The quality of financial analysts’ equity research is pivotal for an efficient capital market. This study investigates the quality of earnings forecasts and stock recommendations for initial public offerings (IPOs) in Germany. The empirical study includes 12,605 earnings forecasts and 6,209 stock recommendations of individual analysts for the time period from 1997 to 2004. The focus of this stu...

Decentralization has long been advocated as a desirable process for improving health systems. Nevertheless, we still lack a sufficient analytical framework for systematically studying how decentralization can achieve this objective. We do not have adequate means of analyzing the three key elements of decentralization: (1) the amount of choice that is transferred from central institutions to ins...

OBJECTIVE This study evaluated knowledge, opinions and compliance related to Uganda's comprehensive smoke-free law among hospitality venues in Kampala Uganda. DESIGN This multi-method study presents cross-sectional findings of the extent of compliance in the early phase of Uganda's comprehensive smoke-free law (2 months postimplementation; pre-enforcement). SETTING Bars, pubs and restaurant...

The increasing financial pressures of health care insurance coverage have become a key issue for advanced economies. This study tests whether hospital financial pressures have an effect on the health of the uninsured population. To do so, the author investigates the implications of managed care for the uninsured in the United States. Managed care penetration has increased financial pressures on...

PROBLEM During China's transition to a market economy in the 1980s and 1990s, the rural population faced substantial barriers to accessing health care and encountered heavier financial burdens than urban residents in paying for necessary health services. APPROACH In 2003, China started to implement a rural cooperative medical scheme (RCMS), mainly through government subsidies. The scheme oper...

Although the theory of multinational banking has pointed out the importance of local profit opportunities, the empirical evidence is still poor and deserves further investigation. To this end, we analyse entry decisions and activity levels of foreign banks operating in Italy between 1983 and 1998. We consider 22 OECD countries, 10 of which had at least one bank (branch or subsidiary) in Italy. ...

Canada's publicly funded healthcare system ensures that medically necessary hospital and physician services are available without financial barriers, but not all community-based care is covered. Consequently, many patients experience financial shocks (FS) related to community-based healthcare services not funded by government, and perhaps also from lost income, a situation that may be difficult...

Two of the main puzzles in international economics are the consumption and the portfolio home biases. They are empirically related: countries that are more open to trade also have more internationally diversified portfolios. In a two-country stochastic equilibrium model, I prove that introducing trade costs in goods market alone, as suggested by Obstfeld and Rogoff [2000], is not sufficient to ...

BACKGROUND This paper presents the prevalence of health promotion in workplaces in Poland. It characterises the undertaken ac tions, their rationale and perceived obstacles. It analyses the diversity of these phenomena in the companies of different financial soundness and level of employment. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study was conducted with the use of Computer Assisted Telephone Interview in...

This paper provides a rationale for the relatively poor macroeconomic performance in the post-Soviet transition economies based upon the concept of financial repression. Policies undertaken to assist in financing government expenditures caused financial repression and financial fragmentation, to use the terms introduced by McKinnon (1973). After an introductory section, I introduce a theoretica...