This regular feature of the journal includes a discussion of recent trends in health care spending, employment, and prices. The statistics presented in this article are valuable in their own right and for understanding the relationship between the health care sector and the overall economy. In addition, they allow us to anticipate the direction and magnitude of health care cost changes prior to...

This feature presents highlights from statistics on health care utilization, prices, expenses, employment, and work hours, as well as on national economic activity, with brief analysis of these economic indicators. These statistics provide an early indication of changes occurring in the health care sector and within the general economy. Although most statistics include data for the second quart...

Over the last 20 years, acute-care hospitals in most OECD countries have built up costly overcapacities. From the perspective of economic policy, it is desirable to know how hospitals of different ownership forms respond to changes in demand and are probably best suited to deal with existing overcapacities. This article examines ownership-specific differences in the responsiveness to changes in...

Economists have long used state-collected discharge data to construct Hirschman-Herfindahl (HH) indices measuring hospital competition. Since data are collected to determine the facility providing the service rather than ownership, the difference between the number of reporting facilities and the number of competitors has grown over time due to mergers and networking activities. Consequently, t...

This study undertook to discern the effect the production strategy dimension had on technological growth in a developing country. It utilized robust indicators that measured the penetration of advanced manufacturing technologies in the Ugandan machine tool driven industry. Poor or the lack thereof of comprehensive production strategies had a profound effect on the development of this industry. ...

Sandia National Laboratories, under the direction of the Office of Science and Technology, National Institute of Justice, conducted the chemical facility vulnerability assessment (CFVA) project. The primary objective of this project was to develop, test and validate a vulnerability assessment methodology (VAM) for determining the security of chemical facilities against terrorist or criminal att...

We explain strategic piracy in the software industry as a result of the presence of learning costs in the context of intertemporal price discrimination. First, piracy can be a means to incite consumers to invest in human capital, which increases their propensity to pay and enables the firm to raise prices. Second, the presence of piracy induces a more efficient intertemporal price discrimination.

Product liability litigation has made important contributions to tobacco control, especially by uncovering incriminating industry documents and publicizing product dangers and industry misconduct. WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Article 19 encourages Parties to strengthen legal procedures to facilitate these lawsuits and to establish mechanisms for mutual assistance. Creative...

Despite extensive investigation of the Indian software industry, knowledge about small software firms is inadequate. This knowledge is important as many developing countries are contemplating the software industry as a means of national growth along the lines that India has taken. This paper provides a descriptive analysis of small software firms in India. It shows that small software firms tha...