BACKGROUND The growing economization of the health care system and implication of market principles in the medical field have risen new and serious questions on the meaning of the medical profession, the doctor-patient relationship and the orientation of medicine itself. The impact of the dynamic clinical structures on the doctor-doctor and the doctor-patient interaction appear even unpredictab...

This paper develops a theory of the firm, and equilibrium credit rationing mechanisms in oligopoly with R&D-product market competition. Credit rationing arises from a hold-up problem between wealth-constrained entrepreneurs and external investors. Underinvestment occurs if entrepreneurial wealth constraint is binding, even though the equilibrium corporate governance structure addresses the hold...

In multi-unit auctions, such as auctions of commodities and securities, and financial exchanges, it is necessary to specify rationing rules to break ties between multiple marginal bids. The standard approach in the literature and in pratice is to ration marginal bids proportionally. This paper shows how bidding can be made more competitive if the rationing rule instead gives increasing priority...

The U.S. has focused attention on the rising costs of health care coincident with the increasing age of the population. Arguments have been made to overtly ration care to older persons; however, general acceptance of the need to ration scarce resources, whether or not such a policy is actually formalized, can lead to covert rationing. Some overt rationing has already occurred, some of the data ...

This paper considers alternative means of rationing access to outdoor recreation areas, focussing on rock-climbing sites in Scotland. Such rationing is deemed increasingly important due to crowding and environmental externalities, yet cultural and practical considerations mean that a system of simple entry fees to mountain areas is unrealistic. We use a repeated nested multinomial logit model t...

We report the results of duopoly market experiments where firms first commit to capacities and then compete in prices. The theoretical literature pertaining to these duopoly models suggests that the way residual demand is rationed is fundamental to the character of equilibrium outcomes when capacity costs are sufficiently low. The experiments test this prediction by varying capacity cost and de...

Some empirical investigations are pointing to the fact that high-tech firms are subject to credit rationing to a higher extent than the average. This excess of credit rationing may not be due to information asymmetries, but rather to the inability of credit institutions to screen projects in novel fields. This article provides a model of this phenomenon and explores its implications in the ligh...

Financial shortage in resource-limited and poor countries restricts treatment in HIV-infected patients especially in poor countries. Higher HIV prevalence in poorer countries makes drug rationing a real concern. Different countries solve the problem with different methods regarding WHO guidelines, but fairness and equity should be a major consideration in drug rationing. This paper is aimed at ...

This paper considers a two-echelon capacitated supply chain with two non-identical retailers and information sharing. We characterize the optimal inventory policies. We also study the benefits of the optimal stock rationing policy over the first come first served (FCFS) and the modified echelon-stock rationing (MESR) policies. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Gasoline engine exhaust has been considered as a major source of air pollution in China. Due to lower cyto- and geno-toxicity effects of methanol engine exhaust, methanol is regarded as a potential substitute for gasoline. We have previously compared cyto- and geno-toxicities of gasoline engine exhaust with that of methanol engine exhaust in A549 cells (Zhang et al., 2007).To characterize the i...