Purpose: The purpose of this research was to estimate the impact of Medicare Part D on prescription and medical utilization among Arizona's senior dual eligible population.Methods: Generalized estimating equations were used to analyze changes in utilization among dual eligibles (Arizona Health Care Cost Containment (AHCCCS) beneficiaries between the ages of 66 and 80 as of January 1, 2006) relative to a "comparison" group ineligible for Part D (AHCCCS beneficiaries between the ages of 50 and 62 as of January 1, 2006) for the first two years following the implementation of Part D. Medical and pharmacy claims from AHCCCS from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2007 were used in this analysis.Results: The dual eligibles and Part D ineligible comparison group were similar in their level and trend of utilization of over-the-counter (OTC) medications and benzodiazepines in the pre-Part D period. Following implementation of Part D, there was an immediate decline in utilization of both OTC medications and benzodiazepines in the dual eligibles relative to the comparison group (p<0.001).Increasing trends for both the dual eligible and comparison group were observed during the pre-Part D period for total prescription utilization, generic medication utilization and antidepressant use. After the implementation of Medicare Part D, utilization of these drug classes was significantly lower among the dual eligibles relative to the comparison group.Trends in physician office visits were similar between the dual eligible group and comparison group for the entire study period. During the first month of Part D, the dual eligibles had a statistically significantly larger increase in physician visits over the previous month relative to the comparison group (p=0.001). The trend in hospitalizations between the two groups significantly differed during the pre-period, precluding meaningful comparisons between the groups for this particular outcome.Conclusion: This study supports the belief that medication use for dual eligible Medicare beneficiaries was disrupted by the transition of outpatient drug benefits from Medicaid to Medicare Part D.

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Arrende har i mer eller mindre konkret form begagnats i Sverige sedan medeltiden.  Jordabalkens bestämmelser om nyttjanderättsformen arrende har därför också en ganska brokig historia och ett antal förslag att presentera en lag efter 1734-års lag antogs inte. Först 1970 antogs den jordabalk vi har idag. Denna har också utvecklats med tiden, men förändringarna har varit relativt små och mest varit av redaktionell karaktär. Idag har arrendator av både gårdsarrenden och sidoarrenden ett starkt besittningsskydd vilket möjliggör för arrendatorn att tvinga fram en förlängning av det ursprungliga nyttjanderättsupplåtelseavtalet, trots att jordägaren önskar bli av med arrendatorn. För att besittningsskydd ska föreligga krävs för det första att arrendet följer de regler som satts upp för arrende och har ett skriftligt avtal och en tidsbegränsning.  Gränsdragningen mellan arrende och andra nyttjanderättsupplåtelser är inte självklar då många nyttjanderätter kan ha inslag av olika nyttjanderätter. Är det oklart om upplåtelsen är ett servitut eller ett arrende bör man se till var rätten är knuten, personen i fråga eller fastigheten. Är upplåtelsen knuten till personen är det troligtvis ett arrende. Lagstiftaren har infört 4 arrendealternativ, men endast ett, jordbruksarrende skall behandlas här. Huvudregeln är att jordbruksarrendatorer har rätt till besittningsskydd, men detta kan också förverkas eller avstås från vid avtalets ingående. Detta besittningsskydd är starkt och försvårar för jordägaren att få tillbaka sin fastighet om han eller hon så skulle vilja. Detta leder till att många jordägare väljer att inte upplåta mark till nyttjanderätt, om arrendator inte väljer att avtala bort arrendet, eller endast upplåter ett sidoarrende med en löptid på ett år (vilka inte har besittningsskydd). För att maximera antalet arrendeupplåtelser bör man därför utvärdera det starka besittningsskydd som tillfaller arrendator. Detta besittningsskydd tycks vara mycket av en kvarleva från en tid då arrendator hade en klart svagare ställning mot jordägaren än vad den har idag. Om vi istället angriper lagen med en tanke om att jordägare och arrendator idag är mer jämställda parter ekonomiskt, blir detta starka besittningsskydd problematiskt i jämförelse med den grundlagsskyddade äganderätten. Möjliga förslag som skulle kunna göra lagen mer jämställd är till exempel att låta arrendeupplåtelserna ha en total avtalsfrihet, likt dansk lagstiftning, istället för både dispositiva och tvingande bestämmelser. Ett annat alternativ vore att försvaga besittningsskyddet, genom att bedömningarna för dess brytande tar mer hänsyn till äganderätten. Ett annat alternativ är att besittningsrätten avskaffas helt. Oavsett hur problemet bör lösas tycks det vara angeläget att lösa och för det första frigöra jord till jordbruksarrende genom att jordägarna inte känner rädsla över att förlora kontrollen över sin fastighet samtidigt som man måste ta hänsyn till arrendatorernas intresse av att ha ett stabilt nyttjanderättsavtal. Om parterna inte tycker att jordabalken tar hänsyn till deras intresse på något sätt ökar risken för att de ska använda sig av andra alternativ för en överenskommelse om brukande av annans jord, och att man inte alls använder sig av de regler som lagstiftaren velat. Detta måste obönhörligen leda till konflikter och då är parterna än mindre skyddade än om de hade en välavvägd reglering att falla tillbaka på. Jordabalken bör därför utredas med grund i den förändrade partsställning som följt med tiden för att återigen vara ett aktuellt alternativ för dagens jordbrukare.

