居住模式对老人福利的影响：基于代际关系的视角--来自我国老人膳食质量的证据

在我国老龄化程度不断加深的过程中,老人的居住模式选择及其福利问题变得越来越重要。我国传统的与子女合住的居住模式真的能改善老人福利吗？文章以我国老人的膳食质量为例,基于我国独特的“双向反馈”代际关系,从“亲代需求”和“子代需求”两个方面来讨论亲子合住居住模式对老人福利的影响,并利用2009年与2011年中国居民健康与营养调查(CH NS )的数据加以实证检验。研究表明：(1)与子女合住的居住模式非但没有改善反而降低了老人的平衡膳食得分,尤其在低龄老人、农村老人和女性老人中更为明显。(2)从影响渠道来看,亲子合住居住模式家庭中老人为满足子女的抚幼需求而无私地投入时间和精力,但老人的照料需求却没有得到很好的满足,代际关系重心向下偏移是造成老人膳食质量下降的主要原因。文章为不同居住模式下老人福利干预政策的制定和社会养老服务体系的建设提供了实证依据。     

Paper and Hill: An In‐Class Corporate Governance Case

Corporate governance is a set of rules and processes that help ensure that firms are effectively run for the benefit of their stakeholders. Good corporate governance is predicated on having directors fulfill their fiduciary duties while acting as stewards of the corporation. The fact that good corporate governance is essential to a well‐functioning and prosperous society is reflected in CPA Canada's Strategy and Governance competency. Unfortunately, there are few in‐class Canadian corporate governance cases that instructors can use to help accounting students improve their understanding of these three fundamental governance concepts: director duty of care, director duty of loyalty, and the business judgment rule. This Canadian corporate governance case is based on the actual events regarding the approval of Steven Hill's employment contract as the Chair of Paper Enterprises Inc. The case is presented using PowerPoint slides, rather than in a traditional narrative format, as it intended to be used as an in‐class case that does not require advance student preparation.     

Public Support for Older Disabled People: Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing on Receipt of Disability Benefits and Social Care Subsidy

In England, state support for older people with disabilities consists of a national system of non‐means‐tested cash disability benefits and a locally administered means‐tested system of social care. Evidence on how the combination of the two systems targets those in most need is lacking. We estimate a latent factor structural equation model of disability and receipt of one or both forms of support. The model integrates the measurement of disability and its influence on receipt of state support, allowing for the socio‐economic gradient in disability, and adopts income and wealth constructs appropriate to each part of the model. We find that receipt of each form of support rises as disability increases, with a strong concentration on the most disabled, especially for local‐authority‐funded care. The overlap between the two programmes is confined to the most disabled. Less than half of recipients of local‐authority‐funded care also receive a disability benefit; a third of those in the top 10 per cent of the disability distribution receive neither form of support. Despite being non‐means‐tested, disability benefits display a degree of income and wealth targeting, as a consequence of the socio‐economic gradient in disability and likely disability benefit claims behaviour. The scope for improving income/wealth targeting of disability benefits by means testing them, as some have suggested, is thus less than might be expected.     

Valuing Unpaid Child Care in the U.S.: A Prototype Satellite Account Using the American Time Use Survey

This paper builds on previous satellite accounts that treat households as production units, but challenges their measurement and valuation of time devoted to child care, making a case for the inclusion of supervisory child care time that does not overlap with other productive activities. We also suggest several other methodological refinements for estimates based on analysis of data from the American Time Use Survey: application of a vector of specialized replacement cost wage estimates for different child care activities rather than a single wage, and adjustments for the ratio of children to adults present and for the educational attainment of caregivers. Our estimates of the value of child care alone in 2004 and 2010 exceed previous estimates of the value of all non‐market household production in the U.S. The end result is an upward adjustment of Gross Domestic Product by about 43 percent compared to previous adjustments of about 26 percent.     

