Inefficient Resource Allocation Research Articles

New e-business model: undergraduate study program search system

Students who have graduated from high schools across the EU member states can choose from a wide variety of study programs and universities at which to pursue their degree studies. Each combination of a university and study program is unique, which further complicates student choice. Lack of information transparency regarding the unique characteristics of each combination of a university and study program exacerbates the already inefficient allocation of resources in education and the delayed employment of graduates. Bridging the gap between secondary and higher education by creating a new e-business model – undergraduate study program search system – may help solve the problem.

Establishing a Centralized Logistical Triage Platform to facilitate Supply Chain Optimization for Critical Resources during COVID-19 in a Developing Country

Problem: The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant resource deficiencies, especially with regards to basic facilities required for the safety of Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Resource deficiency can be attributed both to inadequate production and to misdirected distribution due to deficits in the global supply chain, particularly in a time-sensitive situation like this. Low-Middle Income Countries (LMICs) face the added burden of economic constraints and underdeveloped health-care infrastructure. Lack of a centralized approach, ineffective rapid communication (especially amongst private and public entities), stockpiling and inefficient resource allocation further exacerbate this underlying issue.Approach: Project Alloy has worked on building a platform for “Logistical Triage” to strengthen the coordination of resource networks in crisis situations. We aim to facilitate supply chain optimization by tackling inequitable resource distribution through a centralized management approach. Through our portal, healthcare organizations in need of personal protective equipment, ventilators, and other key resources would be connected to non-governmental organizations, government agencies and manufacturers to enable time-sensitive and need-based optimization of resource allocation and distribution. Outcomes: We hope to facilitate near-real time tracking of resource consumption, to guide the efforts of rapidly emerging “pop-up” suppliers and manufacturers. This would ultimately feed into three key outcomes: a) to ensure immediate continuity of supplies to HCPs in the frontline against COVID-19; b) to track and preempt the trajectory of resource deficiencies and demands in order to mitigate the impact of the rapidly rising incidence of COVID-19 cases; and c) to establish a centralized network for healthcare specific e-commerce infrastructure in low-middle income countries to facilitate future crisis management. Future Steps: We plan to expand iteratively, to include e-commerce technology to build our supplier dashboard and to develop a crisis specific e-commerce marketplace for healthcare resources.

Reimagining Financing and Payment of Long-Term Care.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed fundamental problems with the structure of long-term care financing and payment in the United States. The piecemeal system that exists suffers from several key problems, including underfunding, fragmentation across types and sites of care, and substantial variation in payment across states and populations. These problems result in inefficient allocation of resources, limited access to care, substandard quality, and inequities in both access and quality. We propose a new federal benefit for long-term care, most likely as part of the Medicare program. Essential features of this benefit include taxpayer subsidies, along the lines of other Medicare benefits, and coverage across the range of long-term care services, including both residential and home- and community-based care. A new federal benefit has the most potential to break down administrative barriers and improve resource allocation, to ensure adequate payment rates across all states, to expand access to care by spreading risk across the entire Medicare population, and to improve equity by extending coverage to all Medicare beneficiaries who want it. A new federal benefit is politically challenging, requiring bold action by Congress, and entails the risks of administrative challenges and unintended consequences. However, in this case, retaining the status quo remains the far greater risk.

OP310 Challenges Raised By The Economic Evaluation Of CAR-T-cell therapies: The Review By The French National Authority For Health

