bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Risk aversion and risk loving in the small: a decomposition of the multivariate risk premium
Authors: Ercolani Marco G. 
Published: January 2004

AbstractThis note proposes a decomposition of the familiar scalar multivariate risk premium into components which can be easily interpreted in the context of consumer theory. The premium under consideration is the standard one used to ascertain the impact of price and income risk on consumer welfare. This proposed premium decomposition allows for a more intuitive identification of the detrimental and beneficial effects that arise from income and price risk. As an illustrative example, this decomposition is used to ascertain the welfare effects arising from the price fluctuations experienced by UK households over the period 1963–97.
Whatever Happened to Integrated Transport?
Authors: Grayling Tony 
Published: January 2004

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the record of the Labour government on transport since 1997. It argues that Labour's plans have been overtaken by events, notably the fuel tax protests and the Hatfield train crash, and that the government has lost sight of its ambitions for an integrated transport policy. Transport is not an end in itself but a means to the end of wider objectives such as social equity, environmental sustainability and quality of life. Measured in these terms, the government's ten‐year transport plan is modest in scale and regressive in impact, and lacks and effective demand management strategy. The government should return to the principles of integrated transport. This requires a reformation of the ten‐year plan around the objectives of accessibility, liveability and sustainability, and new measures on both the supply side and the demand side of transport.
Local Democracy Renewed?
Authors: Bonney Norman 
Published: January 2004

ABSTRACTNew Labour's prescriptions for revitalising local democracy drew heavily upon academic analyses that emphasised the loss of power and legitimacy of local government, the need to reconnect local institutions of governance to the populace and to ensure that the dispersed powers of the successor institutions were coordinated locally through new procedures of community planning. The new arrangements have further weakened the power of elected local authorities and introduced a variety of agencies and partnerships which operate in a less public environment and which blur the channels of accountability that characterise representative democracy. Public participation initiatives often appear to be restricted exercises for limited executive led public involvement while more genuine and more independent local representative institutions such as parish and community councils have been sidelined.
Why New Labour Wants the Euro
Authors: Kettell Steven 
Published: January 2004

ABSTRACTThis article argues that membership of the single European currency would provide New Labour with a means of enhancing its rules‐based and depoliticised approach to macroeconomic policy management. The move would enable the government to strengthen its anti‐inflationary credibility and to impose further competitive discipline on business and labour, while at the same time also enabling it to increase its governing autonomy by placing core areas of economic policy outside the sphere of democratic control. Despite these advantages, however, formidable obstacles, most notably a high level of public antipathy towards the project, mean that New Labour's euro‐vision is unlikely to be realised.
Remote Electronic Voting: Free, Fair and Secret?
Authors: Birch Sarah , Watt Bob 
Published: January 2004

ABSTRACTMost of the debate surrounding remote electronic voting has focused on technical issues such as security and feasibility. This article examines the equally important issue of whether voting outside the context of the supervised polling place meets the legal and normative standards required of democratic elections. Our conclusion is that if voting that takes place in an unsupervised context, it is virtually impossible to guarantee that it will be carried out in secret, and that lack of secrecy constitutes a serious violation of the principles of freeness and fairness that govern elections in democratic states. This argument also has implications for postal voting, which are discussed in brief.
Modelling spatial patterns of biodiversity for conservation prioritization in North‐eastern Mexico
Authors: Ortega‐Huerta Miguel A. , Peterson A. T. 
Published: January 2004

