MANY BUSINESS OWNERS, SEEKING FLEXIBLE, COST‐EFFECtive employees to flesh out their workforce, try tapping workers under the age of 18. And it's a smart, cost‐effective…
Abstract
MANY BUSINESS OWNERS, SEEKING FLEXIBLE, COST‐EFFECtive employees to flesh out their workforce, try tapping workers under the age of 18. And it's a smart, cost‐effective strategy—with one big “but”: Be sure you adhere to the child labor laws—or risk facing hefty fines.
Edward L. Golding and Steven Slutsky
Salop and Stiglitz analyzed an equilibrium search model under a Stackelberg assumption that consumers could react to changes in the distribution of prices charged by firms even…
Abstract
Salop and Stiglitz analyzed an equilibrium search model under a Stackelberg assumption that consumers could react to changes in the distribution of prices charged by firms even though they did not know which particular firms were charging the lowest price. In this chapter we assume that firms and consumers move simultaneously so that consumers cannot react to changes in the price distribution. We also assume that a firm cannot limit sales if demand exceeds its desired supply at the price it sets. In contrast to Salop and Stiglitz, a single-price equilibrium at the monopoly price always exists. For most distributions of consumer search costs, a range of two-price equilibria will also exist. In the two-price equilibria, the high price is always the monopoly price while the low price varies in a range above the minimum of average total cost.
Edward L. Golding and Steven Slutsky
We find equilibrium price distributions in a search model with asymmetric duopolists whose marginal costs differ. There are informed consumers who know both prices and buy at the…
Abstract
We find equilibrium price distributions in a search model with asymmetric duopolists whose marginal costs differ. There are informed consumers who know both prices and buy at the lower one and uninformed consumers who, not knowing prices, choose a store arbitrarily. With asymmetries, pure strategy equilibrium can exist and, even when not, atoms can exist in the firms' price distributions. One surprising result is that increasing the low cost store's marginal cost can lower average prices and raise the expected utilities of both types of consumers. When the low cost firm is foreign, this could justify imposing a tariff.
Katharina Kieslich, Jeonghoon Ahn, Gabriele Badano, Kalipso Chalkidou, Leonardo Cubillos, Renata Curi Hauegen, Chris Henshall, Carleigh B Krubiner, Peter Littlejohns, Lanting Lu, Steven D Pearson, Annette Rid, Jennifer A Whitty and James Wilson
New hepatitis C medicines such as sofosbuvir underline the need to balance considerations of innovation, clinical evidence, budget impact and equity in health priority-setting…
Abstract
Purpose
New hepatitis C medicines such as sofosbuvir underline the need to balance considerations of innovation, clinical evidence, budget impact and equity in health priority-setting. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of public participation in addressing these considerations.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper employs a comparative case study approach. It explores the experience of four countries – Brazil, England, South Korea and the USA – in making coverage decisions about the antiviral sofosbuvir and involving the public and patients in these decision-making processes.
Findings
Issues emerging from public participation ac tivities include the role of the universal right to health in Brazil, the balance between innovation and budget impact in England, the effect of unethical medical practices on public perception in South Korea and the legitimacy of priority-setting processes in the USA. Providing policymakers are receptive to these issues, public participation activities may be re-conceptualized as processes that illuminate policy problems relevant to a particular context, thereby promoting an agenda-setting role for the public.
Originality/value
The paper offers an empirical analysis of public involvement in the case of sofosbuvir, where the relevant considerations that bear on priority-setting decisions have been particularly stark. The perspectives that emerge suggest that public participation contributes to raising attention to issues that need to be addressed by policymakers. Public participation activities can thus contribute to setting policy agendas, even if that is not their explicit purpose. However, the actualization of this contribution is contingent on the receptiveness of policymakers.
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Keywords
The verification of bibliographic information in a known item search can be both lengthy and tedious. The difficulties in using some of the traditional sources are well‐known. For…
Abstract
The verification of bibliographic information in a known item search can be both lengthy and tedious. The difficulties in using some of the traditional sources are well‐known. For example, the National Union Catalog provides access only through main entry; Books in Print and the Cumulative Book Index have author, title, and subject access but are limited by the fact that they cover only books either in print in a given year or published in a given year. The result can be a frustrating and, at times, fruitless search.
