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.     

Collective Economy in War

Collective Economy in War I President Roosevelt Recommends to the Congress Legislation to Stabilize the Cost of Living April 27, 1944
II The President Reports on His Tour of War Production Centers Radio Address to the Nation, October 12, 1942
III The President Transmits to Congress a War Budget Exceeding a Hundred Billion Dollars January 6, 1943     

The macroeconomic impact of NAFTA termination

US President Trump has threatened to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement. How much would each member country gain or lose if this threat were carried out? Would trade imbalances within the region diminish? What would the transition to new production and consumption patterns look like? I provide quantitative answers to these questions using a dynamic general equilibrium model with a multi-sector input–output production structure, heterogeneous firms that make forward-looking export participation decisions, and adjustment frictions in trade and factor markets. Regional trade flows would fall dramatically, and while the US trade deficit with Canada would decline, the deficit with Mexico would grow. Welfare would fall by 0.04%, 0.12%, and 0.2% in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, respectively, and transition dynamics would significantly affect welfare in both the short run and the long run.     

What prevents PROS from making KNOTS? Evidence for nano-researchers

The current study examines the barriers faced by research organisations in nanoscience when transferring knowledge to the industrial sector. Two are the questions that guide this research: Does the context play a role in the effectiveness of knowledge transfer activities? Does the transfer of scientific output in nanoscience depend on the type of organisation? Three geographic areas are compared: the Basque Country (Spain), Uusimaa (Finland) and Sydsverige (Sweden). A survey to the research groups in the three locations was conducted, together with interviews with each group’s leaders. Quantitative and qualitative methods are thus used to interpret the information collected. The results indicate that the main barriers to knowledge transfer come from the innovation system, rather than from the organisation to which the research group belongs. The study discusses a series of trade-offs facing policy makers in charge of implementing science, technology and innovation.     

Major transitions in ‘big’ history

‘Big’ history treats events between the Big Bang and contemporary technological life on Earth as a single narrative, suggesting that cosmological, biological and social processes can be treated similarly. An obvious trend in big history is the development of increasingly complex systems. This implies that the degree to which historical systems have deviated from thermodynamic equilibrium has increased over time. Recent theory suggests that step-wise changes in the work accomplished by a system can be explained using steady-state non-equilibrium thermodynamics. This paper argues that significant macro-historical events can therefore be characterized as transitions to steady states exhibiting persistently higher levels of thermodynamic disequilibrium which result in observably novel kinds or levels of organisation. Further, non-equilibrium thermodynamics suggests that such transitions should have particular temporal structures, beginning with sustainable energy innovations which result in novelties in organisation and in control mechanisms for maintaining the new organisation against energy fluctuations. We show how events in big history which qualify as historically significant by these criteria exhibit this internal structure. Big history thus obeys law-like processes, resulting in a common pattern of major transitions between steady-state historical regimes. This common process from cosmological to contemporary times makes big history a viable and relevant field of scientific study.     

Leading from Behind – American Exceptionalism and President Obama’s Post-American Vision of Hegemony

This article explores the discursive performance and political significance of ‘American exceptionalism’ under President Obama. Moving beyond a critical examination of geopolitical identity, it investigates how representations of exceptionalism, understood as ideational construct of uniqueness and superiority, are linked to practices of US foreign and security policy that confirm, but also contest, established notions of American leadership in world politics. A particular focus lies on the 2012 presidential campaign, and how diverging ‘exceptionalist’ visions between Obama and Mitt Romney testified to competing ideas for American primacy and cooperative engagement. The article will further examine the cases of ‘leading from behind’ in Libya, American non-intervention against Assad in Syria, and US reactions to current crises concerning Ukraine and ISIS. The contextualisation of these episodes in contemporary, geopolitical discourse reveals how the practice of US foreign and security policy under Obama is shaped by a conflicted and paradoxical vision of post-American hegemony.     

践行新保守主义的美国新智库：外交政策创议

新保守主义是影响当代美国外交的一股重要力量,它依据＂美国例外论＂而鼓噪美国积极介入世界事务,建立美国的全球领导权。在借助智库＂新美国世纪计划＂而推动小布什政府发动伊拉克战争以后,新保守主义不甘寂寞,于2009年又创立了智库＂外交政策创议＂,积极开展各种活动,争取国会共和党议员的支持,培训和拉拢国家安全领域的青年精英,试图再次左右美国的外交决策。     

Demand articulation in intermediary organisations: The case of orphan drugs in the Netherlands

Several aspects of a technology are uncertain when it is in its emerging phase, e.g. the demand for a technology. Demand articulation processes are regarded as important, but till now it is often treated as a black box. We present a conceptual framework for the analysis of demand articulation processes inside intermediary organisations, and in interaction with other stakeholders. The empirical basis of this framework is provided by a case study involving an event history analysis, in which the occurrence and the contents of demands are followed over time. We studied the processes within the ‘Dutch Steering Committee Orphan Drugs’, an intermediary organisation that supports new and emerging technologies in the context of orphan drugs. Our results show that due to the activity of the intermediary organisation demand articulation occurred, that interactions exist between the demands and the organisation's underlying values, and that in interaction with other actors a debate on the reimbursement of new drugs is settled. The major contribution of this paper lies in the design of a framework for studying demand articulation processes in intermediary organisations and the resulting impacts on the development of emerging technologies. In addition, the paper provides insights in the possibilities to reinforce the role of the intermediary organisation studied.     

