In this paper, we consider a perturbed compound Poisson risk model with investment and debit interests. Dividends are paid to the shareholders according to a threshold dividend strategy. An alternative assumption is that when the surplus is negative, a debit interest is applied and when the...

There is a public perception that electricity liberalisation is the major cause of recent electricity blackouts. This is reflected in the newspaper reporting of blackouts. By contrast, it was not listed as a cause in any official investigation reports. In this paper, we examine the common causes...

Stock prices in emerging economies move in step much more than in advanced economies. Emerging markets' prices capitalize less firm specific information, and appear subject to more economy-wide fluctuations. Measures of this consonance of stock returns are positively correlated with indicators...

In recent years, a number of empirical studies and energy regulators have applied benchmarking techniques to measure the efficiency and performance of network utilities. An important issue has been the extent to which such results are influenced by contextual factors. Among these, weather...

Stock prices move together more in low-income economies than in high-income economies. This finding is clearly not due to market size differences, and only partially explained by slightly higher fundamentals correlation in low-income economies. However, measures of a country's institutionalized...

We have investigated the photoluminescence (PL) properties of amorphous silicon nanoparticles (a-Si NPs) embedded in silicon nitride film (Si-in-SiN<Subscript>x</Subscript>) grown by helicon wave plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (HWP-CVD) technique. The PL spectrum of the film exhibits a broad band...</subscript>

Efficiency analysis of electricity distribution networks is often limited to technical or cost efficiency measures. However, some important non-tradable aspects of their service such as quality of service and network energy losses are generally not part of the analysis. A regulatory concern is...

The Diagnostic Care Group (DCG) model is applied to data from the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission from fiscal years 1994-1995 and used to assess the extent of biased selection between one fee-for-service (FFS) plan, one preferred provider organization, and several health maintenance...