The nursing shortage: can information technology help?

There is no doubt that the nursing shortage is a real and valid concern for the medical community. American Hospital Association President Dick Davidson reports: "America needs up to 126,000 nurses now, as well as more pharmacists, lab technicians, support staff and others. We need immediate action to help alleviate this situation" (American Hospital Association, 2001). Clinical information systems can be one of those immediate actions that can help nurses feel more confident about the care they are delivering. In addition to preventing medical errors, streamlining workflow and communications, and reducing redundant data entry, these systems can have a lasting and positive effect on overall job satisfaction, providing a significant influence on retaining our invaluable nursing resources.     

Quality in life and death: can we have the conversations?

As nurses, we participate in providing social justice through the delivery of health care. While much of what we do supports healthier lifestyles and healing, we must also acknowledge that for an increasing number of our patients, life may have become irreversibly painful and unwanted. Nurses have acute sensitivity to the dilemmas faced by dying patients and their families. Our empathy and know-how in such cases dictates that we make an effort to relieve such suffering. Easing suffering will require assessments of the changing terrain of end-of-life care and the populations receiving that care. Dialogues can bridge the interest of patients, providers, and policymakers and ultimately legislation that reinforces ethical end-of-life care and ensures a voice for those who will be most affected.     

How should we collect data on the nursing workforce?

R esearchers who study the nursing workforce use data about nurses and data about nursing jobs. Diifferent approaches - sample surveys and relicensure surveys - used to collect data on RNs, and the benefits and weaknesses of these approaches, are reviewed. Predicting the future supply of nurses is more complex than estimating the current supply, as factors that affect future supply must be considered. Simple forecasts can be created with relatively few variables, which could be collected through relicensure surveys. However, more detailed assessments of potential retirement patterns, changing family norms regarding childcare and household work, and movements into higher education require the rich data more often found in sample surveys.     

Immigrant earnings growth: selection bias or real progress?

We use longitudinal tax data linked to immigrant landing records to study the effect of selective attrition on the estimated earnings assimilation of immigrants to Canada. Contrary to findings in the existing international literature, we show that the immigrant‐native earnings gap closes at the same pace in longitudinal and cross‐sectional data. Low‐earning immigrants are likely to leave the cross‐sectional samples over time, but the same is true for the native born. Our study suggests that immigrants to Canada have labour market participation dynamics similar to those of the native born.     

US household real net worth through the Great Recession and beyond: Have we recovered?

Household data adjusted for inflation show that net worth is still below its pre-Great Recession levels, unlike aggregate Federal Reserve data. Poorer and younger households both lost and recovered more net worth percentage-wise. Financial assets have recovered more than non-financial assets.     

Antisocial behavior in experiments: What have we learned from the past two decades?

Antisocial behavior experiments, both conducted in the laboratory or in the field, have become commonplace in the experimental economics literature. Such experiments found their relevance in the real world as people are not always selfish or nice to others, but they also sometimes behave spitefully. This paper focuses on payoff-destruction experiments conducted over the last two decades and synthesizes the findings. We are able to find 46 studies where we found inequity reduction and pure spite as the main motives for such behavior. This behavior can also be explained by conflict experience. We conclude with suggestions for future research.     

Financialization and Portuguese real investment: A supportive or disruptive relationship?

The article makes an empirical analysis of the relationship between financialization and real investment by Portuguese nonfinancial corporations from 1979 to 2013. In theory, while financialization leads to a rise in financial investments by nonfinancial corporations and thus deviates funds from real investment, it also intensifies the pressure for financial payments and therefore restricts the funds available for real investment. We estimate an aggregate investment function including control variables (profitability, debt, cost of capital and output growth) and two measures of financialization (financial receipts and financial payments). The study concludes that there is a long-term investment equation, and finds evidence that the process of financialization has hampered real investment largely as a result of financial payments. The article also finds that profitability and debt are both detrimental to real investment.     

