What makes a physician revenue cycle tick

Hospitals should boost the revenue cycle performance of acquired physician practices by: Effectively assimilating the physician practice into the overall organization. Standardizing revenue cycle processes, policies, and tools between the hospital and physician practice. Enhancing physician/patient scheduling policies and procedures. Regularly auditing physician documentation and periodically comparing hospital charges against practice charges. Improving procedures for responding to denials.     

Familiarity breeds growth: The impact of factional ties on local cadres’ economic performance in China

Some attribute China's rapid economic growth to a cadre promotion system that rewards economic performance. Others argue that political promotion in China hinges on factionalism. Extant empirical studies often assume that performance can be measured independently from the effect of factionalism. We test the validity of this assumption by examining whether local cadres’ economic performance would change as a result of losing vertical ties to a higher authority. We find an immediate increase in the growth rates of local GDP and government revenue. However, the performance change is mediated by the type of succeeding leaders, as it occurs only under locally promoted leaders who have existing ties with the local cadres. We further examine various channels through which a leader's insider status may affect local economic performance and find that newly appointed outsider leaders would cut fiscal transfers to the local level, which may explain the drop in their short‐term performance.     

Economics of an Integrated Manurial Biogas and Protein Recovery System for Beef Cattle

Fermentation of livestock manure for the production of biogas is not economically viable given current and prospective energy prices, as long as the residue from the fermentation process is used on agricultural land as a source of crop nutrients. An alternative use of the residue is to separate out the solid fraction for use as a source of protein and minerals for livestock. This alternative was evaluated for a commercial beef feedlot in Ontario, and was found to provide attractive returns using feed replacement values for the residue solids, even when a zero value was attributed to the biogas, and when real interest rates reached 7 percent. Economies of size were also found.     

Firm routines,customer switching and market selection under duopoly

This paper explores the dynamics of market selection for an industry in which firms employ relatively simple pricing, production and investment routines and in which consumers switch between rival firms in response to price differentials but do not all do so instantaneously. The key issue is whether market processes result in the elimination of less efficient firms by their more efficient rivals. That is to say, do such processes unfailingly increase the efficiency with which available economic resources are used? In the context of duopoly, we show that the survival of the more efficient firm is not guaranteed and that, more generally, the outcome depends upon the speeds with which firms adjust prices and capacities and with which customers switch between rival firms.     

Standard deviations implied in option prices as predictors of future stock price variability

Standard deviations implied in option prices have recently been introduced as being better than average predictors of future stock price variability. This article specifically studies the predictive ability of implicit standard deviations, taking into account the dividend problem and the problem of optimal weighting schemes of the standard deviations when there are several options on the same stock. Transaction data information was used to study the importance of non-simultaneities in observing stock and option prices.     

Limit pricing,conjectural variation and entry

The paper investigates the relationship of the degree of tacit collusion among existing sellers on industry price when a threat of entry exists. A general model is developed which allows comparison of two seemingly unrelated strands of the limit pricing literature.     

A heuristic analysis of highly fractionated 2n factorial experiments

Fractional factorial experiments are very useful in identifying active factors and the conventional method of analysis may not always detect these active factors. Box and Meyer (1993) provided a Bayesian method to compute the posterior probability that a factor is active. Their method does not indicate whether main effects or interactions are active. Following their approach in a non-Bayesian way, we will present a heuristic analysis which determines the active main effects and small order interactions in any 2ⁿ fractional factorial design. It may be noted that the method given by Box and Meyer has greater flexibility and wider applicability over the method given in this paper; however, our method is a simpler alternative for 2ⁿ experiments that determines active main effects and small order interactions. No SimplePara     

Book reviews

Louviere, Jordan. 1988. Analyzing decision making: Metric conjoint measurement. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. ISBN 080397576. 95 pp. Paper $6.95.

DiGiulio, Robert C. 1989. Beyond widowhood—from bereavement to emergence and hope. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0–02–907882–2. 240 pp. Cloth, $19.95

Ewert, Alan W. 1989. Outdoor adventure pursuits: Foundations, models, and theories. Worthington, Ohio: Publishing Horizons, Inc. ISBN 0–942280–50–4. 234 pp. Hardcover, $20.00.     

Agglomeration and clustering over the industry life cycle: Toward a dynamic model of geographic concentration

Research on agglomeration finds that either a higher survival rate of incumbent firms or a higher founding rate of new entrants, or both, can sustain an industry cluster. The conditioning effects of time on the two distinct mechanisms of survival and founding are, however, rarely examined. We argue that the forces driving geographic concentration vary across the industry life cycle. Data from Ontario's winery industry from 1865 to 1974 demonstrates a dynamic model of geographic concentration: agglomeration attracts more new entry in the growth stage only, whereas it contributes to firm survival in the mature stage only. The results not only establish the importance of understanding the temporal dynamics underlying agglomeration externalities, but also provide a possible explanation for the mixed empirical results found in previous studies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.