Regional differences of outpatient physician supply as a theoretical economic and empirical generalized linear model

BACKGROUND: Regional differences in physician supply can be found in many health care systems, regardless of their organizational and financial structure. A theoretical model is developed for the physicians' decision on office allocation, covering demand-side factors and a consumption time function. METHODS: To test the propositions following the theoretical model, generalized linear models were estimated to explain differences in 412 German districts. Various factors found in the literature were included to control for physicians' regional preferences. RESULTS: Evidence in favor of the first three propositions of the theoretical model could be found. Specialists show a stronger association to higher populated districts than GPs. Although indicators for regional preferences are significantly correlated with physician density, their coefficients are not as high as population density. CONCLUSIONS: If regional disparities should be addressed by political actions, the focus should be to counteract those parameters representing physicians' preferences in over- and undersupplied regions.

Establishing continental sovereignty in Africa: risk and opportunity in financial integration - lessons for Africa from a legal perspective

This thesis identifies and defines the new African sovereignty. It establishes a modern sovereignty in Africa hatched from the changing nature of sovereignty in which countries come together at various levels or grades of partial surrender of national sovereignty in order to work closer together for their mutual advantage and benefit. To this end, the narrative zooms in on the central issues within the realms of money matters whereby a new model of monetary sovereignty and monetary solutions is designed in an attempt to ease the recurring tensions and challenges of modern national sovereignty in the continent of Africa. As such, this discussion will offer a historical journey through the constitution of sovereignty, to the birth of the nation state and international public law. It develops the theory of the changing nature of sovereignty within the modern state and opens new lines of inquiry for Africa. In this regard, it draws from juxtaposing and mixing elements of regional and global financial integration as well as retaining national financial sovereignty features to form this new design which I dub continental sovereignty. At its core, the thesis will deal with the legal aspects that stem from the co-mingling of legal systems of nation states and communities at the regional and global levels within the context of financial integration. The argument is that the rule of law remains sacrosanct in monetary management. Effective financial integration is the result of properly structured and managed legal frameworks with robust laws and institutions whether at a national, regional or global level. However, the thesis reveals that in order to avoid undermining the progress of Africa’s financial integration project, any solution for Africa must be immersed within a broader global solution where development issues are addressed and resolved and Africa can form a more central part in all relevant international discussion fora. The work will expound these issues by applying them within a regional and global context, with the state of affairs in Africa forming the nucleus. This application consequently presents the six key themes of the thesis which will be considered therein. They are: a.) regional advantage: which exploits the possibilities of deeper and further financial integration between smaller communal arrangements; b.) regional risk and exposure: the extent to which this deeper form of financial integration can spiral out of control if effected too quickly and too ambitiously; c.) global advantage: which considers the merits of global financial integration and the influence exerted by financial laws on the global financial architecture; d.) global risk and exposure: which considers the challenges of global financial integration especially within the background of the Global Financial Crisis 2007-2008; e.) African challenge: which considers the extent to which this analysis impacts the African economic and financial integration agenda; and f.) development challenge: which examines the extent to which global development issues impact the African solution (continental sovereignty) and the need for any solution for the continent to be roped into a broader global solution within which Africa can form an important part. Even though the thesis requests an optimistic undertone on the progress made so far, it unearths the African problem of multiple national sovereignty and multiple overlapping regional sovereignty constituted as the ‘spaghetti bowl’ dilemma. As such, the unique contribution to knowledge on financial integration in Africa can be echoed in these words: Africa‘s financial integration agenda has had little success in authenticating a systematic and dependable legal framework for monetary management. Efforts made have been incomplete, substandard, and not carefully followed through particularly reflected in the impuissant nature of the judicial enforcement mechanisms. Thus, the thesis argues that, any meaningful answer to the problems dogging the continent is inter alia deeply entrenched within a new form of cooperative monetary sovereignty. In other words, the thesis does not prescribe the creation of new laws; rather it advocates the effective enforcement of existing laws.

Costa del Sol (Spain), analysis of economic and land changes caused by tourism

Malaga is in southern Spain, in a region called Andalusia. Costa del Sol belongs to the province of Malaga, near the Strait of Gibraltar and near the coast of Africa (about 300 km) and about 2,300 km of Sluptz. The Costa del Sol is next to the Mediterranean Sea and near the Atlantic Ocean. Strong and rapid growth of tourism in the countries of southern Europe and in Poland. Spain currently (2015) is the third largest inbound of international tourism (68 mil.) and the second inbound in tourism revenue. Europe is a major world tourist region. The first recipient of tourism in the world is France. Most tourism takes place between developed countries.