Fonds Français 2245 is a fifteenth-century chansonnier of the Duke of Orleans which is property of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, France. This thesis describes the document and provides commentary and transcriptions.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the environment and the satisfaction of certain part-time university faculty members. A web-based, confidential questionnaire was made available to voluntary participants. The data collection occurred during the Fall semester of 2004. The survey provided data from 10 Louisiana universities in the top four Carnegies categories of Doctoral Extensive, Doctoral Intensive, and Masters I and II universities. Though a total of 610 faculty members participated in this study, the final sample included 542 participants. The research questions of this study focused on job status (part-time or full-time) and academic discipline (liberal arts or business). These were the two major categories from which participants were solicited and into which the participating faculty members were divided. The research utilized Benjamin's (1998) categorization on what he considered to be two "umbrella" groups of faculty members: liberal artsrelated disciplines and vocationally-related disciplines. This latter cluster was represented in this study by colleges of business, which fit into that category. The study also used Linda Hagedorn's (2000) conceptual framework, which contends that certain motivators, hygienes, triggers, and environmental factors have a significant relationship to faculty satisfaction. Her framework is based in large part upon Herzberg's (1959) work, which developed the concept of motivators and hygienes as significant predictors of worker satisfaction. Hagedorn's conceptual framework was modified to address certain environmental conditions that are unique to part-time faculty members. The regression models for both full-time and part-time faculty are highly significant (p = .001) and account for 52.6% of the variance in the full-time population and 64.6% for the parttimers. Six variables indicated significant differences between full-time faculty and part-time faculty, five at the .001 level. Four variables indicated significant differences between liberal arts and business faculty: climate of the university (p <.01), climate of the college (p < .05), climate within the department (p <.05), and overall satisfaction between Benjamin’s (1998) categories.

Protéiforme, le tiers au marché public se rencontre essentiellement sous deux statuts, selon l’intérêt lésé direct ou indirect qu’il démontrera. Lésé par un manquement aux règles de passation, le tiers est effectivement protégé par le droit, qui instaure à son profit des voies de recours lui permettant tant de contester la légalité du marché que de demander des dommages et intérêts en réparation du préjudice subi. Citoyen, le tiers est défavorisé par sa condition, qui ne lui offre pas toujours les moyens d’actions de nature à satisfaire sa volonté de s’assurer de la légalité des procédures de passation. Il dispose pourtant, au sens du droit européen, d’un intérêt légitime à s’assurer qu’il existe de bonnes procédures de passation. Ce postulat conduira à proposer des solutions juridiques de nature à mettre le droit français en conformité avec ces nouvelles exigences. / The third party in the public procurement essentially meets under two statuses, according to the direct or indirect harmed interest which it will demonstrate. Hurt by a breach on procurement procedure, the third party is actually protected by the law, which establishes in its profit legal remedies allowing him to dispute the legality of the contact as well as asking for compensation for the loss suffered. Citizen, the third party is disadvantaged by its status, which does not always offer him actions likely to satisfy his will to make sure of the legality of the procurement procedure. He has nevertheless, under European law, a legitimate concern to make sure that there are good procurement procedures. That premise will lead to propose legal solutions likely to put the french law in accordance with these new requirements.

This dissertation analyzes the men's razor market to examine whether a monopolist can implement price discrimination for the complementary goods. I estimate a demand system for razors using the random coefficient logit model with market level sales data from the Nielsen Store Scanner dataset and individual demographic data from the March CPS. The estimated parameters are used to construct price-cost markups. By comparing the markups of different products, I find evidence that Gillette uses a two-part tariff strategy. This conclusion can be generalized as that of a monopolist setting the prices of tie-in products consistent with a two-part tariff.

