Unemployment, macroeconomic policy and labor market flexibility: Argentina and Mexico in the 1990s

Includes bibliography

An assessment of the dynamics between the permanent and transitory components of Mexico's output and unemployment

Includes bibliography.

RP93-395 Liability Insurance and the Family Child Care Provider

Life other small business owners, family child care providers need adequate life, health, and disability insurance to protect their families from the loss of their income. However, child care providers also face unique risks. Perhaps the most important of these risks is the financial loss that would result if the provider were found liable or responsible for the injury or death of a child or a child's parent. If a claim were filed against you as a provider, three different types of financial losses are possible: medical expenses, damages awarded to the victim or his/her family after a lawsuit, and court costs related to your defense. This booklet will help you to: (1) evaluate options for insuring a family child care operation, and (2) evaluate available liability insurance policies.

Perceptions of Procedural and Distributive Justice in the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

The September l1th Victim Compensation Fund (the Fund) was created in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Much has been written about the Fund, both pro and con, in both popular media and scholarly literature. Perhaps the most widely used term in referring to the Fund is "unprecedented." The Fund is intriguing for many reasons, particularly for its public policy implications and its impact on the claimants themselves. The federal government has never before provided compensation to victims of terrorism through a special master who had virtually unlimited discretion in determining awards. Consequently, this formal allocation of money by a representative of the federal government to its citizens has provided an opportunity to test theories of procedural and distributive justice in a novel context. This article tests these theories by analyzing the results of a study of the Fund's claimants. Part I provides general background, summarizes existing commentary on the Fund, and discusses prior research on social justice that is relevant to the 9/11 claimants' experiences with the Fund. Part II of this article describes the methodology behind the study, in which seventy-one individuals who filed claims with the Fund completed surveys about their experiences with and perceptions of the Fund. Part III discusses the survey results. We found that participants were reasonably satisfied with the procedural aspects of the Fund, such as representatives' impartiality and respectful treatment. Participants were less satisfied, however, with the distributive aspects of the Fund, such as the unequal distribution of compensation and the reduction in compensation if claimants received compensation from other sources (e.g., life insurance). Part IV of this article addresses the implications of the study results for public policy and for theories of social justice.

INSURANCE

We have been working with exterminators on the insurance problems for thirty-five or so years. Recently PCO’s have been doing much in the way of bird control. There does not seem to be anyone that we know of who does strictly bird control insurance, so our group always ties it in with our pest control. I feel that nothing touches everyone so regularly, with the exception of the federal government, as your insurance premiums. I would like to discuss with you the causes and results of accidents and how they can effect insurance premiums.

Robust statistical modeling using the Birnbaum-Saunders-t distribution applied to insurance

In this paper, we carry out robust modeling and influence diagnostics in Birnbaum-Saunders (BS) regression models. Specifically, we present some aspects related to BS and log-BS distributions and their generalizations from the Student-t distribution, and develop BS-t regression models, including maximum likelihood estimation based on the EM algorithm and diagnostic tools. In addition, we apply the obtained results to real data from insurance, which shows the uses of the proposed model. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The secondary market for life insurance policies in the United States market evolution and product valuation

In this work we discuss the secondary market for life insurance policies in the United States of America. First, we give an overview of the life settlement market: how it came into existence, its growth prospects and the ethical issues it arises. Secondly, we discuss the characteristics of the different life insurance products present in the market and describe how life settlements are originated. Life settlement transactions tend to be long and complex transactions that require the involvement of a number of parties. Also, a direct investment into life insurance policies is fraught with a number of practical issues and entails risks that are not directly related to longevity. This may reduce the efficiency of a direct investment in physical policies. For these reasons, a synthetic longevity market has evolved. The number of parties involved in a synthetic longevity transaction is typically smaller and the broker-dealer transferring the longevity exposure will be retaining most or all of the risks a physical investment entails. Finally, we describe the main methods used in the market to evaluate life settlement investments and the role of life expectancy providers.

Supply sensitive services in Swiss ambulatory care: an analysis of basic health insurance records for 2003-2007

Swiss ambulatory care is characterized by independent, and primarily practice-based, physicians, receiving fee for service reimbursement. This study analyses supply sensitive services using ambulatory care claims data from mandatory health insurance. A first research question was aimed at the hypothesis that physicians with large patient lists decrease their intensity of services and bill less per patient to health insurance, and vice versa: physicians with smaller patient lists compensate for the lack of patients with additional visits and services. A second research question relates to the fact that several cantons are allowing physicians to directly dispense drugs to patients ('self-dispensation') whereas other cantons restrict such direct sales to emergencies only. This second question was based on the assumption that patterns of rescheduling patients for consultations may differ across channels of dispensing prescription drugs and therefore the hypothesis of different consultation costs in this context was investigated.

