A Note on Risk Aversion,Prudence and Portfolio Insurance

This paper examines some properties of portfolio insurance that are linked to the risk aversion and the prudence of the investor. We provide explicit conditions to measure portfolio sensitivity to downside risk. We also characterize the degree of portfolio insurance by means of the ratio of absolute prudence to absolute risk aversion.     

Complementarity and Substituability in Multiple-Risk Insurance Markets

We study imperfect competition between insurers in a multiple-risk environment. In the absence of asymmetric information, equilibria are efficient, and we determine the degrees of specialization under which the specialized insurers are able or unable to capture the surplus. We show in contrast that under adverse selection, specialization systematically prevents second-best efficiency. Concluding on the role of our notions of strategic complementarity/substituability on the tradeoff between efficiency and fairness of the allocation, we give indications on the desirable structure of the insurance industry.     

An investigation of due-date assignment rules with constrained tightness

We describe an experimental study of a single-machine scheduling model for a system that assigns due-dates to arriving jobs. The average lightness of the due-dates is assumed to be governed by a policy constraint, which we link analytically to the parameters of the decision rules for due-date assignment. We examine the use of different kinds of information in setting due-dates, and we investigate the relationship between the due-date assignment rule and the priority dispatching rule. On the basis of our results we identify situations in which the dispatching rule is critical to effective scheduling, others in which the due-date assignment rule is critical, and still others in which the combination of the two rules is a critical design issue.     

Survey on attitudes to nutrition planning

The results of a worldwide survey of nutrition planning professionals' attitudes towards nutrition policy are presented. The objective of the survey was to determine what those involved in nutrition planning perceive to be the causes of hunger and malnutrition, and their views on the effectiveness of the programs implemented to overcome these problems. In mid-1979, a questionnaire was compiled comprising 48 questions related to attitudes towards nutrition policy, voluntary questions about social class, political classification and professional behavior and a question on perceived major impediments to solving malnutrition in the world. The questionnaire was sent to 728 professionals 87 countries; 250 replies from 55 countries; 250 replies from 55 countries were received. 44% of respondents resided in the US, 16% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 14% in the Far East, 12% in Africa and the Middle East and 13% in Europe, Canada and Australasia. Self-classification of political beliefs is the most clear cut correlate in predicting attitudes towards food and nutrition policy. There appear to be 2 clear schools of scientific/political behavior in the sample: one holds a more moderate, but generally liberal, set of views regarding the failure of modern technology in resolving world hunger and nutrition problems; a 2nd more liberal group believes political causes to be at the root of hunger. There is no single profession that can be typified as a breeding ground for nutrition planners. While the European trained and/or native group tends to be more to the left in their attitudes than their counterparts in the US, both groups are decidedly liberal and believe that social structural changes are needed to solve the problems of hunger and malnutrition in the world.     

The information content of earnings and turnover announcements in France

Annual net income is seen by shareholders as the most important figure, since it is, for individual accounts, the basis of appropriation of profit by the shareholders' general meeting. However, firms publish interim figures at a higher frequency to allow investors to react quickly to frequently updated information that gives them a more accurate view of the evolution of the firm. In the United States, according to regulation S-X, the interim quarterly reports must disclose the net income. In France, firms must publish their quarterly turnovers and their half-year income statements in addition to their annual accounts. Whereas American publications are practically homogeneous in nature in terms of earnings disclosure, the information content of French quarterly reports differs from that of the half-year and annual accounts. Such French irregularities in information content mean that interim and annual announcements do not have the same value for the shareholders. Because of the heterogeneous nature and the time frame of the disclosed information, one may wonder if French market reactions to the announcements of interim publications exhibit significantly different characteristics from those observed for quarterly releases in other countries. This can only be appreciated through a differential analysis of French market response to interim and annual announcements.     

The cost of childhood injury in France

Injuries are a major public health problem worldwide. In the USA, injuries cause 146, 400 deaths annually, with 31 million non-fatal injury visits to emergency departments (EDs). EDs thus represent an important source of injury data. The primary objective of the current study was to describe the epidemiology of injury-related ED visits and assess injury-related utilization of health care resources in an inner-city hospital in Indiana, using data stored in a computerized medical record system. It involved a retrospective review of the records for injury visits to EDs and injury admissions over a 3-year period. The variables extracted and analysed included patients' demographics, external cause of injury, diagnosis, length of stay, ED and hospital charges. A total of 60,470 injury-related ED visits were made, the majority of patients were male (61.6%), uninsured (63.1%), treated in ED and discharged (98.4%). The leading causes of injury were falls (18.8%), motor vehicle crashes (18.4%), assaults (17.6%), being struck (11.2%) and overexertion (10.6). Firearms caused most injury deaths (32.4%; n = 314); motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of hospitalization (26.6%; n = 642) and also the most expensive to treat as inpatients (mean charge $19,190). The mean charge per patient treated and discharged was $150 compared to $11,116 for patients admitted. These findings demonstrate the value of computerized medical records in capturing and storing E-coded injury data. The system generates data that can be used for epidemiological surveillance and injury prevention at the local level, and for assessment of impact of specific injuries on health care resources.     

Assessing ‘meta-services’: customer's perceived value and behaviour

‘Meta-services’ are delivered by firms cooperating together through a network. How customers perceive such services has been scarcely studied. The main assumption here is that, after experiencing services delivered by networked firms, the consumers synthesise their perceptions in terms of the perceived value of the network and that this global assessment will better announce behavioural intentions than the commonly used satisfaction index. Passengers travelling on long-haul flights with a global airline alliance experience such ‘meta-services’ and were questioned through a dedicated survey to test a structural equation model. Most hypotheses are not contradicted by the data. Unlike most recent studies referring to perceived value, this concept is seen here as one-dimensional and is measured by a rather simple scale. This allows distinguishing the value concept from its determinants. Specific variables, such as effective coordination, information and harmonisation, proved also to be useful when measuring customers’ valuation of ‘meta-services’.     

Testing for Parameter Stability in Dynamic Models across Frequencies*

This paper contributes to the econometric literature on structural breaks by proposing a test for parameter stability in vector autoregressive (VAR) models at a particular frequency ω, where ω ∈ [0, π]. When a dynamic model is affected by a structural break, the new tests allow for detecting which frequencies of the data are responsible for parameter instability. If the model is locally stable at the frequencies of interest, the whole sample size can then be exploited despite the presence of a break. The methodology is applied to analyse the productivity slowdown in the US, and the outcome is that local stability concerns only the higher frequencies of data on consumption, investment and output.     

Affirmative action in education: Evidence from engineering college admissions in India

This paper examines an affirmative action program for “lower-caste” groups in engineering colleges in India. We study both the targeting properties of the program, and its implications for labor market outcomes. We find that affirmative action successfully targets the financially disadvantaged: the upper-caste applicants that are displaced by affirmative action come from a richer economic background than the lower-caste applicants that are displacing them. Targeting by caste, however, may lead to the exclusion of other disadvantaged groups. For example, caste-based targeting reduces the overall number of females entering engineering colleges. We find that despite poor entrance exam scores, lower-caste entrants obtain a positive return to admission. Our estimates, however, also suggest that these gains may come at an absolute cost because the income losses experienced by displaced upper-caste applicants are larger than the income gains experienced by displacing lower-caste students. Limited sample sizes in our preferred econometric specifications, however, prevent us from drawing strong conclusions from these labor market findings.