Social Services in Times of Economic and Social Crisis: The case of Spain

The financial and economic crisis which originated in 2008 has had a severe impact on the population of the Southern European countries. The economic policies of austerity and public deficit control, as well as the neo-liberal and conservative social policies are redefining the public social protection systems, in particular the Social Services. In order to get to understand the current situation, we shall explain how the Social Services were developed in Spain and analyse the causes and consequences of the economic crisis. The working hypothesis is that the greater the increase on the population’s needs, the more developed the Social Services should be. We carried out a descriptive analysis of the situation as far as the social impacts of the crisis per region are concerned. We tested the hypothesis through a parametric model of analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) triangulating with the non-parametric Kruscal-Wallis test. The working hypothesis failed. The regions with better developed Social Services show a lower level of poverty and social exclusion. The challenges that the public Social Services system faces in times of crisis is three-fold: 1) re-modelling of local administration and transferring of the municipal Social Services responsibilities to the regional administration; 2) an increase of the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion 3) impact on social policies.

Volatility transmission between stock and exchange-rate markets: A connectedness analysis

This paper empirically investigates volatility transmission among stock and foreign exchange markets in seven major world economies during the period July 1988 to January 2015. To this end, we first perform a static and dynamic analysis to measure the total volatility connectedness in the entire period (the system-wide approach) using a framework recently proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2014). Second, we make use of a dynamic analysis to evaluate the net directional connectedness for each market. To gain further insights, we examine the time-varying behaviour of net pair-wise directional connectedness during the financial turmoil periods experienced in the sample period Our results suggest that slightly more than half of the total variance of the forecast errors is explained by shocks across markets rather than by idiosyncratic shocks. Furthermore, we find that volatility connectedness varies over time, with a surge during periods of increasing economic and financial instability.

Inequality of income and poverty persistence in the Municipality of Bologna: a cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis through administrative data

This work is part of a project promoted by Emilia-Romagna that aims at encouraging research activities in order to support the innovation strategies of the regional economic system through the exploitation of new data sources. To gain this scope, a database containing administrative data is provided by the Municipality of Bologna. This is achieved by linking data from the Register Office of the Municipality and fiscal data coming from the tax returns submitted to the Revenue Agency and released by the Ministry of Economy and Finance for the period 2002-2017. The main purpose of the project is the analysis of the medium term financial and distributional trends of income of the citizens residing in the Municipality of Bologna. Exploiting this innovative source of data allow us to analyse the dynamics of income at municipal level, overcoming the lack of information in official survey-based statistic. We investigate these trends by building inequality indicators and by examining the persistence of in-work poverty. Our results represent an important informative element to improve the effectiveness and equity of welfare policies at the local level, and to guide the distribution of economic and social support and urban redevelopment interventions in different areas of the Municipality.

Suicide in urban New South Wales, Australia 1985-1994: Socio-economic and migrant interactions

Variation of suicide with socio-economic status (SES) in urban NSW (Australia) during 1985-1994, by sex and country or region of birth, was examined using Poisson regression analysis of vital statistics and population data (age greater than or similar to 15 yr). Quintiles of SES were defined by municipality of residence and comparisons of suicide by SES were adjusted for age and country (or region) of birth (COB), and examined by COB. Risk of suicide in females was 28% that of males for all adults and 21% for youth (age 15-24 yr). Suicide risk was lower in males from southern Europe, Middle East and Asia, and higher in northern and eastern European males, compared to the Australian-born. Risks for suicide increased significantly with decreasing SES in males, but not in females. The relationship of male suicide and SES was stronger when controlled for COB. For males, the relative risk of suicide, adjusted for age and COB, was 66% higher in the lowest SES quintile compared to the highest quintile, and 39% higher for youth (age 15-24 yr). For male suicide, the population attributable fraction for SES (less than the highest quintile) was 27%. Analysis of SES differentials in male suicide according to COB indicated a significant inverse suicide gradient in relation to SES for the Australian-born and those burn in New Zealand and the United Kingdom or fire. but not in non-English speaking COB groups, except for Asia. For Australian-born males, suicide risk was 71% higher in the lowest SES group (compared to the highest), adjusted for age. These findings indicate that SES plays an important role in male suicide rates among the Australian-born and migrants from English-speaking countries and Asia, and among youth; but not in female suicide, nor suicide in most non-English speaking migrant groups. Reduction in SES differentials through economic and social policies may reduce male suicide in lower SES groups and should be seen to be at least as important as individual level interventions. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Survival Analysis Employed in Predicting Corporate Failure: A Forecasting Model Proposal

In face of the current economic and financial environment, predicting corporate bankruptcy is arguably a phenomenon of increasing interest to investors, creditors, borrowing firms, and governments alike. Within the strand of literature focused on bankruptcy forecasting we can find diverse types of research employing a wide variety of techniques, but only a few researchers have used survival analysis for the examination of this issue. We propose a model for the prediction of corporate bankruptcy based on survival analysis, a technique which stands on its own merits. In this research, the hazard rate is the probability of ‘‘bankruptcy’’ as of time t, conditional upon having survived until time t. Many hazard models are applied in a context where the running of time naturally affects the hazard rate. The model employed in this paper uses the time of survival or the hazard risk as dependent variable, considering the unsuccessful companies as censured observations.

