Price Elasticity of Demand for Term Life Insurance and Adverse Selection

This paper provides an empirical estimate of price' and risk' elasticities of demand for term life insurance for those who purchase some insurance. It finds that the elasticity with respect to changes in premiums is generally higher than the elasticity with respect to changes in risk. It also finds that the elasticity, in the range of -0.3 to -0.5, is sufficiently low that adverse selection in term life insurance is unlikely to lead to a death spiral and may not even lead to measured effects of adverse selection on total purchases.

Should we identify and treat hyperlipidemia in the advanced elderly?

No randomized controlled trials exist that identify and treat hyperlipidemia for advanced elderly patients (age >80 years). Expert and consensus guidelines state that hyperlipidemia found in any patient with coronary artery disease (CAD), or at risk of CAD, should be treated irrespective of age; however, evidence is limited to support lowering lipids for advanced elderly patients with and without known CAD (strength of recommendation: C, based on expert and consensus guidelines)

Recycled polyethylene/paraffin wax/expanded graphite based heat absorbers for thermal energy storage: An artificial aging study

An artificial aging study of novel heat absorbers based on phase change materials (PCMs) prepared from recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE), paraffin wax (PW), and expanded graphite (EG) was investigated. The optimal composition of PCMs contained 40 wt% HDPE, whereas the paraffin wax content ranged from 40 to 60 wt% and the expanded graphite content ranged from 5 to 15 wt%. PCMs were artificially aged through exposure to UV irradiation, enhanced temperature, and humidity. It was clearly demonstrated that the addition of EG to PCMs led to the suppression of PW leakage and improved the photooxidation stability of the PCMs during the aging process. The best performance was achieved by adding 15 wt% of EG to the PCMs. The sample shows a leakage of paraffin wax below 10%, retaining a melting enthalpy of PW within PCMs of 54.8 J/g, a thermal conductivity of 1.64 W/mK and the lowest photooxidation, characterized by an increase in the concentration of carbonyl groups from all investigated materials after artificial aging. Furthermore, PCMs mixed with EG exhibited good mechanical properties, even after 100 days of exposure to artificial aging. Finally, this work demonstrates a justification for the use of recycled plastics in the formation of PCMs.This research was funded by an NPRP grant No: NPRP10-0205-170349 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of the Qatar Foundation)

Infinities of stable periodic orbits in systems of coupled oscillators

We consider the dynamical behavior of coupled oscillators with robust heteroclinic cycles between saddles that may be periodic or chaotic. We differentiate attracting cycles into types that we call phase resetting and free running depending on whether the cycle approaches a given saddle along one or many trajectories. At loss of stability of attracting cycling, we show in a phase-resetting example the existence of an infinite family of stable periodic orbits that accumulate on the cycling, whereas for a free-running example loss of stability of the cycling gives rise to a single quasiperiodic or chaotic attractor

Resonance bifurcations from robust homoclinic cycles

We present two calculations for a class of robust homoclinic cycles with symmetry Z_n x Z_2^n, for which the sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability given by Krupa and Melbourne are not optimal. Firstly, we compute optimal conditions for asymptotic stability using transition matrix techniques which make explicit use of the geometry of the group action. Secondly, through an explicit computation of the global parts of the Poincare map near the cycle we show that, generically, the resonance bifurcations from the cycles are supercritical: a unique branch of asymptotically stable period orbits emerges from the resonance bifurcation and exists for coefficient values where the cycle has lost stability. This calculation is the first to explicitly compute the criticality of a resonance bifurcation, and answers a conjecture of Field and Swift in a particular limiting case. Moreover, we are able to obtain an asymptotically-correct analytic expression for the period of the bifurcating orbit, with no adjustable parameters, which has not proved possible previously. We show that the asymptotic analysis compares very favourably with numerical results.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Nonlinearit

Impact of Capital Budgeting Decision on Profitability of Firm – Selected Listed Automobile Companies in India

Purpose: Profitability plays an important function in the business operations and determines the value by which a business is held. The study set to investigate the impact of capital budgeting decisions on profitability of Automobile firms. Capital budgeting particularly addressed five areas of the study that included capital budgeting decisions (acquisition of long-term assets, replacement of long-term assets, investment appraisal techniques, outsourcing expenditure and working capital decisions) had a biggest and significant effect on profitability of the organizations.   Methodology: This study basically involved survey of the Automobile Companies listed in NSE in India. Any business that seeks to invest its resources in a project without understanding the risks and returns involved would be held as irresponsible by its owners or shareholders. This study considered 10 companies are taken from Automobile sectors, which is listed in NSE. Correlation and paired T test were used.   Findings: This study basically involved survey of the Automobile Companies listed in NSE in India.The findings set up that there was relationship between the independent variables of capital budgeting decisions and profitability. The study was examined the outcome of capital budgeting Impact on profitability of listed firms in India. The independent variables for the study were Capital Budgeting and Profitability.   Research implications:  it is evident that Maruti and Tata Motors produced positive and statistically significant values for this study (high t-values (12.37 and 11.26), p =0.00) respectively. Eicher Motor resulted a Lowest but insignificant values (t= 2.11, p = 0.07).   Originality/Outcome: The study found that positive impact of capital budgeting on profitability of the firms under the study

Classification and stability of simple homoclinic cycles in R^5

The paper presents a complete study of simple homoclinic cycles in R^5. We find all symmetry groups Gamma such that a Gamma-equivariant dynamical system in R^5 can possess a simple homoclinic cycle. We introduce a classification of simple homoclinic cycles in R^n based on the action of the system symmetry group. For systems in R^5, we list all classes of simple homoclinic cycles. For each class, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability and fragmentary asymptotic stability in terms of eigenvalues of linearisation near the steady state involved in the cycle. For any action of the groups Gamma which can give rise to a simple homoclinic cycle, we list classes to which the respective homoclinic cycles belong, thus determining conditions for asymptotic stability of these cycles.Comment: 34 pp., 4 tables, 30 references. Submitted to Nonlinearit

A mathematical framework for critical transitions: normal forms, variance and applications

Critical transitions occur in a wide variety of applications including mathematical biology, climate change, human physiology and economics. Therefore it is highly desirable to find early-warning signs. We show that it is possible to classify critical transitions by using bifurcation theory and normal forms in the singular limit. Based on this elementary classification, we analyze stochastic fluctuations and calculate scaling laws of the variance of stochastic sample paths near critical transitions for fast subsystem bifurcations up to codimension two. The theory is applied to several models: the Stommel-Cessi box model for the thermohaline circulation from geoscience, an epidemic-spreading model on an adaptive network, an activator-inhibitor switch from systems biology, a predator-prey system from ecology and to the Euler buckling problem from classical mechanics. For the Stommel-Cessi model we compare different detrending techniques to calculate early-warning signs. In the epidemics model we show that link densities could be better variables for prediction than population densities. The activator-inhibitor switch demonstrates effects in three time-scale systems and points out that excitable cells and molecular units have information for subthreshold prediction. In the predator-prey model explosive population growth near a codimension two bifurcation is investigated and we show that early-warnings from normal forms can be misleading in this context. In the biomechanical model we demonstrate that early-warning signs for buckling depend crucially on the control strategy near the instability which illustrates the effect of multiplicative noise.Comment: minor corrections to previous versio