Working Papers

Listed below are the Working Papers to date from SPINTAN. We hope you find them of interest, please feel free to contact the corresponding author or SPINTAN (info@spintan.net) with your comments.

SPINTAN Working Paper No. 13
Organisational capital and hospital performance in Hungary
Antónia Hüttl, Ágnes Nagy
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The paper presents a case study exploring the possibilities to measure own-account organisational capital and its impact on hospital performance in Hungary. The comparable dataset consists of the time series 2010- 2013 of 58 general hospitals owned by the government. Investment in own-account OC is measured both in a narrow and in a broad sense, depending on the range of employees contributing to OC. In the period according to our estimates, applying the narrow concept the average stocks of OC varied between 2,5-4,3% of the wages of all employees, and between 11,3-12,3% in the broad concept. The analysis has provided some evidence that the stocks of OC in broad sense has a slight positive effect on clinical performance, measured by the cost weighted number of activities. Applying OC in the narrow sense, a positive correlation could be detected only if higher values have been attached to DRGs of complicated interventions and of treatment of serious diseases.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-13
SPINTAN Working Paper No. 12
Organisational capital and hospital performance in England
Mary O’Mahony, Silvia Beghelli, Lucy Stokes
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This paper explores the relationship between organisational capital and hospital performance in England, for the period 2010/11 to 2013/14. We construct measures of investment in organisational capital for NHS Acute Trusts (as hospitals in England are managed by Trusts) and investigate whether investment in this form of intangible asset is related to Trust performance. We measure investment in organisational capital in terms of payments to managers, in line with the approach developed by Corrado, Hulten and Sichel (2005, 2009). Squicciarini and Le Mouel (2012) argue that, particularly in public services, occupations other than managers also contribute to organisational capital. Our data allow us to identify both general managers and clinical managers, and we therefore include both types of manager within our measure of organisational capital. We find that, in aggregate, investment in organisational capital in NHS Trusts has been increasing over the period of our analysis. This has been driven primarily by increases in organisational capital in terms of clinical managers; while the number of clinical managers has been increasing, on average, the number of general managers has remained relatively stable over this period. There is however considerable variation across NHS Trusts in the proportion of total staff in management roles. The relationship between organisational capital and Trust performance varies depending on the performance measure used. When Trust performance is considered in terms of cost-weighted output, we find little evidence of a relationship with investment in organisational capital, once controlling for other factors. There is however some evidence of a positive relationship between investment in organisational capital and cost-weighted output based on inpatient activity alone. This association is driven by investment in organisational capital in terms of clinical managers, rather than for general managers. The analysis also provides some evidence of a statistically significant relationship between investment in organisational capital and Trust performance in terms of mortality, with higher levels of investment in organisational capital in terms of clinical managers associated with better outcomes in terms of mortality. Our analysis provides tentative evidence that investments in organisational capital may matter for NHS Trust performance in England. Furthermore, given that statistically significant results typically focus on organisational capital in terms of clinical managers, the study provides further support for the argument that it is important to consider not only general managers in any analysis of organisational capital, but to also consider the broader contribution made by other professionals, at least within hospital settings.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-12
SPINTAN Working Paper No. 11
Estimates of intangible investment in the public sector: EU, US, China and Brazil
F. Bacchini, C. Corrado, J.Hao, J.Haskel, R. Iannaccone, M. Iommi, K. Jager, C. Jona Lasinio
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The paper illustrates the methods used to generate measures of public intangible investment for 22 European countries in 1995-2011 and for US, China and Brazil over the period 1995-2013. We propose an estimation strategy that is consistent with National Accounts principles and with the theoretical framework developed in (Corrado, Haskel, Jona-Lasinio, 2015). The methodology is organized into two different steps depending on whether the intangible assets are capitalized in National Accounts or are accounted as intermediate costs. The paper offers also an overview of the main characteristics of the SPINTAN database. Finally, we provide some preliminary evidence on the dynamics and intensities of public intangible investment in the EU economies, US, China and Brazil.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-11
SPINTAN Working Paper No. 10
Fiscal consolidation and crisis in the EU: exploring long-run supply-side effects through education
