Opening of China's Trade,Labour Market Reform and Impact on Rural Wages

Government policy in China supports urban wages at the expense of returns to farm labour. A model is developed to estimate how WTO accession and complementary labour market reform will influence factor returns in China. With WTO membership, a larger cut in manufacturing tariffs compared to agriculture will improve agriculture's terms of trade and will raise the agricultural wage. Complementary labour market reforms will further boost farm wages as labour exits agriculture in large numbers. We estimate that WTO membership and complementary labour market reforms will result in a decline in the agricultural labour force by about 25 per cent.     

Informative Brand Advertising and Pricing Strategies in Internet Markets with Heterogeneous Consumer Search

The use of information intermediaries has been shown to undermine the effect of brand in online markets. In this paper, the effect of consumer search on the relationship between brand advertising and pricing strategies is analysed. Price data are taken from the leading UK motor insurance comparison website, with the advantage that prices can be related to the search characteristics of consumers and to the advertising expenditure of firms. The paper finds that more-advertised firms have lower price rankings at the comparison site, indicating that advertising is informative in this market. The main result is that consumer search weakens the relationship between advertising and pricing. An implication is that increased usage of price comparison sites will make informative brand advertising less important.     

Does It Matter What Managers Do?

After half a century of research, we now have a fair idea of what managers do. This differs both from the "heroic self-image" idealisation and from the sanitised "management science" idealisation. Despite IT and all the talk of empowerment, management as a profession in its own right is, if anything, becoming more, not less, widespread. What managers do therefore matters simply because so many people are doing "management" as their main role. But does what managers do matter in terms of its effects on the people being managed, and, if so, how? The answer is obviously yes, but the central message of this article is how little we know through systematic research about this – particularly given how much preaching there is on how to do it well.     

Theory and the Evaluation of Advertising

In this paper, the author distinguishes between idealistic and econometric models of the advertising process. He argues that it is in the interplay between theoretical understanding and empirical precision that progress in the evaluation of advertising is most likely to be made. He suggests two avenues of future research where such progress is possible: the analysis of buying behaviour patterns and the careful measurement of the salience of a brand.     

Scenarios for future service encounters

This article develops research-based scenarios of future service encounters. Views from senior customer service directors in 14 major service companies regarding future service encounters and future roles and capabilities of customer service professionals were gathered. This was considered in the light of secondary data regarding technology and socio-economic projections. Short scenarios of future service encounters around key dimensions of technology, time and money are presented. Ways in which scenario planning may be used to aid planning and proactive business strategy in the service sector are discussed.     

A review of: “THE CAPITAL BUDGETING DECISION,Fifth Edition” by Harold Bierman,Jr., and Seymour Smldt,MacHillan, New York,lgflO, xvl + 544 pp., list, £17.00.

The need for consistent discount factors under the pure capital rationing case has been the subject of several papers. This paper illuminates this subject and analyzes the solution procedures suggested for finding a consistent solution. As is shown, none of the suggested procedures converge to an acceptable consistent solution.     

The healthcare burden of disease progression in medicare patients with functional mitral regurgitation

Abstract

Objective: This retrospective database analysis estimated the incremental effect that disease progression from non-clinically significant functional mitral regurgitation (nsFMR) to clinically significant FMR (sFMR) has on clinical outcomes and costs.

Methods: Medicare Fee for Service beneficiaries with nsFMR were examined, defined as those with a heart failure diagnosis prior to MR. Patients were classified as ischemic if there was a history of: CAD, AMI, PCI, or CABG. The primary outcome was time to sFMR, defined as pulmonary hypertension, atrial fibrillation, mitral valve surgery, serial echocardiography, or death, using a Cox hazard regression model. Annualized hospitalizations, inpatient hospital days, and healthcare expenditures were also modeled.

Results: Patients with IHD had higher risk (Hazard Ratio?=?1.22 [1.14–1.30]) for disease progression compared to patients without. The progression cohort had significantly more annual inpatient hospitalizations (non-IHD?=?1.32; IHD?=?1.40) than the non-progression cohort (non-IHD?=?0.36; IHD?=?0.34), and significantly more annual inpatient hospital days (non-IHD?=?13.07; IHD?=?13.52) than the non-progression cohort (non-IHD?=?2.29; with IHD?=?2.08). The progression cohort had over 3.5-times higher costs vs the non-progression cohort, independent of IHD (non-IHD?=?$12,798 vs $46,784; IHD?=?$12,582 vs $49,348).

Conclusion: Treating FMR patients earlier in their clinical trajectory may prevent disease progression and reduce high rates of healthcare utilization and expenditures.