Integration and Task Allocation: Evidence from Patient Care

Using the universe of patient transitions from inpatient hospital care to skilled nursing facilities and home health care in 2005, we show how integration eliminates task misallocation problems between organizations. We find that vertical integration allows hospitals to shift patient recovery tasks downstream to lower‐cost organizations by discharging patients earlier (and in poorer health) and increasing post‐hospitalization service intensity. Although integration facilitates a shift in the allocation of tasks and resources, health outcomes either improved or were unaffected by integration on average. The evidence suggests that integration solves coordination problems that arise in market exchange through improvements in the allocation of tasks across care settings.     

企业价值:动荡环境中的重心?(中)

我们的目的是在变化的环境中,推动行业战略管理理论中“企业价值”的应用研究。借助五个不同行业中具有典型意义的企业,通过考察企业价值对消费者、顾客和客户的不同作用,从四个重要维度量化并分析了市场对企业公开声明的战略的观点,并且说明了在产业效应中考虑到动荡因素的可能性。结论是:特定行业在顾客对不同类型的动荡的感知面前是非常脆弱的,在很多大型企业中也是如此。笔者认为,相对于渐进变化环境中的企业价值,在激进、动荡市场环境或间断均衡中的企业价值更为明显,与顾客和客户的关系也更为紧密。     

PHYSICAL STATURE IN NINETEENTH‐CENTURY NEW ZEALAND: A PRELIMINARY INTERPRETATION

During the late nineteenth century, the physical stature of New Zealand‐born men stagnated, despite an apparently beneficial public health environment and growth in per‐capita incomes. We examine trends and differentials in male stature through World War I enlistment and casualty records. Stature varied by social class, with professionals and men in rural occupations substantially taller than their peers. There is not enough evidence to show that the indigenous Maori population differed in height from men of European descent. Stagnation in stature in late nineteenth‐century New Zealand is consistent with patterns observed in Australia, North America, and Western Europe.     

External and internal consistency of choices made in convex time budgets

We evaluate data on choices made from convex time budgets (CTB) in Andreoni and Sprenger (Am Econ Rev 102(7):3333–3356, 2012a) and Augenblick et al. (Q J Econ 130(3):1067–1115, 2015), two influential studies that proposed and applied this experimental technique. We use the weak axiom of revealed preference (WARP) to test for external consistency relative to pairwise choice, and demand, wealth and impatience monotonicity to test for internal consistency. We find that choices made by subjects in the original Andreoni and Sprenger (Am Econ Rev 102(7):3333–3356, 2012a) paper violate WARP frequently; violations of all three internal measures of monotonicity are concentrated in subjects who take advantage of the novel feature of CTB by making interior choices. Wealth monotonicity violations are more prevalent and pronounced than either demand or impatience monotonicity violations. We substantiate the importance of our desiderata of choice consistency in examining effort allocation choices made in Augenblick et al. (Q J Econ 130(3):1067–1115, 2015), where we find considerably more demand monotonicity violations, as well as many classical monotonicity violations which are associated with time inconsistent behavior. We believe that the frequency and magnitude of WARP and monotonicity violations found in the two studies pose important confounds for interpreting and structurally estimating choice patterns elicited through CTB. We encourage researchers employing CTB in present and future experiments to include consistency tests in their design and pre-estimation analysis.     

A framework for assessing the vulnerability of food systems to future shocks

Modern society depends on complex agro-ecological and trading systems to provide food for urban residents, yet there are few tools available to assess whether these systems are vulnerable to future disturbances. We propose a preliminary framework to assess the vulnerability of food systems to future shocks based on landscape ecology's ‘Panarchy Framework’. According to Panarchy, ecosystem vulnerability is determined by three generic characteristics: (1) the wealth available in the system, (2) how connected the system is, and (3) how much diversity exists in the system. In this framework, wealthy, non-diverse, tightly connected systems are highly vulnerable. The wealth of food systems can be measured using the approach pioneered by development economists to assess how poverty affects food security. Diversity can be measured using the tools investors use to measure the diversity of investment portfolios to assess financial risk. The connectivity of a system can be evaluated with the tools chemists use to assess the pathways chemicals use to flow through the environment. This approach can lead to better tools for creating policy designed to reduce vulnerability, and can help urban or regional planners identify where food systems are vulnerable to shocks and disturbances that may occur in the future.     

Economics at the Federal Communications Commission: 2006–2007

This article focuses on media ownership and spectrum auction design. These two issues have not only been particularly important at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the last year, but also are being informed by economic analysis either completed at the FCC or commissioned by the FCC.     

Assessing corporate performance

For those striving to create good companies it would at least be helpful to be able to identify them. While the very best companies usually perform well under any measure of corporate success, most conventional measures stack the odds in favour of certain companies over others. Capital intensity and gearing frequently interfere in the appropriate ranking of firms. This paper analyses some of the problems of commonly quoted performance indicators, and nominates an alternative.     

CEO Overconfidence and Earnings Management: Evidence from Property-Liability Insurers' Loss Reserves

This study investigates the relation between managerial overconfidence and loss-reserving practices in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry. We find robust evidence that CEO overconfidence is significantly associated with relatively low loss reserves, resulting in relatively high reported earnings. This finding is consistent with the theoretical predication that overconfident managers overestimate the returns on their investment projects and underestimate losses. Our result contributes to the literature linking CEOs' personality traits and firms' accounting policy as well as to the literature on insurer loss-reserving practices.