IntroductionSince 2013, the coverage of innovative and expensive drugs by the French National Health Insurance considers cost-effectiveness and budget impact, as assessed by the National Authority for Health (HAS) on the basis of an evaluation submitted by the firm. First CAR-T cell therapies were subject to economic evaluation in 2019 in France. We aim at describing the process and results of the economic evaluation of tisagenlecleucel and axicabtagene ciloleucel and the challenges these evaluations raised.MethodsPrimary evaluations were submitted by the firms to be reviewed by HAS. The final analyses were submitted to the Committee of Economic Evaluation and Public Health (CEESP), composed of independent economists, clinicians and patients’ representatives. The CEESP issued Opinions related to i) the methodological quality of economic evidence and ii) the cost-effectiveness and budget impact of the drugs under review.ResultsThe estimated incremental cost-utility ratio (ICUR) of tisagenlecleucel were rejected, being based on insufficient clinical evidence to estimate and extrapolate the long-term progression and to compare tisagenlecleucel with alternatives. Thus, the CEESP concluded that tisagenlecleucel was not proved cost-effective. The estimated ICUR of axicabtagene ciloleucel at 114,509EUR/QALY vs. chemotherapies was associated with an acceptable level of evidence despite being based on a frail indirect comparison and limited data on quality of life. In a context where France has no official cost-effectiveness threshold, the CEESP considered axicabtagene ciloleucel ICUR to be “very high” and questioned the collective acceptability of the claimed price.The CEESP stressed that the main source of uncertainty surrounding the ICUR estimates of both drugs was related to the lack of hindsight on effectiveness, especially in terms of overall survival and safety.ConclusionsThe economic evaluation of CAR-T cell therapies highlights the sources of uncertainty underlying the decision and the risk of inefficient resource allocation driven by limited clinical data. It calls for payment schemes accounting for the uncertainty, and effective collection of relevant post-marketing data.

The relative effectiveness of law enforcement policies aimed at reducing illegal trade: Evidence from laboratory markets.

Despite recent emphasis and implementation of national and international anti-money laundering policies, illegal product markets, and their associated illicit profit remain a global problem. In addition to law enforcement aimed at reducing money-laundering, enforcement also takes place during (1) the production (e.g. crop eradication) and (2) sale (e.g. seizure of products during transportation that interrupts buyer and seller transactions) of the illegal product. Since funds for enforcement come from limited budgets, understanding where in this production-trade-laundering cycle law enforcement is most impactful becomes a global question. Using laboratory experimental markets and a seizure rate of 20%, we find that law enforcement focused on seizing laundered profits does little to reduce illegal market activity when compared to no law enforcement, suggesting that focusing law enforcement on money laundering will likely be ineffective at reducing crime. Results further show the amount of illicit trade is nearly 32% lower when law enforcement is focused at the point of sale, and there may be additional economic incentives that reduce illicit trade in the long run when compared to no law enforcement. Enforcement at the point of production also reduces market activity, but not as effectively as enforcement at the point of sale. Lastly, the empirical findings deviate from equilibrium predictions, suggesting law enforcement policy based on theory alone may lead to inefficient allocation of limited law enforcement resources.

Technical and resource-use efficiencies of cashew production in Ghana: implications on achieving sustainable development goals

The expansion of Ghana’s cashew industry is expected to be a watershed moment in the country’s diversification of agricultural export commodity trade. In Ghana’s cashew farms, however, there is a significant difference between observed and potential farm yield. As a result, empirical study is required to serve as policy guidelines in order to improve farmer’s productive efficiency and, as a necessary consequence, contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of no poverty and zero hunger. The study explores farm-level productive efficiency and factors that can lead to variations in farmer’s technical efficiency in the Bono East region of Ghana. The single-stage double bootstrap Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to estimate technical efficiency and its determinants. The estimated results indicate that the average bias-corrected technical efficiency score (33%) was lower than the original average score (51%), suggesting that the original efficiency scores had been skewed upwards. Some of the primary factors that have been reported as having a significant effect on technical efficiency include the gender of respondents, educational attainment, and membership of farmer groups. Results of the resource-use efficiency analysis suggest that cashew farmers in Ghana do not escape the criticisms of inefficient resource allocation. Farm-level policies should be skewed towards enhancing resource-use efficiency through effective capacity-building to improve farmer’s management and technical capabilities, improve farm productivity, and consequently contribute to Ghana's quest to meet the sustainable development goals.