Data,information and knowledge: have we got it right?

Economists make the unarticulated assumption that information is something that stands apart from and is independent of the processor of information and its internal characteristics. We argue that they need to revisit the distinctions they have drawn between data, information, and knowledge. Some associate information with data, and others associate information with knowledge. But since none of them readily conflates data with knowledge, this suggests too loose a conceptualisation of the term information. We argue that the difference between data, information, and knowledge is in fact crucial. Information theory and the physics of information provide us with useful insights with which to build an economics of information appropriate to the needs of the emerging information economy.JEL Classification: A12, D20, D80, M21Correspondence to: Agustí CanalsA. Canals, Av. Tibidabo, 39-43. 08035 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain     

Institutions and industrial policy in Brazil after two decades: have we built the needed institutions?

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to examine the design and implementation of industrial policy in Brazil based on their capacity to affect the prevailing institutions. We argue that the main reason for the failure of policies in Brazil, and in Latin America, is their inability to induce persistent changes in firms’ innovative behavior. Based on the analysis of national innovation indicators, and on previous empirical studies, we demonstrate that the Brazilian industrial policy was not able to change the prevailing conventions. The main problems related to this fragility are: institutional problems and related to industrial policy development conventions; serious coordination problems; maintaining a macroeconomic policy that is not convergent toward industrial policy efforts; policy instruments that were not able to change prevailing conventions, such as low R&D and innovative expenditures; a set of strategic choices that are inconsistent with innovation, technological catch-up and structural change.     

What do we know about real exchange rate nonlinearities?

Nonlinear modeling of adjustments to purchasing power parity has recently gained much attention. However, a huge body of the empirical literature applies ESTAR models and neglects the existence of other competing nonlinear models. Among these, the Markov Switching AR model has a strong substantiation in international finance. Our contribution to the literature is fivefold: First, ESTAR and MSAR models from a unit root perspective are compared. To this end, a new unit root test against MSAR is proposed as the second contribution. Thirdly, the case of misspecified alternatives in a Monte Carlo setup with real world parameter constellations is studied. The ESTAR unit root test is not indicative, while the MSAR unit test is robust. Fourthly, the case of correctly specified alternatives is considered and low power of the ESTAR but not for the MSAR unit root test is observed. Fifthly, an empirical application to real exchange rates suggests that they may indeed be explained by Markov Switching dynamics rather than ESTAR.     

Contagion effects of sovereign credit rating revisions on the real economy: is it trade or finance?

We analyse the contagion effects of sovereign credit rating revisions on the real economy, with particular emphasis on the intensity of trade and finance channels. Our findings show that event countries that experienced rating revisions cause substantial contagion effects on the real output growth rates of nonevent countries. Nonevent countries with a high export ratio, high external debt levels, or those that are more dependent on common bank credit relative to other nonevent countries are more likely to be infected by event countries’ adverse credit shocks. The results remain after accounting for alternative real economy indicators, financial liberalization, financial crises, and economic development status.     

Do commercial real estate prices have predictive content for GDP?

Using a uniquely compiled database concerning rental prices of commercial real estates, which are property of the largest broker in the Netherlands, we examine whether these prices have predictive value for quarterly economic growth. In contrast to related studies, we document that the mean price contains no relevant information, whereas other properties of the price distributions have. We show that these distributions can be described by mixtures of two distributions, reflecting low-end and high-end price segments. Our main findings are that higher economic growth is predictable from more new buildings being rented, more variation in the price levels and a larger size of the low-price segment, while lower economic growth emerges when the differences in prices between high-end and low-end segments increase and when the average price level in the low-price segment increases.     

Nurse retention: is it worth it?

Nurse turnover costs thousands of dollars and negatively affects patient outcomes. Study results indicate experienced nurses perceive decreased autonomy and task orientation, and increased work pressure in their work environments. Strategies are presented to help retain RNs, save money, and improve patient outcomes.