新型农村合作医疗的运行效率、筹资与基层政府行为

现阶段新型农村合作医疗制度试点的重点之一是如何在公平与效率之间找到新的均衡。这项制度在农村稳步推开,缓解了医疗服务中长期存在的公平效率问题。但自该项制度实施以来.调查点居民卫生可及性公平仍有待改善,筹资存在垂直不公平问题,卫生服务利用公平性有所增强,但改进余地很大。资源配置效率有所提高,但并不明显;医疗机构间缺乏竞争,成本软约束导致医疗机构低效率运行。因此新农合制度实施过程中的公平性,还有待政府进一步改善,同时以公平为前提,提高资源配置和服务效率。     

Conceptualizing businesses as social actors: A framework for understanding sustainability actions in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises

Small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can play a crucial role in advancing environmental and social well‐being. Yet various—often conflicting—explanations have been offered to clarify why SMEs pursue sustainability. Some arguments foreground possibilities of profit maximization, whereas others emphasize individual values and convictions. Research supporting such contradicting explanations is often biased towards large enterprises or small, innovative frontrunners. In this article, we examine the underlying drivers of social and environmental interventions of SMEs by exploring empirical data from a survey of over 1,600 Canadian SMEs and complementary in‐depth interviews. We argue that sustainability actions of SMEs can be understood by viewing these firms as social actors—organizations that are shaped by individual values, internal and external interpersonal relationships, and are embedded in a social environment. This conceptualization directs attention to the full range of factors that shape sustainability engagement of SMEs and highlights frequently overlooked forms of sustainability‐oriented actions.     

Celebrity Attachment and Behavioral Intentions: The Mediating Role of Place Attachment

Film‐induced tourism has recently gained increased attention in academic research. Although previous literature has identified the existence of consumer–celebrity attachment, scant empirical studies have examined whether celebrity attachment influences behavioral intentions in a film tourism context. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between celebrity attachment and behavioral intentions as well as to clarify the role of place attachment. Survey data from 312 tourists in Taiwan indicate that celebrity attachment is positively related to behavioral intentions. Moreover, place attachment partially mediates the relationship between celebrity attachment and behavioral intentions. Implications of these findings for managing marketing strategies as well as future research directions are subsequently discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating green supply chain management among Chinese manufacturers from the ecological modernization perspective

Green supply chain management (GSCM) has become an emergent ecological modernization tool amongst Chinese manufacturers to balance environmental performance with productivity and business performance gains. Ecological modernization at the society level is influenced by restructuring policies and regulations. Some of these policies and regulations in China are focusing on enhancing energy savings and pollution reduction (ESPR). Based on a survey of 376 responses, we investigate whether different Chinese manufacturer clusters varying in their extent of implementing GSCM exist from this ecological modernization perspective. We also examine if Chinese manufacturers’ awareness of domestic and international environmental ESPR-oriented compliance is related to GSCM implementation and whether a mediating effect of regulatory pressure plays a significant role. The results highlight the varying pace of Chinese manufacturers to ecologically modernize with GSCM practices and the significance of regulatory pressure to diffuse the practices adoption by Chinese manufacturing industry. Implications of this research go beyond the manufacturers investigated in this study where similar occurrence of these relationships may exist in other regions.     

Effects of community,family, and education on earnings of black and white men

Summary The primary purpose of this paper was to determine the effect of background on the education and earnings of black and white men.It was largely motivated by a desire to quantify the extent to which past discrimination against Blacks, resulting in lower achievement, inhibits the progress of individuals today in a somewhat more benign environment.It has demonstrated that both community and family background factors are important in determining the levels of education and earnings of black and white men.The community effects for Blacks operate largely through their moving into more integrated neighborhoods, so that many positive community externalities are apparently not available to families in predominantly black middle-class neighborhoods.While the effects of father’s education, city origin, and community income are comparable between Blacks and whites, white men’s education is more affected by number of siblings, family income, and age of 1968 head of household than is black men’s education.The relative sizes of the coefficients of these latter variables are consistent with steeper age-earnings profiles for older white men than older black men and higher prices paid for investing in children by black parents.     

Anticipated Environmental Policy and Transitional Dynamics in an Endogenous Growth Model

This paper makes a new attempt toinvestigate how an anticipatedenvironmental policy governs the transitionaldynamics of an economy when pollutionexternality is taken into account. Themodeling strategy we use is an AK technologyendogenous growth framework with an endogenousleisure-labor choice. It is found that, unlikeinelastic labor supply framework, a rise inpublic abatement expenditure will stimulate thebalanced economic growth rate. It is alsofound that public abatement technology plays animportant role in determining the transitionaladjustment of the economic growth rate inresponse to a pre-announced environmentalpolicy.     

An Entrepreneurial Perspective of Institutional Change

Utilizing Kirzner's theory of entrepreneurial discovery, Schumpeter's two types of economic responses and the Austrian theory of institutions as building blocks, this paper constructs an entrepreneurial theory of institutional change. Focusing on the coordinating role of human institutions, this paper argues that entrepreneurial extraordinary discovery destroys the stability of institutions and creates uncertainty in the market (creative response). As a result, institutions are incapable of coordinating economic activities because market participants' stocks of knowledge are no longer adequate to solve new problems. Hence, profit gaps or mismatches of market participants' plans occur. Given new technologies, new relative prices and tastes, imitative entrepreneurs soon identify and capitalize on the opportunities created by Schumpeterian extraordinary discoveries (adaptive response). Imitators improve production methods, modify rules and alter property rights in order to improve coordination. Through learning, experimentation, trial and error, the more rewarding methods are then selected. Successful actions are imitated and repeated in the market, and gradually crystallized into new institutions which once again serve as social coordinators.     

Securitization,Risk‐Taking and the Option to Change Strategy

This article models the riskiness of structured securitization deals. The deals are put together by “banks,” which can exercise strategic options over the risk put into the deals. The banks face a trade‐off between the benefits of risk‐taking now and future franchise benefits if the deal pays off. The key insight is a convex relationship between the value of the bank's equity position and the risk in the deal. Although there is a continuum of possible risk, banks choose either the highest or lowest levels of risk open to them. Changes in strategy are discontinuous and unpredictable; a history of low risk‐taking may be a prelude to increased risk‐taking later. Competition, to the extent of reducing franchise value, can lead to more risk‐taking, as can more information in the market. The model provides insights into the risk‐taking that led up to the Great Recession and to institutions that are “Too Big to Fail.”     

Effects of employees' perceived dependability on success of enterprise applications in e-business

Electronic business (e-business) plays a major role in modern economic networks due to its shorter cycle time and faster information transactions. Building enterprise applications that can coordinate activities, decisions, and knowledge across many functions is a good solution for e-business. Hence, how to implement enterprise applications successfully has become an increasingly important management issue. Although success of information systems (IS) has received fairly extensive attention from prior research, issues regarding whether functions and service delivered by systems can be justifiably relied on by users are seriously ignored, especially complex systems like enterprise applications. Thus, this paper attempts to extend this kind of concept, perceived dependability, into DeLone and McLean's IS success model to explore how it influences success of enterprise applications. Results from a survey of 170 respondents taken from six internationalized e-businesses in Taiwan strongly support that perceived dependability is indeed an important factor for success of enterprise applications. Additionally, over and beyond the effects of dependability on success of enterprise applications, it can help practitioners and managers get deep insights into how to implement e-business successfully.