Reconstructing consumer participation in evidence‐based health care: a polemic

Consumer participation in the evidence‐based health‐care movement is largely seen as important by those who promote evidence‐based health care but is surrounded by a range of competing discourses that variously critique medicine, nursing or health‐care systems; situate consumers as powerless players within systems characterized by controlling health professionals; or politicize the role of the consumer as activist and defender of patient rights. This paper explores these competing discourses and develops an argument that asserts that the social construction of the evidence‐based movement has rendered previously accepted terminology regarding the user or receiver of health services relatively meaningless. The result has been the ‘politicisation’ and ‘professionalisation’ of consumer participation and the time has come to reconstruct consumer participation in evidence‐based health care – from the generation of evidence to guideline development.     

STANDARDIZATION IN THE WIRELESS INTERNET MARKET: LESSONS FROM JAPAN AND KOREA

The wireless Internet market has been growing rapidly since NTT DoCoMo first introduced the service in 1999. This paper provides a framework within which the wireless Internet market can be analysed so as to draw valuable policy implications. We show that if platforms are standardized: (i) social welfare is increased with the rational expectation of larger installed bases; (ii) the neutrality of a revenue‐sharing ratio that is valid for non‐standardized network platforms is affected; and (iii) the collusive interconnection charge is lower than the social optimum insofar as the population mass of content providers is less dense than that of Internet users.     

Spatial pillage game

A pillage game is a coalitional game as a model of Hobbesian anarchy. The spatial pillage game introduces a spatial feature into the pillage game. Players are located in regions and can travel from one region to another. The players can form a coalition and combine their power only within their destination regions, which limits the exertion of the power of each coalition. Under this spatial restriction, a coalition can pillage less powerful coalitions without any cost. The feasibility of pillages between coalitions determines the dominance relation that defines stable states in which powers among the players are endogenously balanced. With the spatial restriction, the set of stable states changes. However, if the players have forecasting ability, then the set of stable states does not change with the spatial restriction. Core, stable set, and farsighted core are adopted as alternative solution concepts.     

Die Macht der Meinungsmacher: Ratingagenturen und staatliche Verschuldungsdynamiken

Die Finanzm?rkte reagieren in der gegenw?rtigen Staatsschuldenkrise offensichtlich auf Meinungs?u?erungen der marktbeherrschenden Ratingagenturen — selbst wenn diese in scheinbarem Widerspruch zur vorherigen Bewertung ?konomischer Fundamentaldaten stehen. Das führt dazu, dass private Interessen staatliche Verschuldungsdynamiken beeinfl ussen k?nnen und für sie damit politischer Handlungsspielraum entsteht.     

The role of the temporary component in spot prices in the revision of expected future spot prices: Evidence from index futures quotes

It is frequently argued that foreign investors have extrapolative expectations due to their informational disadvantages. That is, in the absence of other sources of information, foreigners revise their expectations on the future price of a domestic stock more in line with its current price change than do domestic investors. In this study, we analytically show that foreigners might respond more to a price change because they pay relatively less attention to a temporary component in price—i.e. because they are more well‐informed. We confirm this hypothesis with a simple yet powerful test that is designed by the identification schemes arising directly from the nature of a temporary component and by the access to a direct measure of the investor's expectation, namely, the quote for futures contracts. After controlling for the temporary component effect and using the lead–lag relationship between the spot and futures markets, we show that foreign investors are indeed most well‐informed, whereas domestic individuals are at the other end with the most extrapolative expectations. Finally, domestic institutions are largely indistinguishable from foreigners but are noticeably different from domestic individuals.     

The Determinants of Cross‐border M&As: The Role of Institutions and Financial Development in the Gravity Model

This paper examines the macroeconomic determinants of cross‐border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Using a panel dataset of bilateral M&A deal values for 101 countries for 17 years ranging from 1989 to 2005, we investigate both home and host‐country factors that may play an important role in determining the size and direction of M&A flows. Overall, the empirical results suggest that legal and institutional quality and financial market development increase M&A volume across borders. The significant effect of institutions, however, may disappear for transactions between countries in similar stages of the development.     

Financial Development and Economic Growth: An Egg‐and‐Chicken Problem?

This study uses a Granger causality procedure to investigate the relationship between financial development and economic growth. The authors estimate a vector autoregression (VAR) model for nine OECD countries and China. They argue that a time-series approach is superior to a cross-sectional one and that the VAR framework avoids technical problems common in other time-series models. Evidence is presented of bidirectional causality between financial development and growth in half of the countries and reverse causality in three others. There is little support for the hypothesis that finance "leads" growth, and caution must be exercised in making general conclusions about this relationship.