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No. 328

JULY 2002

Vol LXXXIII

ISSN 0019-5170

Contents


 

   Profit Function for General Hospital with Relative Service Efficiency

MIAO-SHENG CHEN, CHE LIN AND CHIEN-CHUNG LEE
 

This paper proposes a method to search the optimal service level tor maximizing the overall profit of the general hospital. The patient arrival rate, subsidiary of the government, variable/fixed contribution of a patient, and the cost for operating the general hospital are considered simultaneously into this study. In addition, the indicator introduced to measure the service level is the relative service efficiency in this paper. This indicator doesn't focus on the absolute performance result, but emphasizes on the relative service efficiency of a general hospital. Therefore, a fairer evaluation of the service level is established. Moreover, this paper also constructs a Profit Function (PF) Model for seeking the optimal employee operation hour input in each medical care item as well as the expected service level. Through this study, a Two-Step Method for achieving the optimal solution of the PF Model is developed, and the numerical example is followed.

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   States of India are Not Converging

 TAPEN SINHA AND DIPENDRA SINHA
 

A vast literature has developed around convergence of per capita income across different regions both within a country and across different countries. There seems to be a consensus that regions converge at least in the conditional beta sense of convergence. The evidence to date has been based mostly on developed countries only. For India, a developing country, we show that neither beta convergence nor conditional beta convergence holds. The results for India are in sharp contrast with results from other countries.

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  Managerial Discretion, Public Sector Reform and Industry Performance

SOUMYEN SIKDAR AND ANINDYA SEN
 

The present paper adds a new dimension to the literature on mixed oligopolies by introducing managerial discretion in state owned enterprises (SOEs). The resulting inefficiency has led policymakers to consider the options of privatization and liberalization, and these issues are sought to be modeled in the paper. In our paper, the manager of the SOE pursues his own interest by choosing the cost function. The explicit modeling of managerial discretion allows us to rank different post-reform market structures both in terms of social welfare and managerial utility.

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  Energy and Environment: South Asia Perspective

SITESH BHATIA
 

As a nation develops economically, its needs for energy increase exponentially, and quest for more, renewable energy sources becomes imperative. The energy-environment problems of today have attained global dimensions.

(a) Conservation of energy and environment: and
(b) Generation of energy.

The need for technology transfers and technical co-operation has been stressed by two SAARC regional studies also, emphasizing the need for technology transfers in the field of alternative and renewable energy system, energy conservation and monitoring of environmental impact of energy producing systems.
The World Energy Council recommended developing at the regional level an energy master plan with an emphasis on maximizing the use of clean energy e.g. hydro-electricity, wind energy and solar energy. India has a vast potential of renewable energy sources specially hydroelectricity and solar power.
However the pace of development of renewal energy sources has been slow due to several factors. With continued co-operation amongst various countries of the world in research and development, and transfer to technology of renewable energy sources, use of the non-conventional sources of energy can become technically feasible, commercially viable, and therefore universally acceptable.

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  The Imperative of Reducing Government Participation in the Economy of Niegeria

SAMSON E. EOO
 

The Nigerian economy has stagnated below the desired minimum growth rate for a lengthy period of time. There is a popular opinion that the relatively large size of government, among other factors, is responsible for this problem. In this paper, attempt is made to empirically verify that opinion, with the aid of appropriate models and estimation techniques. The results from the empirical investigation reveal that government size is indeed large, and also contributed significantly to the stagnation in the economy of Nigeria. Although other factors, such as openness of the economy, made their own contributions to the stagnation, the impact of government size was much more significant. Arising from this finding, therefore, is the overriding imperative of reducing government participation in the economy, in order to facilitate more rapid growth and development. This could be done in several ways, some of which may include privatization, deregulation, fiscal restraint, as well as the provision of enabling environment for private sector to expand and assume the role of economic prime mover.

