Rationality tests in the presence of instabilities in finite samples

The importance of expectations in modern macroeconomic models and in particular of policy makers expectations for forward looking policy rules has generated a lot of interest in time series of professional forecasts (including central bank staff forecasts). This has spawned a large literature on the evaluation of forecasts that are not model based or where the model is unknown. Although, the available time series of historical forecasts are typically short, this literature has so far mostly disregarded the small sample properties of the proposed tests and estimators. In this paper we fill this gap in the literature, focusing on a set of recently proposed rationality tests for unstable environments. Using a Monte Carlo study we demonstrate that the asymptotic tests are substantially oversized in finite samples including any sample size that is practically available. We provide finite sample adjusted critical values, that allow those tests to be properly applied to sample sizes of typically available forecasts such as the Survey of Professional Forecasters, the Federal Open Market Committee. The critical values we provide will help to avoid false rejections using those data.     

Reciprocity in Caring Labor: Nurses’ Work in Residential Aged Care in Australia

Feminist economists identify reciprocity as a motivation for both paid and unpaid caring work. In general, reciprocity describes people responding to each other in similar ways, either benevolently or harmfully. The quality of care is potentially increased when care relationships are motivated by positive and generalized forms of reciprocity and decreased with negative forms of reciprocity. This study draws on nursing literature and two qualitative studies in Australian residential aged care facilities, conducted in 2002–3 and 2009, to identify a new form called “professional reciprocity.” This form of reciprocity involves deliberate and skilled relational work by nurses to facilitate mutual and interdependent exchanges with care recipients that are beneficial to both care recipients and nurses. This study argues that professional reciprocity, as a skill that can be taught, is important for achieving quality care and workers’ job satisfaction.     

新形势下土地资源管理专业本科教育改革初探

中国当前新形势对土地资源管理人才培养质量提出了更高的要求,有必要对现有土地资源管理专业教育改革进行探索。以江苏师范大学为例,从专业定位、课程体系设置、师资结构及专业建设与发展环境方面分析其土地资源管理专业本科教育存在的问题。为适应新时期土地资源管理专业人才教育的需要,提升本校土地资源管理专业教育水平,需要从专业方向合理定位、课程体系优化、师资队伍建设、教学资源整合与教学管理制度改革以及专业导师制本科教育模式推进等方面进行改革和完善。     

Staff nurse financial management committees--the nurse manager's guide to effective financial performance

As Cohen states (1991, p. 25), "The future role that nursing will play in the health care delivery system is one of many major issues faced by contemporary nursing...Nursing must be able to determine realistically the cost of and evaluate the effectiveness of nursing care provided to its patients." A unit-based financial management committee is one very effective way of teaching the skills needed for the professional nurse to advance the practice in financial management. This will help nursing gain the professional status that they have always worked for. But beyond these very lofty ideals, a staff nurse managed financial management committee can make the nurse manager's life much easier. Staff nurses need to understand and accept the importance of managing the financial as well as the quality side of patient care. When this happens, the budget becomes theirs. Nurses develop a sense of ownership of the budget and learn how to effectively manage the unit's finances. Much staff nurse brain power is not used. Systems must be developed to access nurses' effective ideas for financial management--first in a financial management committee and then on the unit. Not only will this develop the professional status that nurses need and deserve, but it will also impact the cost of health care. In a society where the cost of an appendectomy requires Dayton Hudson to sell 39,000 Ninja Turtle action figures, Atlantic Richfield to sell 192,000 gallons of gas a day, Anheuser-Busch to sell 11,627 6-packs of 12 oz.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

IDENTITY MANAGEMENT: WORKER INDEPENDENCE AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST GAY MEN

I build on a growing literature documenting wage differentials for gay men by showing that the wage differential gay men experience varies significantly across occupations with different levels of worker independence. The penalty is smallest in management and professional occupations, which involve a high level of worker independence. It is largest in service occupations, which include a lower level of independence. This distribution of earnings penalties is consistent with discrimination being the source of the gay wage penalty. The results support the conjecture that higher levels of independence allow gay men to more successfully manage the disclosure of sexual orientation and mediate the negative effects of discrimination. (JEL J3, J7, J15)     

