THE IMPLICATIONS OF CHANGING FEDERALISM: THE COUNTY VIEW

Public Economics,

To Pool or to Aggregate? Tests with a Dynamic Panel Macroeconometric Model of Australian State Labour Markets

We construct a dynamic error correction model of the Australian labour market using a macroeconomic panel across seven states from 1972:3 to 1999:1. Long run equilibrium estimates support a real wage-productivity gap and an unemployment gap. The dynamic short-run estimates support expectations-augmented Phillips curves for wages and prices, and Keynesian demand-led employment growth. We compare three procedures - pooled, aggregate and mean group estimates. Considerable heterogeneity existed across states in the pooled procedure, and state-level variables had a significant impact in the aggregate procedure. Out-of-sample aggregate forecasting for the pooled, aggregate and mean group procedures indicate that the pooled one performs best.Panel cointegration; panel macroeconometric modelling; Australian state labour markets; aggregation

General practitioner understanding of abbreviations used in hospital discharge letters

Determines the incidence of abbreviation use in electronic hospital discharge letters (eDLs) and general practitioner understanding of abbreviations used in eDLs. Abstract Objectives: To determine the incidence of abbreviation use in electronic hospital discharge letters (eDLs) and general practitioner understanding of abbreviations used in eDLs. Design, setting and participants: Retrospective audit of abbreviation use in 200 sequential eDLs was conducted at Nepean Hospital, Sydney, a tertiary referral centre, from 18 December to 31 December 2012. The 15 most commonly used abbreviations and five clinically important abbreviations were identified from the audit. A survey questionnaire using these abbreviations in context was then mailed to 240 GPs in the area covered by the Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health District to determine their understanding of these abbreviations. Main outcome measures: Number of abbreviations and frequency of their use in eDLs, and GPs’ understanding of abbreviations used in the survey. Results: 321 abbreviations were identified in the eDL audit; 48.6% were used only once. Fifty five per cent of GPs (132) responded to the survey. No individual abbreviation was correctly interpreted by all GPs. Six abbreviations were misinterpreted by more than a quarter of GPs. These were SNT (soft non-tender), TTE (transthoracic echocardiogram), EST (exercise stress test), NKDA (no known drug allergies), CTPA (computed tomography pulmonary angiogram), ORIF (open reduction and internal fixation). These abbreviations were interpreted incorrectly by 47.0% (62), 33.3% (44), 33.3% (44) 32.6% (43), 31.1% (41) and 28.0% (37) of GPs, respectively. Conclusion: Abbreviations used in hospital eDLs are not well understood by the GPs who receive them. This has potential to adversely affect patient care in the transition from hospital to community care

Universities and article copyright

In all the debates about copyright and intellectual property in recent years, the battle lines have tended to be drawn between librarians and publishers. This neglected what in some ways is the most important player of all, the employer. There seems little doubt that the university owns the copyright in articles, and universities are beginning seriously to turn their attention to this. Whether the article is in printed and/or electronic form probably makes no difference in law to ownership, but custom and practice are important here. A study has just been completed by the Centre for Educational Systems at Strathclyde University at the request of the Funding Councils to review current practice and benchmark the present position against future action. Higher education has turned itself into big business and as a result is beginning to contemplate more fully how to manage its assets. The total turnover in the sector now exceeds £10 billion pounds per annum. An 'average' university will have a turnover in the region of £120-150 million, less than half of which comes directly from the state. More than half of funds now come from a combination of overseas student fees, competitively tendered research grants, endowment income and intellectual property rights. This last can increasingly represent several millions of pounds and the figure is growing. Quite apart from some of the ownership questions raised below, staff structures are increasingly organized to allow some staff additional research time for the benefit of all. Universities have no other purpose than the creation, dissemination, understanding and development of knowledge, and it is inevitable that intellectual property asset management is an area of growing concern

Consumption Risk-sharing within Australia and with New Zealand

quantify how output risks are smoothed within Australia, and between Australia and New Zealand. About 85 percent of shocks were smoothed within Australia through credit and capital markets, with fiscal policy a source of dis-smoothing after 1992. Risk-sharing between Australia and New Zealand was greater than within Europe, occurring mostly through credit markets. With fully integrated financial markets between Australia and New Zealand since 1960, the average welfare gain would be 2.7 percent of certainty-equivalent consumption over 50 years, although these gains favour New Zealand. Australia's gains are from the pooling of PPP risks. These potential gains were largely resolved by the deregulations and CER trade agreement of the early198 0s.Risk-sharing; horizontal fiscal equalization; common currency; welfare gains from integration

Stable cheapest nonconforming finite elements for the Stokes equations

We introduce two pairs of stable cheapest nonconforming finite element space pairs to approximate the Stokes equations. One pair has each component of its velocity field to be approximated by the $P_1$ nonconforming quadrilateral element while the pressure field is approximated by the piecewise constant function with globally two-dimensional subspaces removed: one removed space is due to the integral mean--zero property and the other space consists of global checker--board patterns. The other pair consists of the velocity space as the $P_1$ nonconforming quadrilateral element enriched by a globally one--dimensional macro bubble function space based on $DSSY$ (Douglas-Santos-Sheen-Ye) nonconforming finite element space; the pressure field is approximated by the piecewise constant function with mean--zero space eliminated. We show that two element pairs satisfy the discrete inf-sup condition uniformly. And we investigate the relationship between them. Several numerical examples are shown to confirm the efficiency and reliability of the proposed methods

Optimal cure cycle design of a resin-fiber composite laminate

A unified computed aided design method was studied for the cure cycle design that incorporates an optimal design technique with the analytical model of a composite cure process. The preliminary results of using this proposed method for optimal cure cycle design are reported and discussed. The cure process of interest is the compression molding of a polyester which is described by a diffusion reaction system. The finite element method is employed to convert the initial boundary value problem into a set of first order differential equations which are solved simultaneously by the DE program. The equations for thermal design sensitivities are derived by using the direct differentiation method and are solved by the DE program. A recursive quadratic programming algorithm with an active set strategy called a linearization method is used to optimally design the cure cycle, subjected to the given design performance requirements. The difficulty of casting the cure cycle design process into a proper mathematical form is recognized. Various optimal design problems are formulated to address theses aspects. The optimal solutions of these formulations are compared and discussed