ABSTRACTRelationships between spatial patterns of bird and mammal species richness in north‐eastern Mexico were analysed in relation to the location of three biosphere reserves (El Abra‐Tanchipa, El Cielo, and Sierra Gorda) and 13 priority areas recently identified for conservation. Ecological niches were modelled and potential distributions delimited for 285 bird and 114 mammal species using a genetic algorithm based on locality information from museum specimens and 15 selected environmental attributes. Potential distributions were transformed into hypothesized current distributions based on species–habitat associations as reflected in a recent land‐use map. Although species richness was lower when distributions were reduced from potential to current, spatial patterns of potential and current richness were similar. Heuristic, complementarity‐based prioritization procedures were used to identify combinations of areas and sites with maximal species representation: the biosphere reserves included 79% of birds and 74% of mammal species; eight priority areas provided an additional 11% of birds and 13% of mammals; the remaining 10% of birds and 13% of mammals were concentrated in new sites across the study area.
Introduced plants of the invasive Solidago gigantea (Asteraceae) are larger and grow denser than conspecifics in the native range
Authors: Jakobs Gabi , Weber Ewald , Edwards Peter J. 
Published: January 2004

ABSTRACTIntroduced plant species that became successful invaders appear often more vigorous and taller than their conspecifics in the native range. Reasons postulated to explain this better performance in the introduced range include more favourable environmental conditions and release from natural enemies and pathogens. According to the Evolution of Increased Competitive Ability hypothesis (EICA hypothesis) there is a trade‐off between investment into defence against herbivores and pathogens, and investment into a stronger competitive ability. In this study, we conducted field surveys to investigate whether populations of the invasive perennial Solidago gigantea Ait (Asteraceae) differ with respect to growth and size in the native and introduced range, respectively. We assessed size and morphological variation of 46 populations in the native North American range and 45 populations in the introduced European range. Despite considerable variation between populations within continents, there were pronounced differences between continents. The average population size, density and total plant biomass were larger in European than in American populations. Climatic differences and latitude explained only a small proportion of the total variation between the two continents. The results show that introduced plants can be very distinct in their growth form and size from conspecifics in the native range. The apparently better performance of this invasive species in Europe may be the result of changed selection pressures, as implied by the EICA hypothesis.
Morphological responses of Leymus chinensis (Poaceae) to the large‐scale climatic gradient along the North‐east China Transect (NECT)
Authors: Renzhong Wang , Qiong Gao 
Published: January 2004

ABSTRACTA field experiment was conducted to examine the morphological variations of Leymus chinensis along the climatic gradient of the North‐east China Transect (NECT), from 115° to 125° E, in the vicinity of 43.5° N, in north‐eastern China. Ten sites selected for plant sampling along the gradient have approximately uniform theoretical radiation, but differ in precipitation and geographical elevation. The results of analyses showed that vegetative and reproductive shoot heights, flag leaf lengths and widths and seed numbers per inflorescence increased from the west to the east with precipitation, but decreased with aridity. Leaf lengths and widths for most leaf types from 115° to 124° E exhibited little variations. Significant correlations of plant heights, flag leaf lengths and widths and seed numbers per inflorescence with large‐scale climatic variables (e.g. annual precipitation, aridity) and geographical variation (longitude) found in this study indicated that climatic factors have significant effects on some morphological traits of L. chinensis along the NECT.
The Impact of Visit Frequency on the Relationship between Service Quality and Outpatient Satisfaction: A South Korean Study
Authors: Cho Woo Hyun , Lee Hanjoon , Kim Chankon , Lee Sunhee , Choi Kui‐Son 
Published: January 2004

