Introduction: In order to achieve a higher success rate for tympanoplasty, different techniques have been developed, and a wide variety of grafting materials have been developed. One of the techniques currently receiving considerable attention involves not lifting the remaining of eardrum from the malleus and embedding the graft underneath in order to repair the eardrum correctly in its origina...

Private banks often blame state guarantees to distort competition by giving public banks the advantage of lower funding costs. In this paper I show that if borrowers perceive the public bank as supporting economic development, private banks may be able to separate firms by self selection, enter the market, and obtain profits in equilibrium despite their cost disadvantage. The public bank’s comp...

MNEs from emerging economies (EE MNEs) have recently undertaken aggressive cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). This phenomenon challenges the current understanding in the international business literature. Integrating the comparative advantage theory with Dunning’s OLI paradigm, this article develops a comparative ownership advantage framework characterized by five attributes: (1) nat...

Enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans in rural areas grew more than 50% in the first three quarters of 2007 and has more than tripled since the inception of the MA program at the beginning of 2006. However, rural enrollment remains well below urban enrollment as a percentage of the eligible population. This brief updates early findings from analysis of the Medicare+Choice/MA program prese...

This is a case study of industrial systems development. In the project studied, an advanced computer application was developed with the intention of supporting complex, cooperative work. The project participants all viewed the emerging computer application in context. However, different contexts were used by each group of actors. Since the application was placed in contexts well known by the pa...

The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 explicitly increased Medicare payments to private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. As a result, every MA plan in the nation is paid more for its enrollees than they would have been expected to cost in traditional fee-for-service Medicare. The authors calculate that payments to MA plans in 2008 will be 12.4 percent greater than the corresponding costs in trad...