Bayesian approaches to technology assessment and decision making

Until the mid-1980s, most economic analyses of healthcare technologies were based on decision theory and used decision-analytic models. The goal was to synthesize all relevant clinical and economic evidence for the purpose of assisting decision makers to efficiently allocate society's scarce resources. This was true of virtually all the early cost-effectiveness evaluations sponsored and/or published by the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) (15), Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Cancer Institute, other elements of the U.S. Public Health Service, and of healthcare technology assessors in Europe and elsewhere around the world. Methodologists routinely espoused, or at minimum assumed, that these economic analyses were based on decision theory (8;24;25). Since decision theory is rooted in—in fact, an informal application of—Bayesian statistical theory, these analysts were conducting studies to assist healthcare decision making by appealing to a Bayesian rather than a classical, or frequentist, inference approach. But their efforts were not so labeled. Oddly, the statistical training of these decision analysts was invariably classical, not Bayesian. Many were not—and still are not—conversant with Bayesian statistical approaches

SALES RATIONALE OF DURABLE PRODUCT DISTRIBUTION

This paper has been prepared to add the writer\u27s bit to the long term struggle for uniformity in the commercial law, and particularly to point to some of the statutory changes in the law affecting distribution of durable goods which have added confusion where once the common law appears to have been on its way to a system more uniform and in accord with business practice and understanding

CORPORATIONS - POWER OF MAJORITY STOCKHOLDERS TO REORGANIZE BY TRANSFER OF ASSETS TO NEW CORPORATION IN EXCHANGE FOR STOCK

A private corporation is solvent and prosperous but is nearing the time when its charter will expire. The directors call a stockholders\u27 meeting at which the majority of the stockholders vote: first, to form a new corporation and, second, to transfer all the assets of the old corporation to the new corporation in consideration for the entire capital stock of the new corporation and the assumption by the new corporation of all liabilities of the old corporation. The plan further provides that the old corporation is then to be dissolved, and the stock of the new corporation is to be distributed pro rata to the stockholders of the old. The plan is carried out as contemplated. Plaintiff, a minority stockholder who has refused to consent to a renewal of the charter dissents to the plan, refuses to receive his share of the stock in the new corporation and brings a bill in equity to set aside the transfer and to have the old corporation liquidated by a receiver

TRENDS IN MODERN CORPORATION LEGISLATION

Any discussion of trends and developments in modem corporation legislation must assume some understanding of the historical antecedents of that legislation and the judicial approach to its interpretation. As a practical matter the outline of modern legislation has emerged within the memory of living men, but in order to know what it is, we must know what it has been, and what it tends to become. The state is less concerned today than long ago about the corporation becoming a state within the state and usurping political power, although such concern could and does evidence itself from time to time. The state now is solicitous of minority shareholder interests in ways formerly unknown. Corporate legislation is in the ascendant relative to judge-made corporate law. It no longer presents a bare outline for organization, but prescribes the detail and fills in the gaps, with the result that large segments of decision law are becoming obsolete. The large unincorporated association is passing from the scene. The reasons for such trends lie deep in our economic, political and legal development

CORPORATIONS - SIGNIFICANCE OF APPRECIATION AND CHANGING PRICE LEVELS IN CORPORATE DIVIDEND POLICIES

The appreciation of assets and the legal and accounting problems involved are largely a product of constant fluctuation in the value of money, and to a lesser degree a prodμct of actual rise in the relative value of isolated pieces of property. In the face of political events such as the devaluation of the dollar, and economic phenomena such as the rising price level which the country has experienced since 1933, such problems are of immediate concern to the accountant and lawyer. We must recognize at the outset that appreciation or depreciation in the price level sense are unrelated to depreciation in the sense in which the accountant uses the latter term. Depreciation in accounting is an amortization of the asset over its estimated life expectancy, and is figured usually upon an original-cost basis. Its effect upon surplus available for dividends is mechanical, and results from the periodic arbitrary charge to depreciation expense. The problem here is much different. It concerns the effect upon surplus available for dividends of a rise in the monetary value of the corporate assets, which is due usually to a fluctuating price level. The writer will deal with fixed and current assets in order