Objective. To examine the relative impact of four service quality dimensions on outpatient satisfaction and to test the invariance of the structural relationships between the service quality dimensions and satisfaction across three patient groups of varying numbers of prior visits to the same hospital as outpatients.Data Sources/Study Setting. Survey of 557 outpatients using a self‐administered questionnaire over a 10‐day period at a general hospital in Sungnam, South Korea.Data Collection. Patients answered questions related to two main constructs, patient satisfaction and health care service quality. The health care service quality measures (30 items) were developed based on the results of three focus group interviews and the SERVQUAL scale, while satisfaction (3 items) was measured using a previously validated scale.Study Design. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the construct validity of the service quality scale by testing convergent and divergent validity. A structural equation model specifying the four service quality dimensions as exogenous variables and patient satisfaction as an endogenous variable was estimated to assess the relative impact of each of the service quality dimensions on satisfaction. This was followed by a multigroup LISREL analysis that tested the invariance of structural coefficients across three groups with different frequencies of outpatient visits to the hospital.Principal Findings. Findings support the causal relationship between service quality and satisfaction in the context of the South Korean health care environment. The four service quality dimensions showed varying patterns of impact on patient satisfaction across the three different outpatient groups.Conclusion. The hospital management needs to be aware of the relative importance of each of the service quality dimensions in satisfaction formation of outpatients, which varies across different hospital utilization groups, and use this in strategic considerations.
Do Drug‐Free Workplace Programs Prevent Occupational Injuries? Evidence from Washington State
Authors: Wickizer Thomas M. , Kopjar Branko , Franklin Gary , Joesch Jutta 
Published: January 2004

Objective. To evaluate the effect of a publicly sponsored drug‐free workplace program on reducing the risk of occupational injuries.Data Sources. Workers' compensation claims data from the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries covering the period 1994 through 2000 and work‐hours data reported by employers served as the data sources for the analysis.Study Design. We used a pre–post design with a nonequivalent comparison group to assess the impact of the intervention on injury risk, measured in terms of differences in injury incidence rates. Two hundred and sixty‐one companies that enrolled in the drug‐free workplace program during the latter half of 1996 were compared with approximately 20,500 nonintervention companies. We tested autoregressive, integrated moving‐average (ARIMA) models to assess the robustness of our findings.Principal Findings. The drug‐free workplace intervention was associated (p<.05) with a statistically significant decrease in injury rates for three industry groups: construction, manufacturing, and services. It was associated (p<.05) with a reduction in the incidence rate of more serious injuries involving four or more days of lost work time for two industry groups: construction and services. The ARIMA analysis supported these findings.Conclusions. The drug‐free workplace program we studied was associated with a selective, industry‐specific preventive effect. The strongest evidence of an intervention effect was for the construction industry. Estimated net cost savings for this industry were positive though small in magnitude.
The Costs of Decedents in the Medicare Program: Implications for Payments to Medicare+Choice Plans
Authors: Beeuwkes Buntin Melinda , Garber Alan M. , Mcclellan Mark , Newhouse Joseph P. 
Published: January 2004

Objective. To discuss and quantify the incentives that Medicare managed care plans have to avoid (through selective enrollment or disenrollment) people who are at risk for very high costs, focusing on Medicare beneficiaries in the last year of life—a group that accounts for more than one‐quarter of Medicare's annual expenditures.Data Source. Medicare administrative claims for 1994 and 1995.Study Design. We calculated the payment a plan would have received under three risk‐adjustment systems for each beneficiary in our 1995 sample based on his or her age, gender, county of residence, original reason for Medicare entitlement, and principal inpatient diagnoses received during any hospital stays in 1994. We compared these amounts to the actual costs incurred by those beneficiaries. We then looked for clinical categories that were predictive of costs, including costs in a beneficiary's last year of life, not accounted for by the risk adjusters.Data Extraction Methods. The analyses were conducted using claims for a 5 percent random sample of Medicare beneficiaries who died in 1995 and a matched group of survivors.Principal Findings. Medicare is currently implementing the Principal Inpatient Diagnostic Cost Groups (PIP‐DCG) risk adjustment payment system to address the problem of risk selection in the Medicare+Choice program. We quantify the strong financial disincentives to enroll terminally ill beneficiaries that plans still have under this risk adjustment system. We also show that up to one‐third of the selection observed between Medicare HMOs and the traditional fee‐for‐service system could be due to differential enrollment of decedents. A risk adjustment system that incorporated more of the available diagnostic information would attenuate this disincentive; however, plans could still use clinical information (not included in the risk adjustment scheme) to identify beneficiaries whose expected costs exceed expected payments.Conclusions. More disaggregated prospective risk adjustment methods and alternative payment systems that compensate plans for delivering care to certain classes of patients should be considered to ensure access to high‐quality managed care for all beneficiaries.
Impact of Managed Care on the Treatment, Costs, and Outcomes of Fee‐for‐Service Medicare Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction
Authors: Kate Bundorf M. , Schulman Kevin A. , Stafford Judith A. , Gaskin Darrell , Jollis James G. , Escarce José J. 
Published: January 2004

