Introducing ‘Journeys Home’

Homelessness, despite being a major social policy issue in Australia, is an area that is not well served by data. Most sorely lacking is any large‐scale panel study that follows a broad sample of persons with recent experience of homelessness and unstable housing histories. In 2010, the Australian Government set about rectifying this deficiency when it commissioned the Melbourne Institute to undertake a new panel study, now known as ‘Journeys Home’. This study draws its sample from the population of Centrelink income‐support recipients, targeting persons identified in the administrative data as having recent experience of homelessness, as well as others with similar characteristics who may be vulnerable to housing difficulties in the future. This article summarises the design of this new study and reports on fieldwork outcomes from the first two waves of data collection.     

Government solvency and financial markets: Dynamic panel estimates for the European Monetary Union

We assess government solvency in the European Monetary Union (EMU), controlling for the interaction of fiscal policy with financial markets. We find a positive interaction, reflecting market-based pressures for fiscal improvement, and significant debt stabilization efforts, weakened in the post-EMU era.     

Targeting Child Labor in Debt Bondage: Evidence, Theory, and Policy Implications

Despite recent multilateral efforts to single out child laborin debt bondage as one of the worst forms of child labor, severalimportant questions have yet to be addressed: How pervasiveis the phenomenon? Are there systematic correlations betweenthe incidence of children in debt bondage and the economic,legislative, and financial development indicators of the economy?How does an understanding of these correlates affect the waynational and international policy measures aimed at targetingthis form of child labor are perceived? This article addresseseach of these questions. The empirical findings suggest strongcorrelation between the likelihood of the incidence of childlabor in debt bondage with the stage of development of an economy,the stage of financial development, and enforcement of corelabor rights. Building on this evidence, the article presentsa theoretical model that highlights the drawbacks and meritsof a number of policies aimed at putting checks on child laborin debt bondage.     

An oligopoly model of ocean liner shipping

In this paper I develop a simultaneous equations oligopoly model of the regulated international ocean liner shipping industry. The firms act as a cartel to determine price jointly and then set their own quality levels to maximize individual profits. The cartel does not attain monopoly profits, because each conference member myopically determines quality without regard for overall cartel profits. The results indicate that an increase in the number of firms in the cartel will increase both cartel price and quality level. An increase in price will also lead to an increase in quality level.I would like to thank Professors Alamarin Phillips, Robert Summers, and Bruce Allen for their helpful comments on earlier research for my dissertation in the Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania on which this work is based. I am especially grateful to Professor Lawrence J. White for his encouragement and valuable suggestions at various stages of my work.     

Housing-Price Cycles and Prepayment Rates of U.S. Mortgage Pools

Empirical mortgage prepayment models generally have trouble explaining differences in mortgage-prepayment speeds among pools with similar interest rates on the underlying mortgages. In this article, we model some of the sources of termination heterogeneity across mortgage pools, particularly the role of regional variations in housing prices in generating atypical prepayment speeds. Using a sample of Freddie Mac mortgage pools from 1991 to 1998, we compare two classes of empirical models: a rational option-pricing model using a backward-solving pricing algorithm and an empirical hazard model. In both empirical estimation strategies, we find evidence that differences in house-price dynamics across regions are an important source of between-pool heterogeneity. This finding is then shown to be robust to alternative ways of parameterizing pool heterogeneity in mortgage termination models.     

Quality indicators for academic nursing primary care centers

ANCs, by definition, deliver more than clinical services to patients and communities. The unique identifier that separates ANCs from other primary care/ambulatory care centers is the educational service they offer to students and other faculty in the school of nursing to which they belong. Therefore, measuring the quality of an ANC must include a measurement of the educational properties that it possesses in addition to the usual quality measurements by such organizations as AAAHC, JCAHO, CHAP, and AAACN. Unless these properties are included and measured by an ANC, it becomes difficult to justify the existence of such a clinic within a school of nursing. ANCs are encouraged to develop quality evaluation programs aimed at evaluating the educational aspects as well as the administrative and clinical aspects of their operations.     

Some Parallels Between Currency and Banking Crises

There is a sizeable literature on the causes of speculative attacks on fixed exchange rates and a large literature on the determinants of bank runs. Surprisingly, these two literatures rarely overlap, even though both types of crises involve attacks on asset price-fixing schemes. This paper draws a number of parallels between the work on currency crises and the work on banking crises and examines some of the new insights that are coming out of a more integrated approach in the aftermath of the Asian financial crises.     

More preventive care, and fewer emergency room visits and prescription drugs--health care utilization in a consumer-driven health plan

Although consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) have grown dramatically, the question of whether CDHPs have reduced health care costs has not been answered definitively. This article presents what the authors believe to be the first study to analyze a large sample of claims data and to look in detail at different types of utilization among enrollees in a CDHP and those in a traditional comprehensive major medical (CMM) plan. After adjusting for the finding that CDHP enrollees are both younger and healthier than those in CMM plans, the authors found that CDHP enrollees show no consistent or significant utilization differences for measures over which consumers have little control (e.g., inpatient stays); lower utilization for measures over which consumers have greater control (e.g., emergency room visits); and higher utilization of preventive services.     

The CNO/CFO partnership: navigating the changing landscape

With increasing pressure to cut costs, both real and immediate, and those forecasted and anticipated, the partnership and collaboration between nursing and finance will continue to take on new challenges. This partnership has historically been strained and does not always come easy due to differences in focus, different priorities, and inadequate communication, listening, and hearing. That needs to change and a strong CNO-CFO partnership is needed. Nursing leaders need to understand and appreciate the financial constraints and balance them with expected outcomes, and financial leaders need to understand and appreciate the core clinical business and what gaps in care mean to the financial viability of the organization and to patient outcomes. One health system developed a platform for change and is dedicated to the hard work involved in continuously working on those partnerships so when it comes to patient quality, safety, and financial performance, nursing and finance leaders are well positioned for future health care challenges.     

生产性老龄化:理论与应用视角

有关老龄化社会的讨论大多负面地将重点放在这些严重的挑战上,当然形势的确不容乐观。这类讨论一般只考虑老年人给经济、卫生保健、社会福利体系所造成的负担;并未考虑故事的"另一面",即人口结构变化的积极面:老年人寿命延长并且健康。在世界各地的许多发达国家和发展中国家,60岁的成年人仍可预期再拥有20至30年以上的寿命。此外,老年群体的受教育水平越来越高②。