Accurate forecasts of incoming calls are crucial to optimal staffing decisions in call centers. This paper evaluates a wide range of models and forecast combination techniques by means of statistical and economic criteria. Relative to the previous literature, this paper is novel in several...

In recent years, it has become evident that pure monetary measures cannot represent the poverty phenomenon faithfully. Poverty involves many different aspects of life that can be hardly condensed in a single monetary indicator. People can be poor in different ways, at different degrees and from...

In this paper we propose a methodology for measuring the ‘relative effectiveness’ of healthcare services (i.e. the effect of hospital care on patients) under general conditions, in which: a) a healthcare outcome underlies qualitative and quantitative observable indicators; ß) we are...

The geo-logarithmic family of price indexes constitutes an interesting parametric class of index numbers for price comparison, due to the properties satisfied by its members, together with their cofactors. The family was introduced in the early ’90s, as a generalization of the Sato-Vartia...

Previous studies on hospitals’ efficiency often refer to quite restrictive functional forms for the technology (Aigner et al., 1977, J. Econom., 6, 21–37) . In this paper, referring to a study about some hospitals in Lombardy, we formulate convenient correctives to a statistical model based...

The possible relationship between warm katabatic winds and human health and behaviour is analyzed; notwithstanding popular belief which is very positive about it, the connection has not been previously analyzed with the proper methods. We use a statistical model to address this question and our...