The legal challenge to ERISA preemptions

Managed care, once celebrated as a vehicle to halt the increasing cost of health care, has come under increasing fire from patients and health care providers, accused of cutting costs and managing care at the expense of patients. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) has been a shield for managed care organizations (MCOs), buffeting them from liability for quality-of-care issues. Lawsuits and legislation are chipping away at the protective shield of ERISA as MCOs find themselves more liable for their decisions and for the care provided by physicians with whom the MCO contracts and provides financial incentives for controlling cost of medical care.     

What's in Your 403(b)? Academic Retirement Plans and the Costs of Underdiversification

Sponsors of defined contribution retirement plans typically limit the investment choices of plan participants to a small number of investment managers and a limited number of investment vehicles. Such restrictions may limit excessive risk-taking by participants but also may preclude opportunities for efficient diversification. Many college and university 403 (b) plans have restricted investment choices to the retirement annuities offered by TIAA-CREF, the current manager of over half of all 403(b) contributions. Using 10 years of historical data, we study the efficiency of this TIAA-CREF opportunity set relative to a larger set that includes several standard index funds. Extrapolations must be interpreted -with caution. Assuming optimal rebalancing, depending on loss aversion and diversification constraints, the historical sample of returns implies that over a 20-year remaining work life, an employee -with an expanded menu that includes standard index funds could gain over 40% in terminal wealth compared to one who is restricted to TIAA-CREF retirement annuities. Even when a naive diversification strategy of equally weighting (1/n) all available funds is used, the expandedmenu outperforms the restricted portfolio by more than 25% over20years. These differences generally are significant at conventional levels based on parametric and nonparametric testing and do not appear to result from idiosyncratic market performance durinz the sample period.     

Share restrictions and asset pricing: Evidence from the hedge fund industry

This paper presents evidence on the relation between hedge fund returns and restrictions imposed by funds that limit the liquidity of fund investors. The excess returns of funds with lockup restrictions are approximately 4–7% per year higher than those of nonlockup funds. The average alpha of all funds is negative or insignificant after controlling for lockups and other share restrictions. Also, a negative relation is found between share restrictions and the liquidity of the fund's portfolio. This suggests that share restrictions allow funds to efficiently manage illiquid assets, and these benefits are captured by investors as a share illiquidity premium.     

The CES‐‐Translog Production Function, Returns to Scale and AES

The translog functional form imposes no a priori restrictions on the substitution possibilities between the factor inputs, by relaxing the assumption of strong separability, and the CES–translog cost function specification allows for testing homothetic technology with Hicks‐neutral technical change. In this paper an n ‐factor CES–translog production function is presented which develops the parameters to directly assess scale effects from those due to technology in the production structure. In addition, by applying Shephard's lemma it was possible to derive the input demand functions, as well as the partial elasticities of substitution and the cross‐partial price elasticities of demand for a generalized CES–translog production structure.     

Situational and trait interactions among goal orientations

Regulatory focus theory has been used to describe and explain a wide range of consumer responses. This goal orientation has been examined both as a chronic difference and a situational variable. Yet, it is unclear how a situational manipulation interacts with the individual??s chronic goal orientation. The present research investigates the potential for interactions and suggests that typical outcomes of regulatory focus are likely to emerge more clearly under circumstances in which promotion focus is manipulated. The studies demonstrate asymmetric effects in the interactions of chronic and situational manipulations of regulatory focus using different manipulations and outcome variables. The implications of these findings are significant for any research involving the manipulation of variables that can also be considered as chronic tendencies.     

The out-of-region bias: Distance estimations based on geographic category membership

This research addresses estimations of distance, an important factor in numerous consumer decisions (e.g., store choice, willingness to pay for travel). Our central hypothesis is that when two places are located in the same geographic category, individuals estimate them to be closer to each other than when they are located in different categories, a bias we term ??the out-of-region bias.?? In study 1, we demonstrate that participants are more willing to visit a store located in the city in which they live rather than a store located in a neighboring city because they mistakenly think that a store in their city is closer to home. In studies 2a and b, we show that the out-of-region bias leads consumers to express higher willingness to pay for an airline ticket that involves travel across versus within regions because they inaccurately estimate greater distance between cities that are located in different regions (vs. the same region). Study 2a also demonstrates that the out-of-region bias is ameliorated in the presence of a map, indicating that the bias is a conceptual (vs. perceptual) bias, and study 2b rules out an alternative explanation for our results based on consumers?? tendency to exaggerate north?Csouth distances.     

Interregional exchange as a development factor of the cluster structure of a regional economy

This article considers theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of the formation of the cluster structure of a regional economy, shows the role of interregional exchange in this process and presents parameter estimates of interregional exchange on the basis of a gravity model (on the example of the Republic of Bashkortostan).