Impact of youth injuries on the uninsured farm family's economic viability

The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of youth injuries on the uninsured farm family's economic viability. Using farm prototypes, we compared farm profits with costs of farm youth injuries. We built profit models for two types of farms, dairy and soybean farms. Then we estimated the cost impact of farm youth injuries of different levels of severity on a farm family with no health insurance. A severe child injury that requires at least 10 days of hospitalisation would cost almost equal to the operating profit of the average dairy farm with no health insurance and would turn the operating profit of the average soybean farm into a severe loss of $99,499. Prevention of child agricultural injuries would significantly improve the financial situation for farm families that lack health insurance.     

基于风险考虑的保险公司效率评价模型构建

本文通过运用随机前沿分析方法构建了基于风险考虑的保险公司效率评价模型,实证测度了承担不同经营风险的保险公司经过风险调整后的真实效率水平。研究发现,风险因素的考虑使得中国保险公司的成本效率和利润效率水平出现了不同程度的上调,表明风险因素很大程度上分担了对于保险公司成本支出和利润变动的解释,但随着整体风险管理水平的提高,这种解释力正在降低,我国保险公司存在巨大的提升盈利能力和压缩成本的潜能。     

引入运费险参数的电商利润优化模型分析

在网购盛行的同时,网购行为中更为常见的退货行为也给电商的利润带来了较大的不利影响。运费险诞生后,基于运费险的电商最优决策成为运营管理中的热点问题之一。将退货率及退货运费险引入经典报童模型当中,基于报童模型给出考虑退货运费的电商利润预测模型。基于商家是否购买运费险的决策,推导出不同情境下,商家的最优订货量及对应利润。通过具体算例,给出了电商利润的数值模拟。结果表明,商家在决策是否购置运费险时,应当考虑商品性价比、原有销量和利润、退货率、退货处理成本等因素。在对采购策略进行决策时,应当考虑最优订购量、进货成本。     

Transfer pricing for aligning divisional and corporate decisions

Discussions about transfer pricing normally presume the firm's objective is to maximize profit while making the best use of existing capacity. This article differs by exploring the impact of transfer pricing on capital budget decisions. In decentralized firms, decision authority for investment is assigned to division managers whose capital budgets include revenues from internal transfers. When a selling division is under capacity, economic theory recommends a transfer price based on differential cost. Here the seller generates sufficient revenues to recoup operating costs, but not enough to recover capital costs. Consequently, division managers will reject some investments that otherwise would have increased corporate shareholder value. Market-based transfer pricing overcomes this conflict by allocating savings on inter-company transactions to the selling division. However, market transfer pricing may result in shortfalls to corporate profit. Nonetheless, we argue in favor of the use of transfer pricing on the presumption that long-term value creation takes precedence over short-term profit.     

Introduction and Call for Papers

ABSTRACT

This paper reports the results from a study developed on the idea that differences in consumer satisfaction would exist among individuals based on the profit status of their health insurance plan. Analysis of 581 responses received in a national survey of randomly selected households confirmed the idea that satisfaction did vary with profit status. This was particularly true of individuals in not-for-profit HMO plans. They reported greater satisfaction with aspects of health care than individuals in for-profit HMO plans. This study corroborates the findings of other related studies and signals to consumers the need to consider health plan profit status in their selection of an HMO plan.     

The employer costs of motor vehicle crashes

The latest published estimate of the cost of US motor vehicle crashes to employers is for 1989. This study estimates annual employer costs in 1998-2000. Incidence was estimated with occupational injury data and motor vehicle crash data for 1998-2000. Employer costs were estimated from Federal estimates of crash costs by source of payment using data on the percentage of varied payment streams (e.g. health insurance, sick leave) paid by employers. Motor vehicle crash injuries on and off the job cost employers almost $60 billion annually, including $16.3 billion in fringe benefit costs; $25.2 billion in property damage, workplace disruption and other non-fringe costs; and $18.4 billion in wage-risk premiums. Traffic safety programmes can reduce the fringe benefit bill without reducing the benefits offered to employees. Eliminating alcohol-impaired and unrestrained driving would save employers $15.2 billion annually.     

Public health insurance,individual health,and entry into self-employment

We investigate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into self-employment. Health insurance systems that distinguish between the two sectors of employment create incentives or disincentives to start a business for different individuals. We estimate a discrete time hazard rate model of entry into self-employment based on representative household panel data for Germany, which include individual health information. The results indicate that an increase in the health insurance cost differential between self-employed workers and paid employees by €10 per month decreases the probability of entry into self-employment by 1.7% of the annual entry rate. This shows that entrepreneurship lock, which an emerging literature describes for the system of employer-provided health insurance in the USA, can also occur in a public health insurance system. Therefore, entrepreneurial activity should be taken into account when discussing potential health-care reforms.     

