Exclusions of infertility treatment in the aftermath of Bragdon v. Abbott

This article analyzes the Supreme Court's decision in Bragdon v. Abbott to determine whether the Court's reading of ADA necessarily leads to the conclusion that a group health plan's or insurer's exclusion or limitation of coverage with respect to infertility is prohibited by ADA. The authors conclude that it may be advisable for plans to perform at least minimal actuarial calculations with respect to the current or anticipated costs of covering infertility treatments prior to adopting any exclusions or limitations of coverage.     

INNOVATIONS IN PARTITIONING A SHARE OF STOCK

This paper presents a synthesis of innovations in the slicing and dicing of cash flows of a share of a firm's common stock. It begins by discussing PRIMEs and SCOREs, then Unbundled Stock Units (USUs), and finally three proposed hybrid equity options called DIVS, OWLS, and RISKS.
Decomposing a share of stock into components that can be traded separately allows investors to choose between the different investment attributes constituting the underlying share. An investor who desires only cash dividend income may buy only DIVS, and another who values capital appreciation but not current income can purchase only the residual claim.
Derivatives seem to go through a developmental process that is analogous to the biological phenomenon of natural selection and adaptation. The engines that drive this evolutionary process are changing domestic and international market conditions, international tax and regulatory arbitrage, and, of course, the financial innovators who learn from their own mistakes, and from the experience of others. These innovators continually develop new products that represent improvements over the old, if only by their ability to adhere more closely to the guidelines laid down by the regulators. The histories of PRIMEs and SCOREs, of USUs, and, most recently, of DIVS, OWLS and RISKS together provide a nice illustration of this developmental process.     

Import Competition, Employment Risk, and the Job-Search Outcomes of Trade-Displaced Manufacturing Workers

This study examines the underlying relationships that exist among import competition, employment risk, and worker earnings. In addition, we consider how such competitiveness and risk experienced on a prior job will affect, under both equilibrium and disequilibrium interpretations of the labor market, alternative postdisplacement job-search outcomes. Econometric models of predisplacement earnings and postdisplacement outcomes (jobless duration, reemployment, and earnings) provide insights on these relationships and in turn on the comparative job-search success of trade-displaced and "other" displaced workers.     

Correlates of Drug Testing Attitudes in a Sample of Blue Collar Workers

Using responses from 1429 workers employed in the wood products industry, we examine the relationship between drug testing (DT) attitudes and several demographic, organizational, job attitude, and job outcome variables. After controlling for age and marital status, analyses revealed moderate correlations between DT attitudes and alcohol and drug variables, DT program characteristics, organizational, and work attitude variables. DT attitudes were weakly but significantly related to absences, late work arrivals, accidents, and injuries. Implications of the findings and future research suggestions are discussed.     

Motivators of market mavenism in the retail environment

This study examines relationships between market mavenism and five other consumer characteristics. We conceptualize three of these characteristics as broad marketplace concepts at the same (or higher) level of abstraction as mavenism. The remaining two variables are involvement with specific product categories: mobile phones and clothing. The data come from a survey of 258 US student consumers. The results show that mavenism is positively associated with brand engagement in self-concept, status consumption, and materialism. Mavenism is also positively associated with involvement with mobile phones and with clothing. This pattern of relationships enriches the nomological network of market mavenism by describing possible motivators and consequences of this unique aspect of consumer behaviour.     

Contests with Multi-tasking*

The standard contest model in which participants compete in a single dimension is well understood and documented. Multi‐dimension extensions are possible but are liable to increase the complexity of the contest structure, mitigating one of its main advantages: simplicity. In this paper we propose an extension in which competition ensues in several dimensions, and a competitor that wins a certain number of these is awarded a prize. The amount of information needed to run the contest is hence limited to the number of dimensions won by each player. We look at the design of this contest from the point of view of maximising effort in the contest (per dimension and totally), and show that there will be a tendency to run small contests with few dimensions. The standard Tullock model and its results are encompassed by our framework.     

Some reflections upon trade union recognition

Union recognition is an ever topical issue. In this article the authors attempt to determine the desirability of instituting and operating a union recognition policy for a small, new enterprise within the manufacturing sector.