The Role of the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in the Comprehensive Management of Pediatric Oncology Patients in the Inpatient Setting

The role of the pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP) in the comprehensive management of pediatric oncology patients in the inpatient setting was examined at a large tertiary teaching hospital. This article shows role responsibilities including new diagnosis teaching, procedures, routine chemotherapy, patients' comprehensive medical management, coordination of nursing care across settings, phone triage, and professional development. A PNP's typical day is highlighted to illustrate the innovative merging of traditional ambulatory care roles with that of the PNP as a comprehensive manager of pediatric oncology patients in the inpatient setting. This role provides a more seamless care experience and provides critical links in the delivery of health care to pediatric oncology patients.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68349/2/10.1177_104345429901600202.pd

Mesoscopic modelling of financial markets

We derive a mesoscopic description of the behavior of a simple financial market where the agents can create their own portfolio between two investment alternatives: a stock and a bond. The model is derived starting from the Levy-Levy-Solomon microscopic model (Econ. Lett., 45, (1994), 103--111) using the methods of kinetic theory and consists of a linear Boltzmann equation for the wealth distribution of the agents coupled with an equation for the price of the stock. From this model, under a suitable scaling, we derive a Fokker-Planck equation and show that the equation admits a self-similar lognormal behavior. Several numerical examples are also reported to validate our analysis

A Hedged Monte Carlo Approach to Real Option Pricing

In this work we are concerned with valuing optionalities associated to invest or to delay investment in a project when the available information provided to the manager comes from simulated data of cash flows under historical (or subjective) measure in a possibly incomplete market. Our approach is suitable also to incorporating subjective views from management or market experts and to stochastic investment costs. It is based on the Hedged Monte Carlo strategy proposed by Potters et al (2001) where options are priced simultaneously with the determination of the corresponding hedging. The approach is particularly well-suited to the evaluation of commodity related projects whereby the availability of pricing formulae is very rare, the scenario simulations are usually available only in the historical measure, and the cash flows can be highly nonlinear functions of the prices.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figure

On arbitrages arising from honest times

In the context of a general continuous financial market model, we study whether the additional information associated with an honest time gives rise to arbitrage profits. By relying on the theory of progressive enlargement of filtrations, we explicitly show that no kind of arbitrage profit can ever be realised strictly before an honest time, while classical arbitrage opportunities can be realised exactly at an honest time as well as after an honest time. Moreover, stronger arbitrages of the first kind can only be obtained by trading as soon as an honest time occurs. We carefully study the behavior of local martingale deflators and consider no-arbitrage-type conditions weaker than NFLVR.Comment: 25 pages, revised versio

Valuing reload options

Over the past quarter century, the use of stock options as pay for performance has grown enormously. Option grants now account for 32% of CEO pay—more than twice that of salaries. In addition options are now being granted to many more employees than before. During this same time period, there have been numerous innovations in the features on compensation options. One of these features is the reload—the grant of new options to replace shares tendered in the payment of the exercise. Within the past year, the long-delayed FASB requirement that options be expensed for financial reporting has finally become a fact. It is incumbent upon financial researchers to provide methods to achieve the goal of valuing options, not only to serve the accounting needs, but also to provide ways of determining their true costs and incentive effects. This paper analyzes the various forms of reload options and provides simple Black-Scholes like formulas for evaluating them. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2006Exoctic options, Reload options, Incentive options,

Can Market Incompleteness Resolve Asset Pricing Puzzles?

This paper shows that the presence of persistent uninsurable risk concentrated in economic depressions has the potential to resolve two well-known asset pricing puzzles. It is also shown that the presence of such risk in more normal economic expansions and recessions is likely to be much less relevant in determining equilibrium asset prices. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004.