Extending health care coverage: Potential linkages between statutory social security and community-based social protection

Abstract   The extension of social health protection in developing countries is widely recognized as a priority. Various financing and institutional methods can be used in pursuing this objective, but none of them can achieve universal coverage in the short term. Based on an analysis of the respective strengths and weaknesses of social health insurance and community-based health care schemes, this article demonstrates the high potential of coverage extension strategies that use a pluralistic institutional approach to establish linkages and exploit complementarities optimally. A typology of potential linkages among different methods is presented and their value added illustrated using country examples.     

Deciding between GARCH and stochastic volatility via strong decision rules

The GARCH and stochastic volatility (SV) models are two competing, well-known and often used models to explain the volatility of financial series. In this paper, we consider a closed form estimator for a stochastic volatility model and derive its asymptotic properties. We confirm our theoretical results by a simulation study. In addition, we propose a set of simple, strongly consistent decision rules to compare the ability of the GARCH and the SV model to fit the characteristic features observed in high frequency financial data such as high kurtosis and slowly decaying autocorrelation function of the squared observations. These rules are based on a number of moment conditions that is allowed to increase with sample size. We show that our selection procedure leads to choosing the model that fits best, or the simplest model under equivalence, with probability one as the sample size increases. The finite sample size behavior of our procedure is analyzed via simulations. Finally, we provide an application to stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average index.     

Dynamic Global Games of Regime Change: Learning,Multiplicity, and the Timing of Attacks

Global games of regime change—coordination games of incomplete information in which a status quo is abandoned once a sufficiently large fraction of agents attack it—have been used to study crises phenomena such as currency attacks, bank runs, debt crises, and political change. We extend the static benchmark examined in the literature by allowing agents to take actions in many periods and to learn about the underlying fundamentals over time. We first provide a simple recursive algorithm for the characterization of monotone equilibria. We then show how the interaction of the knowledge that the regime survived past attacks with the arrival of information over time, or with changes in fundamentals, leads to interesting equilibrium properties. First, multiplicity may obtain under the same conditions on exogenous information that guarantee uniqueness in the static benchmark. Second, fundamentals may predict the eventual fate of the regime but not the timing or the number of attacks. Finally, equilibrium dynamics can alternate between phases of tranquility—where no attack is possible—and phases of distress—where a large attack can occur—even without changes in fundamentals.     

Bootstrapping regression models with BLUS residuals

To bootstrap a regression problem, pairs of response and explanatory variables or residuals can be resam‐pled, according to whether we believe that the explanatory variables are random or fixed. In the latter case, different residuals have been proposed in the literature, including the ordinary residuals (Efron 1979), standardized residuals (Bickel & Freedman 1983) and Studentized residuals (Weber 1984). Freedman (1981) has shown that the bootstrap from ordinary residuals is asymptotically valid when the number of cases increases and the number of variables is fixed. Bickel & Freedman (1983) have shown the asymptotic validity for ordinary residuals when the number of variables and the number of cases both increase, provided that the ratio of the two converges to zero at an appropriate rate. In this paper, the authors introduce the use of BLUS (Best Linear Unbiased with Scalar covariance matrix) residuals in bootstrapping regression models. The main advantage of the BLUS residuals, introduced in Theil (1965), is that they are uncorrelated. The main disadvantage is that only n —p residuals can be computed for a regression problem with n cases and p variables. The asymptotic results of Freedman (1981) and Bickel & Freedman (1983) for the ordinary (and standardized) residuals are generalized to the BLUS residuals. A small simulation study shows that even though only n — p residuals are available, in small samples bootstrapping BLUS residuals can be as good as, and sometimes better than, bootstrapping from standardized or Studentized residuals.     

Correlation in a Bayesian framework

The authors consider the correlation between two arbitrary functions of the data and a parameter when the parameter is regarded as a random variable with given prior distribution. They show how to compute such a correlation and use closed form expressions to assess the dependence between parameters and various classical or robust estimators thereof, as well as between p‐values and posterior probabilities of the null hypothesis in the one‐sided testing problem. Other applications involve the Dirichlet process and stationary Gaussian processes. Using this approach, the authors also derive a general nonparametric upper bound on Bayes risks.     

Does job complexity mitigate the negative effect of emotion-rule dissonance on employee burnout?

In interactions with clients or patients, human service workers are at risk of experiencing discrepancies between felt and organizationally mandated emotions (i.e. emotion-rule dissonance). Given the documented detrimental effects of such discrepancies on employee strain, the present study investigated whether job complexity mitigates the relation between emotion-rule dissonance and employee burnout using data from a two-wave panel study of eldercare workers (N?=?583, 16-month time lag). Structural equation modelling revealed that emotion-rule dissonance at Time 1 preceded emotional exhaustion and depersonalization at Time 2. Beyond that, employees whose work offered job complexity were found to suffer less from emotional exhaustion and depersonalization when encountering discrepancies between felt and stipulated emotions compared to employees who conducted noncomplex work. Thus, designing complex tasks appears to be a crucial starting point for alleviating employee burnout in jobs that provoke emotion-rule dissonance.     

Bertrand competition with asymmetric costs: a solution in pure strategies

Theory and Decision - We consider a Bertrand duopoly with homogeneous goods and we allow for asymmetric marginal costs. We derive the Myopic Stable Set in pure strategies as introduced by Demuynck...     

Blinking While Speaking and Talking,Hearing, and Listening: Communication or Individual Underlying Process?

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - Why do eye-blinks activate during conversation? We manipulated informational content and communicative intent exchanged within dyads. By comparison to a silent...