Drivers and barriers to a green economy. A review of selected balkan countries

Balkan countries typically share remarkable similarities in culture and history. However, this specific region received little academic attention and produced fewer scholarly deals with the green economy. Our intended purpose is to gather the most recent literature on the green economy about Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are also produced in local Universities and show that these countries possess the potential for an easy green conversion despite barriers and lack of sufficient motivation; The first two countries as mentioned above are members of the EU, while the other two have an EU candidate status. We obtained national experts' opinions and policy recommendations through a Scopus database search (mostly) 2015–2020. Through a SWOT analysis matrix, we gather evidence of both internal and external pushes. The first push is the role of national institutions and consumers; the latter is the EU's considerable influence, which provides essential incentives to carefully foster alignment with European regulatory standards. The internal push typically bears more social responsibility in shaping domestic policies and going green. In Croatia and Slovenia, the transition towards a greener economy goes ahead positively; in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Slovenia, the lack of adequate policies and awareness (among people and companies) and the inefficient allocation of external resources remain barriers to such a greener transition. These Balkan countries deserve more attention in the academic literature, both theoretical and empirical, thanks to their unexploited green potential, which could help policymakers make their countries greener.

Ecological efficiency evaluation of marine ranching based on the Super-SBM model: A case study of Shandong

To investigate the efficiency level of marine ranching in the process of ecological management and the balance between the economy and ecology, we proposed a comprehensive index system based on the entropy weight method and measured the Marine Ranching Ecological Efficiency (MREE) of 18 marine ranches in Shandong Province through the Super-SBM model. On the basis of MREE scores, we divided the marine ranches into high-efficiency, medium-efficiency and low-efficiency marine ranches and carried out a comparative analysis. Then, we performed a cause analysis of the efficiency loss. The results showed that the mean of the MREE scores was 0.6; the best-practice marine ranching had an MREE score of 1.877 while the worst one had an MREE score of 0.0645, wherein the Pure Technical Efficiency (PTE) score was the key dimension between the decomposition efficiency scores of MREE scores respected by the Technical Efficiency (TE) scores. The result indicates that the redundancy of inputs and undesirable outputs and the deficiency of ecological outputs are major causes of loss of MREE, which reflects inefficient resource allocation efficiency, deficient government and technical support, and inadequate habitat construction and risk prevention of these marine ranches.

Co-evolution of Construction Waste Recycling Industrial Chain Based on Lotka–volterra Model

Under the green building policy, the recycling of construction waste has become an important issue. However, many obstructions in the industrial chain of construction waste recycling, slow integration of production elements in the chain, and inefficient resource allocation hinder the development of the construction waste recycling industry. In this study, a co-evolution model of the industrial chain of construction waste recycling is constructed based on the Lotka–Volterra model, and the Jacobian matrix is used for stability analysis. Finally, a numerical simulation is performed. The simulation results indicate that: (1) There is a high product correlation between upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain of construction waste recycling; (2) The conversion coefficient of supply and demand of upstream and downstream enterprises has a higher impact on and is more sensitive to the evolution of this industrial chain; (3) The co-evolution of upstream and downstream enterprises promotes the added value of products and maximizes the overall benefits of the industrial chain, which provides reference value and theoretical basis for the development of the industrial chain of construction waste recycling.

Increased non-attendance at epilepsy clinic in patients with neuropsychiatric comorbidities: A prospective study

BackgroundIn patients with epilepsy, regular follow-up is vital for adequate seizure control, antiseizure drugs’ (ASDs) side effects, psychiatric comorbidities, and planning for epilepsy surgery. Non-attendance creates barriers to adequate patient care, inefficient allocation of resources, loss of income, and unnecessary emergency department visits due to lack of seizure control. This study aimed to determine the causes and sociodemographic characteristics of the non-attendant population at the Epilepsy Clinic. MethodsA prospective and observational study was carried out on patients treated at the Epilepsy Clinic of the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery (NINN) in Mexico from August 2015 to June 2016. A phone interview was made with all those patients who did not attend the epilepsy consultation. This call incorporated ad hoc questions to meet the objectives of this study. ResultsDuring the study period, 1299 patients had an appointment at the epilepsy clinic, where 233 (17.9%) patients missed their consultation, 123 (52.8%) were male, mean age was 35.9 ± 14.42 years. The most frequent cause of non-attendance was forgetfulness of the appointment in 62 patients (26.6%). Two patients died; no patient was reported to have experienced SUDEP. Non-attendant patients showed statistically significant overall prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities (41.6%), particularly depression, anxiety, and interictal psychosis. ConclusionInformation on non-attendance at various specialist consultations is scarce, and to our knowledge, this is the first study to address non-attendance in patients with epilepsy in Latin America. Improving hospital protocols to reduce non-attendance can increase patient adherence to follow-up, ultimately improving the quality of care in the epilepsy clinic.

