The Value of Clinical Practice Guidelines as Malpractice "Safe Harbors"

Examines the extent to which evidence-based recommendations for optimizing patient care could help reduce provider defensiveness and overutilization. Outlines context for and challenges in designing and implementing clinical guidelines as policy reform

Search-Theoretic Models of the Labor Market-A Survey

We survey search-theoretic models of the labor market and discuss their usefulness for analyzing labor market dynamics, job turnover, and wages. We first examine single-agent models, showing how they can incorporate many interesting features and generate rich predictions. We then consider equilibrium models that endogenize several variables that are treated parametrically in single-agent models, including the arrival rate of job offers and the wage distribution. We survey alternative formulations of these models, emphasizing two key issues: how workers and firms meet, and how wages are determined. We emphasize throughout the implications of alternative assumptions for turnover, wage dispersion, and efficiency.

Alternative Mechanisms for Corporate Control

We examine performance and management characteristics of Fortune 500 firms experiencing one of three types of control change: internally precipitated management turnover, hostile takeover, and friendly takeover. We find that firms experiencing internally precipitated management turnover perform poorly relative to other firms in their industries, but are not concentrated in poorly performing industries. In contrast, targets of hostile takeovers are concentrated in troubled industries. There is also weaker evidence that hostile takeover targets underperform their industry peers. We interpret this evidence as consistent with the idea that the board of directors is capable of firing managers whose leadership leads to poor performance relative to industry, but that an external challenge in the form of a hostile takeover is often required when the whole industry is in decline. The evidence also indicates that firms run by a member of the founding family are less likely to experience either internally precipitated top management turnover or a hostile takeover. On the other hand, firms whose top management team is dominated by a single, relatively young top executive, while lacking in internal discipline, are more likely to experience a hostile takeover.

Characteristics of Hostile and Friendly Takeover Targets

Compared to an average Fortune 500 firm, a target of a hostile takeover is smaller, older, has a lower Tobin's Q, invests less of its income, and is growing more slowly. The low Q seems to be an industry-specific rather than a firm-specific effect. In addition, a hostile target is less likely to be run by a member of the founding family, and has lower officer ownership, than the average firm. In contrast, a target of a friendly acquisitions is smaller and younger than an average Fortune 500 firm, and has comparable Tobin's Qs and most other financial characteristics. Friendly targets are more likely to be run by a member of the founding family, and have higher officer ownership, than the average firm. The decision of a CEO with a large stake and/or with a relationship to a founder to retire often precipitates a friendly acquisition. These results suggest that the motive for a takeover often determines its mood. Thus disciplinary takeovers are more often hostile, and synergistic ones are more often friendly.

The Stock Market and Investment: Is the Market a Sideshow?

macroeconomics, stock market

Daze fasteners

A daze fastener system for connecting two or more structural elements wherein the structural elements and fastener parts have substantially different coefficient of thermal expansion physical property characteristics is employed in this invention. By providing frusto-conical abutting surfaces between the structural elements and fastener parts any differences in thermal expansion/contraction between the parts is translated to sliding motion and avoids deleterious thermal stresses in the connection. An essential feature for isotropic homogeneous material connections is that at least two sets of mating surfaces are required wherein each set of mating surfaces has line element extensions that pass through a common point

Occurrence of Two Species of Old World Bees, \u3ci\u3eAnthidium Manicatum\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eA. Oblongatum\u3c/i\u3e (Apoidea: Megachilidae), in Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan

Anthidium manicatum and A. oblongatum are two European bees species that have recently established themselves in North America. Anthidium manicatum has previously been documented in New York and Ontario, Canada, and A. oblongatum has been documented in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and eastern Pennsylvania. We surveyed a number of sites in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana for these species in 2000 and 2001, and found both bee species to have extended their ranges into northern Ohio, and A. manicatum to have moved into southern Michigan. We present a key identifying the four Anthidium species now known from northeastern North America