68 research outputs found
Price effects of a hospital merger: Heterogeneity across health insurers, hospital products, and hospital locations
In most studies on hospital merger effects, the unit of observation is the merged hospital, whereas the observed price is the weighted average across hospital products and across payers. However, little is known about whether price effects vary between hospital locations, products, and payers. We expand existing bargaining models to allow for heterogeneous price effects and use a difference-in-differences model in which price changes at the merging hospitals are compared with price changes at comparison hospitals. We find evidence of heterogeneous price effects across health insurers, hospital products and hospital locations. These findings have implications for ex ante merger scrutiny
Young childrenâs food brand knowledge. Early development and associations with television viewing and parentâs diet
Brand knowledge is a prerequisite of childrenâs requests and choices for branded foods. We explored the development of young childrenâs brand knowledge of foods highly advertised on television â both healthy and less healthy. Participants were 172 children aged 3â5 years in diverse socio-economic settings, from two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland with different regulatory environments. Results indicated that food brand knowledge (i) did not differ across jurisdictions; (ii) increased significantly between 3 and 4 years; and (iii) children had significantly greater knowledge of unhealthy food brands, compared with similarly advertised healthy brands. In addition, (iv) childrenâs healthy food brand knowledge was not related to their television viewing, their motherâs education, or parent or child eating. However, (v) unhealthy brand knowledge was significantly related to all these factors, although only parent eating and childrenâs age were independent predictors. Findings indicate that effects of food marketing for un- healthy foods take place through routes other than television advertising alone, and are present before pre-schoolers develop the concept of healthy eating. Implications are that marketing restrictions of un- healthy foods should extend beyond television advertising; and that family-focused obesity prevention programmes should begin before children are 3 years of age
Market innovation as framing, productive friction and bricolage: an exploration of the personal data market
This paper explores the possibilities offered by recent Science and Technology Studies (STS) research on markets for engaging with market innovation. Although there exist few reflections on how innovation happens in markets, market innovation has not been singularly theorized in STS-inspired market studies. In this paper, we explore the potential analytic utility of different sets of ideas in the field of market studies, such as âframingâ [Callon, M. (1998) âIntroduction: the embeddedness of economic markets in economicsâ, in The Laws of Markets, ed. M. Callon, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 1â57; Callon, M. (2007) âAn essay on the growing contribution of economic markets to the proliferation of the socialâ, Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 24, no. 7â8, pp. 136â163], âproductive frictionâ [Stark, D. (2009) The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ] and âbricolageâ [MacKenzie, D. & Pardo-Guerra, J. P. (2014) âInsurgent capitalism: Island, bricolage and the re-making of financeâ, Economy and Society, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 153â182]. Drawing on our research into the online personal data industry and start-ups developing personal data control products, we put together five sensibilities that we think are of use for broader considerations of market innovation
Web Vulnerability Study of Online Pharmacy Sites
Consumers are increasingly using online pharmacies, but these sites may not provide an adequate level of security with the consumersâ personal data. There is a gap in this research addressing the problems of security vulnerabilities in this industry. The objective is to identify the level of web application security vulnerabilities in online pharmacies and the common types of flaws, thus expanding on prior studies. Technical, managerial and legal recommendations on how to mitigate security issues are presented. The proposed four-step method first consists of choosing an online testing tool. The next steps involve choosing a list of 60 online pharmacy sites to test, and then running the software analysis to compile a list of flaws. Finally, an in-depth analysis is performed on the types of web application vulnerabilities. The majority of sites had serious vulnerabilities, with the majority of flaws being cross-site scripting or old versions of software that have not been updated. A method is proposed for the securing of web pharmacy sites, using a multi-phased approach of technical and managerial techniques together with a thorough understanding of national legal requirements for securing systems
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