Violations of Service Fairness and Legal Ramifications: The Case of the Managed Care Industry

Adapted from Chan's (2000) model depicting success of litigation, this paper argues that with the application of various legislation, health maintenance organizations' (HMOs') violations of service fairness to each group: enrollees, physicians, and hospitals give rise to each group's lawsuits against the HMOs. Various authors (Bowen et al., 1999; Seiders and Berry, 1998) indicate that justice concepts such as distributive, procedural, and interactional justice can be applied to the area of service fairness. The violation of these underlying justice principles with HMOs' service unfairness to enrollees, physicians, and hospitals is examined. A general synopsis of the ethical issues in the managed care industry is provided. The various lawsuits launched by each group: enrollees, physicians, and hospitals together with the key statutes used are discussed. This paper also highlights the provisions and ramifications of the 11 April 2000 landmark agreement that Aetna made with Texas Attorney General John Cornyn to settle the 1998 lawsuit brought against the company. Lastly, the current ethical issues in the managed care industry are further discussed. The value of this paper can be adapted to the study of organizations' service fairness violations in other industries or in the educational, governmental, and not-for-profit sectors both nationally and internationally.     

Price-volume relation in stocks: A multiple time series analysis on the Singapore market

We examine the price-volume relation in stocks using the multiple time series approach due to Tiao and Box (1981). This approach has the advantage of treating price and volume jointly and symmetrically (without enforcing the roles of input and output). It is free of the simultaneity bias in regression analysis and the unidirectional dynamics imposed by transfer function models. Empirical results show that there is implicit positive correlation between price and volume through their residuals. However, the results for the explicit lead and lag relations are mixed. The technical analysts' adage that volume often leads the trend of price is not supported. Nonetheless, the implicit relationship between price and volume confirms the usefulness of incorporating volume data to forecast future return. Our analysis shows that the multiple time series models outperform the univariate models in post-sample forecasts.     

From T-Bills to Stocks: Seasonal Anomalies Revisited

This paper employed eleven data series which consist of stocks, bonds, bills, equity premiums, term premiums, and various default premiums to investigate whether January seasonality reported in existing literature is robust across different states of the economy as this has important trading implications. For the periods 1926–1990, small stocks, small stock premiums, low grade bonds, and default premiums (spread between high grade, low grade and government bonds) reveal January seasonality and that the seasonality is robust across different states of the economy except for low grade bond returns and default premiums. January seasonality for low grade bond returns and low grade bond default premiums are primarily driven by results found during periods of economic expansion. Overall, January seasonality is more evident during the economic expansion periods although the magnitude of default premiums is larger during periods of economic contraction. Furthermore, prior findings of strong summer equity returns are primarily driven by the results found during the periods of economic contraction. It is also found that equity returns are generally higher during periods of economic expansion.     

Strategic profiles and performance: An empirical test of select key propositions

Competing theories on internal orientation versus external orientation are examined. The relevant theories are amalgamated and condensed into a number of competing propositions that are empirically tested. The findings suggest that the internally oriented businesses as well as the externally oriented businesses underperform the efficient, marketing oriented businesses.     

Minnesota-type adaptive hierarchical priors for large Bayesian VARs

Large Bayesian VARs with stochastic volatility are increasingly used in empirical macroeconomics. The key to making these highly parameterized VARs useful is the use of shrinkage priors. We develop a family of priors that captures the best features of two prominent classes of shrinkage priors: adaptive hierarchical priors and Minnesota priors. Like adaptive hierarchical priors, these new priors ensure that only ‘small’ coefficients are strongly shrunk to zero, while ‘large’ coefficients remain intact. At the same time, these new priors can also incorporate many useful features of the Minnesota priors such as cross-variable shrinkage and shrinking coefficients on higher lags more aggressively. We introduce a fast posterior sampler to estimate BVARs with this family of priors—for a BVAR with 25 variables and 4 lags, obtaining 10,000 posterior draws takes about 3 min on a standard desktop computer. In a forecasting exercise, we show that these new priors outperform both adaptive hierarchical priors and Minnesota priors.     

科学与实证——一个基于“神经元经济学”的综述

诞生于20世纪90年代中晚期的神经元经济学(Neuroeconomics)是经济学的最新分支和经济学前沿研究的最新领域,它运用现代神经科学的范式、方法和技术工具分析人类的经济行为以及脑组织(主要是神经元及其相关的神经突触联结和神经网络)在人类决策过程中的功能、作用和机制,把经济学的实证研究提升到一个前所未有的高度,对经济学传统理论提出一系列意义重大的修正,从而为经济学的发展深化开拓了一个全新的空间。     

人民币新汇率形成机制下的上市公司外汇风险暴露

本文运用国际金融理论中经典的Augmented Market模型、2005年7月21日人民币汇率形成机制改革之后20个月的汇率变动数据和股票市场收益率数据来分析中国上市公司在新汇率形成机制下的外汇风险暴露问题。实证研究的结果显示,中国A股上市公司的整体股票收益率对汇率波动的敏感程度非常显著,且人民币兑美元汇率的升值推动了A股上市公司平均收益率的上升。     

论虚拟技术创新实验室的构建

从建设虚拟技术创新实验室的必要性、可能性、组建形式和程序，组件分析、建设原则，虚拟技术创新实验室与生产力促进中心的比较等方面进行论述，有利于社会化技术创新支撑服务体系建设。     

Debt and Equity Characteristics of Mandatorily Redeemable Preferred Stock

Abstract. This study examines whether mandatorily redeemable preferred stock (MRPS) is priced more like debt or equity by (1) investigating its debt and equity characteristics and (2) specifying conditions under which one characteristic would dominate the other. Based on a sample of 113 nonconvertible MRPS issued during 1970 to 1990, our results are consistent with the view that MRPS has both debt and equity characteristics. The debt (equity) feature is more pronounced among nonutility (utility) issues. Within the utility group, we find high (low) rated MRPS issues to be more debt (equity) like. Our results appear to support current MRPS disclosure rules.     

转基因食品检测技术的相关研究

基因工程是生物工程的一个重要分支,是在分子水平对基因进行技术改造,将外部基因经体外重组导入至受体细胞中,使基因可以在受体细胞内进行复制、转录与翻译.经过基因技术的不断发展和改造,转入的基因能够稳定遗传,表达出新产物或新性状.转基因食品为人们的生活带来了更多选择,特别是植物性转基因食品的出现.DNA重组技术与细胞融合技术...