De-mystifying the Inconvenient Truth : Does Ex Post Moral Hazard Indeed Exist in Korean Private Health Insurance Market?

There have been heated debates on whether private health insurance creates moral hazard effects. Despite its importance, however, the moral hazard problem of private health insurance is still controversial and understudied. To empirically examine whether or not moral hazard exists in the Korean private health insurance market, we employed two-stage regression for endogeneity control and the Heckman two-step procedure for sample selection bias control, which are expected to produce consistent estimates. All estimation results do not allow us to detect the presence of the moral hazard effects and imply that people hold private health insurance simply as “safety net”.Private Health Insurance, Moral Hazard, Endogeneity, Sample Selection Bias

The Effect of Patient's Asymmetric Information Problem on Medical Care Utilization with Consideration of a Patient's Ex-ante Health Status

Even if a patient's access to health information has been enhanced, a patient still doesn't have enough ability to utilize it. Therefore, a doctor's effort to sincerely communicate with a patient might affect the patient's use of medical care. This paper builds up the empirical model and found the effect of a doctor's effort on patient's medical care use was significant and according to the ex-ante health status of a patient, a doctor's effort influenced a patient's medical care use in different way.asymmetry of information between doctor and patient, patient's medical care use, doctor's effort to effectively communicate with patients, patient's ex-ante health status

Economic and Political Changes and Import Demand Behavior of North Korea

We study some empirical aspects of North Korean economy implied in its import behavior in the period before the collapse of Soviet Union. Our analysis is based on econometric inference for a cointegration relation and some model determination methods. We have found that for North Korean economy some non-market factors are important determinants of the import behavior. The non-market factors are related to the country¡¯s political situations, its political relation with two communist superpowers, and its relation with western industrialized countries. Our results show that the non-market factors have different impacts on imports from different countries and imports for different commodity groups, which enables us to find some interesting aspects of North Korean economy. Among several results those with the following two implications are of particular interests. First, the two communist superpowers were overall stable and the most important suppliers to North Korean economy regardless of the political situation while Western countries filled the deficiency, if any, caused by Sino-Soviet dispute. Second, the foreign debt problem had significantly negative impacts on imports from the capitalist countries, which is true even after the new open door policy initiated in 1984.

Perturbation of frame sequences and its applications to shift-invariant spaces

AbstractWe generalize the main result in [O. Christensen, H.O. Kim, R.Y. Kim, J.K. Lim, Perturbation of frame sequences in shift-invariant spaces, J. Geom. Anal. 15 (2005) 181–191] in order to make it comparable with existing results. Then we compare the special cases of the three results in the literature in the setting of the perturbation of the generating sets of finitely generated shift-invariant spaces of L2(Rd)

How the Budget Process Works in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee and Its Implications for the Korean Government

The recent recession and subsequent rescue efforts along with snowballing annual deficits and national debts in the United States have made it urgent for scholars to examine national budget processes across countries. The House Appropriations Committee is a key cog in the annual appropriations process in the United States and understanding how it behaves offers a clue for what to do with central government deficits. I offer a comprehensive review of scholarly contributions on the behavior of House Appropriation Committee since Fennos seminal works in 1962 and 1966. Then, I note potential lessons that these studies and U.S experiences can offer for the Korean government

Oleate Prevents Palmitate-Induced Atrophy via Modulation of Mitochondrial ROS Production in Skeletal Myotubes

Accumulation of saturated fatty acids contributes to lipotoxicity-related insulin resistance and atrophy in skeletal muscle. Conversely, unsaturated fatty acids like docosahexaenoic acid were proven to preserve muscle mass. However, it is not known if the most common unsaturated oleate will protect skeletal myotubes against palmitate-mediated atrophy, and its specific mechanism remains to be elucidated. Therefore, we investigated the effects of oleate on atrophy-related factors in palmitate-conditioned myotubes. Exposure of myotubes to palmitate, but not to oleate, led to an induction of fragmented nuclei, myotube loss, atrophy, and mitochondrial superoxide in a dose-dependent manner. Treatment of oleate to myotubes attenuated production of palmitate-induced mitochondrial superoxide in a dose-dependent manner. The treatment of oleate or MitoTEMPO to palmitate-conditioned myotubes led to inhibition of palmitate-induced mRNA expression of proinflammatory (TNF-α and IL6), mitochondrial fission (Drp1 and Fis1), and atrophy markers (myostatin and atrogin1). In accordance with the gene expression data, our immunocytochemistry experiment demonstrated that oleate and MitoTEMPO prevented or attenuated palmitate-mediated myotube shrinkage. These results provide a mechanism indicating that oleate prevents palmitate-mediated atrophy via at least partial modulation of mitochondrial superoxide production

Youth Smoking, Cigarette Prices, and Anti-Smoking Sentiment

In this paper, we develop a new direct measure of state anti-smoking sentiment and merge it with micro data on youth smoking in 1992 and 2000. The empirical results from the cross-sectional models show two consistent patterns: after controlling for differences in state anti-smoking sentiment, the price of cigarettes has a weak and statistically insignificant influence on smoking participation; and state anti-smoking sentiment appears to be a potentially important influence on youth smoking participation. The cross-sectional results are corroborated by results from discrete time hazard models of smoking initiation that include state fixed effects. However, there is evidence of price-responsiveness in the conditional cigarette demand by youth and young adult smokers.

THE ANALYSIS OF OCULAR MOVEMENT FOR THE DYNAMIC POSTURAL CONTROL OF TURN MOTION ON THE BALANCE BEAM

This study demonstrated the importance of dynamic postural balancing and ocular movement in a turn motion on the balance beam using a manufactured wireless EOG measuring system with three female gymnasts. This study found that among the dynamic postural control variables, angular displacement and ocular movement were closely related. During a turn motion, the ocular movement was in opposite direction of the angular displacement of head and trunk along the medio-lateral axis. This resulted from the gymnast’s effort to stare at the end of the balance beam or the front in order to keep balance. The change of angular displacement of head around the medio-lateral axis and vertical axis was in opposite direction of the ocular movement. When the motion was successful, the gymnasts performed a spotting motion

Invariances of Frame Sequences under Perturbations

This paper determines the exact relationships that hold among the major Paley–Wiener perturbation theorems for frame sequences. It is shown that major properties of a frame sequence such as excess, deficit, and rank remain invariant under Paley–Wiener perturbations, but need not be preserved by compact perturbations. For localized frames, which are frames with additional structure, it is shown that the frame measure function is also preserved by Paley–Wiener perturbations