Legal and political regulation of higher education in Portugal: an evolutionary perspective on the current policy issues and the problem of order

The higher education system in Europe is currently under stress and the debates over its reform and future are gaining momentum. Now that, for most countries, we are in a time for change, in the overall society and the whole education system, the legal and political dimensions have gained prominence, which has not been followed by a more integrative approach of the problem of order, its reform and the issue of regulation, beyond the typical static and classical cost-benefit analyses. The two classical approaches for studying (and for designing the policy measures of) the problem of the reform of the higher education system - the cost-benefit analysis and the legal scholarship description - have to be integrated. This is the argument of our paper that the very integration of economic and legal approaches, what Warren Samuels called the legal-economic nexus, is meaningful and necessary, especially if we want to address the problem of order (as formulated by Joseph Spengler) and the overall regulation of the system. On the one hand, and without neglecting the interest and insights gained from the cost-benefit analysis, or other approaches of value for money assessment, we will focus our study on the legal, social and political aspects of the regulation of the higher education system and its reform in Portugal. On the other hand, the economic and financial problems have to be taken into account, but in a more inclusive way with regard to the indirect and other socio-economic costs not contemplated in traditional or standard assessments of policies for the tertiary education sector. In the first section of the paper, we will discuss the theoretical and conceptual underpinning of our analysis, focusing on the evolutionary approach, the role of critical institutions, the legal-economic nexus and the problem of order. All these elements are related to the institutional tradition, from Veblen and Commons to Spengler and Samuels. The second section states the problem of regulation in the higher education system and the issue of policy formulation for tackling the problem. The current situation is clearly one of crisis with the expansion of the cohorts of young students coming to an end and the recurrent scandals in private institutions. In the last decade, after a protracted period of extension or expansion of the system, i. e., the continuous growth of students, universities and other institutions are competing harder to gain students and have seen their financial situation at risk. It seems that we are entering a period of radical uncertainty, higher competition and a new configuration that is slowly building up is the growth in intensity, which means upgrading the quality of the higher learning and getting more involvement in vocational training and life-long learning. With this change, and along with other deep ones in the Portuguese society and economy, the current regulation has shown signs of maladjustment. The third section consists of our conclusions on the current issue of regulation and policy challenge. First, we underline the importance of an evolutionary approach to a process of change that is essentially dynamic. A special attention will be given to the issues related to an evolutionary construe of policy analysis and formulation. Second, the integration of law and economics, through the notion of legal economic nexus, allows us to better define the issues of regulation and the concrete problems that the universities are facing. One aspect is the instability of the political measures regarding the public administration and on which the higher education system depends financially, legally and institutionally, to say the least. A corollary is the lack of clear strategy in the policy reforms. Third, our research criticizes several studies, such as the one made by the OECD in late 2006 for the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, for being too static and neglecting fundamental aspects of regulation such as the logic of actors, groups and organizations who are major players in the system. Finally, simply changing the legal rules will not necessary per se change the behaviors that the authorities want to change. By this, we mean that it is not only remiss of the policy maker to ignore some of the critical issues of regulation, namely the continuous non-respect by academic management and administrative bodies of universities of the legal rules that were once promulgated. Changing the rules does not change the problem, especially without the necessary debates form the different relevant quarters that make up the higher education system. The issues of social interaction remain as intact. Our treatment of the matter will be organized in the following way. In the first section, the theoretical principles are developed in order to be able to study more adequately the higher education transformation with a modest evolutionary theory and a legal and economic nexus of the interactions of the system and the policy challenges. After describing, in the second section, the recent evolution and current working of the higher education in Portugal, we will analyze the legal framework and the current regulatory practices and problems in light of the theoretical framework adopted. We will end with some conclusions on the current problems of regulation and the policy measures that are discusses in recent years.

A fractional perspective to financial indices

The application of mathematical methods and computer algorithms in the analysis of economic and financial data series aims to give empirical descriptions of the hidden relations between many complex or unknown variables and systems. This strategy overcomes the requirement for building models based on a set of ‘fundamental laws’, which is the paradigm for studying phenomena usual in physics and engineering. In spite of this shortcut, the fact is that financial series demonstrate to be hard to tackle, involving complex memory effects and a apparently chaotic behaviour. Several measures for describing these objects were adopted by market agents, but, due to their simplicity, they are not capable to cope with the diversity and complexity embedded in the data. Therefore, it is important to propose new measures that, on one hand, are highly interpretable by standard personal but, on the other hand, are capable of capturing a significant part of the dynamical effects.

Multi-Objective and Financial Portfolio Optimization of Carrier-Sense Multiple Access Protocols with Cooperative Diversity

8th International Workshop on Multiple Access Communications (MACOM2015), Helsinki, Finland.