Shifting from Undersupply to Oversupply: Does NHS Workforce Planning Need a Paradigm Shift?

The National Health Service in England is currently halfway through the most austere decade in its history. Finding ways to improve health care efficiency is crucial to ensure the sustainability of the health system. While evidence of supply‐induced demand (SID) has often been used as an economic argument to restrict labour supply, in the UK the risks of SID may be much less than in health care systems with more deregulated entry into the market post‐qualification and with fee‐for‐service payment systems. This article focuses on the problem of staff shortages in nursing. We argue that, although an oversupply of some types of labour can add to cost pressures by increasing demand for health care services and that the cost of training staff is high, undersupply and poor labour planning lead to unintended consequences such as poor labour productivity. As a result there is a case for public policy to target an oversupply of nurses in the future. If government reforms to nurse funding help, they are to be welcomed.     

Measuring the Effects of Film and Television on Tourism to Screen Locations: A Theoretical and Empirical Perspective

It is generally believed that consumption of film and television products can induce tourism to destinations featured. We review the literature relating to this, examine it from the perspective of mass communications theory and develop a general causal model to measure the influence of screen products on visitor numbers. The model is quantified by way of a survey at two popular UK destinations. Our conclusions are that the contributions of screen products to visitor numbers are fractional, diffuse and substantial. We further find that the magnitude of the effect differs greatly between destinations and that this is related to background causes independent of screen effects.     

Marketing and the law

Marketing decisions are particularly vulnerable to legal rulings made in both the courts and the legislatures. The effective management of those legal implications challenges the modern marketing professional. Grasping marketing’s overall legal environment, including its governing case law, regulatory statutes, and future trends, is essential. This review will provide analysis of recent court cases and legislation, with particular emphasis on creatively assisting the marketer’s management of the legal factor.     

Market entry,privatization and bank performance in transition1

This paper examines how market entry and privatization have affected the margins and marginal costs of banks in the post‐communist transition. We estimate bank revenue and cost functions, allowing the estimated parameters to change over time. In the first sub‐period (1995–98), we find that privatized banks earned higher margins than other banks, while foreign start‐ups had lower marginal costs. In the third sub‐period (2002–2004), foreign banks remained low marginal cost service providers, while privatized domestic banks had the widest margins. Subtracting marginal costs from margins to calculate mark‐ups, an indication of demand for services, shows that initially privatized banks had the largest mark‐ups. However, by the third sub‐period, differences among private banks diminished. In comparison to private banks, state banks persistently under‐performed in controlling costs and attracting demand. Our evidence therefore indicates that foreign bank entry promoted lower costs and that privatization and market entry encouraged more demand for services.     

MODELING INTERNATIONAL CONSUMPTION PATTERNS

This article addresses a number of key problems commonly confronted in the literature on international demand analysis. These include data issues and requirements, multistage budgeting, outliers, group heteroskedasticity, and model selection. A two-stage demand system is fit to International Comparison Programme data for 114 countries for nine aggregate categories and eight food sub-categories of goods. Outliers are identified and omitted from the sample. Parameter estimates for the two stages are obtained with a maximum-likelihood procedure that corrects for group heteroskedasticity. Country-specific income and own-price elasticities are calculated and indicate that poor countries are more responsive to changes in income and prices than rich countries. We also find evidence for the strong version of Engel's law; when income doubles, the budget share of food declines by approximately 0.10.     

Long-term health-related burden of adult congenital heart diseases in Hong Kong

Aims: This study aimed to examine the long-term clinical and economic burden of adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD) in Hong Kong.

Methods: It retrospectively analyzed 336 consecutive ACHD patients who attended the Adult Congenital Heart Clinic between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2014. Direct medical costs and clinical outcomes over the 5 years were calculated and documented. The economic evaluation was from the hospital’s perspective.

Results: The median age of ACHD patients was 47 (31–62) years old, with female predominance (61.5%). Ventricular and atrial septal defects accounted for 70% and severe ACHD for 10% of the study cohort. The prevalence of arrhythmia and heart failure increased with the complexity of CHD. The total mean annual cost for managing each ACHD patient was USD 2,913. The annual cost of management of simple ACHD was USD 2,638 vs complex ACHD (USD 6,425) (p?=?0.013).

Conclusions: This study demonstrated severe ACHD patients accounted for higher cardiovascular morbidities in arrhythmias and heart failure with a higher cost of management.     

From Foster Mothers to Child Care Centers: A History of Working Mothers and Child Care in Sweden

The Swedish welfare state is usually considered "woman friendly." It treats mothers, including single mothers, as workers and offers them high quality public child care. Feminist typologies often use paid work as the lens through which to look at welfare states. Jane Jenson, however, proposes that we think seriously about care in typologies of welfare states. The aim of this article is to take the child care arrangements of working mothers seriously and the empirical concern is historical. While most people believe that the expansion of public child care in Sweden enabled mothers to become workers, it could also be argued- looking through the lens of care- that new public policies enabled women workers to become caregivers.     

African Women in the Entrepreneurial Landscape: Reconsidering the Formal and Informal Sectors

Informal and formal sectors can be seen as “dual economies” of African countries. This article discusses the entrepreneurial landscape in Africa considering both sectors, as well as the continuum from small to large within each. It queries whether there can be mobility within and between sectors and whether upward movement, as seen elsewhere, is possible for most African entrepreneurs. The landscape displays the range of women entrepreneurs from traditional microenterprises to large informal-sector traders, from small- to large-scale formal-sector companies, as well as emerging globalists (the “new generation of African entrepreneurs”). Paradigms compare and contrast these entrepreneurs in terms of demographic variables, types of typical enterprises and companies, product sources and markets, start-up capital, networks and associations, and mobility within and between the sectors. Findings show the informal?formal distinction is useful to disentangle the landscape, but that movement between informal sector categories is not substantial because of the entry requirements of education, capital, business networks, etc. Similarly, within the formal sector of small to large businesses, limited access to capital, networks, market niches, and product innovation hinders upward mobility for most. The new generation of African entrepreneurs form an endpoint of the continuum because their global business methods, networks, financial transparency, and business ethics propel them to success. Hence, while most African women entrepreneurs are lower on the scale, there is a growing cadre of women at the top who provide role models of achievement within their countries.