Archive | April, 2007

Principles of Economics, translated

27 Apr

Yoram Bauman styles himself as the world’s only stand-up economist and his recent performance at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting took a sideways look at the Principles of Economics as espoused by leading economist Greg Mankiw.

Bauman’s latest work has been as the project economist for a Washington State, Department of Ecology report on the Impacts of Climate Change on Washington’s Economy looking at the impacts, costs and economic opportunities of climate change.

Read more about Yoram Bauman’s research and papers from his homepage, explore similar resources by following related links from EconPapers and find more internet sites on the topic of Environmental Economics at Intute: Social Sciences.

Digital information and the NHS

26 Apr

ESRC logo New research from the ESRC has highlighted the impact that digitizing information is having on patients, managers and staff in the NHS

A survey of 200 patients and their representatives, clinicians and other healthcare professionals (librarians and IT staff) from across eight NHS trusts, by Professor Ann Blandford and Professor Peter Lunt  found that attention is required on areas such as:

  • designing technologies to fit with established working practices at the individual and team level within the NHS
  • ensuring that the values of workers are not at odds with the new technologies; ensuring that users trust the technology;
  • ensuring that the new technologies do not undermine health service workers’ pride in their knowledge

This is the latest report from the ESRC E-Society Programme who have prepared a full briefing on the issue.

Search Intute: Social Sciences for more on health services.

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Nice video, shame about the politicians

25 Apr

The BBC reported last week that the Electoral Commission and Ofcom will be keeping a close eye on the main political parties and their use of online campaigning in the run-up to the local elections next month – not only for the amount spent on their websites, but also their use of online video.

All three main UK political parties are dabbling in the world of online video with YouTube being home to a Labour Party channel and the official Liberal Democrat video channel, while the Conservatives got their first with WebCameron.

In the States, not only are candidates announcing their 2008 Presidential bids online as well as in person, but the political punditry is also online for example the editors of the respected National Journal’s Hotline, offer a daily vlog

YouTube have brought together the video offerings of the various 2008 Presidential hopefuls into the YouChoose portal site that can help voters make up their minds.

Meanwhile in France the run-off to choose the successor to Jacques Chirac will see contenders Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal make use of online video to help get their messages across.

Intute: Social Sciences links to more resources on the issues of online campaigning and political uses of video.

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The Minimum Wage has reduced sickness absence

24 Apr

In the first of a series of interviews with economics researchers at the Royal Economic Society Conference 2007, Romesh Vaitilingam talks to Martin Robson about the Minimum Wage.

Listen to the interview

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Britain’s national minimum wage has not only raised the pay of low-paid employees. It has also led to a reduction in the rate of these employees’ absence through sickness – and hence improved their productivity. That is the finding of new research by Marco Ercolani and Martin Robson. This effect might help to explain why the introduction of the minimum wage was greeted with apparent equanimity by many employers.

Employee sickness absence is widely recognised as a major problem for the economy. In recent years, for example, it has been calculated that the direct costs of sickness absence in terms of the value of lost output amount to over £11 billion per annum; around 1% of the country’s annual GDP.

On top of this, there are the indirect costs such as the loss of employee morale among those required to cover for absent colleagues. While many instances of employee sickness absence represent genuine cases of ill health, a significant proportion almost certainly does not.

Read more at the Economics in Action blog and search Intute: Social Sciences for more on the Minimum Wage

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