An Expert System Solution to Mortgage Arrears Problems

This article draws on research into the current level of provision of arrears and debt counselling in building societies, banks and finance houses and concludes that, whilst interest in a consistent and systematic approach to arrears counselling is very positive, progress towards any practical application of Information Technology in the arrears counselling process is slow. In response to this shortfall the article presents a novel approach to arrears counselling through an expert system named Personal Insolvency Strategy Counselling Expert System (PISCES). Work on PISCES at Loughborough University Banking Centre has shown that much of the expertise and knowledge of the experienced arrears counsellor can be captured within a computer-based system. An evaluation of PISCES by interested parties has confirmed that the expert system approach to arrears counselling is valid and that the PISCES system, in particular shows promise.     

Individual, Social and Organizational Sources of Sharing and Variation in the Ethical Reasoning of Managers

A growth in consumer and media ethical consciousness has resulted in the need for organizations to ensure that members understand, share and project an approved and unified set of ethics. Thus understanding which variables are related to sharing and variation of ethical reasoning and moral intent, and the relative strength of these variables is critical. While past research has examined individual (attitudes, values, etc.), social (peers, significant others, etc.) and organizational (codes of conduct, senior management, etc.) variables, it has focused on their influence on the individual – and not on their role in relation to patterns of group sharing and variation in an organization. Introduced as a new methodology to study ethics, microcultural analysis stipulates that to explain patterns of sharing and variation, one must understand how individual, social and organizational variables influence sharing and variation. Key hypotheses predict that managers who share in individual, social or organizational determinants will be more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Qualitative and quantitative research supports the key hypotheses, finding social ties, personal moral intensity, Machiavellianism, locus of control and codes of ethics as significant determinants. Individuals who share in these determinants are more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Additionally, regression analysis reveals social ties and personal moral intensity to be the strongest determinants. Based on these results, managerial recommendations focus on a holistic approach, manipulating these three determinants to cultivate a unified code of ethics within an organization.     

Some tests for the constancy of regressions under heteroscedasticity

For testing the equality of coefficients of a linear regression model under heteroscedasticity, we suggest an F criterion conditioned on the posterior mean of the ratio of standard deviations of error terms in two subsamples. For pairable subsamples, and exact F test is derived. Sampling experiments show that the Chow test differs substantially from the nominal significance level when the two subsample sizes are unequal, and that the F test conditioned on the posterior mean is superior to other tests when sample sizes are small.     

Labour force and land distributional effects of agricultural technology: A case study of coffee

Land reform frequently refers to government policies which expropriate large farms and fragment them into smaller units; however, land reform can also refer to the opposite process, that of consolidation of farms which are too small for efficient production. In the latter sense, that of land consolidation, land reform may or may not be socially desirable and prompt government intervention. Possible gains in efficiency accruing from land consolidation may not be desirable if it entails agricultural unemployment and accelerated rural-urban migration, in which case governments may try to intervene. This paper looks at land reform in the context of one crop, coffee. New techniques of coffee cultivation will increase output-labour, output-land and labour-land ratios, offering the prospect for higher coffee employment and output. However, economic and institutional barries will preclude higher output; as a result coffee employment and small coffee farms will be threatened. This paper examines the economic implications of the new coffee technology in the context of Columbia.     

A defense of utilitarian policy processes in corporate and public management

The growing awareness that corporate and public policy forming processes are intensively utilitarian has provoked a variety of criticism. The procedural difficulties of utilitarianism are well known; less well known but potentially more devastating is a set of charges that utilitarian policy processes intrude upon important relationships and societal processes. This paper defends utilitarian methods against these charges.More specifically, two criticisms are singled out for examination. The first is the claim that utilitarian policy processes systematically discriminate against the rights of non-human life and suppress any feelings of sympathy or obligation humans might have for animals or plants. The second is the argument that utilitarianism ultimately circumvents considerations of process which are essential for the development of individual and societal identity.Given these criticisms, the goal of this paper is to defend the role of utilitarian techniques in corporate and public policy processes against such charges. F. Neil Brady is Assistant Professor of Management at the College of Business Administration, San Diego State University. He is the author of Feeling and Understanding: A Moral Psychology for Public Servants, Public Administration Quarterly 7, and Ethical Theory for the Public Administrator: The Management of Competing Interests, American Review of Public Administration 15, pp. 119–126.     

Financial Innovation in the Management of Catastrophe Risk

Like the preceding article, this article argues that the high costs of reinsurance present the opportunity for hedging instruments to be offered to primary insurers that are both competitive with current reinsurance and that offer investors high rates of return. But the combination of high reinsurance premiums and the vast capacity of the capital market for diversification is not sufficient to ensure the success of these new instruments. If new instruments such as catastrophe options and catastrophelinked bonds are to compete successfully with reinsurance, they must provide a cost-effective means of resolving incentive conflicts between the primary insurer and the ultimate risk bearer that are known as "moral hazard." Without an effective solution of this moral hazard problem, the use of past insurance loss data to estimate the potential returns for purchasers of catastrophe bonds and other such instruments will be misleading and unreliable.
As the author demonstrates, both traditional reinsurance and each of the new catastrophe hedging instruments presents insurance companies and other hedgers with the challenge of managing a different combination of moral hazard, credit risk, and basis risk. For example, traditional catastrophe reinsurance is subject to significant credit risk and moral hazard, but little if any basis risk. By contrast, both catastrophe options and bonds can be designed in ways that reduce moral hazard and credit risk, but at the cost of taking on some basis risk. The risk manager's task in such circumstances is to design an instrument that embodies the optimal, or cost-minimizing, trade-off among these three sources of risk.     

Capitalization of the Property-Liability Insurance Industry: Overview

The 1990s witnessed an unprecedented decline in leverage ratios in the United States property-liability insurance industry. The premiums-to-surplus ratio, the most commonly used leverage ratio in the industry, fell from its historical average of 2.0 to less than 1.0 by the end of 2000; and the industry-wide capital-to-asset ratio increased from an historical average of about 25% to 35%. The international reinsurance industry also experienced significant capital increases and leverage declines during the 1990s (Cummins and Weiss, 2000).¹ These unusual trends raised widespread concerns that the property-liability insurance industry had become over-capitalized (The Economist, 1999; Bowers, 2001; Seifert, 2001). To investigate the growth in capitalization and its potential causes, the Conference on Capitalization in the Property-Liability Insurance Industry was held at the Wharton School in September 2000 under the joint sponsorship of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and AON. Selected papers from the conference comprise this issue of the Journal of Financial Services Research (JFSR).     

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花了上百万英镑的钞票来开发、生产、营销一种产品．并将它装船运到世界各地．却发现这种产品存在一个严重的质量瑕疵，这对每一个厂商来说都是一个噩梦。无论瑕疵出现在少数产品上，还是多数产品都存在问题，你都不得不全部召回它们。你将面对两种选择：要么是主动将货品下架，召回已销售的货品，并及时赔偿消赞者；要么是等着监管机构强制你召回．并按照程序披露潜在而敏感的商业信息。