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  Uncertainty in Nigeria's Political Economy and growth in Private Investment, 1970-1996 : A Co integrated Approach

MERCY ADA ANYIWE AND FAMOUS O. I. IZEOONMI
 

The Nigerian government had long realized the importance of a large private sector and hence, has implemented programmes meant to directly increase the level of private investment in Nigeria. But the uncertainty in a given political economy determines to a large extent the level of success of a programme, or the extent of growth of private investment or the increase in the size of the private sector. Premised on this stance, the objective of this study is to find out the relationship between the uncertainty in Nigeria's political economy and growth in private investment. Statistical and econometric methods including co integration were employed for data analyses. The results among other things show that uncertainties of some variables, namely, gross domestic product, industrial capacity utilization. credit to the private sector and the real foreign exchange rate had significant negative impact on growth of private investment in Nigeria within the sample period. To set uncertainties in their paths, Nigeria should foster increase productivity among her citizens, provide or rehabilitate existing infrastructures and nurture the nascent democratic government.

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 Corruption and Rent Seeking in Less Developed Countries: An Indian Perspective

 I. D. GUPTA
 

Corruption had been endemic in economic and political system since ages like cough, cold and fever and its remedy too was present in the form of police, intelligence and judicial institution. However, of late it has become cause of concern owing to its serious proportion and penetration in the system of economy and policy. It is infringing upon and distorting the institutions and forces of growth and development in many of the Less Developed Countries where growth is basic priority to remove poverty-absolute and relative- and establish social justice.
The study is divided into five parts: part one begins with observations of Kautilya and other scholars in this regard; the second, attempts to analysis the things in economic demand supply framework; the third, deals how even in democracies corruption is prevalent; the fourth, attempts to know what went wrong in India and the next part tries to suggest the way out.
The paper focuses attention on normal to systemic to secondary corruptions in the Less Developed Countries. It makes an attempt to analyze the interplay of political and economic corruption in India. Developments in the past five decades in the Indian economy, the impact of Land Reforms, the Green Revolution and rising 'expectations' of rich peasantry to share political power since late sixties, and subsequent caste based politics after Mandai divide have also been analyzed. The change of scenario since 1991 and impact of globalization in reducing corruption by assigning lower rule to state in production process and freeing the economy from excessive regulations have also been touched upon.
In our analysis it has been observed that corruption is 'independent' of economic or political systems as it is rooted in human nature and its driving force is one of six evil elements (defects) in human namely greed. However, it could be controlled and contained, if not altogether abolished, more effectively by strengthening the institutions of 'democracy' itself. It is only through properly functioning democratic institutions that the county could move towards 'freedom from corruption'. Non- democratic societies without any viable opposition, free press, freedom of expression and independent judiciary are less likely to be free from corruption.

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 The Human Development Index: A Contribution to its Construction

P. K. CHAUBEY
 

This paper essentially addresses to correct a serious lapse in the construction of human development index proposed by the UNDP. This lapse occurs in the income component of the index. After pointing out the weaknesses that it inheres, an appropriate alternative is suggested.

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 A Discussion of Human Capital Expenditure Classification: Toward the Competitive Advantages of a Taiwan Company

HAl MING CHEN AND KU JUN LIN
 

Traditional financial do not provide proper disclosure and relevant data for modern businesses which derive their competitive advantages and profitability mainly from human capital. This paper provides an alternative way to measure and disclosure human capital items. We define and classify company's human capital in line with a theoretical framework we provided, sort out company's human capital investments according to cost development stages in human resources, and finally isolates human capital from expenses and suggests the disclosure way in the financial statements. In addition, an electronics company of Taiwan is studied to explain how to identity the human capital.

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Problems with UNDP Multi-Step Utility Function and Their Resolutions: Generalization of Some Results

RAVIKANT BHATNAGAR
 

The 'first dollar anomaly' was empirically discovered by Harald Trabold-Nubler (1991). Chaubey (1998) showed that it is k-iong stretch, not the first dollar and k is dependent on the Order of range. Further generalization of the result obtained by Chaubey (1998) has been presented in this paper.
Trabold-Nubler (1991) had observed that after a certain range the utility-income curve becomes altogether perverse. The present paper mathematically demonstrates as to why that happens.
Following the same fragmentation of the income range as adopted by UNDP's HDRs, a multi-step formulation of the utility function which conforms to the principle of diminishing returns from the income is proposed in the paper as a generalization of the two- step formulation due to Chaubey (1998).

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