Group decision-making: Head-count versus intensity of preference

This paper puts forth a framework for reshaping the group decision-making process. The proposed framework extends from the usual one-issue-at-a-time decision-making to one that involves several related issues simultaneously. Weaknesses of the traditional majority voting mechanism are first identified, and then a different voting method that takes each individual voter's sentiment into account is discussed. Specifically, a decision-maker is asked to express his/her intensity of preference for the issues encountered. Three hierarchical structures—benefits, costs, and risks—are developed to evaluate the alternatives. Due to the nature of pairwise comparisons and synthesis, the proposed method is amenable to consensus building and has higher reliability and consistency. It can be used for candidate selection, e.g. governmental election, when a large population is involved. It is also effective for resource allocation and prioritization when a small group or business is concerned. We believe the proposed approach has potential for resolving deficiencies of the conventional voting mechanism, and can be applied to many real-world problems. Its implementation on the Internet is also discussed.     

HETEROGENEOUS EFFECTS OF THE ACA MEDICAID EXPANSION ON HOSPITAL FINANCIAL OUTCOMES

This study examines the effect of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion on hospital financial outcomes. A key innovation relative to prior studies is that we explicitly account for heterogeneity across states in the timing and extent of the expansion as well as across hospital types. We find that Medicaid expansion led to a decrease in uncompensated care expenditures and an increase in average operating margins. The effects were larger in states where the Medicaid expansion led to a greater increase in program eligibility. Operating margins improved most for public hospitals and facilities located in rural areas. (JEL I11, I13, I18)     

Contextual Influences on Thinking in Organizations: Learner and Tutor Orientations to Organizational Learning

This paper examines the orientations, or frames of reference, of participants in five bank training programmes run by three banks in the United Kingdom. Adopting a symbolic interactionist approach and ethnographic methods of investigation, the paper attempts to elucidate the ways in which both learners and tutors thought about their roles in the learning events and the goals and strategies they adopted in order to cope with their situation. It is suggested that in order to understand the participants' behaviour it is necessary to take into account the contexts in which their actions were constructed. In particular it is proposed that the organizational context of the training programmes, which exposed the participants to the gaze of ‘hidden audiences’ of organizational superiors, inhibited the potential of the programmes as vehicles for learning. It is also argued that interactionist approaches using ethnographic methods, which enable organizational actors to be studied in situ, have an important contribution to make to the wider study of organizational cognition.     

The Impact of Labour Market Reforms and Economic Performance on the Matching of the Short‐term and the Long‐term Unemployed

As a reaction to high and persistent unemployment in Germany, the largest labour market reforms in post‐war history were implemented between 2003 and 2005. We analyse the impact of the reforms and its coincidence with an economic expansion on the efficiency of matching out of unemployment. Especially focussing on searcher heterogeneity, we estimate a system of stock‐flow matching functions for short‐term and long‐term unemployment (three‐stage least squares) on the basis of administrative data. In sum, the reforms increased matching efficiency for both groups, but the effect was larger for the long‐term unemployed. The interaction of reforms and economic expansion, however, was not influential.     

Inventories,inflation dynamics and the New Keynesian Phillips curve

We introduce inventories into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model and study the implications for inflation dynamics. Inventory holdings are motivated as a means to generate sales for demand-constrained firms. We derive various representations of the New Keynesian Phillips curve with inventories and show that one of these specifications is observationally equivalent to the standard model with respect to the behavior of inflation when the model's cross-equation restrictions are imposed. However, the driving variable in the New Keynesian Phillips curve – real marginal cost – is unobservable and has to be proxied by, for instance, real unit labor cost. An alternative approach is to impute marginal cost by using the model's optimality conditions. We show that the stock–sales ratio is linked to marginal cost. We also estimate these various specifications of the New Keynesian Phillips curve using GMM. We find that the predictive power of the inventory-specification at best approaches that of the standard model, but does not improve upon it.     

