scholarly journals The role of insurance in business recovery after a natural disaster: The case of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Porntida Poontirakul

<p>We aim to investigate the role of insurance in business recovery following the devastating Christchurch earthquake in February, 22nd, 2011. We analyze data from two business surveys conducted after the earthquake to examine how insurance affected business operation in the aftermath of the earthquake both in the short-term and longer-term. For the short-term analysis, we use a combination of propensity score matching (PSM) and linear probability model (LPM) to analyze the data. We first estimate the propensity scores for insurance take-up of each firm conditional on the firm’s individual characteristics. Stratification based on the estimated propensity scores is used to match the treated (insured) and the control (uninsured) firms. We then estimate the probability of firms’ continuing operations with a set of control variables to account for the level of damage and disruption caused by the quake in each stratum. We find little evidence of any beneficial effect of insurance coverage on business continuity in the short-run. For the longer-term analysis, we analyze the available survey data using logistic regression. The result suggests that business interruption insurance significantly promotes increased level of long-term productivity for surviving firms following the earthquake.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Porntida Poontirakul

<p>We aim to investigate the role of insurance in business recovery following the devastating Christchurch earthquake in February, 22nd, 2011. We analyze data from two business surveys conducted after the earthquake to examine how insurance affected business operation in the aftermath of the earthquake both in the short-term and longer-term. For the short-term analysis, we use a combination of propensity score matching (PSM) and linear probability model (LPM) to analyze the data. We first estimate the propensity scores for insurance take-up of each firm conditional on the firm’s individual characteristics. Stratification based on the estimated propensity scores is used to match the treated (insured) and the control (uninsured) firms. We then estimate the probability of firms’ continuing operations with a set of control variables to account for the level of damage and disruption caused by the quake in each stratum. We find little evidence of any beneficial effect of insurance coverage on business continuity in the short-run. For the longer-term analysis, we analyze the available survey data using logistic regression. The result suggests that business interruption insurance significantly promotes increased level of long-term productivity for surviving firms following the earthquake.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (8) ◽  
pp. 1081-1099 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Barber ◽  
Dana Hollie

PurposeThe purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to examine the incremental contribution of product market fluidity (P_THREAT), another measure of competition from that of the Herfindahl index (H_COMP) and (2) to examine how a research and development (R&D) real activities earnings management strategy to meet an earnings target is influenced by competition.Design/methodology/approachUsing a linear probability model, we test whether P_THREAT is incremental to the H_COMP competition measure and whether it influences the likelihood of firms using abnormally low R&D real activities earnings management to meet an earnings target.FindingsWe find that P_THREAT is incrementally informative to the commonly used Herfindahl measure of competition in predicting abnormally low R&D real activities earnings management activities. This finding is consistent with the notion of examining P_THREAT because the Herfindahl index alone may be incomplete, depending on the product makeup of a company. The negative coefficient suggests that reducing discretionary spending on R&D in the short run could have a detrimental effect on long-term profits because bypassed R&D opportunities would put firms at a disadvantage with their competitors' R&D efforts. In contrast, we find that firms are more likely to use R&D activities earnings management as a mechanism to meet an earnings target when P_THREAT is high. This suggests that when high competitive pressure exists, firms are more likely to use abnormally low R&D as a mechanism to meet an earnings target.Originality/valueWe specifically focus on R&D activities earnings management because our primary competition measure, P_THREAT, captures changes in rival firms' products relative to the firm. Because R&D is primarily what drives product change, R&D is the type of real activities earnings management that is most relevant to our competition measure. Hence, this study contributes to the literature by examining how competition influences the likelihood of firms possibly engaging in R&D activities earnings management and meeting earnings targets in the presence of P_THREAT competition.


