Priority setting is inevitable on the path towards universal health coverage. All countries experience a gap between their population's health needs and what is economically feasible for governments to provide. Can priority setting ever be fair and ethically acceptable? Fairness requires that unmet health needs be addressed, but in a fair order. Three criteria for priority setting are widely ac...

Discussion of reserves’ adequacy has renewed after financial crises in Asia and Russia. It became evident that large international reserves made countries less prone to crisis. Special attention was paid to the ratio of a country’s external short-term debt to reserves as a very successful marker of potential external vulnerability that generally outperforms other reserves’ adequacy criteria. Th...

The present paper examines the effectiveness of financial overcompensation as a means to enhance customer loyalty after a product failure. Overcompensation implies that customers are entitled to a refund that is larger than the purchase price. It is, however, still unclear whether large overcompensations entail saturation effects, or alternatively, result in an actual drop in customer loyalty. ...

In Europe, health insurance arrangements are under reform. These arrangements redistribute collectively financed resources to ensure access to health care for all. Allocation of health services is historically based on medical needs, but use of other criteria, such as lifestyle, is debated upon. Does the general public also have preferences for conditional allocation? This depends on their opin...

In this paper we assess Bayesian estimation and prediction using integrated Laplace approximation (INLA) on a stochastic volatility model. This was performed through a Monte Carlo study with 1000 simulated time series. To evaluate the estimation method, two criteria were considered: the bias and square root of the mean square error (smse). The criteria used for prediction are the one step ahead...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common disabling neurologic condition in young adults and imposes high financial and quality of life costs on patients, their families, and society. Yet, developments in the battle against MS include new treatments to slow its progression and updated diagnostic criteria that can accelerate diagnosis and effective treatment. This article offers a review and up...

Study selection and analysis: Inclusion criteria: experimental or quasi-experimental studies assessing systematic approaches to care using multiple types of treatment modalities—for example, guidelines, protocols, algorithms, or care plans, and using multiple types of treatment modalities—for example, education, reminders, and financial incentives for patients and providers. Exclusion criteria:...

Decision making and technical decision analysis demand computer-aided techniques and therefore more and more support by formal techniques. In recent years fuzzy decision analysis and related techniques gained importance as an efficient method for planning and optimization applications in fields like production planning, financial and economical modeling and forecasting or classification. It is ...

As a sequel to the article by Ken Lambert and Tara McKeon, we propose a model by which defects in lead aprons may easily be evaluated on a routine basis. The model is applicable to lead aprons of various lead equivalent thicknesses. As recommended rejection criteria, we have used the concept of additional dose that an individual might receive due to defects in the lead (Pb) apron. The model has...

Many accounting and finance problems require ordinal multi-state classification decisions, (e.g., control risk, bond rating, financial distress, etc.), yet few decision support systems are available to aid decision makers in such tasks. In this study, we develop a Neural Network based decision support system (NN-DSS) to classify firms in four ordinal states of financial condition namely healthy...