environmental and econosociocultural conditions.While direct policy analysis is ill-advised at this time due to data inadequacy, the model is illustrated using data presently available for twenty-five relatively homogeneous sub-Sahara African countries. Within the limitations of available data, the findings suggest that reductions in mortality in the region might best be achieved by making appropriate health resources available to the populations. Study findings also suggest that physicians contributed more during the study period to the variance in physical health status than did medical assistants.     

United States Demand for Indonesian Plywood 1

Indonesia's exports of plywood are the largest in the world and a leading source of foreign exchange earnings. Although the industry's growth has been rapid, several studies indicate that it has been subsidised both directly and indirectly. What are the prospects for Indonesia to offset these subsidies by raising plywood prices as its share of key import markets grows? This paper sheds light on this question by analyzing econometrically the United States' imports of Indonesian plywood from July 1979 to December 1986, using a monthly import demand model. The results suggest that Indonesia's rapid expansion into the US plywood market has been due primarily to its low plywood prices, and that attempts to raise prices relative to those of competing export regions would result in significant reductions in market share.     

Towards a unified theory of the firm: An historical approach

Most microtheorists have been preoccupied with the productive aspects of the firm, tending to neglect the questions of capital investment and finance. However, the interdependent nature of production, investment, and finance has not gone totally unrecognized. Over the past 50 years, a handful of economists have written on this interdependence. These economists' works form the intellectual background on which this study is based. With the insights thus gained, the essential features of a unified theory of the firm is outlined.     

Distortion of preferences and the Nash theory of bargaining

It is shown that in Nash bargaining over division of a single good, when agents are allowed to distort their von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions into any (weakly) concave form, reporting linear utility functions constitutes a unique dominant-strategy Nash equilibrium.     

Machine performance centres: a survey of technology management issues and their impact on industrial corporate competitiveness

This paper reports the results of a machina performance centre survey of 54 industrial manufacturers in the USA. Here a machine performance centre refers to the technological or mechanical components of a production floor, i.e. machinery, used intentionally to produce a pre-established form of output. The paper details findings and analyzes survey results both individually and comparatively with traditional Japanese manufaturing plactices in order to prova that the demise of many US industrial manufacturerc has been caused in large part by internal technology management failures. The results provide the basis for the proposed conceptual framework for machine performance centre management described within the context of the paper. Substantive effort is made to describe the potential implications of the research on corporate competitiveness and machine performance centre management while the empirical message is azmed at providing a new premise of thinking for the management of industrial manufacturing organizatzons.