Análisis del servicio de Urgencias aplicando teoría de líneas de espera

Those responsible for making decisions in hospitals are increasingly aware of the need to efficiently manage hospital systems. An option for analysis is done by queuing models. In this paper is analyzed the service area ER, in a public hospital applying the concepts and relationships of waiting lines. From the model results, it is concluded that in the emergency department does not have the required minimum number of doctors to allow a steady flow of patients. With the model, the minimum required number of doctors is calculated to meet current and future demand for service with the same service time and the same discipline of service. Analytical models, allowing direct understand the relationships between service demand, number of doctors and patient care priority viewed as a queuing system. The work is useful for administrators and managers of hospital systems.     

Empleo manufacturero en la Región Centro de México. Una estimación por gran división

In this paper, the production performance by great division and its effects on formal job generation in the central region of Mexico is analyzed. The more dynamic manufacturing divisions are identified and with the estimation of an employment function with panel data for each of the nine manufacturing great divisions, it is found that divisions I. Food, beverages and tobacco, II. Textiles, clothing and leather industry, III. Wood and wood products and IX Other manufacturing industries exhibit a high income elasticity of employment (0.716, 1.035, 0.781 and 0.94) and that the more technical divisions, with greater innovation processes and highly exporting divisions such as division VIII. Metal products, machinery and equipment show a lower elasticity.     

Manufacturing labor in the Central Region of Mexico. An estimation by great division

The production performance and its effects in the generation of formal employment in the Central region of Mexico are analyzed at the major division level of manufacture. The most dynamic activity divisions of the manufacturing industry are identified and, by estimating a function of employment with panel data for each of the nine major divisions of manufacture, it is reported that the activity divisions: I. Food products, beverages and tobacco, II. Textiles, clothing and leather industry, III. Timber industry and wood products and IX. Other manufacturing industries show high employment income elasticity (0.716, 1.035, 0.781 and 0.94). Furthermore, the divisions that comprise the more technical branches, with greater innovation processes and high levels of export, such as division VIII. Metal products, machinery and equipment, show lower elasticity.     

Are the cultural accounting values a relevant issue for the SMEs’ financing options?

This paper aims to examine the financing options of the managers/owners of SMEs (small and medium-sized companies) from a point of view that incorporates cultural values, namely, conservatism and secrecy. Data were collected with the use of a questionnaire conducted for managers/owners of a sample of 1629 Portuguese SMEs, and with the use of accounting and financial information from the period 2009 to 2011. 438 managers/owners provided valid answers, corresponding to a response rate of 27%. Using multivariate regression techniques as a basis, the results showed that a significant number of managers/owners supported the negative relationship between conservatism/secrecy and the business financing options associated with a higher risk (debts with costs). The results also showed that a more significant number of managers/owners of national SMEs choose sources of financing in light of the pecking order theory.     

Evaluation of the effect of investor psychology on an artificial stock market through its degree of efficiency

The main objective of this article is to develop a Cellular Automaton Model in which more than one type of stockbroker interact, and where the use and exchange of information between investors describe the complexity measured through the estimation of the Hurst exponent. This exponent represents an efficient or random market when it has a value equal to 0.5. Thanks to the various proposals, it can be determined in this investigation that a rational component must exist in the simulator in order to generate an efficient behavior.     

Prices and heterogeneous search costs

We study price formation in a model of consumer search for differentiated products in which consumers have heterogeneous search costs. We provide conditions under which a pure‐strategy symmetric Nash equilibrium exists and is unique. Search costs affect two margins—the intensive search margin (or search intensity) and the extensive search margin (or the decision to search rather than to not search at all). These two margins affect the elasticity of demand in opposite directions and whether lower search costs result in higher or lower prices depends on the properties of the search cost density.     

Economic Impact of Competition Policy: A Look Beyond Consumer Surplus

Competition authorities try to mitigate negative distortionary effects on the markets by tackling abuse of market power or cartels and by controlling mergers. This study attempts to assess the impact of these endeavours by going beyond calculations of lumpsum effects on consumer surplus. We revise the simulation of Van Sinderen and Kemp (Economist 156(4):365–385, 2008) who use a cut in income taxes as a modelling device to simulate the impact of anti cartel policies. Our approach avoids attributing effects caused purely by changes in taxation to market power and uses changes in the Lerner index as the impuls. We have updated the model to enable simulating the impact of competition policies on productivity and R&D in order to get a balanced view on the effects. We find that the re-distribution of surplus from producers to consumers supported by ACM in this new setting is likely to have a positive effect on productivity, GDP, wages and consumption, and a small positive effect on employment. This differs from the outcome of Van Sinderen and Kemp, who did not find a positive impact on productivity, due to an overestimation of the employment growth.     

Intra-Industry Trade: A Static and Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

This study examines the features and determinants of intra-industry trade (IIT), horizontal IIT (HIIT) and vertical IIT (VIIT) between Portugal and the European Union in the period 1996–2002, using a static and a dynamic panel data analysis. The findings indicate that Portuguese VIIT increased significantly during the period in accordance with the values expected for a developed country. The regression results show that there is evidence supporting the explanation of VIIT by Heckscher–Ohlin’s (HO) theory and that Portugal has comparative advantages in low-quality differentiated products. The findings support the theory that, in general, there is no positive statistical association between HIIT and HO variables. The central theme of this paper is to show that it may be preferable to use the GMM approach in empirical studies of IIT rather than pooled OLS, fixed effects or random effects estimators. The results also suggest that the GMM system estimator obtains more reasonable parameter estimates than the first-differenced GMM estimator.

The chain from customer satisfaction via word-of-mouth referrals to new customer acquisition

It has often been argued that word-of-mouth (WOM) can contribute significantly to a firm’s success in a variety of ways. Here, we analyze the functional linkage between customer satisfaction, WOM, and new customer acquisition. Using data from two empirical studies we conceptualize and test the direct, non-linear, and moderated relationship between satisfaction and WOM. We further explore the circumstances under which WOM leads to new customer acquisition using a logistic regression model. We do so for two groups (new customers and long-term customers) from the customer base of a large energy provider (n = 688), and for a random sample of B2B customers (n = 416) in the same market. Results indicate that the satisfaction-WOM link is non-linear and is moderated by several customer involvement dimensions. Based on our results, we demonstrate how the satisfaction-WOM-new customer acquisition link can enrich return on quality and satisfaction models. Further, we draw conclusions about how companies can make use of both the satisfaction-WOM and the WOM-new customer acquisition link for better allocating their marketing resources.