Pricing Life

Pricing Life

Author: Peter A. Ubel

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780262710091

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A rational look at health care rationing, from ethical, economic, psychological, and clinical perspectives. Although managed health care is a hot topic, too few discussions focus on health care rationing--who lives and who dies, death versus dollars. In this book physician and bioethicist Peter A. Ubel argues that physicians, health insurance companies, managed care organizations, and governments need to consider the cost-effectiveness of many new health care technologies. In particular, they need to think about how best to ration health care. Ubel believes that standard medical training should provide physicians with the expertise to decide when to withhold health care from patients. He discusses the moral questions raised by this position, and by health care rationing in general. He incorporates ethical arguments about the appropriate role of cost-effectiveness analysis in health care rationing, empirical research about how the general public wants to ration care, and clinical insights based on his practice of general internal medicine. Straddling the fields of ethics, economics, research psychology, and clinical medicine, he moves the debate forward from whether to ration to how to ration. The discussion is enlivened by actual case studies.


The Pricing of Progress

The Pricing of Progress

Author: Eli Cook

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-09-25

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 0674982541

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In today’s GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. The Pricing of Progress traces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life. Eli Cook roots the rise of economic indicators in the emergence of modern capitalism and the contested history of English enclosure, Caribbean slavery, American industrialization, economic thought, and corporate power. He explores how the maximization of market production became the chief objective of American economic and social policy. We see how distinctly capitalist quantification techniques used to manage or invest in railroad corporations, textile factories, real estate holdings, or cotton plantations escaped the confines of the business world and seeped into every nook and cranny of society. As economic elites quantified the nation as a for-profit, capitalized investment, the progress of its inhabitants, free or enslaved, came to be valued according to their moneymaking abilities. Today as in the nineteenth century, political struggles rage over who gets to determine the statistical yardsticks used to gauge the “health” of our economy and nation. The Pricing of Progress helps us grasp the limits and dangers of entrusting economic indicators to measure social welfare and moral goals.


Pricing Lives

Pricing Lives

Author: W. Kip Viscusi

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 069120859X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How society’s undervaluing of life puts all of us at risk—and the groundbreaking economic measure that can fix it Like it or not, sometimes we need to put a monetary value on people's lives. In the past, government agencies used the financial "cost of death" to monetize the mortality risks of regulatory policies, but this method vastly undervalued life. Pricing Lives tells the story of how the government came to adopt an altogether different approach--the value of a statistical life, or VSL—and persuasively shows how its more widespread use could create a safer and more equitable society for everyone. In the 1980s, W. Kip Viscusi used the method to demonstrate that the benefits of requiring businesses to label hazardous chemicals immensely outweighed the costs. VSL is the risk-reward trade-off that people make about their health when considering risky job choices. With it, Viscusi calculated how much more money workers would demand to take on hazardous jobs, boosting calculated benefits by an order of magnitude. His current estimate of the value of a statistical life is $10 million. In this book, Viscusi provides a comprehensive look at all aspects of economic and policy efforts to price lives, including controversial topics such as whether older people's lives are worth less and richer people's lives are worth more. He explains why corporations need to abandon the misguided cost-of-death approach, how the courts can profit from increased application of VSL in assessing liability and setting damages, and how other countries consistently undervalue risks to life. Pricing Lives proposes sensible economic guideposts to foster more protective policies and greater levels of safety in the United States and throughout the world.


Non-Life Insurance Pricing with Generalized Linear Models

Non-Life Insurance Pricing with Generalized Linear Models

Author: Esbjörn Ohlsson

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-03-18

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 3642107915

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Non-life insurance pricing is the art of setting the price of an insurance policy, taking into consideration varoius properties of the insured object and the policy holder. Introduced by British actuaries generalized linear models (GLMs) have become today a the standard aproach for tariff analysis. The book focuses on methods based on GLMs that have been found useful in actuarial practice and provides a set of tools for a tariff analysis. Basic theory of GLMs in a tariff analysis setting is presented with useful extensions of standarde GLM theory that are not in common use. The book meets the European Core Syllabus for actuarial education and is written for actuarial students as well as practicing actuaries. To support reader real data of some complexity are provided at www.math.su.se/GLMbook.


