Preparing your organization's training program for ICD-10

Training for ICD-10 is going to be expensive, though predictions of how expensive vary widely. Healthcare finance executives should create a flexible, multiyear capital and operating budget to prepare for ICD-10 conversion and the training and support that will be required. Healthcare organizations also should assess staff knowledge in the critical ICD-10 areas and begin training now to be ready for go-live by early 2013.     

Social indicators and technology assessment

The relationship between what is known as “social indicators” and what is called “technology assessment” is one between two “social technologies”. Both are at a relatively early stage of development and both carry the burdens associated with great expectations and enthusiastic missionaries.     

Feedback and the success of irrational investors

We provide a model in which irrational investors trade based upon considerations that have no inherent connection to fundamentals. However, trading activity affects market prices, and because of feedback from security prices to cash flows, the irrational trades influence underlying cash flows. As a result, irrational investors can, in some situations, earn abnormal (i.e., risk-adjusted) profits that can exceed the abnormal profits of rational informed investors. Although the trading of irrational investors cause prices to deviate from fundamental values, stock prices follow a random walk.     

Exporting and Productivity in the United Kingdom

This paper investigates various aspects of the links betweenexporting and productivity for a large sample of firms in theUnited Kingdom. We find evidence to support the propositionthat sunk costs are important. Self selection takes place, withlarger and more productive firms entering export markets, andfirms have to become more productive in order to enter. Industrycharacteristics also affect the likelihood of entry—bothindustrial and spatial agglomeration are important. When werely on an unmatched sample of firms we can find some evidenceof further productivity improvement after entry, but this disappearswhen we use a matched sample. Our results suggest that policyshould avoid simply subsidizing firms that may self select intoexport promotion policies and focus instead on reducing informationasymmetries and supporting development of clusters.     

Globalization and real wages in New Zealand 1873-1913

This paper reports annual real wage indexes for laborers and for workers more generally in New Zealand, adjusted for purchasing power parity, for the years 1873-1913. These data are used to include New Zealand in the debates surrounding international wage convergence. On the basis of time series tests we find evidence of an integrated trans-Tasman labor market. Productivity, the terms of trade, and swings in labor’s income share, rather than immigration, shaped New Zealand’s wage growth.     

Cournot Oligopoly Conditions under which Any Horizontal Merger Is Profitable

Findings in economic theory suggest that horizontalmergers involving firms with aggregate market shareless than 50% are unlikely to be motivated by theconsequent reduction in competitivity. The resultsarise because, absent cost efficiencies, quantity-settingfirms in small mergers are impoverished by the merger.We demonstrate that this conclusion is a consequence ofthe strong restrictions imposed on the demand function,and we identify a well-behaved demand function suchthat any set of merging firms benefits from the reductionin competition even when there are no cost efficiencies.     

Knowledge transfer costs and dependence as determinants of financial reporting

Abstract This paper examines the circumstances in which financial reporting exists. Jensen and Meckling (1995 ) observe that where there are high knowledge transfer costs, then decentralisation is necessary; and that where decentralisation occurs there is a control problem, which can be addressed by providing a control system. I predict that where there are high knowledge transfer costs there will be a control system; if the control system uses financial reports, these will occur for activities with high knowledge transfer costs. The ability to decentralise is reduced where dependence makes it potentially costly to allow a subordinate to make decisions about the activity. The paper predicts that high dependence will be negatively associated with the existence of financial reports. The results confirm the predictions that financial reports are positively associated with knowledge transfer costs and negatively associated with dependence.