New issues in long-term care

Employer sponsorship of long-term care programs is a growing trend, one that is likely to continue, no matter what direction national health care reform takes.     

Book Reviews

Rashid Amjad (ed.), The Development of Labour Intensive Industry in ASEAN Countries, Geneva: Asian Employment Programme, International Labour Office, 1981, pp. v + 337. US$10.00.

G. J. Viksnins, Financial Deepening in ASEAN Countries, Pacific Forum. University of Hawaii Press, 1980, pp. ix + 76.

C. Sosya, L-S. Chia, W. L. Collier (eds). Man, Land and Sea, Bangkok: Agricultural Development Council, 1982, pp. ix + 320.

Joachim K. Metzner, Agriculture and Population Pressure in Sikka, Isle of Flores, (A contribution to the study of the stability of agricultural systems in the wet and dry tropics). Development Studies Centre Monograph No. 28. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1982, pp. xxxii + 355. $A15.00.

Dwight Y. King, Interest Groups and Political Linkages in Indonesia 1800–1965. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies Special Report No. 20, pp. vii + 192, index.

Improving Access to Indonesian Collections in the Netherlands, Leiden: Intercontinenta No. 2, 1981, pp. 78. Dlf. l4.75.     

Jackknifing Bond Option Prices

Prices of interest rate derivative securities depend cruciallyon the mean reversion parameters of the underlying diffusions.These parameters are subject to estimation bias when standardmethods are used. The estimation bias can be substantial evenin very large samples and much more serious than the discretizationbias, and it translates into a bias in pricing bond optionsand other derivative securities that is important in practicalwork. This article proposes a very general and computationallyinexpensive method of bias reduction that is based on Quenouille's(1956; Biometrika, 43, 353–360) jackknife. We show howthe method can be applied directly to the options price itselfas well as the coefficients in the models. We investigate itsperformance in a Monte Carlo study. Empirical applications toU.S. dollar swap rates highlight the differences between bondand option prices implied by the jackknife procedure and thoseimplied by the standard approach. These differences are largeand suggest that bias reduction in pricing options is importantin practical applications.     

Estimating Bargaining Effects in Hedonic Models: Evidence from the Housing Market

Bargaining is common in markets for heterogeneous goods and differences in bargaining power between buyer and seller affect the negotiated transaction price. Previous research has found systematic evidence in the housing markets that weak buyers pay higher prices and weak sellers receive lower prices for their homes. Earlier work has modeled the bargaining effect as a parallel shift in the hedonic function, implicitly assuming that attribute shadow prices were unaffected by the bargaining process. In this paper, we use a sample of home sales where the seller's bargaining power is weakened by the fact that the home is vacant at the time of sale to test whether the effect of bargaining is best captured by a shift in the hedonic constant or whether the attribute shadow prices vary as well. The question is significant for property valuation where estimation of the marginal value of an attribute is commonly used to adjust comparable sales data. We find strong confirmation that bargaining power influences the negotiated price. We also find evidence that bargaining power alters attribute prices, although we do not find a consistent pattern across markets.     

2001年国内外大石油公司经营业绩

单位:亿美元┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓┃ ┃ 业务板块 ┃ 2001年 ┃ 2000年 ┃ 闻期增减,% ┃┣━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━┫┃ ┃ 勘探与生产 ┃ 104.29 ┃ 19_3.69 ┃ 一l曼7 ┃┃ 埃克森美孚 ┃ 炼油与销售 ┃ 47.27 ┃ 34.18 ┃ 23。7 ┃┃ ┃ 化工 ┃ 8.82 ┃ 11.61 ┃ —24.0 ┃┃ 各板块净利润 ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃┃ ┃ 其他 ┃ —2.18 ┃ 7.72 ┃ —- ┃┃ ┃ 净利润总计 ┃ 153.2 ┃ 1772 …