Search results

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to examine the diffusion of a new surgical procedure with lower per-case cost and how its diffusion path is affected by the simultaneous introduction of a new drug class that may be an effective treatment to prevent surgery. In particular, we examine whether a process of technology substitution exists that influences the diffusion process of the surgical technology. Given their different cost implications, the interaction of these two different technologies, surgery and drug intervention, is relevant from the perspective of health expenditure. This is of particular interest in health care as technology adoption and diffusion has been cited as a major driver of expenditure growth. Such expenditure growth has been increasingly targeted through the use of market-orientated policy tools aimed at increasing efficiency. Our research is thus addressing the question of how economic incentives influence the diffusion process and we discuss the impact of a set of incentives on hospital behavior.

Design/methodology – Hospital admission data for the financial years 1998/1999 to 2007/2008 in England are used to empirically test the contribution of prescription uptake and market-oriented reforms. Dynamic panel data models are used to capture any changes in technology preference during the period of study.

Findings – Our results suggest that the hospital sector exhibits a strong new technology preference, tempered by the interaction of competition for patients and the ability of the primary care sector to substitute treatments.

Value/originality – Given the current fast technological change, we examine the technological race occurring in the health care sector. We account simultaneously for the diffusion of different technologies not only within the same typology but also with technologies of a different class.

Medical technology broadly defined to include all aspects of the process of treating disease (e.g., pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures) is profoundly important for individual health and, consequently, also for general welfare. Advances in medical technology hold out the prospect of both improved population health and increased general welfare. However, because of the nature and extensive regulation of the markets for health care goods and services, the development and application of medical technologies differs fundamentally from nonmedical technological advances. In this volume of the series of Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, entitled The Economics of Medical Technology, we present several papers that provide theoretical and empirical evidence about the market for medical technology.

Unemployment insurance (UI) reduces the opportunity cost of leisure, but it is unknown whether this additional leisure time is physically active. To obtain unbiased estimates of the effect of UI on physically active leisure participation, I exploit changes in UI program legislation across US states and time. Using nationally representative monthly data between 2003 and 2010 from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), I find evidence that both state UI eligibility expansions and increases in maximum allowable state UI benefits coincide with greater probability of physical activity among the recently unemployed. Based on point estimates, state UI eligibility expansions increased the probability of physical activity participation by 8–10 percentage points among the unemployed with less than a high school education, while a 10% increase in the maximum allowable state UI benefit increased the probability of physical activity by 0.3 to 0.6 percentage points among the unemployed who have completed high school or some college.

The development of small firms tends to follow certain growth patterns usually referred to as business growth models. This paper reports on the conceptualisation of a “problem‐based phenomenological life cycle model”, which delineates the growth pattern of micro and small manufacturing firms in Cyprus. The empirically validated model offers guidance to small business managers, financiers and advisers as to the challenges and growth complexities accompanying the transitions taking place in small businesses as they develop along their organisational life cycle. Enhanced understanding of the barriers to the development of small business contributes to the better design of policy initiatives that seek to foster the survival, sustainable growth and prosperity of small enterprises.

There have always been traditional differences between the various regions of the British Isles. For example, meat consumption is greater in the North than the South; most families take some meat at every meal and this extends to the children. The North is the home of the savoury meat products, eg., faggots, rissoles and similar preparations and a high meat content for such foods as sausages is expected; between 80 and 90% with the cereal only present for binding purposes. Present minimum meat contents would be considered a swindle, also the nature of the lean meat and the lean meat/fat ratio. The high water content similarly would have been unacceptable.

In a full blaze of comings and goings, it is unnecessary to remind ourselves that the holiday season is upon us; mass travel to faraway places. The media have for months, all through the winter, been extolling a surfeit of romantic areas of the world, exspecially on television; of colourful scenes, exotic beauties, brilliant sunshine everywhere; travel mostly by air as so‐called package tours — holidays for the masses! The most popular areas are countries of the Mediterranean littoral, from Israel to Spain, North Africa, the Adriatic, but of recent years, much farhter afield, India, South‐east Asia and increasingly to the USA.

To construct an index (index of environmental sensitivity performance) to be used in a cross‐country trade model in order to analyze the effect of various degrees of environmental stringency on the trade patterns, and especially on the export performance of the countries.

The gravity model of trade is used in order to find the effects of environmental stringency on the variation in trade flows.

The study shows that environmental stringency has an important impact on the export of the countries. The impact of the degree of environmental stringency on the exports is significantly negative suggesting an inverse relationship between export values and relative environmental sensitivity performance of the nations.

This study supports the argument that the environmental stringency level differential between developing and developed nations is a crucial criteria in terms of explaining shifts in the trade patterns and international specialization of the countries.