The Costs and Benefits of Euro-sation in Central-Eastern Europe Before or Instead of EMU Membership

Countries unable or unwilling to join a Monetary Union can partly replicate membership effects through either a Currency Board or formal replacement of the domestic currency by the currency of the Union. Schemes of this kind have been introduced recently in Transition Economies. The net balance of costs and benefits involved, for the country and the common currency area, are shown to be an empirical question, depending on a number of conditions and primarily on the degree of monetary, real, and institutional convergence already achieved beforehand. Positive net advantages may derive from dollar/Euro-isation but should not be taken for granted.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39724/3/wp340.pd

The Costs and Benefits of Euro-sation in Central-Eastern Europe Before or Instead of EMU Membership

Countries unable or unwilling to join a Monetary Union can partly replicate membership effects through either a Currency Board or formal replacement of the domestic currency by the currency of the Union. Schemes of this kind have been introduced recently in Transition Economies. The net balance of costs and benefits involved, for the country and the common currency area, are shown to be an empirical question, depending on a number of conditions and primarily on the degree of monetary, real, and institutional convergence already achieved beforehand. Positive net advantages may derive from dollar/Euro-isation but should not be taken for granted.Euro, monetary union, dollarisation, exchange rate regimes, convergence, transition

Adopting the Euro in the enlarged Union: An obstacle course

Joining the 'Eurozone' - Economic and Monetary Union - is perceived as a very important step in the process of European integration. For the new members of the enlarged Union: Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Malta, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, participation in EMU is an integral part of their membership obligations (acquis communautaire). They cannot opt out, as it was in the case of the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden. This paper discusses number of issues connected with joining the 'Euro', such as the Exchange Rate Mechanism, two years of speculation exposure, the Maastricht conditions, the fiscal shock of accession, and exchange rate real revaluation

Using patient-reported measures to drive change in healthcare: the experience of the digital, continuous and systematic PREMs observatory in Italy

BACKGROUND: The use of Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) has great potential in healthcare service improvement, but a limited use. This paper presents an empirical case of PREMs innovation in Italy, to foster patient data use up to the ward level, by keeping strengths and addressing weaknesses of previous PREMs survey experiences. The paper reports key lessons learned in this ongoing experience of action research, directly involving practitioners. METHODS: The aim of this paper is to present the results of an ongoing action research, encompassing the innovation of PREMs collection, reporting and use, currently adopted by 21 hospitals of two Italian regions. The continuous and systematic PREMs collection has been implemented between 2017 and 2019 and includes: a continuous web-based administration, using web-services; an augmented and positive questionnaire matching standard closed-ended questions with narrative sections; the inclusion and benchmarking of patient data within a shared performance evaluation system; public disclosure of aggregated anonymized data; a multi-level and real-time web-platform for reporting PREMs to professionals. The action research was carried out with practitioners in a real-life and complex context. The authors used multiple data sources and methods: observations, feedback of practitioners, collected during several workshops and meetings, and analysis of preliminary data on the survey implementation. RESULTS: A continuous and systematic PREMs observatory was developed and adopted in two Italian regions. PREMs participation and response rates tend to increase over time, reaching stable percentages after the first months. Narrative feedback provide a 'positive narration' of episodes and behaviours that made the difference to patients and can inform quality improvement actions. Real-time reporting of quantitative and qualitative data is enabling a gratifying process of service improvement and people management at all the hospitals' levels. CONCLUSIONS: The PREMs presented in this paper has been recognized by healthcare professionals and managers as a strategic and positive tool for improving an actual use of PREMs at system and ward levels, by measuring and highlighting positive deviances, such as compassionate behaviours

Generation of non-synchronous accelerograms for evaluate the seismic bridge response, including local site amplification.

Non-synchronous seismic actions particularly affect the behaviour of infrastructures with significant longitudinal extension, as bridges, interacting with the soil at surface or below ground level. Some authors state that non synchronism may increase by a large amount the structural response. Several acceleration records relative to different points of the ground with different soil profiles at distances meaningful for bridge analyses, are not available in data banks. The objective of this work is the generation of arrays of asynchronous signals at different points in space, starting from natural accelerograms related to a given seismic event, to increase the number of the available data. The computer code GAS has been modified to use natural accelerograms. The procedure has been applied to a real case, L’Aquila main-shock, for which records in different points of the free field are known

Kornai: Shortage versus surplus economies

The economics of institutions and comparative systems owes an enormous debt to János Kornai. This was well exemplified by Kornai (2014a), offering a synthetic characterization of socialism and capitalism, respectively, as shortage and surplus economies. I was very fortunate, over the last fifty years, to have had many opportunities to meet him and to talk to him, and to discuss these issues directly with him. János can be very persuasive, and over the years I have somewhat converged towards his views, but in this essay, I am going to rehearse one residual major disagreement on the shortage economy, and three reservations on capitalism as the surplus economy which, after discovering from talking to him that he was in basic sympathy with them, I have downgraded to qualifications