Effects of perceived cost,service quality,and customer satisfaction on health insurance service continuance

This paper aims to contribute to the universal discourse on financial services continuance behavior by examining the impact of service cost on customers’ service-quality perception and service continuance intention. It presents the results of an empirical study that has explored the impacts of service cost, service quality, and customer satisfaction on health insurance customers’ behavioral intention toward continuing or discontinuing with their service providers. Very few studies had examined the impact of service cost on service-quality perception. Our study attempts to fill that gap. A sample of 820 customers was surveyed, and 624 usable responses were analyzed with ANOVA, standard multiple regression, and logistic regression. Our findings indicate that, although highly satisfied health insurance customers will most likely retain their current service providers, customer dissatisfaction does not necessarily lead to discontinuance. Our results also provide some operational implications for health insurance managers, with strategies for reducing attrition and improving customer retention.     

Age heaping and numeracy: looking behind the curtain

Age‐heaping‐based numeracy indicators have served as valuable tools to derive basic human capital estimates, especially for periods where other indicators are unavailable. However, the accuracy of individual age statements usually remains unknown, and due to the lack of precise information it can only be assumed that excessive occurrence of multiples of five in age distributions reflects inferior numerical skills. This article addresses this lacuna by identifying 162 individuals in two independent data sources: self‐reported age statements and independently kept records which are based on family heritage books and church registers. This method makes it possible to identify individual misreporting and the degree of accuracy of each individual. Findings show that not everyone who reported a multiple of five was reporting an incorrect age, nor was it the case that everyone who reported an age that was not a multiple of five was reporting an accurate age. The empirical analysis shows that the commonly used binary numeracy indicator is correlated with the observed degree of accuracy in age statements, and that a more sophisticated occupational background reduces this inaccuracy. These results tentatively suggest that the commonly used binary indicator measuring age heaping is a valuable proxy for numerical skills and occupational background in a population.     

Cost and learning efficiency drivers in Australian schools: a two-stage network DEA approach

This article explore performance issues in Australian public schools, using a two-stage DEA network model, which accounts simultaneously for both cost and learning efficiency levels. In the cost efficiency stage, different types of expenses and investments are employed to support a given number of students, teachers and administrative staff. In the learning efficiency stage, these groups of individuals help to produce important outputs related to performance in student tests and school rankings. Results indicate that Australian public schools are heterogeneous. Policy implications are also discussed.     

Honoring a pioneer: Gordon Tullock (1922–2014)

Gordon Tullock made seminal contributions to three disciplines, economics, political science, and biology. He was also a founder of bioeconomics. Although economic theory has moved beyond the rational self-interest assumption that underlies his work, Tullock’s contributions were important theoretical stepping stones.     

The Impact of Regret on Exports

We examine optimal production and export decisions of a firm facing exchange rate uncertainty, where the firm's management is not only risk averse but also regret averse, i.e., is characterized by a utility function that includes disutility from having chosen ex post suboptimal alternatives. Experimental and empirical results support the view that managers tend to be regret averse. Under regret aversion a negative risk premium need not preclude the firm from exporting which would be the case if the firm were only risk averse. Exporting creates an implicit hedge against the possibility of regret when the realized spot exchange rate turns out to be high. The regret‐averse firm as such has a greater ex ante incentive to export than the purely risk averse firm. Finally, we use a two‐state example to illustrate that the firm optimally exports more (less) to the foreign country than in the case of pure risk aversion if the low (high) spot exchange rate is more likely to prevail. Regret aversion as such plays a crucial role in determining the firm's optimal allocation between domestic sales and foreign exports.     

Migration,Ethnicity, and the Educational Gradient in the Jakarta Mega-Urban Region: A Spatial Analysis

The Jakarta mega-urban region (MUR) is one of the largest such regions in the world. In this article, we revisit Castles’s seminal 1967 article, based on the 1961 Population Census of Indonesia, on the educational and ethnic composition of Jakarta. Using data from the full-count 2010 Population Census, we examine spatial patterns in the educational gradients of the population across the Jakarta MUR and look to determine whether these patterns can be explained by internal migration and ethnic composition at the kecamatan (subdistrict) level. We find that population movement from the core to the outer areas has softened the historically extremely sharp gradation in educational attainment across the MUR. We show the dominance of the Sundanese and Bantenese ethnic groups in the rural hinterlands of the MUR, where the average educational attainment is relatively low, and note this question of rurality versus ethnicity when interpreting our results.     

Reliability and relevance of fair values: private equity investments and investee fundamentals

Review of Accounting Studies - We directly test the reliability and relevance of investee fair values reported by listed private equity funds (LPEs). In our setting, disaggregated fair value...     

Consumption-based equity valuation

Using a CCAPM-based risk-adjustment model, we perform yearly valuations of a large sample of stocks listed on NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ over a 30-year period. The model differs from standard valuation models in the sense that it adjusts forecasted residual income for risk in the numerator rather than through a risk-adjusted cost of equity in the denominator. The risk adjustments are derived based on assumptions about the time-series properties of residual income returns and aggregate consumption rather than on historical stock returns. We compare the performance of the model with several implementations of standard valuation models, both in terms of median absolute valuation errors (MAVE) and in terms of excess returns on simple investment strategies based on the differences between model and market prices. The CCAPM-based valuation model yields a significantly lower MAVE than the best performing standard valuation model. Both types of models can identify investment strategies with subsequent excess returns. The CCAPM-based valuation model yields time-series of realized hedge returns with more and higher positive returns and fewer and less negative returns compared with the time-series of realized hedge returns based on the best performing standard valuation model for holding periods from 1 to 5 years. In a statistical test of 1-year-ahead excess return predictability based on the models’ implied pricing errors, the CCAPM-based valuation model is selected as the better model. Using the standard series of aggregate consumption and the nominal price index, a reasonable level of relative risk aversion, and calibrated growth rates in the continuing value at each valuation date, the CCAPM-based valuation model produces small risk adjustments to forecasted residual income and low continuing values. Compared with standard valuation models, it relies less on estimated parameters and speculative elements when aggregating residual earnings forecasts into a valuation.     

A framework for understanding the evolution of relationship quality and the customer relationship development process

This paper attempts to develop and empirically test a conceptual model of relationship quality (RQ) in the financial sector from the perspective of the individual consumer (B2C). Based on a review of RQ research, the paper proposes a model of RQ from the customer perspective using the constructs most often examined in empirical RQ research (customer satisfaction, trust and commitment) and considers the relative importance of these dimensions within the stages of the relationship development process (RDP). A survey of 150 bank customers was undertaken in Egypt and the results tested using structural equation modelling. Respondents were selected on a convenience sampling basis and administered a questionnaire instrument for completion. The findings show that there is a strong relationship between the customer’s perceived relationship development phase and the perceived RQ. An important contribution of this paper lies in the alternative conceptualization of RQ as composed of three dynamic dimensions which are dependent on the RDP phase or stage. A second contribution is methodological and relates to the development of a modified scale to identify the relationship phases of customers. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, these contributions are unique and have not been made previously to the body of knowledge on service relationship management.