A framework to support the integration of priority setting in the preparedness, alert, control and evaluation stages of a disease pandemic

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic, where the need-resource gap has necessitated decision makers in some contexts to ration access to life-saving interventions, has demonstrated the critical need for systematic and fair priority setting and resource allocation mechanisms. Disease outbreaks are becoming increasingly common and priority setting lessons from previous disease outbreaks could be better harnessed to inform decision making and planning for future disease outbreaks. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how priority setting and resource allocation could, ideally, be integrated into the WHO pandemic planning and preparedness framework and used to inform the COVID-19 pandemic recovery plans and plans for future outbreaks. Priority setting and resource allocation during disease outbreaks tend to evoke a process similar to the ‘rule of rescue’. This results in inefficient and unfair resource allocation, negative effects on health and non-health programs and increased health inequities. Integrating priority setting and resource allocation activities throughout the four phases of the WHO emergency preparedness framework could ensure that priority setting during health emergencies is systematic, evidence informed and fair.

Trait anxiety modulates the temporal dynamics of Stroop task switching: An ERP study

The current study aimed to find neural evidence that trait anxiety interferes with one’s shifting function processing efficiency. Twenty-five high trait-anxiety (HTA) and twenty-five low trait-anxiety (LTA) participants were instructed to complete a cue-based Stroop task-switching assessment of shifting function. No group difference in behavioral performance was shown, though event-related potential (ERP) results in the cue-locked period showed that only the LTA group had a general switch benefit in contingent negative variation (CNV) amplitude, indicating the LTA group exerted less task preparation effort. In the subsequent target-locked period, compared to the LTA group, the local switch cost of target-P3 was higher in the HTA group in incompatible trials, suggesting inefficient attentional resource allocation in the HTA group in incompatible trials. These ERP findings indicated that the HTA group ultimately achieved comparable behavioral performance with the LTA group at the expense of using more compensatory strategies at the neural level.

Urbanization forces driving rural urban income disparity: Evidence from metropolitan areas in China

The rural urban income gap in China ranks as one of the largest in the world. This imbalanced rural urban relationship and the associated socioeconomic disparity have caused a weak and inefficient resource allocation, harmed the country's long-term economic development, and led to scores of socioeconomic problems. Concurrent with the widening rural urban income gap, China has been transformed by rapid urbanization. However, to date, there is limited understanding of the links between urbanization forces and this rural urban income disparity. This study uses the dynamic panel data model to investigate the influence of both economic and institutional urbanization forces and other socioeconomic factors on China's rural urban income disparity. Our results show that two economic urbanization factors—rural productivity and urban productivity—have contrasting effects on this income disparity. While rural productivity can significantly narrow the rural urban income disparity, urban productivity can positively contribute to widening the rural urban income disparity. We also find that the hukou openness policy negatively affects the rural urban income disparity with a one-year lag. Finally, consistent with the Kuznets theory, per capita GDP and urban population size both negatively correlate with the rural urban income disparity. Our findings provide insights into why rapid urbanization and the widening of the rural urban income gap coexist in China. Moreover, our results provide clear policy implications on how to mitigate the disparity. The most compelling suggestion is that sustainable agricultural productivity improvement is critical to achieving the goal of mitigating the income gap between rural and urban areas.

