25,305 research outputs found

    THE ESSENTIALS OF RAINFALL DERIVATIVES AND INSURANCE

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    This paper investigates the use of rainfall insurance to manage agricultural production risks. A number of rainfall insurance products are presented along with a raitonal model which identifies the economics of rainfall. The use of rainfall insurance will increase in future years as capital markets, financial institutions, reinsurance companies, crop insurance companies, and hedge funds collectively organize to share and distribute weather risks. The focus of this paper is in fact directed towards the intermediation function of risk markets rather than on end user benefits.Risk and Uncertainty,

    Towards locally based resource allocation in the NHS

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    In a health care system where resources are scarce and the principle of equity is of central concern, mechanisms for the appropriate allocation of resources based on the notion of relating resource use to some concept of need are essential. Two key issues raised in the UK government’s White Paper The New NHS: modern, dependable are the ability first to define health care budgets at a local level and second to integrate budgets to encompass all relevant aspects of health care delivery. This paper considers the theoretical and practical implications of devolving NHS budgets to primary care groups. The paper advocates the development of a patient-based survey of all NHS health care utilization, which could serve as the basis for integrated global budgets for use at a local level.resource allocation; health care budgets; primary care; health need; general practice

    Legislating for Air Quality Management: Reducing Theory to Practice

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    What does it mean to bootstrap a compiler, and why do it? This paper reports on the first bootstrapping of a full-scale EOO (Equation-based Object-Oriented) modeling language such as Modelica. Bootstrapping means that the compiler of a language can compile itself. However, the usual application area for the Modelica is modeling and simulation of complex physical systems. Fortunately it turns out that with some minor extensions, the Modelica language is well suited for the modeling of language semantics. We use the name MetaModelica for this slightly extended Modelica. This is a prerequisite for bootstrapping which requires that the language can be used to model and/or implement itself. The OpenModelica Compiler (OMC) has been written in this MetaModelica language. It originally supported only the standard Modelica language but has been gradually extended to also cover the MetaModelica language extensions. After substantial work, OMC is able to quickly compile itself and produces an executable with good performance. The benefits include a more extensible and maintainable compiler by introducing improved language constructs and a more powerful runtime that makes it easy to add functionality such as parser generators, debuggers, and profiling tools. Future work includes extracting and restructuring parts of OMC, making the compiler smaller and more modular and extensible. This will also make it easier to interface with OMC, making it possible to create more powerful and user-friendly OpenModelica-based tools. The compiler and its bootstrapping is a major effort -- it is currently about 330 000 lines of code, and the MetaModelica extensions are used routinely by approximately ten developers on a daily basis
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