there may be an argument for a carefully trained and experienced small cadre of specialists to do the work. The existing procedures have many faults, some of which I highlighted earlier this year (21 May, p 1421). The working party has answered criticisms of delay in dealing with HM(61)112 procedures by setting indicative time limits which it hopes will keep cases to a maximum of eight months f...

Health insurance specific to one type of medical care (e.g., prescription drug coverage) creates a change in medical care consumption behavior, beyond standard moral hazard, arising both from the differential cost-sharing and relative effectiveness of care in producing health. We model the choice of supplemental health insurance among Medicare beneficiaries, their medical care demand, and subse...

This paper uses 10 years of enrollment data at three Texas public universities to examine whether, to what extent, and in what ways racial and ethnic differences in college achievement can be traced to high school attended. To identify school attributes responsible for unequal college readiness, we estimate fixed effects models for three high school strata defined by the socioeconomic compositi...

Garlic has long been used medicinally, most recently for its cardiovascular, antineoplastic, and antimicrobial properties. Sulfur compounds, including allicin, appear to be the active components in the root bulb of the garlic plant. Studies show significant but modest lipid-lowering effects and antiplatelet activity. Significant blood pressure reduction is not consistently noted. There is some ...

Human Exposure Trichloroethylene is a common environmental contaminant at Superfund sites, Department of Defense facilities, and certain manufacturing operations (e.g., aircraft, spacecraft). It has been found at approximately 852 of the 1,416 sites proposed for inclusion on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Priorities List. On the basis of data reported to the EPA Toxic R...

With the rapid growth of nanotechnology and future bulk manufacture of nanomaterials comes the need to determine, understand and counteract any adverse health effects of these materials that may occur during manufacture, during use, or accidentally. Nanotechnology is expanding rapidly and will affect many aspects of everyday life; there are already hundreds of products that utilize nanoparticle...

In this paper, we examine case studies from three different areas of insurance practice: health care, workers’ compensation, and group term life. These different case studies illustrate how the broad class of panel data models can be applied to different functional areas and to data that have different features. Panel data, also known as longitudinal data, models are regression-type models that...

Teacher quality is an important factor in improving student achievement. As such, policymakers have constructed a number of different credentials to identify high quality teachers. Unfortunately, few of the credentials used in developing countries have been validated (in terms of whether teachers holding such credentials actually improve student achievement). In this study, we employ a student-...