THE SCOTTISH SOCIETY OF ECONOMISTS

T he Scottish Society of Economists was founded on the 29th June 1897. It derived largely from the efforts of Professor Shield Nicholson, its first President, to promote an informed public opinion on matters of economic importance as they arose. The initiative in the formation of the Society came from John H. Romanes, LL.B., W.S., its first Secretary, and throughout its life one of its most active and keen supporters. The inaugural address of the President, delivered in November 1897, appeared in the Economic Journal issued the following month.     

对中国特色城镇化道路的深层思考

胡锦涛总书记在2005年9月29日中共中央政治局第25次集体学习会上强调指出,坚持统筹城乡发展,以工促农,以城带乡,在经济社会发展的基础上不断推进城镇化。坚持走中国特色的城镇化道路,坚持大中小城市和小城镇协调发展,逐步提高城镇化水平。这就进一步深化十六大报告所提出的全面繁荣农村经济,加快城镇化进程的新思路,深刻揭示中国特色城镇化道路的实质。这种“特色”集中表现在它是同解决农业、农村和农民问题紧密联系在一起的。     

The optimal degree of commitment in a negotiation with a deadline

Summary. This note explores the consequences of a player's freedom of choice over his degree of commitment for the bargaining outcome. In particular, we modify the nonstationary structure of Fershtman and Seidmann (1993)'s bargaining by allowing one player to possess imperfect commitments where the degree of commitment is chosen prior to the negotiation stage. We show that a player optimally chooses an intermediate degree of irrevocability provided the costs of increasing the degree of commitment are small enough. In this case, not only an immediate agreement is reached but also the commitment is effective.Received: 18 July 2002, Revised: 20 March 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: C78.Part of this work was written while I was visiting the IAE-CSIC and the University of Essex, whose hospitalities are gratefully acknowledged. This paper has benefited from comments of seminar participants at the University of Essex, 56th European Econometric Society Meeting, 16th Annual Congress of the European Economic Association in Lausanne and the XXVI Symposium of Economic Analysis in Barcelona. I thank Vicent Calabuig and Gonzalo Olcina for very helpful comments. I am especially indebted t o Clara Ponsatí and an anonymous referee for some very detailed comments which lead to substantial improvement of the paper. I also gratefully acknowledge the financial support from Generalitat Valenciana under a postdoctoral grant.     

Meanings and practices of learning from incidents: a social constructivist perspective of incident reporting systems

Incident reporting systems (IRSs) are used in many organisations as tools that promote safety by allowing to collectively learn from incidents. In this paper, we propose a social constructivist approach to learning from incidents, in which the focus is not purely on safety, but on the technology of incident reporting itself. We employ Wiebe Bijker’s work on the Social Construction of Technology to open up the analysis of a specific IRS in use at the Belgian Nuclear Research Center. For this purpose, we carried out 28 interviews with key local actors and collected documents and observation notes. Such social constructivist perspective provides detailed insight into the practices of reporting and the meanings of learning from incidents. Our research shows that various actors within the organisation frame the IRS differently. These framings each have their own implications for the vulnerability of the organisation.     

Correspondence to what? Coherence to what? What is good scenario-based decision making?

This paper provides a framework for the evaluation of scenario planning and other strategic decision making methods or techniques. If scenario planning is useful, we should be teaching it in schools and we as individuals should be using it to cope with the uncertainty inherent in modern life. A prerequisite to this is the need to identify why, where and how (in what way) scenario planning and other methods or techniques are useful. Here, I review evaluations of scenario planning. Taking a Brunswikian perspective, I highlight the issues that have failed to be addressed in this evaluation. I demonstrate that there are many ways in which scenario planning could be useful other than those that have appeared in previous discussions. These multiple routes are dependent upon the interaction between the individual organisation, the environment in which they are operating and the method being followed.     

