Direct provider contracting: one employer's experience.

Employers and unions typically offer an array of health care options to their plan participants including many managed care options. However, until recently, few have considered contracting directly with an integrated delivery system (IDS), therefore circumventing health plans altogether. This article offers a case study of one employer's experience with direct IDS contracting, including employee contribution strategy, benefits design and evaluation of the delivery system.     

An employer's perspective on medical errors: ambitious and clear

Health care is far behind in addressing safety when compared to other high risk industries. In recognition of this problem, Leapfrog was created to serve as an informal action group that will leverage buying power to target patient safety issues raised by the threat of medical errors. The author describes Leapfrog's activities and goals, showing how employers are in the position to create contractual requirements, incentives and consumer expectations that can rally the medical field around a new culture that embraces patient safety.     

Time,cash and services: Reforms for a future sustainable long-term care

The elder care sector is at the core of a radical restructuring process as all the European countries strive to cope with demographic and social change. While current and prospective rapid population ageing is expected greatly to increase the demand for elder care services, financial constraints, social change and rising female employment all act as obstacles to the provision of an adequate supply of care labour.In their search for a financially sustainable response to these challenges the EU countries have brought in various reforms designed to mobilise resources and achieve more cost-efficient results. The paper presents an analysis of the main objectives of care reforms – making care affordable, favouring the creation of a care market, and making work pay – as well as their possible trade-offs. In fact, entailing as it does a larger role for the family, greater reliance on home care may clash with the goal of a higher female activity rate; good jobs and decent working conditions in the care sector may run counter to the principle of care affordability for the greatest possible numbers, while subsidising demand may conflict with public finance sustainability. These interactions, and the interdependence between the care market and the rest of the economy, are crucial factors that will need to be considered in order to ensure consistency between goals and policies.     

The customer satisfaction factor: the value of conducting employee evaluations of managed care networks

Gathering customer satisfaction information is an idea whose time has come. Employers conducting employee evaluations of their managed care networks find the data valuable from both a strategic and a tactical standpoint. The thoughtful, intelligent use of such data can lead to more effective health care management.     

How employee stock options and executive equity ownership affect long-term IPO operating performance

To ascertain whether the form of managerial compensation affects a firm's long-term operating performance, we track IPOs for 5 years after the expiration of the stabilization period. New public companies perform better when managers receive a balanced combination of stock option grants and equity ownership. Firms with unbalanced compensation arrangements, large option grants and little equity ownership or vice versa do not perform as well. This empirical finding is consistent with a theoretical explanation based on managerial risk aversion and the alignment of managerial and owner incentives.     

融资需求、融资约束与盈余管理

本文从企业融资视角,分为融资约束和融资需求研究了融资对于企业盈余管理的作用。通过对盈余管理行为的成本收益分析发现:虽然融资约束和融资需求在理论上都可能导致企业盈余管理行为的增加,但是由融资约束引发的盈余操控成本较大,从而在一定程度上对企业的盈余管理行为起抑制作用;而由融资需求引致的盈余管理行为同样会导致较高的操控成本,但是由于需求较大,相应的盈余管理所带来的效用水平也较高,其愿意承担更高的沉没成本,从而导致较多的盈余管理行为。这从理论上解释了融资对于盈余管理的双重作用问题。该结论在运用我国中小板企业2004-2012年的数据进行检验时成立。     

Social long-term care insurance and redistribution

We study the role of social long-term care (LTC) insurance when income taxation and private insurance markets are imperfect. Policy instruments include public provision of LTC as well as a subsidy on private insurance. The subsidy scheme may be linear or nonlinear. For the linear part we consider an arbitrary number of types, characterized by earnings and survival probabilities. In the nonlinear part, society consists of three types: poor, middle class and rich. The first type is too poor to provide for dependence; the middle class type purchases private insurance and the high income type is self-insured. The main questions are at what level LTC should be provided to the poor and whether it is desirable to subsidize private LTC for the middle class. Interestingly, the results are not totally similar under both linear and nonlinear schemes. First, whereas in the linear case a subsidy of private LTC insurance is desirable, it is not in the nonlinear case (at least at the margin). Second, the desirability of public provision of LTC services depends on the way the income tax is restricted. In the linear case, it may be desirable only if no demogrant (uniform lump-sum transfer) is available. In the nonlinear case, public provision is desirable when the income tax is sufficiently restricted. Specifically, this is the case when the income is subject only to a proportional payroll tax while the LTC reimbursement policy can be nonlinear.     

Human capital,capital structure,and employee pay: An empirical analysis

We test the predictions of Titman (1984) and Berk, Stanton, and Zechner (2010) by examining the effect of leverage on labor costs. Leverage has a significantly positive impact on cash, equity-based, and total compensation of chief executive officers (CEOs). Compensation of new CEOs hired from outside the firm is positively related to prior-year firm leverage. In addition, leverage has a positive and significant impact on average employee pay. The incremental total labor expenses associated with an increase in leverage are large enough to offset the incremental tax benefits of debt. The empirical evidence supports the theoretical prediction that labor costs limit the use of debt.     

