The Attitudes of British National Health Service Managers and Clinicians Towards the Introduction of Benchmarking

This paper describes an empirical study, conducted in three acute hospitals, of the attitudes of central managers, medical managers and clinicians towards the adoption of benchmarking. Benchmarking was portrayed in The New NHS White Paper (1997) as an important means of improving efficiency over the next decade. The present paper examines the context of change and nature of benchmarking. Findings are presented in seven sections including: the understanding which respondents had of benchmarking; their willingness to be involved in benchmarking; the existence of strategies and policies for implementing benchmarking; the relevance of existing costing information; and the role of networks in facilitating benchmarking. The study concludes that the process of change adopted contradicted most of the factors associated with creating receptivity to change. Also, that the publication of the National Reference Costs seemed to have more relevance to resource planning at central National Health Service Management Executive level, than to effecting improvements at operational level in acute hospitals.     

论我国地方财政风险的个性特征

我国地方财政风险，不同于一般的财政风险。从整体考察，它具有分散性、非均衡性和传导性；从结构考察，具有隐蔽性、发展性和内生性，同时它又受外部因素的影响很大。     

JD-1同步电动机微机控制机在整流励磁装置中的应用

为了解决同步电动机在启动过程中的脉振现象以及在运行中因励磁电流不稳而使电动机跳闸等可靠性问题,在整流励磁装置中采用了JD 1同步电动机微机控制机。介绍了控制机的励磁技术性能、励磁可靠性及其维护,较好地改善了电网的功率因数,提高了同步电动机的运行可靠性。     

Flypaper Effect and Sluggishness: Evidence from Regional Health Expenditure in Italy

In Italy, public expenditure reduction is achieved through a revision of social security and health care programs. In particular, public health expenditure control has been implemented through a reform that imposes more stringent budget rules to local governments and a considerable reduction in grants-in-aid from the central government. This paper investigates empirically whether the response to this decrease in categorical lump-sum grants from the central to local governments results in an asymmetric response to intergovernmental grants. Hard budget and soft budget constraint hypotheses are estimated by using a sample of cross-sectional and time observations covering the 20 Italian regions over the period 1989–1993. The main finding is the existence of a standard and a super flypaper effect in both models. The introduction of the soft-budget constraint hypothesis results in a stronger effect of grants and a lower response of own resources which shows that local governments prefer to incur some deficit instead of reducing health care expenditure.     

Informational Networks, Entrepreneurial Action and Performance

This paper develops a model that incorporates personal and business networks, firm action, and performance based on the existing literature. It explores the links between information and entrepreneurial-type action, and action and performance. Survey data was collected from a sample of 100 manufacturing firms in Thailand. Results show that entrepreneurs value the information they receive from their networks. However, there is little statistical support for tangible links between personal or business networks and entrepreneurial action and performance, or between action and performance.     

Characteristics of Earnings-Leading Versus Price-Leading Firms

This study attempts to identify firm characteristics that explain the disparity between the information content of accounting earnings and stock prices. Granger's causality concept was employed to classify sample firms into four groups: price-leading firms, feedback-system firms, earnings-leading firms, and no-causation firms. The feedback-system firms were either combined with the no-causation firms or eliminated entirely to form three sample groups. The entire sample firms then were divided into two classes. The first is for estimation, and the second is for prediction. Results indicate that firm size, capital structure, R-square of regressing prices at time t against earnings at time t – 1, R-square of regressing earnings at time t against prices at time t – 1, and percentage of shares held by institutions are the significant explaining variables. The application of the coefficient estimates to the hold-out sample indicates that 76.2% of the firms can be correctly classified into the corresponding groups. These results were consistent with those from canonical discrimination and other multivariate statistical methods.     

个人理财市场细分及客户群差异性分析

目前我国商业银行个人理财业务尚处于初级阶段,个人理财市场的细分还很简单,尚没有进行更深入的、多层次的分析。针对这一情况,本文借鉴“家庭生命周期”的分析思路,选取人口统计变量和家庭生命周期变量等综合指标作为客户细分变量,对给定的调查样本实施市场细分。为此,本文利用方差分析探讨了一般客户、重要客户、未来潜力客户和战略客户4组客户理财个性的差异性以及对银行理财服务质量期望的差异性。同时,还分析这组客户对主要理财工具、理财产品的需求特点,并在市场细分的基础上制定出4差异化的、有针对性的营销策略。     

我国个人所得税后续改革中必须考虑的若干问题

我国工资薪金个人所得税扣除额宜实行分地区浮动制度,而扣除额的调整必须与扣除方式的改革相结合才具有实质意义。从目前的征管实践来看,加强个人所得税管理、有效控制税源是确保改革目标实现的关键。此外,单纯追求个人所得税的公平功能而忽视其效率的作用,对我国社会政治经济的发展将产生不利的影响,也不符合改革的目标。     

技术服务企业实施QHSE管理体系的探讨

QHSE管理体系是质量、健康、安全、环境为一体的管理模式。该管理体系的建立使企业内的职责和权限更明确、清晰．为企业节省了大量的审核时间及审核经费，为企业带来了经济效益。结合企业管理现状，通过对管理体系的具体分析．提出企业实施QHSE管理体系的几点建议。     

Mutual fund characteristics, managerial attributes, and fund performance

This study provides a comprehensive examination of recent mutual fund performance by analyzing a large set of both mutual funds and fund attributes in an effort to link performance to fund-specific characteristics. The results indicate that the hypothesized relationships between performance and the explanatory variables are generally upheld. After taking into consideration general market conditions and fund investment objective, the characteristic variables that relate to fund popularity, growth, cost, and management also explain performance. Finally, after controlling for survivorship and benchmark error as well as fund-specific factors, the results refute the performance persistence phenomenon.