Perceptions of Home Insurance and Policy Directions: Comparing Mexican Americans and Non-Hispanic White Americans

With prior research on home insurance largely focused on supply side practices, we know little about demand side attributes of this market, especially about consumer perceptions of insurance. This article demonstrates that, despite seemingly more equitable industry practices, ethnic homeowners (Mexican Americans in this study), relative to the majority White population, have a greater tendency to view home insurance as a cost burden (as opposed to coverage against potential damages and injuries) and, hence, are more vulnerable to living with minimal or no home insurance coverage. The findings suggest that this disparity is attributable to cultural differences rooted in diverse structural and institutional circumstances in which ethnic homeowners often find themselves situated. The role of ethnic identity is salient even after accounting for personal, household, property, mortgage, and natural calamity factors. New directions for policy are proposed to address the situation by informing and empowering vulnerable consumers.     

Economic impact of a regulation imposing full-face protectors on adult recreational hockey players

Abstract

In 1988, the Government of Quebec adopted a regulation imposing the use of a full-face protector ( FFP) on the 100,000 adult recreational ice hockey players of the province. After one year of enforcement, the FFP use rate increased from 25% to 88%. Compliancy rates then dropped steadily to reach 76% by 1993. Based on those rates and on epidemiological data on facial injuries, health care costs and efficiency of FFPs in preventing such injuries, it was estimated that the regulation resulted so far in a net saving of $1.9 million in health care costs alone. The savings/cost ratio for the regulation is 1.87:1. If the regulation had imposed a visor instead of a full-face protector, the net savings in health care costs for the same period would have been only $96,277, for a savings/cost ratio of 1.04:1. If no regulation had been adopted at all, it is estimated that voluntary use of FFPs would have resulted in $665,912 of savings while voluntary use of visors would have resulted in a saving of $497,023. It is concluded that a governmental regulation imposing the use of FFPs on adult recreational players was economically justifiable     

大病保险对中老年居民医疗利用及健康的影响——基于CHARLS数据的实证检验

运用CHARLS 2011、2013、2015年三期数据,采用双重差分模型和准自然实验框架,分析城乡居民大病保险制度对中老年居民医疗服务利用和健康的影响及其作用机制,并从城乡和收入两个角度对制度实施效应的异质性进行探究。研究表明:大病保险制度实施能够显著促进中老年居民住院医疗服务及健康,增加中老年居民住院概率1.03%,提高住院次数0.022次,提高住院总费用10.4个百分点,总体健康水平提高0.023个单位;制度实施主要促进了农村和中等收入群体的住院医疗服务利用和健康水平的改善,对低收入人群住院医疗服务影响有限,且对城镇居民和高收入群体的影响并不显著;作用机制分析显示大病保险制度实施通过提高居民医疗服务利用进而起到改善其健康水平的作用。研究表明大病保险制度对中老年居民的住院服务利用和健康起到积极作用,但对于低收入群体的效应仍有待进一步改善。     

Gift card program incrementality and cannibalization: The effect on revenue and profit

Many retailers have not measured the magnitude of cannibalization or its impact on revenue and profit when existing customers use a gift card for purchases they would have made without it, particularly when the card was purchased through a 3rd party at a discount up to 15%. We conducted a survey among gift card redeemers of a national casual dining restaurant chain to determine how the gift card affected their purchase behavior. We used this information, combined with operating margin, to model the impact of three different gift card discount scenarios on firm revenue and profit. Although the revenue effect was positive under all scenarios, the same was not true for profit. The profit was much lower than anticipated, even in the best case scenario, and was negative in the worst case scenario.     

The role of accounting information in revenue management

Revenue management (RM) uses differential pricing and other techniques to manage customer demand for a company's products and services. It judiciously trades off yield and spoilage, and brings rational approaches to pricing for goods and services with a limited shelf life. Because many types of businesses find that growing revenue has a disproportionate impact on operating profits, firms that know and manage their customer base often achieve better bottom-line results by growing revenue rather than by cost-cutting. Initially developed as a marketing tool for pricing airline tickets, today's numerous RM applications can benefit from accounting tools that help assess whether applications will enhance operating profit and monitor their success in doing so. Knowledge of a firm's cost structure, operating leverage in particular, and when to treat RM adjustments as special orders, are the principal accounting lynchpins. Opportunity cost variances and insights from the theory of constraints contribute to effective revenue management/profit enhancement programs. Use of proper accounting information and analytic techniques can help a tolerated union of necessity between RM programs and firm strategy become a desirable marriage of mutual choice.     

