Efficiency and Technological Change in the U.S. Brewing Industry

This study demonstrates that the measurement of technological change and economic efficiency are tightly linked. Efficiency measures may depend on carefully controlling for technological change, while tests of technological change may be sensitive to empirical model specifications. Moreover, the study underlines Solow's (1994) and Romer's (1994) admonition that econometricians should pay attention to industry and institutional evidence in building models of technological change. The empirical results presented here suggest that there has been substantial technological change in the U.S. brewing industry from 1950 to 1992. This occurred in the form of a dramatic shift in technology beginning with the introduction of super breweries in about 1972. There has also been a substantial increase in scale economies, which undoubtedly caused many inefficiently small firms to exit the industry during the 1960s and 1970s. Further results suggest that a more complete specification of technological change and the stochastic nature of the frontier production function leads to higher and more tenable estimates of efficiency.     

Field publishing performance of U.S. economics departments

Conclusion The purpose of this study is to reduce information costs in the market for graduate education in economics and the market for Ph.D. economists by providing information on research concentration in each of 19 fields for 1980–1986. Some variation in publishing performance across fields is found in highly regarded universities. Unexpected faculty strength is discovered in some middle level departments for particular fields. Among middle- and lower-ranked departments, substantial publishing diversity across fields is evident.     

Innocents Abroad: Attitude Change toward Hosts

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of social distance, prior expectations, and trip experience on post-trip attitudes in multiple destinations. This study is based on surveys conducted with two groups of students: 1) a group participating in a summer study abroad program to the South Pacific or to Europe, and 2) a control group. The results show that attitude changes were positive towards Europeans, negative towards Australians, and mixed towards Fijians. This study supports the expectation value theory, but contradicts the cultural distance theory of attitude change. Further, the results show that experience with non-tourism related services played an important role toward attitude change.     

Informational Contagion of Sudden Stops in a Global Games Framework

This paper highlights the cross-country spread of self-fulfilling financial crises through an informational channel. It sets up a two-country framework of investment with strategic complementarities and incomplete information about economic fundamentals. Each market may be subject to sudden stops, triggered by agents preemptively withdrawing their investments for fear others do so. After observing a massive capital outflow from one country, agents downgrade common fundamentals, and therefore have higher requirements regarding factors specific to the other country. This in turn may induce a crisis in the latter, which is not justified by idiosyncratic events or economic interdependence.     

Disease management programs: program intervention, behavior modification, and dosage effect

Disease management programs provide highly personalized self- management support to consumers afflicted with chronic illnesses. Program interventions include the provision of health information, ongoing motivation, and support for behavior change, adherence to pharmacotherapy, development of self-efficacy, and the distribution of self-care tools. Interactions between program and patients are structured and repetitive over time. Consumer behavior change can result in measurable improvements in quality and medical cost savings from postponement or avoidance of preventable complications. We evaluated the impact on cost and quality of a comprehensive Diabetes Disease Management Program (DDMP) across ten US urban markets. A staggered implementation allowed for ten pre–post and five pair-wise comparisons. The DDMP demonstrated significant improvements in six diabetes-related quality indicators, lower cost, and a dose-response with greater than 6 months participation. We conclude that a DDMP improves quality of care and reduce overall medical costs.     

a lesson from all our yesterdays

The rise of unemployment to close to three million recalls memories of the dole queues of the 1930s. Kent Matthews, of the Cardiff Business School, explores the analogies between the unemployment of the 1930s and the 1990s.     

Information systems project management decision making: The influence of experience and risk propensity

Managing information systems (IS) projects is a notoriously difficult task. The project manager is a crucial player in a successful IS development project. This research examines how a project manager's prior experience and risk propensity influence his or her decision making. An experiment was conducted that showed that both experience and risk propensity have significant influence on the decisions made.