发展中国家的社会医疗保险:一个持续的挑战

本文探讨了发展中国家推行社会医疗保险（简称SHI）的可行性。SHI的目的是为了保护所有人免遭疾病所致的财务风险。然而，由于在金融团结程度、医疗服务提供难题和管理能力欠缺等方面缺乏探讨与共识，因此SHI在执行时确有难度。实现医疗保险的全面覆盖可能需要花很长时间，但也可以加快进度。通过家庭解决金融保护问题，从政府和捐助者那里获得持续的金融支持，并使SHl分散地发展，就可以缩短实现医疗保险覆盖所有人所需的时间。     

Assessing the performance of the national park authorities: a case study of Northumberland National Park,England

Although the legislation for the designation of national parks in England dates back to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, it was not until 1997 that free-standing and independent national park authorities were established to help manage these landscapes. In 2014–15, the 10 English national park authorities were allocated £44.6 million from the Department for Food, the Environment and Rural Affairs to deliver their conservation and recreation purposes and their socio-economic duty. This paper discusses how the performance of the national park authorities has been assessed, using the Northumberland National Park Authority as a case study.     

Terror and the costs of crime

This paper argues that terrorism, beyond its immediate impact on innocent victims, also raises the costs of crime, and therefore, imposes a negative externality on potential criminals. Terrorism raises the costs of crime through two channels: (i) by increasing the presence and activity of the police force, and (ii) causing more people to stay at home rather than going out for leisure activities. Our analysis exploits a panel of 120 fatal terror attacks and all reported crimes for 17 districts throughout Israel between 2000 and 2005. After controlling for the fixed-effect of each district and for district-specific time trends, we show that terror attacks reduce property crimes such as burglary, auto-theft, and thefts-from-cars. Terror also reduces assaults and aggravated assaults which occur in private homes, but increases incidents of trespassing and “disrupting the police.” Taken as a whole, the results are consistent with a stronger deterrence effect produced by an increased police presence after a terror attack. A higher level of policing is likely to catch more people trespassing, and at the same time, reduce the number of property crimes. The decline in crimes committed in private houses is likely an indication that the tendency for individuals to stay home after a terror attack further increases the costs of crime.     

On the Inverse of the Covariance Matrix in Portfolio Analysis

The goal of this paper is the derivation and application of a direct characterization of the inverse of the covariance matrix central to portfolio analysis. Such a characterization, in terms of a few primitive constructs, provides the basis for new and illuminating expressions for key concepts as the optimal holding of a given risky asset and the slope of the risk-return efficiency frontier faced by the individual investor. The building blocks of the inverse turn out to be the regression coefficients and residual variance obtained by regressing the asset's excess return on the set of excess returns for all other risky assets.     

‘Sustainable transport choices’ in consumer shopping: a review of the UK evidence

In the UK, as elsewhere in Europe, government policy aims to reduce the use of private cars for consumer shopping trips. One major instrument of policy aims to ensure that new retail development is located in places accessible by all transport modes. This paper reviews the effectiveness of this and other such policies through analysis of survey evidence relating to routine shopping behaviour in the UK. It appears that these policies are likely to have little impact upon shopping travel, given the advantages to the consumer of private car use. However, demographic trends and increasing use of the Internet for food shopping are likely to stabilize or even reduce the use of private cars in the future.     

When do Firms go in for Growth by Acquisitions?

This paper analyses the incidence of acquisitions, and the determinants of expenditure or acquisitions, in a sample of 110 UK quoted companies, 1970–89. Financial variables, especially those related to Jensen's ‘free cash flow’ theory of acquisitions are found to be significant, notably for dominant firms. But there is little support for the inclusion of market structure variables which seek to capture the strategic role of acquisitions as an instrument of competition in oligopolistic markets.     

Efficiency and options on the market index

Summary. In a static exchange economy, when all the endowments are issued as securities on a stock exchange, Pareto optimal allocations may be reached by trading options on the market index (see Breeden and Litzenberger (1978)). We extend this result when some of the risks cannot be exchanged on the market. Options on an appropriate index, which typically differs from the market index, depending on the correlation of the non-tradable risks with the exchanged securities, are still an appropriate tool to support a (constrained) efficient equilibrium. This suggests that the recent development of derivatives based on interest rates may be an efficient way to reach a Pareto optimal allocation of risks. Received: June 16, 1997; revised version: July 25, 1997     

Cost Behaviour of Chinese State-owned Manufacturing Enterprises in the 1980s

This paper aims to model the cost behaviour of Chinese state-owned enterprises in the 1980s. Given production autonomy and profit-related bonus incentives, state firms are expected to increase profits and therefore bonuses by changing their cost behaviours more rationally. However, since institutional constraints remain and distort the rational demand of the firm for input factors, the changes cannot go as far as expected by the standard neoclassical cost minimisation theory. Based on this, we derived a total cost function for Chinese state firms restricted by the government control over their total wage bills. We then test it using a panel data of 386 state manufacturing enterprises in the period 1983–87. It is found that the model predicted well. Despite the constraints, the reform did lead the firms to respond to both changes in factor prices in the directions expected by cost minimising behaviour and to bonus incentives to produce more efficiently.     

Transformation of the Information Technology Function in Organizations: A Case Study in the Manufacturing Sector

The main goal of this study is to better understand the nature of transformations of the Information Technology (IT) function in organizations. A conceptual framework combining a typology of the IT function and key elements of the theory of punctuated equilibrium was developed and applied in a case study of a manufacturing company. Our results suggest that IT functions are transformed in response to various pressures that push it toward change. However, these pressures need to be channelled through a catalyst consisting of three independent elements: (a) the vision of the enterprise concerning the potential value of IT tools, (b) the degree of Chief Information Officer's participation in strategic decision making, and (c) the level of IT knowledge among members of the executive team. Finally, our results challenge the notion that all IT functions tend towards the same optimal profile over time. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evidence of governance arbitrage by private equity sponsors

The motivation for private equity bids is not well understood, partly due to the private nature of their activity. This research contributes to understanding the merits of current-day private equity by examining whether ineffective governance of target public corporations contributes to the role that private equity fulfils. I examine the characteristics of large public target firms that receive a private equity bid to investigate the evidence that private equity is motivated to address ineffective governance. I find evidence the private equity is motivated by what is referred to as governance arbitrage and that this role is heightened when there are constraints such as the imposition of uniform governance practices within public corporations.