Occupational Safety and English Language Proficiency

Recent occupational injury data shows a rising trend, which happens to coincide with both increases in the population of foreign born in the U.S. and with changes in its composition. This study aims at exploring the presence of a statistical relationship between occupational injuries and the level of English proficiency of foreign born using cross-sectional data on the rate of injury and count of injury incidents. A cultural gap hypothesis is also examined as an alternative explanation for the rise in work injuries. While there is some support for the adverse effect of inadequate English language proficiency of foreign born, the results for the cultural gap hypothesis are more robust.English Proficiency, Occupational Injury

A Contingent Valuation of Customer Delay in Medical Services

In this study, the contingent valuation method, based on a survey of patients at medical practices, is used to estimate patients' willingness-to-pay to avoid delays in the reception area and the examination room. The maximum likelihood estimates indicate that patients' willingness-to-pay is affected by the actual waiting time rather than perception of the delay. Other factors that influence patients’ willingness-to-pay are rating of their experience at the medical practice, appointment, gender, age, health insurance, and the waiting location. The results also suggest that losses of consumer surplus due to delays at medical practices could be large, which has policy implications with respect to improvements in health care utilization in the U.S.

Barter and Business Cycles: A Comment and Further Empirical Evidence

The purpose of this comment is a critical evaluation of the empirical analysis made by Cresti (2005) and her finding that commercial barter behaves differently than corporate barter during the course of business cycles. Here, we correct the arbitrary replacement of the missing observations by filling them with forecasts using the Box-Jenkins ARMA and Kalman filter methods before performing the unit root and cointegration tests. Although the ECM estimates for various measures of business cycle are occasionally inconsistent, overall the inventory measures and capacity utilization results suggest that barter transactions are counter-cyclical regardless of the size of the business. Additionally, we find that barter rises with inflationary trend, dissemination of access to computer technology, tax rates and tax laws requiring disclosure of barter transactions.Barter, Business Cycles, Error Correction Model, Box-Jenkins ARMA