Combining health education, risk-rated insurance and employee rebates into an integrated health care cost management strategy

Health education, risk rating and employee rebates can be combined into a comprehensive health promotion program within a benefits plan, reflecting health promotion in its truest sense.     

融资约束、投资效率与融资渠道选择

研究融资约束影响企业的现金持有量、盈利能力、融资渠道与其投资效率,发现融资约束主要通过银行信贷途径影响企业投资效率,对股权融资途径影响较小。充分现金持有、盈利能力强能缓解企业的融资约束。在融资约束条件下,国有企业通过债务融资可以提高投资效率,非国有企业投资效率下降。在非融资约束条件下,非国有企业债务融资的投资效率提高。     

Designing and managing employer-sponsored long-term care plans

Due to prevalent demographic factors, long-term care is an issue of increasing concern to American workers. The cost and time involved in ever-expanding long-term care responsibilities for many employees has resulted in increased indirect employer costs. The authors argue that providing' long-term care as part of the employee benefit plan is an efficient and effective way to manage these increasing costs for both the employer and the employee. The article offers discussion of plan design for long-term care, including issues to be considered and strategy for plan management.     

Managed care,technology adoption,and health care: the adoption of neonatal intensive care

Managed care may influence technology diffusion in health care. This article empirically examines the relationship between HMO market share and the diffusion of neonatal intensive care units. Higher HMO market share is associated with slower adoption of mid-level units, but not with adoption of the most advanced high-level units. Opposite the common supposition that slowing technology growth will harm patients, results suggest that health outcomes for seriously ill newborns are better in higher-level units and that reduced availability of mid-level units may increase their chance of receiving care in a high-level center, so that slower mid-level growth could have benefitted patients.     

经济增长、融资与债务风险

本文从多个角度对我国当前债务问题进行了较为详细的解读。研究认为,随着2009年以来我国经济增长从"贸易+投资"的双轮驱动转换为投资单极驱动,以及经济增速放缓和以债务型融资为主的融资结构,导致了债务的持续、加速积累。尽管目前我国总体债务仍然处于可控水平,但债务增速过快,且各部门债务存在明显的不平衡。从融资角度来看,2015年新增社会融资的近一半被用作利息支出。从未来看,我国债务风险的长期决定因素并不乐观。未来我国政策需要更加着力于平衡和优化各部门的债务率,实现债务增速的总体可控。     

ESO compensation: The roles of default risk, employee sentiment, and insider information

This paper derives a pricing model for employee stock options (ESO) that includes default risk and considers employee sentiment. Using ESO data from 1992 to 2004, the study finds that the average executive's subjective value is about 55% of the Black-Scholes value. Only employees who over-estimate firm returns (or insiders who know that the firm is under-valued) by about 10% per annum will prefer ESOs over cash compensation. Our model also shows that work incentives offered by ESOs may be far lower than those implied by Black-Scholes but that ESOs may induce less risk-taking behavior, contrary to typical moral hazard arguments. Findings may impact relevant accounting regulations as well as compensation decisions.     

Understanding the motivations of long-term care insurance owners: the importance of retirement planning

This article is based on two recent reports by the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) that illuminate the reasons why individuals purchase private long-term care insurance in both the group and individual markets. This information suggests that a younger and more diverse group of individuals are becoming increasingly interested in private long-term care insurance and that workplace education linkage the purchase of long-term care insurance to retirement planning may promote coverage.     

跨国企业分支面临哪些融资问题

随着中国经济发展与全球市场的日益接轨,跨国企业在中国设立的众多分支机构已成为人们关注的一大焦点.跨国企业分支在融资中面临哪些主要问题?如何解决?跨国企业分支的财务工作具有哪些主要特点?如何做好一名成功的跨国企业分支的CFO?     

大型银行、中小企业与贸易融资: 青岛案例

长期以来,商业银行尤其是大银行拓展中小企业信贷市场一直面I临困境.但中国工商银行青岛分行却以中小企业商品交易为基础,较为成功地开发了一系列贸易融资产品.由此可以看出,在特定的产品、制度和技术保证下,大银行也可以成为中小企业信贷市场上的有效资金供给者.     

The Interactions between the Investment, Financing, and Dividend Decisions of Major U.S. Firms

This paper uses 114 responses to a June 1988 mail questionnaire survey of the financial managers of the 1,000 largest U.S. firms to examine Modigliani and Miller's “separation principle”. The opinions of practicing financial managers were found to be consistent with Modigliani and Miller as well as with the work of other empirical researchers. Almost without exception, the direction of causality between investment and financing decisions was found to run from the former to the latter, and dividend decisions were found to be driven by profits and prior year's dividends rather than by the firm's investment and financing actions. Clearly, the beliefs of practicing financial managers seem to reflect acceptance of Modigliani and Miller's “separation principle.”     

Health risk management: well-being for the employee and the bottom line

For most employers, a small percent of the employee/participant population accounts for a large percent of health care costs. However, the population of this high-cost group changes from year to year. The fundamental problem is keeping employees out of the high-risk/high-cost segment, something plan design changes cannot address but that integrated health risk management (IHRM) can help achieve. This article explains how employers can implement an IHRM program to significantly lower health care costs to a degree unattainable through traditional cost-control strategies, while simultaneously raising workers' productivity and well-being.