Sequential Malmquist Indices of Productivity Growth: An Application to OECD Industrial Activities

The paper applies both the standard DEA methodology with contemporaneous frontiers and DEA with sequential frontiers to study changes in productivity and efficiency in manufacturing for a sample of eleven OECD countries over a twenty-year period. It uses a decomposition of the industrial Malmquist productivity indices to locate the sources of productivity growth: 'technical progress' and 'catching up.' The alternative indices are interrelated in a unifying framework that provides an interpretation to their difference. We argue that for manufacturing industries, in which technological regress is unlikely to occur, DEA with sequential frontiers provides a more adequate measure for the contribution of technical changes than standard DEA.     

A cost analysis of SIR-Spheres yttrium-90 resin microspheres versus tyrosine kinase inhibitors in the treatment of unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma in France,Italy, Spain and the UK

Abstract

Background and aims: A wide range of treatment options are available for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), including systemic treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) such as sorafenib and lenvatinib, immunotherapies, locoregional therapies such as selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) and treatments with curative intent such as resection, radiofrequency ablation and liver transplantation. Given the substantial economic burden associated with HCC treatment, the aim of the present analysis was to establish the cost of using SIRT with SIR-Spheres yttrium-90 (Y-90) resin microspheres versus TKIs from healthcare payer perspectives in France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK).

Methods: A cost model was developed to capture the costs of initial systemic treatment with sorafenib (95%) or lenvatinib (5%) versus SIRT in patients with HCC in Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stages B and C. A nested Markov model was utilized to model transitions between progression-free survival (PFS), progression and death, in addition to transitions between subsequent treatment lines. Cost and resource use data were identified from published sources in each of the four countries.

Results: Relative to TKIs, SIRT with SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres were found to be cost saving in all four country settings, with the additional costs of the microspheres and the SIRT procedure being more than offset by reductions in drug and drug administration costs, and treatment of adverse events. Across the four country settings, total cost savings with SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres fell within the range 5.4–24.9% and SIRT resulted in more patients ultimately receiving treatments with curative intent (4.6 vs. 1.4% of eligible patients).

Conclusion: SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres resulted in cost savings relative to TKIs in the treatment of unresectable HCC in all four country settings, while increasing the proportion of patients who become eligible for treatments with curative intent.     

Problems evaluating sales representative performance?: Try activity-based costing

Activity-based costing (ABC) offers a way to improve performance evaluation by providing estimates of the cost of satisfying sales terms to which a sales representative may agree, such as number of batches in which an order is produced and number of training hours provided to customer employees. It also provides estimates of the cost of resources that a sales representative may use while engaging in marketing activities, such as making sales calls and attending trade shows. Traditional costing, which assumes that costs only vary at the unit level, does not provide estimates of the costs of many of these terms and activities.     

Moving markets? Government bond investors and microeconomic policy changes

Do sovereign bond markets react systematically to microeconomic policy reforms? Some observers suggest that investors are very attentive to supply‐side policies such as those related to labor markets, corporate taxation, and product standards. They argue that, along with macroeconomic outcomes and broad financial market conditions, such reforms affect sovereign bond premiums, for developed as well as emerging economies. In contrast, we predict few systematic effects of supply‐side policy reforms on sovereign bond market outcomes. Our theory draws on a standard three‐equation model of the economy, widely accepted among economic and finance professionals. That model makes few clear predictions regarding the anticipated effects of microeconomic policy changes; as a result, we expect that such reforms will not generate systematic market reactions. Our analyses, based on daily data from 37 countries from 2004 to 2012, indeed reveal little evidence of a systematic bond market reaction to the 47 most significant reforms to corporate taxation and labor market regulation. These results call into question the notion that “bond market vigilantes” play a central role in compelling governments to enact specific microeconomic policy changes.     

Resource utilization and charges of patients with and without diagnosed venous thromboembolism during primary hospitalization and after elective inpatient surgery: a retrospective study

Aims: To assess incremental charges of patients experiencing venous thromboembolisms (VTE) across various types of elective inpatient surgical procedures with administration of general anesthesia in the US.

Methods: The authors performed a retrospective study utilizing data from a nationwide hospital operational records database from July 2014 through June 2015 to compare a group of inpatients experiencing a VTE event post-operatively to a propensity score matched group of inpatients who did not experience a VTE. Patients included in the analysis had a hospital admission for an elective inpatient surgical procedure with the use of general anesthesia. Procedures of the heart, brain, lungs, and obstetrical procedures were excluded, as these procedures often require a scheduled ICU stay post-operatively. Outcomes examined included VTE events during hospitalization, length of stay, unscheduled ICU transfers, number of days spent in the ICU if transferred, 3- and 30-day re-admissions, and total hospital charges incurred.

Results: The study included 17,727 patients undergoing elective inpatient surgical procedures. Of these, 36 patients who experienced a VTE event were matched to 108 patients who did not. VTE events occurred in 0.2% of the study population, with most events occurring for patients undergoing total knee replacement. VTE patients had a mean total hospital charge of $60,814 vs $48,325 for non-VTE patients, resulting in a mean incremental charge of $11,979 (p?<?.05). Compared to non-VTE patients, VTE patients had longer length of stay (5.9 days vs 3.7 days, p?<?.001), experienced a higher rate of 3-day re-admissions (3 vs 0 patients) and 30-day re-admissions (7 vs 2 patients).

Conclusions: Patients undergoing elective inpatient surgical procedures with general anesthesia who had a VTE event during their primary hospitalization had a significantly longer length of stay and significantly higher total hospital charges than comparable patients without a VTE event.     

Spatial determinants of productivity growth on agri‐food Spanish firms: a comparison between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms

This study analyses the effect of the spatial factor, location, and interaction effects among peer companies, on the productivity growth of agri‐food companies in Spain. With this aim, we build a productivity growth index and apply a multiequational Seemingly Unrelated Regression on a sample of 344 Spanish cooperatives and investor‐owned firms for the period 2010–2012. Our findings show that agri‐food firms are influenced by spatial factors finding interesting differences between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms. With regard to the geographical location, cooperatives in the western of Spain show higher productivity growth rates, whereas investor‐owned firms in the northeast of Spain present better results. The interaction effect among closer peer companies is also a relevant factor to determine the productivity growth in agri‐food companies. This factor is more relevant for cooperatives than for investor‐owned firms.     

Editorial: Special Issue on the Impact of Business Ethics on Public Life

Even though management scholars have offered several views on the process of corporate sustainability, these efforts have focused mainly on the technical aspects of sustainability while omitting the fundamental role played by individual moral competences. Therefore, previous work offers an incomplete and somewhat reductionist view of corporate sustainability. In this article, we develop a holistic framework of corporate sustainability in which both the moral and technical aspects of sustainability are considered. We do so by integrating the ethical, normative perspective of the Catholic social teaching (CST) with the competitive view of the natural resource-based view. This framework highlights the importance of CST principles and ideas in developing executive moral competences such as moral sensitivity and awareness, and moral cognition and motivation. Moral competences, in turn, influence the organizational selection of environmental strategies, giving leaders the intrinsic motivation to promote both a longer-term stance on corporate sustainability efforts and a relentless search for greener business models. Such strategies move the firm closer towards achieving environmental sustainability. Hence, by bridging the individual, normative-ethical with the organizational, implementational levels of corporate sustainability, our framework provides a more realistic, coherent, and complete perspective on the complex process of achieving corporate sustainability.