Diffusion approximations for insurance risk processes

We consider a risk-reserve process for an insurance company where premium income and the claim sum process are modeled as a renewal reward processes. Moreover, dividends are paid out according to a barrier rule. The aim of the article is to establish a diffusion approximation of this model and to compute ruin probabilities (in finite and in infinite time) and other relevant statistics approximately using the limiting diffusion process. We also demonstrate that, under special circumstances, there exists a stationary distribution for the limiting diffusion.     

Deregulation,workplace, and women: Nurses in private health care in India

The paper examines the growth of private health care in India in the context of its regulatory provisions and questions the work and employment conditions of female care workers (nurses) employed there. Nurses constitute 80% of the total workers in each nursing home/hospital. In the wake of increased demand for private health care since mid‐1990s, insertion of technology and investment is inducing transformation of nursing homes into multi‐ and super‐speciality hospitals resulting in changes in work organization of nurses. This has led to demand for larger numbers of workers. Employers gain by the segmentation in the nursing labor market, paying low wages. Workers face widespread social discrimination, long working hours, and high work intensity. The deplorable situation of a significant section of workers employed in this sector indicates state failure to control the private health sector. Lack of effective standards of work impacts nature of work of the workforce employed in various levels in the healthcare system.     

A MONETARY BUSINESS CYCLE MODEL FOR INDIA

A New Keynesian monetary business cycle model is constructed to study why monetary transmission in India is weak. Our models feature banking and financial sector frictions as well as an informal sector. The predominant channel of monetary transmission is a credit channel. Our main finding is that base money shocks have a larger and more persistent effect on output than an interest rate shock, as in the data. The presence of an informal sector hinders monetary transmission. Contrary to the consensus view, financial repression in the form of a statutory liquidity ratio and administered interest rates, does not weaken monetary transmission. (JEL E31, E32, E44, E52, E63)     

On bates of convergence in the central limit theorem for parameter estimation in general autoregressive model

This paper explores the rate at which the estimates of the unknown parameters in an autoregressive process converge in distribution to the normal variate.     

Accelerated life tests under competing weibull causes of failure

Accelerated life testing of a product under more severe than normal conditions is cawiionly used to reduce test time and cost. Data collected at such accelerated conditions is used to obtain estimates of parameters of a stress translation function which is then used to make inference about the product's, per" formance under normal conditions. This problem is considered when the product is a p component series system with WeibuH distributed component lifetimes liaving a caimon shape parameter. A general stress translation function is used and estimates of model parameters are obtained for various censoring schemes.     

On partial sufficiency: A review

The notion of a sufficient statistic—a statistic that summarizes in itself all the relevant information in the sample x about the universal parameter ω—is acclaimed as one of the most significant discoveries of Sir Ronald A. Fisher. It is however not well-recognized that the related notion of a partially sufficient statistic—a statistic that isolates and exhausts all the relevant and usable information in the sample about a sub-parameter θ=θ(ω)—can be very elusive if the question is posed in sample space terms. In this review article, the author tries to unravel the mystery that surrounds the notion of partial sufficiency. For mathematical details on some of the issues raised here one may refer to Basu (1977).     

Crossover design in clinical trials for binary response

In this paper, we consider a binary response model for the analysis of the two-treatment, two-period and four-sequence crossover design. We have introduced intra-patient drug dependency parameter in the model and provide two tests for the hypothesis of equality of treatment effects. We employ Monte Carlo simulation to compare our tests and a test that works under parallel design on the basis of type I error rate and power. We find that our procedures are dominant over the competitor with respect to power. Finally, we use a data set to illustrate the applicability of our procedure.     

On the ‘optimal’ density power divergence tuning parameter

The density power divergence, indexed by a single tuning parameter α, has proved to be a very useful tool in minimum distance inference. The family of density power divergences provides a generalized estimation scheme which includes likelihood-based procedures (represented by choice α=0 for the tuning parameter) as a special case. However, under data contamination, this scheme provides several more stable choices for model fitting and analysis (provided by positive values for the tuning parameter α). As larger values of α necessarily lead to a drop in model efficiency, determining the optimal value of α to provide the best compromise between model-efficiency and stability against data contamination in any real situation is a major challenge. In this paper, we provide a refinement of an existing technique with the aim of eliminating the dependence of the procedure on an initial pilot estimator. Numerical evidence is provided to demonstrate the very good performance of the method. Our technique has a general flavour, and we expect that similar tuning parameter selection algorithms will work well for other M-estimators, or any robust procedure that depends on the choice of a tuning parameter.     

Son targeting fertility behavior: Some consequences and determinants

This article draws out some implications of son targeting fertility behavior and studies its determinants. We demonstrate that such behavior has two notable implications at the aggregate level: (a) girls have a larger number of siblings (sibling effect), and (b) girls are born at relatively earlier parities within families (birth-order effect). Empirically testing for these effects, we find that both are present in many countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and North Africa but are absent in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Using maximum likelihood estimation, we study the effect of covariates on son targeting fertility behavior in India, a country that displays significant sibling and birth-order effects. We find that income and geographic location of families significantly affect son targeting behavior.