15,099 research outputs found
Medical Malpractice: Impact of the Crisis and Effect of State Tort Reforms
Reviews research on the malpractice crisis and examines data on how volatile malpractice environments affect healthcare delivery and how state tort reforms affect premiums, frequency of claims, payouts, and physician supply. Considers policy implications
Understanding Medical Malpractice Insurance: A Primer
Analyzes the causes of and potential solutions to address malpractice crises, and discusses how medical malpractice insurance works, why premiums change, and what can be done about it
Empirical Health Law Scholarship: The State of the Field
The last three decades have seen the blossoming of the fields of health law and empirical legal studies and their intersection--empirical scholarship in health law and policy. Researchers in legal academia and other settings have conducted hundreds of studies using data to estimate the effects of health law on accident rates, health outcomes, health care utilization, and costs, as well as other outcome variables. Yet the emerging field of empirical health law faces significant challenges--practical, methodological, and political.
The purpose of this Article is to survey the current state of the field by describing commonly used methods, analyzing enabling and inhibiting factors in the production and uptake of this type of research by policymakers, and suggesting ways to increase the production and impact of empirical health law studies. In some areas of inquiry, high-quality research has been conducted, and the findings have been successfully imported into policy debates and used to inform evidence-based lawmaking. In other areas, the level of rigor has been uneven, and the best evidence has not translated effectively into sound policy. Despite challenges and historical shortcomings, empirical health law studies can and should have a substantial impact on regulations designed to improve public safety, increase both access to and quality of health care, and foster technological innovation
COINTEGRATION AND THE FORECAST ACCURACY OF VAR MODELS
This paper assesses the forecast performance of a set of VAR models under a growing number of restrictions. With a maximum forecast horizon of 12 years, we show that the farther the horizon is, the more structured and restricted VAR models have to be to produce accurate forecasts. Indeed, unrestricted VAR models, not subjected to integration or cointegration, are poor forecasters for both short and long run horizons. Differenced VAR models, subject to integration, are reliable predictors for one-step horizons but ineffectual for multi-step horizons. Cointegrated VAR models including appropriate structural breaks and exogenous variables, as well as being subjected to over-identifying theory consistent restrictions, are excellent forecasters for both short and long run horizons. Hence, to obtain precise forecasts from VAR models, proper specification and cointegration are crucial for whatever horizons are at stake, while integration is relevant only for short run horizons.VAR demand systems; structural breaks, exogenous regressors, integration; cointegration; forecast accuracy.
Administrative Compensation for Medical Injuries: Lessons From Three Foreign Systems
Examines "no-fault" systems in New Zealand, Sweden, and Denmark, in which patients injured by medical negligence can file for compensation through governmental or private adjudicating organizations. Considers lessons for U.S. medical malpractice reform
Statistical wave scattering through classically chaotic cavities in the presence of surface absorption
We propose a model to describe the statistical properties of wave scattering
through a classically chaotic cavity in the presence of surface absorption.
Experimentally, surface absorption could be realized by attaching an "absorbing
patch" to the inner wall of the cavity. In our model, the cavity is connected
to the outside by a waveguide with N open modes (or channels), while an
experimental patch is simulated by an "absorbing mirror" attached to the inside
wall of the cavity; the mirror, consisting of a waveguide that supports Na
channels, with absorption inside and a perfectly reflecting wall at its end, is
described by a subunitary scattering matrix Sa. The number of channels Na, as a
measure of the geometric cross section of the mirror, and the lack of unitarity
of Sa as a measure of absorption, are under our control: these parameters have
an important physical significance for real experiments. The absorption
strength in the cavity is quantified by the trace of the lack of unitarity. The
statistical distribution of the resulting S matrix for N=1 open channel and
only one absorbing channel, Na =1, is solved analytically for the orthogonal
and unitary universality classes, and the results are compared with those
arising from numerical simulations. The relation with other models existing in
the literature, in some of which absorption has a volumetric character, is also
studied.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Essence and Cause: Making Something Be What It Is
Aristotle frequently describes essence as a âcauseâ or âexplanationâ, thus ascribing to essence some sort of causal or explanatory role. This explanatory role is often explicated by scholars in terms of essence âmaking the thing be what it isâ or âmaking it the very thing that it isâ. I argue that this is problematic, at least on the assumption that âmakingâ expresses an explanatory relation, since it violates certain formal features of explanation. I then consider whether Aristotle is vulnerable to this problem by examining the explanatory role of essence in Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics Z 17
Statistical fluctuations of the parametric derivative of the transmission and reflection coefficients in absorbing chaotic cavities
Motivated by recent theoretical and experimental works, we study the
statistical fluctuations of the parametric derivative of the transmission T and
reflection R coefficients in ballistic chaotic cavities in the presence of
absorption. Analytical results for the variance of the parametric derivative of
T and R, with and without time-reversal symmetry, are obtained for both
asymmetric and left-right symmetric cavities. These results are valid for
arbitrary number of channels, in completely agreement with the one channel case
in the absence of absorption studied in the literature.Comment: Modified version as accepted in PR
Testing Alternative Dynamic Systems for Modelling Tourism Demand
The goals in this paper are to contribute an empirical study of tourism demand dynamics, and to point out areas where the scrutiny of relationships between theoretical and empirical considerations are likely to produce new insights in this area of research. A flexible general form of a Dynamic Almost Ideal Demand System (DAIDS) is derived to analyse the UK tourism demand for its geographically proximate neighbours Portugal, Spain and France, in the period 1969-1997. Nested within the general dynamic structure are Deaton and Muellbauerâs static AIDS model itself, the partial adjustment model and the auto-regressive distributed lag model, which are tested against the general dynamic alternative. The empirical results obtained show that DAIDS is a data coherent and theoretically consistent model, providing evidence of the robustness of this methodology to conduct tourism demand analysis in a temporal context. Moreover, the dynamic model offers statistically strong evidence on the inadequacy of the orthodox static AIDS and the other restricted models to reconcile consistently data and theory within their formulations. Estimates for tourism price and expenditure elasticities are obtained, permitting a comparative analysis of the relative magnitudes and statistical relevance of long and short run sensitivity of the UK tourism demand to changes in its determinants.Tourism Demand, dynamic almost ideal system, partial adjustment system, autoregressive distributed lag system.
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