Analysis of USDA Livestock Price Forecasting Accuracy for Cattle, Hogs, and Broilers

Agricultural markets, compared to other sectors, are typically characterized by uncertainty and high price fluctuations. High price volatility in livestock markets leads to inefficient resource allocation and production planning. Expert price forecasts are not always affordable for all market players, so readily available public forecasts have risen in popularity. This study uses accuracy-based testing methods to evaluate the accuracy of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) livestock price forecasting by utilizing the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) quarterly data for slaughter cattle, hogs, and broilers. The study also employs a vector error correction (VEC) model to compare USDA price forecasts. Results suggest that the USDA forecast was more accurate than the competing VEC model across three sectors, suggested by low RMSE and MAE. The beta efficiency test results showed that USDA price forecasts were efficient for all three price series, whereas VEC forecasts were biased for hogs and broiler prices. The findings of the study also confirm that USDA price forecasts are biased for cattle prices with a tendency to repeat past forecast error in all three markets. Results from the forecast encompassing tests showed that USDA cattle and broiler forecasts captured the information contained in VEC forecasts. However, because the hog prices did not show any improvement over time, there is room for improvement of the USDA price forecasts. Overall, results suggest that USDA price forecasts for slaughter cattle, hogs and broilers provide useful information to the market. However, the results also indicate that USDA price forecasts reduce forecast error by economically significant levels.

Consequences of Mergers and Acquisitions on Firm Performance: A Sector-Level Study of Public Listed Companies in China

As the motives of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are different across industries, this study examined the synergy effects of technological gains and capital intensity on the operating performance of the acquiring firms after M&As. The sample comprised 434 completed M&As initiated by Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges with 2,170 observations over the years 2012 to 2016. On average, the firms performed better after M&As. The results show that the operating performance of public health, information technology, telecommunication and financial service firms within the high-technology sector increased after M&As. This suggests that high-technology firms can benefit from M&As through a more extensive knowledge base and financial synergy. We also found that good governance characterized by board independence affects firm performance positively. Therefore, the acquisition of technology through M&As could be an essential corporate growth strategy in the Chinese capital market, which is transforming from a state-controlled economy to a more market driven one. The findings provide useful insights to both corporate players and policy-makers on the types of M&As that stand higher chances to generate positive outcomes and those that need extra measures and further scrutiny to prevent inefficient allocation of resources.

Reflection on Emergency Management in China Based on Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Prevention and Control

In 2019, China had novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China, which seriously threatened people’s health and affected social order and economic development. The novel coronavirus epidemic has been actively dealt with by the government. However, there are still some problems, such as weak awareness of crisis, ineffective emergency response, stagnant legal construction, unsound rumors, ineffective public opinion, insufficient material support, inefficient allocation of resources, the local officials with low ability, inadequate humanistic care and incomplete rescue mechanism. By analyzing how the government deal with the novel coronavirus pneumonia crisis, we can optimize the working mechanism, improving the working methods, and improving the government’s emergency management capability.

Improve a Human Resource Allocation Guide in Construction Management based on Case study

The object of this paper is to analyze difference Human Resource allocation Guide, and suggest improved Human Resource allocation Guide to meet the owner’s needs. This paper analyzed the present situation of Human Resource allocation Guide by announcement and law through case study of construction management service about public office awarded by Public Procurement Service (PPS) from 2011 to 2013, and considered proper Human Resource allocation Guide in design process, during and after construction process. Based on the findings of current study, the following problems were identified; difference between announcement and legal Human Resource allocation, Human Resource allocation problem during the whole phase of project, and Human Resource allocation problem of work types. For the improvement, this paper suggests specifying minimum Human Resource requirement in RFP (Require For Proposal) so that it is available to manage flexible Human Resource allocation, proper Human Resource allocation Guide, in design process, to reduce the workload in construction process, and Human Resource allocation in construction process for appropriate compensation package. This study is anticipated to help the next following study to improve inefficient Human Resource allocation Guide.