Objective. To examine the effects of market‐level managed care activity on the treatment, cost, and outcomes of care for Medicare fee‐for‐service acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients.Data Sources/Study Setting. Patients from the Cooperative Cardiovascular Project (CCP), a sample of Medicare beneficiaries discharged from nonfederal acute‐care hospitals with a primary discharge diagnosis of AMI from January 1994 to February 1996.Study Design. We estimated models of patient treatment, costs, and outcomes using ordinary least squares and logistic regression. The independent variables of primary interest were market‐area managed care penetration and competition. The models included controls for patient, hospital, and other market area characteristics.Data Collection/Extraction Methods. We merged the CCP data with Medicare claims and other data sources. The study sample included CCP patients aged 65 and older who were admitted during 1994 and 1995 with a confirmed AMI to a nonrural hospital.Principal Findings. Rates of revascularization and cardiac catheterization for Medicare fee‐for‐service patients with AMI are lower in high‐HMO penetration markets than in low‐penetration ones. Patients admitted in high‐HMO‐competition markets, in contrast, are more likely to receive cardiac catheterization for treatment of their AMI and had higher treatment costs than those admitted in low‐competition markets.Conclusions. The level of managed care activity in the health care market affects the process of care for Medicare fee‐for‐service AMI patients. Spillovers from managed care activity to patients with other types of insurance are more likely when managed care organizations have greater market power.
Reexamining Organizational Configurations: An Update, Validation, and Expansion of the Taxonomy of Health Networks and Systems
Authors: Dubbs Nicole L. , Bazzoli Gloria J. , Shortell Stephen M. , Kralovec Peter D. 
Published: January 2004

Objectives. To (a) assess how the original cluster categories of hospital‐led health networks and systems have changed over time; (b) identify any new patterns of cluster configurations; and (c) demonstrate how additional data can be used to refine and enhance the taxonomy measures.Data Sources. 1994 and 1998 American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey of Hospitals.Study Design. As in the original taxonomy, separate cluster solutions are identified for health networks and health systems by applying three strategic/structural dimensions (differentiation, integration, and centralization) to three components of the health service/product continuum (hospital services, physician arrangements, and provider‐based insurance activities).Data Extraction Methods. Factor, cluster, and discriminant analyses are used to analyze the 1998 data. Descriptive and comparative methods are used to analyze the updated 1998 taxonomy relative to the original 1994 version.Principal Findings. The 1998 cluster categories are similar to the original taxonomy, however, they reveal some new organizational configurations. For the health networks, centralization of product/service lines is occurring more selectively than in the past. For the health systems, participation has grown in and dispersed across a more diverse set of decentralized organizational forms. For both networks and systems, the definition of centralization has changed over time.Conclusions. In its updated form, the taxonomy continues to provide policymakers and practitioners with a descriptive and contextual framework against which to assess organizational programs and policies. There is a need to continue to revisit the taxonomy from time to time because of the persistent evolution of the U.S. health care industry and the consequent shifting of organizational configurations in this arena. There is also value in continuing to move the taxonomy in the direction of refinement/expansion as new opportunities become available.
Metamorphic evolution of garnet‐bearing ultramafic rocks from the Gongen area, Sanbagawa belt, Japan
Authors: Enami M. , Mizukami T. , Yokoyama K. 
Published: January 2004

