A Balancing Act: Work–Life Balance and Multiple Stakeholder Outcomes in Hospitals

This article examines the direct and indirect effects of work–life balance (WLB) practices on multiple stakeholder outcomes in hospitals. The authors examine the direct and indirect effects of WLB practices in 173 hospitals in the United Kingdom on organizational, patient care and employee outcomes. The article proposes a model in which the effects of WLB practices on patient care outcomes and financial performance are mediated by employee turnover intentions. The authors provide strong support for the potential vested in WLB practices in the healthcare setting. Results indicate that greater use of WLB practices enhances outcomes for hospitals, their employees and the patients they care for.     

Trade, production sharing, and the international transmission of business cycles

Countries that are more engaged in production sharing exhibit higher bilateral manufacturing output correlations. We use data on trade flows between US multinationals and their affiliates as well as trade between the United States and Mexican maquiladoras to measure production-sharing trade and its link with the business cycle. We then develop a quantitative model of international business cycles that generates a positive link between the extent of vertically integrated production-sharing trade and internationally synchronized business cycles. A key assumption in the model is a relatively low elasticity of substitution between home and foreign inputs in the production of the vertically integrated good.     

From Imitation to Innovation: The Evolution of R&D Capabilities and Learning Processes in the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

Since the mid 1990s the Indian pharmaceutical industry has emerged as a leading supplier of generic drugs to both developing and developed countries.The movement of the Indian pharmaceutical industry along the R&D value chain represents a remarkable shift from an importer to an innovator of drugs. The Indian government's industrial and technology policies along with changes in regulation of intellectual property rights played a crucial role in shaping this development of R&D capability. Using the 'capability creation model' this paper discusses the learning processes and stages involved in this dramatic accumulation of technological capability. This analysis shows that the Indian pharmaceutical industry has followed a trajectory from duplicative imitation to creative imitation to move up the value chain of pharmaceutical R&D. Finally as a result of changes in patent law the industry is learning to develop capabilities in innovative R&D. The basic and intermediate technological capabilities gained from imitative learning gave these firms a solid base for development of competence in advanced innovative R&D. These findings have implications for government policies as well as firm strategies in other developing countries albeit with some limitations due to global harmonisation of patent laws being promoted by the World Trade Organization.     

Regulated price reforms and unregulated substitutes: the case of residential piped gas in Argentina

This paper examines the impact of regulated piped gas price changes on connection decisions and households’ welfare. The analysis explicitly considers bottled gas as a substitute for piped gas and therefore uses a simple utility maximization model that yields both a gas-type choice model and a demand specification whose parameterization allows examining households’ responses to regulated price changes. The results show that relative gas prices and household features explain households’ piped gas usage. They also provide insights on the distribution of welfare changes. The findings illustrate the impact of tariff rebalancing and unregulated substitutes on further access to regulated network services.     

Productivity throughout regulatory cycles in gas utilities

This paper examines productivity patterns in price cap regulated utilities around price reviews. We specify a variable cost function that we estimate using alternative specifications of technical change. Results show that the pattern of pure technical change differs within and between regulatory cycles. They also provide evidence that exogenous investment reduces the ratchet-problem, that strategic cost cutting behavior is reduced when regulatory cycles are short and that, absent these two features, industry productivity is consistent with strategic cost cutting behavior.     

Rural versus urban preferences for renewable energy developments

Development of renewable energy resources, such as wind farms and hydro-electric schemes, are being promoted as a new method of expanding and diversifying employment in rural areas. However, such energy projects are associated with a range of environmental impacts which might be detrimental to other economic activities, such as those based on nature tourism. The authors use a Choice Experiment to quantify peoples' preferences over environmental and employment impacts that may result from the deployment of renewable energy projects in rural areas of Scotland, focussing in particular on any differences between the preferences of urban and rural dwellers, and on heterogeneity within these groups. Rural and urban households are shown to have different welfare gains which are dependent on the type of renewable energy technology and on the scale of project under consideration.     

Debates and Decisions: On a Rationale of Argumentation Rules

We view a debate as a mechanism by which an uninformed decision maker (the listener) extracts information from two informed debaters, who hold contradicting positions regarding the right decision. During the debate, the debaters raise arguments and, based on these arguments, the listener reaches a conclusion. Using a simple example, we investigate the mechanism design problem of constructing rules of debate that maximize the probability that the listener reaches the right conclusion, subject to constraints on the form and length of the debate. It is shown that optimal debate rules have the property that the conclusion drawn by the listener is not necessarily the same as the conclusion he would have drawn, had he interpreted the information, revealed to him or her during the debate, literally. The optimal design of debate rules requires that the information elicited from a counterargument depends on the argument it counterargues. We also link our discussion with the pragmatics literature. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, D78.     

Simple estimators for the parameters of discrete dynamic games (with entry/exit examples)

We estimate parameters from data on discrete dynamic games, using entry/exit games to illustrate. Semiparametric first‐stage estimates of entry and continuation values are computed from sample averages of the realized continuation values of entrants and incumbents. Under certain assumptions, these values are easy‐to‐compute analytic functions of the parameters of interest. The entry and continuation values are used to determine the model's predictions for entry and exit conditional on the parameter vector, and the estimates compare these predictions with the data on entry and exit rates. Small‐sample properties are discussed and lead to the simplest of estimators.     

The world economy,external debt and prospects for development financing

This paper provides an overview of the evolution of the industrial economies in the 1960s, with particular attention to the factors which gave rise to the economic crisis of recent years. The effects of this international economic instability on the developing economies is then considered, especially the weakening of their balance-of-payments position which has increased their dependence on external finance. The author indicates that the developing countries' growing reliance on credits from private international banks gives cause for concern and he proceeds to make some suggestions for other mechanisms of development financing.     

Recession, inflation and the international monetary system

The difficult circumstances being faced by the world economy and its uncertain prospects for the 1980s make it necessary to take a new look at the present financial mechanisms and international institutions for monetary cooperation, with a view to adapting them to current needs and to developments in the near future. The industrial countries will have more modest rates of growth than in earlier decades, and this will have significant consequences for the developing countries: (a) stagnation of official development aid flows; (b) possible intensification of protectionist trends; (c) slow growth of producers of raw materials whose export markets will be seriously limited; (d) gradual shift of world economic and political activity toward oil-producing developing countries and, to a lesser extent, toward the exporters of manufacturers; (e) industrial countries and raw materials producers will become increasingly interdependent; (f) oil-producing and other higher income developing countries will increase their participation in regional economic cooperation and official development aid efforts. Some of the more specific problems which require attention from the international community are inflation and recession; structural disequilibria, recycling and external debt; adjustment process; creation of liquidity and transfer of resources; and participation of the developing countries in the monetary system.