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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a human ecology economics (HEE) framework for understanding and addressing homelessness, especially as it exists in California and the San Francisco Bay Area. The role of business and private "stakeholders of the homeless" is emphasized. Design/methodology/approach: The HEE approach relies on evolutionary and complex systems processes, and it incorporates interdisciplinary material from the humanities. Within HEE, an early-stage exploratory research method is used. In-depth interviews with 16 long-term residents who are also managers in various organizations help to identify private-sector perceptions including how businesses can engage with and support the homeless. Findings: In the current balance between needed supplies of "production capital," which includes affordable housing, shelter beds, food, clothing, medical supplies and so on and "transaction capital," which is an interacting mix of social capital, informational capital and financial capital, the authors find that the business community needs to pay greater attention to deficits in "transaction capital." Research limitations/implications: It is beyond the scope of this paper, and beyond the current ability of complex system modeling, to prioritize the best interventions across various types of homeless communities. However, for early-stage research, the authors have provided a useful ontology of the human ecology of homelessness that might inform further research and policy initiatives. Follow-on research might then investigate, with more rigorous methods, the narrower causalities between subcomponents of one's ontology. Originality/value: Scholars, policymakers and business community activists might appreciate the more comprehensive and accessible interdisciplinary framework for understanding the causes and possible responses to homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction of enforcement and adjudication for general deterrence of drunk-driving. The authors present a triangular feedback model between three domains: police, courts and drunk-driving events. The authors’ deductive approach imposes no structural assumptions beyond the core of general deterrence theory.Design/methodology/approach Using a largely untapped data set for California’s 58 counties from 1990 to 2010, the authors estimate a series of heterogeneous panel Granger non-causality tests. This empirically based evidence is re-organized per the proposed triangular feedback model to objectively categorize local criminal justice systems as active, responsive or reactive (with respect to drunk-driving).Findings Our results suggest that state-level analyses obscure useful variations that empirical panel methods can now handle. The authors provide evidence that research based on empirically derived groupings, rather than inductively based preconceptions, is key to understanding enforcement and compliance. The authors provide a less confounded picture of the relationship between drunk-driving enforcement and adjudication.Research limitations/implications Our study addresses one offense for a particular state in the USA. It is an exploratory analysis. This analytical and empirical approach is new.Practical implications Our approach imposes very few a priori assumptions and requires a minimum of data series to be executed. The method can be broadly applied to a range of topics and observational units.Social implications The authors aim to expand identification of local systems’ effectiveness (or not) and mechanisms of for general deterrence of drunk-driving. The offense is one that can be committed easily and unintentionally; it does not presume anomie. The authors address general communities, not anomalies. Knowing how enforcement and compliance operate is essential to an array of behavioral externalities.Originality/value This is a new empirically based approach for analyzing social systems. It is a marriage of new macroeconomic time-series techniques with an old question, most often addressed by microeconomic research. This study uses an underutilized data source to construct a unique panel data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In the face of growing demand for care and tightening resource constraints, hospitals need to ensure access to care that is affordable and effective. Yet, the multiplicity of objectives is a key challenge in this industry. An understanding of the interrelationships (tradeoffs) between the multiple outcome objectives of care (throughput, experiential and financial performance) and returns to operational inputs (diversification of care) is fundamental to improving access to care that is effective and affordable. This study serves to address this need. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis in the study builds on an output-oriented distance function model and uses a longitudinal panel dataset from 153 hospitals in California. Findings: This study results point to key insights related to output–output tradeoffs along the production frontier. Specifically, the authors find that higher throughput rates may lead to significantly lower levels of experiential quality, and net revenue from operations, accounting for the clinical quality of care. Similarly, the authors' findings highlight the resource intensity and operational challenges of improving experiential quality of care. In regards to input–output relationships, this study finds diversification of care is associated with increased throughput, improvements in service satisfaction and a corresponding increase in the net revenue from operations. Originality/value: Highlighting the tradeoffs along the production frontier among the various outcomes of interest (throughput, experiential quality and net revenue from operations), and highlighting the link between diversification of care and care delivery outcomes at the hospital level are key contributions of this study. An understanding of the tradeoffs and returns in healthcare delivery serves to inform policy-making with key managerial implications in the delivery of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]