Impact of Various Insurance Types on Level and Appropriateness of Health Care Consumption

The goal of this study was to examine the extent to which insurance type, or method of care management, impact the appropriate delivery of health care. Previous studies indicate a relationship between insurance type and patterns of consumption but do not directly link the incentives or disincentives inherent in each plan with trends inconsumption of health care. This study explores how different types of health insurance coverage affect the location, the degree, and the frequency of health care consumption in order to gain insight into which plans promote appropriate delivery and consumption ofcare.

Temporomandibular disorders/myoarthropathy of the masticatory system. Costs of dental treatment and reimbursement by Swiss federal insurance agencies according to the Health Care Benefits Ordinance (KLV)

The goal of the study was to calculate the direct costs of therapy for patients with MAP. This retrospective study included 242 MAP patients treated at the Department of Prosthodontics of the University of Bern between 2003 and 2006. The following parameters were collected from the clinical charts: chief complaint, diagnosis, treatment modalities, total costs, costs of the dental technician, number of appointments, average cost per appointment, length of treatment, and services reimbursed by health insurance agencies. The average age of the patients was 40.4 ± 17.3 years (76.4% women, 23.6% men). The chief complaint was pain in 91.3% of the cases, TMJ noises (61.2%) or limitation of mandibular mobility (53.3%). Tendomyopathy (22.3%), disc displacement (22.4%), or a combination of the two (37.6%) were more often diagnosed than arthropathy alone (7.4%). Furthermore, 10.3% of the MAP patients had another primary diagnosis (tumor, trauma, etc.). Patients were treated with counseling and exercises (36.0%), physiotherapy (23.6%), or occlusal splints (32.6%). The cost of treatment reached 644 Swiss francs for four appointments spread over an average of 21 weeks. In the great majority of cases, patients can be treated with inexpensive modalities. 99.9% of the MAP cases submitted to the insurance agencies were reimbursed by them, in accordance with Article 17d1-3 of the Swiss Health Care Benefits Ordinance (KLV) and Article 25 of the Federal Health Insurance Act (KVG). The costs of treatment performed by dentists remain modest. The more time-consuming services, such as providing information, counseling and instructions, are poorly remunerated. This aspect should be re-evaluated in a future revision of the tariff schedule.

Health insurance coverage of Hispanic adults: An assessment of subgroup difference and the impact of immigration

This research explores the health insurance coverage of various Hispanic subgroups in comparison to non-Hispanic whites and blacks. The impact of immigration status is also considered as we hypothesize that nativity, duration, and naturalization tap a possible process of structural acculturation that increases access to insurance coverage for Hispanic groups. We find that the immigration variables impact the type of insurance reported. However, race/ethnic disparities continue to exist, with the various Hispanic subgroups more likely to report miscellaneous government health insurance or no health insurance coverage as compared to non-Hispanic whites.

Atlantic hurricanes and associated insurance loss potentials in future climate scenarios: limitations of high-resolution AGCM simulations

Potential future changes in tropical cyclone (TC) characteristics are among the more serious regional threats of global climate change. Therefore, a better understanding of how anthropogenic climate change may affect TCs and how these changes translate in socio-economic impacts is required. Here, we apply a TC detection and tracking method that was developed for ERA-40 data to time-slice experiments of two atmospheric general circulation models, namely the fifth version of the European Centre model of Hamburg model (MPI, Hamburg, Germany, T213) and the Japan Meteorological Agency/ Meteorological research Institute model (MRI, Tsukuba city, Japan, TL959). For each model, two climate simulations are available: a control simulation for present-day conditions to evaluate the model against observations, and a scenario simulation to assess future changes. The evaluation of the control simulations shows that the number of intense storms is underestimated due to the model resolution. To overcome this deficiency, simulated cyclone intensities are scaled to the best track data leading to a better representation of the TC intensities. Both models project an increased number of major hurricanes and modified trajectories in their scenario simulations. These changes have an effect on the projected loss potentials. However, these state-of-the-art models still yield contradicting results, and therefore they are not yet suitable to provide robust estimates of losses due to uncertainties in simulated hurricane intensity, location and frequency.