Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Fiscal Decentralization On Health Care In China, Emily Yee

University Avenue Undergraduate Journal of Economics

From my analysis, I conclude that decentralization has not been detrimental to health care when health care performance is measured by the number of doctors per 10,000 people, mortality rates, and local health care expenditure. However, the effects of decentralization on health care are inconclusive when health care performance is measured by the number of hospital beds per 10,000 people.

This paper is divided into five sections. The first section discusses theories of federalism. The second section presents an overview of China’s economic reforms since 1980. The third section discusses the current state of health care in China and its …

Preschools And Privatization, Ellen B. Magenheim

Economics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

A Little Adam Smith Is A Dangerous Thing, Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

Adam Smith was trying to counter medieval church theology, which held that any self-interested behavior was sinful and detrimental. Smith countered that self-interest could yield valuable outcomes for society as people pursued specialization and market trade. Much later these quotes would be used to justify the greedy and grasping personae of homo economicus, illustrating how a little Adam Smith can prove to be a dangerous thing. For example, Max Lerner in 1937 would say that Adam Smith "sanctified predatory impulses" and "gave a new dignity to greed." By the 1980s the movie Wall Street has the financial tycoon Gordon …

The Influence Of Family And Community Ties On The Demand For Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, Kenneth Allen Knapp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Reverse mortgages are loans against home equity that do not have to be repaid until the borrower moves, sells the home, or dies. The loans generally are available only to older homeowners, usually aged 62 or over. This paper explores whether demand for reverse mortgages is influenced by the strength of area’s family and community ties. One type of reverse mortgage is analyzed: the FHA-insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM). Several researchers have estimated the potential demand for reverse mortgages. To my knowledge, this is the first study of how actual demand may be determined, and of how it may …

The Regulatory History Of A New Technology: The Electromagnetic Telegraph, Alexander J. Field

Economics

Attitudes toward economic regulation in the United States have, since colonial times, been influenced by an almost schizophrenic oscillation between dirigiste and laissez-faire ideology. The laissez-faire tradition maintains that within a legal system providing elementary guarantees against force and fraud, business enterprise should be allowed the maximum possible freedom. The dirigiste tradition, on the other hand, recommends government intervention in a variety of situations, including those where the social return may exceed the private rate of return to research and development spending, in cases of natural monopoly, or where a firm has erected barriers to entry that give it effective …

Workers' Compensation: Benefits, Costs, And Safety Under Alternative Insurance Arrangements, Terry Thomason, Timothy P. Schmidle, John F. Burton

Upjohn Press

Thomason, Schmidle, and Burton make use of a unique data set to delve into how insurance arrangements affect several objectives of the workers' compensation (WC) program. They underscore the effects of deregulation and other changes in WC insurance pricing arrangements by performing empirical analyses that use state-specific cost, benefit, and injury data from 48 states for 1975-1995. This allows them to address the interactive relationships among the four objectives of WC systems adequacy of benefits, affordability of WC insurance, efficiency in the benefits delivery system, and prevention of workplace injuries and diseases and how various public policies adopted by states …

Labor, Business, And Change In Germany And The United States, Kirsten S. Wever Editor

Upjohn Press

The chapters explore the proposition that the benefits of either the German coordinating institutions or the United States' more decentralized political economy each entail trade-offs that may be necessary but politically unpleasant. The authors also offer comparisons of sectoral and firm-level adjustment processes for change.

The Political Economy Of Health Care Reforms, Huizhong Zhou Editor

Upjohn Press

A leading group of health care economists propose solutions to problems related to Medicare, managed care, health insurance, coverage for the uninsured, and the role of tax policy in health care.

Reemployment Bonuses In The Unemployment Insurance System: Evidence From Three Field Experiments, Philip K. Robins Editor, Robert G. Spiegelman Editor

Upjohn Press

In this volume a select group of UI researchers describes the motivation for and the design, implementation, and impacts of UI bonus experiments administered in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington. They also describe the benefits and costs of the various experimental treatments for the government as a whole, the UI system in particular, claimants' earnings, and the overall net benefits to society.

Economic Challenges Facing Pakistan, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

There is almost a consensus that the major economic challenges facing Pakistan are rising poverty and unemployment, heavy external and domestic indebtedness, high fiscal deficit and low investment. The debate has so therefore focussed on the means to face these challenges and particularly on the ways to bring about economic recovery.

The Economic Impact Of Aids/Hiv, Sridevi R. K. Narayanan

Student Works (2000-2009)

HIV/AIDS has become a seemingly important health, as well as socio economic issue that has crippling effects on the economy of a nation. It not only has serious implications on the high risk behaviour groups but tends to spill over to affect the economic performances or a nation. At the same time poor economic conditions do tend to promote the high incidences of the diseases especially poorly developed nations such as the South African countries The purpose of this study is to examine the economic impact of HIV/AlDS in Malaysia. Although it is a recent phenomena, and HIV//\IDS prevalence in …

Pay At Risk: Compensation And Employment Risk In The United States And Canada, John A. Turner Editor

Upjohn Press

The contributors to this book investigate the compensation and employment risks for U.S. and Canadian workers. They examine both wage and nonwage aspects of compensation, and whether workers in the U.S. or Canada face more job-related risks. They also seek to identify trends in risk bearing and whether they differ by country.