Learning to bid: The design of auctions under uncertainty and adaptation

We examine auction design in a context where symmetrically informed adaptive agents with common valuations learn to bid for a good. Despite the absence of private valuations, asymmetric information, or risk aversion, bidder strategies do not converge to the Bertrand–Nash equilibrium strategies even in the long run. Deviations from equilibrium strategies depend on uncertainty regarding the value of the good, auction structure, the agents? learning model, and the number of bidders. Although individual agents learn Nash bidding strategies in isolation, the learning of each agent, by flattening the best-reply correspondence of other agents, blocks common learning. These negative externalities are more severe in second-price auctions, auctions with many bidders, and auctions where the good has an uncertain value ex post.     

Does a marching band impact college Football game attendance? A panel study of Division II

Marching bands are an integral part of the college football game-day experience by increasing both the quantity and quality of entertainment. Academic music programs could enhance a band’s entertainment value via better-trained members and recruitment of more highly skilled musicians. The impact of these influences on game-day attendance is explored using data from nine years of regular season games in Division II. The regression model controls for economic factors, home-team performance, demographic influences and game characteristics and employs boot-strap clustering methods for calculating standard errors of coefficients. Results suggest that a marching band, the existence of an academic music program and being a historically black college each exerts an independent positive impact on attendance after controlling for all other factors.     

Healthcare utilization and costs among relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma patients on carfilzomib or pomalidomide as monotherapy or in combination with dexamethasone

Aim: To compare monthly healthcare resource utilization (HRU) and costs among adult patients with multiple myeloma (MM) receiving second or subsequent line of treatment (LOT) with carfilzomib or pomalidomide as monotherapy or in combination with dexamethasone.

Methods and materials: Adult MM patients who received carfilzomib or pomalidomide as second/subsequent LOT between 2006 and 2014 were selected from the MarketScan databases. LOT was determined using Medical/pharmacy claims using a published algorithm. For each patient, first LOT with carfilzomib or pomalidomide was defined as index LOT. Patients with first LOT as index LOT, who received other chemotherapy in combination with carfilzomib or pomalidomide, or who underwent stem cell transplant (STC) during index LOT were excluded. Monthly HRU and costs during index LOT were compared using inverse probability of treatment weights (IPTW) based on propensity scores for receipt of carfilzomib estimated by logistic regression with LOT, patient demographics, Charlson index, comorbidities, pre-index healthcare cost, and receipt of prior SCT as covariates.

Results: After weighting, baseline characteristics were well balanced among 114 carfilzomib and 144 pomalidomide patients. Mean (95% CI) numbers of outpatient visits per month were 7.1 (5.2–8.0) with carfilzomib and 4.7 (3.9–6.1) with pomalidomide (p?=?0.006). Otherwise, there were no statistically significant differences between the groups in mean monthly HRU and costs or median time to therapy discontinuation. Mean (95% CI) monthly total healthcare costs were $19,776 (15,322–27,748) with pomalidomide and $17,321 (12,412–21,874) with carfilzomib (p?=?0.522).

Limitations: Comparison of carfilzomib vs pomalidomide may be biased if there are unobserved factors not balanced by IPTW. The relatively small sample size limits the power of analyses to detect potential differences between treatment groups.

Conclusions: Monthly HRU and costs are similar among patients with relapse or refractory MM patients receiving carfilzomib or pomalidomide as monotherapy or in combination with dexamethasone.     

Investor Pessimism and the German Stock Market: Exploring Google Search Queries

We analyze the relationship of retail investor sentiment and the German stock market by introducing four distinct investor pessimism indices (IPIs) based on selected aggregate Google search queries. We assess the predictive power of weekly changes in sentiment captured by the IPIs for contemporaneous and future DAX returns, volatility and trading volume. The indices are found to have individually varying, but overall remarkably high explanatory power. An increase in retail investor pessimism is accompanied by decreasing contemporaneous market returns and an increase in volatility and trading volume. Future returns tend to increase while future volatility and trading volume decrease. The outcome is in line with the conjecture of correction effects. Overall, the results are well in line with modern investor sentiment theory.