论"新法制史"之"旧"

1998年底,美国学者黄宗智提出“新法制史”研究的观念,这对推动法律史学研究无疑具有积极意义。但早在民国时期已有中国学者对中国法制史的多学科综合研究进行了深入的探索,并取得了很高的学术成就。遗憾的是此后该研究观念没有得到应有的重视。20世纪90年代后,法律史研究的观念和方法再次从单调走向多元,新的研究成果体现了研究者在研究观念和方法上的回归。“新法制史”之“新”观念实际上包含着许多“旧”方法,这也是法律史学研究的客观规律的反映。     

Land inequality and the transition to modern growth

Can the initial distribution of land, in a country's early history, affect its subsequent economic development? In this paper, I show that when land ownership is sufficiently concentrated, the landed elite will lobby the government to raise barriers to industrialization in order to protect its rents in the rural economy. I develop a small open economy model in which barriers take the form of tariffs on the imports of intermediate inputs used in industry. Such tariffs can affect both the timing and the pace of industrialization. The quantitative application of the theory is motivated by an important question in economic history: why did Argentina not replicate Canadian economic success, despite reasonable expectations to the contrary in the late 19th century? I provide evidence that Argentina had a markedly higher inequality in land ownership than Canada. Taking as given the observed differences in land distributions in the early 20th century, the model produces differences in equilibrium tariffs similar to the ones observed at the time, and the ones required to account for the Canadian–Argentine income gap until 1950. Over time however, as land becomes unimportant in production, land inequality ceases to be a source of policy disparities and income gaps.     

Rethinking Globalization in the Trump Era: US-China Relations

The global economic and political order that was created in the aftermath of World War II is under attack by President Donald Trump. In this article, Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Stiglitz discusses the scope for protectionist actions by President Trump and suggests how countries such as China could and should respond. In particular, he proposes a set of ten principles that should guide China’s response, principles designed to enhance a more stable and efficient multi-polar system of global governance that can contribute to a stronger global economy.     

Stochastic growth with a likelihood-increasing estimation process

Summary. We formulate an optimal estimation process in a stochastic growth model with an unknown true probability model. We consider a general reduced model of capital accumulation with an infinite horizon and introduce a learning process in the stochastic dynamic programming. When the only available information is a sample realization generated by a stationary and ergodic stochastic process, we prove that the optimal estimation process based on likelihood-increasing behavior converges to the true probability measure and the likelihood-increasing estimator defines a transition function on the sample space.Received: 24 January 2004, Revised: 18 February 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C13, C44, C61, O41.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual Meeting of the Japanese Economic Association at the University of Tokyo, at the annual Conference of the Japan Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics at Keio University, and at the 7th Czech-Japan Seminar on Data Analysis and Decision Making under Uncertainty in Awaji Island. I have benefited from useful comments from Hidetoshi Komiya, Andrew McLennan, Toru Maruyama, Nancy Stokey, Shinichi Suda, Shin-Ichi Takekuma, Akira Yamazaki, and an anonymous referee. I would also like to thank Fumihiro Kaneko for invaluable technical discussions. This research was partly supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 14730021) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.     

‘Managing’ Reductions in Working Hours: A Study of Work-time and Leisure Preferences in UK Industry

This paper, which is predicated on the view that reductions in work-time are generally desirable, explores the working hours of managers and professionals in UK industry. Managers and professionals are often grouped together in empirical and theoretical work, e.g. in the literature on the professional-managerial class, and Goldthorpe's ‘Service Class’. Nevertheless, there are differences: professionals, historically, are autonomous workers; the role of managers, in contrast, is to extract work from others on behalf of the organisation. Using data collected from the 2005 Labour Force Survey we establish there are statistically significant empirical differences between managers and professionals; one of these differences is in attitudes to work-time. We theorise that this is because managers' roles align their attitudes with those desired by the firm or organisation, and we conclude that, as a consequence, the ‘voluntary’ nature of work-time regulation should be revisited.     

Current global imbalances and the Keynes Plan: A Keynesian approach for reforming the international monetary system

This paper proposes a “logical experiment”, illustrating how alternative international monetary systems may produce opposite results in the global economy. In the current organisation, “key currencies” work as international money. Keynes, by contrast, proposed that this role should be assigned to a supranational, “credit” money. While the world currently lives in an asymmetric regime, which lead to what has been defined as a “balance of financial terror”, Keynes tried to achieve a more peaceful type of “international balance”. I argue that the structural reform and the technical provisions proposed by the “Keynes Plan” may still – at least in principle – provide useful remedies for international disequilibria, by remedying the asymmetries of the current international payments architecture and helping to curb both inflationary and deflationary pressures on the world economy.     

Predicting presidential election results

The 2004 US presidential election proved again how difficult it is to predict vote shares on the basis of polls. Midday media exit polls suggested that Senator Kerry would become the 44th President. Political scientists and econometricians, led by Ray Fair, have promulgated theoretical arguments and empirical results to predict US presidential elections, using macro-economic data and political factors. Respecifying Fair's war variable to include Korea and Vietnam and removing serial correlation improves his election forecasting without public opinion poll variables. This generalized Fair model predicts President Bush's two-party vote share would be 52.3 percent, well below predictions by Fair and prestigious political scientists.