Meeting Magnet research evidence-based practice expectations through hospital-based research centers

Hospital-based nursing research centers can create the structures and processes needed to promote and sustain research and evidence-based practice (EBP) and assist in the monitoring of care delivery outcomes. At the University of Rochester Medical Center, New York, a highly successful nursing research center has succeeded in creating a Magnet environment that incorporates research and EBP into strategic planning, individual employee performance review, and organizational processes. Support of a hospital-based research center can provide the foundation for an infrastructure that supports achievement of Magnet designation research and EBP criteria. The costs pertain primarily to the staff required to develop and manage the center and the educational programs offered through it. Based on the experience at this center, administrators should plan 3-5 years before significant impact is seen in terms of numbers of consultations performed and tangible increases in staff and leadership participation in research and EBP initiatives.     

空中乘务专业认同测量模型及其实证研究

综合采用文献分析与深度访谈，提出了空中乘务专业认同四维度测量模型，它包括：专业教学、专业前景、专业意识及专业发展。开发并验证了用于测量空中乘务专业认同的量表。实证结果表明：开发的量表具有良好的信效度。对开展空中乘务专业认同优化管理提供参考依据。     

Beyond busyness: creating slack in the organization

Human beings are not machines. The patient safety literature documents the price we pay for excessive overtime, long hours, and no breaks. Disengaged staff, high vacancy rates, and turnover are the products of cultures that do not support a professional environment where nurses are seen as knowledge workers. At his retirement dinner, a factory worker accepted accolades for his years of dedicated service. In his farewell speech, he noted that for 40 years the factory used his hands but never his brains. His expertise and knowledge were never acknowledged or solicited. Consequently he watched in silence for years as directives came down from managers and leaders that were totally unrealistic and bore no relevance to the reality in which he worked. And he watched the initiatives fail. Unfortunately we in health care can create that exact situation if we do not incorporate time (slack) into the schedules of our knowledge workers so they can unleash their genius, reinvent health care, and fix health care from the inside out. Nurse leaders must be the architects of participation and allow this to happen.     

Use of social networks in banking: a study in the Czech Republic

Social networks are becoming more and more important nowadays. Apart from regular users of the Internet, companies have started to use them in their business. Their potential is that a great number of people, future clients of big companies, use them on a daily basis. Thus, the aim of this article is to analyse the use of social networks in the banking sector of the Czech Republic, particularly with respect to customer support. The methods of this study include common data analysis and professional analysis. Common data analysis consists of the evaluation of public data from social networks and web pages of the selected bank institutions. The professional analysis is conducted by paid professional analytical tools that provide more detailed statistics. The findings of the study show that social networks are now well-established tools for the Czech banks to attract both their current and potential clients. The Czech banks seem to care about their clients by trying to meet their needs. Customer care and services provided, however, differ with type of bank.     

工商管理专业特色建设研究——以普通财经类院校为例

学科综合化水平低、专业趋同缺乏专业特色、缺乏行业背景和地方经济结合不够紧密是财经类高校工商管理专业特色不够明显的主要原因.随着社会经济的向以现代服务业为主的新型经济结构转型发展,先进制造业和现代服务业逐渐成为社会经济的主要组成部分,现代企业生产经营管理也趋于全球化和国际化,以新升本科院校为主体的普通财经类院校应密切联系地方经济,以服务管理为核心,以培养应用型管理人才为导向,以特色学科建设为基础形成工商管理专业特色,通过多学科和国际化的师资队伍建设、管理能力导向的专业培养方案改革、问题导向和国际化的课程体系和教学设计以及产学研基地建设来实现工商管理专业特色建设.     

Case management: an evaluation at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles

This prospective, quantitative, and qualitative evaluation of the case management program at CHLA clearly demonstrated the value of professional service coordination of care for children with complex, special health needs. Most specifically, the program documented improvement in three discrete areas of evaluation: 1. Financial, with decreased unnecessary expenditures and increased revenue. 2. Patient satisfaction, documented with validated questionnaires. 3. Clinical process improvement, using quantifiable clinical outcomes. At the very least, case management is an extremely valuable service in the present managed health care environment, and may in fact be indispensable.     

