Patient and Sample Identification. out of the Maze?

Background: Patient and sample misidentification may cause significant harm or discomfort to the patients, especially when incorrect data is used for performing specific healthcare activities. It is hence obvious that efficient and quality care can only start from accurate patient identification. There are many opportunities for misidentification in healthcare and laboratory medicine, including homonymy, incorrect patient registration, reliance on wrong patient data, mistakes in order entry, collection of biological specimens from wrong patients, inappropriate sample labeling and inaccurate entry or erroneous transmission of test results through the laboratory information system. Many ongoing efforts are made to prevent this important healthcare problem, entailing streamlined strategies for identifying patients throughout the healthcare industry by means of traditional and innovative identifiers, as well as using technologic tools that may enhance both the quality and efficiency of blood tubes labeling. The aim of this article is to provide an overview about the liability of identification errors in healthcare, thus providing a pragmatic approach for diverging the so-called patient identification crisis

Strategic Monetary Policy with Non Atomistic Wage Setters

This paper presents a monetary policy game where firms' and wage setters' choices are derived explcitly from microfoundations. This approach allows us to relate some important features of the policy game to identifiable technological and preference parameters. Moreover, it shows that with large (uncoordinated) wage setters the policy maker's inflation aversion may have a permanent effect on employment even if private agents have rational expectations and complete information. The traditional result, whereby equilibrium employment is unrelated to the policy maker's inflation aversion is obtained as a special case when wage setting is fully decentralized (atomistic private sector). The model is used to reexamine the welfare effects of monetary policy delegation to a `conservative' central bank.

Issues Concerning the Approximation Underlying the Spectral Representation Theorem

In many important textbooks the formal statement of the Spectral RepresentationTheorem is followed by a process version, usually informal, stating thatany stationary stochastic process g is the limit in quadratic mean of asequence of processes, each consisting of a finite sum of harmonicoscillations with stochastic weights. The natural issues, whether the approximationerror is stationary, or whether at least it converges to zero uniformly int , have not been explicitly addressed in the literature. The paper shows that in allrelevant cases, for T unbounded the process convergence is not uniform in t. Equivalently, when T is unbounded the numberof harmonic oscillations necessary to approximate a stationary stochastic process with a preassigned accuracydepends on t . The conclusion is that the process version of the Spectral RepresentationTheorem should explicitely mention that in general the approximation of a stationary stochastic processby a finite sum of harmonic oscillations, given the accuracy, is valid for t belongingto a bounded subset of the real axis (of the set of integers in the discrete-parametercase).Stochastic processes. Stationarity. Spectral analysis.

Strategic Monetary Policy with Non-Atomistic Wage-Setters

This paper proposes a monetary policy game based on a microfounded general equilibrium model. The approach allows some key features of the policy game (such as the policy maker's gap between desired and "natural" output) to be related to basic technological and preference parameters. Moreover, it shows how results are affected by the presence of nonatomistic private agents. A main finding which is emphasized here is that, with nonatomistic labor unions, the policy maker's aversion to inflation may have a permanent effect on employment even if all agents have rational expectations and complete information. The traditional result, whereby equilibrium employment is unrelated to the policy maker's aversion to inflation, is obtained as a special case when private agents are atomistic. The model is used to reexamine the welfare effects of monetary policy delegation to a "conservative" central bank.

Incremental Principal Component Analysis Exact implementation and continuity corrections

This paper describes some applications of an incremental implementation of the principal component analysis (PCA). The algorithm updates the transformation coefficients matrix on-line for each new sample, without the need to keep all the samples in memory. The algorithm is formally equivalent to the usual batch version, in the sense that given a sample set the transformation coefficients at the end of the process are the same. The implications of applying the PCA in real time are discussed with the help of data analysis examples. In particular we focus on the problem of the continuity of the PCs during an on-line analysis.Comment: accepted at http://www.icinco.org

Median Voter Preferences, Central Bank Independence and Conservatism

This paper studies how the independence and conservatism of a central bank relate to the structure and stability of the median voter preferences. This is done by means of a model of endogenous delegation in which an opportunistic policy-maker chooses the monetary regime (independence and conservatism) to maximise the welfare of the median voter. The results show that a high degree of inflation aversion of monetary policy is not necessarily associated with a high degree of central bank independence. A high degree of inflation aversion of society (i.e. of the median voter) may lead to establish a central bank which is highly inflation averse, without necessarily making it independent. This suggests that the negative correlation between inflation and central bank independence indices detected by several empirical studies may reflect a link between inflation and some deep features of social preferences.central banks, elections, median voter

Revisiting the Case for a Populist Central Banker

It is known that discretionary policy may give rise to an inflationary bias if wages are negotiated in nominal terms. It has recently been argued that this bias can be eliminated, and welfare maximized, by the appointment of a central banker who does not care at all about inflation (a "populist" central banker). A conceptual flaw of the latter result is identified here. It is shown that when wages are negotiated in nominal terms the result is true only in the special case of a single, allencompassing, union. In the more general case of multiple unions, however, inflation increases linearly with their number and a populist central bank may turn out to decrease welfare.central bank conservatism, nominal wage bargaining