4,963 research outputs found
Introduction to Library Trends 28 (1) Summer 1979: The Economics of Academic Libraries
published or submitted for publicatio
Was there an ‘Industrious Revolution’ before the Industrial Revolution? An Empirical Exercise for England, c. 1300-1830
It is conventionally assumed that the pre-modern working year was fixed and that consumption varied with changes in wages and prices. This is challenged by the twin theories of the ‘industrious’ revolution and the consumer revolution, positing a longer working year as people earned surplus money to buy novel goods. In this study, we turn the conventional view on its head, fixing consumption rather than labour input. Specifically, we use a basket of basic consumption goods and compute the working year of rural and urban day labourers required to achieve that. By comparing with independent estimates of the actual working year, we find two ‘industrious’ revolutions among rural workers; both, however, are attributable to economic hardship, and we detect no signs of a consumer revolution. For urban labourers, by contrast, a growing gap between their actual working year and the work required to buy the basket provides great scope for a consumer revolution.Consumer Revolution; Cost-of-Living Index; Day Wages; ‘Industrious’ Revolution; Industrial Revolution; Labour Supply; Standard of Living
Medicaid Expansion and Hospital Closures: Examining Hospital, County, and State Effects in the Wake of the Affordable Care Act
INTRODUCTION: Since 2010, there has been a wave of hospital closures and mergers across the United States. These closures have likely impaired access to ambulatory care services for many communities, particularly those in which only one hospital is present. Given that decisions to expand Medicaid were state-specific, there may be differences in number and type of hospital closures between states that expanded and did not expand Medicaid
AIM: The present study aims to investigate the association between state level Medicaid expansion and short-term hospital closures from 2010-2016 using multilevel modeling of hospitals, counties, and states. This analysis aims to control for hospital differences, county demographics, and state insurance market factors.
METHODS: Hospital level data was obtained from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services. For contextual county effects, small area health insurance, income, and poverty estimates were included (U.S. Census 2013). State decisions on Medicaid expansion and state-level insurance market data was also assembled and analyzed. Multilevel models were estimated in STATA gllamm.
RESULTS: Medicaid non-expansion was not associated with a greater risk of hospital closure once included in the multilevel model. Further, rural vs. urban status was not predictive of hospital closure. Smaller hospitals, nonprofit hospitals, and hospitals with a history of ownership change were associated with closure risk. Critical access hospital status was a protective factor against closure.
DISCUSSION: Local, state, and federal policies supportive of small and nonprofit hospitals may be beneficial in preventing more hospital closures in the coming years. Further, in-depth financial research and increased awareness of both the historical and current trends in hospital closures is recommended for researchers and policymakers
Land Grant Application- Allen, Jacob (Scarborough)
Land grant application submitted to the Maine Land Office for Jacob Allen for service in the Revolutionary War.https://digitalmaine.com/revolutionary_war_me_land_office/1022/thumbnail.jp
Defining Textual Entailment
Textual entailment is a relationship that obtains between fragments of text when one fragment in some sense implies the other fragment. The automation of textual entailment recognition supports a wide variety of text-based tasks, including information retrieval, information extraction, question answering, text summarization, and machine translation. Much ingenuity has been devoted to developing algorithms for identifying textual entailments, but relatively little to saying what textual entailment actually is. This article is a review of the logical and philosophical issues involved in providing an adequate definition of textual entailment. We show that many natural definitions of textual entailment are refuted by counterexamples, including the most widely cited definition of Dagan et al. We then articulate and defend the following revised definition: T textually entails H = df typically, a human reading T would be justified in inferring the proposition expressed by H from the proposition expressed by T. We also show that textual entailment is context-sensitive, nontransitive, and nonmonotonic
Drivers of decadal vegetation change in Northern Alaska
The Arctic is experiencing rapid climate change. This research documents vegetation change near Atqasuk and Utqiaġvik, Alaska. At each location, 30 plots distributed in a matrix across the landscape, were sampled annually from 2010 to 2019 using a point frame. For every encounter we recorded the height and classified it into eight broad functional groups (deciduous shrubs, evergreen shrubs, forbs, graminoids, bryophytes, lichens, litter and standing dead vegetation); for vascular plants we also identified the species. We found a consistent increase in plant stature and cover over time which was dramatic at Atqasuk. Graminoid cover and height increased at both sites. At Atqasuk shrub and forb cover and height increased. Species diversity decreased at both sites. Year was generally the strongest predictor of vegetation change suggesting a cumulative change over time; however, soil moisture and soil temperature were also predictors of vegetation change in many cases. We anticipate plants in the region will continue to grow taller as the region warms resulting in further increases in plant cover, especially graminoids. The accumulation of litter will likely result in a decline of bryophytes and lichens. These changes in community structure will impact energy balance and carbon cycling and habitat quality for wildlife and therefore have regional and global consequences
Setting the bar: Bright-line indicators in American higher education accreditation
Responding to increased calls for uniform standards in higher education accreditation, this paper uses punctuated equilibrium theory to ask whether bright lines will have disproportionate impacts on various institution types in higher education. Using ordinary least squares and logistic regressions, I analyze the impacts of predominant degree granted, profit structure, and institutional ownership on 150 percent time completion rates, student loan default rates, and debt to earnings ratio. The results suggest that bright lines in completion rate would disproportionately impact institutions based on predominant degree granted, profit structure, and institutional ownership. Bright lines in student loan default rate would disproportionately impact institutions based on profit structure and institutional ownership, while bright lines in debt to earnings ratio would disproportionately impact institutions based on institutional ownership alone. The wide variation present in these institutions makes a uniform bright line impractical and unfairly punitive. These results are significant and robust, suggesting that the federal government must find a new method of standardizing the accreditation process
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