Fracture incidence among elderly people in institutional care: linking injury surveillance data with a postal code-based register of residential and nursing homes

Fracture prevention strategies will be most cost-effective if targeted at groups of frail elderly people who are at particularly high risk of falls and fractures. Elderly people living in residential and nursing homes are one potential target population, but fracture incidence in this setting remains poorly defined in many countries. We have used the All Wales Injury Surveillance System (AWISS) in a population-based study of people aged over 65 living in the city of Cardiff. We linked a postal code-based register of all care homes in the city with injury data from Cardiff’s only Accident and Emergency department. Cardiff has 47,520 residents aged over 65, and 1,874 (3.9%) live in residential or nursing homes. Fracture incidence was 25/1,000/year overall, and 5/1,000/year for hip fracture. During 1997, the care home residents suffered 162 fractures, 82 of which were of the hip; an incidence of 86/1,000/year overall, 44/1,000/year for hip fracture. Even after adjustment for the age and sex profile of the care home population, fracture incidence remained 2.3 times higher and hip fracture incidence 3.6 times higher than in the general elderly population. Such figures support the potential cost-effectiveness of strategies that prevent fractures in care homes, and are of special interest to those planning intervention studies in this setting.     

The Open2-Innova8ion Tool—A software tool for rating organisational innovation performance

The Open2-Innova8ion Tool is an interactive, multi-media, web-based software tool for rating organisational innovation performance. This tool was designed for organisations to use as an adaptation of the European Commission's work on developing empirical measures of national innovation performance with the Summary Innovation Index (SII). It is designed for users with experience of employment in an organisation, from senior managers to all types of employees, with an interest in rating the innovation performance of their organisation. The Tool is quick and intuitive to use, and provides textual feedback, together with graphic ratings using Google meters. Feedback is based on user perceptions of organisational indicators of Innovation Enablers, Activities, and Outputs to provide an overall rating of innovation performance; this can be compared with a self-rating of innovativeness to allow some interpretation of the congruence between the user and their organisation. This prototype Tool was trialled and evaluated during a workshop on low carbon vehicle innovation, with participants (innovators) representing organisations from the surface transport industry as part of the U-STIR programme with EU Framework 7 funding. This publically available web-tool has applications to education, training, and research http://design.open.ac.uk/itool/.     

ACTION RESEARCH IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT—A FRAMEWORK FOR RELEVANT AND RIGOROUS RESEARCH

In this article we present a framework that researchers can use when they prepare and conduct Action Research (AR) projects. Authors can also use the framework as a guide for how to write relevant and rigorous AR articles. AR is an applied form of case‐based research that can provide exceedingly relevant research in applied fields such as supply chain management. At the same time, AR is also a criticized research approach, particularly in terms of research rigor. With the ambition to address, as well as bridge, the gap between the relevance and rigor within AR research, we first develop a comprehensive research methodology framework that synthesizes the crucial aspects of the AR research methodology. Secondly, we review existing AR articles within logistics, operations management, and supply chain management and present the current state of AR research. After a critical review of the existing articles using our framework, we delineate vital aspects that should be addressed in future AR research. As relevance and rigor are not at odds, we believe that our comprehensive framework will pave the way for a growing stream of rigorous, as well as relevant, AR research.     

Stochastic Index Numbers: A Review

The stochastic approach is a new way of viewing index numbers in which uncertainty and statistical ideas play a central role. Rather than just providing a single number for the rate of inflation, the stochastic approach provides the whole probability distribution of inflation. This paper reviews the key elements of the approach and then discusses its early history, including some previously overlooked links with Fisher's work contained in his book The Making of Index Numbers. We then consider some more recent developments, including Diewert's well-known critique of the stochastic approach, and provide responses to his criticisms. We also provide a review of Theil's work on the stochastic approach, and present and extend Diewert's work on this topic within the context of the Country Product Dummy method which measures price levels internationally. The paper also contains some recent material on the value of information from the perspective of the stochastic approach, as well as illustrative applications.     

Ethical Climate and Purchasing Social Responsibility: A Benevolence Focus

Using a sample of multinational firms in Germany, we develop and empirically examine a model to test the effects of ethical climate and its antecedents on purchasing social responsibility (PSR). Our results show different effects of benevolence dimensions of ethical climate on PSR: employee-focused climate has no effect, but community-focused climate is a significant driver of PSR. The results also show that top management ethical norms and code of conduct implementation impact PSR directly as well as indirectly through ethical climate.     

Change in UK Bank Branch Networks: A Customer Perspective

Branch networks evolved to attract relatively cheap retail de- posits through the convenience of branch locations and branch-based payment systems. Traditionally, they provided a highly effective mechanism for administering, collecting and de- livering cash and helped to promote an extensive range of associated lending and ancillary services. However, the import- . ance of branch networks is only tenable provided that theconditions which determined their historical position continue to apply. The most important of these conditions are that the market continues to respond to it and that it will remain the basis for existing and emerging patterns of competitive behaviour. With this consideration in mind and against a background of un- precedented change in the financial services markets, the article attempts to assess the future validity of branch networks by obtaining the opinions of customers on a range of important issues currently confronting banking institutions with compre- hensive branch networks.     

Scientific Ambiguity and Climate Policy

Economic evaluation of climate policy traditionally treats uncertainty by appealing to expected utility theory. Yet our knowledge of the impacts of climate policy may not be of sufficient quality to be described by unique probabilistic beliefs. In such circumstances, it has been argued that the axioms of expected utility theory may not be the correct standard of rationality. By contrast, several axiomatic frameworks have recently been proposed that account for ambiguous knowledge. In this paper, we apply static and dynamic versions of a smooth ambiguity model to climate mitigation policy. We obtain a general result on the comparative statics of optimal abatement and ambiguity aversion, and then extend our analysis to a more realistic, dynamic setting, where we introduce scientific ambiguity into the well-known DICE model of the climate-economy system. For policy-relevant exogenous mitigation policies, we show that the value of emissions abatement increases as ambiguity aversion increases, and that this ‘ambiguity premium’ can in some plausible cases be very large. In these cases the effect of ambiguity aversion on welfare is comparable to that of other much studied welfare parameters. Thus ambiguity aversion may be an important neglected aspect of climate change economics, and seems likely to provide another argument for strong abatement policy.     

A cross-country analysis of consumption patterns

This paper uses the system-wide approach to analyse the consumption patterns in 18 OECD countries. The results show that, on average, the OECD per capita consumption increased by 3% per annum and prices increased by about 7% per annum; OECD consumers spend about half of their income on food, housing and transport. It is also shown that, in most OECD countries, food, housing and medical care are necessities and clothing, durables, transport and recreation are luxuries, and that the demand for all goods considered are price inelastic. The controversial hypothesis of Stigler and Becker (1977) that tastes are the same across countries is also tested and it is found that the OECD consumption data do not support their claim.