Ownership structure and hospital service costs and fees: A decomposition approach

This paper analyzes hospital characteristics that are associated with higher average costs and charges for venipuncture, computed tomography procedures (computerized axial tomography [CAT] scans), and electrocardiograms (EKG). Using data from a Medicare database, our results indicate that higher wages, larger hospital sizes, and greater service quality are associated with higher procedure costs, whereas system membership is generally associated with lower procedure costs. Blinder‐type decompositions, which are the main focus of this study, suggest (a) that venipuncture costs are about 17% to 19% lower at proprietary hospitals than at nonprofit or government hospitals, (b) CAT scan costs are about 6% to 12% lower at nonprofit hospitals than at proprietary and government hospitals, and (c) that EKG costs are about 3% lower at proprietary hospitals than at nonprofit or government hospitals. Lastly, large portions of each of these differences are found to be due to both differences in mean values of the hospitals' characteristics by ownership type and differences in the mechanism by which the hospitals' characteristics are transmitted to procedure costs.     

Commercial Bank Lending to SMEs in Poland

This paper explores the processes of financial intermediation that are used by commercial banks in their interactions with SMEs in Poland. The paper develops an argument for examining the empirical realities of commercial bank involvement with the SME sector within the context of economic transformation by suggesting that the connection between them influences the trajectories of economic change within transition. The paper provides a history of re-organisation of the commercial banking sector in Poland, paying particular attention to the involvement of foreign capital and foreign banks as the trend towards increasing foreign participation is apparent in the Central European transition economies. The findings from this research suggest that there are some significant variations within the commercial banking sector in the approach to, and practices for, lending to the SME sector.     

Materialism, status signaling, and product satisfaction

The consumer satisfaction literature has not, for the mos part, integrated individual values into the product evaluation process. Yet a comprehensive understanding of consumer satisfaction can best be attained by including both consumer and product factors. To demonstrate the usefulness of including individual values, this research focuses on one consumer value, namely, materialism. The authors empirically explore how this individual value is linked to consumers’ evaluations of products they have purchased. Using surveys, the authors collected data from a sample of college students (n=211) and a sample of adults (n=270). Across these two studies, using divergent samples and products, they find consistent evidence that materialism is negatively related to product satisfaction in product categories with high potential for status signaling, but unrelated to product satisfaction in product categories with lower potential for status signaling. The consumption goals that produce these product evaluations are empirically addressed Jeff Wang (jianfeng76@yahoo.com; PhD, City University of Hong Kong) is an assistant professor of marketing in the Faculty of Business at the City University of Hong Kong. This work was conducted when he was a doctoral student of marketing in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. His research interests include social networks and consumer behavior, consumer satisfaction and well-being, materialism and consumption meanings, and consumer interests and public policy issues. His dissertation studies credit card debt as a socially embedded phenomenon and investigates how consumers leverage their interpersonal ties as they accumulate and repay their debt. Melanie Wallendorf (mwallendorf@eller.arizona.edu) is Soldwedel Professor of Marketing in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. She holds an MS in sociology and a PhD in marketing from the University of Pittsburgh. Her articles on the sociocultural aspects of consumption have been published in theJournal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Advertising and Society Review, Addiction, Journal of Macromarketing, andAmerican Behavioral Scientist, among others. Her coauthored article on “The Sacred and Profane in Consumer Behavior” won theJournal of Consumer Research Best Article Award in 1992. Her research has been featured in theWall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, American Demographics, andFortune, and has been funded by the Marketing Science Institute, the Arizona Disease Control Research Commission, and the Office of Earth Science at NASA.     