Lorenzo Serrano, Ángel Soler, Laura Hernández
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The aim of this paper is to analyze the possibility of long-run supply-side effects of fiscal consolidation on output through its effect on the education sector and human capital accumulation. It examines the effect of crisis and public expenditure austerity on European dropout rates and analyzes the effects of educational attainment on participation in the labour market, employability and labour productivity using EU-LFS and EU-SILC microdata. Some estimates of long-run impacts on output based on those results are provided for different scenarios. The analysis is carried out for the EU as a whole and also for those countries especially affected by fiscal consolidation. The results show that fiscal consolidation might affect negatively educational attainment when public expenditure on education is reduced. However, also as a result of the economic crisis, job opportunities for young people drastically decrease in the fiscal consolidation countries. This reduces the opportunity cost of studying, extending schooling, reducing dropout rates and fostering human capital accumulation. All in all, the latter effect would dominate any negative long-run supply-side effect from a lower level of public spending on education in the case of the EU countries.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-10
SPINTAN Working Paper No. 9
Hospital performance and intangible investments: the impact of own account organizational capital
Erika Schulz, Laura Beckmann
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This paper used the employee embedded approach to measure the amount of investments in own account organizational capital as well as the impact of organizational capital on hospital performance in Germany. In hospitals managers of the three main professions: doctors, nurses and economists contribute to building organizational capital. Parts of their working were defined as investments in organizational capital. We find that in our selection of hospitals, one million Euros are invested each year in organizational capital, which is consistent with the findings of CHS (2005, 2009) for the US. Furthermore, we estimated several models to analyze the impact of organizational capital on hospital performance, using a variety of output indicators. We found significant and positive effects on quality adjusted output measures and labor productivity in all models. This includes the time as well as the wage weighted approach to labor input. As organizational capital is mainly constituted of nursing and medical staffing times and wages, we would thus conclude that investments into these professions have a positive effect on hospital performance. Additionally, we estimated several quality models to account for the special output of hospitals; patient treatment. For our quality regressions we selected a subgroup of patients with a set of diagnoses as basis for our output measures in order to be able to better compare the quality of treatment between hospitals. In this context positive output measures such as labor productivity might cause deterioration in quality due to higher work load. For this reason we estimated a separate model with the survival rate as the only dependent variable, in order to isolate the quality effect from the quantity effect. Our results show that the positive impact of organizational capital on hospital performance is mainly driven by quantity aspects. However, when talking about intangibles in the public sector, we believe that developing quality indicators would be a valuable contribution of future research.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-09
SPINTAN Working Paper No. 8
Development of public spending structures in the EU member states: social investment and its impact on social outcomes
Sebastian Leitner, Robert Stehrer
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This paper analyses the changes in public spending structures in the EU Member States over the period 1995 to 2013 based on data on government expenditures by function (COFOG) with a focus on social expenditure categories health, education and social protection spending expressed in per capita terms in PPPs at constant prices. Expenditures increased in general in real terms, while large differences in spending levels are observed across countries. In EU countries which have been hit hard by the economic crisis cuts have been enacted. Furthermore the paper analyses the levels and changes of individual expenditures on health and education based on COICOP data (Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose) across EU Member States. In an econometric analysis the effects of public and private expenditures on public health and other social outcomes are examined. Higher levels of public expenditures and lower levels of economic poverty are significantly correlated with superior population health and public welfare.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-08
SPINTAN Working Paper No. 7
Fiscal consolidation and income distribution
Francisco J. Goerlich, Laura Hernández
