• Compassionate communities: design and preliminary results of the experience of Vic (Barcelona, Spain) caring city

  Gómez-Batiste, X.; Mateu, S.; Serra-Jofre, S.; Molas, M.; Mir-Roca, S.; Amblàs, J.; Costa, X.; Lasmarías, C.; Serrarols, M.; Solà-Serrabou, A.; Calle, C.; Kellehear, Allan (2018)

  Background: A program of Compassionate City or Community (CC) has been designed and developed in the City of Vic (43,964 habitants, Barcelona, Spain), based on The Compassionate City Charter and other public health literature and experiments, with the joint leadership of the City Council and the Chair of Palliative Care at the University of Vic, and as an expansion of a comprehensive and integrated system of palliative care. Methods: The program started with an assessment of needs of the city as identified by 48 social organizations with a foundational workshop and a semi-structured survey. After this assessment, the mission, vision, values and aims were agreed. The main aims consisted in promoting changes in social and cultural attitudes toward the end of life (EoL) and providing integrated care for people with advanced chronic conditions and social needs such as loneliness, poverty, low access to services at home, or conflict. The selected slogan was “Living with meaning, dignity, and support the end of life”. Results: The program for the first year has included 19 activities (cultural, training, informative, and mixed) and followed by 1,260 attendants, and the training activities were followed by 147 people. Local and regional sponsors are funding the initiative. After a year, a quantitative and qualitative evaluation was performed, showing high participation and satisfaction of the attendants and organizations. In the second year, the care for particular vulnerable people defined as targets (EoL and social factors described before) will start with volunteers with more organizations to join the project. Conclusions: The key identified factors for the initial success are: the strong joint leadership between social department of the Council and the University; clear aims and targets; high participation rates; the limited size of the geographical context; which allowed high participation and recognition; and the commitment to evaluate results.
• Pricing of time-varying illiquidity within the Eurozone: Evidence using a Markov switching liquidity-adjusted capital asset pricing model

  Grillini, S.; Ozkan, A.; Sharma, Abhijit; Al Janabi, M.A.M. (2019)

  This paper investigates time-varying characteristics of illiquidity and the pricing of its risk using a liquidity-adjusted capital asset pricing model (L-CAPM). Collecting data from a pool of Eurozone countries between 1990 and 2018, we employ Markov switching models to assess the degree of persistence of illiquidity shocks. Contrary to prior research, which largely makes use of autoregressive (AR) processes, we provide strong evidence that illiquidity is time-varying and the persistence of shocks determines two distinct regimes characterised by high and low illiquidity. We assess pricing of illiquidity risk by developing and empirically testing a conditional L-CAPM model, where different regimes constitute priced risk factors for the cross-section of stock returns. We extend previous unconditional versions of L-CAPM models and we show that the various channels through which illiquidity affects asset returns and price of risks are time-varying. We find strong support for our conditional L-CAPM and our results are robust to alternative specifications and estimation techniques. These findings have important implications for portfolio management practices and are relevant to portfolio and risk managers and regulatory institutions.
• Evaluating Healthcare Governance Using Knowledge-based System to Enhance Quality Management

  Al Khamisi, Yousuf N.; Munive-Hernandez, J. Eduardo; Campean, I. Felician (2018-07)

  Governance perspective plays a vital role in the success of Quality Management in Healthcare Environment (QMHE). In fact QMHE has adopted and applied different quality tools and models in recent times, with some even developing their own quality‐based initiatives. This paper will present an original and novel approach (KB/ES coupled with GAP analysis) to evaluate the effectiveness of governance body in QMHE. The KB system inserts GAP for benchmarking and evaluating the current practices with the desired ones. The KB system will benchmark the current position of governance perspective as part of QMHE with the ideal benchmark one. The results will help healthcare practitioners to improve the governance boy’s gaps and take the correct decisions.
• Is Radiative Forcing Cointegrated with Temperature? A Further Examination Using a Structural Time Series Approach

  Balcombe, K.; Fraser, I.M.; Sharma, Abhijit (2019)

  This paper re-examines the long-run relationship between radiative forcing (including emissions of carbon dioxide, sulphur oxides, methane, and solar radiation) and temperatures from a structural time series modeling perspective. We assess whether forcing measures are cointegrated with global temperatures using the structural time series approach.
• Developing a Discrete Event Simulation Methodology to support a Six Sigma Approach

  Hussain, Anees; Munive-Hernandez, J. Eduardo; Campean, I. Felician (2019)

  Competition in the manufacturing industry is growing at an accelerated rate due to globalization trend. This global competition urges manufacturing organizations to review and improve their processes in order to enhance and maintain their competitive advantage. One of those initiatives is the implementation of the Six Sigma methodology to analyze and reduce variation hence improving the processes of manufacturing organizations. This paper presents a Discrete Event Simulation methodology to support a Six Sigma approach for manufacturing organizations. Several approaches to implement Six Sigma focus on improving time management and reducing cycle time. However, these efforts may fail in their effective and practical implementation to achieve the desired results. Following the proposed methodology, a Discrete Event Simulation model was built to assist decision makers in understanding the behavior of the current manufacturing process. This approach helps to systematically define, measure and analyze the current state process to test different scenarios to improve performance. The paper is amongst the first to offer a simulation methodology to support a process improvement approach. It applies an action research strategy to develop and validate the proposed modelling methodology in a British manufacturing organization competing in global markets.

View more