The objective of this study is to evaluate farm, household, and financial characteristics of cash grain farmers’ decisions of whether to purchase revenue insurance. Using farm-level data these characteristics were identified by estimating a logit model of revenue insurance purchase decisions by farm operators. Results indicate that farm operators with the ability to self-insure through accumula...

Although contracting with health plans can produce a wealth of patients for a medical practice, it can also increase practice overhead substantially and result in deeply discounted fees. As a result, many family physicians have had to see more patients in a day and work more hours just to maintain their income. Others have responded to these pressures by reinventing an old practice model – cash...

An examination of survey responses about Individual Retirement Account (IRA) holdings reveals that individuals often take all-or-nothing approaches in their decisions to diversify across the asset categories of cash, bonds, and equity. Two thirds of survey respondents put their entire IRA holdings into a single asset category. A surprisingly large proportion of funds is held in cash, while only...

The Repayment Policy for Multiple Loans is about a given set of loans and a monthly incoming cash flow: what is the best way to allocate the monthly income to repay such loans? In this article, we close the almost 20-year-old open question about how to model the repayment policy for multiple loans problem together with its computational complexity. Thus, we propose a mixed integer linear progra...

Poor women with children in Ecuador were selected at random for a cash transfer equivalent to 7 percent of monthly expenditures. The transfer is greater than the increase in schooling costs at the end of primary school, but it is less than 20 percent of median child labor earnings in the labor market. Poor families with children in school at the time of the award use the extra income to postpon...

This study estimates 2007 national poverty rates using an approach largely conceptualized by a 1995 National Academy of Sciences panel and similar to the supplemental poverty measure that will soon be produced by the U.S. Census Bureau. The study uses poverty thresholds based on expenditures for shelter, food, clothing, and utilities, as well as a measure of family income that includes earnings...

We decompose changes in the Gini coefficient to investigate whether the Conditional Cash Tranfers (CCT) have had an inequality reducing effect in three Latin American countries: Brasil, Mexico and Chile. We conclude that CCT programs helped reducing inequality between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. The share of total income represented by the CCTs is very small, less than 1%. But as their tar...

Understanding financial statements is imperative for better management of corporations, while system dynamics (SD) offers dynamic modeling and simulation skills for better strategies of management. This paper tries to present a consolidated principle of accounting system dynamics on the basis of simple principles from SD and accounting system. It is, then, specifically applied to model corporat...

The share of finance in U.S. GDP displays large historical variations. I argue, using evidence and theory, that corporate finance is a key factor behind these evolutions. Corporate demand for intermediation depends crucially on the relative investment opportunities of firms with low cash flows (young firms) and firms with high cash flows (incumbents). A simple general equilibrium model is devel...

In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their degree of revealed credit constraints. Specifically, we analyze how these Americans spend their income tax refunds, using transaction-level data from a stored-value card product. Card-holders may choose among several tax settlement and loan options, effectively receiving cash as much as 90 days earl...