Let’s compare our mortgage malaises, shall we?
Posted on November 20, 2009 at 9:19 amFrom the BERC’s latest Housing Brief:
Oh, by the way: The national numbers have gotten quite a bit worse in a rather short time.
permalink | Comment on this post
We’re part of the Terrible 10
Posted on at 7:54 am
The Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy puts Tennessee on its list with the most regressive tax systems. The lack of a broad income tax and a heavy reliance on sales and excise taxes are two of the main culprits.
permalink | Comment on this post
Lake Wobegon Medical Center welcomes you
Posted on November 9, 2009 at 2:47 pmA new survey by Health Affairs says 99 percent of hospital chairman think their facility provides above-average care. Its authors provide one interesting regulatory suggestion.
The large differences in board activities between high-performing and low-performing hospitals we found suggest that governing boards may be an important target for intervention for policymakers hoping to improve care in U.S. hospitals.
permalink | Comment on this post
Vanderbilt researchers: Let’s talk about containing school spending
Posted on November 5, 2009 at 10:57 am
Professors James W. Guthrie and Arthur Peng worry that the Recovery Act billions being poured into school systems across the country will lead to persistently rising education outlays “regardless of the diminishing returns in terms of student outcomes.”
Based on historic spending trends and estimating that the federal government’s stimulus contribution will grow to approximately $90 billion, Guthrie and Peng project that national per pupil revenues could increase at a rate of nearly 2.5 percent annually over the next ten years.
Yet, reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have been level for four decades. And, for a half century, nearly one-third of the nation’s high-school students have failed to graduate with their class each year, while graduation rates for black and Hispanic students are even lower.
SEE ALSO: The full paper, “The Phony Funding Crisis“
permalink | Comment on this post
Meharry received $5.7M in stimulus funds
Posted on October 22, 2009 at 11:45 amMeharry Medical College has received $5.7 million in funding from the $4.35 billion made available by the National Institutes of Health through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The money will expand the school’s research on health disparities, including research on women’s health, cancer and HIV/AIDS.
permalink | Comment on this post
Vanderbilt helps launch online science news channel
Posted on September 25, 2009 at 2:16 am
A group of university administrators has officially launched Futurity, a Web news station dedicated to scientific research news they say is being cast aside by most media organizations.
“Futurity is a direct link to the research pipeline. If you want a glimpse at where research is today and where it’s headed tomorrow, Futurity offers that in a very accessible way,” said Lisa Lapin, assistant vice president for communications at Stanford University, who helped develop the site. “Today’s online environment is perfectly suited for this type of direct communication.”
permalink | Comment on this post
No loss of pricing power for health insurers
Posted on September 16, 2009 at 7:13 amA Kaiser Family Foundation study says that, despite the most painful recession in decades, the average family and employers can still expect to pay 5 percent more for a workplace health plan this year.
The survey shows that health benefits remained relatively stable despite the severe economic downturn. As noted above, this may indicate a strong commitment by employers to maintaining workers’ benefits, but also could reflect the possibility that some employers made decisions about health benefits before the implications of the worsening economy were fully apparent.
Click here for the report’s summary and here for the Kaiser Foundation page with much more info.
Bass attorney named Bar Foundation fellow
Posted on September 10, 2009 at 7:16 am
Leigh Walton, a 25-year Bass Berry & Sims partner and co-chair of its health care practice, has been named a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. The nonprofit ABF, which bills itself as “the nation’s leading research institute for the empirical study of law,” hosts its fellowships in residence at its offices in Chicago.
permalink | Comment on this post
Think CEO salaries are too high?
Posted on August 11, 2009 at 8:12 am
Then chew on this executive compensation nugget from MTSU researchers.
