Designing a guideline-based utilization management program

Many public and private organizations are developing and publishing clinical guidelines to assist health care providers and patients in making appropriate medical decisions. Unless clinical guidelines are part of a well-designed managed care program, they have little effect on physician practice styles. This article explores integral components of an effective guideline-based utilization management program. Initial evaluation of this program suggests that, as part of a well-designed utilization management program, clinical guidelines can inform patients and physicians, and create appropriate incentives for effective health care delivery.     

Sources of capital and income for communal area farmers in Kavango: Implications for agriculture and rural development

A survey based on a structured questionnaire was conducted at the beginning of 1995 to identify sources of capital and income for rural households in Kavango. The survey, which covered 80 households, revealed that there was a high dependence on external income sources. Pensions were the major source of income for the highest proportion of all households (33 per cent), followed by wages (23 per cent) and brewing (10 per cent). Other sources of income of similar importance to brewing were crop sales, non‐formal work and cash remittances.

Livestock were a minor source of income but a major source of capital and food security. Households with smaller cattle herds depended more on cattle for income and food security than those with larger herds. Cattle were a highly valued production resource that was only consumed during times of crisis and only in the absence of less valuable assets that could be easily liquidated. Grain storage was more popular among groups with the lowest income. By various criteria, female‐headed households always tended to be in the group of households categorised as the poorest of the poor. However, given sufficient income, over one third of them would purchase cattle to diversify their investment portfolio.

This article presents a number of potential strategies for improving the incomes of rural households in Kavango. These include the promotion of equitable livestock ownership and better use of the grazing resource through community management, intensification of cropping and the implementation of labour‐intensive programmes to develop rural infrastructure.     

Diversity and arbitrage in a regulatory breakup model

In 1999 Robert Fernholz observed an inconsistency between the normative assumption of existence of an equivalent martingale measure (EMM) and the empirical reality of diversity in equity markets. We explore a method of imposing diversity on market models by a type of antitrust regulation that is compatible with EMMs. The regulatory procedure breaks up companies that become too large, while holding the total number of companies constant by imposing a simultaneous merge of other companies. The regulatory events are assumed to have no impact on portfolio values. As an example, regulation is imposed on a market model in which diversity is maintained via a log-pole in the drift of the largest company. The result is the removal of arbitrage opportunities from this market while maintaining the market’s diversity.     

Reengineering--setting a course for radical change

When you pull up anchor and start reengineering, the seas can look a little rough. Here's what the strategist can expect when retooling some of the typical business processes that make up an average company: manufacturing, sales, information technology, back office/support services, and human resources.     

The environmental Kuznets curve revisited once again

In the past decade, considerable attention has been paid to the hypothesized inverted U-shaped relationship between income level and environmental quality, known as the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). An overview of empirical studies of this relationship finds limited evidence for an EKC. The strongest evidence is with urban SO2 concentrations. A close examination of a seminal paper in this field, which first reported the relationship between income level and SO2 concentrations, finds the relationship weak at best. Given the limited evidence for an EKC, why is it still accepted as fact? This article suggests that it both serves the interests of powerful groups in society, and it corresponds to a notion that wealthy people care more about environmental quality than do poor people.     

Transactions, volume, and volatility

We show that the positive volatility-volume relation documentedby numerous researchers actually reflects the positive relationbetween volatility and the number of transactions. Thus, itis the occurrence of transactions per se, and not their size,that generates volatility; trade size has no information beyondthat contained in the frequency of transactions. Our resultssuggest that theoretical research needs to entertain scenariosin which (i) both the frequency and size of trades are endogenouslydetermined, yet (ii) the size of trades has no information contentbeyond that contained in the number of transactions.     

Growing more trees for fuelwood in the Northern Transvaal or redistribution after sustainable harvesting?

A model of the supply and demand for fuelwood within Region G is considered against the background of the plant nursery programme of the Biomass Initiative. Despite severe deficit in fuelwood supply in the homeland areas, the region as a whole could be self‐sufficient in sustainably harvested fuelwood from natural vegetation given redistribution of fuelwood from areas in the region where sustainable supply is in excess of demand (mainly conservation areas and commercial grazing areas and to a lesser extent commercial forestry plantations); an appropriate transport and distribution system; and multi‐purpose land‐use management. Redistribution would provide jobs within the neglected rural sector and the stimulus for additional industries around other natural resources. It would obviate the need for nurseries aimed primarily at encouraging rural communities to plant trees to alleviate the fuelwood shortage.     

Entrepreneurs' Personal Values,Compensation, and High Growth Firm Performance

We tested whether high growth firms' performance is related to the number of benefits offered and/or the values of the entrepreneur. Using data from the 2007 top 500 fastest growing entrepreneurial firms in America, we discovered that entrepreneurs' values do not relate to the total number of benefits offered, meaning the mediation model does not exist and lending strength to the argument that entrepreneurs' values greatly influence the success of a new venture. However, the total benefits offered are positively related to firm performance. We determine that the entrepreneurs' values and the total benefits offered are instrumental to firm performance.     

Initial margin policy and stochastic volatility in the crude oil futures market

This article examines the relationship between the volatilityof the crude oil futures market and changes in initial marginrequirements. To closely match changes in futures market volatilitywith the corresponding changes in margin requirements, we inferthe volatility of the futures market from the prices of crudeoil futures options contracts. Using a mean-reverting diffusionprocess for volatility, we show that changes in margin policydo not affect subsequent market volatility.