Acknowledging the importance of BAI accounts

For hospitals, balance after insurance (BAI) refers to revenue from uninsured patients and from patients with patient responsibility after insurance. BAI is a rapidly growing share of hospital revenue as a result of substitution from high-deductible commercial insurance plans-revenue that tends to convert to cash relatively easily and quickly-meaning that an increasing share of hospital cash flow is now due from the patient. Hospitals should make sure that their self-pay patients receive excellent customer service: It not only improves the likelihood of a greater yield, but also-perhaps more important-helps ensure customer loyalty and willingness to recommend the facility to others.     

The secularization of science and a new deal for science policy

The secularization of science, by analogy with the separation of Church and state, would divest all science funding from the state, except where it bears directly on matters of public policy. I argue for an intensification of this tendency, which is already occurring across the Euro-American world. I then explore the policy implications in some detail, including historical precedents in New Deal attitudes toward the role of science in public policy. I begin by reviewing the secularization of Christendom, which turns out to be intimately tied with the social ascendency of the natural sciences. I then explore more recent conditions that contribute to the secularization of science itself, during which I claim that the Cold War's scaling up of state support for scientific research should be regarded as a historical aberration that we are currently getting over. However, I still reserve a very strong role for the state in the public distribution of already existing knowledge, the primary vehicle for which will remain the university.     

Employment Protection,Threat and Incentive Effects on Worker Absence

This article provides new evidence on the effect of changes in employment protection on worker absence. We use novel multi‐organization data to examine changes in worker absence as workers move from temporary to permanent employment contracts. We demonstrate a robust positive effect of employment protection on sickness absence. It has also been suggested that the impact of employment protection on absence and effort is due to a fear of dismissal. We also provide evidence that suggests that temporary workers' absence is influenced by incentives to attain jobs with protection that is unrelated to threat of dismissal. This has not been considered in earlier research. This channel of employment protection effects has important policy implications.     

Reflections on Private Water Supply: Agency and Equity Issues

In the second of the two articles, the authors reflect on and extend their earlier work by describing recent trends in water privatization, drawing important lessons from cases where privatization efforts have failed, offering suggestions about the way privatized firms can be successfully monitored, and addressing the popular argument that “fairness” demands that water be distributed by public firms at a zero (or heavily subsidized) price.     

The half‐empty office: dilemmas in managing locational flexibility

Through a case study contrasting the impacts of formalised and informal teleworking practices on office‐based workers, multidimensional dilemmas between flexibility, control and equity are uncovered. Formal schemes, although problematic and rare, possess some advantages in resolving the three dimensions. A model is proposed to test findings further.     

DOLLARIZATION FOR ARGENTINA

In January 1999, President Carlos Menem suggested replacing the Argentine peso with the U.S. dollar. President Menem's announcement has sparked a debate throughout Latin America and Eastern Europe about what has been termed dollarization. That debate prompted U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to deliver a major policy speech on alternative exchange-rate regimes on April 21, 1999 and the U.S. Senate Banking Committee to hold dollarization hearings the following day featuring Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers.
This article presents a case for officially dollarizing Argentina. Dollarization is not new. Unofficial dollarization is widespread in emerging market countries; in fact, as much as 70% of the stock of U.S. dollars now circulates abroad. Twenty-eight countries and dependent territories are officially dollarized. Although official dollarization would result in Argentina losing seigniorage of about 0.22 percent of GDP, the author estimates that this cost would be more than offset by a reduction in interest rates that would increase Argentina's trend rate of GDP growth by about two percent.
After debunking the most common criticisms of dollarization, the article closes by offering recommendations about the specific form of dollarization and presenting a detailed dollarization statute for Argentina. The author proposes a competitive currency regime for Argentina, one in which all foreign money would be legal tender.     

Some Determinants of Core Competencies: Evidence from a Binary-Logit Analysis

Despite the increasing recognition of the salience of core competencies in the process of competition, the notion of core competencies has remained largely ambiguous in the literature. Neither is it clear what strategies, institutions, and resources are necessary for developing and sustaining core competencies. This paper uses the binary-logit model to explore the determinants of core competencies, and identifies investment in intangible assets, marketing/promotional activities and firm size as significant determinants of core competencies. An evaluation of the technology strategies of two competence-seeking firms also points to the increasing salience of intangible assets, decentralization/globalization of the R&D function, and the intensive search for knowledge and capabilities.