Potential Barriers to the Implementation of Digital Game-Based Learning in the Classroom: Pre-service Teachers’ Views

Τeachers seek to attract students’ attention by demonstrating the relevance of learning content to daily activities and enhancing their students’ self-esteem and satisfaction. In the digital world, an example of an innovative learning tool is digital games. Digital game learning (DGBL) is a smart pedagogical approach that utilises digital games. DGBL has a prominent place in learning technologies due to the potentiality of games to engage students, enabling them to effortlessly reach the edges of their competencies, skills, and knowledge. Teachers, students and games per se constitute important agents for the successful and effective implementation of DGBL. In this context, our research was extended to cover the study of teachers’ and students’ perceptions of DGBL. More specifically, the purpose of this research was to examine the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the barriers to DGBL implementation. To that end, an online survey with closed-ended questions and one open-ended question was conducted. In this paper, we present the answers to the open-ended question. Quantitative and qualitative data processing and analysis were carried out. According to the pre-service teachers’ responses, it is concluded that a major obstacle is the inefficient allocation of available financial resources. Resources are required for the supply of up-to-date equipment, devices and educational software, as well as for the professional development and training of teachers, school administrators and policymakers. Utilizing easy-to-use and inexpensive devices, which most teachers and even students hold, is the answer to the hurdle called “lack of equipment”. Therefore, the implementation of the DGBL, as a smart and innovative pedagogical approach, is primarily a matter of political will to curriculum reform based on ongoing research into appropriate digital learning materials.

Team-based instructional change in undergraduate STEM: characterizing effective faculty collaboration

BackgroundTeam-based instructional change is a promising model for improving undergraduate STEM instruction. Teams are more likely to produce sustainable, innovative, and high-quality outcomes than individuals working alone. However, teams also tend to involve higher risks of failure and can result in inefficient allocation of valuable resources. At this point, there is limited knowledge of how teams in the context of STEM higher education should work to achieve desirable outcomes.ResultsIn this study, we collect semi-structured interview data from 23 team members from a total of 4 teams at 3 institutions across the USA. We analyze the results using a grounded theory approach and connect them to the existing literature. This study builds upon the first part of our work that developed a model of team inputs that lead to team outcomes. In this part, we identify the mechanisms by which input characteristics influence teamwork and outcomes. Team member data expand this initial model by identifying key aspects of team processes and emergent states. In this paper, we present five team processes: strategic leadership, egalitarian power dynamics, team member commitment, effective communication, and clear decision-making processes, that shape how teams work together, and three emergent states: shared vision, psychological safety, and team cohesion, that team members perceived as important aspects of how teams feel and think when working together.ConclusionsThis work furthers our understanding of how instructional change teams can be successful. However, due to the highly complex nature of teams, further investigation with more teams is required to test and enrich the emerging theory.

The Effects of Blame and Politicization on Responses to Pandemics

COVID-19 has caused widespread discrimination and blame; however, analyzing history, it becomes apparent that racially motivated blame is common during pandemics. Placed for religious, ethnic, or socioeconomic reasons, blame has caused discrimination and stigma for the “other”. Blaming a specific race without scientific evidence causes discrimination and hate crimes, creating more problems that require attention and resources to resolve and diverting them from the pandemic response. A quick and direct response is vital for minimizing the impacts of pandemics, while blame only distracts and leads to politicizing the disease. 
 This paper finds that unfounded blame throughout history results in delays in the health response, inefficient resource allocation, and the undermining of cooperation. This blame is part of politicizing pandemics, which exacerbates the impacts of the disease by diverting attention away from the health response and disease’s containment. Racist accusations during pandemics against Asians in America since the turn of the 20th century also led to hate crimes and increased discrimination, resulting in discriminatory public perception reflected even through government actions. 
 COVID-19 is reflecting these historical trends. The latest disease to be politicized, the coronavirus has widened the scope of scapegoating beyond blaming Asians. Its politicization is creating further divisions in society and leading to tension on both a global scale with the WHO and domestically with the CDC and state legislatures. Consistent with former diseases, unfounded blame during the coronavirus is a practice that ultimately causes more deaths and needs to end immediately.