Intensity Of Local Competition Research Articles

Competition in French hospital: Does it impact the patient management in healthcare?

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt; line-height: 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;">This research paper examines changes in patient care management in acute care hospitals between 2001 and 2011. During this time, there were two opposing factors at play: the competition effect of the reform and the policymaker’s decision to reduce public hospitals across France. By studying the trends, it is evident that there has been a significant overall shift in patient care management during this period. This change could be attributed to the global competition effect and the concentration of in-patients in specific public facilities. Through the difference-in-difference method, the study analyzed time variations in the intensity of local competition. It was found that local competition had a negligible impact on patient care management. Additionally, the study revealed that there was a significant positive competition effect on high-technical procedures for the private sector, which is in line with the market segment where private sector hospitals have a leadership position and the pro-competitive reform intensified this position. The study also uncovered a negative competition effect on the length of stay for public hospitals. Prior to the implementation of the DRG-based payment reform, public sector hospitals were paid a global budget. However, after the reform was implemented, they had to shorten the length of stay to increase the number of stays. For-profit hospitals have always been paid based on the number of stays. The results are robust and consistent when alternative measures of local competition are used.</span></p>

Determinants of Staff Localization in Headquarters-Subsidiary-Subsidiary Relationships

This paper investigates how cultural distance, the local experience of a foreign subsidiary, and the intensity of local competition jointly affect the staff localization of MNEs’ subsidiaries. While previous studies on the effects of cultural distance have mainly focused on the gap between home and host countries, we extend the existing “home-host” country perspective to the home-intermediary-host country relationship. This study regards Korea as an intermediary country and utilizes 520 observations from a unique survey conducted by the Export-Import Bank of Korea from 2006 to 2013. The results suggest that the impact of cultural distance on staff localization is a function of local experience and competitive environment in the home-intermediate-host relationship structure. This paper makes a theoretical contribution to our understanding of the behavior of multinational corporations by expanding the cultural distance perspective between the home and host countries explored in previous research to the home-subsidiary-subsidiary structure.

Sex-biased demography modulates male harm across the genome.

Recent years have seen an explosion of theoretical and empirical interest in the role that kin selection plays in shaping patterns of sexual conflict, with a particular focus on male harming traits. However, this work has focused solely on autosomal genes, and as such it remains unclear how demography modulates the evolution of male harm loci occurring in other portions of the genome, such as sex chromosomes and cytoplasmic elements. To investigate this, we extend existing models of sexual conflict for application to these different modes of inheritance. We first analyse the general case, revealing how sex-specific relatedness, reproductive value and the intensity of local competition combine to determine the potential for male harm. We then analyse a series of demographically explicit models, to assess how dispersal, overlapping generations, reproductive skew and the mechanism of population regulation affect sexual conflict across the genome, and drive conflict between nuclear and cytoplasmic genes. We then explore the effects of sex biases in these demographic parameters, showing how they may drive further conflicts between autosomes and sex chromosomes. Finally, we outline how different crossing schemes may be used to identify signatures of these intragenomic conflicts.

Siring success in kangaroos: size matters for those in the right place at the right time

Abstract In polygynous species, male reproductive success is predicted to be monopolized by a few dominant males. This prediction is often not supported, suggesting that ecological and alternative mating tactics influence siring success. The spatiotemporal distribution of individuals and the number of males competing for each receptive female are often overlooked because they are difficult to monitor in wild animals. We examined how spatial overlap of female–male pairs, the time spent by a male on the breeding site, number of competitors, and morphological traits influence siring probability in eastern gray kangaroos (Macropus giganteus). We compared home range overlap for 12 208 dam–male pairs and 295 known dam–sire pairs to define local competitive groups and to estimate every male’s opportunity to sire the young of each female. We compared models considering morphological traits relative to the entire population or to local competitive groups. Including local competition improved model performance because it estimated the intensity of competition and compared each male’s morphological traits to those of its competitive group. Regardless of size, males can increase their probability to sire a young by increasing their mating opportunity relative to the mother. We underline the importance of considering spatial structure to assess the intensity of competition in species where males cannot equally access all females in a population. The estimation of mating opportunity and intensity of local competition improves our understanding of how morphological traits affect siring success when each mating event involves a different set of competing males, a characteristic of most wild species.

Factors influencing local competition intensity

This paper investigates the factors influencing the intensity of local competition. The research results may be of interest to companies if deciding whether to enter a market or by defining a new market. Understanding which factors impact the competition the most also helps to address these factors when dealing with competitors and other subjects. The studied factors were selected based on Porter's model of five competitive forces. The data were obtained from the World Economic Forum database. To analyze the data, the statistics software PSPP and the programming language Python with statistical package Statsmodels were used. The results were considered to be statistically significant if they were on significance level p ≤ 0.05. The finding is that higher competition intensity is positively influenced by the number of local suppliers, foreign competition, intellectual property protection, and negatively by spending on research and development. This research may serve as a guideline for companies. If a company is entering a new market, the results presented in this paper may help to assess the intensity level of local competition by identifying the most influential factors.

Turnout in the Municipal Elections of March 2020 and Excess Mortality During the Covid-19 Epidemic in France

We analyze the consequences of the decision of French government to maintain the first round of the municipal elections on March 15, 2020 on local excess mortality in the following weeks. We exploit heterogeneity across municipalities in voter turnout, which we instrument using a measure of the intensity of local competition. The results reveal that a higher turnout was associated with a significantly higher death counts for the elderly population in the five weeks after the elections. If the historically low turnout in 2020 had been at its 2014 level, the number of deaths would have been 21.8 percent higher than the one that was recorded. More than three quarters of these additional deaths would have occurred among the individuals aged 80 and above.