The Bridge to Practice Model: a collaborative program designed for clinical experiences in baccalaureate nursing

The Bridge to Practice Model provides undergraduate nursing students with continuity in medical-surgical education through placement in the same hospital for all medical-surgical clinical rotations. Hospitals that participate in the bridge model provide senior clinical nurse preceptors whose time is paid for by the university. The university provides an on-site nurse faculty member who works with nursing education to coordinate all clinical groups. Institutional continuity and university/hospital collaboration result in less orientation time for students and faculty, more involvement with clinical support services and care management, and more informed employment choices by senior students. Challenges include recruitment of interested senior clinical nurses, retention of clinical liaison faculty, and management of the trade-off between institutional stability offered by clinical site continuity and the variety of experiences offered by rotation across several clinical settings.     

Informal home care and labor-force participation of household members

In Germany, informal home care is preferred to professional care services in the public discussion as well as in legal care regulations. However, only minor importance is ascribed to the opportunity costs caregivers face. Therefore, this article explores the influence home care has on the labor supply of caregivers who cohabitate with the care recipient. I use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 2001 to 2007, which allows researchers to merge the characteristics of both groups for the first time. Owing to diverging gender roles, I examine female and male caregivers separately. The results show that having an individual in need of care in the household does not decrease labor supply to an economically relevant quantity. As providing care might be endogenous to the labor-supply decision, I test for endogeneity by using characteristics of care recipients as instruments and I additionally test for sample attrition. Moreover, the panel structure allows me to control for unobserved heterogeneity.     

关于职业信用管理的现状与对策研究

职业信用管理体系的完善是保证人力资源充分融入市场经济的必要前提,而我国职业信用缺失问题还很严重,直接影响了我国人力资源市场的整体发展。因此,必须采取相应的措施构建我国职业信用管理体系。     

The Impact of Aging Population on the Rise of the Health Care Cost in the Czech Republic

Population aging is believed to be a major factor behind the rise of health care cost worldwide. However, an increasing body of evidence in the literature on the subject of population aging and its influence on health care cost suggests that demographic changes play a relatively minor role in driving up the health care bill. Firstly, we review some available evidence. Secondly, we analyze the situation in the Czech Republic using financial and health care utilization data and demographic projections. Thirdly, we point out the main areas of health care responsible for the health care expenditures growth in the Czech Republic.     

The determinants of access to health care and medicines in India

This article explores the issue of demand for health care and medicines in India where household share of total health expenditure is one of the highest among high- and low-income countries. Previous work found that important determinants include health status, socio-demographics, income and demand for care was inelastic. Compared with previous studies, this article uses large household data sets including data on medicine expenditure to explore health-seeking behaviour. Count models find that determinants include health status, socio-demographic information, health insurance, household expenditure and government regulation. Elasticities range from ?0.13 to 0.03 and are generally consistent with literature findings. For inpatient care, conditional on having at least one hospitalization, the expected number of hospitalizations increases with being male and household expenditure. Medicine expenditure accounts for a large share of household health expenditure. Low-income individuals could experience problems and raises important policy implications on the demand and supply side to improve access to health care and medicines for patients in India.     

A Spatial Cross–Sectional Analysis of Elasticity of Demand for Soccer

Several studies estimate the demand for watching English professional football (soccer) as highly inelastic, a puzzling result given that clubs appear to possess a degree of monopoly power. We discuss weaknesses in earlier studies and offer an alternative method of assessing elasticity based on travel costs of spectators living different distances from the grounds. We find that elasticity varies across the 20 senior clubs for which data were available but in almost every case demand is more elastic than reported in the existing literature and pricing policy appears therefore to be more orientated towards profit maximisation than previously thought.     

中国事业单位国有资产管理问题及对策探讨

中国事业单位国有资产管理存在的主要问题是:部分事业单位国有资产产权虚置;管理混乱;运营效率低下,闲置浪费严重;监管部门职责不清,监管力度不够;国有资产管理人员比较缺乏,业务水平不高等.结合当前中国实际情况,应大力推进政府机构改革,加快事业单位体制改革,改革事业单位国有资产运作方式,建立符合中国国情的事业单位国有资产管理体制,加强国有资产管理人员的教育培训工作.