Needs-based health care funding: implications for resource distribution in Ontario

Capitation models have been suggested as an alternative to funding methods based on historical utilization patterns. Capitation funding distributes esources to regions or programs according to their population, adjusted for the age and gender composition and relative need. The most commonly used relative needs measure is the Standardized Mortality Ratio (SMR). This paper compares the distribution of resources in Ontario implied by a variety of capitation formula. Another aspect of this research is to design a mechanism that translates the SMR into a funding allocation index. We specify a non‐linear model to capture the relationship between current expenditures and the SMR while controlling for historical utilization factors. In contrast to previous work, in which a linear relationship between expenditures and need was assumed, our estimates suggest that the relationship may actually be highly non‐linear. This non‐linearity ncreases transfers to regions of relative need relative to a linear capitation program. JEL Classification: I0, H51 On a suggéré des modèles de financement per capita des soins de santé pour remplacer les méthodes de financement fondées sur les patterns historiques d'utilisation. Cette solution de rechange distribuerait les ressources aux régions et programmes selon la population (avec des ajustements pour tenir compte de la structure 'âges, de sexes, et de besoins relatifs). La mesure la plus commune des besoins relatifs est le taux de mortalité standardisé (TMS). Ce mémoire compare la répartition des ressources en Ontario qui découlerait de l'emploi d'une variété de formules. On tente aussi de construire un mécanisme qui traduise le TMS en un indice d'allocation des fonds. Les auteurs construisent un odèle non‐linéaire qui saisit la relation entre TMS et épenses courantes tout en normalisant pour tenir compte des facteurs historiques d'utilisation. Contrairement aux résultats des travaux antérieurs qui postulaient une relation linéaire entre épenses et besoins, les résultats de cette étude uggèrent que cette relation peut être fortement non‐linéaire, et que cette non‐linéarité tend à ccroître les transferts aux régions qui ont les besoins les plus grands.     

When two ‘wrongs’ make a right: An essay on business ethics

Sometimes two wrongs do make a right. That is, others' violations of moral rules may make it permissible for one to also violate these rules, to avoid being unfairly disadvantaged. This claim, originally advanced by Hobbes, is applied to three cases in business. It is suggested that the claim is one source of scepticism concerning business ethics. I argue, however, that the conditions under which business competitors' violations of moral rules would render one's own violations permissible are quite restricted. Hence, the observation that two wrongs may make a right does not give people a broad warrant for ignoring moral standards in their business activities. Gregory S. Kavka is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. He was awarded a NEH Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, 1982–83. His most important publication is: Some Paradoxes of Deterrence, Journal of Philosophy (June 1978).My work on this paper was partly supported by a University of California, Irvine Summer Faculty Research Fellowship. I am grateful to the University of Virginia for use of its library facilities, and to Mike W. Martin, Rick O'Neil, a referee for the Journal of Business Ethics, and participants at the Society for Business Ethics meeting at the Pacific Division APA convention in March 1982, for helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Hurricane Katrina as an Experiment in Housing Mobility and Neighborhood Effects: Were the Relocated Poor Black Evacuees Better-Off?

Hurricane Katrina induced hundreds of thousands of New Orleans citizens to evacuate and relocate to different neighborhoods. Some of these evacuees moved to neighborhoods with poverty rates lower than the one they left in New Orleans. With survey data on a small sample of black Katrina evacuees who registered for absentee voter ballots, this paper explores whether or not there were improvements in the welfare of black evacuees—neighborhood effects—as a result of moving to neighborhoods with a lower poverty rate. With data from a small sample of relocated Katrina evacuees, we provide matching estimates of the short-run treatment effect of different types of changes in neighborhood poverty on five different measures of individual welfare. Treatment parameter estimates reveal—conditional upon the change in origin to destination neighborhood poverty rate—positive neighborhood effects mostly for black evacuees who did not move from high poverty to low poverty neighborhoods, but could have. Our results suggest that at least in the short-run, antipoverty policies based on housing mobility and changing the poverty characteristics of neighborhoods are not necessarily effective in improving the welfare of poor black households.     

Higher Co-Moment CAPM and Hedge Fund Returns

Atlantic Economic Journal - This paper uses a higher moment capital asset pricing model to characterize the returns of several types of hedge fund indices. The quantile regression approach is used...     

Are preliminary announcements of the money stock rational forecasts?

We develop a theoretical framework of analyzing preliminary announcements of economic data and then apply this framework to the money stock. We find that preliminary announcements of the money stock are best characterized as measured with classical errors-in-variables. That is, the revision is not correlated with the true value of the series. The revision is, however, forecastable using information available at the time of the preliminary announcement. Our ability to forecast the revision implies that preliminary announcements are not rational estimates of the true money stock.