Enrolment in Micro Life and Health Insurance: Evidences from Sri Lanka

Microinsurance is an emerging concept protecting households from the potentially catastrophic expenditures associated with family related shocks. Therefore, this paper presents evidence on the determinants of insurance participation using probit models on household survey data from Sri Lanka, conditional on household's microfinance institution enrolment. Further, we employ multivariate probit regressions to analyse factors affecting the participation in different types of insurance. We find that the household’s experience of a family related shock is positively associated with the participation in micro health insurance schemes under study. There is strong evidence that microinsurance has not yet succeeded in proportionately reaching the most vulnerable households. Notably, education of the household head is a strong determinant of microinsurance participation.microinsurance, household behaviour, Sri Lanka

Risk Management among the Poor: The Case of Microfinancial Services

This paper argues that the level of financial services provision determines the risk management strategies among the poor. The paper estimates the determinants of the household’s use of one, two or all three types of microfinancial services applying ordered probit models and additionally probit models for combinations of them. By doing this on household survey data from Sri Lanka, there is empirical evidence that household's probability to participate in microfinancial services increases with rising self perception towards risk. Further, we find that it depends highly on the type of risk, if a household is more or less likely to use microfinancial services in Sri Lanka, whereas the accessibility to one, two or three microfinancial services is determined by the experience of specific hazards in the past. The study finds that the poor are less likely to use microfinancial services than their better off counterparts.financial markets, financial services, microinsurance, Sri Lanka, South Asia

THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF AFTER-SALES SERVICES FOR THE INSURANCE OF GROWTH IN CUSTOMER-VALUE-ORIENTED MANAGEMENT: AN OBSERVATION OF SMALL- AND MEDIUM-SIZED INDUSTRIAL GOODS MANUFACTURERS

Small and medium-sized companies in the investment goods industry find themselves more and more often confronted with radical changes in the conditions of their business environments. The access to one dimensional growth just by selling physical products is becoming increasingly limited. Traditional means are suffering of a constant loss of effectiveness. But even though it has been shown that there are enormous chances in the area of after-sales services in this industry, small- and medium-sized industrial goods manufacturers obtain only about 25% of their turnover with services, due to an insufficient strategic involvement of this topic. On the basis of a long term perspective and against the background of the discussions on stakeholder integration, strategic business segments and the customer-lifetime-value, this paper focuses on the different possibilities of accessing new market potentials by combining and analyzing the implications of different strategic perspectives on after-sales-services and their effects on the customer-lifetime-value.After-Sales Services; Investment goods industry; Capital goods; Strategic marketing; Strategic business segment.

Grow With Canola: on-farm demonstration

Non-Peer Reviewe

Testing the Event in Isolation on Maui

Archaeological theory has usually depended upon investigating locations through the entire length of occupation. The novelty of addressing archaeological data through the analysis of separate events in time has been proposed by several scholars. An eventful analysis of archaeology or "eventful archaeology" is addressed here by analyzing archaeological data obtain from the Koholuapapa heiau on the island of Maui. The discovery of an adjacent residential enclosure constructed after the collapse of the kapu system across the Hawai'ian archipelago supports a spatial transformation. Data analysis of the archaeological investigation identifies the numerous cascading events leading up to the cultural transformation of the material record.B.A. (Bachelor of Arts

AC Power Combining Strategy with Application to Efficient Linear Power Amplifiers

With the ongoing push for wireless systems to accommodate more users and support higher data rates more efficient modulation schemes have been created that are more advanced than simple FM and AM modulation used for radio broadcasting. These modulation schemes, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), suffer from high peak to average power ratios. Standard Class A and Class AB amplifiers cannot simultaneously achieve good linearity and efficiency, and therefore there has been an increase in the development of new topologies to combat this issue. Common features to these circuits is power combining of two or more separate transistors. In this work, we consider various ways of two-source power combining and identify four topologies of interest. We notice that linear power-efficient amplifiers reported to date are based upon two of the identified combining strategies. We believe that no amplifiers have been reported that leverage the other two alternatives. This work produces a fully-functional amplifier based on one of these alternatives. The prototypes are intended to serve as concept verification of the architecture and hence are implemented at lower (1 MHz) frequencies

Open Innovation After Initial Coin Offerings - An Empirical Investigation of Crowd Participation and Third-Party Support

This study investigates the relationship between third-party support of young ventures and crowd engagement in open source development projects grounded in signaling theory. It is centered on the empirical analysis of a multi-source secondary dataset of 697 firms which conducted an initial coin offering (ICO) and published their source code online. We find that internal third-party support by technology advisors is positively associated with crowd engagement for open source development projects. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, we find internal support by business advisors and prestigious external support to be negatively related to crowd participation. The study enhances our understanding of antecedents of software co-creation and contributes to IS literature on third-party endorsement in open innovation and ICOs

Savings, Credit and Insurance : Household Demand for Formal Financial Services in Rural Ghana

This paper argues that the study of the demand for financial services in developing countries leaves out part of the story, if it looks at only one of the three elements of the so called finance trinity, i.e. savings products, loans, or insurances, as is largely done in the literature. In contrast to previous research, it is assumed that households’ choice for any of these services is strongly interconnected. Therefore, the paper simultaneously estimates the determinants of household demand for savings, loans and insurances by applying a multivariate probit model on household survey data from rural Ghana. On the one hand, the estimation results confirm the common finding that poorer households are less likely to participate in the formal financial sector than better off households. On the other hand, there is empirical evidence that the usage of savings products, loans and insurances does not only depend on the socio-economic status of households, but also on various other factors, such as households’ risk assessment and the past exposure to shocks. In addition, trust in the providing institution and its products appear to play a key role.Bei der Betrachtung der Nachfrage nach Finanzdienstleistungen in Entwicklungsländern spiegelt die bisherige Literatur nur einen Teil des Gesamtbildes wider, da sie sich hauptsächlich auf eines der drei Elemente der so genannten „finance trinity“ – Sparprodukte, Kredite und Versicherungen – beschränkt. Im Gegensatz dazu wird hier unterstellt, dass die Entscheidungen von Haushalten für oder gegen die Verwendung jedes dieser Produkte eng miteinander verknüpft sind. Deshalb werden die Determinanten für die Nachfrage nach Sparprodukten, Krediten und Versicherungen simultan geschätzt, und zwar mit Hilfe eines multivariaten Probit-Modells auf der Grundlage von Haushaltsdaten aus einem ländlichen Gebiet Ghanas. Einerseits stützen die Resultate frühere Erkenntnisse aus der Literatur, nämlich dass ärmere Haushalte mit geringerer Wahrscheinlichkeit als besser gestellte Haushalte am formalen Finanzmarkt teilnehmen. Andererseits belegen die empirischen Ergebnisse, dass die Verwendung von Sparprodukten, Krediten und Versicherungen nicht allein vom sozioökonomischen Status der Haushalte, sondern auch von verschiedenen anderen Faktoren, wie der Selbsteinschätzung der Risikosituation seitens der Haushalte und der Erfahrung von Schocksituationen in der Vergangenheit, abhängen. Zudem scheint das Vertrauen in die Finanzinstitution, ihre Produkte und Mitarbeiter eine entscheidende Rolle zu spielen