BACKGROUND Governments and other payers are yet to determine optimal processes by which to review the safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of technologies and procedures that are in active use within health systems, and rescind funding (partially or fully) from those that display poor profiles against these parameters. To further progress a disinvestment agenda, a model is required to ...

We study a continuous-time, finite horizon optimal stochastic reversible investment problem for a firm producing a single good. The production capacity is modeled as a onedimensional, time-homogeneous, linear diffusion controlled by a bounded variation process which represents the cumulative investment-disinvestment strategy. We associate to the investmentdisinvestment problem a zero-sum optima...

The role of men's jealousy over a wife's infidelity in precipitating marital conflict and wife abuse is well documented. The role of women's jealousy over a husband's infidelity has received little attention, which is puzzling given high potential costs to women of withdrawal of paternal investment. We address this gap by investigating marital conflict and wife abuse among Tsimane forager–farme...

BACKGROUND Wales faces serious public health challenges, with relatively low life expectancies and wide inequalities in life expectancy with associated pressures on the National Health Service (NHS) at a time of financial recession. This has led to growing recognition of the need to better understand the range of health improvement and prevention programmes across Welsh Government, NHS, local g...

OBJECTIVES We develop and test a conceptual model of factors influencing the likelihood of physical wife abuse. The paternal disinvestment model emphasizes that spousal conflict over resource use results from men's attempts to increase individual fitness at a cost to the family (e.g., through pursuit of extramarital affairs). We propose that men use violence to control women's responses to the ...

In this journal, Macchi and Pavan [1] have described how, in Italy, a research hospital can be managed at the times of a global economic crisis and have pointed out that, as a matter of fact, sustainability has become the main concern for hospital managers and physicians. This implies to promote a more critical evaluation of health-care interventions leading in some cases to negative approval d...

BACKGROUND Since the global financial crisis, UK NHS spending has reduced considerably. Respiratory care is a large cost driver for Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, the largest health board in Wales. Under the remit of 'prudent healthcare' championed by the Welsh Health Minister, a Programme Budgeting Marginal Analysis (PBMA) of the North Wales respiratory care pathway was conducted. ...

We propose a model of a firm’s reversible investment decision with macroeconomic conditions based on optimal switching of a diffusion regime. The switching costs and the cash flow generated from the firm depend on a business cycle alternating via a Markov chain, and the triggers of investment and disinvestment in each state are determined endogenously. Provided the investment costs are cyclical...