This editorial introduces the new journal and sets out some of the editors' principles. It notes the apparently haphazard approach towards the improvement in management practice in health care, and contrasts it with the more scientific approach adopted by the medical profession. The journal aims...

This paper focuses on induction, because the supposed weaknesses of that process are the main reason for favouring falsificationism, which plays an important part in scientific methodology generally; the paper is part of a wider study of economic methodology. The standard objections to, and...

Fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms are used to rework more realistic (and more complex) models of competitive markets. The resulting equilibria are significantly different from the ones predicted from the usual static analysis; the methodology solves the Walrasian problem of how markets can...

Using new linked employee-workplace data for Britain in 2004, we find that the nature of the public private pay gap differs between genders and that of the gender pay gap differs between sectors. The analysis shows that little none of the gender earnings gap in both the public and private sector...

This study examines the role of individual characteristics, occupation, industry, region, and workplace characteristics in accounting for differences in hourly earnings between men and women in full and part-time jobs in Britain. A four-way gender-working time split (male fulltimers, male...

Since the introduction of the system of diagnosis related groups (DRGs) for USA Medicare patients in 1983, case payment mechanisms have gradually become the principal means of reimbursing hospitals in most developed countries. The use of case payments nevertheless poses severe technical and...

The delivery of health services represents one of the most daunting challenges confronting contemporary management. The complexity of the issues involved suggests that health service policy makers seeking to allocate scarce resources would find the opportunities offered by large scale modelling...

Uniquely among sciences, the methodology of economics (its epistemology, ontology, scope, and focal questions) has failed to improve the match between its theories and reality. It is aprioristic, assuming that introspection will reveal unchallengeable basic truths from which a valid theoretical...