Heterogeneous Beliefs and the Demand for D&O Insurance by Listed Companies

This paper introduces a new rationale for the existence of “Directors’ and Officers’” (D&O) insurance. We use a model with volatile stock markets where shareholders design compensation schemes that incentivize managers to stimulate short-term increases in stock prices that do not maximize long run stock market value. We show that D&O insurance provides a convenient instrument for the initial shareholders of a company to take advantage of differences in beliefs between insiders and outsiders in capital markets. The empirical results support the idea that both the insurance coverage and the premium are higher in the presence of new shareholders and volatile markets. The results prove robust in various empirical model specifications.

Supplemental security income : disability program vulnerable to applicant fraud when middlemen are used : report to the Chairman, Special Committee on Aging, U.S. Senate /

"B-257888"--P. 1.

A five-year perspective of the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan (CHIP).

"May 1995."

Supplemental Security Income : additional actions needed to reduce program vulnerability to fraud and abuse : report to the Honorable Henry A. Waxman, Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives /

"B-278983"--P. 1.

FATORES ANTECEDENTES NA ATITUDE DE ALUNOS DE GRADUAÇÃO FRENTE AO PLÁGIO

A crescente preocupação com a desonestidade acadêmica e seus possíveis impactos para as organizações e sociedade tem requerido especial atenção. Diversos estudos indicam que a tecnologia e, em especial, a Internet, pode ocasionar o aumento da desonestidade acadêmica e, em especial, da prática de plágio. Tipos de desonestidade acadêmica são listados pela literatura como sendo a fraude, o plágio, o auxílio externo e a fraude eletrônica. Dentre estes tipos, o plágio está se tornando a maior preocupação entre as instituições de ensino superior em comparação com os demais (LOVETT-HOOPER et al., 2007). A existência da intencionalidade do indivíduo é uma característica central nos estudos sobre plágio, caracterizado como sendo a consequência de uma decisão individual. Do ponto de vista da Theory of Planned Behavior - TPB (Teoria do Comportamento Planejado), de Ajzen (1991), a ação do indivíduo é orientada por crenças (comportamentais, normativas e de controle) que influenciam sua atitude em relação a algo, que por sua vez leva à racionalização da intenção que influenciará o comportamento do indivíduo. Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo identificar os fatores antecedentes que influenciam a atitude em relação ao plágio dentre estudantes brasileiros do ensino superior, modalidade à distância. Um sistemático mapeamento da literatura sobre o tema identificou mais de 300 artigos e convergiu para um número de 74 artigos considerados fundamentais. Destes, foi gerado um modelo de análise que define como preditores da Atitude Positiva em relação ao Plágio (a partir de determinadas influências recebidas, o indivíduo considerará a prática do plágio), os seguintes construtos: Posicionamento Moral, Normas sociais e Aspectos situacionais. Para análise do modelo, utilizou-se uma pesquisa do tipo survey quando, nesta fase foram encaminhados, 1800 questionários, a alunos de diferentes períodos do curso de Administração, de uma Universidade particular. A taxa de retorno dos questionários foi de 28,95%, totalizando 353 questionários válidos. Para a análise dos dados utilizou-se a modelagem por equações estruturais com algoritmo Partial Least Squares (PLS), técnica adequada para um número reduzido de observações e quando não se pode assumir parâmetros para a distribuição. Os principais resultados encontrados nesta pesquisa foram: 41,8% da variablidade da Atitude explicada do modelo de Atitude Positiva frente ao plágio; e a identificação de seis construtos significantes associados ao modelo, sendo: Entendimento (-0,102, p<0,05), Expectativa de Valor (0,243, p<0,001), Facilidade (0,108, p<0,05), Situação de Pressão (0,126, p<0,01), Relativismo (0,272, p<0,001) e Severidade e Possibilidade de Punição (-0,255, p<0,001).

Hotel Human Resources Directors Identify Ethical Issues

Hotel human resources directors report that the most important ethical issues they face are a lack of work ethic, drug use, and employee theft. When asked about ethical problems experienced in their own hotels. Managers’ report that employees' lack of respect for each other, racial and gender conflicts, guest abuse, dishonesty, and homosexual issues are the biggest problems. The author discusses these ethical dilemmas and suggests ways they can be addressed.

Pricing farm-level agricultural insurance: a Bayesian approach

This paper applies Hierarchical Bayesian Models to price farm-level yield insurance contracts. This methodology considers the temporal effect, the spatial dependence and spatio-temporal models. One of the major advantages of this framework is that an estimate of the premium rate is obtained directly from the posterior distribution. These methods were applied to a farm-level data set of soybean in the State of the Parana (Brazil), for the period between 1994 and 2003. The model selection was based on a posterior predictive criterion. This study improves considerably the estimation of the fair premium rates considering the small number of observations.

Bayesian ratemaking procedure of crop insurance contracts with skewed distribution

Over the years, crop insurance programs became the focus of agricultural policy in the USA, Spain, Mexico, and more recently in Brazil. Given the increasing interest in insurance, accurate calculation of the premium rate is of great importance. We address the crop-yield distribution issue and its implications in pricing an insurance contract considering the dynamic structure of the data and incorporating the spatial correlation in the Hierarchical Bayesian framework. Results show that empirical (insurers) rates are higher in low risk areas and lower in high risk areas. Such methodological improvement is primarily important in situations of limited data.

Spatio-temporal modeling of agricultural yield data with an application to pricing crop insurance contracts

This article presents a statistical model of agricultural yield data based on a set of hierarchical Bayesian models that allows joint modeling of temporal and spatial autocorrelation. This method captures a comprehensive range of the various uncertainties involved in predicting crop insurance premium rates as opposed to the more traditional ad hoc, two-stage methods that are typically based on independent estimation and prediction. A panel data set of county-average yield data was analyzed for 290 counties in the State of Parana (Brazil) for the period of 1990 through 2002. Posterior predictive criteria are used to evaluate different model specifications. This article provides substantial improvements in the statistical and actuarial methods often applied to the calculation of insurance premium rates. These improvements are especially relevant to situations where data are limited.

Parametric and nonparametric statistical modelling of crop yield: implications for pricing crop insurance contracts

This article considers alternative methods to calculate the fair premium rate of crop insurance contracts based on county yields. The premium rate was calculated using parametric and nonparametric approaches to estimate the conditional agricultural yield density. These methods were applied to a data set of county yield provided by the Statistical and Geography Brazilian Institute (IBGE), for the period of 1990 through 2002, for soybean, corn and wheat, in the State of Paran. In this article, we propose methodological alternatives to pricing crop insurance contracts resulting in more accurate premium rates in a situation of limited data.