Product differentiation, cost‐reducing mergers, and consumer welfare

Abstract.  Cost synergies are an explicitly recognized justification for a two‐firm merger, and empirical techniques are now widely used to assess the impact of cost‐reducing mergers on prices and welfare in the post‐merger market. We show that if the merger occurs in a vertically product differentiated market, then the merger will lead to a reduction in product offerings that limits the usefulness of pre‐merger empirical estimates. Indeed, we further show that in such markets, two‐firm mergers will typically lead to higher prices regardless of the merger's cost savings. JEL classification: L10, L41     

Household migration in the Southern Cone: the case of Paraguay

This study of migration from Paraguay to Argentina focuses on urban to urban migration and uses about 1300 interviews collected during September 1983 to May 1984 for constructing a profile of the migrants. Paraguayan migration to Argentina has historical roots. The first flows were in 1936 and 1947 and were due to war. Migrants tended to settle in Formosa and Misiones provinces in the northern region. The second waves that occurred during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were to Buenos Aires. Most migration during the more recent years was motivated by economics. It is likely that the key factors were push factors in Paraguay. Migration policies in sending and receiving countries are lax. Half of the interviews were conducted among families in Gran Buenos Aires, and half were conducted among families in Asuncion, Paraguay. 33% of migrants in Argentina reported Asuncion as their last residence. Many migrants were from departments bordering on Argentina. Only 222 of the 543 heads of household who had been employed prior to departure reported that farm work had been their employment. Migration is precipitated by both economic and noneconomic factors. Logistic model findings indicate that urban migrant heads of households tended to be younger and less educated than nonmigrants. Migrants tended to be single heads of households with relatively few children. Rural migrants were less likely to be female and were more likely to have a larger family size than urban migrants. Heads of household with fewer continuous years of employment were more likely to migrate. Findings from data at the time of the interview suggest that higher relative wages were a pull force, when age, sex, education, marital status, size of business, and job seniority were controlled for. The recent democratization in Paraquay is like to attract return migrants, if urban employment opportunities are available.     

Making use of Internet interactivity to propose a dynamic presentation of web questionnaires

Quality & Quantity - New methodologies that aim to collect data in innovative ways (e.g. big data) are putting pressure on the traditional surveys based on questionnaires. In order to obtain...     

‘I didn't feel like I was alone anymore’: evaluating self‐organised employee coping practices conducted via Facebook

The long‐term fracturing of the labour movement has led to increased attention to employee coping practices under new management practices and labour processes. However, the literature caters little for the recent rise of employees taking to social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook, to find ways to cope with the pressures of contemporary employment. To explore the self‐organised coping qualities of SNSs, interviews were conducted with front line workers, employed by a large anti‐trade union US retailer, who contribute to a self‐organised Facebook group set up as a place for fellow employees to deal with collective employment‐related problems. The main findings suggest employee self‐organised Facebook groups represent an important development and extension to the coping practices available to individual and groups of employees. The main implication of the findings is that Facebook groups appear to strengthen and widen the options for employee resilience in an age of continuing trade union retreat.     

COVID-19 impact on fruit and vegetable markets

Canadian fruit and vegetable markets were significantly impacted by the spread of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (and COVID-19 disease), beginning in March 2020. Due to the closure of restaurants, bars, and schools, produce growers and distributors were forced to shift supplies almost entirely from the foodservice to the retail channel. Shippers reported labor and logistical constraints in making the change, but the fresh produce supply chain remained robust. In the long term, we expect lasting changes in consumers’ online food-purchasing habits, heightened constraints on immigrant labor markets, and tighter concentration in fresh produce distribution and perhaps retailing.     

Bounds analysis of competing risks: a non-parametric evaluation of the effect of unemployment benefits on migration

By reexamining the effect of unemployment benefits on reemployment probabilities we make two contributions to the literature: first, we estimate separate effects for reemployment in the local or a distant region. Second, we address the problem of incomplete duration within a competing risks model. Our results confirm that missing data problems at first preclude any meaningful result even though we have access to daily individual data on 50 % of the male workforce in Germany. When we impose additional assumptions, we obtain evidence that the treatment effect depends on the household context, the treatment intensity and the destination state.