2017 ◽  
Vol 239 ◽  
pp. R32-R52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Domonkos Tomáš ◽  
Ostrihoň Filip ◽  
Šikulová Ivana ◽  
Širaňová Mária

The EU established an early warning system by introducing the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) in the wake of the recent recession. Nevertheless, it has been found by some authors to be rather vague when launching the Excessive Imbalances Procedure. Performed analysis reflects on such views and treats the MIP indicators as a system while assessing the significance of all particular variables separately. This assessment was accomplished by applying a multivariate unbalanced logit model, utilising all 14 MIP headline indicators, using time horizons ranging from one to three years before crisis, which was represented by periods with output gap lower than negative 2 per cent. The approach was confronted with the estimates of a linear probability model to provide an idea about the robustness of the results. In the short term, activity rates, youth unemployment rates and private sector debt are the best performing indicators, complemented by current account balances in the long term.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Kamlesh Kumar Shukla

FIIs are companies registered outside India. In the past four years there has been more than $41 trillion worth of FII funds invested in India. This has been one of the major reasons on the bull market witnessing unprecedented growth with the BSE Sensex rising 221% in absolute terms in this span. The present downfall of the market too is influenced as these FIIs are taking out some of their invested money. Though there is a lot of value in this market and fundamentally there is a lot of upside in it. For long-term value investors, there’s little because for worry but short term traders are adversely getting affected by the role of FIIs are playing at the present. Investors should not panic and should remain invested in sectors where underlying earnings growth has little to do with financial markets or global economy.


1997 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian De Vries

This article introduces a volume devoted to the examination of later-life bereavement: an analysis of variation in cause, course, and consequence. Six articles address and represent this variation and comprise this volume: 1) Prigerson et al. present case histories of the traumatic grief of spouses; 2) Hays et al. highlight the bereavement experiences of siblings in contrast to those spouses and friends; 3) Moss et al. address the role of gender in middle-aged children's responses to parent death; 4) Bower focuses on the language adopted by these adult children in accepting the death of a parent; 5) de Vries et al. explore the long-term, longitudinal effects on the psychological and somatic functioning of parents following the death of an adult child; and 6) Fry presents the short-term and longitudinal reactions of grandparents to the death of a grandchild. A concluding article is offered by de Vries stressing both the unique and common features of these varied bereavement experiences touching on some of the empirical issues and suggesting potential implications and applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5024
Author(s):  
 Vítor Manuel de Sousa Gabriel ◽  
María Mar Miralles-Quirós ◽  
José Luis Miralles-Quirós

This paper analyses the links established between environmental indices and the oil price adopting a double perspective, long-term and short-term relationships. For that purpose, we employ the Bounds Test and bivariate conditional heteroscedasticity models. In the long run, the pattern of behaviour of environmental indices clearly differed from that of the oil prices, and it was not possible to identify cointegrating vectors. In the short-term, it was possible to conclude that, in contemporaneous terms, the variables studied tended to follow similar paths. When the lag of the oil price variable was considered, the impacts produced on the stock market sectors were partially of a negative nature, which allows us to suppose that this variable plays the role of a risk factor for environmental investment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Viet Cao ◽  
Ghinwa Alyoussef ◽  
Nadège Gatcha-Bandjun ◽  
Willis Gwenzi ◽  
Chicgoua Noubactep

AbstractMetallic iron (Fe0) has shown outstanding performances for water decontamination and its efficiency has been improved by the presence of sand (Fe0/sand) and manganese oxide (Fe0/MnOx). In this study, a ternary Fe0/MnOx/sand system is characterized for its discoloration efficiency of methylene blue (MB) in quiescent batch studies for 7, 18, 25 and 47 days. The objective was to understand the fundamental mechanisms of water treatment in Fe0/H2O systems using MB as an operational tracer of reactivity. The premise was that, in the short term, both MnO2 and sand delay MB discoloration by avoiding the availability of free iron corrosion products (FeCPs). Results clearly demonstrate no monotonous increase in MB discoloration with increasing contact time. As a rule, the extent of MB discoloration is influenced by the diffusive transport of MB from the solution to the aggregates at the bottom of the vessels (test-tubes). The presence of MnOx and sand enabled the long-term generation of iron hydroxides for MB discoloration by adsorption and co-precipitation. Results clearly reveal the complexity of the Fe0/MnOx/sand system, while establishing that both MnOx and sand improve the efficiency of Fe0/H2O systems in the long-term. This study establishes the mechanisms of the promotion of water decontamination by amending Fe0-based systems with reactive MnOx.


BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. e044549
Author(s):  
Sangkyun Jo ◽  
Duk Bin Jun ◽  
Sungho Park

ObjectiveWe evaluate the effectiveness of mild disease differential copayment policy aimed at reducing unnecessary patient visits to secondary/tertiary healthcare institutions in South Korea.DesignRetrospective study using difference-in-difference design.SettingSample Research database provided by the Korean National Health Insurance Service, between 2010 and 2013.Participants206 947 patients who visited healthcare institutions to treat mild diseases during the sample period.MethodsA linear probability model with difference-in-difference approach was adopted to estimate the changes in patients’ healthcare choices associated with the differential copayment policy. The dependent variable was a binary variable denoting whether a patient visited primary healthcare or secondary/tertiary healthcare to treat her/his mild disease. Patients’ individual characteristics were controlled with a fixed effect.ResultsWe observed significant decrease in the proportion of patients choosing secondary/tertiary healthcare over primary healthcare by 2.99 per cent point. The decrease associated with the policy was smaller by 14% in the low-income group compared with richer population, greater by 19% among the residents of Seoul metropolitan area than among people living elsewhere, and greater among frequent healthcare visitors by 33% than among people who less frequently visit healthcare.ConclusionThe mild disease differential copayment policy of South Korea was successful in discouraging unnecessary visits to secondary/tertiary healthcare institutions to treat mild diseases that can be treated well in primary healthcare.


1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 225-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond F. Hopkins

The principles and norms adopted by the regime governing food aid in the 1950s have changed substantially during the subsequent three decades. Explaining the changes necessarily includes analyzing the efforts of an international epistemic community consisting of economic development specialists, agricultural economists, and administrators of food aid. According to the initial regime principles, food aid should be provided from donors' own surplus stocks, should supplement the usual commercial food imports in recipient countries, should be given under short-term commitments sensitive to the political and economic goals of donors, and should directly feed hungry people. As a result of following these principles, the epistemic community and other critics argued, food aid often had the adverse effects of reducing local production of food in recipient countries and exacerbating rather than alleviating hunger. The epistemic community (1) developed and proposed ideas for more efficiently supplying food aid and avoiding “disincentive” effects and (2) pushed for reforms to make food aid serve as the basis for the recipients' economic development and to target it at addressing long-term food security problems. The ideas of the international epistemic community have increasingly received support from international organizations and the governments of donor and recipient nations. Most recently, they have led to revisions of the U.S. food aid program passed by Congress in October 1990 and signed into law two months later. As the analysis of food aid reform demonstrates, changes in the international regime have been incremental, rather than radical. Moreover, the locus for the change has shifted from an American-centered one in the 1950s to a more international one in recent decades.


2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 613-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Gómez-Baggethun ◽  
Manuel Ruiz-Pérez

In the last decade a growing number of environmental scientists have advocated economic valuation of ecosystem services as a pragmatic short-term strategy to communicate the value of biodiversity in a language that reflects dominant political and economic views. This paper revisits the controversy on economic valuation of ecosystem services in the light of two aspects that are often neglected in ongoing debates. First, the role of the particular institutional setup in which environmental policy and governance is currently embedded in shaping valuation outcomes. Second, the broader economic and sociopolitical processes that have governed the expansion of pricing into previously non-marketed areas of the environment. Our analysis suggests that within the institutional setup and broader sociopolitical processes that have become prominent since the late 1980s economic valuation is likely to pave the way for the commodification of ecosystem services with potentially counterproductive effects in the long term for biodiversity conservation and equity of access to ecosystem services benefits.


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