Current trends in hospital mergers and acquisitions

Healthcare reform will impact hospital consolidation in three key areas: Payment rates will decrease, indirectly encouraging consolidation by forcing hospitals to find new ways to reduce costs and increase negotiating clout with suppliers and payers. The cost of doing business will increase as hospitals spend more on compliance, technology, and physician employment. The ACO model will encourage hospital network formation by rewarding integrated healthcare systems that can reduce costs and improve quality.     

Some Inflationary Aspects of Distributive Conflict:Reassessing Canadian Inflation,Part I

This is the first installment of a two-part article, in which we explore the empirical validity of the post-Keynesian “conflict inflation” theory for Canada. By documenting the numerous points of contact between Canadian inflation, on one hand, and institutional power and distributive conflict, on the other, we argue that inflation may be validly understood as a power process insofar as it feeds on social conflict and is systematically associated with the redistribution of income between different income groups. Over the past century, Canadian inflation has tended to redistribute income from capital to labor, from large to small firms, and from the upper to the lower income brackets. Given these facts, Canadian inflation must be understood as a political phenomenon.     

The Politics of Canadian Monetary Policy: Reassessing Canadian Inflation,Part II

This is the second installment of a two-part article on Canadian inflation. This article builds on the traditional conflict theory of inflation by applying insights from the post-Keynesian and micro-politics theories of money and central bank policy. It argues that the Bank of Canada’s inflation targets — not just inflation itself — have to be understood in terms of social conflict and power. This analysis extends the evidence on the distributive implications of Canadian inflation offered in Part I.     

A COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION OF VOLUME EFFECTS AND SEASONALITY IN DAILY SECURITY RETURNS

In this study, an integrated model of return seasonality is developed and the hypothesis that seasonality is associated with changes in relative trading volume is examined. Return regularities associated with the turn of the month, the week of the month, and holiday closings are documented. Beyond these effects, neither the turn of the year nor the January effect is significant for large firms. Relative volume is shown to display calendar regularities similar to those in returns, and tests indicate a causal relationship flowing from volume to returns.     

Intra-industry trade — An in-depth study of Swedish liquid pump trade

Intra-Industry Trade — An In-Depth Study of Swedish Liquid Pump Trade. - The issue of intra-industry trade is here investigated through an in-depth case study of Swedish trade in pumps. A questionnaire was made in order to give detailed information about the trade flows. The survey indicates that the share of “true” IIT in Sweden's centrifugal pump trade in 1990 was about 10 percent. This part of the apparent IIT could not be attributed to “categorical aggregation”. The survey revealed twelve different causes of IIT. A large share of IIT was due to re-exports (= vertical IIT). Behavioural and institutional factors were the main explanations of the non-re-exports IIT (= horizontal IIT).