Measured as a share of corporate earnings (after-tax profits), the S&P 500 CEOs share of earnings averaged about 2.4 percent over the entire 15 years from 1993-2007. … The CEO share of earnings generally rose from around 2.5 percent in the mid-1990s to a peak level of four percent in 1999 and, surprisingly, has trended downward since then, ending at a historically low level of about 1.6 percent of earnings in 2007.
permalink | Comment on this post
Study: Hospitalists slash repeat visits
Posted on June 24, 2009 at 12:51 pmCogent Healthcare calls attention to a study that says its hospitalist programs produce readmission rates of about 6 percent – less than a third the national average. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin/Northwestern University studied 25 hospitals in 11 states for a year.
permalink | Comment on this post
The case for a smaller, healthier VC sector
Posted on June 10, 2009 at 8:25 amA new study sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation says venture-capital firms need to curtail their investments and focus on producing more profits.
The industry itself might be structurally flawed: The core markets that made it successful — information technology and telecommunications — are now mature and less capital intensive. In addition, exit markets are unwilling to take on young and unprofitable companies. Given that, the study says, the real question for venture is one of capital and size. As opportunities shrink, the venture business should shrink too, possibly by as much as 50 percent.
SEE ALSO: Forbes‘ piece on the study
permalink | Comment on this post
Shake it like a Polaroid picture
Posted on May 4, 2009 at 3:51 pmLouisiana-Pacific researchers will team with engineers from Simpson Strong-Tie, a builder and a group of academic researchers to simulate the 1994 Northridge quake on a seven-story condominium tower.
“The outcome of the tests could lead to taller wood-frame buildings in active seismic zones,” said John van de Lindt, a Colorado State University civil engineering professor who serves as the principal investigator for the project.
permalink | Comment on this post
NASA grant for Vanderbilt
Posted on April 23, 2009 at 3:25 pmThe nation’s space agency is cutting a check for almost $200,000 worth of research into “model-based software health management.”
permalink | Comment on this post
Why no one sounded the alarm
Posted on January 5, 2009 at 8:55 amThe Wall Street Journal explains why the economic opinion-making community failed to sound the alarm bells on the economic crisis:
There has long been a marked distinction between economists who study finance and economists who study the broader economy, with limited communication between the groups. As a young Harvard University economist, Mr. Summers argued this was a dangerous shortcoming in a now famous screed, where he unfavorably compared finance specialists to “ketchup economists” who are too narrowly focused on their field of study, while also complaining about general economists tendency to continually rediscover conclusions that the finance specialists had come to long ago.
Finally, many academic economists privately worried that a housing bubble was building, and that it’s bursting would cause severe problems, but didn’t publicize their concerns. An exception is New York University’s Nouriel Roubini, who in 2006 said that the U.S. was almost certainly heading into a recession. Mr. Roubini is often characterized as a grand stander, but Mr. Rajan says that he deserves credit for acting on his convictions.
“Most academics are really reluctant to take part in the public dialog, because the public dialog requires you to have an opinion about things you can’t really be sure about,” says Mr. Rajan. “They fear talking about things where everything is not neatly nailed in a model. They stay away and let the charlatans occupy the high ground.”
‘A public-private prison symbiosis’
Posted on November 20, 2008 at 11:23 pmVanderbilt researchers – funded initially by CCA – say states benefit financially from competition between public and private prison operators.
“…[From] 1999 to 2004, the overall average cost of housing a prisoner in a public facility grew by almost 5 percent in states without a private prison population. States that had some prisoners in privately run prisons had their average cost go up less than 2 percent.”
Recent Comments
In our good state a select few run the place, 20 yrs ago and today....
Southernindie…Unfortunat ely you have suffered a dibilitating...
And…Karl (Marx) Dean is spending one billion dollars...
Someone explain the difference between short stay and observation...
Watching the Chairman of Starwood Hotels yesterday on CNBC...
Funny how the Union’s feel about taxes. They complained about their...
Where is it?
An absolutely ugly structure, which I have always thought did not take...
Too bad that ATT changed the look of the building so that it no longer...
Yeah, well, look at the TN Legislature of good ol’ boys and the...
As long as the red rules, we will be far behind other states. The GOP does...
Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn: I don’t know what...