1,721,023 research outputs found

    Hotelling competition on quality in the health care market.

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    This paper aims to theoretically analyse recent health system reforms. Generally patients are free to choose, within the region they live in, the best provider among the private "accredited" and public ones. The criterion patients use to choose the provider which fits their expectations best is not, at least in a tax financed system, the price of the treatment since patients do not pay directly for the treatment they receive. Crucial in determining their choice is the quality level and the provider spatial location. In a normative perspective we want to analyse hospitals' Nash/Counot and Stackelberg equilibriums in a Hotelling spatial competition scenario. Because of asymmetric information, patients could be unable to observe the true quality provided. Thus the demand for health care services is assumed to depend on a perceived quality (different from true quality). New equilibrium outcomes are investigated when patient choice is affected by uncertainty.

    A Viable Alternative: the Scandinavian Model of "Social Democracy"

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    This paper aims at discussing how far the Scandinavian model of "social democracy", which is assumed to be the Swedish model, still represents a viable alternative for the development of other industrial relations systems. The Scandinavian model, characterised by labour market peace and centralised bargaining, is based on two main pillars: "active labour market" and "solidaristic wage" policies. Its "golden age" lasted more than forty years targeting full employment, therefore here it is argued if it is possible to transfer such a model, as a whole or partially, to Italy. In examining such issue this analysis develops a short comparison between the industrial relations systems in the two countries identifying the main convergences and divergences at the institutional level and considering the possible effects on employment and wage growth.

    Intergovernmental equalization grants: some fundamental principles.

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    Propositions related to intergovernmental equalization grants are always implicitly or explicitly derived from one model of government or another. The paper assumes that governments are competitive organisms. In such a frame of reference, equalization payments serve to insure that all the units in a decentralized governmental system have a chance to share in the benefits of competition. In other words, equalization payments are stabilization instruments. As such they will generally have an effect on the interpersonal distribution of income, but they are not motivated by that effect. The paper also argues that economic globalization increases the need for equalization grants.

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    On the Xenophobia of non-discriminated Ethnic Minorities

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    Sometimes the leaders of ethnic minority groups behave in a way that may promote xenophobia. A simple two-subject model is used to find out when this behaviour is rational. The conditions are briefly discussed with reference to the Italian case. An appendix illustrates the definition of xenophobia adopted in the paper.

    Cantor Type Attractors in Stochastic Growth Models.

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    We study a one-sector stochastic optimal growth model where production is affected by a shock taking one of two values. Such exogenous shock may enter multiplicatively or additively. A result is presented which provides sufficient conditions to ensure that the attractor of the iterated function system (IFS) representing the optimal policy, is a generalized topological Cantor set. To indicate the role of the strict monotonicity condition on the IFS in this result, examples of attractors, which are not of the Cantor type, are constructed with iterated function systems, whose maps are contractions and satisfy a no overlap property.

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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