This dissertation contributes to the current understanding of labor markets, focusing on the use of micro level data and computational modeling to study the interaction of unemployment with various aspects of the macroeconomy. I address the fact that frictions in the labor market carry over into other dimensions of firms' and workers' decisions, such as a firm's incentive to utilize its current labor force, workers' participation in the labor market, and the decision to acquire or discharge debt. In Chapter 1, I study involuntary part-time employment over the business cycle. I document that the population at work part-time for economic reasons ($PTE$) is countercyclical, volatile, and transitory. Workers in $PTE$ are nearly three times more likely than the unemployed to return to full-time work in a given month, and seven times more likely than full-time workers to become unemployed. Using household survey data, I demonstrate that cyclical fluctuations in $PTE$ come from changes in the transition rates between full-time and part-time employment rather than between part-time and unemployment. Moreover, these movements are primarily due to within-job changes in hours. Accordingly, I model part-time work focusing on a firm's decision to hire, fire, or partially utilize its labor force. Firms in the model are heterogeneous in size and productivity, and are subject to search frictions. The model produces firm-level utilization of part-time employment which is consistent with observed worker flows, and varies across the size and age distributions of firms. Over the business cycle, the model matches the observed relative volatility of unemployment and $PTE$. Part-time labor utilization by firms increases the volatility of vacancies and unemployment in the model relative to the case with only an extensive margin. Chapter 2 studies the interaction of a participation margin in a labor market search model. Introducing a participation margin of whether or not to actively search for a job requires the use of large idiosyncratic shocks to workers' participation incentives in order to match monthly labor flows in the data. If we measure the participation transitions of workers outside of employment where search decisions are observable and apply this same transition process to employed workers, any search model will overstate the transition of workers out of employment to nonparticipation. Allowing the participation transition of workers to depend on their employment state fixes these flows, but this transition process is unobservable for employed workers. Taking advantage of the longer panel of the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participants, I estimate the markov process for participation transitions of employed workers using their observed search behavior before and after an employment spell. The difference in the transition process measured for employed and nonemployed workers is consistent with an interpretation of attachment to the labor force. I build a directed search model with a labor force participation margin subject to employment-dependent shocks and show that it can match the labor market flows in US data. Chapter 3, which is jointly authored with Chander S. Kochar, investigates the effects of student loans on labor market outcomes. The student loan market is the second largest source of household debt in the United States, with $1.2 trillion in outstanding debt. Unlike other sources of unsecured credit, student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Using data on college graduates from the 1993/03 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, we first identify that student loan debt has a significant negative effect on students' earnings after graduation. We show that the inability to discharge debt in bankruptcy is critical to produce this result within a simple search theoretic framework. We propose a richer model with student loan debt and a delinquency/default decision to study the effects of recent changes to student loan policies on the labor market and delinquency outcomes of college graduates.

Wellsville Mountain is 10 miles west of Logan, Utah, at the northern extremity of the Wasatch Range. Paleozoic rocks forma northeast-dipping homocline bounded in part by northwest-trending high-angle faults and cut by a series of northeast-trending high-angle faults. A major transverse fault, with a stratigraphic displacement of 4,500 feet, divides the mountain into two distinct blocks. The rock units of the area are comparable to those of the Logan quadrangle immediately to the east. Pre-Cambrian rocks crop out in Box Elder Canyon, just east of Brigham City, and are overlain by at least 20,000 feet of northeast-dipping Paleozoic rocks of every period except possibly the Permian. The Beirdneau sandstone member of the Jefferson formation, is tentatively correlated with that of the upper Devils Gate limestone of central Nevada. About 6,600 feet of the Oquirrh formation of Pennsylvanian age is exposed near the northern end of Wellsville Mountain. The presence of Desmoinesian fusulinids at the base of the Oquirrh and upper Virgilian fusulinids throughout the interval from 1,000 to 2,000 feet above its base indicates an absence of Lower Pennsylvanian rocks and suggests that the upper 4,400 feet may be in part Permian. Mesozoic rocks are not found in the area. The Wasatch formation and Salt Lake group of Tertiary age crop out in the foothills at the northern end of Wellsville Mountain. Two fault systems are recognized in the area. The northeast-trending high-angle transverse faults of Laramide age and the north-west-trending high-angle bordering faults are Basin and Range age.

The mapped area, in north-central Utah, is centered about 22.6 miles south of Logan, Utah. It measures about 3.8 miles in the north-south direction and 6.6 miles in the east-west direction. Stratigraphic units of Precambrian and Cambrian age underline most of the area. The Precambrian units are as follows: (1) Maple Canyon Formation, (2) Kelley Canyon Formation, (3) Orthoquartzite unit, (4) Argillite unit, (5) Mutual Formation, and (6) Volcanic unit. The Brigham Formation, which overlies the Precambrian volcanic unit, is probably of Cambrian age; however, the lower part may be Precambrian. The overlying Cambrian carbonate unit is not differentiated. The Salt Lake Formation of Tertiary age overlaps older rocks in the valley north of James Peak. The western part of James Peak, east of a major normal fault, consists of east-dipping Precambrian units. The oldest unit, which crops out on the eastern side of Broadmouth Canyon, is the Maple Canyon Formation. The rocks of the eastern part of James Peak also dip generally eastward. A continuous stratigraphic section extends from the Kelley Canyon Formation, exposed in Wolf Creek Canyon, northeastward to the Brigham Formation. The Cambrian carbonate unit seems to overlie the Brigham in normal stratigraphic succession. A thrust fault, which has about 1,000 feet of displacement, is present on the eastern side of James Peak. Another thrust fault, on the southeastern side of James Peak, places the Cambrian carbonate unit on Precambrian units. A block of the Brigham Formation, near the southeastern corner of the area, is thrust over the carbonate unit and the Brigham. The thrust faulting is part of the Laramide Orogeny that occurred late in the Mesozoic Era and early in the Teritary Period. Movement was generally eastward. Normal faulting began early in the Tertiary Period and continues at the present time.