Agent-based Investigation of Price Inflation In Health Insurance

Frech-Ginsburg showed that medical insurance reimbursement systems with certain price-control characteristics cause chronic price inflation. We construct a three-party market in which Experts, Non-Experts and Insurers negotiate with each other for services, insurance coverage and cash in such a way that we can observe prices over successive rounds of negotiations and observe whether or not they show inflationary tendencies. We use agent-based software to simulate the agents. We find that three-party transactions between Insurer-Expert-Non-Expert show inflationary tendencies, but two-party transactions between Experts and Non-Experts do not. The findings suggest that institutional sources of price inflation can exist based on the order of negotiations when there is an intermediary between consumer and supplier. Inflation rates appear sensitive to the number of negotiations in each round

Interdisciplinary Practice

In commenting on the state of affairs in contemporary archaeology, Wylie outlines an agenda for archaeology as an interdisciplinary science rooted in ethical practices of stewardship. In so doing she lays the foundations for an informed and philosophically relevant “meta-archaeology.

Interdisciplinary working in service design: case studies for designing touch points

The paper argues that interdisciplinary design can be successful in services design. It offers information about 2 case studies in which interdisciplinary teams address design services problems. The paper explains the design method employed in the case studies. It also identifies “user design centred” as the main concept that drove the design approach. It explains the meaning of “user centred design”, of “services design” and highlights the importance of “interdisciplinary services design”. The paper also offers a framework for interdisciplinary working in service design. KEYWORDS: Service Design, Touch Points, Interdisciplinary workin

Teaching and Learning in Interdisciplinary Higher Education: A Systematic Review

Interdisciplinary higher education aims to develop boundary-crossing skills, such as interdisciplinary thinking. In the present review study, interdisciplinary thinking was defined as the capacity to integrate knowledge of two or more disciplines to produce a cognitive advancement in ways that would have been impossible or unlikely through single disciplinary means. It was considered as a complex cognitive skill that constituted of a number of subskills. The review was accomplished by means of a systematic search within four scientific literature databases followed by a critical analysis. The review showed that, to date, scientific research into teaching and learning in interdisciplinary higher education has remained limited and explorative. The research advanced the understanding of the necessary subskills of interdisciplinary thinking and typical conditions for enabling the development of interdisciplinary thinking. This understanding provides a platform from which the theory and practice of interdisciplinary higher education can move forwar

iSTEM Teaching & Learning Conference Program 2017

iSTEM Conference Program 201

Boundary Spanning in Academia: Antecedents and Near-Term Consequences of Academic Entrepreneurialism

Analyzing the pathways of people who earned interdisciplinary research doctorates in the United States in 2010, we generate three main findings while controlling for gender, ethnicity, discipline, and age. First, individuals who complete an interdisciplinary dissertation display near-term income risk since they tend to earn nearly $1,700 less in the year after graduation. Second, students whose fathers earned a college degree demonstrated a .8% higher probability of pursuing interdisciplinary research. Third, the probability that non-citizens pursue interdisciplinary dissertation work is 4.7% higher when compared with US citizens. Our findings quantify the risks of interdisciplinary work and contribute to policy debates

Interdisciplinary Dissertation Research Among Public Health Doctoral Trainees, 2003-2015

Given the call for more interdisciplinary research in public health, the objectives of this study were to (1) examine the correlates of interdisciplinary dissertation completion and (2) identify secondary fields most common among interdisciplinary public health graduates. METHODS: We analyzed pooled cross-sectional data from 11 120 doctoral graduates in the Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2003-2015. The primary outcome was interdisciplinary dissertation completion. Covariates included primary public health field, sociodemographic characteristics, and institutional attributes. RESULTS: From 2003 to 2015, a total of 4005 of 11 120 (36.0%) doctoral graduates in public health reported interdisciplinary dissertations, with significant increases observed in recent years. Compared with general public health graduates, graduates of environmental health (odds ratio [OR] = 1.74; P < .001) and health services administration (OR = 1.38; P < .001) doctoral programs were significantly more likely to report completing interdisciplinary dissertation work, whereas graduates from biostatistics (OR = 0.51; P < .001) and epidemiology (OR = 0.76; P < .001) were less likely to do so. Completing an interdisciplinary dissertation was associated with being male, a non-US citizen, a graduate of a private institution, and a graduate of an institution with high but not the highest level of research activity. Many secondary dissertation fields reported by interdisciplinary graduates included other public health fields. CONCLUSION: Although interdisciplinary dissertation research among doctoral graduates in public health has increased in recent years, such work is bounded in certain fields of public health and certain types of graduates and institutions. Academic administrators and other stakeholders may use these results to inform greater interdisciplinary activity during doctoral training and to evaluate current and future collaborations across departments or schools