Medical resource utilization and costs for total hip arthroplasty: benchmarking an anterior approach technique in the Medicare population

Aims: The anterior approach (AA) for total hip arthroplasty (THA) is associated with more rapid recovery when compared to traditional approaches. The purpose of this study was to benchmark healthcare resource utilization and costs for patients with THA via AA relative to matched patients.

Materials and methods: This study queried Medicare claims data (2012–2014) to identify patients who received THA via an AA from experienced surgeons, and matched these patients to a control cohort (all THA approaches). Direct and propensity-score matching were employed to maximize similarity between patients and hospitals in the two cohorts. Hospital length of stay (LOS), the proportion of patients discharged to home or home health, and post-acute claim payments during the 90-day episode were assessed. Generalized estimating equations were applied to control for imbalances between the cohorts and clustering of outcomes within hospitals.

Results: A total of 1,794 patients were included after patient matching. Patients who received AA had significantly lower mean hospital LOS vs patients in the control group (2.06?±?1.36 vs 2.98?±?1.58 days, p?<?.0001). The adjusted proportion of patients discharged to home was nearly 20 percentage points higher in the AA cohort vs the control cohort (87.3% vs 68.7%, p?<?.0001). Post-acute claim payments for AA patients were nearly 50% lower than those for control patients ($4,139 vs $7,465, p?<?.0001).

Conclusion: AA patients had significantly lower post-acute care resource use when compared to control patients. Further research is warranted to evaluate the cost effectiveness of AA among surgeons of varying experience levels.     

Corporate Governance and Business Ethics

"It is this distancing of personal relationships, combined with their replacement by written contractual terms and conditions, which make the discussion of ethics within a corporate institutionalised context highly limited and problematic.' The challenge is to find means of personalising modern corporations so as to encourage ethical behaviour. Atul K. Shah PhD (Econ) ACA gained his doctorate from the London School of Economics and is Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Financial Management, at the University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ; e-mail ashah@essex.ac.uk . This article was conceived while he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of Business, University of Maryland, USA. The author wishes to thank Dan Ostas, Lee Preston and Stephen Loeb for helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

The impact of global and local cohesion on innovation in the pharmaceutical industry

In this paper, we examine how the configuration of intraorganizational networks, and in particular, cohesion among members of an organization, influences organizations' innovative output. We argue that the cohesion among R&D scientists could be at a local level or a global level, and that local and global cohesion may have different impacts on firms' innovation performance. We test our hypotheses by examining the structure of the R&D collaboration networks within firms that operated in the pharmaceutical industry between 1981 and 1989, and their innovative outcomes—patents that led to new product launches. We find that local cohesion has a positive impact on the innovative performance of a firm, and global cohesion has a negative impact. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ties that bind tourists: embedding destination motivators to destination attachment: a study in the context of Kumbh Fair,India

ABSTRACT

Despite the deep cultural value and strong appeal to global tourists, the Kumbh Fair has not been explored much by researchers. This is even though the Kumbh Fair is crafting the tourism of India, thereby leading to its overall socio-economic development. This study aims to examine the determinants of tourist motivation, such as ads awareness, destination image and online-communities, which provoke tourists to have attachment with the destination more closely. The study found the tourists’ attitude as a complementary mediation and spiritual stimuli as a mediating moderator are positively impacting on the significant relationship of destination motivators and destination attachment.     

Testing for capital mobility: A random coefficients approach

This paper extends the Feldstein-Horioka (1980), Feldstein (1983) and subsequent studies on the degree of capital mobility, by adopting a random coefficients model. This approach is more general in that it permits inter-country variations in the degree of capital mobility to arise due to the differences in size as well as in other institutional or structural characteristics. In addition, it is a refinement of stochastic laws as defined by Pratt and Schlaifer (1984, 1988). Our results point to significant inter-country differences in the degree of capital mobility, thereby lending support to the random coefficients approach. In particular, our results indicate that, on average, the degree of capital mobility is much higher than implied by fixed coefficients approach. Finally, country size itself does not appear to bear a systematic relationship with the degree of capital mobility as suggested by Murphy (1984).We are grateful to two anonymous referees, and Baldev Raj, Editor of the journal for helpful comments and suggestions. The usual caveat applies.     

Effect of Ad-Irrelevant Distance Cues on Persuasiveness of Message Framing

This research suggests that the relative persuasiveness of message framing depends on psychological distance induced by seemingly irrelevant cues in the ad environment. Positively (negatively) framed messages are more persuasive when the ad-irrelevant cues induce psychological remoteness (proximity). Across four studies and two different product categories, participants evaluated positively (negatively) framed messages more favorably when induced with social remoteness (proximity), spatial remoteness (proximity), and an abstract (concrete) construal. The findings contribute theoretically to the extant literature on message framing and offer actionable implications to ad managers for strategically designing ad environments to enhance the effectiveness of message framing.     

On the impact of trade openness on growth: further evidence from OECD countries

This study attempts to examine empirically the implications of the degree of openness for total and individual factor productivity growth in a group of 19 OECD countries over the last three decades. The study combines both time series and cross-sectional data. The model employed is a generalization of the commonly used, growth-accounting model based on the concept of an aggregate production function in which the rate of economic growth is a function of capital and labour accumulation and total factor productivity. It is explicitly assumed that total factor productivity depends, in turn, upon the rate of export expansion. The model is then estimated using the random coefficients approach. While results generally indicate that the relative importance of trade openness on economic growth varies significantly across countries, they also indicate that the role of capital and labour accumulation in fostering economic growth varies with the degree of openness, cross-sectionally as well as across time.     

Emerging philanthropy markets

• Entrepreneurs are not the only ones to salivate at the call of emerging markets. Major nonprofit organizations that raise money in high-income Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for redistribution in developing countries are also looking for new sources of funds. Some of the countries that benefited from private philanthropy not too long ago are now in a position to help. The contribution of this paper is two-prong. First, it introduces a robust market screening methodology to determine countries' capacities to give on the basis of macroeconomic and infrastructure indicators. Second, it identifies cross-cultural predictors for charitable donations taken from the World Value Survey. A logistic regression calibrated on already successful fundraising operation scores countries on their propensity for private philanthropy. Research findings receive theoretical support from Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Top countries for private philanthropy are of Protestant tradition and are at the origin of capitalism, as we know it today. Confucian countries that share a similar ethic and have opted for capitalist economies are first class candidates for private philanthropy.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Determinants of invention commercialization: an empirical examination of academically sourced inventions

We examine the attributes of technological inventions that influence their commercialization. Using a unique dataset of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)‐licensed patents, we show that the likelihood of invention commercialization, which we measure by the achievement of first sale, is positively associated with two characteristics of licensed technological inventions—scope and pioneering nature—and has an inverted U‐shaped relationship with the age of the invention. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.