PPOs: the employer perspective

This paper reports the results of a national survey on employer experiences with preferred provider organizations (PPOs). The survey, conducted in 1987, included information from almost 700 telephone interviews with employee benefit managers. We found that 11 percent of employees are in PPOs. PPOs now have a strong presence among employers of all sizes. However, whereas they are a major force in the West, where almost one-third of employees are members, they have garnered only a 1 percent market share in the East. We examine the impact of PPOs on health insurance premiums and on employer satisfaction. The results show that in 1987, the year of the survey, PPOs appeared to provide mild cost savings compared to conventional insurance, and that employers were very satisfied with almost all aspects of PPOs, whereas they were surprisingly critical of their HMOs.     

Are hypnotically induced pseudomemories resistant to cross-examination?

Two experiments examined the effects of hypnotic procedures in response to interrogation and crossexamination in subjects who viewed a simulated robbery. Experiment 1 found that hypnotic and nonhypnotic leading interrogations were equally likely to produce misattributions and misidentification of mug shots. Moreover, under cross-examination subjects who had been given an hypnotic interrogation and those given nonhypnotic interrogations were equally likely to disavow their earlier misattributions and misidentifications. In both hypnotic and nonhypnotic treatments high hypnotizables were more likely than low hypnotizables to misattribute characteristics during interrogation and to disavow earlier misattributions during cross-examination. In Experiment 2 high hypnotizables given a cross-examination that legitimated their earlier errors as honest mistakes and that enabled them to disavow earlier testimony without discrediting themselves (hidden observer treatment) showed the highest and most consistent rates of disavowel. A stringent cross-examination that implied that subjects had been careless or dishonest during interrogation produced the lowest rates of disavowel.     

Revisiting Tiebout: Moving Rationales and Interjurisdictional Relocation

This article evaluates a key component of the model of localpublic expenditures put forth by Charles Tiebout and embracedby analysts in the public choice tradition. Central to thismodel is the assumption that citizens who are unhappy with localgovernment policies have an incentive to relocate to a differentjurisdiction that offers preferable taxes and services. Usingdata from a survey of actual movers in over fifty communities(including a large central city) located in the two largestcounties of a metropolitan area, we examined factors affectingboth the decision to move and the choice of a new residence.Empirical findings support the expectations of the Tiebout model,showing that tax and service factors significantly influencethe choice of a new residence for those who moved from one jurisdictionto another. The implications of the findings for central citiesare developed.     

Genocide in Kosovo

Conclusion That Kosovo exploded with genocidal violence in 1999 and ultimately prompted outside intervention surprised few—it was a long-festering hotspot but one that fell low on the world politics priority lists, despite the brutal “wars of Yugoslav” succession that engulfed Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. But for a relatively small scale conflict in a rather unknown corner of the world, Kosovo’s crisis of 1998–1999 brought with it a host of complex issues that challenge the international community to this day. As with any issue or case in the area of genocide studies, attention and understanding must first go to the dramatic human suffering inflicted upon one group by another. The macro-level political, legal, and ethical discussion and debates swirling about Kosovo should not and must not obscure the powerful and provocative human element at play. First and foremost, the Kosovo issue revolves around how best to save lives following an explosion of genocidal violence. Simultaneously, however, Kosovo in 1999 exploded with ramifications for the future of state sovereignty, the United Nations, and understanding the causes of genocide, nation building, and humanitarianism in the twenty-first century.