Moral Hazard in Health Insurance

Moral Hazard in Health Insurance
Author: Amy Finkelstein
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2014-12-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0231538685

Addressing the challenge of covering heath care expenses—while minimizing economic risks. Moral hazard—the tendency to change behavior when the cost of that behavior will be borne by others—is a particularly tricky question when considering health care. Kenneth J. Arrow’s seminal 1963 paper on this topic (included in this volume) was one of the first to explore the implication of moral hazard for health care, and Amy Finkelstein—recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic—here examines this issue in the context of contemporary American health care policy. Drawing on research from both the original RAND Health Insurance Experiment and her own research, including a 2008 Health Insurance Experiment in Oregon, Finkelstein presents compelling evidence that health insurance does indeed affect medical spending and encourages policy solutions that acknowledge and account for this. The volume also features commentaries and insights from other renowned economists, including an introduction by Joseph P. Newhouse that provides context for the discussion, a commentary from Jonathan Gruber that considers provider-side moral hazard, and reflections from Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth J. Arrow. “Reads like a fireside chat among a group of distinguished, articulate health economists.” —Choice

Economically Enabled Energy Management

Economically Enabled Energy Management
Author: Takeshi Hatanaka
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2020-04-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9811535760

This book gathers contributions from a multidisciplinary research team comprised of control engineering and economics researchers and formed to address a central interdisciplinary social issue, namely economically enabled energy management. The book’s primary focus is on achieving optimal energy management that is viable from both an engineering and economic standpoint. In addition to the theoretical results and techniques presented, several chapters highlight experimental case studies, which will benefit academic researchers and practitioners alike. The first three chapters present comprehensive overviews of respective social contexts, underscore the pressing need for economically efficient energy management systems and academic work on this emerging research topic, and identify fundamental differences between approaches in control engineering and economics. In turn, the next three chapters (Chapters 4–6) provide economics-oriented approaches to the subject. The following five chapters (Chapters 7–11) address optimal energy market design, integrating both physical and economic models. The book’s last three chapters (Chapters 12–14) mainly focus on the engineering aspects of next-generation energy management, though economic factors are also shown to play important roles.

The Handbook of Organizational Economics

The Handbook of Organizational Economics
Author: Robert Gibbons
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 1248
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691132798

(E-book available via MyiLibrary) In even the most market-oriented economies, most economic transactions occur not in markets but inside managed organizations, particularly business firms. Organizational economics seeks to understand the nature and workings of such organizations and their impact on economic performance. The Handbook of Organizational Economics surveys the major theories, evidence, and methods used in the field. It displays the breadth of topics in organizational economics, including the roles of individuals and groups in organizations, organizational structures and processes, the boundaries of the firm, contracts between and within firms, and more.

Probability Models for Economic Decisions, second edition

Probability Models for Economic Decisions, second edition
Author: Roger B. Myerson
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 569
Release: 2019-12-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262355604

An introduction to the use of probability models for analyzing risk and economic decisions, using spreadsheets to represent and simulate uncertainty. This textbook offers an introduction to the use of probability models for analyzing risks and economic decisions. It takes a learn-by-doing approach, teaching the student to use spreadsheets to represent and simulate uncertainty and to analyze the effect of such uncertainty on an economic decision. Students in applied business and economics can more easily grasp difficult analytical methods with Excel spreadsheets. The book covers the basic ideas of probability, how to simulate random variables, and how to compute conditional probabilities via Monte Carlo simulation. The first four chapters use a large collection of probability distributions to simulate a range of problems involving worker efficiency, market entry, oil exploration, repeated investment, and subjective belief elicitation. The book then covers correlation and multivariate normal random variables; conditional expectation; optimization of decision variables, with discussions of the strategic value of information, decision trees, game theory, and adverse selection; risk sharing and finance; dynamic models of growth; dynamic models of arrivals; and model risk. New material in this second edition includes two new chapters on additional dynamic models and model risk; new sections in every chapter; many new end-of-chapter exercises; and coverage of such topics as simulation model workflow, models of probabilistic electoral forecasting, and real options. The book comes equipped with Simtools, an open-source, free software used througout the book, which allows students to conduct Monte Carlo simulations seamlessly in Excel.

Contract Theory

Contract Theory
Author: Patrick Bolton
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 746
Release: 2004-12-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262025768

A comprehensive introduction to contract theory, emphasizing common themes and methodologies as well as applications in key areas. Despite the vast research literature on topics relating to contract theory, only a few of the field's core ideas are covered in microeconomics textbooks. This long-awaited book fills the need for a comprehensive textbook on contract theory suitable for use at the graduate and advanced undergraduate levels. It covers the areas of agency theory, information economics, and organization theory, highlighting common themes and methodologies and presenting the main ideas in an accessible way. It also presents many applications in all areas of economics, especially labor economics, industrial organization, and corporate finance. The book emphasizes applications rather than general theorems while providing self-contained, intuitive treatment of the simple models analyzed. In this way, it can also serve as a reference for researchers interested in building contract-theoretic models in applied contexts.The book covers all the major topics in contract theory taught in most graduate courses. It begins by discussing such basic ideas in incentive and information theory as screening, signaling, and moral hazard. Subsequent sections treat multilateral contracting with private information or hidden actions, covering auction theory, bilateral trade under private information, and the theory of the internal organization of firms; long-term contracts with private information or hidden actions; and incomplete contracts, the theory of ownership and control, and contracting with externalities. Each chapter ends with a guide to the relevant literature. Exercises appear in a separate chapter at the end of the book.

