Density versus Quality in Health Care Provision: Using Household Data to Make Budgetary Choices in Ethiopia

Usage of health facilities in Ethiopia is among the lowest inthe world; raising usage rates is probably critical for improvinghealth outcomes. The government has diagnosed the principalproblem as the lack of primary health facilities and is devotinga large share of the health budget to building more facilities.But household data suggest that usage of health facilities issensitive not just to the distance to the nearest facility butalso to the quality of health care provided. If the qualityof weak facilities were raised to that currently provided bythe majority of facilities in Ethiopia, usage would rise significantly.National data suggest that given the current density and qualityof service provision, additional expenditure on improving thequality of service delivery will be more cost-effective thanincreasing the density of service provision. The budget allocationrule presented in the article can help local policymakers makedecisions about how to allocate funds between improving thequality of care and decreasing the distance to the nearest healthcare facility.     

Integration Deficits of IT Controlling

The paper is based on the thesis that IT controlling suffers from two integration deficits with regard to its methods base: On the one hand, this is a lack of synchronization between research on IT controlling methods and developments in practice; on the other hand, a lack of integration of IT controlling methods with methods of business and information systems engineering (BISE). Based on this assumption, the paper investigates historical developments in IT controlling research and practice to derive theses about the present state of method integration. The analysis finds indications for further potential for method integration and identifies these potentials. Requirements towards method integration are derived from an analysis of the identified integration potentials and two examples illustrate how to realize further integration. Accepted after two revisions by the editors of the special focus. This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Strecker S, Kargl H (2009) Integrationsdefizite des IT-Controllings – Historischer Hintergrund, Analyse von Integrationspotenzialen und Methodenintegration. doi: 10.1007/s11576-009-0175-9.     

Beschäftigungswachstum durch effizientere Allokation auf dem Arbeitsmarkt

Die positive Entwicklung des deutschen Arbeitsmarkts führt zu einer zunehmenden Diskussion über die Qualit?t des Besch?ftigungsaufbaus. Kritiker beanstanden die Zunahme flexibler Besch?ftigungsformen und fordern mehr Regulierung. Aus ?konomischer Sicht würde die Wiedereinschr?nkung der in den vergangenen Jahren hinzugewonnenen ?ffnungsspielr?ume die Allokationsfunktion des Arbeitsmarkts schw?chen. Dabei l?sst sich der Besch?ftigungsaufbau wesentlich auf die Arbeitsmarktreformen der letzten Jahre zurückführen. Durch flexible Besch?ftigungsformen und eine besch?ftigungsorientierte Tarifpolitik wurden die Wettbewerbselemente des Arbeitsmarkts gest?rkt.     

Investment in Africa's Manufacturing Sector: A Four Country Panel Data Analysis

Firm level data for the manufacturing sector in Africa, presented in this paper, shows very low levels of investment. The importance of profit effects on investment is investigated using a flexible accelerator, a specification based on the Euler equation and a simple generalisation of these specificiations. There are controls for firm fixed effects. It is shown that the profit effect is very similar for both the accelerator and Euler equation specifications. A comparison with other studies shows that, for small firms, the effect is much smaller in Africa than for other countries. Reasons for the relative insensitivity of investment to profits in African firms are suggested. For the most general specification tested there are no significant differences in the size of the profit effect across the four countries in the study.     

Bankruptcy and firm finance

This paper analyzes how an enforcement mechanism that resembles a court affects firm finance. The court is described by two parameters that correspond to enforcement costs and the amount of creditor/debtor protection. We provide a theoretical and quantitative characterization of the effect of these enforcement parameters on the contract loan rate, the default probability and welfare. We analyze agents’ incentive to default and pursue bankruptcy and show that when the constraints that govern these decisions bind, the enforcement parameters can have a sharply non-linear effect on finance. We also compute the welfare losses of “poor institutions” and show that they are non-trivial. The results provide guidance on when models which abstract from enforcement provide good approximations and when they do not.      

Reconfiguration of the conceptual landscape: a tribute to the service logic of Richard Normann

This article is a tribute to the late Richard Normann, whose call for a “service logic” (Normann, Reframing Business: When the Map Changes the Landscape, Wiley, Chichester, p. 99, 2001) both parallels and enriches service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch, J. Mark, 68:1–17, 2004a). Like Vargo and Lusch, Normann shifted the focus of the offering from an output to a process of value creation and perceived the firm as an organizer of this process, with the customer as a co-producer, rather than a receiver of value. He also argued that offerings are “frozen knowledge,” similar to Vargo and Lusch’s contention that the basis of exchange is applied operant resources (service) and suggested that the ‘dematerialization’ of resources increases their ‘liquidity’, which allows increased “density” for value creation. Thus, he suggested that firms need to “reframe business”—rethink the logic of value creation—to reveal opportunities in reconfiguring the value constellations of which they are part. This tribute explores these and other similarities and differences between Normann’s work and the evolving S-D logic.     

A generalization of Panjer’s recursion and numerically stable risk aggregation

Portfolio credit risk models as well as models for operational risk can often be treated analogously to the collective risk model coming from insurance. Applying the classical Panjer recursion in the collective risk model can lead to numerical instabilities, for instance if the claim number distribution is extended negative binomial or extended logarithmic. We present a generalization of Panjer’s recursion that leads to numerically stable algorithms. The algorithm can be applied to the collective risk model, where the claim number follows, for example, a Poisson distribution mixed over a generalized tempered stable distribution with exponent in (0,1). De Pril’s recursion can be generalized in the same vein. We also present an analogue of our method for the collective model with a severity distribution having mixed support.     

Investment timing,liquidity, and agency costs of debt

This paper examines the effect of debt and liquidity on corporate investment in a continuous-time framework. We show that stockholder–bondholder agency conflicts cause investment thresholds to be U-shaped in leverage and decreasing in liquidity. In the absence of tax effects, we derive the optimal level of liquid funds that eliminates agency costs by implementing the first-best investment policy for a given capital structure. In a second step we generalize the framework by introducing a tax advantage of debt, and we show that an interior solution for liquidity and capital structure optimally trades off tax benefits and agency costs of debt.