10,997 research outputs found
Reviving Full-Service Family Practice in British Columbia
Describes innovative operational reforms made in the province's fee-for-service system to improve quality of care and reduce costs, including incentive payments for chronic disease management and enhanced training. Outlines lessons learned and challenges
The Minimum Expectation Selection Problem
We define the min-min expectation selection problem (resp. max-min
expectation selection problem) to be that of selecting k out of n given
discrete probability distributions, to minimize (resp. maximize) the
expectation of the minimum value resulting when independent random variables
are drawn from the selected distributions. We assume each distribution has
finitely many atoms. Let d be the number of distinct values in the support of
the distributions. We show that if d is a constant greater than 2, the min-min
expectation problem is NP-complete but admits a fully polynomial time
approximation scheme. For d an arbitrary integer, it is NP-hard to approximate
the min-min expectation problem with any constant approximation factor. The
max-min expectation problem is polynomially solvable for constant d; we leave
open its complexity for variable d. We also show similar results for binary
selection problems in which we must choose one distribution from each of n
pairs of distributions.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure. Full version of paper presented at 10th Int.
Conf. Random Structures and Algorithms, Poznan, Poland, August 200
Tetris is Hard, Even to Approximate
In the popular computer game of Tetris, the player is given a sequence of
tetromino pieces and must pack them into a rectangular gameboard initially
occupied by a given configuration of filled squares; any completely filled row
of the gameboard is cleared and all pieces above it drop by one row. We prove
that in the offline version of Tetris, it is NP-complete to maximize the number
of cleared rows, maximize the number of tetrises (quadruples of rows
simultaneously filled and cleared), minimize the maximum height of an occupied
square, or maximize the number of pieces placed before the game ends. We
furthermore show the extreme inapproximability of the first and last of these
objectives to within a factor of p^(1-epsilon), when given a sequence of p
pieces, and the inapproximability of the third objective to within a factor of
(2 - epsilon), for any epsilon>0. Our results hold under several variations on
the rules of Tetris, including different models of rotation, limitations on
player agility, and restricted piece sets.Comment: 56 pages, 11 figure
Reassessing the Shimer facts
In a recent influential paper, Shimer uses CPS duration and gross flow data to draw two conclusions: (1) separation rates are nearly acyclic; and (2) separation rates contribute little to the variability of unemployment. In this paper the authors assert that Shimer's analysis is problematic, for two reasons: (1) cyclicality is not evaluated systematically; and (2) the measured contributions to unemployment variability do not actually decompose total unemployment variability. The authors address these problems by applying a standard statistical measure of business cycle comovement, and constructing a precise decomposition of unemployment variability. Their results disconfirm Shimer's conclusions. More specifically, separation rates are highly countercyclical under various business cycle measures and filtering methods. The authors also find that fluctuations in separation rates make a substantial contribution to overall unemployment variability.
Regime switching and monetary policy measurement
This paper applies regime-switching methods to the problem of measuring monetary policy. Policy preferences and structural factors are specified parametrically as independent Markov processes. Interaction between the structural and preference parameters in the policy rule serves to identify the two processes. The estimates uncover policy episodes that are initiated by switches to "dove regimes," shown to Granger-cause both NBER recessions and the Romer dates. These episodes imply real effects of monetary policy that are smaller than those found in previous studies.Phillips curve ; Monetary policy
Contractual Intermediaries
This paper analyzes the role of third party intermediaries, such as courts and arbitrators, in contract enforcement. In our model, intermediaries compel contracted transfers and resolve disputes when requested to do so by the contracting agents. When the verifiability of information is limited, successful enforcement requires that dispute resolution costs be sufficiently great. Optimal enforcement systems economize on dispute resolution and information costs, and may involve establishment of specific systems tailored to particular groups. We show further that the "holdup problem" may be resolved via an appropriately designed dispute resolution system.
Job matching and propagation
In the U.S. labor market, the vacancy-unemployment ratio and employment react sluggishly to productivity shocks. The authors show that the job matching model in its standard form cannot reproduce these patterns due to excessively rapid vacancy responses. Extending the model to incorporate sunk costs for vacancy creation yields highly realistic dynamics. Creation costs induce entrant firms to smooth the adjustment of new openings following a shock, leading the stock of vacancies to react sluggishly.Job creation ; Employment ; Unemployment
Exogenous vs. endogenous separation
This paper assesses how various approaches to modeling the separation margin affect the ability of the Mortensen-Pissarides job matching model to explain key facts about the aggregate labor market. Allowing for realistic time variation in the separation rate, whether exogenous or endogenous, greatly increases the unemployment variability generated by the model. Specifications with exogenous separation rates, whether constant or time-varying, fail to produce realistic volatility and productivity responsiveness of the separation rate and worker flows. Specifications with endogenous separation rates, on the other hand, succeed along these dimensions. In addition, the endogenous separation model with on-the-job search yields a realistic Beveridge curve correlation and performs well in accounting for the productivity responsiveness of market tightness. While adopting the Hagedorn-Manovskii calibration approach improves the behavior of the job finding rate, the volume of job-to-job transitions in the on-the-job search specification becomes essentially zero.Job hunting ; Unemployment
The dynamic Beveridge curve
In aggregate U.S. data, exogenous shocks to labor productivity induce highly persistent and hump-shaped responses to both the vacancy-unemployment ratio and employment. The authors show that the standard version of the Mortensen-Pissarides matching model fails to replicate this dynamic pattern due to the rapid responses of vacancies. They extend the model by introducing a sunk cost for creating new job positions, motivated by the well-known fact that worker turnover exceeds job turnover. In the matching model with sunk costs, vacancies react sluggishly to shocks, leading to highly realistic dynamicsEmployment ; Unemployment
On Minimizing Crossings in Storyline Visualizations
In a storyline visualization, we visualize a collection of interacting
characters (e.g., in a movie, play, etc.) by -monotone curves that converge
for each interaction, and diverge otherwise. Given a storyline with
characters, we show tight lower and upper bounds on the number of crossings
required in any storyline visualization for a restricted case. In particular,
we show that if (1) each meeting consists of exactly two characters and (2) the
meetings can be modeled as a tree, then we can always find a storyline
visualization with crossings. Furthermore, we show that there
exist storylines in this restricted case that require
crossings. Lastly, we show that, in the general case, minimizing the number of
crossings in a storyline visualization is fixed-parameter tractable, when
parameterized on the number of characters . Our algorithm runs in time
, where is the number of meetings.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. To appear at the 23rd International Symposium on
Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2015
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