Public sector health insurance trusts

Public sector associations have successfully developed and run employee health insurance pools for almost 30 years, providing members with savings and flexibility not available from commercial health insurance carriers. This article looks at the models, technical tools and governance philosophy that have contributed to their success in a very challenging business environment.     

中国失衡时代是否已终结

过去十年,全球性不均衡问题逐渐成为各国宏观经济政策的中心议题。本文重点分析了当前中国的外部失衡问题,研究了2008年后促使中国经常账户盈余下降的影响因素,预测了中国外部顺差的走向。本文认为,未来几年中国的经常账户盈余将保持适度。外部失衡不能反映当今中国国际收支的主要特征。随着中国国内经济越来越依赖投资的拉动,内部失衡问题将愈发明显。     

Analysis of Visitor Decision Making System When Visiting Natural Recreation Sites by Multinomial Logit Model

Multinomial Logit Model has analyzed the relationship between the frequency of visits to recreation areas and the motivational factors affecting the visits. Kastro Environment Preserving Site that is located in the Black Sea coast of Marmara region in Turkey, has been chosen as the site for this study. Kastro bay is a natural park that is visited only for recreational visits. The study has been conducted on a photogenic study group due to the proximity factor of Kastro bay close to Istanbul. Kastro bay is a popular recreational park due to its characteristic advantages such as a 200 m wide and approximately 2.5 km long beach and with its high quality vegetation. The vegetation type includes ash tree, oak tree, black pine, sand lily etc. Kastro bay is also the site for the Mediterranean seals (Monachus-monachus) which are at the level of extinction. Approximately 50,000 visitors visit the region during the months of July and August. It has been concluded that there is high direct correlation between the frequency of visits and the motivational factors. It has been determined that the visits are mostly based on the sea and the ecological tourism.Jel: O13, Q20, Q26, Q51, Q56, Q57     

OCCUPATIONAL EARNINGS BEHAVIOR AND THE INEQUALITY OF EARNINGS BY SEX AND RACE IN THE UNITED STATES*

This paper examines differences in earnings by occupations, and within occupations by sex and by race, on the basis of the 1/100 Public Use Samples of the 1960 and 1970 U.S. Population Censuses. It employs interval analysis to establish 32 categories of occupations with similar characteristics. Little relation was found between mean earnings of occupational groups and the degree of earnings inequality within them. When the figures are examined by sex, it was found that men, on average, earned over twice as much as women in both years, but women's earnings were more unequally distributed (as measured by the Gini coefficient). Women are concentrated in the traditional “female” occupations, which tend to be those at the bottom of the earnings scale, and men have a monopoly of the higher paid occupations. But mean earnings for men exceeded those for women in all occupational groups except one, even in the primarily female occupations. Standardizing first for occupational distribution and then for earnings by occupation, it was found that earnings differences between males and females within occupation had a greater impact on the overall male-female earnings ratio than did differences in occupational distribution by sex. In contrast, when the figures are examined by race, the change in occupational distribution (primarily the movement of blacks out of farming and of blacks and Spanish speakers out of personal services) was the major factor. There was also a considerable degree of earnings inequality within demographic groups. The degree of inequality was in the main reduced when the demographic groups were subdivided into occupations, but it was still substantial. Additional factors like time worked, schooling, and experience must be taken into consideration in understanding this phenomenon.     

Internationalizing audit education

Audit education is typically offered only to accounting majors. We argue that auditing provides a way of thinking that could serve as a framework for an accounting curriculam. We describe two parts of a course content that could be incorporated into an existing auditing course or a begining accounting course. The first section emphasizes accountability; the second emphasizes the role of the auditor in the accountability process. The concepts are best taught within an international paradigm that permits examination of various institutional environments.     

The Effects of Megamergers on Efficiency and Prices: Evidence from a Bank Profit Function

This paper examines the efficiency and price effects of mergers by applying a frontier profit function to data on bank megamergers. We find that merged banks experience a statistically significant 16 percentage point average increase in profit efficiency rank relative to other large banks. Most of the improvement is from increasing revenues, including a shift in outputs from securities to loans, a higher-valued product. Improvements were greatest for the banks with the lowest efficiencies prior to merging, who therefore had the greatest capacity for improvement. By comparison, the effects on profits from merger-related changes in prices were found to be very small.     

Transport logistic services in Russia: Integration in the world market

This paper considers problems of increased foreign trade networks requiring faster growth of multimodal shipping and exact coordination of all points in the chain of freight delivery. Special attention is paid to rail and sea shipping integration in major directions of freight flows.     

Deregulating the domestic natural gas market: Conditions and mechanisms

The paper looks at topical points of the formation of the domestic natural gas market, the definitive ones being the rules of interaction between the monopoly company and the independent gas producers. Elaborated corporate interaction rules are presented as a Grid Code. The mechanism of a business game between key domestic gas market players is proposed as a Grid Code development tool.