A Survey Of Dynamic Games In Economics

A Survey Of Dynamic Games In Economics
Author: Ngo Van Long
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2010-09-23
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 981446595X

This book provides readers with a comprehensive survey of models of dynamic games in economics, including an extensive coverage of numerous fields of applications. It will also discuss and explain main concepts and techniques used in dynamic games, and inform readers of its major developments while equipping them with tools and ideas that will aid in the formulation of solutions for problems. A Survey of Dynamic Games in Economics will interest those who wish to study more about the conceptions, approaches and models that are applied in the domain of dynamic games.

The Oxford Handbook of Banking

The Oxford Handbook of Banking
Author: Allen N. Berger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1309
Release: 2019-10-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0192558072

The Oxford Handbook of Banking, Third Edition provides an overview and analysis of developments and research in this rapidly evolving field. Aimed at graduate students of economics, banking, and finance; academics; practitioners; regulators; and policy makers, it strikes a balance between abstract theory, empirical analysis, and practitioner and policy-related material. Split into five distinct parts The Oxford Handbook of Banking is a one-stop source of relevant research in banking. It examines the theory of banking, bank operations and performance, regulatory and policy perspectives, macroeconomic perspectives in banking, and international differences in banking structures and environments. Taking a global perspective it examines banking systems in the United States, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Africa, the European Union, transition countries of Europe, and Latin America. Thematic issues covered include financial innovation and technological change; consumer and mortgage lending; Islamic banking; and how banks influence real economic activity. Fully revised and now including brand new chapters on a range of geographical regions, bank bailouts and bail-ins, and behavioral economics amongst many other topics, this third edition of The Oxford Handbook of Banking provides readers with insights to seminal and contemporary research in banking and an opportunity to learn about the diversity of financial systems around the world.

Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms

Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms
Author:
Publisher: SIAM
Total Pages: 896
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780898715385

From the January 2003 symposium come just over 100 papers addressing a range of topics related to discrete algorithms. Examples of topics covered include packing Steiner trees, counting inversions in lists, directed scale-free graphs, quantum property testing, and improved results for directed multicut. The papers were not formally refereed, but attempts were made to verify major results. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Advanced Microeconomics for Contract, Institutional, and Organizational Economics

Advanced Microeconomics for Contract, Institutional, and Organizational Economics
Author: W. Bentley MacLeod
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262046873

A graduate textbook on microeconomics, covering decision theory, game theory, and the foundations of contract theory, with a unique focus on the empirical. This graduate-level text on microeconomics, covering such topics as decision theory, game theory, bargaining theory, contract theory, trade under asymmetric information, and relational contract theory, is unique in its emphasis on the interplay between theory and evidence. It reviews the microeconomic theory of exchange “from the ground up,” aiming to produce a set of models and hypotheses amenable to empirical exploration, with particular focus on models that are useful for the study of contracts, institutions, and organizations. It explores research that extends price theory to the exchange of commodities when markets are incomplete, discussing recent developments in the field. Topics covered include the relationship between theory and evidence; decision theory as it is used in contract theory and institutional design; game theory; axiomatic and strategic bargaining theory; agency theory and the class of models that are considered to constitute contract theory, with discussions of moral hazard and trade with asymmetric information; and the theory of relational contracts. The final chapter offers a nontechnical review that provides a guide to which model is the most appropriate for a particular application. End-of-chapter exercises help students expand their understanding of the material, and an appendix provides brief introduction to optimization theory and the welfare theorem of general equilibrium theory. Students are assumed to be familiar with general equilibrium theory and basic constrained optimization theory.

Adversarial Machine Learning

Adversarial Machine Learning
Author: Aneesh Sreevallabh Chivukula
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2023-03-06
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3030997723

A critical challenge in deep learning is the vulnerability of deep learning networks to security attacks from intelligent cyber adversaries. Even innocuous perturbations to the training data can be used to manipulate the behaviour of deep networks in unintended ways. In this book, we review the latest developments in adversarial attack technologies in computer vision; natural language processing; and cybersecurity with regard to multidimensional, textual and image data, sequence data, and temporal data. In turn, we assess the robustness properties of deep learning networks to produce a taxonomy of adversarial examples that characterises the security of learning systems using game theoretical adversarial deep learning algorithms. The state-of-the-art in adversarial perturbation-based privacy protection mechanisms is also reviewed. We propose new adversary types for game theoretical objectives in non-stationary computational learning environments. Proper quantification of the hypothesis set in the decision problems of our research leads to various functional problems, oracular problems, sampling tasks, and optimization problems. We also address the defence mechanisms currently available for deep learning models deployed in real-world environments. The learning theories used in these defence mechanisms concern data representations, feature manipulations, misclassifications costs, sensitivity landscapes, distributional robustness, and complexity classes of the adversarial deep learning algorithms and their applications. In closing, we propose future research directions in adversarial deep learning applications for resilient learning system design and review formalized learning assumptions concerning the attack surfaces and robustness characteristics of artificial intelligence applications so as to deconstruct the contemporary adversarial deep learning designs. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to Adversarial Machine Learning practitioners and Adversarial Artificial Intelligence researchers whose work involves the design and application of Adversarial Deep Learning.