Search results for "Strategy"

COVID-19 and International Business: A Viewpoint

2020

La capitalización de los arrendamientos operativos: Análisis del impacto en las empresas del IBEX 35

2018

Purpose: This paper analyzes the consequences of the change in the accounting rules about operating leases in the companies and users of financial information. Design/methodology: We use the constructive capitalization method to estimate the liabilities and leased assets and perform an ex ante analysis of the regulatory impact in the IBEX 35 non-financial companies. Non-parametric tests are employed to examine the effect on certain ratios, and through a multivariate regression we investigate the business characteristics that explain the variation of EBITDA. Findings: The ratios under study are significantly affected by the capitalization of operating leases. The explanatory analysis shows t…

The Effects of a Structured Curriculum on Preschool Effectiveness: A Field Experiment

2021

Abstract: This study tests an intervention that introduces a structured curriculum for five-year-olds into the universal preschool context of Norway, where the business as usual is an unstructured curriculum. We conduct a field experiment with 691 five-year-olds in 71 preschools and measure treatment impacts on children’s development in mathematics, language, and executive functioning. The nine-month intervention has effects on child development at post-intervention and the effects persist one year following the end of the treatment. The effects are mainly driven by the preschools identified as low-quality at baseline, indicating that a structured curriculum can reduce inequality in early c…

Demand for life annuities from married couples with a bequest motive

2006

The aim of this paper is to explain the ‘annuities puzzle’ in greater depth by introducing the bequest motive. It will try to determine whether this motive really is a relevant feature influencing the demand for life annuities from married couples. With this aim in mind, we develop an optimization model of the utility provided by purchasing a life annuity with contingent survivor benefit or a joint survivor life annuity. Our model is based on that first put forward by Brown and Poterba (2000), to which we have added elements from other models, such as Friedman and Warshawsky's (1990) and Vidal and Lejárraga's (2004), which include the bequest motive. This will enable us to calculate the ann…

Has pharmaceutical research become more scientific?

1996

Pharmaceutical research continues to be highly empirical, despite some recent writings arguing that it has become more scientific. Contrary to a study asserting that Mevacor, Tagamet, and Capoten demonstrate the success of targeted research, these drugs were discovered only after many years of following leads. Two hypotheses implied by the proposition that pharmaceutical research has become more scientific are tested. The first hypothesis is that the uncertainty of research has fallen. The second is that the number of publications by scientists in the industry has increased. Both are rejected.

On equity in education again : an international comparison

1985

This article proposes an approach to answering two questions: first, does investment in education help growth; second, does the allocation of investment in education matter? I develop a model where individual ability is heterogeneous and education both ...

Information Integration, Coordination Failures, and Quality of Prescribing

2022

Poor information flows hamper coordination, potentially leading to suboptimal decisions in health care. We examine the effects of a large-scale policy of health information integration. We use the staggered adoption of a nationwide electronic prescribing system over four years in Finland and prescription-level administrative data. Our results show no discernible effect on the probability of co-prescribing harmful drugs on average, but the heterogeneity analysis reveals that this probability reduces in rural regions, by 35 percent. This substantial reduction is driven by interacting prescriptions from different physicians and generalists. Information integration can therefore improve the coo…

An assessment of the 2011 Spanish pension reform using the Swedish system as a benchmark

2013

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to make an assessment of the 2011 reform of the public pension system in Spain using the Swedish pension system as a benchmark, although some reference to the US pension system is also made. The paper focuses on the reform, explaining its aims, breaking down the main contents, critically examining the official view and describing the expected ageing of the Spanish population. This approach complements the quantitative analyses performed by other researchers and will enable us to assess the reformed system with the focus on four main areas: actuarial fairness, actuarial transparency, solvency and communication with the public. The main conclusion is that the …

How does an allowance for a non-working younger partner affect the retirement behaviour of couples?

2021

AbstractWe examine the effect of the partner allowance (PA) in the Dutch pension system on the retirement decisions of couples using administrative data. PA was paid to people who receive the public old-age pension with a partner younger than the state pension age (SPA) and with a low own income. PA worked as a financial incentive to retire earlier, especially for the younger partners. As of 1 April 2015, new old-age pensioners are no longer entitled to this allowance. We estimate the effect of this reform on the retirement behaviour of each spouse. To account for the fact that at the same time, another reform essentially put an end to generous early retirement arrangements, we compare sing…

Hedging foreign exchange rate risk: Multi-currency diversification

2016

Abstract This article proposes a multi-currency cross-hedging strategy that minimizes the exchange risk. The use of derivatives in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is not common but, despite its complexity, can be interesting for those with international activities. In particular, the reduction in the exchange risk borne through the use of natural multi-currency cross-hedging is measured, considering Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) and Value-at-Risk (VaR) for measuring market risk instead of the variance. CVaR is minimized using linear programmes, while a multiobjective genetic algorithm is designed for minimizing VaR, considering two scenarios for each currency. The results obtai…