Registered nurses' perspectives on health care and the 2008 presidential election

As this historic presidential election draws near, what do RNs think of our nation's priorities? Which candidates do they think will be most effective in shaping our health care system and addressing the most pressing issues of our time? The results of this survey show that RNs do not identify overwhelmingly with one political ideology or party and, in fact, they closely resemble the public on these political dimensions. The data also show that RNs identify health care issues as the most important problem facing the nation. RNs who believe that it is the responsibility of the government to provide health insurance to those without it, have more confidence in the government to achieve this outcome, and are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. The presidential election is expected to be highly contested and could be determined by a relatively small margin of votes and, thus, nurses should recognize their chances of influencing the outcome of the election. The data from this survey provide baseline information potentially useful to increasing the political influence of the nursing profession, informing other organizations about where they might align with nurses, and helping candidates and the political parties compete more effectively in seeking the support of roughly 3 million RN voters.     

Environmental technology foresight: New horizons for technology management

Decision-making in corporate technology management and government technology policy is increasingly influenced by the environmental impact of technologies. Technology foresight (TF) and environmental impact assessment (EIA) are analyzed with regard to the roles they can play in developing long-term strategies and policies for reducing the environmental impact of technologies. The methods for TF and EIA are quite well developed, but remain within a tradition of rational decision-making. However, recent studies of tecnology management and innovation have shown that technology development can be explained only to a certain degree by rational decision-making. EIA is usually presented as an objective and scientific method, based on normative underpinnings that usually remain hidden. Thus, systematic information-providing instruments such as TF and EIA can play only a limited role. We propose a procedure for environmental technology foresight. The case is made that environmental technology management will be most helped by a 'constructive' approach in order to stimulate incorporation of long-term environmental objectives.     

麻省理工学院全球高管研修班

"我们的愿景是让全球各地的高层领导人,无论其英文口语水平如何,都能到麻省理工学院参加一系列定期举办的高管培训,获得人们梦寐以求的高管培训证书。这为跨国企业精英高管们提供了一个独一无二的机会,他们可以共聚一堂,向教师及彼此学习与交流,以真正独特的方式探讨全球化带来的挑战。这是一个大胆的构想,世界上有能真正实现它的地方,那就是麻省理工学院。"     

A BUREAUCRAT'S PROCUREMENT STRATEGY: BUDGET CONSTRAINTS AND RATIONING

ABSTRACT ** :  We investigate a bureaucratic principal responsible for the procurement of goods and services from private agents. The bureaucrat is evaluated on output and controlled by a limited budget. The agents maximize profit, have private information about variable production costs, and have positive outside options which are lost upon acceptance of a procurement contract. The setting is relevant for, e.g. governmental agencies. We show how this setup makes probabilistic rationing and overproduction for low-cost agents a useful tool for the bureaucrat.     

FDI and Income Inequality—Evidence from Latin American Economies

This paper analyzes whether foreign direct investment (FDI) has contributed to the wide income gaps in Latin America. Panel cointegration techniques as well as regression analysis are performed to assess the impact of inward FDI stocks on income inequality among households in Latin American host countries. The panel cointegration analysis typically reveals a significant and positive effect on income inequality. There is no evidence for reverse causality. The findings are fairly robust to the choice of different estimation methods, sample selection and the period of observation.     

Tradespace exploration of in-space communications network architectures

Making architectural decisions in long lifecycle systems is challenging because the time between system definition and end of operations can span multiple decades, resulting in shifts in stakeholder needs and major advances in technologies. Space-based communications using relay satellite constellations is one such example, requiring substantial up-front planning to define capabilities and size capacity due to the large investment of time and resources. Additionally, there are numerous viable system architectures. In this paper, we build on existing methods to develop a graph-based decision method to assess and explore architectural flexibility in the future evolution of long lifecycle systems. The tradespace graph defines edges between similar architectures, quantifies the switching cost between architectures, using graphs to analyse the potential system evolution pathways. In a test case on NASA communication satellites, we find that hosting government communications payloads, in particular optical payloads, on commercial satellites could reduce cost and increase flexibility of the NASA network.     

Unemployment Risk, Labour Force Participation and Savings

This paper analyses labour force participation and precautionary savings in the presence of risks of being fired or failing to secure a job offer when out of the labour market. We use a finite horizon framework with two employment states and a stage utility function which is CARA in consumption but non-separable in leisure. The results are that there is precautionary labour force participation: employment risk lowers the reservation wage; generally it also reduces consumption. However due to the non-separability assumption, precautionary savings, as usually defined, may not be positive. We characterize the reservation wage and contrast the results with those in which the stage utility is additive in leisure and consumption. We extend the analysis to study the effects of cyclical variation in employment risk, of stochastic future wage rates, and of adding a third employment state of search.     

The proper panel econometric specification of the gravity equation: A three-way model with bilateral interaction effects

We argue that the proper specification of a panel gravity model should include main (exporter, importer, and time) as well as time invariant exporter-by-importer (bilateral) interaction effects. In a panel of 11 APEC countries, the latter are highly significant and account for the largest part of variation. First version received: February 2001/Final version received: June 2002 RID="*" ID="*"  We are grateful to two anonymous referees and Robert Kunst for their helpful comments.     

Private enforcement,corruption, and antitrust design

We examine how the rationale for enabling versus precluding private antitrust enforcement depends on whether antitrust enforcement is corruption-free or plagued by corruption. Corruption in courts affects the incentives to bring forth private antitrust lawsuits. This, in turn, along with corruption in antitrust agency enforcement, alters the incentives to commit antitrust violations. The social welfare effect of enabling private antitrust enforcement in the presence of corruption depends on whether corrupt officials in the ensuing bribery contests favor a particular firm and if so which one and to what extent. Under some circumstances, corruption actually increases the social desirability of private antitrust enforcement relative to the no-corruption scenario. Our analysis highlights that the effects of a given legal arrangement for antitrust enforcement critically depend on the corruption environment and, thus, that the appropriate design of antitrust institutions is context-specific.     

Market failure vs. system failure as a rationale for economic policy? A critique from an evolutionary perspective

This paper reconsiders the explanation of economic policy from an evolutionary economics perspective. It contrasts the neoclassical equilibrium notions of market and government failure with the dominant evolutionary neo-Schumpeterian and Austrian-Hayekian perceptions. Based on this comparison, the paper criticizes the fact that neoclassical reasoning still prevails in non-equilibrium evolutionary economics when economic policy issues are examined. This is more than surprising, since proponents of evolutionary economics usually view their approach as incompatible with its neoclassical counterpart. In addition, it is shown that this “fallacy of failure thinking” even finds its continuation in the alternative concept of “system failure” with which some evolutionary economists try to explain and legitimate policy interventions in local, regional or national innovation systems. The paper argues that in order to prevent the otherwise fruitful and more realistic evolutionary approach from undermining its own criticism of neoclassical economics and to create a consistent as well as objective evolutionary policy framework, it is necessary to eliminate the equilibrium spirit. Finally, the paper delivers an alternative evolutionary explanation of economic policy which is able to overcome the theory-immanent contradiction of the hitherto evolutionary view on this subject.