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This working paper attempts to shed light on distributional effects of recent fiscal consolidation policies, mainly through the channel of in-kind public transfers. We look at the distribution of income in 16 EU countries during the recent global financial and economic crisis, and the subsequent period of fiscal consolidation. Experiences in terms of the depth of the recession and the policies implemented to deal with vary greatly across EU countries. We illustrate this diversity, and show how the crisis has accentuated the differences among EU countries, both in income levels and in inequality. The effects of the public sector on household income distribution have traditionally been measured through the effects of money transfers and taxes, but in developed economies in-kind transfers are of increasing importance. In our context, the analysis of in-kind transfers –mainly education and health– from a distributional perspective is of paramount importance, since fiscal consolidation programmes have led to a reduction in public expenditure in these services in many countries. We mainly use the EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), which allows us to track the distributional effects of public interventions in the economy, namely money transfer and taxes. For in-kind services we impute benefits at the individual level from the EUSILC database. Starting from aggregate figures, we make a number of adjustments and arrive at an extended household income. Finally, we measure the distribution in this extended income for all countries in the analysis, before and after the crisis. Our results point to the absence of relative inequality effects of fiscal consolidations in those countries where public sector cuts have been deeper. This fact is due to the emphasis on measuring inequality in relative terms, given that primary incomes have fallen by more than the cuts in public services provided to citizens.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-07
SPINTAN Working Paper No. 6
The long-run effect of fiscal consolidation on economic growth: evidence from quantitative case studies
Mischa Kleis, Marc-Daniel Moessinger
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We contribute to the literature on the long-run effect of fiscal consolidation on economic growth by applying a novel method for quantitative case studies. Relying on a qualitative (narrative) definition of fiscal consolidations based on an examination of historical policy documents and using the synthetic control method (SCM), we investigate the evolution of post-consolidation trajectories of economic growth in six case studies of OECD countries. In contrast to recent studies that reject the hypothesis of non-Keynesian effects, our results do not offer clear-cut evidence on the long-run effect of fiscal consolidation on economic growth. Half of the case studies point to a positive effect with the other half indicating a negative effect on economic growth trajectories. We further do not find a specific effect of the strength of the fiscal adjustment and the type of consolidation, i.e., whether the consolidation is rather based on expenditure cuts or revenue increases.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-06
SPINTAN Working Paper No. 5
The research output of universities and its determinants: quality, intangible investments, specialisation and inefficiencies
José Manuel Pastor, Lorenzo Serrano
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Published in: Scientometrics, 109(2), 1255-1281
Increasing research output is a fundamental challenge for the well-being of European citizens. The analysis of productivity in Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) at a European level reveals enormous differences in output per researcher across countries. This study develops a 5-step methodology that explicitly considers the quality of scientific output in EU universities and its specialisations to explain and decompose the differences in output per university teacher in terms of a) differences in efficiency within each field of science (FOS), b) differences in FOS specialisation of the HEIs in each country, c) differences in quality, and d) differences in allocation of resources per researcher. The inefficiency levels estimated show that across the EU as a whole there is a substantial margin for increasing research output without having to spend more resources. There are also major differences between countries in terms of inefficiency. The main sources of heterogeneity in scientific output from the HEIs in the EU are the differences in resources allocated per researcher and, to a lesser extent, the differences in efficiency within each knowledge field. In contrast, the differences in quality and in specialisation seem to play a much smaller role in determining differences in output.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-05
SPINTAN Working Paper No. 4
The effects of survival rates on education in a simple life-cycle model
Martin Weale
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This paper explores the decision to invest in education and its link with life expectancy and mortality. It presents evidence for a statistical relationship between life expectancy and participation in education in the European Union, and explores this in a life-cycle model. It is found that conventional estimates of returns to education imply much longer periods of education than are observed in practice. More conventional results can be found if the marginal return to education is assumed to decline with the age at which it is completed. Even then declining mortality accounts only for a small part in the extension of education seen since the early twentieth century. If, as has been suggested by some research, education itself influences mortality, then it is possible to account for over 60% of the increase in years of education as higher productivity and living standards have made life more fully worth living.
DOI http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/SPINTAN-WP-04