What are the effects of childhood immunization program (UIP) on women's fertility and birth spacing? I examine the effect of this immunization program on women's subsequent fertility and birth spacing by exploiting district-by-cohort variation in exposure to the program. The results indicate...

In the mid-1980s, the Indian government embarked on one of the largest childhood immunization programs-called "Universal Immunization Program" (UIP)in order to reduce the high mortality and morbidity among children. I examine the effect of this immunization program on child mortality and...

In this paper we assess the current relevance of different sources of international competitiveness. Relative prices, labor costs, and productivity are evaluated as determinants of a country's international competitiveness at the industry level. Working with detailed data on unit values and with...

A generalization of the log-logistic distribution called exponentiated log-logistic distribution (in lines of exponentiated Weibull distribution suggested by Mudholkar and Srivastava [Technometrics 37: 436-445, 1995]) is considered. In this paper the operating characteristic for a sampling plan...

In explaining economic phenomena, economic analysis concentrates on selected influences and fixes the host of other factors under a ceteris paribus clause. This view, which goes back to Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), is developed in the first part of the book. Aggregation is viewed as a particular...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipient’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option when choosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While there are numerous research articles studying annuities from a...

Even 50 years after Modigliani/Miller’s irrelevance theorem, the basic question of how firms choose their capital structure remains unclear. This survey paper aims at summarizing and discussing corresponding recent developments in empirical capital structure research, which, in our view, are...

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that the protection of business methods by patents is prohibited in Europe. This paper investigates the legal framework set by patent laws with respect to the...

Ein Großteil der Neugründungen in Deutschland ist auf staatliche Förderung von Existenzgründern zurückzuführen. Dieser Anteil hat sich nach Einführung des als „Ich-AG“ bekannten Existenzgründungszuschusses Anfang 2003 stark erhöht. Die Erfolgsfaktorenforschung hat diese Form von...

In 2003, Swiss Re introduced a mortality-based security designed to hedge excessive mortality changes for its life book of business. The concern was apparently brevity risk, i.e., the risk of premature death. The brevity risk due to a pandemic is similar to the property risk associated with...