Working Time In Comparative Perspective: Volume Ii - Life-Cycle Working Time And Nonstandard Work, Susan N. Houseman Editor, Alice Nakamura Editor

Upjohn Press

The chapters explore an expanded set of working-time issues, which may be loosely grouped under two topics: 1) working time over the life cycle, and 2) nonstandard work arrangements (e.g., temporary work, job sharing and moonlighting).

Ensuring Health And Income Security For An Aging Workforce, Peter Budetti Editor, Richard V. Burkhauser Editor, Janice M. Gregory Editor, H. Allan Hunt Editor

Upjohn Press

The chapters explore implications of an aging workforce for a number of social programs in the coming decades, and point to the critical policy issues we must face when growing numbers of older workers begin to strain the capacity of those programs.

Economic Education And Government Reform In The Republic Of Georgia, Craig Macphee

Department of Economics: Faculty Publications

The author describes public education through the media and training for government officials and for journalists undertaken as part of economic reform efforts in the Republic of Georgia of the former Soviet Union. The article concludes with a discussion of the necessary conditions for success of these broad-based educational efforts.

Geography, Industrial Organization, And Agglomeration Heteroskedasticity Models With Estimates Of The Variances Of Foreign Exchange Rates, Chihwa Kao

Center for Policy Research

This paper proposes a robust estimation procedure, the bounded influence estimate (BIS), which is robust against departure from the conditional normality of the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) models to describe the behavior of exchange rates. First, the BIE identifies the additive outliers (AO, e.g., Fox 1972) caused by abnormal information arrivals which may be triggered by changes in domestic policies and international shocks. Identification of outliers allows us to analyze the major economic and political factors that contribute directly to the dramatic changes in exchange rates. Second, the performance of the BIE is compared with the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) …

Risk Based Urban Watershed Management Under Conflicting Objectives, Vladimir Novotny, David E. Clark, Robert J. Griffin, Douglas Booth

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Ecological impairment and flooding caused by urbanization can be expressed numerically by calculating the risks throughout the watershed (floodplain) and along the main stems of the streams. The risks can be evaluated in terms of the present and/or future. This article describes the methodologies for ascertaining the risks in the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) environment. The objectives of urban flood controls and ecological preservation/restoration of urban waters are often conflicting and, in the past, the sole emphasis on flood control led to destruction of habitat and deterioration of water quality. An optimal solution to these two problems may be achieved …

The G8'S Contributions To Twenty-First Century Governance, John J. Kirton, Joseph P. Daniels, Andreas Freytag

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Enslaved To Fashion: Corporations, Consumers, And The Campaign For Worker Rights In The Global Economy, George Demartino

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of Levi’s Children: Coming to Terms with Human Rights in the Global Marketplace by Karl Schoenberger. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000. 288pp.

Levi’s Children presents a sobering account of the tribulations of a transnational corporation with a heart trying its best to navigate honorably the polluted moral waters of the global economy. San Francisco-based Levi Strauss and Company, maker of the iconic Levi’s jeans and other apparel, sought to maintain a commitment to social responsibility in the face of intensifying financial pressures to do otherwise. Author Karl Schoenberger puts this account to good effect, illuminating the extraordinary …

Dispelling The Myths About The Global Economy, Murray L. Weidenbaum

Murray Weidenbaum Publications

Murray Weidenbaum attempts to clarify many of the myths involving globalization, such as job loss, do sanctions work, is the U.S. the only country that does not use protectionism, and whether American companies doing business overseas pollute their environments due to less strict regulations.

The Pros And Cons Of Globalization, Murray L. Weidenbaum, Robert Batterson

Murray Weidenbaum Publications

This briefing book presents both sides of the globalization debate so that readers can draw their own conclusions. Although many of the factors are complex, this summary of the issues surrounding the conflict over globalization is meant to help people better understand the claims of both sides.

