Suchergebnisse

In 2009 firms faced both economic uncertainty and influenza outbreaks. Both crises posed large costs for firms; however, the manner in which they were perceived by management to affect the organization potentially differed. Using generalized maximum entropy (GME) the authors analyzed a business outlook survey of Seattle, Washington area businesses. Overall, firms were more proactive in responding to the economic crisis than to the influenza pandemic, even though the potential costs associated with both were quite large. Among the authors' conclusions is that business managers responded to the economic crisis more because it was more familiar and something over which they thought they had more control.

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to empirically identify incentives that drive resource shifting by US pharmaceutical firms to comparatively low-tax jurisdictions.


Design/methodology/approach
Using a panel of publicly listed companies, we investigate whether resource shifting is facilitated by two underlying factors. First, we examine whether pharmaceutical manufacturers whose intangible assets are disproportionately held as intellectual property are more or less likely to shift resources to jurisdictions outside of the USA. Second, we empirically determine whether manufacturers that derive most of their revenues from producing a specific type of product are more or less likely to shift income-producing resources to their international affiliates.


Findings
The empirical results suggest that pharmaceutical factors do practice strategic resource shifting. Moreover, pharmaceutical manufacturers which produce biologic medications are significantly less likely than other manufacturers to practice resource shifting. We find no evidence to suggest that firms whose intangible assets are more composed of intellectual property are any more or less likely to practice resource shifting.


Originality/value
To date, a plethora of studies exist which examine resource shifting in a large, general population of multinational corporations. However, there are relatively few studies that examine international resource shifting in the pharmaceutical industry.

Declining economic conditions over the past several years have identified a disturbing trend; more and more households in the US are being pushed to the brink of financial insolvency. Current legal and market protections (including, but not limited to the use of collateral and mortgage insurance, consumer credit counseling and bankruptcy protection) provide relief after financial distress occurs, but do nothing to prevent the likelihood of distress. Recent research argues that the use of preventive measures are superior to ex post measures, but can only be implemented with the help of predictive models to identify at risk households. This paper uses tools drawn from evolutionary game theory, economics and public health to create a simple model of "financial epidemiology", which illustrates the role that social dynamics play in shaping household financial decisions. The model facilitates the prediction of financial insolvency by constructing phase diagrams which illustrate "tipping points" beyond which households move down an inexorable path towards insolvency.

In this article, a combination of data envelopment analysis, spreadsheet modeling and regression techniques is applied to a panel of nonprofit Washington State hospitals in an effort to determine whether (and if so, to what extent) inefficiency in one hospital cost center is shared with inefficiency in other cost centers. The findings suggest that a significant amount of inefficiency is shared across hospital cost centers. The authors further determine that certain cost centers contribute more to the overall performance of a given hospital than others. As such, managerial decisions and government policies designed to enhance hospital efficiency should be implemented differently, depending on the characteristics of the hospital in question.