The consumer-driven approach: can it pick up where managed care left off?

Managed care has failed and health care costs are once again out of control. Given the current political, social and economic environment, there are now two options: a single-payer health care system, or an aggressive and global employer health benefits redesign that strongly encourages consumer-driven behavior. This article discusses the failure of managed care and ways that employers can promote consumer-driven behavior now using available tools and plan provisions.     

International business cycles: What are the facts?

Modern business cycle theory involves developing models that explain stylized facts. For this strategy to be successful, these facts should be well established. In this paper, we focus on the stylized facts of international business cycles. We use the generalized method of moments and quarterly data from twenty industrialized countries to estimate and test hypotheses concerning pairwise cross-country correlations of macroeconomic aggregates. A remarkable common feature emerges: these correlations are mostly positive, not very high and of a similar order of magnitude. The most important discrepancy with the theory is the low cross-country correlation of consumption.     

HIPAA's privacy rule: what is it, and how does it affect you?

This article discusses the implications for stakeholders of the privacy rule under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, on which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services first released guidance on July 6, 2001. Although guidance will continue to evolve, the authors urge organizations to initiate the implementation of policies to ensure compliance by the actual effective date of 2003. (Small health plans have until 2004 to comply.)     

Classical and technological convergence: beyond the Solow-Swan growth model

Recent investigations into cross-country convergence followMankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) in using a log-linear approximationto the Swan-Solow growth model to specify regressions. Thesestudies tend to assume a common and exogenous technology. Incontrast, the technology catch-up literature endogenises thegrowth of technology. The use of capital stock data rendersthe approximations and over-identification of the Mankiw modelunnecessary and enables us, using dynamic panel estimation,to estimate the separate contributions of diminishing returnsand technology transfer to the rate of conditional convergence.We find that both effects are important.     

Effects of gender and other factors on rank of law professors in colleges of business: Evidence of a glass ceiling

The matter of salary levels and professional advancement is much discussed and debated today in business and academe. This paper examines the matter of salary determinants for law professors in colleges of management in the U.S. with an emphasis on examining how gender might affect professorial salary and rank. By focusing on one discipline in today's academe and in a college having great student demand (management) coupled with a professed commitment to women's rights and by holding constant variables relevant to salary and rank, this study, addresses the matter of whether gender is a factor in determination of academic rank and salary. This study used correlation and path analysis in arriving at our conclusions. Our sample size meets statistically acceptable parameters. Our results corroborate earlier research which finds significant pay differences between women and men, but they show that at least for the sample of legal studies professors in this study, these pay differences are attributable to the number of years spent in academe. If women have only recently enjoyed opportunities for careers in this discipline, they do not have as much seniority, on average as men. Consequently, if universities pay salaries at least partly according to seniority, women's salaries are likely to be lower than men's salaries, as our study indicates. At the same time, however, even after controlling for seniority and other factors that might affect rank, there are still significantly fewer women in the higher ranks. These results point to the operation of a glass ceiling which restricts promotional opportunities for women in other fields.Prof. Bruce D. Fisher is a Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Formerly an attorney in the Office of General Counsel of the United States Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., Prof. Fisher has published in 42Rutgers Law Review 349 (1991), theCincinnat Law Review, theAdministrative Law Review, and numerous other legal and business publications. His degrees include BBA, '65; JD, '68; LLM, '74.Prof. Steve Motowidlo is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Florida. He has a BA '69 and a Ph.D. '76. He has published numerous articles in theJournal of Applied Psychology and other academic journals. He consults extensively with industry.Mr. Steve Werner is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Human Resources at the University of Florida. He has a BA degree in mathematics '85, an MBA '86, and has worked in industry prior to pursuing his Ph.D. He has published in theColumbia Journal of World Business.     

Strategic default,workout, and commercial mortgage valuation

This paper extends existing equilibrium commercial mortgage pricing models by endogenizing negotiated workout into the usual noncooperative lending game. Workout is a feasible subgame strategy for the lender to play whenever foreclosure transaction costs exist for either party to a loan transaction. In particular, negotiated workout solutions Pareto dominate the foreclosure alternative when default occurs. To obtain our results, we embed a cooperative bargaining game within a noncooperative mortgage loan/default game. We also address the valuation wedge problem that occurs when foreclosure transaction costs are introduced. Through the notion of replacement game equilibrium, we find symmetric mortgage pricing solutions that eliminate the valuation wedge and thus suggest that lending will occur in commercial real estate mortgage markets even when foreclosure transaction costs exist.     

Do state trading exporters distort trade?

In this paper, we analyse the trade-distorting effects of state trading enterprises (STEs) which exist in some exporting countries. Because of these potential effects, several countries have raised the issue of state enterprises in the Doha Round negotiations in the WTO. The belief is that STEs in certain developed countries have trade effects which are equivalent to an export subsidy. STEs also exist in developing countries, though since the aim of government policy may differ from the developed country case, the trade distortion may be equivalent to an export tax. We present a theoretical model that is sufficiently general to allow us to consider the case of exporting STEs in developed and developing economies. The model is calibrated with data on two examples of STEs, one typical of an STE in a developed country, the other typical of an STE in a developing economy. In each case, we allow for differences in the nature of the STE's pay-off function. The overall conclusion is that STEs do distort trade and the trade distortion effect is potentially significant.