Scale and scope economies for drug abuse treatment costs: evidence for Washington State

Drug abuse treatment has been pervasive in the US in the recent years, and the associated direct treatment costs approached $18 billion in 2001. However, there have been few published studies on scale economies, and none on scope economies, for drug abuse treatment costs. We estimate a restricted cost function for 17 hospitals in Washington State that provided inpatient and/or outpatient drug abuse treatment during the years 1997–2004. We find significant evidence of scale economies for hospitals that provide only outpatient drug abuse treatment services. The marginal costs of outpatient services are even smaller for hospitals that produce both outpatient and inpatient drug abuse treatment services. Further, these joint-production hospitals exhibit diseconomies of scope, or specialization economies. These results all imply that recent trends towards additional outpatient treatment services will enhance cost efficiency.     

Between mathematical formalism,normative choice rules,and the behavioural sciences: The emergence of rational choice theories in the late 1940s and early 1950s

Abstract

This paper discusses why mathematical economists of the early Cold War period favored formal-axiomatic over behavioral choice theories. One reason was that formal-axiomatic theories allowed mathematical economists to improve the conceptual and theoretical foundations of economics and thereby to increase its scientific status. Furthermore, the separation between mathematical economics and other behavioral sciences was not as clear-cut as often argued. While economists did not modify their behavioral assumptions, some acknowledged the empirical shortcomings of their models. The paper reveals the multifaceted nature of rational choice theories reflected in the changing interpretations and roles of the theories in those early years.     

The effect of state health insurance benefit mandates on premiums and employee contributions

The average US state has 40 benefit mandates, laws requiring health insurance to cover particular conditions, treatments, providers or people. We investigate the extent to which these mandates increase the health insurance premiums paid by employers, and the extent to which these higher premiums are passed on to employees in the form of higher employee contributions. We use state-level data on premiums and employee contributions to health insurance from the insurance component of the 1996–2011 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Our main analysis is a fixed effects regression that controls for age, race, income, union membership and the presence of state mandate waivers. We find robust evidence that the average mandate increases premiums by approximately 0.6%, and that mandates lead to similar increases in employee contributions for single-coverage health insurance plans. Alternative specifications using an AR(1) error structure estimate a larger effect of mandates, while those using generalized estimating equations estimate smaller effects. We find that mandates requiring insurers to cover a specific benefit, as opposed to a specific type of provider or person, lead to the largest increases in employee contributions.     

International website disclosure of codes of ethics: auditor‐specific and stock‐exchange‐listing differences

This research examines whether having a readily available code of ethics on a corporation's website associates with either their auditor or stock exchange listing. As such, it is the first research that studies the association among readily available codes of ethics, client auditor and stock exchange listing on a longitudinal basis. In our data gathering, we went to the website of each corporation and searched for a readily available disclosure of its code of ethics at the beginning of April 2006 through April 2009 – third‐through‐sixth anniversaries of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act. Our data indicate that the average readily available rate of codes of ethics for Ernst and Young's clients was significantly lower than the average readily available rate for the clients of Deloitte and Touche in 2006 and 2007 and PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2007. However, our data indicate no differences among the Big Four firms in 2008 and 2009. Our data indicate that the average readily available rates for the clients listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) were significantly higher than for clients that were not listed on the NYSE for all four observation points (2006–2009).