Comparative financing analysis and political economy of noncommunicable diseases

The pandemic of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) poses substantial challenges to the health financing sustainability in high-income and low/middle income countries (LMICs). The aim of this review is to identify the bottle neck inefficiencies in NCDs attributable spending and propose sustainable health financing solutions. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the “best buy” concept to scale up the core intervention package against NCDs targeted for LMICs. Population- and individual-based NCD best buy interventions are projected at US$170 billion over 2011–2025. Appropriately designed health financing arrangements can be powerful enablers to scale up the NCD best buys. Rapidly developing emerging nations dominate the landscape of LMICs. Their capability and willingness to invest resources for eradicating NCDs could strengthen WHO outreach efforts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, much beyond current capacities. There has been a declining trend in international donor aid intended to cope with NCDs over the past decade. There is also a serious misalignment of these resources with the actual needs of recipient countries. Globally, the momentum towards the financing of intersectoral actions is growing, and this presents a cost-effective solution. A budget discrepancy of 10:1 in WHO and multilateral agencies remains in donor aid in favour of communicable diseases compared to NCDs. LMICs are likely to remain a bottleneck of NCDs imposed financing sustainability challenge in the long-run. Catastrophic household health expenditure from out of pocket spending on NCDs could plunge almost 150 million people into poverty worldwide. This epidemiological burden coupled with population ageing presents an exceptionally serious sustainability challenge, even among the richest countries which are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Strategic and political leadership of WHO and multilateral agencies would likely play essential roles in the struggle that has just begun.     

The impact of credit constraints on the performance of Chinese agricultural wholesalers

This article evaluates the impact of credit constraints on the performance of Chinese agricultural wholesalers. We estimate a stochastic frontier function using transaction and credit data of agricultural wholesalers from across China to estimate the efficiency and productivity impacts of credit constraints on sales of affected agricultural wholesalers. Empirical results show that micro- and smaller wholesalers are disproportionally impacted by credit constraints and that eliminating these constraints would increase the sales of affected agricultural wholesalers by approximately 15%. Thus, policies aimed at providing credit access for these wholesalers would significantly boost the performance of smaller agricultural wholesalers while improving the overall performance of the Chinese food supply chain without requiring additional non-credit inputs.     

Opportunistic shirking behaviour during unpaid overtime

We identify the presence of shirking by Major League Baseball umpires during indefinite unpaid overtime, as defined by extra innings. In the presence of new information about expected game length, umpires exert biases in ball and strike calls consistent with opportunistically reducing the likelihood of working additional time. General implications with respect to the effectiveness of salaried workers during unpaid overtime hours are discussed.     

The effects of mergers and acquisitions on the firm size distribution

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the effects of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on the shape of the firm size distribution, by using data of the population of manufacturing firms in the Netherlands. Our analysis shows that M&As do not affect the size distribution when we consider the entire population of firms. When we focus on the firms involved in an M&A event, we observe a shift of the firm size distribution towards larger sizes. Firm size distribution becomes more concentrated around the mean, less skewed to the right hand side, and thinner at the tails as a whole. The shift toward higher sizes due to M&A is not uniform but affects firms of different sizes in different ways. While the number of firms in the lower tail decreased, the number of firms in the central size classes increased substantially and outweighed the increase in the number (and mean size) of firms in the upper tail of the distribution (consequently the overall market concentration measured by the Herfindahl index declines). M&As lead to a departure from log-normality of the firm size distribution, suggesting that external growth does not follow Gibrat’s law. Our counterfactual analysis highlights that only internal growth does not affect the shape of the size distribution of firms. On the contrary, it suggests that the change in the size distribution is almost entirely due to the external growth of the firms.

The future of technology and marketing: a multidisciplinary perspective

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science -     

Linking Public Investment to Private Investment. The Case of Spanish Regions

Public investment constitutes one of the main instruments of regional policies. The existence of a direct link between infrastructure and regional income per capita is usually accepted. Literature also describes a positive effect of public investment on private capital accumulation. This paper seeks to provide new empirical evidence on this latter relationship for the case of Spanish regions over the period 1965–1997 using panel data methodology. The results show a positive effect of productive and social public investment (especially in education) on private investment. The spillover effects generated by the productive infrastructures located in other regions do not seem to encourage the private investment in neighbouring regions. Public consumption and interest rate exert a negative influence on private capital accumulation. These results are robust to changes in the econometric specification.     

Housing and cost of living: Application to the Spanish regions

Spain is a home-owner economy, and housing is a key good for determining the cost of living. However, its treatment in indices such as the Spanish Consumer Price Index (CPI) makes it impossible to measure the real impact of housing on the cost of living. This issue is especially relevant at the regional level, where the differences in the housing markets are very substantial. This paper demonstrates the importance of taking account of owner occupied housing in a measure of the cost of living for Spain.     

Does Ethnic Discrimination Vary Across Minority Groups? Evidence from a Field Experiment*

We conduct a large‐scale field experiment to measure labour market discrimination in Australia, one quarter of whose population was born overseas. To denote ethnicity, we use distinctively Anglo‐Saxon, Indigenous, Italian, Chinese and Middle Eastern names. We compare multiple ethnic groups, rather than a single minority as in most other studies. In all cases we applied for entry‐level jobs and submitted a CV indicating that the candidate attended high school in Australia. We find significant differences in callback rates: ethnic minority candidates would need to apply for more jobs in order to receive the same number of interviews. These differences vary systematically across ethnic groups.     

Board Determinants in Banking Industry. An International Perspective

This paper explores the factors influencing the board composition of an international sample of commercial banks over the period 1996–2006. After considering the dual role of the board as monitor and advisor, our analysis shows that no one board composition is optimal for the banking industry and that any such recommendation could harm bank governance. Our results suggest that more complex banks that have a low ownership concentration and are headquartered in a civil law country should have larger and more independent boards. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Innovation in the every day life of libraries

A state of the Art trend analysis of the Library and Information science reveals that the Library world is in the midst of the technological restructuring. Every branch of library work changes continuously because of the technological facilities, although the missions and goals remain unaltered. The libraries belong to these professional divisions which involve the innovation and technology transfer in everyday life. In most of the cases innovation either as a product or as a procedure goes into the libraries, it's not a phenomenon produced by them.On the strategic level libraries on average have developed the ability to collect, process and assimilate technological innovation.On the organizational level libraries follow the changes which technology transfer dictates such as close co-operation with computer centers and external commercial information suppliers, software and hardware suppliers, science and technology achievements, etc. It is too common to libraries to develop routines and Best Practices for every task, derived by the technology they use, for the cost decrease, the time save and the increase of the effectiveness and efficiency.The innovative process is the kind which libraries could adopt, as innovation is composed of the systematic retrieve of changes and systematic analysis of the opportunities which these changes could contribute to economic and social improvement.Innovation above all, is a social procedure, as it is interpreted in terms such as creativity, desires, fantasy and the ability to take risks and to change. So innovation and technology transfer differentiates the role of the librarian and extends it beyond the limits of the information intermediary. The librarian in order to involve, anticipate and especially produce innovation has to learn how to learn, as libraries have to learn how to change.The presentation will be a methodological one and will focus on Best Practices, the definition and a short report, how they combine with the library functions and how they produce innovative processes and new Best Practices. An evaluation of Best Practices according the Value Analysis method is included as a prerequisite of the final choice of which practice is characterised as Best and which not.