Information And Communication Technology And Poverty: An Asian Perspective, M. G. Quibria, Feichin, Ted Tschang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many commentators have extolled the virtues of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in reducing poverty and improving the quality of life. While such arguments have been used before in relation to many predecessor technologies, including other earlier communications technologies, the promise has often floundered. This paper attempts to provide a more balanced analysis of the question, by exploring the linkages between the new ICTs and poverty reduction. It examines the linkages in two ways: the potential for direct impacts of ICTs on various areas of poverty and development, and the indirect impacts of ICTs on economic growth, exports and …

Development Of Human And Physical Capital And Change In The Structure Of Exports In Developing Countries: An Analytical Study, Pritam Banjeree '01

Honors Projects

The objective of this paper is to look at how development of physical and human capital affects the structure of exports from developing countries. As a country becomes increasingly developed, it moves away from production in primary goods to production of manufactures. This structural change will also be reflected in its exports. The more developed a country is in terms of human and physical capital the higher will be its manufacturing exports. This hypothesis is tested empirically. Factors like education, per capita income, infrastructure and capital investment are used to capture human and physical capital development, while the percentage of …

Explaining The Wage Gap Between Contingent And Noncontingent Workers, Nicole Skalski '01

Honors Projects

An important labor market trend is the rapid increase of the contingent workforce. Contingent workers are members of the workforce who do not perceive themselves as having an explicit or implicit contract for continuing employment. Under this definition, it is estimated that 6 million workers are classified as contingent. Researchers have discovered a pay gap between contingent and noncontingent workers. Hipple, in his 1998 study, argued that median earnings were $266 per week for contingent workers, compared with $444 for the noncontingents. The purpose of this project is to explore what causes this income differential by using the National Longitudinal …

A Bayesian Decision Approach For Sample Size Determination In Phase Ii Trials, Denis H. Y. Leung, You-Gan Wang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Stallard (1998, Biometrics54, 279–294) recently used Bayesian decision theory for sample-size determination in phase II trials. His design maximizes the expected financial gains in the development of a new treatment. However, it results in a very high probability (0.65) of recommending an ineffective treatment for phase III testing. On the other hand, the expected gain using his design is more than 10 times that of a design that tightly controls the false positive error (Thall and Simon, 1994, Biometrics50, 337–349). Stallard's design maximizes the expected gain per phase II trial, but it does not maximize the rate of gain or …

On The Grounds Of Globalization: A Topography For Feminist Political Engagement, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Globalization is nothing new. Global trade has been going on for millennia—though what constitutes the "globe" has expanded dramatically in that time. And trade is nothing if not cultural exchange, the narrow distinctions between the economic and the cultural having long been rendered obsolete. Moreover, our forbears, like us, were great "miscegenators." If here I gloss the racialized and gendered violence often associated with miscegenation, I do so strategically to note that all recourse to purity, indigeneity, or aboriginality—however useful strategically—should be subject to at least as much scrutiny as the easy romance with hybridity (see Mitchell 1997). Globalization has …

Central Bank Of Nigeria Annual Report And Statement Of Accounts For The Year Ended 31st December 2000, Central Bank Of Nigeria

CBN Annual Report

This Report reviews the operations of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and macroeconomic developments during the fiscal year 2000 and appraises the major economic policy outcomes during the period. The bank is responsible for administering the Banks and Other Financial Institutions (BOFI) Act, which aims to ensure high standards of banking practice and financial stability through surveillance activities and the promotion of an efficient payments and clearing system. The bank's major objectives for monetary policy in 2000 were outlined in the Bank's Monetary Policy Circular No. 34. Key policy targets included growth in broad money, narrow money, aggregate bank …

Preliminary Assessment Of Client Interest In And Needs Of The New England Environmental Finance Center, New England Environmental Finance Center, University Of Southern Maine

Planning

The New England Environmental Finance Center (NE/EFC) has been conceived as a knowledge-based clearinghouse, training, and change-agent program aimed at helping EPA's constituencies find financially successful approaches to environmental improvements. The NE/EFC will develop approaches to needs of particular priority in New England and potentially useful throughout the nation; share such approaches through the EFC national network; and help make tools from that network accessible throughout New England. In 1999 we began exploring with potential users how this ninth of the nation's EFCs might best address the region's needs. The assessment continued through the Muskie School's EFC proposal to EPA …

A Better Harvest, Tushaar Shah

IIMB Management Review

In 1972, the prices of fossil fuel suddenly shot up and with it there was enormous escalation in fertiliser prices. People were therefore very pessimistic about the future of agriculture in the country, though the Green Revolution had been hailed only a few years before. So in my talk on Our Agriculture Future in 1973 I said that what we needed was an integrated approach: a farming systems approach looking at our land and water resources. I also spoke about the concept of Sarvodaya Agriculture, which is a high synergy society of farmers, managing and caring for natural resources like …

Job Stability And Wage Progression Patterns Among Early Tanf Leavers, Steven G. Anderson, Anthony P. Halter, George Julnes, Richard Schuldt

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article reports on first-year employment experiences of a randomly selected sample of 213 Illinois TANF leavers. Aggregate employment levels were 70 percent at exit, and leavers typically generated earnings from a single full-time job. However, employment often was unstable, so that only about one-fourth of leavers had the same job both at exit and when interviewed 10-11 months later. Employment instability resulted from the marginal or temporary nature of many jobs, as well as employment barriers such as health problems and lack of day care. Average wage levels easily exceeded the minimum wage and grew during the first year …