Enlarging the Pie vs. Increasing One's Slice: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Generic and Brand Advertising

Marketing Letters - Generic advertising promotes the general qualities of a product category and, therefore, benefits all firms—regardless of who has contributed to the campaign (e.g....     

Constructing a value-based healthcare system for hypertensive patients through changing payment mode: evidence from a comparative study in rural China

Objective: To construct a value-based healthcare system for rural Chinese hypertensive patients through an increasing outpatient care reimbursement ratio.

Methods: This comparative study sampled two similar counties, Dangyang County and Zhijiang County, in Hubei Province of China, as the intervention group and the control group, respectively. The Social Health Insurance Fund of the intervention group budgeted 600 yuan per capita per year to insured patients with third stage hypertension to cover their outpatient expenditures, while the outpatient expenditures of the control group were not covered by its Social Health Insurance Fund. The inpatient expenditure reimbursement policies in both groups were not adjusted during the study. Value improvement in this study was defined as reduction in medical costs and improvement in health outcomes within the pilot healthcare system. A propensity score matching model combined with a difference-in-differences model was used to estimate the changes in medical costs and health outcomes.

Results: In total, 1,673 pairs of patients were enrolled into statistical analysis after the propensity score matching. The intervention increased per capita annual outpatient expenditure by 81.2 (+31.8%) yuan (p?>?.05), but decreased the per capita annual inpatient expenditure and total medical expenditure by 475.4 (–40.7%) yuan and 394.2 (–27.7%) yuan, respectively (p?p?p?p?p?>?.05).

Conclusion: Increasing the outpatient expenditures, the reimbursement ratio was beneficial to the value of the healthcare system for hypertensive patients. Outpatient care for patients with chronic diseases should be prioritized for rural China and healthcare settings with inadequate health insurance funds.     

Excessive Dollar Debt: Financial Development and Underinsurance

We propose that the limited financial development of emerging markets is a significant factor behind the large share of dollar-denominated external debt present in these markets. We show that when financial constraints affect borrowing and lending between domestic agents, agents undervalue insuring against an exchange rate depreciation. Since more of this insurance is present when external debt is denominated in domestic currency rather than in dollars, this result implies that domestic agents choose excessive dollar debt. We also show that limited financial development reduces the incentives for foreign lenders to enter emerging markets. The retarded entry reinforces the underinsurance problem.     

Demutualization and Public Offerings of Financial Exchanges

The recent merger of the New York Stock Exchange with Archipelago, a publicly listed electronic exchange, can be viewed as the final phase of a wave of organizational transformation that has swept across most of the world's major financial exchanges in the last ten years. Until the early 1990s, almost all stock and derivatives exchanges were organized as non‐profit, mutual organizations owned by their members. But starting with the demutualization of the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1993, the number of stock exchanges that have adopted a for‐profit, publicly listed organizational form has grown steadily. At the same time, the largest derivative exchanges such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, and Eurex are either already publicly listed or are part of publicly listed parent companies. In this article, after discussing the forces that are driving such change, the authors offer some early evidence on the profitability and stock market performance of listed exchanges. As the authors note, deregulation together with new developments in information technology have caused latent conflicts of interest within the mutual form of organization to become debilitating ones. And, as if to confirm the superiority of the new organizational form, the authors report that conversions to for‐profit status and public ownership have led to significant increases in operating performance and share values. But, as the authors also note, these results are preliminary, and the demutualization and listing of exchanges creates a new challenge for exchanges as self‐regulating institutions: managing the conflicts that may arise between the owners and those who transact on the exchange. The authors expect the next wave of transformation to produce both geographical consolidation as well as mergers/acquisitions across product lines (e.g. merger of leading equities and derivatives exchanges). In equities trading, given that North America is already dominated by the NYSE and Nasdaq, the most interesting arena will continue to be Europe, where one or two large exchanges are likely to emerge. The emergence of such megaexchanges, with scale comparable to that of U.S. exchanges, could have a significant impact on the corporate capital‐raising process and cost of capital.     

Cost-based Phillips Curve forecasts of inflation

It is a well-established idea that prices are a function of marginal cost, yet estimating a reliable measure of marginal cost is difficult to do. Stock and Watson (1999) use the Phillips Curve to forecast inflation for a variety of existing activity variables that researchers commonly use to proxy for marginal cost. This paper uses a similar type of approach to examine the performance of a new candidate for the activity variable, which is marginal cost measured following the theoretical methodology of Bils (1987), which we find to be simple yet powerful when implemented empirically. We then use the Phillips Curve to conduct pseudo out-of-sample inflation forecasts for the US using: output, unemployment, hours, the labor share, the capacity utilization rate, and the new measure of marginal cost. For almost all cases, forecast errors are lowest in the regressions with the new marginal cost variable, indicating that this new measure is an improvement over previous attempts to proxy for marginal cost.     

The Microsoft challenge

In 1996, the Microsoft Corporation introduced a new giving programme to members of the University of Washington. Rather than simply donating in cash or kind, it offered to match any funds donated by faculty members to graduate students. The response to the programme was overwhelming initially. However, the organisers changed the rules of the challenge and over time, donations went down. Finally, the company indicated that it wanted to wind down the programme. This case offers unique data and perspective on how to use a challenge as part of a fundraising strategy. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

How Reliable Are Hog Futures as Forecasts?

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange hog futures contract was revamped in 1997 and it is one of the largest futures markets for a nonstorable commodity. The literature is divided on whether or not futures prices for nonstorables provide reliable forecasts of cash prices. We find that from 1998 to 2004, the hog futures market was an unbiased predictor of cash prices.     

A provider-cost/patron-effort schema for classifying products

Since the commodity-oriented thinkers of marketing’s early history, marketers have sought a valid schema for classifying products. Currently, the marketing literature is dominated by two types of schemata for classifying products: product-based and consumer cost-based. Despite marketing tenets such asexchange is the focal notion of marketing andgood marketing theory integrates the perspectives of firms and consumers, no existing schema embodies either exchange or a dual firm/consumer perspective. After reviewing the existing classificational schemata, one such schema is proposed and evaluated. The two classifying dimensions of this schema are providers’ relative variable costs (PRVC) and patrons’ relative effort (PRE). Crossing high and low levels of PRVC and PRE yields four product categories: low cost/effort, patroneffort heavy, provider-cost heavy, and high cost/effort. His work has appeared inJournal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Advertising, International Journal of Advertising, Business Horizons, Business Ethics: A European Review, and other journals. His current research interests include marketing theory, advertising, and ethics. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from Purdue University. will soon receive his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of North Texas. His work has appeared inAcademy of Management Journal, as well as the proceedings of the American Marketing Association, the Decision Science Association, and the Society of Franchising. His research interests include building and testing models in international marketing, consumer behavior, and marketing management. His current research interests include self-referent processing of advertisements and consumer satisfaction.