Size,Growth, and Survival in the Upper Austrian Farm Sector

This paper investigates the evolution of the size distribution of more than 40,000 farms in the Upper Austrian farm sector over the period 1980–90. Using Gibrat's Law as our point of departure, we find that smaller farms grow much faster towards some minimum efficient scale of production than farms at or above this threshold size. We furthermore find evidence for the existence of two separate "centres of attraction" of farm size supporting the notion of a "disappearing middle" and the emergence of a bimodal structure of farm sizes. Correcting for size-related attrition bias had very little effect on our results.     

Efficiency in the Greek Banking Industry: A Comparison of Foreign and Domestic Banks

This study uses a sample of foreign and domestic banks operating in Greece during 1999–2004 to examine the impact of ownership on efficiency. We estimate an input oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA) model under variable returns to scale with inputs and outputs selected on the basis of a profit‐oriented approach. The results indicate an average pure technical efficiency equal to 0.7325 showing that the banks in sample could improve their efficiency by 26.75%. Over the same period, scale efficiency was equal to 0.6830. The comparison of the efficiency scores by group of ownership shows that domestic banks have higher pure technical efficiency and lower scale efficiency; however, the differences are not statistically significant. A DEA window‐analysis confirms the results of the cross‐section estimations. We also estimate a Tobit regression model but consistent with the univariate results we find no evidence to support the argument that ownership has a statistically significant impact on efficiency.     

中国对外反倾销影响因素研究

利用1999-2009年中国对外反倾销申诉数据,本文运用Logit模型和经典线性模型,实证测量了行业企业单位数、全部从业人员年平均数、总资产贡献率、资本密集度、工业成本费用利润率、竞争力指数、进口渗透率,对中国对外反倾销行为在发起阶段的影响程度,提出行业企业单位数、总资产密集度和进口渗透率是发起反倾销申诉的重要影响因素,进口渗透率和全部从业人员年平均是影响申诉频率的主要因素。     

Estimating the costs of non-fatal consumer product injuries in the United States

This paper describes a data-driven injury cost model (ICM) developed to estimate the costs associated with non-fatal consumer product injuries. The modeling effort combines information by diagnosis from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) and 17 other large data sets. The ICM contains four aggregated cost components: (1) medical costs, (2) work losses, (3) quality of life and pain and suffering costs, and (4) product liability insurance administration and litigation costs. The ICM estimates societal costs, which are broader than costs to any individual group, such as victims, insurers, or product manufacturers. Costs associated with consumer product injuries are estimated to be approximately $500 billion in 1996, accounting for nearly one-third of the total annual injury costs. We examine injury costs in several ways, including by major product category, by sex and age of victims, by body part injured, by injury diagnosis, and by highest level of medical treatment received. We also rank the 10 leading consumer products that account for injury costs overall and within different age groups. Products such as stairs and floors are among the top 10 for all age groups. Other products, however, are more closely tied to injuries at particular stages of life (e.g., infant/toddler, child, young adult, elderly). These cost estimates are useful in assessing which products and types of injuries impose the greatest costs on society and for identifying areas for focused injury prevention efforts.     

Understanding the Impact of Health Reform on the States: Expansion of Coverage through Medicaid and Exchanges

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) expands Medicaid coverage and creates subsidized state health insurance exchanges. The implementation of the ACA will impact the states and consequently the state residents differently. We discuss the factors contributing to the variation in uninsured rates and the Medicaid population, and we predict that these underlying economic, demographic factors and state policies will continue to affect health insurance coverage. Using data from the March 2010 Current Population Survey (CPS), we examine health care coverage at the state level prior to the ACA and forecast the percentage of state residents eligible for expanded Medicaid and the exchanges. Our results suggest the percentage of state population eligible for expanded Medicaid and subsidized exchanges will vary considerably, especially for adults. Further, we show that current state Medicaid eligibility rules, the percentage of employers offering health insurance and poverty rates will continue to shape the variation in projected health insurance coverage across the states. Finally, we discuss the potential impact of the Supreme Court decision that allowed states to opt‐out of Medicaid expansion.     

Replacement versus Historical Cost Profit Rates: What is the Difference? When Does it Matter?

This paper explains the Bureau of Economic Analysis methodology for computing historical cost and replacement cost measures of the net stock of capital in the US economy. It is demonstrated that there exists a threshold rate of inflation in the price of capital goods that keeps the percentage difference between the two capital stock measures constant. Hence, over periods when average inflation in the price index for capital goods is equal to the threshold value, historical cost and replacement cost profit rates would show equal percentage changes; an example of such a period for the US economy is 1946–2010.