Profile identification via weighted related metric scaling : an application to dependent Spanish children

Disability and dependency (lack of autonomy in performing common everyday actions) affect health status and quality of life, therefore they are significant public health issues. The main purpose of this study is to establish the existing relationship among different variables (continuous, categorical and binary) referred to children between 3 and 6 years old and their functional dependence in basic activities of daily living. We combine different types of information via weighted related metric scaling to obtain homogeneous profiles for dependent Spanish children. The redundant information between groups of variables is modeled with an interaction parameter that can be optimized according to several criteria. In this paper, the goal is to obtain maximum explained variability in an Euclidean configuration. Data comes from the Survey about Disabilities, Personal Autonomy and Dependence Situations, EDAD 2008, (Spanish National Institute of Statistics, 2008)ADL, Disability, Mixed-type data, Public health, Related metric scaling

Mercado de seguros: oferta y demanda. ¿Cómo operan y se caracterizan?

El consumo, en general, ha sido siempre un tema ampliamente analizado, tanto desde su vertiente micro como macroeconómica, debido a las implicaciones de política económica y a su relación con la oferta, es decir, con la estructura productiva. Por ello, en este artículo se detallan las características del mercado de seguros, tanto de las entidades y los productos que ofrecen como de los clientes ya sean presentes o futuros.Seguros España, Consumidor de Seguros, Mercado de Seguros.

Why using a general model in Solvency II is not a good idea : an explanation from a Bayesian point of view

The passing of Directive 2009/138/CE (Solvency II) has opened a new era in the European insurance market. According to this new regulatory environment, the volume of own resources will be determined depending on the risks that any insurer would be holding. So, nowadays, the model to estimate the amount of economic capital is one of the most important elements. The Directive establishes that the European entities can use a general model to perform these tasks. However, this situation is far from being optimal because the calibration of the general model has been made using figures that reflects and average behaviour. This paper shows that not all the companies operating in a specific market has the same risk profile. For this reason, it is unsatisfactory to use a general model for all of them. We use the PAM clustering method and afterwards some Bayesian tools to check the results previously obtained. Analysed data (public information belonging to Spanish insurance companies about balance sheets and income statements from 1998 to 2007) comes from the DGSFP (Spanish insurance regulator).Solvency II, PAM, Longitudinal multinomial model

Long term care in Spain : extent, costs and challenges

The passing of Act 39/2006, of 14th December, on the Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Care for Dependent Persons (known as the Dependent Care Law) has created the fourth pillar of Welfare State in Spain. In order to achieve its efficient implementation, we need to know who and how many individuals should be attended and how much money is needed for the attention. However, the answers to these two questions given until now suggest that a lot of work is still to be done in order to reach the objectives proposed by the Law

Aplicación al sector asegurador español (no vida) del modelo de seguros de Tapiero

El objetivo de este trabajo es evaluar el modelo de seguros propuesto por Tapiero en 1987, utilizando datos reales de empresas aseguradoras españolas dedicadas al negocio no vida. Tras adaptar el modelo a la información disponible, se estiman los parámetros del mismo mediante Mínimos Cuadrados en Tres Etapas utilizando variables instrumentales. Se realiza una simulación para comprobar que la evolución de dichas variables bajo diferentes escenarios es compatible con la doctrina básica actuarial, observándose que las inversiones son fundamentales para el crecimiento de la entidad.Matemática actuarial, Modelo matemático actuarial, Seguros no vida, Regresores estocásticos, Transformación Box-Cox, Datos de panel.

Executive Management in Insurance Entities: A Comparative Study of Mutual Companies and Joint-Stock Companies in Spain with a View to the 21st Century Market

“This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: Issues and Practice. The definitive publisher-authenticated version of Executive Management in Insurance Entities: A Comparative Study of Mutual Companies and Joint-Stock Companies in Spain with a View to the 21st Century Market / Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: Issues and Practice, April 2001, v. 26, iss. 2, pp. 206-231 is available online at http://www.palgrave-journals.com/gpp/journal/v26/n2/abs/2500108a.htmlPublicad

Visualizing health and well-being inequalities among older Europeans

Financial support from research project MTM2014-56535-R by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. This paper uses data from SHARE Waves 6 (https ://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE .w6.710), see Börsch-Supan et al. (2013) for methodological details. The SHARE data collection has been funded by the European Commission through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHAREI3:RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005-028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006-028812), FP7 (SHARE-PREP: GA N o211909, SHARE-LEAP: GA N o227822, SHARE M4: GA N o261982) and Horizon 2020 (SHARE-DEV3: GA N o676536, SERISS: GA N o654221) and by DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. Additional funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research, the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01-AG09740-13S2, P01-AG005842, P01-AG08291, P30-AG12815, R21-AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG-BSR06-11, OGHA-04-064, HHSN271201300071C) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged(see www.share -proje ct.org)

Visualizing Inequality in Health and Socioeconomic Wellbeing in the EU: Findings from the SHARE Survey

This article belongs to the Special Issue The Economics of CaringThe main objective of this paper is to visualize profiles of older Europeans to better understand differing levels of dependency across Europe. Data comes from wave 6 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), carried out in 18 countries and representing over 124 million aged individuals in Europe. Using the information of around 30 mixed-type variables, we design four composite indices of wellbeing for each respondent: self-perception of health, physical health and nutrition, mental agility, and level of dependency. Next, by implementing the k-prototypes clustering algorithm, profiles are created by combining those indices with a collection of socio-economic and demographic variables about the respondents. Five profiles are established that segment the dataset into the least to the most individuals at risk of health and socio-economic wellbeing. The methodology we propose is wide enough to be extended to other surveys or disciplines.This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, grant number MTM2014-56535-R

Investment in R&D and its link with income: theory and inquiry about the behaviour of the European economies

Vivimos en un tiempo caracterizado por una profunda transformación tecnológica dentro de economías que operan a escala global. En este contexto, la innovación aparece como un factor clave para la mejora de las condiciones productivas de un sistema económico, que en el caso europeo, es fundamental para mejorar la competitividad de las economías de la zona. Este trabajo indaga sobre la vinculación entre gasto en innovación y nivel de renta en quince países europeos, estudiándose la existencia de grupos de naciones que presentan pautas similares de gasto en I+D+i. Para ello, se han utilizado tanto el análisis de correlaciones como el quick cluster.______________________________________________We are living a time in which the economies are operating on a global scale and are affected by an intense technological change. In this context, innovation emerges as a key factor to enhance the productivity in the economic systems. This variable becomes fundamental for increasing the competitiveness of European economies. This paper inquires into the link between investment in innovation and income level in 15 European countries, not only studying each of them, but also trying to find groups with similar spending patterns of behaviour. It has been taken into account variables such as the level and composition of R&D outlays, the proportion of this investment into the GDP and how much of it is spent by Public Sector. Correlation analysis and quick cluster have been the statistical tools used to undertake this task