Risk and the Outsourcing of Risk Management Services: The Case of Claims Management

Outsourcing of risk management activities is a well-established practice, involving a range of services from actuarial audits to loss control training to risk financing management to claims administration services. Surprisingly, little work has been done to examine the risks associated with outsourcing risk management activities. This article examines the outsourcing of claims management services by reviewing the research on outsourcing risks and by interviewing leading practitioners. In doing so, the authors draw some provisional observations about risks and risk costs associated with outsourcing claims management services—observations that seem generalizable to all risk management outsourcing.     

Corruption,Cooperation and Endogenous Time Discount Rates

Virtually all uses of repeated games tostudy of cooperation assume that people'stime discount rates are exogenous andfixed. Here we offer an evolutionary gameembedded in a multi-period model ofinvestment and consumption in whichindividual time discounts are determined bytheir convergence to values determined byEvolutionary Stable Strategies. Oursubstantive motivation, though, iscorruption and its relationship to economicgrowth. To understand the observedrelationship between levels of corruptionand economic indicators of social welfare,we argue that corruption is a form ofcooperation that requires closeinterpersonal monitoring. If we assume,moreover, that when people discount thefuture greatly the only sustainable formsof cooperation are those that allow forclose monitoring, then our analysis can beinterpreted as a dynamic model of therelationship between corruption andinvestment.     

医院人事制度改革的思考

随着事业单位人事制度改革的不断深入,做为占有事业单位很大份额的医院,其人事制度改革,显的尤为重要。在计划体制下医院曾为全民医疗、预防、保健康复和为社会主义经济建设保障健康的人力资源做出了巨大贡献。但随着市场经济的不断完善,现有的用人机制严重阻碍了医院的发展,使医院不能应对激烈的市场竞争。因此,医院人事管理制度的改革已成为医院一项重要而紧迫的任务。 1.人事制度改革要有政策支持医院人事制度改革不是单一的医院内部管理的问题,牵一发而动全局。必须在国家或地区的政     

改革和完善党的领导方式和执政方式探析

改革和完善党的领导方式和执政方式,是时代、国情、党情的发展变化对党的建设提出的客观要求。必须按照“实现社会主义民主政治的制度化、规范化和程序化”要求,积极推进党的领导制度、组织制度、领导体制、机构设置、工作制度、工作机制和工作方式等方面的改革。     

Economic Freedom and Taxation: Is There a Trade-off in the Locational Competition Between Countries?

This paper investigates the relationshipbetween economic freedomand taxation. We argue that an economicallyfree environment improvesthe attractiveness of a location, which, inturn, enables governmentsto levy higher business taxes. To test thishypothesis empirically, weestimate the impact of economic freedom onthe national tax policy,where the latter is measured by thecorporate tax revenue related toGNP (corporate tax ratio). We utilize adata set of 46 developed and lessdeveloped countries between 1980 and 1997and find a clear confirmationof our hypothesis. Further, a simulationanalysis reveals that the observedchange in economic freedom has equalizedthe international distributionof corporate tax ratios.     

Book reviews

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Chief executive officers and voluntary environmental performance: Costa Rica's certification for sustainable tourism

This study evaluates whether the education, environmental expertise, and nationality of firms' chief executive officers (CEOs) are associated with greater participation and environmental performance in a voluntary environmental program implemented in a developing nation. Specifically, we collected data from the Certification for Sustainable Tourism (CST) program, a voluntary initiative aimed at promoting beyond-compliance environmental performance by hotels operating in Costa Rica. Our findings suggest that CEOs' level of formal education and environmental expertise appear to be significantly associated with higher corporate participation in voluntary programs and also with higher beyond-compliance environmental performance ratings. Contrary to conventional expectations, CEOs from industrialized countries (as opposed to developing countries) do not appear to show a statistically significant association with participation in the CST program and with higher beyond-compliance environmental performance.