Heterogeneity in the tax pass-through to spirit retail prices: Evidence from Belgium

On 1st November 2015, the Belgian government increased the excise tax on alcoholic beverages. For spirits with 40% of alcohol and bottle size of 70 cl, this tax change is equivalent to an amount of 2,43 € per bottle of spirits. This paper studies the impact of this tax reform at the store level on the (posted) retail price of six major brands of spirits, using a difference-in-differences method. The estimation is based on a balanced panel of scanner data from a major supermarket chain (with a 33% market share) and uses the retail prices of the same brands sold in France by the same supermarket chain as a control group. Having information on each store location, we show spatial variations in the tax pass-through for homogeneous products. We find that these variations are strongly related to the intensity of local competition and to a lesser extent to the proximity to the borders (mainly with Luxembourg which is the low-price country). We find that the tax was quickly passed through during the first month of tax implementation and that it was mostly over-shifted. However, we also find that both the border and the competition effects are not instantaneous, but arise several months after the tax reform. These findings have important implications for alcohol control policies as they highlight that the incidence of alcohol taxation can vary greatly across space and affect differently households depending on where they live.

Introducing Activity-Based Payment in the Hospital Industry: Evidence from French Data

Many countries have reformed hospital reimbursement policies to provide stronger incentives for quality and cost reduction. The purpose of this work is to understand how the effect of such reforms depends on the intensity of local competition. We build a nonprice competition model to examine the effect of a shift from global budget to patient-based payment for public hospitals in France. We predict that the number of patient admissions should increase in public hospitals by more than in private clinics and that the increase in admissions is stronger in public hospitals more exposed to competitive pressure from private clinics. Considering the reform implemented in France between 2005 and 2008, we find empirical evidence supporting these predictions.

Determinants of Antimonopoly Policy Effectiveness in Transition Economies

The paper explores what factors influence an effectiveness of antimonopoly policy in transition economies on a local (territorial) level. The empirical evidence on national level suggests that an effective implementation of antimonopoly policy depends mostly on a number of macroeconomic factors. However, an enforcement role of antimonopoly bodies and a specific of regional level are not studied. To investigate the relationship between, firstly, an antimonopoly authority’s activity output and, secondly, local economic factors and the effectiveness of antimonopoly policy a survey of 151 top officials of 89 local antimonopoly offices and an ordinary least-squares linear regression across 89 local regions in Russia and Kazakhstanare used. The results indicate that on local level an openness of local economy matters as on national, however, a size of local economy and an intensity of local competition do not matter. Furthermore, the effectiveness of antimonopoly policy in transitional economies is empirically associated with the active stance against anticompetitive agreements (positively) and an abuse of a dominant position of market power (negatively). Additionally, a size of fines administrated by antimonopoly authorities positively influences the effectiveness of the policy.

Competition Policy Works: The Effect of Competition Policy on the Intensity of Competition - An International Cross-Country Comparison

This paper explores the relationship between competition policy, experience of the application of competition policy, the intensity of local competition and the standard of living. Perception data from the World Economic Forum is used to measure the intensity of local competition. Richer and larger countries in general introduce competition policy earlier than smaller and poorer countries, and industrialized countries earlier than Latin American, African, transition and Asian countries, in this order. A regression analysis for a sample of 101 countries reveals that experience and overall government effectiveness explain a substantial part of the perception of the effectiveness of antitrust policy. During the first years of (new) competition legislation the effectiveness of application improves rapidly, whereas very old competition agencies make little further improvement of their application performance after a certain time. The effectiveness of antitrust policy has a significant influence on the intensity of local competition. The size of the economy also has a significant impact on the intensity of local competition, whereas external protection does not. These results indicate that competition legislation and experience of the application of competition legislation have a large impact on the level of competition in an economy, whereas the influence of external protection is not clear. In countries with a high intensity of local competition the standard of living is higher than in countries with a low intensity of local competition.

Competition By Choice

This paper relates firm location choice and consumer search. Firms that cluster together attract consumers by facilitating price comparison, but clustering increases the intensity of local competition. I construct a simple model which shows that firms may choose head-on competition by locating together. In special cases, this can be the unique equilibrium outcome. I also use the model to show that price setting firms may earn more in equilibrium than quantity setting firms.

Impact of environment on state university hospital performance. An explanatory model.

This article, by means of a path model, shows the impact of environment on state university hospital performance. The state environment is shown to affect systematically the intensity of local competition, the reputation of the medical school, the financial independence of the parent university, the allocation of indigent care dollars, the nature of governance and management, and the performance of the hospital. Results show that while certain environments are predictably more supportive of universities and university hospitals, these environments tend also to attract health care competition. Competition is shown to pressure hospitals into greater efficiency, but competition is shown also to hurt viability. But a hospital management that pays attention to the hospital environment is shown to help both efficiency and viability. The model explains respectively 37% and 46% of the variance in hospital efficiency and viability.

Group selection is implicated in the evolution of female-biased sex ratios

Female-biased sex ratios are common among arthropods that mate in small groups with episodic dispersal1–3. When breeding groups are founded by more than one female, individual (within-group) selection favours an unbiased (1:1) sex ratio, regardless of group size and degree of inbreeding (or sibmating), and regardless of the intensity of local competition among siblings for mates. On the other hand, female-biased sex ratios are favoured by group selection in randomly structured populations. Existing treatments of the evolution of female-biased sex ratios1,2,4–6 correctly predict the result of evolution, but do not make clear that it is a balance between opposing forces at two levels of selection3. I now show this to be so.