This project examines the impact of the tax treatment of health insurance on health coverage and spending patterns. The second component is an assessment of the effect of health insurance coverage, and policies that affect health insurance coverage, on measures of the quality of care based on the Commonwealth Fund state scorecard. The Internet and its underlying technology have enabled businesses to redesign their processes to take advantage of the capabilities of the Internet as well as to create new ways of communicating and coordinating diverse activities. In addition, both the intranet and extranet have offered ample means for an enterprise to create (or add) value. This has resulted in new and unique challenges for data collection. This project investigates measurement issues related to electronic commerce and produces estimates of the effects of e-commerce on productivity.
The project examines the impact of computer networks on business processes and on various elements of the supply chain. The study will examine the types of enterprises that use Electronic Commerce Technology (ECT), examine how ECT affects e-supply chain and transforms production, determine if and how the use of ECT results in value addition (or creation), and determine the adequacy of the measures used by the U.S. Census Bureau. The research will generate estimates of the effect of e-commerce on productivity in manufacturing plants. The investigation will determine whether plants that invested in e-commerce technology received returns in the form of added productivity gains. The researchers’ investigation using Census Bureau data can lead to a detailed examination of whether the data are consistent with one of these hypotheses and identify sources of potential e-commerce measurement problems. They will investigate in an e-commerce framework the applicability and robustness of traditional production function estimation, issues related to the incorporation of knowledge, manufacturing processes, and quality improvement into the production function, and issues related to industry type and geographic concentration of industries.
Sathasivam Mathiyalakan