Worker Sorting, Taxes and Health Insurance Coverage

We develop a model in which firms hire heterogeneous workers but must offer all workers insurance benefits under similar terms. In equilibrium, some firms offer free health insurance, some require an employee premium payment and some do not offer insurance. Making the employee contribution pre-tax lowers the cost to workers of a given employee premium and encourages more firms to charge. This increases the offer rate, lowers the take-up rate, increases (decreases) coverage among high (low) demand groups, with an indeterminate overall effect. We test the model using the expansion of section 125 plans between 1987 and 1996. The results are generally supportive.

Value Relevance of Financial and Non-Financial Information: Evidence from the Gaming Industry

Using financial and non-financial data from casino gaming firms listed in the United States from 1999–2017, we explore two research questions: (1) Is financial information value relevant to financial markets in the casino gaming industry? (2) Does non-financial information have incremental explanatory power over financial information? In general, we find that accounting numbers can explain a firm’s market value and stock returns in the casino gaming industry, except for accounting accruals, which may behave differently compared to other industries. We also find that non-financial information, such as the number of table games, number of slot machines, and their relative proportion, have significant value relevance in explaining market valuation. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the value relevance of financial and non-financial information in the casino gaming industry. We also provide analysis of firms characterized by these non-financial attributes. Keywords: hospitality, casino, gaming, value relevance, table games, slot machines JEL Code: L83, M19, M4

Measurement of Isothermal Pressure of Lattice Gas by Random Walk

We present a computational random walk method of measuring the isothermal pressure of the lattice gas with and without the excluded volume interaction. The method is based on the discretization of the exact thermodynamic relation for the pressure. The simulation results are in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions.Comment: 10 Pages, 2 Figures, Teaching Material. To Appear in Physica

Guest Editorial

Network security is a continuing endeavor as exhibited by this special issue on the subject. Although the problem of securing networks emerged almost simultaneously with their development, attaining a fixed set of complete solutions remains evasive. In the history of the development of computers and networking, solutions to challenging problems have become touchstones, and from among them we can draw a parallel to the current state of network development