‘Medical altruism in mainstream health economics: theoretical and political paradoxes’ comments

In this article, which was published in the September 2014 issue of the Review, Batifoulier and Da Silva examine the role of medical altruism in health economics. They argue that abandoning homo economicus and the mainstream practice of incorporating patient well-being in the doctor’s utility function in order to explain the clinical behavior of doctors and switching from profit maximization to medical altruism both lead to a dead end. We agree but the authors leave us with no way out. We argue instead that the doctor’s clinical behavior whether expressed in terms of utility or altruism is not a fit subject for economics. The way out is to restrict economics to health care issues with financial dimensions. In their article, Batifoulier and Da Silva bring their French experience to the table. We bring to the table our American experience with more than 40 years of hands-on care for patients along with the experiences of four other physicians in our extended family. The specialties include intensive care pediatrics, emergency medicine, intensive-care pulmonary medicine, dermatology, and otolaryngology. Our premise in responding to Batifoulier and Da Silva is that apart from payment for services rendered, there probably are no serious differences in the actual practice of medicine in France compared to the United States. And even if there are such differences, they are matters to be taken up by medicine not economics.     

从经济的角度考察西部欠发达地区农村家庭养老的困境

随着老龄化的加快,养老越来越成为重要的社会问题,在西部欠发达农村地区,由于土地养老和农村医疗保障的缺陷,老年人的自养能力很脆弱;对老年人的子女来说,由于存在老年人的预期寿命延长和子女数下降的矛盾,养老能力也同样很脆弱,家庭养老陷入了困境.     

A bivariate zero-inflated count data regression model with unrestricted correlation

This paper proposes a computationally simple bivariate zero-inflated count data regression model with an unrestricted correlation pattern. An application to data with excess of zeros on the demand for health services is given.     

Towards an accessible hotel: a case study of Scandic

This paper focuses on the issue of hotel accessibility and offers a case study of Scandic. Drawing on a qualitative-cum-quantitative methodology, it argues for a holistic approach to the idea of an accessible hotel. Specifically, it is based on semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey conducted among elderly and disabled guests. Accordingly, it underscores not only the importance of a corporate social responsibility (CSR)-centred organizational culture and employee extra-role behaviours, but also of customer satisfaction, loyalty and trust. This paper proposes an original and evidence-based conceptualization of hotel accessibility and offers several practical recommendations intending to turn hotels into truly accessible facilities.     

How True Is True? Assessing Socially Desirable Response Bias

Health care professionals' (HCPs) opinions and perspectives are highly valuedbecause these individuals often play a major role in developing and implementingsupport and education services aimed at cancer patients and their families. Thepurpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of adding a substantive measurethat would be useful for determining socially desirable responses (SDRs) withoutadding unnecessary length to the questionnaire design. A total of 1180 nurses,physicians, and social workers specializing in oncology returned fully completedmailed questionnaires (61% response rate) originally intended to measure HCPs'awareness (i.e., knowledge, helpfulness, and recommendations) of cancer supportservices. SDRs were assessed by the inclusion of a bogus program that was comparedto actual support programs. Results indicated that relative to the bogus program, HCPswere significantly more likely to endorse programs that they knew about, thought helpful,and recommended. Evidence of SDR bias was lacking. These findings provide supportfor the inclusion of measures that can be used on brief questionnaires to strengthenresearch methodology.     

Advances in physician profiling: the use of DEA

Insurers, health plans, and individual physicians in the United States are facing increasing pressures to reduce costs while maintaining quality. In this study, motivated by our work with a large managed care organization, we use readily available data from its claims database with data envelopment analysis (DEA) to examine physician practices within this organization. Currently the organization evaluates primary care physicians using a profile of 16 disparate ratios involving cost, utilization, and quality. We employed these same factors along with indicators of severity to develop a single, comprehensive measure of physician efficiency through DEA. DEA enabled us to identify a reference set of “best practice” physicians tailored to each inefficient physician. This paper presents a discussion of the selection of model inputs and outputs, the development of the DEA model using a “stepwise” approach, and a sensitivity analysis using superefficiency scores. The stepwise and superefficiency analyses required little extra computation and yielded useful insights into the reasons as to why certain physicians were found to be efficient. This paper demonstrates that DEA has advantages for physician profiling and usefully augments the current ratio-based reports.