Low risk, high reward? Repeated competitive biddings with multiple winners in health care

We study physiotherapy providers’ prices in repeated competitive biddings where multiple providers are accepted in geographical districts. Historically, only very few districts have rejected any providers. We show that this practice increased prices and analyze the effects the risk of rejection has on prices. Our data are derived from three subsequent competitive biddings. The results show that rejecting at least one provider decreased prices by more than 5% in the next procurement round. The results also indicate that providers have learned to calculate their optimal bids, which has also increased prices. Further, we perform counterfactual policy analysis of a capacity-rule of acceptance. The analysis shows that implementing a systematic acceptance rule results in a trade-off between direct cost savings and service continuity at patients’ usual providers.

Contract Formation in India: Law and Practice

This chapter examines the law on the formation of contracts in India. The Indian Contract Act 1872 is significant as it is the first successful attempt to codify the English common law of contract in the British Commonwealth. The Act was then transplanted to other jurisdictions in the British Commonwealth. The preamble of the Act makes it clear that it is intended to ‘define and amend certain parts of the law relating to contract’; therefore the Act does not exhaustively set out the rules of contract law. Interesting issues follow relating to the precise ambit of the Act, and the areas where there continues to be room for common law development, whether novel and unique to India, or adopted into Indian law after considering the common law developments in other jurisdictions. One issue relates to the postal acceptance rule which does not state that it is an exception to the instantaneous communication rule. Another issue relates to whether the Act permits the accommodation of a subsequent development in the English common law.

Formation and Third Party Rights in the Myanmar Law of Contract

This chapter discusses the Myanmar law on contract formation and third party beneficiaries. The Myanmar law of contract largely comprises the Myanmar Contract Act 1872, which is identical to the Indian Contract Act 1872 subject to some factual changes in the illustrations). It was drafted by English lawyers and appears to be a statutory codification of the English common law of contract. In addition, section 13(3) of the Burma Laws Act 1898 allows courts to fill gaps in the written laws by the application of the principles of justice, equity, and good conscience. The first requirement for a contract is a proposal which may be revoked at any time prior to its acceptance. Second, there must be acceptance of the proposal, either by expression of agreement (the postal acceptance rule applies unless otherwise specified) or by performance. Third, consideration is necessary to convert an agreement into an enforceable contract if the parties are competent and the agreement is lawful. Myanmar law does not adopt the view that only the parties can enforce a contract—third parties are free to enforce contracts made for their benefit.

An Enhanced Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm with Solution Acceptance Rule and Probabilistic Multisearch

The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a popular swarm based technique, which is inspired from the intelligent foraging behavior of honeybee swarms. This paper proposes a new variant of ABC algorithm, namely, enhanced ABC with solution acceptance rule and probabilistic multisearch (ABC-SA) to address global optimization problems. A new solution acceptance rule is proposed where, instead of greedy selection between old solution and new candidate solution, worse candidate solutions have a probability to be accepted. Additionally, the acceptance probability of worse candidates is nonlinearly decreased throughout the search process adaptively. Moreover, in order to improve the performance of the ABC and balance the intensification and diversification, a probabilistic multisearch strategy is presented. Three different search equations with distinctive characters are employed using predetermined search probabilities. By implementing a new solution acceptance rule and a probabilistic multisearch approach, the intensification and diversification performance of the ABC algorithm is improved. The proposed algorithm has been tested on well-known benchmark functions of varying dimensions by comparing against novel ABC variants, as well as several recent state-of-the-art algorithms. Computational results show that the proposed ABC-SA outperforms other ABC variants and is superior to state-of-the-art algorithms proposed in the literature.

Flaw Acceptance Rule of J-Groove Weld of Bottom Mounted Instrumentation Nozzle

The rules on fitness for service for nuclear power plants of JSME are applied for flaw evaluation after detecting defects in the operating nuclear plants in Japan. The rules mainly focus on simple geometry such as straight pipes or vessels and do not provide the evaluation procedure for complex structures. The authors made a draft of flaw acceptance rule for J-groove weld of a bottom mounted instrumentation nozzle at application of the cap repair. The rule contains flaw modeling, fatigue and SCC crack growth calculation and flaw instability assessment. After detecting a defect on a J-groove weld, a flaw will be modeled in the whole of J-groove weld region because of fast SCC crack propagation in the weld region. Due to complex configuration of the evaluation location, FE analysis is needed for obtaining stress intensity factors (Ks) to calculate the crack growth and flaw instability. The proposed rule has a guidance for K calculation by FE analysis with the aim of decreasing dependence of individuals for calculation. The authors performed benchmark analyses to confirm the guidance applicability. The calculation results by three participants agreed within several percent.