New danish bases of calculation in life and pension insurance

Abstract

A committee consisting of actuaries representing private life offices, private pension offices, and Statsanstalten for Livsforsikring (The State Life Insurance Institution) transacting both life and pension business, have compiled a complete set of calculation bases, which have been adopted by all Danish life and pension offices with effect as from January 1, 1966.     

What counts as a reasonable extent? – a systems approach for understanding fire safety in Sweden

Swedish legislation requires that any owner or user of a building maintain a reasonable level of fire protection measures to ensure the safety of all people located in the building. If a building, in the wake of a fire, in court is determined not to have had a reasonable fire protection, the blame will likewise be assigned to the building owner or user. Using the perspective of risk governance, this study aims at analysing how regulation and stakeholders interact to maintain a specific level of fire protection in hotels. The focus is on identifying problems and frictions that have emerged from the complex relationships, and differences of interests, between the different stakeholders. Based on a stakeholder analysis, 11 respondents were selected for an interview study. The main problems identified in the analysis are that there are ambiguities for the individual hotel owner to know whether her or his fire protection measures are reasonable according to the law, that the system has emerged without clear political goals, problems related to the process of local supervision, that the ambiguous situation gives rise to opportunities of other stakeholders to claim the definition of what counts as a reasonable extent, and the ethical problems associated with convicting a single individual for failure in a complex multi-actor system.     

The effect of change-in-control covenants on takeovers: Evidence from leveraged buyouts

Change-in-control covenants first became commonplace towards the end of the takeover wave in the 1980s. We examine merger and acquisition activity from 1991 to 2006 to see how such covenant protection influences the wealth effects and probability of takeovers. Examining a sample of leveraged buyouts (LBOs) we find bondholders with such covenant protection experience average wealth effects of 2.30% while unprotected bonds experience ? 6.76% upon the announcement of an LBO. Furthermore, we document that the existence of bondholder change-in-control covenants cuts the firm's probability of being targeted in an LBO in half. We also find that change-in-control covenants reduce the probability of being targeted in non-LBO takeovers, but the effect appears less dramatic.     

The future of European development aid

Development assistance represents one mechanism for the redistribution of global wealth. This article examines key external challenges that the development aid systems in the EU currently confront. Among the most important elements of the changing backdrop against which decisions on preparing EU development cooperation for the future will be made are the increasing differentiation of countries within the developing world and the rise of new global development actors, and the growing prominence of issue linkages between security and development and the environment and development. These challenges raise important questions for the EU concerning the future rationale and organization of development assistance.     

Why are firms unlevered?

In this paper, we examine why firms have no debt in their capital structure. We reject the hypothesis that zero-leverage policies are driven by entrenched managers attempting to avoid the disciplinary pressures of debt. These firms do not have weaker internal or external governance mechanisms. The debt initiation decisions of these firms are not preceded by shocks to their entrenchment, such as takeover threats or the emergence of activist blockholders. Our evidence supports the hypothesis that these firms are financially constrained. Zero-debt firms are small, young, conserve cash from cash-flow, and are more likely to lease their assets. When they have access to a line of credit, they face stricter covenants and higher all-in costs than comparable control firms. They lose market share in economic downturns, consistent with the financial constraints explanation, but inconsistent with theories of predation which suggest that they may be voluntarily stockpiling debt capacity.     

Some lessons from government information technology policies

Information Technology (IT) policies in some small, medium-sized and large OECD economies are considered. The IT industries are the focus of growth in the industrial restructuring process. R & D cooperation is seen as a policy innovation which alters the character of industrial competition. Factors affecting IT policy formulation and strategy are discussed, especially the importance of industry-government reactions, coupling between supply- and demand-side interventions and the industry life cycle.     

Strategic Planning in Research and Technology Institutes

Research and Technology Institutes (RTIs) are today facing the challenges of restructuring. New demands are being placed upon them in an increasingly uncertain financial and innovation environment. This paper, which is based upon a review of nine of the most successful RTIs in Europe, North America and East Asia, provides a framework for assessing RTIs and understanding how RTIs need to function to meet user needs within the context of national systems of innovation. The paper suggests some simple tools for identifying and classifying user needs as well as for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of RTIs. It is argued that this type of analysis is a prerequisite for the strategic planning and management of such institutes. The paper points out some of the operational aspects of RTI management where improvement opportunities are often possible.     

Future disassembly and recycling technology: results of a Delphi study

This article presents the results of a Delphi study that was carried out between November 1996 and March 1997. The subject of this study is future disassembly and recycling technology for the electronics and the automotive industry. The results reflect the opinions of a panel of about 70 specialists, preselected by the authors. Issues in this Delphi Study range from the possibilities for automatic disassembly and sophisticated material separation and sorting techniques to the development of recycling output prices. All issues were investigated for technological feasibility and for economic attractiveness. The main conclusion of this study shows that obstacles for future disassembly and recycling technology are of an economic rather than a technological nature. Automatic disassembly will probably gain importance in the next 25 years, but only for specific product categories. Sorting and separation techniques will become increasingly sophisticated.     

Language and tourism

The sociolinguistic study of verbal encounters in touristic situations provides an opportunity to exanine communication between different linguistic groups under unusual circumstances: the high temporariness of the foreigners and the high degree of linguistic accommodation of the locals to them. This state of affairs stands in marked contrast to the tendency of guestworkers and immigrants who are less temporary and usually of lower status, to accommodate linguistically to the locals. While accommodation by locals is common to virtually all touristic situations, the degree of proficiency of locals in the tourists' language varies considerably and hence also the extent to which tourists are forced to accommodate linguistically. In an effort to organize the linguistic variation in tourism, a typology of tourist roles is used as the principal framework. The notion of “language brokerage” is introduced. The integration of sociological and sociolinguistic analyses is illustrated by incidental data from the literature on tourism and from fieldwork in Thailand.     

中国的双顺差、日本经验及失衡调整

我要讲的题目是"中国的双顺差:失衡与相互依赖",主要是从90年代开始,在过去十六年中的十三年,中国国际收支经常账户和资本账户同时出现了盈余,也就是出现了双顺差.这是非常特殊的现象.首先,我从国别比较的角度来透视中国出现双顺差的独特性,然后分析中国的双顺差是如何产生的.我认为,中国的双顺差主要是由加工贸易和外商直接投资推动的.