AbstractGarnet‐bearing ultramafic rocks including clinopyroxenite, wehrlite and websterite locally crop out in the Higashi‐akaishi peridotite of the Besshi region in the Cretaceous Sanbagawa metamorphic belt. These rock types occur within dunite as lenses, boudins or layers with a thickness ranging from a few centimetres to 1 metre. The wide and systematic variation of bulk‐rock composition and the overall layered structure imply that the ultramafic complex originated as a cumulate sequence. Garnet and other major silicates contain rare inclusions of edenitic amphibole, chlorite and magnetite, implying equilibrium at relatively low P–T conditions during prograde metamorphism. Orthopyroxene coexisting with garnet shows bell‐shaped Al zoning with a continuous decrease of Al from the core towards the rim, consistent with rims recording peak metamorphic conditions. Estimated P–T conditions using core and rim compositions of orthopyroxene are 1.5–2.4 GPa/700–800 °C and 2.9–3.8 GPa/700–810 °C, respectively, implying a high P/T gradient (> 3.1 GPa/100 °C) during prograde metamorphism. The presence of relatively low P–T conditions at an early stage of metamorphism and the steep P/T gradient together trace a concave upwards P–T path that shows increasing P/T with higher T, similar to P–T paths reported from other UHP metamorphic terranes. These results suggest either (1) down dragging of hydrated mantle cumulate parallel to the slab–wedge interface in the subduction zone by mechanical coupling with the subducting slab or (2) ocean floor metamorphism and/or serpentinization at early stage of subduction of oceanic lithosphere and ensuing HP–UHP prograde metamorphism.
Hydrothermal alteration, fluid flow and volume change in shear zones: the layered mafic–ultramafic Kettara intrusion (Jebilet Massif, Variscan belt, Morocco)
Authors: Essaifi A. , Capdevila R. , Fourcade S. , Lagarde J. L. , Ballèvre M. , Marignac CH. 
Published: January 2004

AbstractDuring emplacement and cooling, the layered mafic–ultramafic Kettara intrusion (Jebilet, Morocco) underwent coeval effects of deformation and pervasive fluid infiltration at the scale of the intrusion. In the zones not affected by deformation, primary minerals (olivine, plagioclase, clinopyroxene) were partially or totally altered into Ca‐amphibole, Mg‐chlorite and CaAl‐silicates. In the zones of active deformation (centimetre‐scale shear zones), focused fluid flow transformed the metacumulates (peridotites and leucogabbros) into ultramylonites where insoluble primary minerals (ilmenite, spinel and apatite) persist in a Ca‐amphibole‐rich matrix. Mass‐balance calculations indicate that shearing was accompanied by up to 200% volume gain; the ultramylonites being enriched in Si, Ca, Mg, and Fe, and depleted in Na and K. The gains in Ca and Mg and losses in Na and K are consistent with fluid flow in the direction of increasing temperature.When the intrusion had cooled to temperatures prevailing in the country rock (lower greenschist facies), deformation was still active along the shear zones. Intense intragranular fracturing in the shear zone walls and subsequent fluid infiltration allowed shear zones to thicken to metre‐scale shear zones with time. The inner parts of the shear zones were transformed into chlorite‐rich ultramylonites. In the shear zone walls, muscovite crystallized at the expense of Ca–Al silicates, while calcite and quartz were deposited in ‘en echelon’ veins. Mass‐balance calculations indicate that formation of the chlorite‐rich shear zones was accompanied by up to 60% volume loss near the centre of the shear zones; the ultramylonites being enriched in Fe and depleted in Si, Ca, Mg, Na and K while the shear zones walls are enriched in K and depleted in Ca and Si. The alteration observed in, and adjacent to the chlorite shear zones is consistent with an upward migrating regional fluid which flows laterally into the shear zone walls. Isotopic (Sr, O) signatures inferred for the fluid indicate it was deeply equilibrated with host lithologies.