BACKGROUND South Africa has a large domestically funded HIV programme with highly saturated coverage levels for most prevention and treatment interventions. To further optimise its allocative efficiency, we designed a novel optimisation method and examined whether the optimal package of interventions changes when interaction and non-linear scale-up effects are incorporated into cost-effectivene...

Prior research offers limited insight into the types of work experiences that promote leadership skill development and the ways that the person and context shape the developmental value of these experiences. In this article, the authors develop a series of hypotheses linking leadership skill development to features of the experience (developmental challenge), person (learning orientation), and ...

We obtain upper bounds on the number of sign changes of linear combnatlons of derivatives and convolutions of Plya frequency functions using the variation diminishing properties of totally positive functions. These constitute extensions of earlier results of Karlin and Proschan.

This paper presents a framework grounded on convex optimization and economics ideas to solve by index policies problems of optimal dynamic allocation of effort to a discrete-state (finite or countable) binary-action (work/rest) semi-Markov restless bandit project, elucidating issues raised by previous work. Its contributions include: (i) the concept of a restless bandit’s marginal productivity ...

In this paper we develop a measure of competition based on management’s disclosures in their 10-K filing and find that firms’ rates of diminishing marginal returns on new and existing investment vary significantly with our measure. We show that these firm-level disclosures are related to existing industry-level measures of disclosure (e.g., Herfindahl index), but capture something distinctly ne...

1. Research papers use a variety of methods for evaluating experiments designed to determine nutritional requirements of poultry. Growth trials result in a set of ordered pairs of data. Often, point-by-point comparisons are made between treatments using analysis of variance. This approach ignores that response variables (body weight, feed efficiency, bone ash, etc.) are continuous rather than d...

We argue that goals serve as reference points and alter outcomes in a manner consistent with the value function of Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992). We present new evidence that goals inherit the properties of the value function-not only a reference point, but also loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity. We also use the value function to explain previous e...

An accruable point scenario study was applied to examine the effect of point-accumulation trend (diminishing vs. increasing) and nominal value (small large) a medium for repeated consumption on program loyalty. The results showed that both factors affect consumer loyalty toward reward program. Consumers who received with an increasing accumulation large perceived be more valuable than those dim...

Background and Aim: Marginal adaptation has a significant role in the success and longevity of indirect restorations. This experimental study compared the effect of intraoral and extraoral scanning on the marginal adaptation of the crowns which was made using the CEREC AC system. Materials and Methods: A Typodont maxillary first molar was prepared and served as the master die for an all-cera...

Network effects can reduce consumption levels across customers when a monopolist chooses optimal nonlinear pricing. The direction and extent of these distortions depend on the relative rates of variation in marginal intrinsic value and marginal network value with customer type. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.