We assess the forecasting performance of the nowcasting model developed at the New York FED. We show that the observation regarding a striking difference in the model's predictive ability across business cycle phases made earlier in the literature also applies here. During expansions, the...

We analyze the association that pharmaceutical innovation had with premature mortality from all diseases in Switzerland during the period 1996-2018, and its association with hospital utilization for all diseases in Switzerland during the period 2002-2019. The analysis is performed by...

Basel III, regulating the solvency of banks, is to be fully implemented by 2027 while Solvency III directed at insurers is being prepared. In view of past experience, it will be closely modelled after Basel III. This raises two questions. (i) Will Basel III and Solvency III be more successful...

The development challenges of addressing health problems in low- and middle-income countries are daunting but not insurmountable. There are now known and affordable interventions to deal with many aspects of the HIV/AIDS crisis as well as the continued challenge posed by malaria and other major...

The objective of this paper is to pursue an intuitive idea: for a consumer who represents an "unfavorable" health risk but an "excellent risk" as a driver, a multi-peril policy could be associated with a reduced selection effort on the part of the insurer. If this intuition should be confirmed,...