Introduction to Business

Introduction to Business

Author: Lawrence J. Gitman

Publisher:

Published: 2024-09-16

Total Pages: 1455

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Introduction to Business covers the scope and sequence of most introductory business courses. The book provides detailed explanations in the context of core themes such as customer satisfaction, ethics, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing change. Introduction to Business includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations, which feature a variety of individuals. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for student success in this course and beyond. This is an adaptation of Introduction to Business by OpenStax. You can access the textbook as pdf for free at openstax.org. Minor editorial changes were made to ensure a better ebook reading experience. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Morals and Markets

Morals and Markets

Author: Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-08-08

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0231545428

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Life insurance—the promise of an insurer to pay a sum upon a person's death in exchange for a regular premium—is a bizarre enterprise. How can we monetize human life? Should we? What statistics do we use, what assumptions do we make, and what behavioral factors do we consider? First published in 1979, Morals and Markets Is a pathbreaking study exploring the development of life insurance in the United States. Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer combines economic history and a sociological perspective to advance a novel interpretation of the life insurance industry. The book pioneered a cultural approach to the analysis of morally controversial markets. Zelizer begins in the mid-nineteenth century with the rise of the life insurance industry, a contentious chapter in the history of American business. Life insurance was stigmatized at first, denounced in newspapers and condemned by religious leaders as an immoral and sacrilegious gamble on human life. Over time, the business became a widely praised arrangement to secure a family's future. How did life insurance overcome cultural barriers? As Zelizer shows, the evolution of the industry in the United States matched evolving attitudes toward death, money, family relations, property, and personal legacy.


Pricing the Priceless Child

Pricing the Priceless Child

Author: Viviana A. Zelizer

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1994-08-28

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780691034591

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study traces the emergence of changing attitudes about the child, at once economically "useless" and emotionally "priceless", from the late 1800s to the 1930s. It describes how turn-of-the-century America discovered new, sentimental ways to determine a child's monetary worth.


Pricing Insurance Risk

Pricing Insurance Risk

Author: Stephen J. Mildenhall

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2022-06-15

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 1119755670

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

PRICING INSURANCE RISK A comprehensive framework for measuring, valuing, and managing risk Pricing Insurance Risk: Theory and Practice delivers an accessible and authoritative account of how to determine the premium for a portfolio of non-hedgeable insurance risks and how to allocate it fairly to each portfolio component. The authors synthesize hundreds of academic research papers, bringing to light little-appreciated answers to fundamental questions about the relationships between insurance risk, capital, and premium. They lean on their industry experience throughout to connect the theory to real-world practice, such as assessing the performance of business units, evaluating risk transfer options, and optimizing portfolio mix. Readers will discover: Definitions, classifications, and specifications of risk An in-depth treatment of classical risk measures and premium calculation principles Properties of risk measures and their visualization A logical framework for spectral and coherent risk measures How risk measures for capital and pricing are distinct but interact Why the cost of capital, not capital itself, should be allocated The natural allocation method and how it unifies marginal and risk-adjusted probability approaches Applications to reserve risk, reinsurance, asset risk, franchise value, and portfolio optimization Perfect for actuaries working in the non-life or general insurance and reinsurance sectors, Pricing Insurance Risk: Theory and Practice is also an indispensable resource for banking and finance professionals, as well as risk management professionals seeking insight into measuring the value of their efforts to mitigate, transfer, or bear nonsystematic risk.


The Price Advantage

The Price Advantage

Author: Michael V. Marn

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2004-04-12

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0471690023

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Price Advantage by three preeminent experts at McKinsey & Company is the most pragmatic and insightful book on pricing available. Based on in-depth, first-hand experience with hundreds of companies, this book is designed to provide managers with comprehensive guidance through the maze of pricing issues. The authors demonstrate why pricing excellence is critical to corporate success and profitability, then explain state-of-the-art approaches to analyzing and improving your own pricing strategy for any product or service. Their advice is critical for readers who need to develop pricing strategies that work in both good economic times and bad.


Style and Statistics

Style and Statistics

Author: Brittany Bullard

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-11-22

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1119271258

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A non-technical guide to leveraging retail analytics for personal and competitive advantage Style & Statistics is a real-world guide to analytics in retail. Written specifically for the non-IT crowd, this book explains analytics in an approachable, understandable way, and provides examples of direct application to retail merchandise management, marketing, and operations. The discussion covers current industry trends and emerging-standard processes, and illustrates how analytics is providing new solutions to perennial retail problems. You'll learn how to leverage the benefits of analytics to boost your personal career, and how to interpret data in a way that's useful to the average end business user or shopper. Key concepts are detailed in easy-to-understand language, and numerous examples highlight the growing importance of understanding analytics in the retail environment. The power of analytics has become apparent across industries, but it's left an especially indelible mark on retail. It's a complex topic, but you don't need to be a data scientist to take advantage of the opportunities it brings. This book shows you what you need to know, and how to put analytics to work with retail-specific applications. Learn how analytics can help you be better at your job Dig deeper into the customer's needs, wants, and dreams Streamline merchandise management, pricing, marketing, and more Find solutions for inefficiencies and inaccuracies As the retail customer evolves, so must the retail industry. The retail landscape not only includes in-store but also website, mobile site, mobile apps, and social media. With more and more competition emerging on all sides, retailers need to use every tool at their disposal to create value and gain a competitive advantage. Analytics offers a number of ways to make your company stand out, whether it's through improved operations, customer experience, or any of the other myriad factors that build a great place to shop. Style & Statistics provides an analytics primer with a practical bent, specifically for the retail industry.