Mastering the Chargemaster: Minimizing Price-Gouging and Exposing the Structural Flaws in the Healthcare "Market"

In his seminal article, Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,1 Steven Brill recounts stories of Americans of modest to comfortable means, whose lives were turned upside-down, not just by tragic illness; but, by the cost of the cure.

Hybrid Public Offerings In China: The Case Of Class B Shares

When raising equity capital through the recently opened Shanghai stock exchange, Chinese companies can issue stock to Chinese nationals (A shares) or to non-Chinese nationals (B shares). Between 1990 and 1996 40 issuances of B shares took place, often by firms that had previously issued A shares. These class B initial offerings are found to exhibit underpricing relative to first day trading prices, but to a much less severe degree than class A share IPOs. Indeed, the extent of underpricing of class B shares is found to be in line with underpricing in the U.S. This is surprising because for the most part these offerings are hybrids of IPOs and seasoned equity offerings, representing offerings of old (traded) claims in a new market setting. We examine a variety of standard explanations for underpricing of IPOs finding either no empirical support for the hypotheses, or that many of these explanations are not relevant to the characteristics of the Chinese market.Two features of Chinese IPOs particularly seem to set them apart from new issues in the U.S. First, the capital market is not fully established, and second, the issuer of all IPOs is the government. The Chinese IPOs represent an attempt to transform a non-market economy, therefore, the prime objective may be the very creation of a viable market mechanism rather than a mere maximization of issue proceeds. We examine whether underpricing may be explained by this desire by the government (who also happens to be the issuer) to establish a market, and suggest a variety of lines for future research to cast further light on this hypothesis

Physics Potential of the ICAL detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO)

The upcoming 50 kt magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is designed to study the atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos separately over a wide range of energies and path lengths. The primary focus of this experiment is to explore the Earth matter effects by observing the energy and zenith angle dependence of the atmospheric neutrinos in the multi-GeV range. This study will be crucial to address some of the outstanding issues in neutrino oscillation physics, including the fundamental issue of neutrino mass hierarchy. In this document, we present the physics potential of the detector as obtained from realistic detector simulations. We describe the simulation framework, the neutrino interactions in the detector, and the expected response of the detector to particles traversing it. The ICAL detector can determine the energy and direction of the muons to a high precision, and in addition, its sensitivity to multi-GeV hadrons increases its physics reach substantially. Its charge identification capability, and hence its ability to distinguish neutrinos from antineutrinos, makes it an efficient detector for determining the neutrino mass hierarchy. In this report, we outline the analyses carried out for the determination of neutrino mass hierarchy and precision measurements of atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters at ICAL, and give the expected physics reach of the detector with 10 years of runtime. We also explore the potential of ICAL for probing new physics scenarios like CPT violation and the presence of magnetic monopoles.Comment: 139 pages, Physics White Paper of the ICAL (INO) Collaboration, Contents identical with the version published in Pramana - J. Physic

The relevance of value-at-risk disclosures: evidence from the LTCM crisis

Purpose – Previous studies have established that the failure of the hedge fund, long-term capital management (LTCM), was associated with significant negative abnormal returns for many US banks, especially around September 2, 1998, when LTCM announced its failure. This study attempts to examine whether bank value-at-risk (VaR) disclosures were used by investors to assess the potential trading loss that a bank could suffer at that time. Design/methodology/approach – This study examines whether there was any association between disclosed VaR and the magnitude of abnormal returns and trading volume surrounding the announcement date. Findings – The results indicate that there was no such association which suggests that investors did not use the VaR information to assess the potential trading losses of exposed banks. Banks that formed part of the LTCM bailout consortium and those with larger amounts of notional derivatives faced the largest negative reaction at the time of the failure announcement. Originality/value – VaR disclosures are costly to prepare and complex to interpret. The study finds no benefits of VaR disclosures to bank investors.Capital, Disclosure, Value analysis