Jean Slutsky, Emma Tumilty, Catherine Max, Lanting Lu, Sripen Tantivess, Renata Curi Hauegen, Jennifer A Whitty, Albert Weale, Steven D Pearson, Aviva Tugendhaft, Hufeng Wang, Sophie Staniszewska, Krisantha Weerasuriya, Jeonghoon Ahn and Leonardo Cubillos
The paper summarizes data from 12 countries, chosen to exhibit wide variation, on the role and place of public participation in the setting of priorities. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper summarizes data from 12 countries, chosen to exhibit wide variation, on the role and place of public participation in the setting of priorities. The purpose of this paper is to exhibit cross-national patterns in respect of public participation, linking those differences to institutional features of the countries concerned.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is an example of case-orientated qualitative assessment of participation practices. It derives its data from the presentation of country case studies by experts on each system. The country cases are located within the historical development of democracy in each country.
Findings
Patterns of participation are widely variable. Participation that is effective through routinized institutional processes appears to be inversely related to contestatory participation that uses political mobilization to challenge the legitimacy of the priority setting process. No system has resolved the conceptual ambiguities that are implicit in the idea of public participation.
Originality/value
The paper draws on a unique collection of country case studies in participatory practice in prioritization, supplementing existing published sources. In showing that contestatory participation plays an important role in a sub-set of these countries it makes an important contribution to the field because it broadens the debate about public participation in priority setting beyond the use of minipublics and the observation of public representatives on decision-making bodies.
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Keywords
Robert L. Basmann, Kathy Hayes, Michael McAleer, Ian McCarthy and Daniel J. Slottje
This chapter presents an exposition of the Generalized Fechner–Thurstone (GFT) direct utility function, the system of demand functions derived from it, other systems of demand…
Abstract
This chapter presents an exposition of the Generalized Fechner–Thurstone (GFT) direct utility function, the system of demand functions derived from it, other systems of demand functions from which it can be derived, and its purpose and the econometric circumstances that motivated its original development. Its use in econometrics is demonstrated by an application to household consumer survey data which explores the relationship between prices, on the one hand, and expected exogenous preference changers such as household size, schooling of heads of household, and other social factors, on the other.
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Gregory H. Watson and Camille F. DeYong
The purpose of this paper is to describe the historical approach to concurrent engineering (CE) which has resulted in product line management (PLM) and then evaluates the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the historical approach to concurrent engineering (CE) which has resulted in product line management (PLM) and then evaluates the theoretical models that have been proposed for design for Six Sigma (DFSS) in order to determine which model is able to provide the most consistent approach with historical development of PLM.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach begins with an overview of the approach taken by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) in the development of a coherent quality methodology for structured analysis and problem solving – the Deming Wheel of plan‐do‐check‐act (PDCA) which has become the standard model in Japanese total quality management to define a logical decomposition in process management. In Japan, PDCA is the single logical model which has been broadly accepted as the construct for understanding how to develop both strategic and operational quality methods. The second step in the approach is to examine a similar American development of the model for statistical problem solving that is applied in the Six Sigma method for statistical problem solving: define‐measure‐analyze‐improve‐control (DMAIC). Next, the paper examines the historical sequence in the way the product development process has developed over the past forty years, with emphasis on its military origins (especially CE) and which resulted in the generic model for PLM. The final part of this paper examines the models that have been proposed to implement DFSS over the past ten years and evaluate their logical congruence with the engineering community's design process.
Findings
Problems in alignment with the engineering design process were identified with all of the DFSS models and with the non‐structured or “heuristic” approach to developing a coherent body of knowledge related to DFSS.
Originality/value
This paper provides a challenge to the quality community as well as to the academic community. The paper points out the need for rigorous examination of logical models that are proposed for guiding the thinking of practitioners in the use of quality methods for both the engineering of products and business systems. An expose of lack of rationality in the way an approach to DFSS has been investigated calls for more responsibility in the management of the development of this body of knowledge.