Implementing Evidence-Based Practice in Health Care

This article summarizes recent research on the effectiveness of efforts to implement evidence-based health care. The authors conclude that the evidence in support of single interventions being effective in bringing about practitioner change is weak at best. The authors give examples and evaluative comments on more complex organizational and systemic interventions that are aimed at changing clinical practice, and discuss some of the barriers to their application.     

The critical discount factor as a measure for cartel stability?

This paper considers the stability of tacit collusion in price setting duopolies with repeated interaction. The minimum discount factor above which tacit collusion can be sustained in a subgame perfect equilibrium is called the critical discount factor δ*. In addition, δ* is often used as an intuitive measure for the stability of a tacit cartel, assuming that a collusive equilibrium is more difficult to sustain when δ* increases. However, according to standard theory the distance δ − δ* between the actual and the critical discount factor does not matter for stability as long as δ > δ*. This paper contributes experimental evidence that supports the intuitive idea that a larger critical discount factor makes collusion a less likely outcome.      

大众：最年轻的德国“汽车”

大众汽车公司是德国最年轻的、同时也是德国最大的汽车生产厂家。作为目前德国最大的企业,2010年大众打败日本丰田、美国通用汽车公司成为世界最大汽车公司。其在世界500强排行榜中的排名由2010年的16位升至2011年13位,是德国排名最靠前的品牌。     

THE IMPACT OF THE INDONESIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS ON CHILDREN: AN ANALYSIS USING THE 100 VILLAGES DATA

This paper examines the impact of the Asian financial crisis on children in Indonesia. Specifically, data from four rounds of the 100 Villages Survey are used to examine changes in school attendance rates, child labour force participation and health status. The paper also examines ways in which households are coping with the crisis. The findings provide little evidence that the crisis has had a dramatic negative impact on children. School attendance dropped slightly after the onset of the crisis but has since rebounded to higher than pre-crisis levels. Fewer children are now working, although the older children who are working and not attending school seem to be working longer hours. Comparisons of child health status indicators over time are complicated by changes in the questionnaire but appear to show a relatively stable pattern of child health.     

Bainbridge Festive Foods

Lara Owens and Kathleen Pegram were starting to worry about their newly acquired business, Bainbridge Festive Foods. Bainbridge, a supplier of specialty jams, jellies, and pickles, sold its product through many outlets but relied heavily on a relationship with Cracker Barrel (a restaurant usually accompanied with a country gift store). Many issues face Bainbridge Festive Foods and its new owners. This case offers the opportunity to examine a small agribusiness facing many common issues: reputation (food quality and safety), change in ownership, reliance on one outlet, and a price structure that had not been examined since the firm's inception.     

Is off-farm income reforming the farm? Evidence from Mexico

Does access to off-farm income complement or compete with agricultural production? This article explores the effect of off-farm income on agricultural production activities, using data from the 2003 Mexico National Rural Household Survey. We first discuss the theoretical conditions under which access to off-farm income may influence production in an agricultural household model. Instrumental-variable (IV) estimation methods are then used to test whether agricultural production activities, technologies, and input use differ between households with and without access to off-farm income. We find that off-farm income has a negative effect on agricultural output and the use of family labor on the farm, but a positive impact on the demand for purchased inputs. There is also a slight efficiency gain in households with access to off-farm income. Findings offer insights into how household production evolves as rural households increasingly engage in off-farm income activities.     

The nature of local area social exclusion in England and the role of the labour market

The creation of the Social Exclusion Unit by the present governmentin 1997 is just one example of the increased desire by bothacademics and policy-makers to understand more about the factorsthat lead to individuals and communities becoming excluded frommainstream society. Of the many aspects of social exclusionwhich have featured in recent debate, this article focuses ontwo. The first is to describe the nature and the extent of socialexclusion in the areas in which it is concentrated in the UnitedKingdom. The second is to examine the role that labour-marketfactors play in creating, reducing, or sustaining geographicalconcentrations of social exclusion. The article draws upon theresults of social surveys conducted in deprived areas and discussesthe arguments for tackling local concentrations of social exclusionthrough area-based initiatives.     

Stock returns and volatility: Another look

Most empirical work examining the intertemporal mean-variance relationship in stock returns has tended to use relatively simple specifications of the mean and especially of the conditional variance. We augment the information set to include economic variables that other researchers have found to be important and use GARCH-M models to explore the relation between volatility and expected stock returns. We find that the additional variables have little impact on the conditional variance and that any intertemporal relationship between volatility and stock returns is weak or unstable. Our results signal the need for theoretical models of the intertemporal volatility-return relationship, and call for further studies of the determinants of the conditional variance of stock returns.